The Apprentices (24 page)

The sun shone pink through her eyelids. When she opened her eyes a millimeter, she saw bright stars refracting through the droplets of water on her eyelashes. Her winter skin was getting tan. Her fingertips pruned in the water. But she didn’t get out. The pool was the only place she could forget the sharp talons sinking into Benjamin’s neck.

Sylvia appeared on the pool deck, wearing a white cover-up and a worried expression. “Janie,” she called. “Come have a lemonade.”

Janie dropped her hips so she sank beneath the surface, her hair floating around her head. She blew out all her air. If she stayed on the bottom, Sylvia couldn’t talk to her. But eventually she would have to breathe again. The apothecary should work on a way to breathe underwater.
That
would be useful. She rose to the surface and put her head up into the world where everything had happened.

Sylvia wore cat-eye sunglasses and yellow mules. Janie pushed herself out of the water, imagining that she was a sea lion, or a mermaid, and sat on the tiled edge.

“Osman put mint in it,” Sylvia said, handing her the lemonade.

Janie stirred the bright green leaves with a straw. Osman, the cook, wasn’t that much older than Janie. He had been a cook in the sultan’s household before Magnusson brought him to the island, and he grew mint and herbs and vegetables in a little patch of carefully tended soil outside the villa’s kitchen.

Sylvia kicked off her mules and dangled her legs in the pool. “You can’t stay in the water all day.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s hell on your hair, first of all.”

Janie twirled a strand of wet hair around her finger and brought it in front of her eyes. It looked the same as always. Brown. Wavy.
American,
Benjamin had said. She wanted to get back in the pool and drown the pain in her chest. “Looks all right to me,” she said.

“The salt water dries it out,” Sylvia said.

“What a tragedy.” Janie let the strand go and sipped her lemonade, which was cold and sweet. She kicked her leg to see the little ripples in the water catch the light.

“So much sun will be bad for your skin, in the long run,” Sylvia said.

Janie looked up. “The
long
run
? Are you serious?”

“When you’re my age, you’ll care,” Sylvia said.

Janie tucked her leg up to turn toward the secretary. “You’ve kidnapped me,” she said, “and taken me to an island in Malaya. No one knows where I am. My best friend in the world is almost certainly dead, and if he weren’t, you would have some terrible plan for him. And your boss, or your boyfriend, or whatever he is, has told me that no one will ever find me again. You really think I’m worried about the
long
run? About
wrinkles
?”

Sylvia frowned.

Janie turned back to face the pool and concentrated on her lemonade—the cold feel of it on her tongue, on the back of her throat, going down her esophagus.

“Magnusson was good to me after my brother died,” Sylvia said.

“Yeah, you said that,” Janie said.

“I still miss him every day.”

Janie looked sideways at Sylvia, who had a faraway look. “How was he killed?”

“He went to Korea in 1950. They sent him with almost no training. It was terribly cold, and they were short of weapons. The Chinese came in overwhelming numbers, in warm, snow-camouflage uniforms. They’d been trained to fight in the mountains, and they killed our boys as they ran for their lives. My brother came home dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” Janie said.

“I think about him all the time. How funny he was, and handsome, how he walked into a room and people wanted to be near him. And how cold he must have been, and how afraid. Three years the war went on, boys like him dying every day. President Truman should have used the atomic bomb to stop it.”

Janie was startled. “You think so?”

“All those boys would be alive now, and home,” Sylvia said. “The North Korean army killed everyone with any education, in the occupied areas. They just shot all the professors and teachers and leaders so there would be no one to stand against them. We could have ended the war so easily, and ended a terrible government.”

“But we would have killed people who had nothing to do with it,” Janie said.

“We did that anyway,” Sylvia said. “My brother had nothing
to do with it—with a made-up border across a country we didn’t understand. None of those boys did.”

Janie looked at Sylvia’s pretty face, contorted with anger, and with the desire for atomic revenge. There was some connection here. “Why does Magnusson want my friends?” she asked.

Sylvia sighed. “I honestly don’t know, Janie. He keeps parts of his business secret from me. I’d tell you if I knew.”

