The Lost Watch

A dry click in the lock, and the door creaked open. The visitor, without waiting to be invited and shoving Jack aside as he passed, immediately stepped inside. Jack had no choice but to close the door behind him.

“Did you bring it?” he asked dryly, all business.

Instead of answering, the visitor placed a small box on the low round table that sat in front of the old, sagging, muddy-brown leather couch.

“Are you sure?” he asked, the muscles along his high cheekbones tightening.

“More than ever.” Jack nodded wearily and scratched under his arm. “I know the consequences, Ben.”

“Will we see each other again?” Ben asked in a trembling voice, clasping his fingers together until his knuckles cracked. “This isn’t how I imagined our last meeting.”

“Take care of yourself.” Instead of answering, Jack held out a thick, heavy envelope and swallowed the lump in his throat. “It’s all there.”

“Aren’t you going to check?” Ben asked, shifting from foot to foot and nodding toward the box.

Jack carefully picked up the box and lifted the lid. For a while he simply looked at it and said nothing. When the lid settled back into place, his lips tightened into a thin, straight line.

“It’s time for you to go.” He walked to the door and opened it for his guest.

Ben only nodded in response and left the apartment at a hurried pace. Only after the key turned several times in the lock was Jack able to exhale. His legs began to tremble, and he slid helplessly down the wall, covering his face with his hands. Barely holding back his sobs, he drew deep breaths, trying to steady his breathing. A minute later he managed to pull himself together and, springing abruptly to his feet, headed for the kitchen. The gas burner flared with an even blue flame, and the kettle settled onto it with a distinct metallic scrape. Jack turned on the cold water and shoved his head under the stream, which sprayed into a mist. Straightening sharply, he threw his head back, and his long wet hair traced an arc through the air before falling onto his neck. His fingers squeezed out the moisture and smoothed the hair tightly against the shape of his skull. The kettle whistled on the stove, and steam rose toward the ceiling before Jack turned off the gas.

Lost in thought, he studied the black lily tattooed on the inside of his left wrist and slowly reached for the kettle. When his arm was in the sink up to the elbow, boiling water scalded the black lily, which reddened and blistered from the burn. Jack ground his teeth against the unbearable pain. Darkness crowded his vision, but he managed to hold back a scream. It was necessary. The tattoo’s protection had to be bypassed. The most important thing afterward was to stay conscious; otherwise, the painful procedure would have to be repeated, since the effect was temporary. The tattoo blocked any possibility of using the artifact, and every keeper knew it, yet none of them knew how to rid themselves of the restriction attached to it. Jack had spent a long time gathering information about the black lily’s weakness, and until this moment no other method had existed short of getting rid of the hand itself. Without the hand, what he intended to do would be impossible.

He braced himself against the edge of the sink with his healthy hand and straightened. A few deep breaths helped bring his mind back into focus. His burned hand felt as if it were on fire, but that was a small price to pay for what he was about to do. Jack shuffled back into the room and stopped beside the coffee table where he had left the box. He had not expected to see it still there; everything felt so unreal that he would not have been surprised if it had vanished without a trace. Yet it remained, like a reproach, an eyesore he could not avoid. He had gone too far to turn back now. He picked it up and, before opening it again, ran his fingers over the rough velvet surface of the lid. He had waited ten years for this chance, three thousand six hundred and fifty long days of thought. How many times a day had he weighed the arguments for and against? But everything led to a single conclusion: the good of humanity did not outweigh one life. From now on, the moral dilemma had narrowed for him to one simple judgment. No one should have to die for the noblest ideas or for a brighter future in which there would be no place for the one who had paid for it with his life. No one.

He was far from religious and did not believe in life after death; it made no sense to him. Of course he understood why people sought salvation in faith: it made existence easier, and at the same time allowed them to do foolish things, to embrace recklessness, to justify their deeds in the name of the Lord. Perhaps if they knew that at the very end there was only emptiness and nothing but emptiness—no reincarnation, no afterlife, only complete oblivion—many things would acquire a different meaning. Wars would lose their sense. Mutual annihilation—for what? Jack did not consider himself a philosopher. He despised sophistry and anything built on arguments that could not be supported by proven facts and evidence. For that reason he regarded death as an irreversible event, and for that same reason life was, to him, the most precious gift.

