The Clock

by Kathryn Wise

  “Yes, Ms. Wheaton, how may I assist you?” Amir answered.

  “Amir, it’s me,” Rachel whispered.

  “Yes, I know. Is there a problem?” Amir asked.

  “I don’t know. There’s someone pounding on the door. I can’t tell who it is, but they’re wearing a bright red suit.”

  “Could it be staff? Possibly one of the bellmen…or a doorman?”

  “No, I don’t think so. The color’s too bright. It looks like the kind of red a woman would wear. Would you please see if security…or better yet, would you see if Charles can come up to investigate?”

  “Certainly, right away.”

  Rachel gently placed the receiver in the cradle and tiptoed back to the living area. The pounding had morphed into a rapid knocking. Looking through the peep hole again, she could see she was right: it was a woman in red. She still couldn’t see the face. It would make too much noise to try and hunch down on the floor for a better look; too risky. Standing still and quiet, like a statue, she waited for Charles.

  Friend or foe? I’m guessing “foe.”

  The sound of heavy footsteps announced the possible arrival of assistance. She heard a man’s muffled voice. More footsteps.

  “Pardon me?” a woman said.

  “I said good afternoon, ma’am. May I assist you with something?” It was Charles. Charles Bannister. Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted was to be caught and cornered by an unknown.

  “Uh yes, I think I might be lost. I’m looking for my daughter’s room. I’m certain she told me it was this room number, but no one seems to be here,” said the woman.

  “I see, Ms.?” Charles said.

  “Uh, Wheaton. Mrs. Wheaton.”

  “Yes, I see Mrs. Wheaton. I’m happy to escort you to the registrar where they can help you make contact with your daughter,” Charles said. Rachel listened, entertained by the load of baloney being dished out. She took another look through the peep hole.

  What? Calista Lawrence? What does she want?

  “Oh, I don’t want to be a bother. I’ll just wait here until she gets back,” the woman said.

  “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but access to the hotel’s room accommodations is restricted to registered guests only. Please come with me,” Charles said.

  “Well, don’t you have a key? Can’t you just let me into the room so that I can be out of the way while I wait for her?” the woman asked.

  “Ma’am, if you don’t come with me right now, I’ll be forced to call security and have you removed from the premises,” Charles said.

  That’s my Charles. No nonsense.

  “Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying now, can you?”

  Oh brother…taking lessons from Priestly.

  “No Ma’am. I’m happy to escort you out of the hotel and into the next cab. Please, after you,” Charles said, directing the woman away from the door and down the hall to the elevators.

  She watched them move out of sight before phoning Amir.

  “Yes, Ms. Wheaton. Was everything carried out to your satisfaction?” Amir asked.

  “Yes. Perfectly. So, Amir…this may seem a little off topic, but I’m famished. Would you mind having some lunch sent up? I have about 90 minutes before I need to catch a cab for Tribeca.”

  “As you wish. I’ll take care of it right away.”

  “Thank you. You’re a gem. Oh…and Amir…I don’t want to ask too much of you, but would it be possible to arrange for a room transfer? I’m afraid my room number has been compromised.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll arrange for another room right now. When would you like to make the switch?”

  “Let’s do the switch right before I leave, around ten after 2. Um…let’s see if there’s anything else. I’m sorry. I know I’m high maintenance.

  “Ms. Wheaton, if you don’t mind me saying so, you’re anything but high maintenance. Whatever you need, I’m at your service,” Amir said.

  “You’re so good. Just one more thing. I need access to a secure safe. The most secure safe available.”

  “No problem, Ms. Wheaton.”

  “Bless you, Amir. I’ll let you know when I’m ready. Shouldn’t be too long.”

  Rachel hung up and sat down in the overstuffed chair. Calista had trampled her calm silence with her incessant knocking. She needed a few minutes to re-center, but it was time for work. Rachel took a chair at the table and began reviewing the pile of information she’d accumulated over the past 36 hours. The list of entries into her room, the acquisitions G2, and the latest data transmission readouts.

  A smart woman’s thinking is never done.

  2Praying the Hours in Ordinary Life: (Art for Faith’s Sake) Lauralee Farrer and Clayton J. Schmit

  Chapter Seven

  Dots

  Rachel took the last bite of a delicious salmon over greens salad. A little nourishment always made her feel better. The Chai tea hadn’t hurt either. She was ready to dive into a big pile of what promised to be tedious analytical work.

  The images had been brewing in the back of her mind for the past day. Intruders entering her room while she was away, masking their true purpose with a world-class cleaning job. The report from Amir might offer up some clues. Who had “cleaned” the room? Who had slipped in to deliver the Armani suit? And given the afternoon’s unexpected visitor, how did Calista Lawrence know her room number?

  Heck, why don’t they just all come by? We can have a party…get to know each other.

