Amberville

Chapter 14

Eric was fiddling with the key he had in his pants pocket.

He was standing, along with the crow, the gazelle, and Snake Marek, in the men’s restroom kitty-corner from the Order Room on the ninth floor of the Environmental Ministry’s imposing headquarters between Avenue Gabriel and Place de la Libération in the heart of Tourquai. Eric had pushed open the door just enough that he could peek out through the narrow doorway. The half-moon was in place; there couldn’t be more than a half hour left of the Evening Weather. The Environmental Ministry was a deserted building except for the guards who were expected to patrol the floors each night. But the guards were apathetic. Eric had heard Edda complain countless times about how the security company was eager to send invoices, but hardly even managed to leave the reception area at night. Despite the fact that two inspection rounds were part of the contract.
The corridor along the meeting rooms was in darkness except for the bluish glow here and there from the plant lights. They were hanging from the ceiling like personal suns for the rubber trees, palms, and ferns, which otherwise would have folded up and died in the windowless dark. The dark-blue wall-to-wall carpeting created a subdued, sober impression.
“Is there usually some particular time that—” Sam whispered impatiently, but was immediately hushed by Eric.
“Someone’s coming,” hissed the bear.
As though on command, they all stopped breathing for a few long moments. They heard a door being slammed shut with a kind of metallic clang, a lock being turned, and then the sound of footsteps. Against the sound-muffling carpets it was impossible to determine if the steps were heading in their direction or not.
Tom-Tom was the first to start breathing again, like a fish on land gasping for air, and Eric became irritated.
Too many sounds were coming from the crow.
At the same time Eric didn’t want to close the door completely. Not knowing what was going on was, he decided, a greater risk than staying completely hidden.
Then all four of them heard it. The crackling sound of a walkie-talkie far away, and a voice that said, “On nine now, read?”
“On nine, yes.”
Eric turned around in surprise and encountered Snake’s piercing gaze.
“Never leaves reception, huh?” Snake hissed.
Eric hushed him with a hand gesture. “Into the stall,” he hissed, gently shoving the crow so that he would understand.
Snake was the quickest to move, but instead of wriggling over toward the toilets he slithered lightning-fast across the floor and glided down into a small wastebasket by the wash basin, where he hid himself under a crumpled paper towel. There were two stalls in the men’s restroom, and it was by chance that the crow took the innermost one while Sam and Eric had to share the stall closest to the door.
“You and me in a restroom stall. A fantasy fulfilled,” sighed Sam without even trying to speak especially softly, “and then the circumstances are so…rotten.”
The gazelle giggled, closing the door and sitting down on the lowered toilet seat while Eric positioned himself to peer through the gap in the door.
“Shh,” hissed Eric.
“Honestly speaking,” said Sam without whispering, “what can happen? Is the guard going to throw us out?”
The gazelle was not afraid of being discovered. Of all the violations of the law he had committed over the years, a break-in at the Environmental Ministry men’s room was hardly anything to write home about. Snake had surely come up with an excuse for himself that would make the situation worse for the others, and Tom-Tom was too stupid to even think of lying. In addition, the crow would neither allow himself to be arrested or questioned; in tight situations he lost control and it’s the guard you’d be feeling sorry for. The only one who really couldn’t be discovered was Eric.
The restroom door opened and the guard came in.
Eric shut his eyes. When he’d played hide-and-seek with Teddy when he was really little, he’d thought he became invisible if he closed his eyes. He waited. Without a single idea of how he might handle the situation. Here I stand, hiding, he thought, inside a stall in a men’s restroom along with a drug-intoxicated homosexual prostitute gazelle who is particularly popular with the masochists of the city.
And Eric Bear smiled a weak smile, for the condition of things could hardly get much worse.
The guard’s few footsteps across the floor over to the stall were determined. And Eric was imagining the paw on the handle on the other side when there was an unexpected crackling from the walkie-talkie. The sound echoed inside the half-tiled room.
“Yes? Over,” answered the guard.
His paw was still on the door handle.
“Food’s ready now,” said his colleague from down in reception.
“Already? Read.”
“I’m not waiting, you can come when you want.”
Then the crackling ceased, and for a few, endless seconds the guard hesitated before he made his decision. With rapid steps he left the restroom. The door slammed shut.
