by Jonas Saul
Vivian, Sarah whispered in her mind. Talk to me.
Silence. Nothing.
“Damn it.”
Sarah read the end of the note. Aarow—Aaron—was to be murdered in Toronto. Sarah had just let him fly home the other day. Had she stuck to the pact they had made in the hotel not two days before, he would be in Santa Rosa with her, reading the letter and not in Toronto about to be killed.
“No, no, no,” she moaned, rolling her head back and forth. “It’s not possible.” She dropped the pages on the bed beside her and looked up at the ceiling. “After all I’ve done, Vivian, you can’t do this to me.” Sarah dropped her head and let the tears flow. She missed Aaron and felt remorse for how she’d treated him in Vegas. She felt bad for being here alone after agreeing to be absolutely honest with him.
She could have kept him from going to Toronto.
She snatched up the letter and tried to memorize the parts that might make sense later on.
Vivian said Aarow would be murdered by the clock.
How will time kill him?
She also said to protect a Dane. If the blonde Danish dies, that could spell trouble. Don’t let the blonde Danish die.
Blonde Danish?
Sarah surmised Vivian was talking about a blonde woman from Denmark. At least she hoped that was right.
There was a man named Oaf and his son. But Vivian admitted in her note that she might be missing a letter in Oaf’s name.
Who would call their son Oaf?
PAIN was behind everything, Vivian wrote. Stop PAIN and everyone lives, but boys will continue to be violated.
Goosebumps rose on Sarah’s forearms. This part of Vivian’s letter didn’t make sense. Boys violated? Stop PAIN? Was there a religious meaning in there somewhere? Sarah recalled her time in Los Angeles where someone was killing Catholic priests for their transgressions. Is that what this was about?
In the end, it was the foretelling of Sarah’s death that shook her. She had spent several years receiving messages from Vivian. Nothing shocked her. It had been a long time since Vivian was so vague. Recently, with her sister directly in her head, everything was quite clear. The letter in Sarah’s hand reminded her of the Automatic Writing stage of their messages. Clues, hints, and riddles.
Sarah would never forget the clue for a kidnapping that read North Face. The girl about to be kidnapped walked right by Sarah, a North Face jacket on, and Sarah missed it, thinking she was supposed to face north in order to see the kidnapping. It almost cost Sarah her life.
As now, the message was spotty and riddled. And it portended the end of Sarah’s life.
Sarah flipped the pages over. Another paragraph was written on the back of the second page. Vivian said that she had taken it upon herself to write letters. Those letters were in the time capsule. They were not to be opened by anyone except by the person whose name was on the envelope, and whoever found the time capsule had the responsibility to properly stamp and mail the letters. Sarah’s life depended on those letters getting through.
She looked inside the capsule tube. The letters were gone.
The last paragraph said goodbye.
Tomorrow, mom and I are going shopping, Vivian wrote. At the mall, I’ve been instructed to run away from her. If I lose mom, I will be able to stop a man named Stew Art. I think his first name is Almond, but I’m not sure.
Armond Stuart.
The man who kidnapped, raped and murdered Vivian all those years ago after she went missing. Armond was now dead after Sarah hunted him through the United States and into Europe.
Sarah read on,
I’m told this is the only way for you to stay alive. If you do, I’m also informed that we, as sisters, will create a bond that’ll stop dozens, if not hundreds of bad people from hurting others in the future. It’s the right thing to do, Sarah. So I have decided to lose mom tomorrow at the mall. Please tell her it was not her fault. This is my choice. I want to do this. I don’t want to live in a world where there’s so much pain. Especially if I can do something about that. I’m left with no choice. So I say goodbye, Sarah, and I pray you live through this so we can do what my teacher from the Other Side has done for me.
Enter into a pact with me, Sarah. If not, we will be reunited very shortly and our work on your plane will be over.
I love you, little Sarah.
The tears came in torrents. Why did the world’s problems fall to this family? Why did she have to lose her sister?
Breathing through her open mouth, her nose clogged as her sinuses filled from crying, Sarah reread the end of the note, the page gripped tight in her palm.
The guest room door opened. Her father stepped in, a glass of whiskey in his hand.
“Sarah,” he said softly. “I turned off the kettle. Thought you’d want something stronger.” He handed her the whiskey. She took it and drank it back in one gulp, then gasped. “Don’t worry about a thing. Your mother and I have thought about this for the last few days and we have a plan. We think it’ll work.”
Sarah rolled the handwritten pages and stuffed them into the tube, missing the tip of the opening a couple of times because her eyes were too blurry with tears.
In a daze, she allowed herself to be led to the kitchen. On the couch in the living room, Parkman sat with his arms crossed.
