The Alchemy of Murder (42 page)

I tap his chest with my finger. “I am going with you whether you like it or not.”

“Fine. But keep in mind, Mademoiselle, this is a sparsely populated area. I doubt if there is more than an inn or two. If there is only one room available…” He shrugs and fails to suppress a smirk.

If he thinks this will stop me, he doesn’t realize he is dealing with a modern woman—sexual innuendos will not frighten me off.

“If there is only one room, you can sleep in the stable. It was once good enough for our Lord and most certainly must be good enough for a mere writer.”

His smirk turns into a frown.

Finally we agree to meet at Gare Saint-Lazare at one o’clock this afternoon.

56

Dubois

After work Luc Dubois went to the barge. Perun is not pleased to see him.

“You were told not to come here except late at night.”

“I’m sorry, but I have important information. I spoke with the American woman. She is getting very close to identifying you.”

Perun shrugs. “So?”

Dubois stares at the anarchist leader. “But—if she does … what would happen to our rebellion?”

Perun suddenly steps closer and Dubois backs up, knocking against the table, causing a copper vial of liquid to spill. “Sorry.” Dubois holds the vial against the edge of the table. Using the side of his hand as a scraper, he pushes liquid from the metal table top into the vial. “I’m sorry. What is it?”

“Black plague.”

“My God!” Dubois drops the vial and steps back, violently shaking his wet hand.

“It’s water for the cat, you fool. Pick it up and refill it.”

He avoids Perun’s glare as he goes to the sink. He thought the man wanted to know when that woman was getting close to discovering him.

“I told you to stay away from the woman.”

“I—I kn—know, I know, I’m sorry.”

“Why did you disobey me?”

“I didn’t mean to, I’m … I’m confused.”

“What are you confused about?”

As he stands at the sink with his back to Perun, Dubois’ right knee shakes. “I don’t know, just confused. We’re getting so close…”

“I see. We’re finally getting ready to deliver a blow that will be heard around the world … and you’re confused? Could it be that you’re apprehensive about our goal?”

Dubois forces himself to turn and face him. “No, of course not.” His voice sounds hollow and false even to his own ears.

“Are you our comrade? A man of action who is willing to demonstrate his loyalty by deeds? To kill for the cause … to die yourself if need be?”

“Of course I am!”

“You failed me once before…”

“He—he was a friend.”

“He was a bourgeois, an enemy of the people.”

“Yes, yes you’re right, he had to die. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” Dubois steps closer. “I just want to share things with you. You know how I feel about you.” He reaches out to touch Perun and jerks his hand back at the look on the man’s face.

Perun whispers, “The problem is not with how you feel. It’s what others would think if you told them.”

“I would never tell them about us.”

Perun raises his eyebrows. “
Us?
You have never really understood. There is only
one of us
 … and I am the one.” He steps into the galley where Vlad, a fellow Russian who serves as his overseer with other workers, is drinking coffee and smoking. He speaks to Vlad before the two men enter the laboratory.

Perun jerks his head at Dubois. “Suit him up.”

Dubois gapes. “What? I don’t know anything about that.”

“That” is work in the walk-in incubators were the colonies of microbes are grown and harvested.

“You said you wanted to help.”

“I meant with experiments, using the microscope—”

“You don’t want to work alongside your comrades? Physical labor is too good for him,” Perun tells Vlad.

“No—no—that’s not it. I just wouldn’t know what to do.”

“You know how to use a broom and a dust pan, don’t you? A wake from a big boat rocked us earlier and colony trays flew out because the cupboard wasn’t latched properly. It’s just dust that needs to be swept up and put back in the trays.”

Dubois knows that the “dust” is heavily infected with microbes.

“Well, comrade, are you too bourgeoisie to sweep a floor?”

Dubois clears his throat. The thought of going into the incubator is terrifying. “No, of course not.”

“Suit him up,” Perun says again.

Dubois follows Vlad through the galley and down a back corridor where the diving suits are stored. He knows the diving suits are not perfect because they’ve lost workers to the invisible enemies.

“They’re so tiny, they get in sometimes … don’t they?” he asks Vlad.

“You know what the leader always tells us, don’t you? They’re just sleeping. When they wake up inside you, they’re hungry. And we are their meat.” He howls with laughter as he unhooks a hanging suit.

Dubois’ throat is dry, his heart pounding. He wants to run and hide, but he knows he would not make it to the quay alive. His hands go into the sleeves of the suit. His pinkie throbs and he can’t massage it. “What kind of bacteria is in the incubator?” he asks.

Vlad shrugs and ignores the question. The spore colonies are numbered—and only Perun knows which species of bacteria correspond to a number. The one thing for certain is that they are all deadly.

The large, round brass helmet is the last to go on. It’s heavy and claustrophobic. Vlad leaves the porthole open in front of the helmet so Dubois can breathe while the helmet is being sealed to the body suit.

“We usually pump air into the suit through a hose, but the opening where the hose is attached in the room is contaminated.”

“How will I breathe?” Dubois is sweating. The metal helmet feels like a big rock on his head.

“With the bladder.”

The “bladder” appears to Dubois to be a bulging leather bag. “What is that?”

“A gold beater’s bag—a cow’s intestine.” Vlad laughs again. “It’s filled with oxygen. Aeronauts use them when they go so high there isn’t enough air to breathe. The oxygen bag will be connected to your helmet with the hose. You carry the bag in with you and can set it down to work. The hose is long enough to reach wherever you go in the room.” He showed him how to adjust the circulation.

