Babayaga: A Novel (40 page)

At this point, Vidot was growing quite concerned for his host. Will was still groggy and seemed only half unconscious, but his arm was thoroughly lashed to the contraption and the scientist clearly planned to stick that hypodermic needle directly into his vein.

The little man kept talking. “We tortured that Basha for days, a battle of wits and physical endurance I will never forget. She was initially quite recalcitrant, but we conceived of means that, well, I will spare you the details, but eventually we broke the creature, wringing out an immense quantity of valuable information. Huss had been right all along, these creatures knew more than we could have ever guessed, more than we even knew how to put to use. It was staggering, they could actually meld sound to substance, producing remarkable effects. The potential remains limitless. The woman was also extremely well versed in recipes involving skullcap, valerian, Iceland moss, and other lichens. We could only use the smallest bit of what she gave us, so much of it was far beyond our comprehension. But what we did manage to exploit, well, I’d wager you’ve bought any number of cures for indigestion, headaches, or fever, at least partially composed of ingredients that came from that woman’s mind.”

He unbuttoned Will’s left sleeve and rolled it up.

“We learned about Zoya and Elga from her as well, the only two colleagues that were still alive. Keep in mind, this was forty years ago, in early 1919. Are you beginning to see? Do you understand yet? We sent riders out to trap the two, but of course, they had vanished from their camp by then.”

He vigorously massaged Will’s forearm until it was pink from his attentions.

“In the end, I burned Basha alive, pouring kerosene on her while she writhed and whimpered. It was the least I could do, the evil creature had managed to hiss out a curse that inspired Huss to stab a fork into his own eye. The man thrust the tines straight into his own brain. Can you imagine that? Well, without him and his leadership, his vision, the entire project lost focus and eventually folded. Finally, I too lost my heart for the hunt, though of course I have always been curious about the fate of those two. Such a long time…” Bendix was silent for a moment, concentrating as he adjusted the drip. “I should probably point out, that while the means were certainly extreme, putting Basha down was not pure vengeance. Like any business, we sought to eradicate the competition wherever we found it. It was no different with the others. The Asian herbalists we shot, the peyote shaman we shot, the whiskey we brought the Polynesian was laced with poison, but then we shot him too. He might have had an antidote, after all, and we wanted to leave no loose ends. So I say all this with a very clear conscience.”

He tapped the needle’s tip and squeezed out a drop. “What we did is no different from what your own Dr. Kellogg has done, taking the peasant’s country grain meals and placing it into those cereal boxes that line the bright aisles of your endless supermarket shelves. Remember too, these were not noble victims; each one was truly a pathetic, primordial savage, busily digging through the earth’s horrible filth to forage for their unreliable cures. Huss and I, on the other hand, were scientifically accelerating the evolution of mankind. We did the world a favor, honestly, elevating an entire civilization out of the putrid swamps of ignorance. So here we are, yes? Now it is time to find a vein.”

Awake enough now to sense the danger, Will tried to struggle, but he was tied down too tightly. “There, there,” said Bendix, “I apologize for the needle but so far none of our other delivery systems works quite as well. We have tried blending it with hashish, cutting it with doses of methamphetamine, even baking it with anise into sugary cookies. Every experiment has had its setbacks. Your poor Boris and Ned, and the others too. All pioneers, all necessary sacrifices. I promise, you will all be remembered as heroes. I am sorry.” As the needle broke the skin, the agony of Will’s screams sent Vidot’s antennae vibrating with such high intensity, he felt engulfed by fire.

IV

Zoya sat in the big Chevrolet beneath the streetlight, shaking from more than the cold. Down on the corner she could see Oliver talking on a public telephone. She felt vulnerable and nervous. A stranger had said her name to her tonight, awakening a fear she had not felt for years. The owls had come to her rescue and then the guns had started firing and she had run, leaping into the thicket and then lying quietly beneath the brush for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, she had worked her way through the thornbushes and crossed over to the far side of the park. She had eventually emerged from the cover of the foliage and, trying to act nonchalant, strode out onto the well-lit boulevard. She saw a solitary man coming toward her and was about to duck back into the park again when he stepped beneath the streetlamp’s beam and she recognized him.