“Oh, Parkman,” Sarah managed.
Parkman pushed off the couch and got to his feet. “Sarah,” he whispered. They embraced. “We’ll find a way through this.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be that easy this time.” She pulled away from him, grabbed the bottle from the coffee table and refilled her whiskey glass. “Vivian has abandoned me up here.” She tapped the side of her head, then drank the whiskey back. “Vivian’s gone, Parkman.”
“Not yet she isn’t. I got one of the letters she wrote.”
Her father put a hand on her shoulder. “So did we.”
Chapter 2
The Clock bit the end of the granola bar off and chewed methodically. The interior of the building across the street was dark. Not a single light glowed from within. It had remained dark since the last person locked up for the night and left the premises.
The Clock studied the buildings on either side. They were also closed for the evening. This would be an easy job. In and out. Just after midnight. No one around except for the odd car passing by. But what could the occupants of a passing vehicle see once The Clock was inside the building?
Alarms wouldn’t be a problem. There was nothing of considerable value inside. If they had an alarm system at all, it would be a cheap ADT system—without cell backup. People who ran businesses like the one across the street rarely paid the exorbitant extra cost for cell backup.
He swallowed, then bit into the granola bar again. The time to go was precisely 12:15 a.m. That was the time he had structured this operation for. Inside the building for ten minutes. Then out. Back in his hotel by one in the morning. Five hours later he would rise at six and do his hour routine of yoga and stretching, then shower, breakfast, and return to this location. He would watch the curtain fall over the business across the street. His client would want a picture of the damage, the carnage. His client would want the deaths caught on camera.
His approach to killing was why people hired him. As a hunter would shoot a giraffe and pose with it, The Clock killed humans and posed with them. Well, sort of. He didn’t do selfies. After forty-two confirmed kills as a private military contractor, it wouldn’t help his business any if he posed with the evidence.
After the final bite of the granola bar, he neatly folded the wrapper, tucked it into his pocket, and checked the time.
12:14 a.m.
He adjusted the straps on the backpack, checked that his Glock 42 was safely stowed, and studied the street around him. In the alleyway he hid in, two large garbage bins sat to his left. The shadows cast by the buildings meant he could stand beside the garbage bin completely undetected by anyone who happened to glance his way. As long as he remained
immobile, someone could walk right by his position and see nothing. Learning the art of not moving, remaining rigidly in one spot, was something trained into him for years as a sniper in Afghanistan.
As a Danish-born sniper with the U.S. Navy Seals, he logged more kills—170—than most of the men they sent over. The record of 173 goes to an unnamed British Royal Marine, but he knew he’d beaten that record by a dozen kills or more. Definitely more than Navy Seal Chris Kyle, and they made a movie about him.
Whether he was too lethal, or the fact that he was from a small island in Denmark, the American government kept his records sealed. No one knew his true identity and no one ever would. He had gotten too good, too precise, too detailed. When they told him to retire, he protested. To murder, to hunt humans, was all he ever wanted to do, and to have it sanctioned by the government, and get paid for it, was glorious.
The officer who informed him he had no choice but to go home, died slowly. No one told him what to do unless they were paying him.
He disappeared that day. Changed his face, his passport—one of many—and now worked his way toward creating a legend that would rival The Jackal, a notorious assassin from the ’70s and ’80s.
He achieved several nicknames during his time in Afghanistan. The one he liked the most, and the one he still used today, was The Clock.
Time was important to him. Kills happened on time. People lived and died on The Clock. Everything was about time and managing it properly. The time a bullet took from the barrel to the forehead. The time allotted for a job to be completed could affect the job.
Time was also a killer as it worked its machinations on every single person each and every day. Even he, The Clock, would be a victim to time. Eventually his hands wouldn’t hold the Glock just so, his eyes wouldn’t acquire the target accurately, and time would kill him.
But not yet. All in good time.
He smiled to himself as he glanced at his watch.
It was time.
With one last look up and down the street, The Clock pushed off the wall and started toward the building. At the front, he headed south until he got to the end of the building and moved into the shadows to his left. At the rear of the building, he quickly located the back door.
Beside the door, he located the phone box attached to the building’s brick wall. From his Kydex sheath, he withdrew his partially serrated, SOG Seal Team knife with its seven-inch blade and severed the phone lines. Unless the building’s alarm system had a cell backup, no one would be notified of the break-in until morning.
Even if the authorities were called, he would be in and out before anyone got there.
He retrieved the lock pick set from his inner breast pocket and counted the ten seconds he allowed himself to gain access to the building. On the eighth second, the lock clicked open.
The Clock pushed the door inward, then stepped inside the back room of the karate dojo. The smell of the gym hit him first. Rubber mats combined with sweat. They worked hard here. The back room was tidy and clean.
