A Sword in Time

by Cidney Swanson

  So where was this most important of things?

  He had no idea.

  Once, he had enjoyed plaguing Littlewood with the question “Where did you last see it?”

  Such a seemingly innocent question but so infuriating when directed at oneself. Where had he last seen his thumb drive? He didn’t know. He simply couldn’t remember.

  Since his initial search he had made many similarly fruitless searches of his pockets, his bag, his wallet. He spent one evening combing the youth hostel kitchen, bathroom, and grounds. He lay awake many nights, trying to reconstruct his movements, only to rise to stuffy sinuses and thunderous headaches. Finally, after three weeks of searching, he admitted the truth: he’d lost it for good. He’d lost the key to wealth immeasurable and all that wealth could buy: comfort, amusement, better health, better toys.

  “Better weather,” he muttered to himself. And then he put his head down and set to reconstructing the design he needed, from scratch.

  Kansas City in February was a hell of ice and dirty snow. He shivered miserably in a studio apartment over a bakery that he moved into because the owner accepted cash and asked no questions. The bakery listed “free day-old baked goods” as a perk of renting the space. The problem with “free” food was that it was made up of the items that didn’t sell out. If Khan never saw another pineapple cream cheese Danish, it would be too soon.

  However, he ate his way through those, and the TastiKrab-stuffed profiteroles, carob chip brownies, and other out-of-favor items, reminding himself every dollar he saved was a dollar that could be spent on rebuilding a time machine. He’d sold the necklace—Elizabethan era, he was told—for a tidy $14,000, but small expenses were constantly gnawing at his spoken-for stash of money. He reduced his rent by half when he offered to keep the sidewalk in front of the bakery free of ice and snow seven days a week, and he brought his heating bill to zero by cutting into some floorboards to access the bakery’s heating ducts—something about which he had no intention of informing his landlord.

  But two months of carbohydrates and shoveling snow had yet to provide him with a workable schematic for rebuilding his portal to warmth, wine, and Wagyu beef. He spent all his waking hours working through the systems he remembered, but he was running into gaping holes in his knowledge. It wasn’t, he insisted, that Littlewood had been more intelligent; rather, Khan simply hadn’t paid attention to certain aspects of the singularity device.

  February gave way to March and a handful of days above freezing, but then the snow returned with a vengeance. He spent a memorable Saturday shoveling the bakery sidewalk four times. This could not go on. Late that night, after dining on whole wheat brioche and a carton of cheap red wine, Khan came to a painful (if rather drunken) conclusion. He had neither the financial resources nor the will necessary to continue this way indefinitely. He needed the lost designs. And the only place he could get them was in Florida. Florida was nice in March. Khan wanted “nice” for a change. The baker could damn well shovel his own sidewalk.

  On the four-day bus ride to Wellesley, Florida, Khan went back and forth trying to decide whether or not it would be best to simply present himself to Littlewood along with an apology for the regrettable events of last December. Littlewood’s messages three months earlier had indicated he was willing to forgive and forget. Khan had nearly persuaded himself that such an apology was within his power, but when he stepped off the bus in downtown Wellesley, he realized the truth: he didn’t have it in him. He didn’t trust Arthur Littlewood. He didn’t like Arthur Littlewood. He’d pulled a gun on Arthur Littlewood. And honestly, he would rather kiss Arthur Littlewood than apologize to him.

  So theft it was. After casing the laboratory facility for three days, Khan concluded the attempt had to be made between the hours of midnight and four in the morning when the lab was always unoccupied. He then spent a day snatching up an entire wardrobe in black (it wasn’t his fault if people didn’t police their Laundromat items) and commenced his attempt to break in to the lab at 2:37 a.m. on a Thursday, coincidentally the Ides of March.