His fingers lifted the lid. Inside the box, nestled in a hollow lined with soft snow-white brocade, lay an antique silver watch made in the shape of a human skull. Jack pulled on the lower jaw and exposed the dial of the old watch, whose exact copy rested in the Louvre, while in his hands lay the carefully guarded original from the mid-seventeenth century. There was no time to appreciate the skill of the piece, with its delicate openwork engraving and the inscription “Stipendia Peccati mors.”[1] One glance at the warning was enough to grasp the full weight of what he intended. And yet, despite the tremor in his hands, he continued. The burning in the black lily intensified, and its contours began to emerge through the burn, reminding him that the protective mechanism was about to awaken.

Ben had told him the watch could send a seeker back through time only once, into his own body, to a specific moment in his life, and only for a short period. It was nothing like classical time travel. It was closer to a transfer of consciousness into the past—after all, the future was closed, because it had not yet come to pass.

Around the circumference of the main dial were Roman numerals from I to XII, and inside it sat an additional rotating ring with Arabic numerals in the same sequence. At the very center, against a floral ornament, a single hand stood fixed and motionless. Jack slipped the metal pin he had prepared in advance under the inner disc and began slowly turning it counterclockwise. When the number six aligned with the marker of the fixed hand, he tightened the rosette of the worm screw until it gave a distinctive click.

A sharp pain shot along his spine. His mouth fell open involuntarily, like the jaw of the watch, and an inhuman rasp tore from his throat. Jack no longer controlled his body; all he could do was watch what was happening to him. From the corner of his tear-filled eye, he saw the front door fly off its hinges and armed men burst into the room. In that state he could not make out their faces, but he knew with certainty that he knew each one of them. Muzzle flashes lit the space. His body jerked from multiple hits. Before soundless darkness swallowed him, he saw himself sinking into the empty eye sockets of the grinning skull of the antique watch.

“Jack? Jack! Do you hear what I’m saying?” A painfully familiar, irritated female voice pulled him out of his stupor. “Don’t pretend this has nothing to do with you. You’re acting like your head is in the clouds!”

Jack did not understand at once what was happening. A moment earlier bullets had been tearing into his body, and the pain still felt so real it had knocked the breath from him. Yet after blinking several times, he found himself sitting across from Cat, whole and unharmed. How long ago it had been. In another life entirely. He could barely recall the details of that conversation. It was the moment their relationship had begun to crack, and he had done nothing to repair it. Now he was at a loss, because he did not know how to act, what to say, or how to respond to her justified reproaches. Apparently, the transfer of consciousness into his younger self from ten years earlier had succeeded. The antique watch really worked, and the thought made him uneasy.

“I’m sorry, Cathy. This isn’t the right time for this conversation,” Jack mumbled, unable to tear his eyes from her green eyes and beautiful lips, the corners of which had dropped in disappointment. “Can we talk later?”

“Are you kidding me? A minute ago you admitted that something had to be done,” she said, finally losing patience as she brushed from her forehead a wayward strand of hair glinting gold in the sunlight. “And now you’ve decided to back out? What’s wrong with you?”

She rose from the chair, grabbed the brown purse with metal clasps lying on the table, and slammed the door on her way out.

Jack raised his hands to his face and saw his fingers trembling. The damned tattoo on his left wrist was gone, as was the recent burn. Everything concerning time had to be reconsidered. He understood that he had borrowed from life, and he felt guilty for having displaced his past consciousness from this body like a thief. This paradox—that he was inside himself and yet a stranger at the same time—was literally choking him, and he could not master the nervous tremor.

This is wrong, came the thought he could not shake. Terrible and wrong.

But Jack was here, and he understood that his stay in this moment of time was limited, though he had no idea how much he had been given. The worst had already happened. He had died in the moment of crossing over, and now all that remained was to justify his act, to pay it off in full, so that this final sacrifice would not prove meaningless. He had to find his younger brother before it was too late. After all, he was still alive. The realization shot through him like an electric current all the way to his heels. He sprang to his feet and discovered that he was wearing his favorite worn jeans, battered but damn comfortable Nikes, and that the body under his black AC/DC T-shirt was in excellent physical shape.

The room smelled of dust warmed by the sun. On the lower shelf beneath the convex television screen, the spine of a videotape was visible, with an inscription in Nick’s handwriting: “Garage Tape — Do Not Erase.” His gaze fell on the alarm clock, the only object that had remained with him from the past into the future. This time the hands showed 2:37 in the afternoon. That meant there were five hours and twenty-three minutes left before the fatal event. Nick would be near the lighthouse at exactly eight in the evening, and all Jack had to do was keep him from reaching Point Lookout.

