Potboiler

Moments before he blacked out, he remembered why pyatshellalikhuiy were so treasured. The recipe called for wheat flour, a rarity in West Zlabia. Practically the only way to get some was to smuggle it across the border from the east, a crime that carried the death penalty. As he heard the fading sound of a key in the door, he was thinking that it wasn’t worth the risk.

82.

He awoke in darkness. His hands and feet were bound. His mouth was full of cloth. His groin was clammy. He felt forward momentum in his bowels and rattling in his joints. He heard the modulating pitch of a shifting transmission. The heat was suffocating and the air suffused with mildew. He could state with confidence that he was tied up in the trunk of a car. Hysteria clutched at him. His throat started to close up. He bucked and thrashed around and ended up banging his head hard enough to subdue himself. He commanded himself to be rational. What would Dick Stapp do? He would lie still and conserve energy. What about Harry Shagreen? He would count turns. Pfefferkorn lay still, conserving his energy and counting turns. He determined that his right shoulder was up against the rear of the trunk. Hence pressure on top of his head meant a right turn. Pressure on the soles of his shoes meant left. He soon became attuned to changes in the elevation: the rightward jolt that indicated uphill, the gentler leftward yaw for down. They drove for what seemed like hours, making what seemed like a thousand turns. The car had rotten suspension. It hit a pothole and he was tossed against the roof of the trunk, landing painfully and losing count. The third time it happened he gave up counting and gave in to despair. All the turns in the world would tell him nothing if he didn’t know the starting point and what direction they had set out in. Nor did he have any idea how long he’d been passed out. He knew nothing, nothing at all, and to be confronted by his ignorance sparked a new fit of rage. He thrashed and bucked and rolled and kicked and screamed and gnawed at his gag, rivers of spit running down his neck.

The car slowed.

It stopped.

Doors opened.

Humid night air kissed him.

He put up no fight as they removed the blindfold. The orange glow of a highway sodium vapor lamp haloed four faces. A fifth face appeared, close enough to eclipse the light. The fifth face had two crinkly eye sockets, two thin bloodless lips, a bulbous pate like an overfilled balloon. It smiled, showing unnaturally even teeth. Pfefferkorn could tell they were dentures.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, or tried to say. He was still gagged.

“Hush,” Lucian Savory said.

He shut the trunk.

FIVE

(Welcome to East Zlabia!)

83.

“You look good,” Savory said. “Have you lost weight?”

Pfefferkorn couldn’t answer. He was still gagged. The henchmen—he’d never before had occasion to use the word, and despite his abject state he could appreciate its aptness, for the four apes dragging him across the parking garage and into the elevator carried an unmistakable air of henchiness about them—smirked.

“The hell happened to your face, anyway? You look like Salvador Dalí with a cattle prod up his ass.”

The elevator doors closed and they began to rise.

Savory sniffed. He frowned. “Christ,” he said. “You pissed your pants, didn’t you.”

Pfefferkorn grunted.

“Give him yours,” Savory said.

One of the henchmen unhesitatingly removed his fatigue pants. The other three stripped Pfefferkorn from the waist down. Two of them lifted him like an infant while the third slid the dry fatigues on. The donor remained standing in his underwear.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Savory said. It was unclear whom he was addressing.

The car went up, up, up.

“Here’s some advice, free of charge,” Savory said. “Try not to look so damned sullen. He hates that.”

Pfefferkorn was unaware of looking sullen. He wanted to grunt “Who’s ‘he’?” but the elevator dinged and the doors opened onto the grandest living room he had ever seen—it made the de Vallées’ house look like a Motel 6—and he knew the answer.

The henchmen carried him through an ornate wooden door and into a maze of corridors lined by armed guards.

“Don’t slouch,” Savory said. “Posture’s a big deal to him. Don’t fidget or stare. Speak only when spoken to. And if he offers you a drink, take it.”

The final door was made of steel. Savory swiped a keycard and pressed a code. A moment later there was a click, and Pfefferkorn was brought inside.

84.

None of the photographs Pfefferkorn had seen did justice to Lord High President Kliment Thithyich in the flesh. A photo failed to convey the way his hands made toys of everyday objects. It failed to capture the voice that came at Pfefferkorn like a gale wind. It did not account for his fondness for air quotes.