Wolfgang rushed outward, catching himself on the rail and staring straight below toward Paris. His stomach flipped, and he stumbled back, his knees feeling suddenly weak. He wasn’t usually afraid of heights, but the vast difference between himself and the ground seemed cataclysmic. He imagined the bomb going off and him being hurtled off the tower and into the dead air beyond. Falling. Falling to his death.
Wolfgang shook his head and began to circle the observation deck, one corner, and then the second. The empty deck was smudged with half-dry paint and mucky footprints. Spider’s footprints.
He grabbed the railing to steady himself, then turned the final corner. The bomb lay in the middle of the deck, planted like a forgotten suitcase. But it was much bigger than a suitcase—built into a 55-gallon drum, strapped to a hand truck with a lid pressed over the top.
Wolfgang rushed forward and pressed his fingers into the gap around the lid, then prized up. The lid wouldn’t move, and Wolfgang’s fingers slipped off the rim with a pop.
He searched his pockets, but the only things he had left with him were his passport and a small bundle of Euros.
Think. Quickly.
Wolfgang felt around the side of the drum until his fingers found the ratchet of the strap binding it to the hand truck. A quick tug on the ratchet, and a press of the release switch, and the strap came loose. Wolfgang pulled it free of the drum and felt down its length until he found the metal hook tied to the strap’s end. It was flat and stiff and fit perfectly into the gap around the drum’s lip.
The lid was tightly battered down like the lid of a paint can, but as Wolfgang shoved down on the hook, he felt it give. Just a little at first, then more. A small gap opened at one side, and Wolfgang dropped the hook, shoving his fingers through the gap and jerking upward. The lid flew off, and the dim lights from the spire of the tower shone down inside the barrel.
Dynamite. It was packed in the middle of the barrel with unidentifiable metal cases crammed in all around it, each of them painted in yellow with red radioactive labels on them. On top of the dynamite was a mess of multi-colored wires, a couple of circuit boards, and an LCD display counting down from six minutes.
How do I do this? Do I just rip away the wires?
No. Wolfgang had seen movies where people did that and the bomb ending up going off. Was this like the movies? Surely it wasn’t that simple.
He wiped his face, and his hands shook. The clock read under five minutes now, ticking down one second at a time. With each flash of the screen, Wolfgang felt the wind at his back and imagined the top of the tower exploding into flames.
No. Think. Think!
Another flash caught his eye, and when he glanced down at the smartwatch on his arm, his heart lurched.
The watch. Lyle can see.
Wolfgang unlocked the watch and cycled through the apps but couldn’t find a messenger or texting function. Had Lyle disabled it to make room for the other applications?
Come on . . . give me something!
Suddenly the watch’s screen went black, and Wolfgang’s stomach sank, thinking for a moment the battery had died. Then the screen flashed green and the whole watch lit up in single colors. Red. Yellow. Purple. The colors changed quickly, and Wolfgang felt the blood surge through him again. Lyle could see.
He directed the watch’s camera to the top of the barrel as the screen went black again. Slowly, he maneuvered around the edge of the barrel, providing Lyle with different angles of the bomb.
The timer counted down under three minutes.
“Come on, Lyle!”
The screen flashed yellow. Wolfgang peered into the bomb case and dug through the wires until he located a yellow wire. He started to pull it, but then the watch began to flash through the different colors again.
“What?” he shouted. “I don’t know what you want!”
The watch stopped flashing, and Wolfgang sucked in a breath. He closed his eyes and forced himself to think. He couldn’t panic. Not now.
He opened his eyes and turned the watch until the camera faced him, then he slowly mouthed, “Two blinks . . . yes.” He held up two fingers, then a thumbs-up. “Three blinks . . . no.” Three fingers, then a thumbs-down. “Understand?”
The watched blinked blue, twice.
“All right, buddy. Let’s get it done.” Wolfgang leaned over the barrel and fingered the yellow wire. He held the watch to where Lyle could see, and then he waited.
The watch blinked red three times. Wolfgang dropped the wire and wiped his eyes, then dug through the barrel. The watch blinked yellow again, then black.
“That’s the only yellow wire, Lyle!”
The clock on the bomb read one minute, twelve seconds. Wolfgang’s heart thumped. The watch blinked yellow, then black. Yellow, then black. Wolfgang dug through the wires as the clock flashed rhythmically.
His fingers shuffled through a red wire, then a blue, and two green, then he touched a black wire. The watch flashed frantically: yellow, black, yellow, black.
Wolfgang twisted the wire and saw a yellow stripe running up its back side. He held the camera close to the wire. “This one?”
The watch flashed green, twice.
He snatched the wire, and it broke free of the mechanism, but the clock didn’t stop ticking. Twenty seconds, now. Nineteen.
The watch flashed red. Wolfgang put his fingers on the red wire, and the watch flashed green, twice. Wolfgang snatched the wire.
Nine seconds. Eight seconds.
“Come on, Lyle!”
The watch flashed purple. Wolfgang dug frantically through the mess. Two purple wires ran into the same mechanism—neither with any stripes.
Four seconds. Three seconds.
He didn’t have time to confirm with Lyle. He grabbed both wires and snatched them free of the mechanism.
The clock froze over the two-second mark, then went black. Wolfgang stumbled back until his hips hit the wall.
The bomb didn’t go off.
He collapsed to the floor of