  10

  • SPECIAL AGENT NEVIS •

  Washington, DC, March

  It had been a lateral move, not a promotion. Electrical grid terrorism? Who were they kidding? Not Special Agent Benjamin Nevis, that was for damn sure. Why didn’t they just take away his FBI badge and be done with it? Sure, it was still National Security Branch. It was still counterterrorism. But sending him out to places like backwoods Georgia and rural Florida? Calling it a promotion was an insult—as if Nevis didn’t get enough of those already. Of furtive looks, of eyes resting on him just a millisecond too long as he strode to the elevator, to the copy machine, to the john.

  What an idiot.

  You heard about him, right?

  Can you imagine?

  Nevis was used to the whispers when colleagues thought he couldn’t hear. And the ones who didn’t care if he could hear. Nevis was used to all of it. The staring, the whispering, the wide berth in the gym. All because he’d been stupid enough to trust his brother-in-law, then Special Agent-in-Charge Lewiston. It always came back to Lewiston and the events six years ago.

  I’ve got your back, man.

  Only it turned out Lewiston had never had anyone’s back. Not Nevis’s and certainly not Nevis’s sister’s—Lewiston’s ex-wife. After, Lewiston had sent Karen a very large check drafted on a bank somewhere in the Caribbean. Nevis couldn’t remember which island. One that had strict banking secrecy laws, that was for sure. The check was supposed to be . . . what? An apology? A severance package? It didn’t matter. She’d cut it into pieces and burned the pieces in a coffee can. Folgers, if he remembered right.

  It was getting harder and harder to remember things about his sister, Karen. She’d lost her battle with lung cancer five years ago. Maybe things would’ve been different if she were still alive. Orphaned at sixteen and eighteen, respectively, they’d been each other’s only family for years. Until Lewiston came along with his big grin and big plans and big lies. Nevis had introduced them, a sin for which he would feel guilt the rest of his life. But Lewiston was hard to say no to. Still, Nevis had refused to introduce him to Karen for over a year.

  Anyway, what was done was done. Nevis had considered quitting the FBI after Lewiston’s betrayal. It would have been easier, maybe. But it would have meant losing access to certain channels of information, and Nevis still harbored the hope he’d find Lewiston someday. Find him and pay him back.

  Stay here and watch that door. I’ll come around from the other side. We’ll trap them.

  And then that magnetic smile.

  Don’t worry man, I’ve got your back.

  But what Lewiston had gotten was . . . away with it. Followed by out of the country. He’d made off with $7 million in unmarked bills. Nevis had remained behind—a top suspect in the theft and Lewiston’s subsequent disappearance. They were friends, after all. They were related by marriage. It was a natural assumption. Heck, the details revealed during the investigation had practically convinced him that he’d been party to the heist.

  I’ve got your back.

  Nevis hadn’t been kicked out or demoted or even reprimanded, in the end. But he’d become a pariah by association, and all his moves within the bureau since that time had been lateral. As though maybe, if they kept shuffling him sideways long enough, he’d get the hint and leave.

  But he wasn’t going anywhere until he figured out where Lewiston was.

  He turned his gaze back to his file. His next assignments monitoring the electrical grid for terrorist threats were scattered throughout the South. Which, no doubt, would be as stimulating as his previous assignments in the Midwest. He ran his eyes down the list. Savannah, he’d heard of at least. But Eclectic, Alabama? Who named their town Eclectic? And where the heck was Wellesley, Florida? He hadn’t known there was a University of South Central Florida. It was insulting. He’d done good work for the bureau. He was better than this.

  But
he wasn’t ready for a career change. Not yet.

  Nevis shook his head and opened a new browser window. Lands’ End. Where he was heading, he was going to need a lighter blazer, not to mention shorts and sandals.

  11

  • FATHER JOE•

  Florida, March

  It pained Father Joe to see Quintus sinking into depression, as he plainly was. The reading material might have helped Quintus’s insomnia (although Father Joe wasn’t sure of that, either), but it had not cheered him.

  Over a breakfast of toast and coffee, Father Joe broached the subject in hesitant Latin.

  “Friend, are you troubled?”

  Quintus didn’t answer right away.

  Father Joe wondered, ought he to have used terreo or tribulo instead of conturbo? Reading the Latin Vulgate was easy; speaking in Latin was a constant challenge.