“Oh, hullo,” Oliver said with a slightly nervous smile.

“Where is Will?”

“I’m afraid I saw that odd little man take him away. I was hidden behind a tree but I saw the whole thing.”

“Why didn’t you help him?”

“I would have tried but the man had a gun and, well…” Oliver held up his empty hands.

Zoya looked around. “And the others?”

“Well, Brandon and the other goon went off with the police in handcuffs. I expect they have some explaining to do. Oh, and Gwen’s lying back there in the grass, surrounded by a flock of curious authorities—the phrase ‘exquisite corpse’ comes to mind.”

“Who was the little man—?”

“Let’s walk while we talk, shall we?” interrupted Oliver, looking around. She fell in beside him as they began strolling. “We’re simply out for our evening constitutional, right?” he said. “I parked the car up the way. So, yes, clearly the whole setup was a bit of a double cross. How Brandon expected to get away with it, I can’t imagine. Trying to wrap my mind around the various possibilities. The way I figure it, you were the patsy, Gwen was supposed to serve you up on a silver plate to help get rid of Will and me. An old-fashioned star-crossed love triangle. A desperate gambit that really doesn’t make much sense. Poor Gwen, silly girl, I don’t know why I took her for an innocent when so precious few are. Obviously, my phone call about the pharmacy triggered all this. But I haven’t the foggiest how it all ties together.”

“Pharmacy?”

Oliver explained his visit with Will earlier that day. When he was done, Zoya felt as confused as she had felt when Will had first told her about his predicament, only this time she was sober. She did not like the feeling of being outside a mystery, looking in. Usually, she was the riddle that eluded being solved, but now here she was, the one having to be rescued, the one without a clue. There were too many secrets that she was not the author of and did not have any answers for. It made her feel skittish, and now some little man had stepped out of the woods, out of the darkness, out of some past, whom she did not know. But he knew her and that frightened her.

Approaching the corner, they saw a police car coming out of the park. Oliver put his arm around her shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’s only for show,” he said reassuringly as the car passed by.

“We have to find Will.”

“Mmmn,” said Oliver. “I’m afraid it might be more prudent to—”

“No,” she said firmly, surprising herself with the steel of her conviction, “we have to find him, now.”

Looking at her, the constant hint of grin he usually wore slipped away. He appeared to be weighing the timbre of her words. “You realize who we’re up against, right? I hate to admit it, but these fellows are a weight class or two above me.”

“We are going to find Will,” she said calmly.

He nodded slowly. “Of course we are, dear.” The ember of a smile flickered back. “Never leave a man behind.”

After a few minutes of walking, they turned off Avenue Raphael onto Avenue Prudhon, where halfway down the block he led her over to where a parked Chevrolet Bel Air sat between two streetlamps. Oliver opened the door for her, then got in behind the wheel. She could feel the momentum of events pulling her, surging forward out of her control. She did not know why she felt such a strong need to help Will, but the intuition felt overwhelming. In some manner, their lives had become entangled, like accidental knots. She did not know where it was going to end, but she knew that she was willing to fight not to have it end here. It was a strange and unfamiliar feeling, it was debt and obligation, he had saved her, after all, and this was her chance to balance the scales. She had always looked out for herself; men were merely the rungs to be climbed on the ladder of time. She had always taken from them without guilt. But this was of an altogether different nature. Another kind of feeling was lurking in her and she did not want to put a name to it. “Please, we need to go,” she said to Oliver.

“I agree,” Oliver said, shaking his head as he repeatedly turned the key, “but I’m afraid our car’s being a bit stubborn.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it doesn’t work. Could be I left the lights on and drained the battery. Could be the starter. The quality on these Chevys is so damn spotty.”

“So what do we do?”

“Well, there’s a phone booth right on the corner there. I could call a taxi service, though I’m not sure any cabdriver will be up for helping us rescue Will. They used up all their heroics at the Battle of the Marne. Let me see…” He fumbled through a small red notebook he had pulled out of his jacket pocket. “There are a few people I could ring up, though it’s hard to figure whom exactly we can trust at this point. For instance, if Gwen were alive she would have been the first one I called. Ha ha. Ah well, we’ll simply have to take our chances with whomever answers. Might take a few tries.” He dug in his pocket. “Luckily I’ve got some
jetons
for the phone.”