Jack grabbed the keys from the table and burst out of the house into the fresh air. The street met him with the smell of wet asphalt and the tang of rusted metal. The sun had hidden behind gathering clouds, and a chill moved through the air. Above the industrial edge over toward Sparrows Point, the sky darkened in an unfriendly way, and the rising wind carried from the bay the unmistakable dockside noise of heavy labor. Dundalk did not look like the most desirable place to live, but for Jack it was the only real reality, with all its flaws left uncovered by any false facade, and that seemed worth more than any ornate beauty.

Once, he had lived here. Once, he had even been happy. If it could be called happiness. He had had a girlfriend he loved, a job of sorts, and music. From time to time they would get together with the guys. His younger brother Nick was a fairly virtuosic drummer, Jack had become decent on electric guitar, and the others filled in on bass, synthesizer, whatever anyone could manage. Sometimes, in especially good moments, when the notes fell into place the way they should, there was talk of forming a band, but nothing ever came of it. Something was always happening to someone—on the personal front, at work, in the family—and everything went on in its usual course. As people usually say, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.

Jack shook his head and returned to reality. When he approached his old 1981 Chevrolet Malibu, parked at the curb, he saw that the front tire was flat, a snaking crack ran across the windshield, the sand-colored body had lost its former shine and acquired a couple of shallow dents, and a rain-soaked flyer for a local pizza place was caught under the wiper. Only then did he remember that the car needed repairs he simply did not have the money for.

Not far away, by the road, stood a phone booth. Outside, on the glass clouded by time, an old faded Bell Atlantic sticker still clung in place. Inside, the booth smelled of dampness and urine. On the metal panel of the payphone, someone had carefully scratched three initials: JFK, apparently unable to let go of the past. He lifted the sticky receiver, nearly dropping it in disgust, but restrained the first impulse, checked that there was a dial tone, and dropped in a couple of coins before dialing the number. He was going to call his father’s old friend, Fred Watkins, a Vietnam comrade-in-arms. Fred had been close to them all their lives, until an incurable illness took Jack’s father. Jack’s mother had died even earlier—a car accident had taken her life—and now, apart from Nick, he had no one left. In this time, his brother was still alive. Until tonight. He sighed and began turning the resistant, sticking dial. Mechanical memory helped him recall the number he could barely dredge up from the back of his mind. Fred had been like family to him and his brother, but there had been no place for him in Jack’s future. One day he had vanished without a trace; everything pointed to likely problems with alcohol, and his advanced age only widened the risk. Most likely he had met the fate of a John Doe—of whom, in this region, there seemed to be no shortage. Only the purpose in Jack’s life had kept him from setting foot on the same road and helped him stay afloat.

And once, everything had been different. Service in the Marine Corps for the good of his country had left a faded tattoo on his left forearm with the Corps emblem: an eagle spreading its wings above the globe, and an anchor wrapped in rope emerging from beneath it. Large letters in a semicircle—United States Marine Corps—framed the composition inked there long ago. He had been ambitious, full of hope, but he had returned home to Dundalk an entirely different man. The small town in Baltimore County had not been the limit of a young man’s dreams, but he never did set off in search of a better lot from the place where he had spent his entire childhood, where every brick was filled with memories.

“Hello?” Fred’s low voice brought Jack back from the memories that had suddenly overtaken him.

“Hey, Fred. You busy? I need a favor.” Nudging a crumpled pack of Camels away with the toe of his sneaker, Jack dropped his gaze to his feet. “I’m without wheels. Can you swing by?”

“No problem! Of course!” his father’s old friend agreed readily. “You going to tell me what’s going on?”

“I’ll give you the details when I see you,” Jack said, not drawing out the conversation. “I’m at my place. I’ll wait.”

After that, Jack hung up and stepped out of the phone booth. The air, filled with brackish moisture, seemed magical after the stale space inside. He walked over to the porch and sat down on the top wooden step, which creaked plaintively under his weight. He had no choice but to kill an hour waiting. Annapolis, from where Fred would be driving, was roughly that far away, with the timing adjusted by whatever traffic had in store. His heart began to beat faster when he thought of the meeting ahead. Not every day did a person get the chance to speak with relatives or friends who had left this world. It was, perhaps, a luxury unavailable to ordinary mortals. At that thought Jack gave a crooked smile—technically, he was no longer one of them, since in his own time he was already dead. Strangely enough, the realization filled him with neither terror nor despair. On the contrary, he was thinking as clearly as it was at all possible to think under the present circumstances, and certainly better than he had in the last ten years of his life.