After he’s suited up, Vlad attaches a chain around his waist.

“What’s that for?”

“The end gets attached through a hole in the door we keep sealed. Sometimes a worker can’t make it back. We use the chain to pull him out.”

Dubois starts to say something and Vlad cuts him off by shutting the helmet porthole. He guides Dubois to a door that opens into a small alcove. Inside the alcove is another airtight door leading to the incubator. Once Dubois is in the alcove, Vlad shuts the outer door and Dubois enters the incubator.

Trays are scattered on the floor. The dust harboring billions of invisible deadly microbes is so fine it goes airborne with every step he takes in the heavy suit. He stands in the middle of the small room and stares around helpless, not really knowing what to do. He realizes Vlad had not given him either a broom or a dust pan. He’s breathing heavy and his courage snaps. He goes back to the airtight door. It is locked. He jerks the handle and bangs on the door.

Dripping with sweat, he feels entombed in the suit and breathing comes hard. He turns and sees Perun and Vlad. They are in the laboratory, watching from the safe side of the glass wall. Perun stares at him stonily. Vlad is laughing.

He can’t breathe! He adjusts the oxygen regulator but it gives no relief. He stares at the air bag. It’s going flat. A hole had been sliced in it, allowing his life’s air to leak out. He staggers toward the window and jerks to a stop.
The chain.
It won’t let him go any farther. He tries to get it off but it’s locked on. And Vlad has the key.

He understands.

The chain was put on him so he couldn’t break out through the glass window to the laboratory. He screams and waves at Perun. “I know!” he screams.

Perun can’t hear him. But he can see Dubois’ anguished, twisted features through the helmet porthole.

Vlad says, “He’s trying to tell us he can’t breathe.”

“He can breathe. All he has to do is take off the helmet, take it off.” Perun taps his head. He speaks the words slowly, mouthing them so Dubois can understand.

Dubois’ thoughts are convulsing and he struggles to understand what Perun means. Tapping his head was the real clue. Take it off? If he takes off the helmet to breathe, he will inhale bacteria.

What did Vlad say about the microbes when they get inside you … they wake up hungry.

57

Nellie & Jules

I am waiting on the platform when Jules arrives with a porter pushing a cart loaded with two very large bags.

“Ready for an adventure into the French countryside?” Jules asks with such delight, it makes me wonder what he’s up to.

“I usually find my investigations are trips through Dante’s Inferno at the time I experience them. They only become ‘adventures’ when I am warm and safe and describing them to friends …
afterward
.”

“You are a very interesting woman, Nellie. Someday I will use you as a character in a book.”

I beam. Sometimes Jules says things that warm the cockles of my heart.

“We had better board.” He offers me his arm. “Where’s your luggage?”

I hold up my valise. “This is it.” I enjoy watching him look at his own heap of bags and back at my single valise. “Don’t you recall, Monsieur Verne, that Phileas Fogg launched his trip around the world with only a carpetbag containing two shirts, three pairs of stockings, and a lot of money?”

“Do you know what I like about you, Nellie?”

I beam even more. “What?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

*   *   *

T
HE RAILWAY CARRIAGE
is uncomfortably warm and the steady rhythm of its wheels lures me into a gentle sleep. When I awake, Jules is still sitting in the exact same position as when we departed, smoking his pipe and reading.

Not far from the city of Paris, the French countryside unfolds in a series of rolling hills. Thatched roof-huts and oxen pulling plows give the scene a European Currier & Ives feel. I was raised in Pennsylvania countryside not too unsimilar to these scenes. Even though the rustic area is picturesque and charmingly cozy, behind the quaint exterior is a great deal of hard work, sometimes from daybreak to nightfall in the foulest weather. And poverty. Few small farmers have more than two coins to rub together. The clothes on their backs are usually handmade and the food on their dinner tables grown on the farm. It is a hard life, sometimes a cruel one. Poor farmers are not often better off than slavish factory workers.

*   *   *

A
S
I
STEP
off the train, a cool, soft breeze brushes my cheek. The fresh air is a welcomed relief from the stuffy train car. Other than an office for selling tickets, the railroad station consists of nothing but a narrow wood platform open to the elements.

Jules speaks to the ticket seller. After a few minutes he returns.

“We need to hurry. I arranged passage with that coach.” He points across the road. “It’s the only one serving the station. The village is about an hour from here and the driver expects rain. We have to get there before the road becomes unpassable.”

Listening to Jules and the driver converse, I realize what Jules meant when he said many people in the country do not speak French good enough to testify in court without an interpreter. I’m able to follow only the general drift of the driver’s remarks.

In the privacy of the carriage, I ask Jules, “What made you pick this village we’re going to?”

“Our driver has transported a man that fits Perun’s description back and forth from the village a number of times. He hasn’t seen him since he took him to the train station several months ago, soon after carrying to the village a package from Institut Pasteur. He’s carried other deliveries to Perun, but remembers this one package in particular because of Pasteur’s name on it.”

“What does he say the man looks like?”

“His description is as vague as yours—perhaps in his thirties or forties, with a heavy beard and long hair. No red scarf, but wearing the scarf of a revolutionary outside of Paris would probably attract more attention than the man wants. Someone at the village has to know our man.”

“If they’re willing to talk.”

“With a few francs most people will talk.”

Dark clouds gather as daylight is slipping away. The road is a series of ruts and the going is much slower. Tall, unkempt hedges used as fencing are on both sides of the road.