Chapter 2: The Munich Pact

By the time Niklaus got back to the workshop, the night had already swallowed the tin roofs of the corner lot. The streetlights hadn’t flicked on yet; the alley lay soaked in a blue-grey twilight. He pushed the door open. The oil lamp was still alive, the flame knocked low by the draft through the gap, then creeping back up, stretching the shadows of gears, files, and copper shavings long and short across the room.

The air tasted of aged machine oil, mixed with rust and damp wood. It was a smell he’d breathed in for twenty years. The pocket watch sat on the anvil where he’d left it before stepping out, chain dangling off the edge, the tail end swaying in the still air.

The Marcus crest on the back of the watch case gleamed with a cold chill in the dim light, looking like it had just been pulled from a well, or maybe like a closed eye.

He kicked off his coat and hung it on the hook by the door, then stepped up to the anvil. Picking up the watch, the case was cool to the touch, heavier than he expected. He clicked the crown, letting the hands spin. The ticks were tight and rapid, sounding like an old pendulum swinging in the dark. He listened for a while, then set it down, thumb pressing against the rim as he flipped it over.

Viktor’s words echoed in his head: “This watch wasn’t stolen. Someone left it there on purpose.” Viktor had said it flatly, but his eyes had never left Niklaus, waiting for a follow-up. Niklaus hadn’t spoken then, and he didn’t speak now. Some threads, once pulled, don’t let go. He wasn’t ready to pull one yet.

He turned the watch over, his thumb brushing the edge of the crest. The wear patterns were uneven, like it had been touched over and over, or ground down deliberately to erase a mark. He held it up to the lamp, squinting, staring for a long time.

Light bent across the case, clarifying the lines. They weren’t friction marks. They were scratches. Fine, almost invisible, but arranged with purpose. He set the watch down, tapped his fingers on the anvil twice, then shoved it into his inner pocket, right against his chest.

He started taking apart the City Hall’s antique clock. Tools were laid out on the wooden bench—tweezers, small hammers, pry bars—lined up in a row, all worn smooth from years of use. He unscrewed the outer rim of the clock face, green verdigris smearing onto his fingertips, smelling of old iron.

He worked slowly. Every part he removed went under the lamp for a check before being placed into a velvet-lined iron tray. Gears, springs, escapement levers, one by one. The wooden bench beside the anvil slowly filled up. As the night deepened, the lamp wick blackened. He snipped the wick and kept working.

Occasionally, a stray cat clattered across the tiles outside. Niklaus didn’t look up.

The next morning, Marcus’s man arrived with a lawyer’s letter. The courier wore a dark uniform, hat brim pulled low. He stood in the workshop doorway and handed over a letter sealed in parchment. The wax stamp bore the family crest, same style as the Marcus sigil, just larger.

Niklaus took it. The man didn’t say a word, turned, and walked away, his leather shoes slapping against the cobblestones, the sound fading into the distance. Niklaus stood in the doorway until the figure vanished around the corner, then shut the door.

The letter was short: repair the City Hall clock within three days, or the family trust terminates, cutting off every lead at Niklaus’s workshop. The handwriting was neat, the tone polite, not a wasted word, like a standard government form already drafted. Niklaus read it, slid it under the workbench, and said nothing. He stood for a moment, touched the pocket watch in his inner pocket, then turned back to the pendulum and kept dismantling.

He opened the pendulum. Scratches inside the wall showed up under the light—dense, orderly, like penmanship practiced over and over. He grabbed the pocket watch, lined up the patterns on the case with the scratches inside the pendulum, and compared them for a long time. They matched. Same hand, same chisel, tampering with the original pages of the post-war compensation records.

He knew this script. It belonged to Marcus’s father, the man celebrated in the archives as a “hero of reconstruction.” Niklaus set the watch down, his finger stopping on the scratches. He didn’t move. The light from outside shifted, landing on the pendulum’s inner wall, making the scratches look like a sentence never finished.

The day Marcus showed up in person, he wore a three-piece suit, his shoes polished to a mirror shine. He planted himself in the doorway, glanced at the gears scattered on the floor, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Fixer of clocks, do you think you’re qualified to talk about history?”

Niklaus didn’t look up, his file still moving in his hand. “Clocks tick. Words don’t.” Marcus sneered and slammed a compensation agreement on the wooden bench. “Sign it. Admit you broke the clock’s core, pay three hundred thousand euros. Otherwise, the trust ends, and you won’t even keep this workshop.”

Niklaus glanced at the contract. The clauses were dense, the penalty section deviously written. He stayed silent, picked up the pen, and signed next to “Accept.” The pen tip pressed hard, indenting the paper deeply. He set the pen down, slid it toward Marcus, and said nothing.

After Marcus left, Niklaus folded the evidence—the paper rubbing of the scratches—into the watch’s hidden layer and sealed it with wax. A drop of wax hit the edge of the paper, hardening into a small, pale-yellow shell. He went back to filing the pendulum’s edge, grinding the scratches shallow, but not flat. Copper shavings fell on the bench, a fine layer like frost.

