Potboiler

He took the soda. The label read Mr. Grapey. The drink contained one hundred sixty calories, no fat, no cholesterol, fifty-three milligrams of sodium, forty-seven grams of sugar, no vitamins, look in your back pocket.

I’m hallucinating, he thought.

He rubbed his eyes.

The words remained.

He reached into his back pocket and removed a slip of paper the size and shape of a fortune-cookie fortune. On it were printed two words.

TURN AROUND

Pfefferkorn turned around.

Not three feet away, where ten seconds prior there had been nobody, a man now stood. Pfefferkorn could not fathom how he had gotten there so quickly and quietly. Yet there he was, a medium-sized man in a shapeless charcoal suit. Pfefferkorn could not tell his age, due to a full eighty percent of his face being hidden behind the largest, bushiest, most aggressively expansionist moustache Pfefferkorn had ever seen. It was a moustache with submoustaches that in turn had sub-submoustaches, each of which might be said to be deserving of its own area code. It was a moustache that vexed profoundly questions of waxing, a moustache the merest glimpse of which might spur female musk oxen to ovulate. It was a moustache that would have driven Nietzsche mad with envy, had he not been mad already. If the three most copiously flowing waterfalls in the world, Niagara, Victoria, and Iguazú Falls, were somehow united, and their combined outputs rendered in facial hair, this man’s moustache would not have been an inaccurate model, save that this man’s moustache also challenged traditional notions of gravity by growing outward, upward, and laterally. It was an impressive moustache and Pfefferkorn was impressed.

“I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed,” the man said.

61.

Moustaches or no moustaches, Pfefferkorn knew at once who he was talking to.

“Jameson?” Pfefferkorn asked. “Is that you?”

The moustaches moved in a disappointed way. “For the purposes of this operation,” Jameson said, “you should refer to me as Blueblood.”

Pfefferkorn followed him to a black coupe at the rear of the parking lot.

“Why are you wearing that ridiculous getup?”

“All information will be provided on a need-to-know basis.”

They peeled out onto the highway.

“Can I at least see some identification or something?” Pfefferkorn asked.

“Field agents don’t carry ID. My official picture wouldn’t match my face, anyhow.”

“I’m not sure why I’m supposed to trust you.”

“Have you seen the news? I cut you loose and you’ll either be in jail or dead by sundown. If not both. And sooner. So it’s in your interest to listen to me. But”—Jameson/Blueblood veered onto the shoulder and slammed on the brakes—“it’s your call.”

Pfefferkorn stared out at the shimmering blacktop. He had no food, no water, and no money. His clothes didn’t fit and he had a headache. He could run, but where? He could seek help, but from whom? There was a reward posted for his capture, and he was one of the most famous writers in the world. Not as high-profile as a movie star, perhaps, but still.

“Well?” Blueblood/Jameson said. “Do you accept?”

“Accept what.”

“Your mission.”

“How am I supposed to answer that? I have no idea what I’m committing to.”

Blueblood rooted around under his seat. “This might help.”

He tossed a manila envelope in Pfefferkorn’s lap. Pfefferkorn opened it and withdrew a photo. It was pixelated and blurry, a still taken from a video. It was what they called a “proof of life” picture. It showed a newspaper with yesterday’s date. The newspaper was being held up by Carlotta de Vallée. She was dirty. Her makeup was smeared. Her left temple was matted down with dark crust. She looked petrified. She had a right to be. There was a gun to her head.

62.

The safe house was a four-story log cabin on a private lake. Pfefferkorn clambered out of the seaplane and took in a lungful of piney air.

“Go on ahead,” Blueblood said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Pfefferkorn walked up the dock toward the house. The front door opened.

“Howdy doody,” Canola said. “Glad you could make it.”

He ushered Pfefferkorn to an elegant room appointed with bearskin rugs and Craftsman furniture. A stag’s head hung over a stone fireplace roomy enough to spit-roast a yak. There was a stately grandfather clock and a long conference table polished to a mirror shine. If not for the presence of a bulletin board tacked with a map of the Zlabias and a ceiling-mounted projection screen, it would have made an appropriate setting for a state dinner party, especially one whose menu called for yak.

“Take a load off,” Canola said. “Op com will be by soon to brief you. Hungry?”

Pfefferkorn nodded.

“Sit tight.”

Pfefferkorn fiddled with the knickknacks on the mantel. Muted voices drifted down the hall. He tried to eavesdrop but got nothing.

Canola returned with sandwiches and ice water. “Lunch is served,” he said.

Pfefferkorn bit into an egg salad on seven-grain.

“Sorry about all the rough stuff,” Canola said. “You understand.”