“But you know how far back this goes. How did Opal happen to be my roommate?”

Sylvia hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

“
Don’t
lie to me,” Janie said. “You owe me the truth. Did Magnusson get me into Grayson?”

“I’m sure you would have got in anyway.”

“So the answer is yes.”

“He did get you the scholarship.”

For a moment, that almost seemed worse than everything else. Janie hadn’t gotten the scholarship on her own. “What if my parents had made me go to Michigan with them?” she asked.

Sylvia glanced around the empty pool deck.

“No one’s listening,” Janie said. “Just tell me.”

“He’s very intuitive about people,” Sylvia said. “He knew your parents would let you go to Grayson, if there was money for it. They think of you as very exceptional. Which, I mean—they’re right to think that, of course.”

Janie stared at her. “So he was counting on my parents’ vanity about me.”

“I’d call it their pride in you.”

“What else does he think about them?”

“I don’t think we should be having this conversation.”

“What harm can it do?” Janie asked. “Here we are.”

There was a pause. “Well, he knows about their political troubles,” Sylvia said. “Not that anyone thinks they’re really Communists. But points of vulnerability are always of interest. You’re their primary point of vulnerability, and the political trouble is secondary.”

Janie looked at Sylvia, with her methodical categories, her primary and secondary points of vulnerability. So much of her had gone into taking care of Magnusson and his affairs. It would be hard for her to walk away, even if she knew he was doing wrong.

“What about me?” Janie asked. “What’s my point of vulnerability?” She thought of her tender, witty mother, and her father’s goofy laugh. She thought of Benjamin, with his copper-flecked eyes.

Sylvia blushed. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Tell me,”
Janie said.

“Well—it’s your ambition.”

Janie was startled. “That’s not true.”

“Yes it is.”

“Not Benjamin?” Janie asked. She’d been careful not to name him before, but it came out, in her surprise. “Not my parents?”

“No,” Sylvia said. “You’re
their
point of vulnerability. But they aren’t yours.”

“Are you sure?” Janie asked. It was dawning on her, slowly. To lure Benjamin, they’d taken Janie. To lure Janie, they’d taken—her chemistry experiment. Was Magnusson right?
Had she become so single-minded that her point of vulnerability was a bunch of glassware and a titrating apparatus, and not the people she loved?

Sylvia gave her a look of sympathy. “It’s okay to be ambitious,” she said. “It’s hard for women to make a mark. You have to be determined.”

“But
people
are more important.”

Sylvia nodded. “I think so.”

Janie hadn’t told her parents that she’d been kicked out of school and moved in with strangers. She hadn’t told them anything, so she could keep working on her chemistry experiment. And she had reached out to Benjamin only when they took her experiment,
because
they’d taken her experiment. And now Benjamin was dead. The thought flooded her with sadness. “The way you think about your brother every day,” she said, “I think about Benjamin.”

“Except that you’ll see him again,” Sylvia said.

“I don’t think so,” Janie said. “You didn’t ask me who Benjamin was. Because you already knew.”

“Yes.”

“How much does Magnusson know?”

“A lot. He knows about Benjamin’s father.”

“So what does he want them for?”

“I couldn’t tell you. Even if I knew. But I promise you I don’t.”

There might be more questions to ask, but Janie couldn’t stand to have Sylvia looking so
sorry
for her anymore. She put her lemonade glass down, lifted her hips off the tile, and slipped feet first back into the pool.

T
he police dumped Pip unceremoniously in a holding cell at the Boston police station, and he picked himself up and grabbed the bars. “What am I in here for?” he demanded.

“Kidnapping a socialite,” said the officer.

“I didn’t kidnap her!”

“Her mother says you did.”

“Well, her mother’s wrong. Your mum ever been wrong about you and a girl?”

“You were in a hotel with her.”

“I was
leaving
a hotel with her. That’s no crime!”

“We were trying to question her,” the officer said. “You ran.”

“You were chasing me!”

“Seems like her roommate disappeared, too. Jane Scott. You might’ve had something to do with it.”