Elena stopped by in the evening. She didn’t take off her grey trench coat, standing by the door flipping through the agreement. She pointed at a spot. “The penalty clause has a loophole. You signed too fast. If he sues you, that clause turns on him.”

Niklaus shook his head, putting the pocket watch back in his inner pocket. “I’ve got something heavier in my hand.” Elena looked at him for a while, didn’t press, just pushed the contract back onto the table. “You owe me an explanation.”

After she left, Niklaus stood before the pendulum, collected the copper shavings into a small vial, stopped it tight, and tucked it into the deepest part of a drawer.

The day the City Hall clock tower resumed ticking, Marcus presided over the unveiling ceremony. Standing under the tower, speaking into a microphone: “My father dedicated his life to post-war reconstruction. This clock is the testament.”

The crowd applauded. Niklaus stood in the back row, his fingers lightly touching the pocket watch. The bell rang. Memories surged—a rainy night, his father forced to sign compensation papers, the pen stolen, a thumbprint pressed, rain soaking the paper. He saw Marcus’s father’s face, and the man on the stage now. Same profile, same kind of smile. He clenched the watch case, his knuckles turning white.

Marcus spotted Niklaus in the crowd. His gaze was a warning, his mouth twitching, as if to say: *You signed.* Niklaus looked down, gripping the watch case in his palm, refusing to look back.

After the crowd dispersed, he snuck around to a dark corner of the tower. He pulled the rubbing paper from the hidden layer, made another copy with charcoal, and returned the original to the watch. Securing the copy, he walked down the side corridor past the museum. In a glass case, an old pocket watch was displayed, its face cracked, hands stopped at 4:17. Sophia leaned in to inspect it, her finger hovering next to the display card, not looking up.

Niklaus stopped two paces from the case. Suddenly, she lifted her eyes, her gaze landing on him through the glass. She didn’t speak, her finger moving from the display card.

She didn’t speak, her finger moving from the card to a small, inconspicuous scratch on the corner of the case, pressing it lightly. The side panel of the glass case sprang open a narrow, silent gap. Niklaus’s pupils shrank.

Sophia pulled out a yellowed paper from the hidden compartment—a rubbing identical to the one in his watch, but older, the ink darker. She handed it over, no explanation. Niklaus took it, his fingertips brushing the raised wax seal on the back: the Marcus family crest, pressed over a date—three years post-war.

“Your father’s files from that year, they weren’t just one copy,” Sophia’s voice was light. “My grandfather witnessed the duplicate for him. The original is in a Swiss Bank vault. Locked for forty years.”

Niklaus gripped the paper tighter. He thought he was the only one holding evidence. Sophia saw through his thought. “You think I’m here to threaten you?” She shook her head. “Marcus doesn’t know this exists. If he did, he never would have let you touch that clock.”

“Why help me?” Niklaus asked.

Sophia was silent for a moment, then pulled a thin chain from her neck. The pendant was a broken gear, the worn teeth fitting perfectly into the notch where the pendulum was stuck. She placed the gear in Niklaus’s palm. “Because I’ve been waiting for someone to fix this clock.”

Niklaus recognized the gear—it was the one pried from inside the pendulum, the one that caused the stoppage. He had always assumed it was natural wear; he hadn’t realized it had been taken deliberately.

“Did you take it?” His voice dropped low.

Sophia lifted her eyes, looking through the glass at him. “No. Marcus did. Twenty years ago, he pried it from the tower, to ensure his father’s ‘testament’ was the only record.” She gestured to the rubbing. “He thinks destroying the physical object destroys the time.”

The bell chimed, echoing under the museum’s vast dome. Niklaus held the gear, feeling the pocket watch warm slightly against his chest.

“You owe me an explanation.” Sophia said, her tone mirroring Elena’s, but with an extra layer of coldness. “Now it’s your turn to pay it.”

She turned and walked down the corridor, her footsteps fading on the stone slabs. Niklaus stood still, tucking the gear and the rubbing back into the watch’s hidden layer. His fingers touched something cold inside the case—a line of extremely fine carving on the inner wall that hadn’t been there before:

“4:17, the day the clock stopped.”

He looked up sharply. Sophia’s figure had already vanished around the corner. In the glass case, the old pocket watch’s hands still stopped at 4:17. Niklaus suddenly understood; that wasn’t just the moment a clock stopped. It was a code.

He gripped the pocket watch tight and walked out of the museum. In the night, the silhouette of the City Hall clock tower stood like a cutout, its lights still on. Niklaus looked at that light and murmured, “Then let time start moving again.”

But as he stepped off the terrace, his phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number, just one word: “Found.”

Niklaus stopped, looking back toward the museum. By the window, Sophia’s shadow stood behind the glass case, holding up an old pocket watch. The face was turned toward him, the hands slowly sliding toward 4:17.