The squeal of brakes made Jack exhale sharply. A painfully familiar beige 1986 Ford F-150 pulled up at the curb, a brown stripe running along the entire side. The door creaked, and Fred stepped out toward him. Jack barely managed to restrain himself from rushing over and embracing his father’s bulky old friend, who smelled of cheap tobacco and motor oil. The pockets of his weathered vest bulged, as usual, with every kind of useless little thing, and the Orioles cap seemed as if it had never left his head. His unkempt goatee stretched into a smile as he held out his hand in greeting, and Jack shook it at once, warmly and hard.

“How long’s it been? A week? Or more?” Fred grinned cheerfully. “That’s right. A month since we last saw each other.”

“Feels like an eternity to me!” Jack laughed with relief. He was glad to see him. The heavy thoughts receded into the background. “Got buried in things and lost track of time. You know how it is.”

“How could I not? While I was rebuilding the heart of my old girl”—Fred slapped the hood of the pickup with his palm—“I forgot to pay the insurance. And once I started dealing with that, old business came up and dragged me even deeper.”

“A vicious circle.” Jack nodded in agreement and finally let go of his father’s old combat comrade’s calloused hand. “Nothing changes.”

“Is that so?” Fred raised one thick black eyebrow in question. “So what happened?”

“You see,” Jack began, faltering because he did not know where to start, “I’ve got a bad feeling. Nick has dropped off the radar, and I need to find him fast. He isn’t answering calls. I figured, unlike everyone else I know, you might have time to help.”

“God’s honest truth! Glad to help. Do you know where he might be?”

“I have an idea where he may show up today.”

“Then what are we standing around for? Hop in—you can tell me on the way.”

Jack did not need to be asked twice. He opened the door to the Ford’s spacious cab and froze for a moment. Memories flooded back with renewed force. Once, he and his father had sat here side by side on the broad, dirty-beige bench seat. The dashboard, cracked in places and fitted with wood darkened by time, held countless fingerprints, including his own. He climbed inside, tossing aside the frayed seat belt that lay across the seat, and breathed in an entire range of smells, from natural to synthetic, which together gave off the scent of faded vinyl. It did not repel him. On the contrary, he felt as if he had returned to his element, where everything was familiar and predictable.

When the doors slammed shut and the pickup’s engine roared, Fred pulled out onto the road, shifted into a higher gear, and pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

“Where are we headed?” he asked in a businesslike tone.

“Point Lookout,” Jack said, leaning back against the seat. “Nick will be there tonight.”

“What makes you so sure?” Fred asked skeptically, scratching his beard with his free hand. “Didn’t you just say you can’t reach him? What’s going on, Jack? What’s supposed to happen?”

“I know my brother,” Jack said, choosing his words carefully, and to still the trembling in his fingers he clenched them into a fist so tightly that his knuckles went white. It did not escape his father’s old friend. “At some point he mentioned his plans, and if my memory isn’t failing me, he’s planning to meet someone. That’s all I know.”

“A bad feeling, then?”

“Exactly. You understand I can’t ignore it, right?”

Fred narrowed his eyes and passed a slow-moving white truck on the highway.

“I understand. In your place, I’d do exactly the same,” he agreed. “But if something dangerous is going on, wouldn’t it be better to prepare for it?”

“It’s complicated.”

“When has it ever been otherwise?”

Jack fell silent and turned away. Trees, bushes, and road signs flashed past the window; the uneven shoulder kept changing shape, behaving like a living thing. The road stretched south, past idiosyncratic gas stations, plowed fields, scattered churches, and solitary houses with flags fluttering on their porches. The closer they drew to St. Mary’s County, the more Maryland seemed to narrow into a thin strip of land, tapering like a wedge toward the last point on the map.

He did not know how to tell Fred something that would not fit inside an ordinary person’s head. He had no proof, and any explanation of what was happening could and would be taken for nothing but sick fantasies. In Fred’s place, he would not have believed a single word of it himself.