  But Quintus didn’t look confused by the question, nor did he ask Father Joe to repeat himself.

  “I am troubled,” said Quintus after his lengthy pause. “I lack occupation,” he added, as if this explained everything.

  Privately, Father Joe thought unemployment was the least of Quintus’s troubles.

  And yet . . . if that was what he believed was wrong . . .

  “May I employ you in labor?” asked Father Joe.

  He must have phrased his Latin oddly, because Quintus seemed intent on covering a smile. These fleeting attempts to stifle laughter over Father Joe’s Latin were the only smiles the priest saw. At least the young man remembered how to smile. That was something.

  “To you will I . . . give . . . labor,” Quintus said, in halting English.

  Father Joe smiled and reached for a legal pad on which he kept a running list of chores that never seemed to get any shorter. There were always areas of the church and grounds that needed cleaning or clearing or planting or weeding.

  He chose the most urgent concern: clearing space for additional parking to accommodate the surprising number of lapsed parishioners who’d kept New Year’s resolutions to attend Mass more regularly.

  In the area Father Joe hoped to clear, there were rocks, some large and some half-buried, in addition to plentiful saw palmettos and weeds. Father Joe expected they’d be at it all week.

  Father Joe had underestimated Quintus.

  By two in the afternoon, Quintus had removed nine boulders and seventeen saw palmettos from the far end of the new parking space. All while Father Joe had done nothing more than weed the rose bushes edging the lot. In addition to the removals, Quintus had backfilled the holes left by the plants and rocks. The young man reminded Father Joe of the oxen he had observed during his youth in Poland; Quintus had the same strength and determination, not to mention his ability to work in the heat.

  “Time for a rest,” said Father Joe, handing Quintus another water bottle, his third or possibly fourth.

  “I am not weary,” replied Quintus. Then, shading his eyes from the sun and looking at Father Joe, he smiled. “But I observe that you are.”

  Over their midday meal, Father Joe told Quintus of a plan he’d concocted to replant the garden surrounding the Madonna with fruits and vegetables that they might be available for those in need.

  Quintus nodded and replied in his lyrical Latin, “Those like myself you would aid, lest they are constrained to steal from farmers their oranges.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is a noble endeavor,” replied Quintus. “I shall aid you.”

  What was more, Quintus needed next to no instruction, either for preparing the soil or planting the seeds, although once Father Joe stopped him from applying water to the garden using his water bottle, Quintus had seemed inexplicably fascinated with the garden hose.

  Father Joe asked how Quintus had learned about planting.

  “My mother managed a great garden,” Quintus explained.

  “Have you considered working as a gardener?” asked the priest.

  “I am no man of agriculture. I have stood guard over—” Quintus fell silent.

  “You were a security guard?” asked Father Joe after a moment of silence.

  Quintus’s expression had grown remote, unreadable. “It matters not.”

  “I did not mean to pry,” Father Joe said, his voice gentle.

  “Forgive me,” replied Quintus. “I am glad to aid you in this work, but I am no gardener.”

  Perhaps not. But it begged the question: What was he, this puzzle of a young man?

  12

  • LITTLEWOOD •

  Florida, March

  Arthur Littlewood had been drinking more than usual. A lot more than usual. And usually alone.

  Neither was a habit he wanted to cultivate, but he was worried and not sleeping well, and this led to drinking. A lot. Alone.

  Littlewood was worried about Jules Khan.

  In those first days after his (now former) postdoc had held them all at gunpoint, Littlewood had repeatedly attempted to contact Khan. He’d left messages urging Khan to turn himself in. (It appeared Khan had stolen a valuable vehicle to make his getaway.) Littlewood had promised to speak on Khan’s behalf, to get any potential sentencing reduced by any means possible. He knew Jules Khan. He knew what a great scientist he could be. Would be. Should be. But day after day, Khan refused to pick up, the calls going straight to voice mail, until New Year’s, when the phone didn’t go straight to voice mail because the number was no longer in service.