“That’s crazy! I haven’t even
seen
her roommate!” Pip was trying not to get riled, but the accusation was ridiculous.

“We’ll see what the detectives say.”

“I get to make a phone call.”

The cop hesitated. “Make it fast.”

Pip thought about his options. There weren’t many people he knew in America. He took a gamble, and asked the operator for the Italian restaurant in Grayson, New Hampshire.

“Which Italian restaurant, sir?” the operator asked.

“I forgot what it’s called,” Pip said. “Something with a
B
. Wait—
Bruno’s.
”

“Just a moment, sir.”

Pip hoped Giovanna, the woman from the restaurant, would answer the telephone. She’d said she had a brother who was a lawyer. But instead, a waiter with a young voice answered. “Do you know a girl named Janie Scott?” Pip asked.

“Yes!” the kid said, and his urgency came straight over the telephone line. “Where
is
she? Are you the one who talked to my aunt?”

Jackpot. Pip grinned. The kid had a lawyer uncle,
and
he had a crush on Janie.

Two hours later, the kid turned up with his uncle the lawyer, who spoke perfect English, wore a nice suit, and made a big fuss about how the police had no actual charges to bring against Pip. He said that Pip was a celebrity, a television star, a
national treasure—
Pip liked that one—and the British consulate was going to be unhappy if the police didn’t let him go.

Pip studied the nephew while the negotiations went on. He was handsome in that soft way girls liked, with black curls falling loose across his forehead. Pip started to wonder about
Benjamin’s reasons for sending him to rescue Janie. Then Pip was free, and the uncle left, telling the two boys to stay the hell out of trouble after this.

It was cold outside, and Pip hugged his jacket to his body. He’d thought America was going to be so bloody glamorous, but it was
freezing
here, and the jails weren’t much nicer than in London.

Raffaello said, “My aunt told me that some short English kid came looking for Janie right after she left.”

“I’m not
that
short,” Pip said.

“You’re pretty short.”

“Why weren’t you at the dance at Grayson?” Pip asked.

“I don’t go there. I had a rehearsal for a play at my own school.”

“You’re an actor?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’m in a play. It’s not like being on television or anything.”

Pip was surprised by how unimportant being on television seemed now—except in that it had helped get him sprung from jail. He decided he trusted Raffaello. “So listen,” he said. “I went to that dance, but Janie wasn’t there. Her roommate, Opal, thinks she’s on some island in Malaya.”

“Malaya?”

“That’s what Opal thinks. We sent a telegram to her grandfather, who’s a sultan. I was hoping he’d send a plane for us.”

“Where’s Opal now?”

“She was with me when I got arrested, but they didn’t bring her in. They probably took her home.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We try to help Janie.”

“In Malaya?” the kid said. “Do you know how far
away
that is?”

“So let’s get started!”

They stared at each other a minute, then Raffaello shook his head and said, “I can’t. I have a shift at the restaurant tonight.”

At the word
restaurant,
Pip’s stomach grumbled. He was cold and hungry, and almost out of money. He had no boat, no plane, no car. The restaurant sounded cozy and warm. They could go there and eat, and he would figure out how to get to Malaya tomorrow.

So they climbed onto the same worn-out bus Pip had taken to Boston with Opal for the two-hour ride back to Grayson. Raffaello got out a dog-eared paperback script to study.

“What’s the play?” Pip asked.

Raffaello showed him the cover:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
by William Shakespeare.

“Any good?” Pip asked.

“Sure,” Raffaello said. “I think so.”

“Are the girls in it pretty?”

Raffaello blushed. “I guess.”

“Best reason to be an actor, in my opinion,” Pip said, settling into his seat. “Loads of pretty girls. You in love with Janie?”

The boy’s blush deepened. “Who wants to know?”

“My mate Benjamin, I think.”

“It’s none of his business.”

“I’d say that means
yes.
”

“Look, I got you out of jail because you’re Janie’s friend,” Raffaello said. “You made me late for work, and I haven’t learned my scenes. What else do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” Pip said. “Want help running lines?”

“No.”
Raffaello frowned in concentration and started mouthing the words silently, and Pip left him to it.