His back throbbed, he was jet-lagged, and he reeked, but he had made it.
The clerk eyed his wheelie bag. “You linger inside us for these two weeks, yes?”
“I travel light,” Pfefferkorn said, sliding a ten-ruzha note across the marble.
The clerk bowed. In an instant the money had vanished up his sleeve. He touched a bell and three bellhops materialized. They fought like dogs over Pfefferkorn’s wheelie bag until the desk clerk sent two of them packing in glum retreat.
The elevator car rose unhappily, stopping half a foot shy of the fourth floor. The bellhop jumped out and raced down the corridor, the wheelie bag bouncing wildly behind. Pfefferkorn followed, careful not to trip over the soiled ridges in the carpeting where it had pulled up from the floorboards. Radios and murmurs and oscillating fans could be heard. From the border a mile away came the stutter of automatic weapons.
Once inside the room, the bellhop made a show of adjusting the thermostat. The dial came off in his hand. He pocketed it and gave up trying to seem useful, waiting by the door until Pfefferkorn had located another ten ruzhy, at which point he smiled brownly and bowed his way out, leaving Pfefferkorn alone in the paralyzing heat.
68.
Pfefferkorn’s time on book tour had taught him that the comfort of an American hotel room arose out of a fantasy mutually agreed upon by hotelier and guest: you were the first person to stay there. The virginal linens, antiseptic artwork, and neutral color schemes were all designed to maintain this illusion, without which it would have been difficult to sleep.
The Hôtel Metropole made no such attempt to conceal its past. To the contrary: room 44 provided a rich historical document. The ceiling, dark and malodorous, attested to thousands of cigarettes. The bedspread showed a broad archipelago of stains, chronicle of many an unsavory act. The molding was Second Empire, the furniture was Constructivist, the carpet was shag, and the curtains were missing. Soft spots in the wallpaper told of listening devices put in and ripped out. He didn’t know what had caused the crimson blotch along the baseboard—it could have just as easily been the result of a rusty leak—but he suspected it had been left there as a rebuke to the chronically optimistic.
A picture of the late Dragomir Zhulk hung over the bed.
Pfefferkorn unpacked. Because the United States and West Zlabia had no formal diplomatic relations, he was traveling as a Canadian expatriate residing in the Solomon Islands. “Arthur S. Kowalczyk” was vice president of a small-time fertilizer distributor seeking bulk suppliers. His wheelie bag contained an assortment of business attire, pressed white shirts and pilled black socks. He hung up his blazer, arranged his shoes at the foot of the bed, and stowed his passport in the safe, which was a cigar box with a flimsy padlock. He stared edgily into the empty suitcase. Beneath its false bottom was a secret compartment containing two additional moustache kits. There was also a supplementary disguise: a traditional Zlabian goatherd’s costume of baggy pants, a peasant shirt, and brightly painted boots with curly pointed toes and six-inch heels. These items were not illegal, per se, but they were suspicious enough to merit concealment. The illegal items were in a second secret compartment, hidden beneath a second false bottom. There he had a roll of cash the size of a soda can and an untraceable cellular phone. Possessing either of these was grounds for immediate arrest and/or expulsion. But the truly risky stuff, the stuff that would get him killed outright, no questions asked, was hidden in a third secret compartment, located underneath a third false panel. Extra precautions had been taken. What looked like a bar of lavender-scented soap was an X-ray-impervious high-density dubnium polymer surrounding a flash drive with the dummied Workbench. What looked like a bottle of designer eau de cologne was an industrial-strength solvent powerful enough to strip the polymer away. What looked like a toothbrush was a toothbrush switchblade. What looked like a stick of deodorant was a stun gun, and what looked like a tin of breath mints held fast-acting poison pills for use in the event he was captured and facing the prospect of torture.
After ensuring that everything had survived the journey, he replaced the false panels and went to take a cooling shower. The water was foul and hot, the towels abrasive. Another picture of Zhulk hung over the toilet, scowling at Pfefferkorn as he stood before the cracked bathroom mirror, pressing the moisture out of his false moustache. It was medium brown, the color of his hair in his youth. In point of fact, it closely resembled the moustache he had kept in college. There was a reason he had shaved it off: it wasn’t a good look for him. Bill had the right amount of manly jowl to justify facial hair. Not him. He ran his fingers over it. It was dense, bristly, both of him and not. He appreciated the restraint Blueblood had shown in creating it.
While he waited to stop sweating, he surveyed the room’s remaining amenities. There was a lamp, a bedside clock, an oscillating fan, and a painted radiator gone piebald—the last of which would be useless for the next three months, minimum. If he was still here then, God help him. He made sure it was screwed tightly off, then switched on the fan. It was dead. He picked up the rotary phone and dialed zero. The desk clerk answered with a smarmy “Monsieur?” Pfefferkorn asked for a replacement fan and was told one would be brought without delay.
A clanking started up from inside the wall, near the headboard. It was a noise he was unfortunately well acquainted with: hot water pipes coming to life. In his old apartment building it had sometimes sounded as though his neighbors were having shootouts. Why a hotel guest would possibly want hot water on a day like today, he could not venture to guess. Then it occurred to him that all the hotel’s water was likely hot, whether guests wanted it that way or not. The clanking was loud and rhythmic. It made the picture of Zhulk vibrate and jump on the wall. To drown it out, Pfefferkorn aimed the remote control at the television. The screen filled with a stern young woman in an unflattering uniform, her tight hair topped with a majorette hat. She was standing in front of a paper weather map, barking the five-day forecast as she tacked up little paper suns. Her voice was even worse than the clanking, so Pfefferkorn muted her and lived with it.
In the top drawer of the nightstand he found the government-mandated copy of the West Zlabian edition of Vassily Nabochka. He sat down on the bed and leafed through it while he waited for his fan. The poem was familiar to him, having played a major role in his fictive life, as it did for every Zlabian. It told of the heroic quest of the disinherited Prince Vassily to find a magical root vegetable with the power to cure his ailing father, the king. The masterwork of itinerant bard Zthanizlabh of Thzazhkst, it reminded Pfefferkorn of the Odyssey crossed with Lear crossed with Hamlet crossed with Oedipus Rex, plus tundra and goats. The first two volumes of Hurwitz centered on a discussion of its history and symbolism, information essential for understanding the present state of affairs, as the Zlabian conflict traced its origins to a blood feud over the fictional protagonist’s final resting place. The East Zlabians claimed Prince Vassily was “buried” in the East. The West Zlabians claimed he was “buried” in the West. Because the poem was unfinished, there was little hope of resolving the dispute. Each side staged its own parade on the day it marked as the prince’s day of death. Often shots were fired or Molotov cocktails thrown across the Gyeznyuiy. And that was in times of peace. At its worst the conflict had pitted brother against brother, goat against goat. According to Hurwitz, an estimated one hundred twenty-one thousand lives had been lost over the years—an incredible number, given the size of the population as a whole.