Just as he opened his mouth, trying to give some logical shape to his fears, a violent impact slammed into the rear of the bed and spun the pickup one hundred and eighty degrees. Jack struck his forehead against the side window and felt a hot trickle run down his temple. The truck whipped around its own axis and was thrown onto the shoulder. A sharp tilt nearly rolled the Ford. But, kicking up a layer of dust, it came crashing back down onto all four wheels. His ears rang as if from the close blast of a mortar shell, but the instinct for survival crushed the disorientation. Jack immediately unbuckled and checked Fred’s condition. His father’s old friend was conscious and, pulling a shotgun from under the seat, bared his teeth in a grim smile.

“Open the glove box! Now!”

Jack knew this was no time for questions and obeyed Fred’s order. His fingers found the rough grip of a Glock 19. In a practiced automatic motion, honed over the years, he racked the slide and chambered a round.

A moment later he flung the door open and jumped out, the barrel aimed toward the potential threat.

“What the hell was that?” Jack forced the air from his tightened lungs.

Fred followed him and, looking around, pressed his back against the body of the truck.

“The truck we passed on the highway,” he said, coughing hard. “Caught us good, son of a bitch.”

“You think it wasn’t an accident?”

The side mirror exploded into shards and forced both men to duck.

“There’s your answer!” Fred squinted and set his finger on the trigger.

A cold gust of wind lifted the dry leaves into the air, and they spiraled along the road. The daylight faded beneath the weight of the slowly advancing leaden clouds. The first large drops of rain struck the windshield and began drumming on the roof of the pickup. Jack placed his hand on the hood and pretended to rise. The next shot came at once. But Jack had been expecting it and did not expose himself, though he managed to work out the shooter’s approximate direction. The shooter’s possible partner had to be removed from the equation, and Fred repeated the same trick from the side of the bed. Two rounds punched through the Ford’s side panel and landed with a grouping impossible for a revolver.

“At least two of them. Armed with automatic rifles,” Jack said, sharing his assessment.

“Or three,” Fred nodded in reply. “Always assume the worst-case scenario. Advice from an old veteran.”

“We’re exposed out here. We need to distract them, and I don’t see a better way than splitting up.”

Fred suddenly rose, and the loud blast of his shotgun rang out, then another. Jack rolled and looked out from behind the front wheel. Seeing movement near the truck that had rammed them, he opened aimed fire. A heavy fall and the dirty cursing that followed confirmed the hit. Automatic fire tore through the space—one of the bullets punctured the tire tread, and the Ford sagged heavily. Shards of stone flew in every direction like shrapnel. Jack gasped in pain and grabbed his side. Ricochet, he thought, and dashed toward the nearest tree. Gooseflesh spread across his back as he moved in a zigzag, making himself an uncovered target. Luckily, the rain intensified and reduced visibility. If the magazine had been full, then of the fifteen rounds available, eleven remained. More than enough, Jack thought. He could not allow himself to lose this fight. Not now and not today. Otherwise, everything would have been for nothing. In his time, he had been one of the best shots, including with a pistol.

His index finger settled on the smooth face of the trigger and then stretched back out along the frame the moment the wind lifted the watery curtain of rain—he rushed onto the roadway under its cover. The shooters had focused on Fred, who had been right: there were three of them. Jack had taken one out; the others were flanking the pickup from both sides. Water streamed down Jack’s face and hands as he held the Glock in a classic two-handed grip and, still closing the distance, opened rapid fire—three shots into one, three into the other. A control shot into each. After making sure they no longer posed a threat, he found the third. The man sat beside the truck, his eyes already glazed over.

The muzzle of the shotgun pressed into Jack’s back.

“Who the hell are you?” came the voice of his father’s old friend from behind him.

“Fred, this isn’t funny anymore! We’re losing time!” Jack brushed the question aside impatiently.

“An eternity since we last saw each other, you said? You didn’t even blink when I said it had been a month since our last meeting. Isn’t that right?”

“So what?”

“We saw each other yesterday. I gave you and Cathy a ride home from Baltimore!”

The adrenaline had not yet had time to drain from his veins after the deadly fight, and the unexpected exposure only intensified its effect. Instead of freezing and standing still, Jack pressed himself even harder against the barrel of the shotgun and used the momentum of his own body, deliberately thrown off balance, to shift his weight onto his left leg with a simultaneous turn and knock the weapon out of Fred’s hands.

