The Apothecary (18 page)
“Did it work?” Pip asked, and his ear came around the screen.
“Hey!” I said. “You’re not supposed to come back here!”
“But you’re
invisible
!”
Benjamin’s clothes seemed to be picking themselves up off the floor, and I could see his pink shoulder, leaning over.
“I didn’t barge in on you guys!”
“We don’t know how long it will last,” Benjamin’s voice said. “We have to go.” A low cupboard below the sink opened, and his clothes seemed to throw themselves into it. “We should dump the bath.”
“I wish we could keep it for later,” Pip said wistfully.
“We can’t leave a trail,” Benjamin said.
I put my clothes in the cupboard, wanting to take them with me, although they would have looked like a bundle of clothes floating bizarrely down the street. The heavy rubbish bin seemed to levitate as Pip and Benjamin lifted it together and poured it out in the laboratory’s sink.
Then we heard a thump from across the room: the thwarted noise of wood jamming as someone shoved the classroom door against the propped chair.
“Who’s in there?” Mr Gilliam’s voice called.
Benjamin and Pip threw the paper back into the wet rubbish bin. I put away the Bunsen burner and the crucible and the beakers we’d used. Then I saw the Pharmacopoeia on the lab table.
“The book!” I said. We couldn’t carry it out without it being seen.
The teacher rattled the doorknob again. “Open this door!”
The book seemed to float in Benjamin’s hands to a high shelf with some other heavy chemistry books. I saw the logic: It looked like it belonged there, and blended in.
Mr Gilliam was pounding on the door by now. We moved cautiously towards it.
“I’ll move the chair,” I whispered. “You go out after he comes in.”
We got in position and I reached for the chair. It was like reaching for something in the dark, knowing approximately where it is. But it was the opposite: I knew exactly where the chair was. It was my own hands I couldn’t see. The pinky finger, at least, was reassuring. When I had a good grip, I pulled the chair free.
Mr Gilliam, who was so perfectly round that his belt looked like it bisected a beach ball, burst into the room and stood looking around. I saw Pip’s ear, then Benjamin’s shoulder, glide out of the room. I stayed very still.
“I know you’re in here!” Mr Gilliam said.
I dodged him as he came near. He stormed past me, looking for the rascally students who were surely crouching behind the lab tables, and I slipped out.
The school was empty—even the chess club was gone— and we ran down the hall in bare feet. It was disorienting, running without being able to see my legs. It almost made me forget about being naked, but not quite. The secretary with the sheep’s curls came out of her office, and we slowed down so we’d make no noise. I slid my visible pinky along the wall, but she didn’t seem to notice anything. I could see that Pip had kept his paper clip for picking locks. But no one expects to see a finger or a paper clip floating down the hall, so no one does.
We pushed open the front doors of the school and stepped out into the February day, and it was
freezing
, being damp and naked. I hugged my arms. I’d anticipated the embarrassment of nakedness, but I’d completely forgotten about the cold. Pip let loose a shocking string of words, most of which I’d never heard before. “Is there some trick that makes you warm?” he asked.
“I only know one,” Benjamin said.
“Well?”
“Running to Bethnal Green,” Benjamin said.
The patch of pink shoulder set off down the steps at a fast clip, and Pip and I followed. I tried to think about how we were rescuing Benjamin’s father from evil forces, and
that
was what mattered—not that the cold concrete stung my feet, and not that we were running naked and freezing into the wind.
W
e ran, invisible, through the streets of London, dodging people in warm hats, scarves, and woollen greatcoats, who couldn’t see us and would have walked right into us. Benjamin was right about the running warming us up: By the time we got to the bunker, I was out of breath, but I wasn’t cold anymore.
Pip’s ear went straight to the lock on the bunker’s door, and his paper clip looked like a tiny worm wiggling in the air as he worked. Benjamin and I kept an eye out for passersby. “Oh, come on, now,” Pip said to the lock. “Right—
there
it is.” The door swung open, and his ear went inside.
I bumped into Benjamin’s bare shoulder as we tried to go through at the same time.
“Sorry!” we both said.
“Shh!” Pip said.
Inside the door there was a small room with an elevator, but instead of a button to call it, there was a place to insert a key.
“Can you pick that?” Benjamin asked.
“I dunno,” Pip said. “It’s a switch for the lift.”
As he said it, we heard the elevator cables running, and we stepped back. I held my visible pinky behind my back, not sure if that would do any good. Then I pressed it against the wall, so at least it wasn’t floating. The doors opened, and Mr Danby came out with a young man who looked puzzled.
“Stand outside and watch for
birds
?” the young man asked.
“Three small ones, all together,” Danby said. “One is a red-chested American robin. Captain Harrison thinks he saw a cat attacking them. I don’t understand why he didn’t report it right away.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but—I don’t think I would have reported a thing like that either.”
“
That
’s why you’re only a lieutenant,” Danby snapped.
I felt Pip’s hand grab mine, and he pulled me around the two men, towards the open elevator door. The three of us tiptoed silently in.
“So, if I see three birds, I call you?” the young man said.
“Try to capture them first,” Danby said.
The lieutenant, who wasn’t in uniform—I guessed because of the bunker’s “secrecy”—went unhappily outside. It was clear that he thought Danby had lost his mind.
Danby turned a key in the switch and got back into the elevator with us, glancing at the upper corners. He was looking for birds, I supposed. The doors closed and we started to sink down under the ground.
Below ground, the elevator opened onto a small room, in which a row of orange hard hats hung over brown canvas overalls on hooks. Heavy boots were tucked neatly under a bench along the wall. Danby went out of the room into a hallway and turned right. We followed him, padding barefoot past framed pictures of Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret, and Winston Churchill.
