The Apothecary

Chapter 29

The Kong Olav



Sarah Pennington’s butler had included a bundle of things to eat in the trunk. We found tinned salmon and crackers from Fortnum & Mason, bottles of apple cider, and a pack of playing cards. I thought I would enjoy having a butler to think of everything I might need, but then realised that my parents mostly did that.

We sat among the empty luggage and played silent games of gin rummy as we waited for the Kong Olav to get out of the endless Thames. As parts of Benjamin returned, one at a time, I noticed the way his sandy eyebrows brushed up towards his forehead. It was part of what made him look so curious and intent, as if he was looking hard and slightly sceptically at the world. There were two freckles joined into one on the left side of his nose. His fingernails were round and still clean from the bath, in spite of our running around the dockyards. He caught me looking at him, over his cards.

“What?” he whispered.

“Nothing!”

“Do I have something on my face?” He brushed the back of his hand across his cheek.

“No.”

“Am I all here?”

“Yes,” I said. “You’re all—”

“Shh,” he said, and he looked to the door. People were talking outside, and Mr Shiskin was one of them.

We couldn’t hear the exact words, but from the voices and the thumping of the wooden leg, it was clear that Shiskin had taken the cabin next door. I wondered that the others couldn’t hear the anxiety in his voice. I could hear it through the door, without even knowing what he was saying.

The voices faded, and we went back to the cards. Eventually, the corridor grew quiet as people went to bed. Through the porthole we could see the open sea; we were out of the Thames and motoring north.

I had just been dealt a beautiful hand, with three eights and a run of four, and was waiting to go out. Benjamin frowned and moved his cards around in his hand, as if shifting them was going to change what they were. I felt a sudden giddy pleasure at doing something as ordinary with him as playing cards.

Benjamin must have felt something of the same happiness, because he said, “I’ve got a hand like a foot,” with his vowels flattened out like an American poker player, so it came out, “Ah’ve got a hayand like a fuht.”

I started to giggle at the fact that he was doing American impressions, and at how funny he sounded doing it.

“Shh!” he said.

“You started it!” I whispered.

Then he held up his hand for silence. There was a faint movement out in the silent corridor. We both listened, alert and tense, but the sound was gone. A minute passed, and I dared to breathe again.

But just as I did, the luggage cabin’s door flew open and we were staring at Jin Lo over the cartoonishly wide barrel of a gun. When she saw who we were, she dropped the gun and glared at us. “Why you here?”

I was too stunned to say anything.

Benjamin managed to say, “To help you.”

“Apothecary say no!”

“But he needs us!” Benjamin said. Even in the panic of the moment, I thought he was wise not to suggest that she needed us.

“Is that a real gun?” I asked.

“Flare,” she said. “For signal.” She shook her head as if disappointed with herself. “I know there is trouble. I go tell apothecary.” She turned.

“Wait!” I said. “The trouble isn’t us, it’s Shiskin.”

She turned and eyed us, then stayed and closed the door. Benjamin told her in a whisper what we knew about Mr Shiskin: that he was acting as a saboteur, and that the Soviets had kidnapped his family and were forcing him to disable the boat in Russian waters so that they could quietly capture the apothecary without attracting attention. And that we had promised Sergei we would try not to get his family killed.

Jin Lo listened carefully, then said, “We throw him into sea.” And she vanished out the cabin door.

“No, wait!” Benjamin said.

We scrambled out of the luggage bunk, over trunks and bags, but Jin Lo was already in Mr Shiskin’s cabin and had dragged him out of bed by the time we got there. He had taken off his wooden leg for the night, which gave her an advantage, but still I was amazed at how strong she was. She twisted his arm behind his back in a way that looked painful, and he struggled to stay upright on one leg. She still had the flare gun, and she held it to his head.

“You bú yàolian,” she said. “I not know how say this in English. You have no shame.”

“Shame?” he said, incredulous. “I risked my life for you and you were careless. You were discovered.” He couldn’t see Jin Lo, who was twisting his arm behind his back, so he glared fiercely at Benjamin and me. “And my family will not be punished for it. I will not be punished.”

“And I will not go to Russian prison,” Jin Lo said.

“Then you shouldn’t be interfering with their nuclear program,” Shiskin said. “If I don’t send a radio signal every six hours, they will know I am captured.”

“You think I am fool?” Jin Lo said, tightening the twist of his arm. “I know you signal them to come.”

Shiskin winced. “They’ll come, whatever you do.”

The two of them stood welded together, caught in a stalemate of contempt and fury. “Find rope,” she finally said to us. “We tie him.”

Shiskin tried to struggle away, and Jin Lo looked ready to pull his arm out of the socket. Benjamin and I found a long cord in the luggage cabin, and Jin Lo trussed Shiskin up with the speed of a calf-roping champion, leaving him immobilised and attached to his bunk. On her way out of the cabin, she picked up his wooden leg. Then she closed the door on him and marched us down the hall to the apothecary’s cabin.

The apothecary opened the door sleepily, wrapped in a dressing gown. His eyes looked naked without his spectacles, but then they grew wide. “Benjamin!” he said.

We sat on the spare bunk and told him about Shiskin.

Benjamin’s father listened and shook his head. “You should have told me before.”

“Then you wouldn’t have let Shiskin aboard,” Benjamin said. “And they would have killed his family.”

“We could have abandoned the mission.”

“It’s what you’ve been working for all these years,” Benjamin said. “I want to help you.”

We all sat in silence, listening to the rumble of the engines. The apothecary’s spirits seemed very low. “We have to tell Captain Norberg,” he said.