“Can’t fault you for being perceptive,” Jack said through clenched teeth, barely holding back his rage. He did not point the Glock at Fred in return. “For me, ten years have passed since our last meeting, but nevertheless, it’s still me.”

After that, he turned away from Fred and, approaching the nearest body, bent down and pulled up the sleeve on the man’s left arm. The inside of his wrist was marked with a black lily, its petals reaching into the eye sockets of the skull depicted in the tattoo.

“Goddamn fanatics!” Jack cursed from the heart. “I’ve never seen that version of the tattoo before.”

“Looks like cleaners,” came the low voice of his father’s old friend behind him. “And they failed their assignment.”

“Not without our help,” Jack said coldly. “We need to see if the truck still runs. Your Ford is done.”

The occasional car flew past them on the highway, but no one cared about the two vehicles in the ditch. From the road it looked like an ordinary breakdown, one vehicle stopped to help another. Neither of them obstructed traffic. They dragged the bodies into the ditch so nothing would attract attention.

Inside the old white Chevy P30 van, with its reinforced bumper and unremarkable battered body, the paint peeling from the doors, there was a smell of diesel and wet rubber. Jack noted to himself that the shooters’ choice of vehicle had not been accidental. A powerful, versatile model, well suited to the kind of work they did. In the cab, on the passenger seat, lay a crumpled road map pinned down by an M4 carbine with a telescoping stock and a collimator sight. Jack jumped into the passenger seat and leaned the rifle against the glove compartment he had already searched. Fred slammed the door hard and turned the ignition key. The powerful engine rattled to life, then roared as the gas pedal was pressed to the floor. They left the crash site behind, shrinking in the rearview mirror until it disappeared from sight.

The windshield wipers went to full power, struggling against the dense, wave-like streams of water on the glass. The mechanical clock on the dashboard showed six fifteen in the evening. Time was running out relentlessly, like sand through fingers, granting no one any mercy. A heavy silence hung in the air. Jack stared out the window, wet and angry. His right side was bleeding and aching. His shirt was soaked with blood and clung unpleasantly to the wound. Fred rummaged in the pocket of his dark green vest—unlikely to have been its natural color—pulled out a crumpled pack of Marlboros with his free hand, brought it to his lips, and tossed it aside. The last cigarette ended up in his mouth. His fingers pressed the cigarette lighter out of habit, and a minute later, with its peculiar click signaling that it was hot, it popped back out. A moment after that he was already lighting the tip of the cigarette and exhaling the first stream of smoke into the vehicle’s cabin.

“Sorry if I was a little too impatient,” he said with a measure of remorse. “I’m not exactly known for patience.”

“True,” Jack said, not arguing as he wiped his blood-covered fingers on his shirt. “You’ve always been unbearable.”

The admission made both men burst out laughing. The nervous tension had left them no other way to release it.

“Another second and I would’ve pulled the trigger!” Fred admitted, exhaling clouds of smoke and still laughing hoarsely. “Can you imagine?”

“The only thing I don’t doubt is that, if not for my good will, you’d be lying in the ditch with a hole in your head,” Jack parried with a crooked grin. “I wouldn’t have let anyone stop me. Not even you.”

The exchange of barbs eased the atmosphere. The downpour kept flooding the highway, and Fred had to slow down to avoid trouble on the road.

“You’ve changed. Gotten harder.” Fred’s tone grew serious.

“There were reasons,” Jack said, offering no excuses. “A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.”

“A remarkable transformation. It looks impossible.”

“I thought exactly the same thing until today.”

“So it’s true? The watch works?” Fred asked, glancing warily at his passenger.

“What do you think?” Jack said with biting sarcasm. “The witch hunt has begun, and someone is desperate to cover their tracks. And to keep me from getting to Nick.”

“I don’t understand. Nick only recently joined our ranks,” his father’s old comrade murmured thoughtfully.

“And you didn’t think I needed to know that?” Jack slammed his open palm against the dashboard in anger. “He could still have been alive!”

Fred went pale as the realization struck him.

“No. That can’t be. Ben assured me the risks were minimal.”

“Ben?” Now it was Jack’s turn to slump helplessly back into the seat. “No. No. What an idiot I am.”

“What? What aren’t you telling me?” Unable to keep driving the van, Fred hit the brakes.