  The format was simple: entry and exit times matched with a keycard ID number. After accounting for her own activity, there were two log items left. The first showed one access with a time stamp of 11:20 am. It looked like a single “open door” item, indicating someone opened the door, held it open, and then left before it closed. Rachel was in the bedroom at the time, having just returned from Zabars. She hadn’t heard anything. Someone could have quietly opened the door, hung the Armani on the inside hook, and left, closing the door behind them. Oddly, the key card ID field was blank. Could she have left the door ajar and not realized it? If she did, the delivery person wouldn’t need a card to get in. But then how was the moment of access captured on the report? She didn’t know their system, but Amir might. Or he knows a guy who knows.

  The next access occurred at 1:15 pm. Someone, or some number of people, entered the room and remained there for over an hour, exiting at 2:20 pm. She had returned from the Virtual Life interview between 2:30 and 3:00 pm. The room looked fantastic. Her clothes had been carefully hung in the closet, and her personal toiletry and beauty products had been placed neatly on the floating shelves and in the cupboards of the en suite. But even with the extra time it must have taken to do the super cleaning, it wouldn’t have taken over an hour. Obviously, whoever it was, spent a good part of the time doing something else…like looking for the key case. This time, the report included a keycard ID, which meant she could probably track down who had done the dirty deed.

  Make that “the clean deed.”

  Rachel jotted her usual cryptic notes directly on the report and put it back into the concealed compartment of her garment bag. As it disappeared behind the zippered flap, she noticed something at the top of the page.

  Wait…what was that first item?

  She pulled the report back out and took a closer look. It was probably a mistake; another single “open door” item logged, but this time with a keycard ID. The time stamp: 5:45 am.

  Right, which one?

  Rachel’s strange double awakening on her first morning in Manhattan hadn’t yet been demystified, but she knew she’d sort it out eventually. Maybe this report was a big clue. Regardless of which “5:45 am” had triggered the hotel’s monitoring system, someone or something had opened and closed her suite’s entry door. Is that why she awoke with a start, her heart nearly pounding out of her chest? Or was the system timestamp generated the second time when the wake up call came through?

  A wave an anxiety passed thru her. She was
running out of time and there was more work to do. After scrawling a brief addendum to her cryptic notes, she put the report back into the garment bag and grabbed her laptop.

  Definitely in work mode now, the dining table had morphed into a classier imitation of her cubicle back at headquarters. She was what they called a “piles” person, her assigned cases neatly organized into visible stacks so that she wouldn’t lose track of anything. The piles on the room’s dining table were smaller, but undoubtedly more intriguing.

  After establishing a VPN connection to the cloud, she entered the URL from the printout Grayson had given her at Zabars. Throughout the morning, even in the midst of her surreal adventure on the way back from the teahouse, Rachel had caught snippets of the news buzz about social media outages. Things were bad. So bad, she noticed the hotel staff manually tracking work schedules, reservations, and guest activity bookings. Despite the inconvenience, the hotel staff was adapting. They were actually talking to each other. And laughing. Could it be they were getting to know each other for the first time?

  Huh…maybe a silver lining. Whoa…

  The data readout screen display seemed to be showing that the rogue activity had increased to triple the activity level of the day before: possibly quadruple. She’d expected it to be bad, but this was over the top. When she looked at it the day before, the rogue transmissions represented about 10% of the total. Today they represented something closer to 40%. She needed to find out what was going on in the world. She grabbed the remote and clicked on the television.

  That’s strange…

  A news station was on, but it wasn’t a US news station. The anchors were speaking in Arabic. Was it a clue to the mysterious identity of the overzealous housekeeping crew? If it was, it still might not mean much. There was a large contingent of Arabic speaking hotel staff, some of who could be part of the housekeeping staff. Still, she wasn’t one to set aside clues based upon the benefit of the doubt. She was a digger, confirming and validating to the point of certainty. Anything still unclear meant she still had questions.

  Rachel turned the station to CNN’s 24 hour news cycle, knowing they’d be running regular updates, and then turned back to her work. Her ears would perk up to any relevant reports.

  The hyperactive transmission activity displayed on the data readout was mesmerizing, but for some reason, she wasn’t able to focus on the data. There was something about the data readout interface itself. It felt different. Along the top of the screen, a whole new set of analytical tools and utilities were now enabled. They hadn’t been there the day before. And then she remembered. The group of four said she would have what she needed when she needed it.

  Rachel recognized the app itself was pretty amazing. Who would develop an app like this? How was it even possible? You’d need to have a satellite view of sorts, a view that transcends and encompasses the world’s global networks and satellite operations. Or you’d have to have a way of accessing every virtual security door of every social media platform in the world.

  Full circle. That’s what that is.

  She gasped. Or is it?

  Rachel wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. The group of four must already have a key. Or the key to all doors. And the key around Mrs. Priestly’s neck? It was incomplete, only partially effective. An imposter key of sorts. Priestly and her horde were determined to harness a power equal to the key held by…whom? The group of four? She reflected on her last meeting beyond the elevator. The sound of the symphony, the brilliant light, and something rising up behind Mr. Randal.

  Her chair began shaking. It was her heart, pounding against the inside of her chest.

  “Oh no, not this again.” Images of people, places, and incidents from the past two days began converging. It wasn’t complete, but the disparate parts of the larger whole, the loose ends bumping around in the back of her mind for most of the last two days, were slowly moving together into something that…made sense? Does it make sense? She wasn’t sure it was the right question. Maybe the better question was “Does it shed light?”

