Potboiler (28 page)

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.”

“Possibly everybody, in parts.”

“They sent me in knowing I would fail,” he said. “I was a pawn.”

“Welcome to the club.”

“Didn’t they care about getting you back?”

She shrugged.

“You could have died.”

“I suppose.”

“You don’t seem too bothered by that possibility,” he said.

“We’re all going to die, at some point.”

“That’s an awfully forgiving line to take on folks who, as far as I can see, have shown no concern for you.”

“You don’t become a beekeeper if you’re not ready to get stung,” she said. “And let’s be fair. I’ve had a comfortable life, courtesy of them. Everything’s a compromise.”

“How long have you been a spy?” he asked.

“Never ask a lady that.”

“Was it Bill’s idea?”

She laughed. “I was the one who recruited him.”

“Did you love him?”

“Enough.”

“What about me.”

“I’ve always loved you, Arthur.”

They made love.

“Sorry we’re not galloping off across the misty moors,” he said.

“It’ll do.”

“I’m still looking into that beefcake for your birthday.”

She smiled. “I can’t wait.”

They made love.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Tomorrow is Casablanca, last stop on this side of the Atlantic before we cross. Once you get to Havana the first thing you need to do is check yourself into a hospital.”

He nodded.

“Promise me you will.”

“Of course,” he said, “but I’ll be fine, as long as you’re with me.”

“That’s what I mean,” she said.

He didn’t understand.

Then he did.

“No,” he said.

“It’s too dangerous for me to stay with you, Arthur. And it’s too dangerous for you to stay with me.”

“Carlotta. Please.”

“I’ve worked with these people for thirty years. I know how they think. They hate loose ends.”

“I’m not a loose end.”

“To them you are. You know too much. Not to mention that if Zhulk
was
telling the truth, he’s bound to renege on the gas, now that you’re gone. That’s an enormous setback for our side. They’re going to be mad. Someone’s got to be blamed, and you’ll make an ideal scapegoat.”

There was a silence.

“‘Our side’?” he said.

“I’m sorry, Arthur.”

He felt the hardness coming on.

“Go someplace far away,” she said. “Start over.”

“I don’t want to start over.”

She put her hand on his. “I’m sorry.”

They lay without speaking, listening to the ocean beat against the side of the ship.

“Whatever you do,” he said, “please don’t tell me I’m like a moth drawn to a flame.”

“All right, I won’t tell you that.”

The waves raged like war.

“Make love to me again,” she said.

He turned his head on the pillow. Her eyes were full of pain. He kissed them shut. Then he closed his own eyes and did his duty.

111.

They stood on deck, watching the rising sun gild the medina, listening to the muezzin’s fading wail as it yielded to the plashing of
floukas
in the harbor. Pfefferkorn was leaning on the railing to take the weight off his broken leg. Carlotta had her arm around his waist.

“I’ll miss you more than you know,” she said.

“I’ll know,” he said.

She started for the gangplank.

“Carlotta.”

She turned around.

“Read it at your leisure,” he said.

She tucked the letter into her coat, kissed his cheek, and walked away.

Pfefferkorn tracked her slender form as it moved along the waterfront. She was headed to the American embassy. There she would make contact with the local field agent. She would report that the West Zlabians had released her in the wake of Pfefferkorn’s execution at the hands of the East Zlabians. He would be gone before anyone thought to start hunting for him.

Jaromir helped him back down to the infirmary. He tucked Pfefferkorn into bed and handed him a tepid mug of
thruynichka.

“To your health,” Jaromir said.

Pfefferkorn took a long pull. It burned.

SEVEN
DEUS EX MACHINA

112.