Then, abruptly, Danby stopped and turned around, as if he’d sensed someone behind him. I tucked my visible pinky behind a picture frame and held my breath. He scanned the hallway.
Another man leaned out of a doorway and called, “Danby! If you please.”
“Yes, General,” Danby said, giving the hallway one last searching look.
We followed him into the general’s office, where he sat down. The general had grey hair and an air of authority, but like the others, he wore no military uniform. There was a map of the world on the wall, with thumbtacks stuck in it. There were a few blue tacks in what seemed to be New Mexico, and a few red ones in Russia. There was a blue one stuck in an island in the Pacific, and a white one off the coast of Australia.
“Any luck with the prisoner?” the general asked.
“Not yet, sir,” Danby said. “The muteness should wear off soon.”
“Did you try getting written answers?”
“With no success, sir.”
“I heard you questioning Captain Harrison about birds.”
Danby flushed crimson. “Yes, sir.”
“Something to do with your investigation of the apothecary and his doings?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m sure you have your reasons, Danby, but the men are starting to talk.”
“But they—” Danby began, and then he seemed to think better of it. “Of course, sir.”
“Just so you know. You’re one of our best men, and I don’t want you compromised.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And your East German contact? What does he report?”
“That the apothecary isn’t working for the Soviets, sir. Also that Leonid Shiskin, an accountant at the Soviet embassy, has been serving as a messenger, but seems to be working on his own, out of personal conviction. He isn’t running the network.”
“I see.”
“We know that the Soviets are looking for the apothecary. They expect the conspirators to gather soon, and they believe Leonid Shiskin might lead them to the group. But as it stands, I don’t think the group can proceed without the apothecary.”
“No?”
“No, sir. He’s their—their Oppenheimer, if you will.”
I was pretty sure Oppenheimer was the physicist who’d made the atomic bomb. I tried to look at Benjamin to see what he made of the comparison, and realised that the strangest thing about being invisible wasn’t being naked in a military bunker. It was that we couldn’t make eye contact. There was no way of sharing all the information I had grown used to sharing with him in a glance. I didn’t know where Benjamin’s eyes were, and he couldn’t see mine.
The general raised an eyebrow. “I see.” He looked at his watch. “D’you suppose the silent treatment might be ending yet?”
“I’ll go check, sir,” Danby said, rising. He seemed anxious to be out of the office.
“Danby,” the general said.
“Yes, sir?”
“You’re sure your Kraut is entirely on our side?”
“Yes, sir,” Danby said. “And he’s quite ruthless.”
The general smiled to himself. “Good,” he said. “Wish we could bring him in here to do some interrogating. We could use some of that ruthlessness.”
Danby smiled uncomfortably.
“And do we know who killed the poor old gardener?” the general asked.
“Not yet, sir,” Danby said. “But we’ll find out.” I knew that he knew the Scar had done it, and thought what a very good liar he was. He sounded completely convincing.
“Strange business, that,” the general said. “Well, carry on.”
“Yes, sir.”
We followed Danby out and tiptoed behind him down the hallway. When I think now about how much eavesdropping we did, I realise that being fourteen had prepared us for it. To be a kid is to be invisible and to listen, and to interpret things that aren’t necessarily meant for you to hear—because how else do you find out about the world?
We passed an enormous telephone switchboard, with empty chairs waiting for operators to sit and make connections, and I wondered if the switchboard was meant to run all the calls of London in the case of an atomic bomb—and if there would be anyone left to make calls.
Further down the hall, Danby knocked at a door. A young woman in a neat green dress came out and closed the door behind her. She had wavy light-brown hair cut short around her ears.
“So?” Danby asked her.
“I’m so bored!” the girl complained. “I thought that stuff was meant to wear off. But we’re just sitting there
staring
at each other.”
“I’d think you’d like that,” Danby said. “You could talk all day, with no one to interrupt you.”
The girl pouted. “It’s no joke,” she said. “I need a coffee.”
“Go on then,” Danby said.
The girl flashed him a grateful smile and darted off down the hall.
Mr Danby went into the room, and we silently followed him in, ready to rescue Benjamin’s father—somehow. I was so busy finding a place to stand where I wouldn’t bump into Danby or anyone else that when I finally looked up at the prisoner, I was shocked.
It wasn’t the apothecary.
The prisoner was a woman, and she looked Chinese. She was young, maybe in her twenties, with her hair in a shiny black braid, and she wore a black shirt and black trousers. I could have sworn that she looked at my visible finger, but only for an instant, and then she fixed her eyes on Mr Danby. She was beautiful, in an austere way, and angry. She sat straight-backed in a chair at a metal table that was bolted to the floor.
Danby took a seat on the table, with one foot on the floor, affecting a casual stance. “Would you like a coffee?” he asked her. “Or tea?”
The prisoner shook her head.
He asked her something in a language I guessed was Chinese, and the woman gave him a look of contempt.
“My Mandarin’s rotten, I know,” Danby said. “But I’m curious—the muteness didn’t last this long on Shiskin. Perhaps it’s because you’re so much smaller?”
The woman shrugged.
“The things you wrote for me, in such elegant Chinese calligraphy, I had them translated,” he said, tapping his knuckles on the table. “Some of the curses were rather primitive—the ones about dogs and pigs, for example—but some were rather good. I liked the one insulting my ancestors to the eighteenth generation.”
The woman glared at him.
He reached forward and put a hand on her pale throat, as if he were a doctor, examining it. “It’s been suggested that I hurt you, to make you talk,” he said. “It isn’t my way, but I’m under a great deal of pressure.” He pressed his finger and thumb into the soft recesses of her neck in a way that seemed both very expert and very painful.
The woman’s eyes watered and she blinked, but she said nothing. I couldn’t believe I had ever found Danby
dreamy
. Now his handsomeness only made him more horrible.