Eric didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t know how long he held his breath, but he felt quite ready to faint. His shoulders sank, he opened the door and stepped out of the stall.
“Damn, I’d almost started hoping for a little action,” said Tom-Tom Crow, who was coming out of the neighboring stall.
They felt strangely exhilarated, even Snake, who came winding out of the wastebasket. Eric crossly muttered a reply to the crow that no one heard, and retook his position by the door out to the corridor and the Order Room.
The full moon was old when the courier finally arrived.
Tom-Tom had fallen asleep inside one of the restroom stalls, Sam and Snake were carrying on a low-voiced conversation about nothing in particular over by the wash basin. When the elevator announced its arrival in the south corridor with a mournful ping, Eric was standing at his post by the door, but all three of them heard the sound.
The gazelle and Snake fell silent.
It was certainly not the guard taking the elevator, and it wasn’t more than a few moments later that they saw him; it was some kind of feline creature. A well-pressed gray suit and the steel-rimmed eyeglasses concealed his particular features, making him anonymous. He took the direct route to the Order Room, setting his briefcase down on the floor while he dug in his pocket for a key. He unlocked the door, took the briefcase, and went into the room, from which he came out again after scarcely half a minute. He’d vanished before the moment had even become exciting.
Eric remained standing in the doorway and peeked.
“Why are we still standing here?” asked Sam impatiently. “He’s definitely gone.”
“That was the Cub List,” whispered Eric.
And he’d scarcely uttered the word before the elevator announced the next visitor. This one, however, had a quite different appearance.
To begin with, it took a while before he showed himself in the north corridor. And when he finally arrived, it was as though he’d gotten lost. With lingering steps he looked around time after time. He was a threadbare camel with shoes so worn the right heel was missing. His pants looked as though he’d slept in them for several weeks, and the shirt that hung down over his thighs was spotted black by soot or oil. When he proved to have the key to the Order Room on a chain around his neck, they all understood that this was the only possibility: this animal was born with pockets with holes in them.
The camel went into the Order Room and came out again. The whole thing went very quickly, but in contrast to the earlier, correct civil servant with his briefcase, it was impossible to see if the camel had taken a list along.
“Now?” whispered Sam.
“We’ll wait until we hear the elevator,” Eric whispered back.
He involuntarily put his paw in his pocket and squeezed the key. It was the key that he’d had made when he was young, the key that he’d copied in modeling clay from Mother’s key ring. And what if it didn’t work? If it was the wrong key, and had been the wrong key for all these years? Or if the ministry had quite simply changed the locks since then? Stranger things had happened.
“Now, then?”
Sam’s impatience demanded no explanation. All four of them had calculated what risk they were taking as of now. If the camel had actually set a Death List…a real Death List in the locked Order Room, ChauffeurTiger could arrive at any moment to fetch it. And no one, not even Tom-Tom, had any desire to run into the tiger.
“Now,” said Eric.
He opened the door to the restroom and quickly crossed the dark corridor. Without hesitating, without thinking, he put the key in the Order Room lock and turned it.
It worked.
When he stepped into the small room, where, just as his mother had always said, there was only a table and a desk blotter, he immediately saw the two envelopes. The one neat with typewritten letters on the front, the other looking like it had been crumpled up, thrown into a puddle, hung up to dry, and then ended up here. Eric felt Snake’s presence right behind him, and intuitively he realized that there was no time to waste. Without appearing any too urgent, he ran over to the table and snatched the battered envelope at the same moment as the snake was making his way up the legs of the table with the intention of doing the same thing. Eric took a few steps to the side and opened the envelope. There was no risk that anyone would notice that the envelope had been opened and closed again; the shabby camel had seen to that.
A piece of paper, and there was a list with names, eighteen of them, typewritten in a column. Eric read.
What was there was impossible.
It was not only Nicholas Dove’s name that Eric recognized on the Death List. There was another name that he knew more than well. Terror and shock caused Eric Bear to become dizzy, feel nauseous. He took a deep breath, pulled himself together, and looked up from the paper.
“It’s true,” Eric Bear said without moving. “There is a Death List.”