The
mercado
was of a piece with the rest of the village, sleepy, low-slung, and salt-eaten. Life began before dawn with the arrival of fishermen offloading buckets of wriggling squid and fraying sacks of shrimp. At half past five the produce trucks pulled up, and by nine all but the sickliest foodstuffs were gone. Toward midafternoon the people rose from their siesta, yawning men jellied by drink, heavy-bosomed women shooing half-naked children with incongruously ancient Indian faces, boys doing battle over a scabby, wheezing
fútbol
until once again drawn homeward by the sweet smell of stewed pork.

Pfefferkorn, a wide-brimmed straw hat on his head, moved among the stalls, squeezing tomatoes. No longer did he feel petty for demanding a discount of a few pesos. Bargaining was not merely tolerated but appreciated, a dance that helped to freshen an otherwise tiresome courtship. He handed the six ripest to the vendor, who placed them on the scale and announced a total weight of eleven kilograms
.
Es ridículo,
Pfefferkorn replied. Never in the history of agriculture had tomatoes weighed so much, he said. He would complain to the
alcalde,
he would inform the padre, he would get his axe (he owned no axe), he would pay a certain amount (he swung the bills, axe-like) and not a centavo more. The vendor replied that he would be reduced to poverty, that he was already giving Pfefferkorn a discount, and who did he think he was, gringo, talking to him like this? After several more thrusts and parries, they agreed upon the same price they had the day before and shook hands.

Christmas was on the horizon, the streets awash with the remains of the previous evening’s
mercado
. Pfefferkorn took his bags of food and walked to the post office, which was also the sewer department, pest control, and Western Union. The lone clerk swapped out the sign on the wall depending on who came through the door and for what purpose. As soon as he saw Pfefferkorn, he replaced
ALCANTARILLADOS
with
CORREOS
and began digging through a jumble of parcels, jostling the gimpy desk and setting its little plastic nativity scene aquiver, so that the animals and magi appeared to line-dance.

“It came yesterday. . . . Don’t you get headaches? . . . Sign here. . . . Thank you.”

Pfefferkorn tended to forget what he had ordered by the time it arrived, which made tearing into the brown paper more exciting—a surprise to himself, from himself. To prolong his pleasure, he strolled down the
avenida.
He sat in the
zócalo
, passing the time of day with the elderly men feeding the birds. A woman in a serape striped like a TV test pattern sold him fritters drenched in jaggery syrup, a seasonal specialty. He ate one and felt as though he had been kicked by a mule. He shifted the package under his other arm and headed toward the rectory.

113.

Some thirty-eight months prior, the
had put ashore in Havana. While the rest of the crew stormed the city to carouse, Jaromir got Pfefferkorn into a taxi and rode with him to the nearest hospital. They checked him in under a false name. He was shown to the medical-tourism ward. He was given X-rays. His leg was rebroken and reset. Jaromir stayed at his side for four more days. Before he left, Pfefferkorn offered to pay him, but he waved it off, growling. He was fine, he said. He was taking back tobacco and sugar, several hundred pounds of which were undeclared and would be sold on the Tunisian black market. Pfefferkorn should keep his money.

The hospital discharged him with crutches, a bottle of painkillers, and instructions to reappear in five weeks. He holed up in a cheap hotel and watched baseball. He watched Venezuelan sitcoms. He watched a dubbed episode of
The Poem, It Is Bad!
For practice, he spoke back to the screen. He hadn’t used Spanish since high school, when he and Bill had been conversation partners.

After the cast came off he spent another month rebuilding his strength. He took long, slow walks. He resumed his regimen of push-ups and sit-ups. He sat in the Plaza de la Catedral, eating
croquetas
and listening to the street musicians. He felt the nightly thump of the cannon at the Castilla de San Carlos de la Cabaña. He did a lot of thinking.

