South Korean government. Becker shot a glance at the date.
“1950?”
He lowered the paper and stared suspiciously around. Vintage automobiles passed up and down the street. As he looked across at the train he’d just climbed off, he noted that the bullet train he’d earlier boarded had now turned into a diesel model that had long since been relegated to train museums.
Challenging? This must be what the old man had been referring to in his request. The job itself sounded simple. Yet how would Becker get back home, to his own time? How had he gotten here in the first place? He thought back. He remembered the long tunnel, how the train’s interior faded to darkness. How he’d fallen asleep at that moment. Normally, he was pumped and energetic for a job.
Frank Becker had spent the last twenty years of his life maintaining strict discipline and intense self-control. He grabbed hold of his rambling nerves, drew a long breath and dropped the paper in the trash. He fingered the knife in his pocket. He had his instructions and he’d received half his fee. He’d complete the job and then figure out how to return. He was a professional. Perhaps it would be as simple as boarding the train again, going back through the tunnel and falling asleep.
Asleep! Am I asleep? Dreaming?
Becker didn’t know what else to do, so he pinched himself and winced at the pain. He was not dreaming. He was fifty years in the past. He gathered his nerves, squared his shoulders, and walked out of the station.
It was a small town, really a village, with a butcher, baker, shops, restaurants, a pub, and a church on the main avenue. As Becker walked, this delicate burst of retail energy petered out and the lane he was walking alongside became quiet. All he heard was the wind and a few birds. Becker had memorized the contents of the letter from his client and then put a match to it. If things went awry, no one would find any evidence on him.
Like the successful man in the city, the woman he was looking for had a routine. Today being Thursday, she would be at her cottage a half-mile distant. She cleaned her home on Thursdays and then prepared a simple meal for her husband who came home promptly at six from work in town. Becker checked his watch. It still ran though it was now apparently five decades earlier than it had been this morning. He had four hours. More than enough time. The couple had no children, the letter had said. She would be alone.
He didn’t have to ask for directions to the cottage. The details in the letter were spot-on. He arrived there twenty minutes after leaving the train station. It was a small footprint of weathered clapboard with chipping white paint, a gingerbread trim painted in soft green and a small flowerbed on either side of the two-foot-high entrance gate that Becker stepped right over. The blooms were pretty, zinnias, geraniums, impatiens. And there was also some fox-glove, which Becker recognized, since he’d once milked deadly quantities of digitalis from the plant in preparation for poisoning another target of his some years ago.
The front door wasn’t even locked. The hinges were well oiled, and his entrance was silent. The place was isolated. He hadn’t passed one person or another home on his way here. He had seen an old DeSoto sedan parked on the side of the road, but there was no one inside.
He didn’t call out as there was no reason to give any warning. His hand slipped to his pocket as he cautiously made his way through the interior space from front to back. The kitchen and what would in the 1950s probably be called the parlor were empty. A pot was on the stove with simmering water in it so the woman of the house had to be nearby. The space was simple and contained no luxuries that Becker could see. He had no idea why a young woman—the letter informed him that she was only nineteen—living in such ordinary circumstances had incurred the wrath of his present client. But his was not to reason, only to execute.
There was only one room left. When he opened the door he saw instantly that it was the bedroom. A four-poster bed with cheap cloth hangings dominated the space. There was a mirror on the wall in which Becker caught his reflection for an instant. He froze. It was the only time he’d ever seen himself about to kill. His face was calm, but his eyes seemed to have swollen to unnatural size, as though the enormity of the deed to come had filled them like hot gas poured into a balloon. Then his attention became riveted on the chair next to the bed. The young woman sat there, her hands busy with knitting needles and yarn. He marveled at the dexterity of her fingers. Yet something did not quite seem right with the image.
He crossed the room and slipped the knife from his pocket. She had not yet looked up. For some reason he wanted to finish the job before she could look at him. Get back on the train, go back to where he belonged. It was the mirror. His reflection had unnerved him somehow. A bead of sweat appeared on his forehead, just above his left eyebrow.
His wish was not granted. She turned to stare at him. He did not like to face his victims. His job, of course, required nerve and daring, but he was actually something of a coward, preferring to strike from behind with an umbrella or a knife. And then run away. That was how he’d killed his father. A hammer to the head and then he’d run to catch a freight train to a new life.
Her expression surprised him. There was a strange man in her bedroom coming at her with a knife, but she did not look afraid. He raised the blade. His heart was pounding, his temples expanding and contracting with the pressure. Her mouth parted as though she were about to say something. But she remained silent because of what he did next. His blade struck, once deeply in the chest, once in the neck for good measure.
She slumped back in the seat, her hands falling to her sides, the knitting needles clattered on the wooden floor. Her chest heaved, throwing her blood outside her body through the two wounds. He should flee, he knew that, but he felt rooted to the spot. His gaze flitted around the room. He saw the leather apron hanging from a hook on the wall. It was spotted with blood and bits of dried meat. Then, his mind working feverishly, he recalled the butcher’s shop he’d passed in the village. That was where the husband must work.
With that thought a cold worked its way into Becker’s skin that paralyzed him. He managed to slowly turn his head back to the dying woman. He looked down at her right hand. He gripped it, turned it upward, drawing it to the light from the window. When he saw the little nodule of bone where the index finger should have been he instantly dropped the hand and it swung back down, hitting the side of the chair.
Becker’s mind was beginning to shut down with each heave of the woman’s body as life left her. As his eyes focused on her body, Becker saw the large hump in her belly. And on her lap was the object of her knitting. A small blue knit cap for the baby boy she was very close to delivering. Now, of course, they were both dead.
As Becker slumped to the floor, his own breaths coming in agonized gasps, he thought he saw his mother smile at him. But he could have been wrong about that. The answer would never come. A moment later he was gone.
David Baldacci is a worldwide bestselling novelist. With his books published in over 45 languages and in more than 80 countries, and with over 110 million copies in print, he is one of the world’s favorite storytellers. David Baldacci is also the cofounder, along with his wife, of the Wish You Well Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting literacy efforts across America. Still a resident of his native Virginia, he invites you to visit him at www.DavidBaldacci.com, and his foundation at www.WishYouWellFoundation.org, and to look into its program to spread books across America at www.FeedingBodyandMind.com.
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