“It was Ben who gave me the watch so I could return to this moment in time and stop my brother from doing something reckless,” Jack whispered soundlessly. “Almost immediately after that, the keepers broke into my apartment…”

“And then?”

“Then? They filled me with lead.”

The cabin became too cramped with the truth that had come out. Jack clutched at his slipping thoughts, trying to piece the whole picture together. But in that state he was incapable of rational analysis. He did not care how long the keepers had guarded the secret of the watch. What had made them set the pendulum of time in motion?

“Why?” Jack barely recognized his own voice.

“Why what?” Fred asked, dragging on the cigarette down to the filter and flicking the butt out the window.

“Why did they choose Nick? Why him? Why not you? Why not Ben?”

“You see. Your brother volunteered when he learned what the watch could do. Before initiation”—Fred bared his hand and showed the black lily—“he can activate the artifact and do what no one has dared to do for a great many years.”

“You’re sitting across from a dead man. That’s what the watch does,” Jack said bitterly. “Good intentions aren’t worth a life.”

“Aren’t you the contradiction to that? You sacrificed yourself to come back and save your younger brother.”

“I did it to restore justice and put an end to any attempt to change the past.”

“That’s the paradox.” Fred shook his head. “Still, I’ll help you, even if I can’t fully accept what you’re saying. Nick shouldn’t have to pay with his life.”

The engine came back to life, and the van slowly left the shoulder and pulled onto the main road. When they passed Prince Frederick, there was still a long road south ahead, where they would have to cross the Governor Thomas Johnson Bridge, take Three Notch Road, and then the last stretch of Route 5 that led to the end of their journey.

Jack remembered Nick’s mischievous smile, his unruly hair that always stuck out in every direction, no matter how much he tried to tame it, always returning to its former state. His brother had been talented at everything, unlike him, and deserved a long, bright future. All these years Jack had lived with the thought of setting everything right, and the moment of truth was drawing inevitably closer. Yet another fear tormented him even more than the event ahead: that he would not remain long enough inside the younger version of himself to carry out what he had come to do. No one knew for certain how long the transfer’s effect lasted or what symptoms marked its end. His gaze fixed on the highway divider. It doubled in his eyes and seemed unwilling to merge back into a clear solid line. A violent shiver ran through his body, and cold clamped all his limbs in an iron grip. Suddenly his left wrist burned as if with fire, and the emerging contours of a blood-red lily appeared on it. Its outlines began to pulse and lit the inside of the cab. The unbearable pain forced a long moan from Jack. Fred watched what was happening out of the corner of his eye, utterly astonished.

“Damn it!” Fred could not contain his shock. “What in God’s name is happening?”

“Time is running out!” Jack said through bloodless lips. “We need to hurry.”

By evening, the white van entered the grounds of Point Lookout—the southern tip of Maryland, where, as far as the eye could see, the broad mouth of the Potomac, staggering in its scale, dissolved into the murky gray waters of Chesapeake Bay. Beneath the weight of the advancing clouds, sliding across the even gray canvas of the low sky, a narrow strip of land could be seen at the crossroads of unfriendly winds. Claimed by sparse trees and tired tall grass, it inevitably brought to mind the back edge of the mortal world, whose harsh beauty could not help but hold the eye. The cold air, carrying notes of salt and old silt against the approach of night, entered the lungs and stirred, instead of alarm, a humility that seemed foreign to the place.

The wheels of the white truck turned onto the narrow loop of the parking area, crunched over the gravel, and the brakes, bringing the two-ton mass to a stop, gave a strained squeal.

A little farther away, the two-story building of the old Point Lookout Lighthouse showed white against the gloom. Above the center of its roof rose a low, dark-red lantern tower, the same color as the roof shingles, and from that distance it bore a faint resemblance to an oil lamp. Its defining feature—the glass lantern with its circular gallery—spoke unmistakably of its true purpose.

Jack landed heavily on the ground and, grimacing with pain, grabbed his right side. The wound was still bleeding, which indicated a more serious injury than he had first thought. The lily on the inside of his wrist continued to burn and had taken on a crimson shade. He could not shake the feeling that an entire eternity had passed since the transfer. As if he had lived a whole life in a single day. He could not rid himself of the déjà vu that all this had happened before. As a rule, that never meant anything good. He slung the rifle strap over his shoulder and tucked the Glock into the back of his waistband.

The gathering dusk blurred visibility. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack caught movement in the tall grass and a vague silhouette near the house itself. A moment later, however, everything had returned to its serene appearance.