He took a taxi to a secluded beach about thirty minutes east of the city. He paid the driver to wait for him. He walked along the sand, his pockets swinging. The tide was far out. He knelt and dug a hole with his hands. He took out the dubnium polymer soap and dropped it into the hole. He took out the designer eau de cologne solvent and aimed the nozzle at the soap and spritzed it three times. The soap began to bubble and dissolve. The solvent was far less effective on the soap than it had been on the wooden crate. He spritzed again and watched the polymer fizz. He kept on spritzing until there was nothing left in the hole except a tuft of foam. At no point did he see anything resembling a flash drive. Which meant that he had been the real bait in the deal with Zhulk. Which meant that Paul had lied, at least about that, and that Carlotta was right. He could never go home.

He had the taxi driver take him to the Malecón. He walked along the esplanade, shielding his eyes and gazing northward toward Key West. It was too far away for him to actually see it, but he pretended he could.

114.

He moved on.

He boarded a propeller plane to Cancún. He spent the night in a motel and caught the first bus out of town. He got off the bus in a random village and walked around. He spent the night in a motel and got back on a different bus. He did the same thing the next day, and the next. Rarely did he stay in one place for more than twenty-four hours. He ate when he was hungry and slept when he was tired. He let his beard grow. It came in everywhere except for the strip of scar tissue on his upper left lip.

One evening while walking from the bus station in some no-name rural hamlet he heard the sound of a struggle and went to investigate. Down a trash-strewn alley, a pair of thugs was robbing an old woman at knifepoint. Pfefferkorn flexed his arms. His healed leg was still stiff. It impaired his mobility a hair. On the other hand, he was leaner and stronger than he had been in years. He was all sinew and muscle and bone.

The old woman was crying, being jerked about as she clung to her handbag.

Pfefferkorn whistled.

The thugs looked up, looked at each other, and smiled. One of them told the other to wait and then he advanced on Pfefferkorn, the knife glinting in the moonlight.

Pfefferkorn left him sinking to his knees, gasping for breath.

The other thug ran.

Pfefferkorn scooped up the old woman in his arms and carried her three blocks to her home. She was still crying, now with gratitude. She blessed him and kissed his cheeks.

“De nada,”
he said.

The next morning, he moved on.

115.

The places he visited all had the same markets, plazas, and cathedrals. They all had the same murals of Hidalgo or Zapata or Pancho Villa. They were all too provincial and remote to get foreign newspaper service, and so he had to wait until he reached Mexico City to get to an Internet café and catch up on the latest developments in the Zlabian valley.

What had happened depended on whose account you chose to believe. According to the West Zlabian state-run news agency, the festival celebrating the fifteen-hundredth anniversary of
Vassily Nabochka
had been an unmitigated success. Copies of the newly completed poem were distributed to every citizen, and the resulting swell of patriotism provoked the jealousy of the East Zlabian capitalist aggressors, who then invaded. According to the East Zlabian
Pyelikhyuin
, the release of the controversial new ending had sent waves of anger through a West Zlabian populace already brimming with discontentment. The rumblings grew in strength and ferocity until they erupted into riots. Violence spilled across the Gyeznyuiy, at which point it became incumbent upon Lord High President Thithyich to breach the median and reestablish order. According to CNN, the chaos was total. Everybody was killing everybody. Neighboring governments, fearing errant shells and a flood of refugees, had begged the world powers to intervene. The White House had petitioned Congress to authorize the use of troops. In theory the peacekeeping force was to be multilateral, but ninety percent of the boots and all of the strategic command were American. Within twenty-four hours they had put the entire valley on lockdown. The president of the United States had issued a statement that there would be a complete withdrawal as soon as feasible. He refused to set a timetable, calling that a “prescription for disappointment.” Nor would he comment on what would happen to the West Zlabian gas field.

Pfefferkorn reread the words “newly completed poem” several times.

He tried looking for a copy of it online but found nothing.

Back at his motel, he reread his unfinished ending to
Vassily Nabochka
. A few months’ distance enabled him to admit that Zhulk’s wife had been right on the money. It was terrible.

That night he went out for a walk. He passed a pimp slapping around a prostitute, threatening to cut her tongue out.

Pfefferkorn whistled.