  At this point, Littlewood had had the locks at his lab changed.

  He also began to have recurrent nightmares in which Khan appeared, gun drawn. Several times when Littlewood drove home late at night, he would see the Honda Accord he’d loaned to Khan, parked in the darkness, and he would panic for a moment, believing Khan had returned and was waiting to ambush him. On one of these occasions, Littlewood found the need to march over to the car and make sure it really was empty, which it was, except for trash.

  Inside the Honda, Littlewood discovered a half-eaten and completely moldy hamburger, along with several empty bottles of VOSS water, and, between the driver’s seat cushion and back cushion, a thumb drive, which for all Littlewood knew had been left by himself long before Khan had been given use of the car.

  He tossed the burger, recycled the bottles, and stuck the thumb drive in his linen sport coat pocket, to be investigated later. After, he decided it was high time to move the Honda behind the mother-in-law unit at the back of his property so that he wouldn’t experience any more moments of panic.

  In addition to moving the Honda, Littlewood took some very practical steps to ensure his safety. Over President’s Day weekend, he changed his house locks and installed another new lock at the lab—electronic this time. Then on the first of March, Littlewood added a security camera to monitor the laboratory stairwell.

  Halfway through the month, Littlewood’s new security camera caught something. It recorded the approach of an intruder just after two o’clock in the morning. The figure was dressed head to toe in black, face hidden underneath a balaclava that looked homemade, but there was something unnervingly familiar about the intruder’s gait. Littlewood felt certain it was Khan.

  Which made it nearly impossible for Littlewood to sleep, well into the month of April. Was he in mortal peril? Should he hire a bodyguard? Most of the time—in daylight at least—Littlewood was able to calm himself, to listen to the voice of reason. After all, Khan hadn’t succeeded in breaking in, had he? No. So just report the incident to the police. It was their job to handle men like Khan. It was his job to do his work. Focus on his research. On his students.

  Littlewood tried to do this, but he was finding it harder than ever to sleep. Khan knew where he lived. Khan carried a gun. Had fired said gun. After an especially bad weekend, Littlewood decided to pay a visit to his friend Father Joe, hoping to find him free. Littlewood wasn’t entirely sure what Catholic priests did, other than celebrate Mass. Littlewood wasn’t religious. At least, he wasn’t Catholic, in spite of his mother’s prayers offered
to that end. He supposed he believed in a Being or Force that had struck the match to light the big bang and that possibly kept things running, but he didn’t really like church.

  He did, however, like Father Joe.

  The two had met in a liquor store, of all places, years ago. Littlewood had gone to the liquor store to buy krupnik: a spiced, honeyed spirit of Polish invention that he’d acquired a taste for when his mother had served it on special occasions in his youth. On his way out of the liquor store, Littlewood overheard the priest who’d been behind him asking for krupnik as well. Littlewood paused at the door. How unexpected. Littlewood had never met anyone else who knew what krupnik was, much less wanted to purchase it.

  He stood with one hand on the door, debating whether to say anything. The man was a priest. Would a priest be embarrassed to be addressed about liquor? And by a complete stranger?

  But when Littlewood heard the liquor store employee tell the priest that there was no more krupnik and to try back in two weeks, Littlewood decided to speak. Turning from the door, he offered his bottle to the priest.

  Who refused it.

  But who agreed to sip a glass with Littlewood that evening.

  A single raised glass that night became two glasses, and then three, and possibly more, and Littlewood ended up sleeping in the vestry. After that, the two men, one a Czech of Polish descent and the other the son of an American-Polish mother, met every couple of months to enjoy krupnik together, sharing their memories of savory pierogi and steaming babka and oplatek the night before Christmas.

  This had gone on for two years before Jules Khan had first intruded into Littlewood’s life. Lately, though—since the trip to Santa Barbara, in fact—Littlewood hadn’t visited Father Joe. That had been what, Christmas? It was almost Easter now. It was high time to raise a glass of krupnik with his friend. At least, it was better than drinking alone.