The Apothecary Page 0,83

so much you can do with an atom. You can split, you can combine, or you can leave it alone.” He handed the wrench back to the helicopter pilot.

I tried to sort out what Sakharov had said, and realised that if this bomb was so powerful, it might overpower the apothecary’s antidotes. I was about to squeeze outside to warn him when I heard the Scar’s gravelly voice, as if observing something about the weather, say, “There is a bird.”

I felt a concussive blow of air and the room went dark. I was trapped inside some kind of tight, musty space, and couldn’t move my wings. A crack of light appeared, and I saw a scarred human face peering in. I was inside the Scar’s wool cap.

“It’s the American robin,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Danby asked.

“We should not have animals in here,” the Russian officer said. “I’ll make a note.”

“This is not the point,” the Scar said. “The bird is not native here. It is a spy.”

There was a pause of amazement at this bizarre claim. The senior officer said, “It has a camera?”

“It’s human,” Danby said. “I mean, it’s a human who became a bird.”

The senior officer cleared his throat and spoke carefully, as if talking to dangerously crazy people. “The trigger mechanism is installed,” he said. “We have twenty minutes. We must return to the ship.”

“Wait!” Danby said. “We should search the island for other birds! They may be trying to stop the test!”

“We will go now,” the senior officer said.

The Scar carried me out of the shed, inside the hat. I didn’t know if Benjamin had heard everything, and I had no way of telling him that the bomb might be too powerful for Jin Lo’s net. Then the rotors of the helicopter started up, and I knew that even my tiny robin’s scream would be drowned out.

I’d never been in a helicopter before, and riding blind inside a not-very-clean wool cap on the lap of a Stasi murderer, when you have information that your friends might desperately need, is not the way I’d recommend trying it. The hat smelled of sweat, and the noisy, rickety helicopter swung sickeningly through the air.

Finally we landed on what had to be the deck of the destroyer.

“We need a box, or a cage,” Mr Danby’s voice said.

A hand grabbed me around the chest and pulled me out of the hat. Light flooded my eyes, and I looked around frantically. The ship was huge, nothing like the bathtub toy it had seemed from the air, but almost no one was on deck. I tried to wriggle free, and stabbed at the Scar’s hand with my beak, but he only squeezed me harder, and I gasped. I thought he would crush my tiny bones.

The young pilot appeared and thrust a toolbox into Danby’s hands. “We go belowdecks, below water level now,” he said. He pointed towards Nova Zembla. “Bomb, yes? Much radiatsii.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” Danby snapped.

The boy hurried away, and Danby opened the metal toolbox, which was the size of a loaf of bread, and empty. They were going to put me in it. If I became human while inside it, I would be crushed as my bones grew. I would die painfully, I was sure—half bird, half human, too big for my prison. I shut my eyes and tried hard to imagine becoming human now, my heartbeat slowing, my wings becoming arms.

Nothing happened, and the Scar put me in the box. He seemed to be trying to figure out how to close the lid with his hand still in it, or to get his hand out without letting me go. I screeched in protest.

And then it began. I felt my heart slow, and my bones get heavier, and my skull thicken, and my feathers retract, and then I tumbled to the deck in my peacoat and boots. The toolbox clattered beside me, and the Scar was so surprised that he lost his hat, which blew across the deck of the destroyer. He ran after and snatched it from the air. I stood up, feeling awkward in my human limbs.

“I knew it!” Danby said, grabbing me by the shoulders. “Where’s the apothecary? Is he on Nova Zembla?”

“He didn’t make it,” I lied. “He fell into the sea.”

Danby searched my eyes to see if I was telling the truth.

“I’m the only one who got to the island,” I said. “I couldn’t save them.” A tear rolled down my cheek—for I did