She watched and waited as he went down to the phone booth and started dialing. One call followed another, and with every coin Oliver dropped into that phone, she felt the weight of her conviction to find Will grow. If he were almost any other man she had known in her past, she would have been long gone by now. She knew that she had probably played the situation entirely wrong from the start. She could have stayed with Oliver. He would have been easy to leave when the time came, and leaving was what a majority of her bones was urging her to do right now. But her heart told her to stay.

A hair-trigger instinct to run had always been strong in her: she had charmed her way onto ducal carriages, hidden in the beds of hay wagons and dairy lorries, tucked herself into the claustrophobic baggage holds of freight trains, stolen countless horses, bicycles, and automobiles. She had even once driven a hotwired BMW R75 motorcycle across the Latvian countryside while a bundled and dour Elga rode sullen in her sidecar. Of all her many skills, knowing when to flee was one of Zoya’s most pronounced; she would be long gone before the empty vault was discovered, the forged checks reached the bank, or the bloated body washed up on the riverbank. She knew she could slip out of the Chevy now, leave Oliver to his phone calls, and vanish backward into the night, holing up in a nearby hotel or rooming house, sleeping until her strength returned in full. Then, in a few days, she could find her way to some other town, perhaps breaking from her old trail, heading south to Madrid, Milan, or Rome, or maybe finding a berth on a steamer to a distant port, Capetown, Hong Kong, or Buenos Aires. Making the journey alone, with no sister beside her, would be alien and dangerous, though perhaps, like Elga, she could find some poor urchin to train in the arts, beginning the cycle all over again. All she needed to do was pull the shiny door handle right beside her, and then she could go, never stopping, never looking back.

The trouble was, she couldn’t. The strange knots binding her to Will kept her rooted in the car seat, waiting impatiently for Oliver to return with whatever scheme he could muster. There was some feeling, some ephemeral spirit working here. She could feel its strange strength clutching at her soul with a grip too strong to resist. It felt like a spell—she knew all the signs of those, but she knew too that this was no bewitching, it was her own choice, born from some kind of affection, which overrode all her old patterns and habits. So instead of bounding off into the briar, she stayed. It was greater than a sense of debt or obligation—Will had shown up in time to save her life, yes, but he had only been her unintentional hero, stumbling in at a lucky moment—the fact was there was more between them, in how their sleeping bodies curled together like a punctuation mark, how his kiss fit against her lips, how their tongues danced along chest and nook and thigh, and how his simple, assured presence calmed her, taking her mind from the constant focus on the hunt, making schemes and stratagems evaporate. It was different than a simple debt. This bond with him made her slightly nauseous, the way all magic did.

Oliver finally came back to the car. “Well, I’m happy to report the cavalry is on its way, though they’ll take a bit to get here.”

She nodded, saying nothing. Oliver took out a cigarette. “I must say, I find your affections for our friend Will quite touching. I’m not sure there’s a soul on earth who would go to such great lengths to rescue me.”

She looked up at him. “You have to want to save someone in order to be saved.”

“Yes, well, now there’s a brain-teaser…” Oliver said, pausing midsentence as he thought it over. He lit his cigarette and smoked it as they sat silently together. For twenty minutes, nothing happened except for the occasional car passing by.

Finally, a little gray Citroën
deux chevaux
came rattling fast around the corner and pulled to a hard stop in front of them, its beat-up bumper almost kissing the Chevrolet chrome. The doors opened and Zoya watched three large black men draw their sizable bodies out from inside the tiny vehicle’s. Moments later, Oliver was making introductions: “Zoya, may I introduce Red, Flats, and Kelly. Gentlemen, this is Zoya.”

“Bonne nuit, mademoiselle,”
said the one named Red, tipping his hat. She smiled politely. She had guessed they were American even before they started speaking English. She was not especially skilled with that tongue, but she had known her share of sailors and could follow them well enough. “Okay, Oliver, how about you tell us a bit more about this job?”