The Metronome
By D.R. Bell
I hate when the phone rings in the middle of the night. Nobody likes such calls, but for me the feeling is visceral. It must have come from the old country, where a knock in the dark often meant that a black car was waiting downstairs and someone was about to disappear. Because of my father’s work, we had the luxury of a phone. When it rang at odd hours, I heard my parents whisper. Then my father would quietly dress and leave.
The ringtone keeps getting louder. I reach for the phone, but it’s not in its usual place on the nightstand. Something falls. On my left, a light comes on. I figure that the noise comes from a pile of clothes I now see on the floor. I stagger forward, fish the BlackBerry out of my pants pocket, and raise it to the light to find the little “phone” button. I simultaneously realize that I am naked, that I am not in my apartment, and that a woman is sitting up in bed. I have a momentary urge to cover myself, but the phone keeps ringing so I punch the button with a little green sign if only to silence the noise.
The man’s voice on the other end is speaking Russian. Amazing, but even after twenty years the brain still switches languages seamlessly. I listen to the voice, at first not comprehending what he wants. I need a paper and a pen. I cover the phone and ask the woman. She shakes her head, rummages on the nightstand on her side, and hands over a small pad and a pencil. I write down the name and the number and hang up.
“Don’t your Russian friends know the time difference?”
By now I am completely awake and know who she is: Sarah, an ex-girlfriend of my soon-to-be-ex-wife and an ex-wife of my ex-partner. If two wrongs can make a right, would four exes make for a mended future? Bits and pieces of last night’s events come to me. Her expression changes when I answer:
“My father is dead.”
The airport surges with families going on their summer vacations. Between a still-valid Russian passport mention of Major Vakunin and a family emergency, getting an Aeroflot ticket to St. Petersburg was easy. Vakunin is the military officer who called me last night. Militzia is the Russian term for police. My father was an investigator in the St. Petersburg militia for many years; that’s why I had the honor of a ranking officer calling me. I programmed Vakunin’s number into my BlackBerry and called AT&T to make sure I have roaming in Russia. I also call the credit card company to let them know I’ll be using the card abroad. I now have to take care of the details myself.
Genre: Thriller
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D.R. Bell
Biography.
About the author – I didn’t plan to write, I had kind of “fallen” into it. In a way, I feel fortunate to take up writing late in life: since I don’t depend on it for my livelihood, I’m free to write what I want. I don’t target a mass audience; if you’re looking for a light read after a hard day at work, you have better options. I want to follow Milan Kundera, one of my favorite writers, in that a “novel is a meditation on existence.” I try to find something meaningful to say and I hope my stories speak to you. To all of you who read my books and left reviews – thank you for your wonderful feedback!
My latest work, Eleos, is a historical fiction set primarily during the time of the Eichmann’s trial. In a way, it’s a personal investigation into how events like the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide became possible.
Marshland is a detective story set in modern Los Angeles, focused on the impact that the internet and social media can have on our lives and their potential for unscrupulous abuse by those in power.
The first three books – The Metronome, The Great Game, and The Outer Circle – form a trilogy, where the lives of seemingly unconnected characters intersect against the backdrop of a turbulent power game between the United States, China, and Russia. Unfortunately, some of the events described there are now happening in real life.
D.R. Bell
