No Time Left (2 page)

The old man cleared his throat and looked appraisingly over Becker’s bland suit, average features, black gloves and downcast
gaze and came away apparently pleased or at least satisfied.

“You come recommended.”

Becker lifted his gaze a millimeter. “I often do. May I ask who the reference was?”

“Schultz.”

“I see. Yes, I can understand that. A tricky one.”

“Indeed.”

“And your request?”

“Trickier still,” said the man. His mustache hairs rippled outward as he spoke. For some reason this irritated Becker when
he observed it. He kept his gaze planted downward after that. It was critical to be objective at this point.

“I look forward to being impressed then,” said Becker with a bit more arrogance than he had intended. There was something
about this fellow, he suddenly concluded, that bothered him. Something other than the rippling mustache.

The old man leaned forward, resting the well-worn elbow patches of his tweed coat on the polished desktop. He took a few moments
to draw a small hooked pipe from his waistcoat pocket and ignite it, nursing the tobacco to life with a few expert intakes
of breath. He bent the match in half with long, spidery blue-veined fingers and brushed it into a copper ashtray next to the
black rotary dial phone.

“A woman needs to be taken care of.”

“Her name and address?”

“It will be provided through the post.”

Becker glanced up at this. “The post? You mean the mail? That is unusual.”

“You call it one thing and I another,” the man said amiably. “But it means the same thing.”

“I also meant that putting such information down in writing could become awkward if the authorities ever saw it.”

“I’m a very old man, so such things do not bother me. What will be will be.”

“All right. What has she done to you that warrants my intervention?”

The man puffed his pipe thoughtfully before answering. “Does it matter?”

Becker shifted uneasily in his seat. “No, it doesn’t. My terms are relatively simple. Half now, half on completion.”

“So I understand.”

“Please also understand that on only one occasion has someone failed to complete the final payment. His funeral was extremely
expensive because of the oversight.”

“I see your point and I would never hazard to repeat his mistake. I have not many years left to live, but I would like to
enjoy them in peace and comfort.”

“And the challenging part?”

“You will see that first-hand.”

Becker gave him a curious expression. “Why call this meeting then?”

“So I could see you, and you could see me. I’m sure you would agree that our business is a personal one. If I may say the
most personal of all. A face-to-face contact seemed to me manifest.”

Becker shrugged, unimpressed by the man’s words. “Suit yourself. I will await your
post
. I’ll give you an address that will reach me.”

The other man’s reply surprised Becker.

“I already have it.” He held out his hand. “Shall we shake on it?”

“That’s not necessary.”

“No, it is. I’m an old-fashioned man, as I’m sure you discerned from the moment you stepped in here.” He held out his hand.
Becker still hesitated.

“Please,” insisted the old man. “Indulge an old man who’s about to pay you a hundred thousand dollars.”

Finally, Becker held out his gloved hand.

The old man shook his head. “Flesh to flesh. It is a point of honor with me.”

Becker hesitated again and then slowly removed the leather covering. He had four fingers. Where the fifth one, the index finger,
should have sprouted, there was only a small nodule of dead bone barely an inch in length. It was a genetic defect inherited
from his mother. It was the chief reason he never used a firearm in his work. He couldn’t pull the trigger properly. It was
also the reason for the gloves.

The other man made no note of the deformity but gave Becker’s hand a firm shake and then released it.

“I feel so much better now,” he said.

You’ll feel even better when the woman is dead,
thought Becker.

“I never got your name,” he said. “Only directions to come here.”

“Wells,” said the man. “Herb Wells.”

The letter came two days later. Becker read through his instructions with growing bewilderment. The old man had said the job
would be challenging. This seemed anything but. It was so straightforward, it put Becker fully on his guard. Yet the half
payment was in his bank account, and there was a train ticket in the envelope for the day after tomorrow.

Becker dressed in his average suit and slipped a six-inch blade in his pocket after donning his ubiquitous gloves. He caught
the high-speed train five minutes before it was set to leave the station. During the ride, the motion of the train, the clickety-clack
of the wheels, and the passage through a long, dark tunnel made Becker do something he never had before. He fell asleep while
traveling on an assignment.

When he awoke the train was just pulling into the station.

A sudden thought hit him as he came out of his stupor.
Bellows of a steam engine?
Why would this train make such a noise?

As he climbed off the train he stood quite still on the platform. The folks passing by him looked normal except for their
clothes. He saw bowties and suits with wide lapels. All the men wore hats, bowlers and flat-brimmed straw hats, and one elderly
fellow even had on a top hat! The ladies were dressed in wide pleated skirts hanging below the knee with sharply pointed hats
and dainty shoes with thick heels of modest height. The children were formally dressed too. One skinny boy was twirling a
wooden yo-yo.

The absence of something else made Becker jerk his head in the direction of the station.

No one had a cell phone. No BlackBerrys. No laptop computers, no buds in ears with iPods connected to belts.

He headed toward a stand and bought a newspaper. When he handed the man a dollar, he received ninety cents back. Becker stared
down at the coins in the palm of his hand. For some reason the coins looked odd, but Becker thrust them in his pocket and
forgot them when he saw the startling headline.

North Korea had just invaded South Korea. As he read further, his skin grew paler and there was a pronounced tic in a blood
vessel on the left side of his temple. President Harry S. Truman denounced this unwarranted invasion and pledged support to
the 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
.