  As she studied the images forming in her mind’s eye, Rachel realized that the power to see everything in virtual space, free from the limiting perspectives of proprietary network paths and secured infrastructure, was sitting right there on her laptop’s screen.

  It was the path to acquiring ultimate control.

  Which is exactly what Virtual Life wants.

  She pushed herself away from the table, shaking, nearly hyperventilating with excitement and fear, emotions lifting her into a surreal awareness of a transcendent reality more powerful than anything Priestly could imagine. Or maybe Rachel wasn’t giving her enough credit. Maybe Priestly knew exactly what this was about.

  The CNN anchor’s voice broke in. “And we have David Simpson with the latest on the social media debacle. David, what can you tell us about this morning’s catastrophic termination of service in the UK?”

  “Well Bob, at this moment the UK is cut off from the rest of the world. There is zero social media connectivity and, as you and I both know all too well, social media has become much more than the name implies. Global corporations, including ours, rely upon it for mission critical functions. Without access to these platforms, whole organizations, their affiliate partners, and their customers could suffer dire consequences. The amount of time and the effort required to shift to old systems or manual processes is significant. Unless a solution is implemented within the next few hours, we could see catastrophic effects on world markets, let alone significant disruption to societal norms.”

  Rachel felt the color drain from her face.

  Running out of…time? No. As long as they don’t get the key case, we still have time.

  Chapter Eight

  New Digs

  The clock’s hands stood at 2:00 pm. Time to get moving. Rachel had 30 minutes to freshen up, arrange for a room change with Amir, and be in a cab headed to Tribeca. She felt rushed. But then, what was she thinking? Time had defied the clock since she’d arrived in Manhattan, so why try to force fit a to-do list into the space between points A and B on the face of a clock?

  Rachel wasn’t sure if Amir was covering the concierge podium right then. She didn’t want to push her luck and make another “Concierge” call from the room phone without knowing whether Amir would pick up. And since apparently too many people knew her room number, she didn’t want to leave the room vacant.

  Wait…I think I have Charles’ cell number.

  Sure enough, she still had Charles’ text of instructions for opening the doorman’s lockbox.

  “Door Services. This is Charles.”

  “Charles, this is Patricia Wheaton,” Rachel said.

  “Yes, Ms. Wheaton. How may I assist you?” Charles asked.

  “Charles, would you please deliver a message to Amir?”

  “Certainly. I saw him a few moments ago near the elevators. It should be no problem.”

  “Oh good. Please let him know that it’s time. He’ll know what it’s about,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. Consider it done. Is there-“

  “Yes…two things. First, would you please send me a text letting me know you made contact with Amir? And second, I need a cab at 2:30. If you could make sure there’s one available for me, that would be great.”

  “Of course, Ms. Wheaton. Is there anything else?” Charles asked.

  “I’m sorry. Just one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “How are you?”

  Charles chuckled. “I’ve never been better. All is well with me, Ms. Wheaton. All is well. I’ll be sure to send you a text confirming contact with Amir. Have a wonderful afternoon.”

  “Thanks Charles…as always.”

  “You’re very welcome.”

  Having Charles deliver the message would save her time fussing around the hotel looking for Amir. Gathering up her piles into neatly binder-clipped packages, she slipped them back into the compartment of her garment bag along with her l
aptop.

  She felt a little grungy after her near-collision with the pavement, so she took a three minute shower, freshened up her hair and makeup, and put on a nice pant suit. Just as she closed the lid of her repacked suitcase, there was a knock on the door.

  Oh…I need to get the key case.

  Rachel walked out into the living area and over to the large picture window. The beautiful aubergine warp sateen drapes had been opened that morning by the housekeeping staff, but the drapery tie backs were stationary, never disturbed by the repeated opening and closing of the panels. She’d made sure of that. Grabbing hold of the left panel’s tie back, she carefully removed the key case from the back of the black ornamental medallion, and slipped it into her suit pocket.

  She checked her phone for the expected text. Sure enough, Charles had come through, but she wanted to be sure. Quietly tiptoeing to the door, she peeked through the peep hole and saw Amir’s gentle face. He’d brought an extra large bellman cart. She swung the door open.

  “Good afternoon, Amir. Please come in. I have everything ready to go.”

  Amir pulled the cart into the room. “I’ve arranged for you to stay in one of the larger suites on a higher floor. You’ll be very comfortable, I guarantee. I also took the liberty of registering the room under another name,” Amir said.

  Rachel gathered her bags and, with Amir’s help, loaded them onto the cart. “Good thinking, my friend. Good thinking. I guess I should know what it is, right? What name did you use?”

  “Deborah Hancock.”

  Rachel dropped her carry-on, the contents of an unzipped side pocket spilling out onto the floor. She stooped down and picked up her personal items, quickly stuffing them back into the bag. Her face felt hot.

  “I’m sorry, I should have talked to you first, but I had to make a quick decision. I thought it would be a good thing…a reminder of why what you’re doing is so important.”