“I don’t like this,” Fred’s quiet voice sounded behind him.

Jack shifted position, dropped to one knee in front of the tall grass, and pressed a finger to his lips. Then, with a two-finger gesture, he indicated the direction, and his father’s combat comrade, following the instruction, began moving in a circle. For a while Jack remained motionless, listening to the sounds around him. His fingers found a stone and hurled it sharply into the thickest part of the grass. A muzzle flash lit the advancing darkness. Jack’s lightning-fast rush caught the opponent off guard. A side kick to the knee, followed by a crack, made the shooter cry out; the edge of Jack’s hand crushed his throat; the dull fall of the body and its convulsive spasms put an end to the brief fight. Fred’s shotgun boomed somewhere nearby. A string of return shots tore through the air.

A man in camouflage sprang out of nowhere and drove a blow into Jack’s bleeding side, forcing him to sink from the pain. Jack managed to deflect the next strike, but the fist grazed his ear and nearly knocked him to the ground. The blade, flashing in the light from distant lamps, sank into his thigh and made him grind his teeth in pain. A second slash of the combat knife, aimed at his neck, missed its target. He instinctively leaned away and, back on his feet, caught the enemy’s arm above the wrist, continuing its motion at the same time, stepped aside, moved off the line of attack, and used the momentum to twist the wrist outward. In the next instant, the knife was already in Jack’s hand, and the blade slid under the opponent’s rib. The man jerked and dropped heavily to the ground. Jack pulled out the Glock and fired a series of shots at the next target, emptying the magazine completely, and this time he was accurate. He tossed the pistol aside and set his shoulder into the stock of the M4, activating the dot on the collimator sight.

Behind the lighthouse building stretched a stone embankment. Waves broke against the large gray boulders, and several dozen yards from shore, black wet wooden pilings, gleaming in the moonlight, jutted out of the water. Against that backdrop, Jack made out the painfully familiar figure of his brother, standing at the very edge and staring at his palm. He was not alone. The other man was Ben. He was gesturing actively and explaining something to Nick. But his body language did not suggest he was about to stop him.

Jack rushed toward the shore, favoring his wounded leg, fired two short bursts at the two gunmen blocking his path, who dropped as if cut down, and, pressing a hand to the wound in his side, hobbled forward, no longer able to run. The shotgun blasts stopped. Fred did what he could, flashed through Jack’s mind. He could not understand why Nick was standing so calmly on the shore and not reacting to what was happening.

“Nick! Nick!” Jack shouted with all the strength he had left, closing the distance. “Stop!”

The bitter irony was that it was Ben who had handed the watch to his younger brother, just as, ten years later, he would hand it to Jack. Now he was seeing it with his own eyes.

Jack kept moving, but it seemed to him that he was lifting his feet far too slowly, like a fruit fly trapped in thick, sweet honey, and he could do nothing about it. Nick slowly turned his head toward him but did not rush to meet him. The lower jaw of the silver watch was open, and he looked at his brother through the fog of time.

“Jack! I’m going to save her, Jack! Mom will be with us again!”

“Nick! Don’t do this! The watch takes your life!” Jack screamed with all his might. “Mom isn’t in the future! Do you hear me?”

Nick smiled as if he had not heard a word.

“We’ll all be together again!” And he set the mechanism of the ancient artifact in motion.

A pistol appeared in Ben’s hand before he realized what was happening. Jack did not have time to react. A single shot echoed over the surface of the bay. A red dot appeared on Nick’s forehead. The watch slipped from his lifeless fingers and struck the wet stones. Nick’s body fell over the edge. A loud splash followed. Jack was on his knees, staring helplessly at the place where his younger brother had been a second earlier. Tears ran down his cheeks. He had failed Nick again. Ben picked up the watch with his left hand; his right still held the pistol. Jack aimed the barrel of the M4 at Ben and pulled the trigger. A dull click sounded. In the same instant, Jack’s consciousness went dark.

“Jack? Jack! Wake up!”

“Who is that?” Jack asked, barely forcing his dry lips apart.

“It’s Ben. You’re in the hospital. But you’re going to be all right!”

“What… what happened?”

Ben lowered his gaze to Jack’s empty wrist and only then spoke.

“I have bad news,” Ben said, shaking his head in devastation. “Your brother is dead.”

May 11, 2026. Munich.