From the backpack slung over his shoulder, he removed the small bombs with timers attached. As he placed them throughout the dojo, setting the timers as he went for ten in the morning, he watched the clock and listened for the sound of approaching vehicles. If he tripped an alarm, they often had the registered key holder attend the premises. The police didn’t always respond. A key holder he could handle and still get the job done.
In less than six minutes, ten devices were secured in vents and in two separate places behind floorboards. Without a bomb-sniffing dog, there was no way they would get every device in time. He left two small bombs in his backpack for later use.
He checked his watch.
Time to go.
The Clock slipped out the back door, closed it and made sure it locked securely. The only evidence of his presence was the cut telephone wires. By the time the karate teachers arrived in the morning and the first class began at 9:30 a.m. as advertised on the front door, no one would pay much attention to a phone line being down. He was pretty sure Bell Canada or Rogers or whomever Aaron Stevens had servicing the phone at his Shotokan dojo wouldn’t have a worker out first thing in the morning. And even if they did, that employee would die in the blast along with the first class of karate students.
The same class that Aaron taught every morning.
The Clock had watched Aaron from the airport when he landed from Las Vegas. The Clock had called the dojo and inquired about tomorrow’s class. A man identified as Daniel told him that Aaron was teaching that class as he was back in town.
The Clock had brought lunch with him as he followed Aaron from the airport to the dojo where Aaron did an hour of administrative duties, collected his mail, and went home.
If anything, The Clock was precise. The client wanted the dojo destroyed. The client wanted Aaron destroyed along with it. The Clock didn’t ask why. It was none of his business. All he concerned himself with was doing the job right.
And getting paid.
A hundred thousand dollars for a simple pyro job. Not bad. The only downside was he would miss seeing the agony on the face of his kill. The aftermath, the charred bodies, sure, but he’d miss the life fleeing the eyes of his victims.
That was the hard part. In a way, he was being cheated because the client wanted an explosion.
He walked around the outside of the building, crossed the quiet street, and walked the two blocks to his rental car.
This was the client’s deal, the client’s money. He was paying for an explosion, so he got an explosion.
But The Clock was already looking forward to the next job.
It was with the same client. He was to pick up a girl at a hotel in Mississauga. Hold her for a week in the hotel, then kill her. Those were the simple instructions from the client. An easy job. Again, no details on why. Just a paycheck. And this client was efficient. It seemed like he knew everything. The client knew the flight number and time Aaron Stevens would arrive at the Toronto Airport. He knew where Aaron would be, when Aaron would be at the dojo, and where the girl was supposed to be.
The Clock liked working with this particular client. His tasks and their particulars were transmitted to his iPhone and money transferred to his off-shore account.
He checked his watch.
On time to the minute.
He started the rental and drove away, wondering how much sleep he would get before he woke for his morning exercises. There was simply too much excitement in his life at the moment.
Chapter 3
Anton Olafson stepped out of the Folketing, the Danish Parliament, and bounded down the stairs, raising his briefcase above his head to shield himself from the rain. He trotted through the Christiansborg parking lot, reserved for members of parliament, until he located his car near the back. Meandering through the tightly-knit cars from the Traffic Committee to the Radical Center Party, around and through several puddles, Olafson was happy to get to his car without a soaker. He fumbled with the keys, opened the door, and dropped into the front seat, shaking rain water off his briefcase before setting it on the passenger seat.
After slamming the door, he took a moment to catch his breath. The rain pounded the roof, a staccato music only the criminally insane or lunatic campers could enjoy. He hated the rain and everything to do with it. Anton often asked his parents why he was given the unfortunate luck of being born in Denmark and not Greece where the sun shone over ten months of the year.
After starting the Tesla, he connected his phone to the car’s Bluetooth and tried calling his daughter’s cell number again. Her voicemail picked up.
Clara hadn’t answered her phone all day. She had joined him on the ride to Copenhagen yesterday, then headed to a friend’s place on the other side of the city, claiming she’d be back this afternoon. The last contact he’d had with her was yesterday around lunch. She’d texted him a picture of a heart and a smile. Her way of telling her father she loved him.
With her not answering he
r phone and not leaving the friend’s address, Anton had no way of getting in touch with her. He’d left meetings early today to head home. Maybe she was already at home waiting for him. At twenty-three years of age, Clara still lived with him, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He made plenty of money. It was hard for the youth of today to find good paying jobs, ones where they could live on their own.
The new position at work had kept Anton busy over the past six months, but he was planning on taking a long summer break. He would make up for lost time with Clara then. Maybe they’d go to Fanø Island, rent a summer cottage on one of Fanø’s huge beaches.
