Potboiler

Before he could answer, there was a noise. They turned to see a largish shadow moving toward them across the kitchen tiles. The shadow belonged to a largish person smiling menacingly and swinging a largish chef’s knife in lazy figure eights.

“Hungry,” Yelena said.

“Not in the least,” Pfefferkorn said.

He pulled Carlotta to safety behind him and flicked open his toothbrush.

108.

“Really, Arthur, that was very impressive.”

They were running.

“Brutal,” Carlotta said. “But impressive.”

Somewhere not too far away, a siren began to wail.

“You damn near took her head off,” she said.

“Keep your voice down,” he said.

They had no trouble at all finding the right ship. It dominated the harbor, a weathered twenty-five-thousand-ton handy-size freighter with in red letters along the starboard side. Jaromir was waiting for them by the gangplank. He blinked at their bloody clothes, then ushered them down into the cargo hold. There were hundreds of wooden crates, stacked eight high atop wooden pallets. They squeezed their way to the back of the hold, where Jaromir had cleared out a space and laid down a blanket. There was a bucket of water. He told them to keep quiet. He would let them know when they had reached the safety of international waters.

They waited. Pfefferkorn’s legs were cramping and it was hard for him to sit still. Carlotta massaged him and used the bucket to wash the blood from his face and hands. He couldn’t be sure whose blood it was, his or Yelena’s. Both, he assumed. He watched it come off impassively. Time ticked by. The sounds of a busy ship trickled down through the ventilation system: forklifts and winches, hydraulics and pistons. The engine began to churn and the whole ship juddered. Home free, he thought. Then he heard barking.

“They’re searching for us,” Carlotta whispered.

He nodded. He uncapped the stun gun and handed it to her. He opened the knife. The barking got louder and nearer and more insistent. There was a shrill metallic squeal as the cargo hold’s doors were hauled open. They could hear Jaromir arguing vociferously with a man in Zlabian. The dogs were going crazy, their barks echoing. Pfefferkorn could sense them straining in his direction. They could smell him. He thought fast and pulled the designer eau de cologne solvent out of his back pocket. It was amber and viscous, just like real designer eau de cologne. He had no idea if it was disguised to smell like anything, but he didn’t think twice. He pulled Carlotta out of the way, held the bottle out at arm’s length, and spritzed the side of a crate. A heady base note of sandalwood and musk, overlaid with ylang-ylang and bergamot, filled the air.

The effect was instantaneous, in more ways than one. The barks turned to whimpers. Pfefferkorn could hear the handler fighting to keep the dogs there, without success. They broke free and ran, and the handler’s voice faded as he chased after them. Right away the doors to the cargo hold slammed shut.

They were safe.

Except they weren’t.

“Arthur,” Carlotta said.

She pointed.

He looked.

The solvent was rapidly eating its way through the crate, the wood dissolving before their eyes. There was a creak and a spray of splinters. Pfefferkorn processed this information just fast enough to throw himself on top of Carlotta and tent his back. The bottom crate collapsed and the seven stacked atop it crashed inward on him, each one loaded with more than fifty-five kilograms of the world’s finest quality root vegetables.

109.

He awoke with his leg bound in a crude splint. His arms and torso were taped up. His head was bandaged tightly. His skin burned with fever. He looked around. He was in a tiny cabin, surrounded by metal canisters and mason jars. He was in the ship’s infirmary.

“My hero.”

An uninjured Carlotta smiled at him from the foot of his cot.

110.

She and Jaromir nursed him as best they could, feeding him soup and expired blister packets of Soviet-era antibiotics and keeping watch as he slipped in and out of delirious dreams. Eventually he awoke lucid enough to ask for a full serving of root vegetable hash and strong enough to get it down.

“Good?” she asked.

“Revolting,” he said. He twisted to set the plate aside and winced at his broken ribs.

“Poor baby,” she said.

“What about you?”

“What about me.”

“Are you okay?”

“You’re asking me that?”

“I mean, did they hurt you.”

She shrugged. “They roughed me up a bit in the beginning, but on the whole I was treated very well.”

“No funny business,” he said.

“Funn—oh.” She shuddered. “No, nothing like that.”

“Good,” he said. “I needed to know that first.”

“Before what.”

“Before this.”

They made love. It was unsanitary, precarious, acrobatic, and transcendent.

Afterward she lay in his arms, lightly stroking his head.

“It was trés sweet of you to come rescue me,” she said. “Stupid, but sweet.”

“That’s my motto.”

“How in the world did you find me?”

He told her everything. It took a while.

“That’s rather complicated,” she said.

“I’m still having trouble figuring out who was telling the truth.”