Love or Hate? Read online

  Love or Hate?

  Bronson

  Copyright © 2021 Bronson

  All rights reserved.

  Contents

  The Bank Vault 11/11/11

  Story One:

  Afghanistan: 1975 (Thirty-Six Years before the Vault)

  11/4/11 (Seven Days to the Vault)

  Story Two:

  Swiss Alps: 11/11/1011 (One thousand years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/11/11

  Story Three:

  Vietnam: 1975 (Thirty-Six years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/4/11 (Seven Days to the Vault)

  Story Four:

  Canada: 1983 (Twenty-Eight Years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/4/11 (Seven Days to the Vault)

  Story Five:

  Dachau: 1945 (Sixty-Six Years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/4/11 (Seven Days to the Vault)

  Story Five (continued):

  Dachau: 1945 (Sixty-Four Years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/4/11 (Seven Days to the Vault)

  Story Six:

  Gaza Strip: 1973 (Thirty-Eight Years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/4/11 (Seven Days to the Vault)

  Story Two (continued):

  Swiss Alps: 11/11/1011 (One Thousand Years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/4/11 (Seven Days to the Vault)

  Story One (continued):

  Afghanistan: 1975 (Thirty-Six Years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/4/11 (Seven Days to the Vault)

  Story Four (continued):

  Canada: 1983 (Twenty-Eight Years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/4/11 (Seven Days before the Vault)

  Harvard University: 11/5/11 (Six Days before the Vault)

  Story Five (continued):

  Dachau: 1945 (sixty-four years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/5/11 (Six Days before the Vault)

  Story five (continued):

  Switzerland: 1945 (Sixty-Six Years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/5/11 (six days to the Vault)

  Story Three:

  Hue River, Vietnam: 1975 (thirty-four years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/5/11 (six days to the Vault)

  Story Seven:

  Brazil: 1984 (Twenty-Seven Years before the Vault)

  Gaza Strip: 1973 (Thirty-Eight Years before the Vault)

  Brazil: 1984 (twenty-Five years before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/5/11 (Six days before the Vault)

  Boston: 11/7/11 (Four days before the Vault)

  Story One (continued):

  Afghanistan: 1975 (Thirty-Six Years before the Vault)

  Story Seven (continued):

  Boston: 11/8/11 (Three Days before the Vault)

  Geneva Airport: 11/10/11 (One Day before the Vault)

  Geneva Opera House: (One Day before the Vault)

  Geneva Opera House: 11/10/11 (One Day before the Vault)

  The Bank: 11/11/11

  The Vault: 11/11/11

  Lake Geneva: 11/14/11 (Three Days after the Vault)

  Lake Geneva: 11/18/11 (Seven Days after the Vault)

  The Bank Vault

  11/11/11

  There are handsome Americans. There are handsome Jews. The nine inmates of the master vault, the most secretive vault in the entire world, stare speechless at the man standing in front of them.

  He is both American and Jewish. They all know of him but do not recognize him because, for the first time in his life, he looks truly confident and disarmingly handsome.

  His hair is dark and thick. His eyes are also dark but kind. His skin is softly tanned and glows against the white linen of his shirt—a shirt that has blood on it.

  Looking at him now, you couldn’t tell he has suffered and survived a life in which most others would have withered and died, but he has. On the outside, he is a petite, gentle man, however, he is just about to find out whether he has now finally become a heroic, big man on the inside.

  He surveys the nine inmates one by one, as if he has all the time in the world. But he does not. He has little over an hour, and then he will most probably be dead, along with eight others.

  He knows that only one of them will walk out of the vault alive, and it won’t be him. It will be the mastermind who brought them all together—a mastermind who is about to commit the most extraordinary heist in history.

  When it is all done, the other phenomenal characters gathered here today will be expendable, so the man behind this ingenious bank heist, whoever he is, will murder them all. He will do it in the most imaginative way, such that each will reach the end of their once-charmed lives desperate to know the true identity of the mastermind.

  This man, the one with an open, loving face and a once-timid, apologetic character, steps over the threshold and into the vault.

  *

  The vault is round, and everything in it gleams in impenetrable steel: the walls, the floor, and the solid table. And the inmates sit at this table. Behind each of them is a steel clock, and the only sound in the vault is the clocks ticking. That, and an unusual sucking noise from the vents. Once the door closes, the vault will be both airtight and watertight. There will be no means of communication in, and no means of communication out.

  In front of each of them lies a state-of-the-art laptop—‘state-of-the-art’ except only two keys now work, the SAVE and the DELETE. A cable runs from each laptop to each inmate. The cables are unbreakable by man, and are attached to cobalt bracelets. These bracelets are tightly locked onto their wrists. Inside the bracelets are two tiny but piercingly sharp needles. One contains the most lethal poison known to man; the other, the antidote.

  The needles are controlled by the two keys on their laptops, and they have sixty minutes to choose which of their fellow inmates to save . . . and which to delete. They can each use one of the keys, and once only. They will soon learn this.

  They will also learn that, in order to access either the SAVE or the DELETE keys, they must first enter their passwords. This will download the entire contents of their bank accounts to a mastermind account. And by doing this, they will be losing entire fortunes they have spent their lives earning. That is something each will go to extreme measures to avoid.

  The handsome new entrant grips his laptop with his one good hand. He doesn’t have a fortune—far from it. But he does have something all the others desperately need: his password.

  No one, including him, dares to move or say a word. Six men, three women, and the enigmatic Jewish-American are all now inseparably linked to their laptops, and hence, to each other. Each of them has reason to love or hate at least one of the others. They possess a love so deep that it makes you want to sacrifice your life in an instant to save the one you love. And a hate so venomous, it makes you want to kill the one you hate.

  However, the inmates do not yet know which of the others they love and which they hate. They each have their own miraculous story of how they came to be in the vault, and they must find out how their stories are connected. They must find out as there is only enough oxygen for one to survive, and by discovering how they are connected, they will be able to decide which one of them will survive . . . and which will die.

  The clocks tick in unison. They show there is only one hour left until 11 o’clock. Then, it will be the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, of the eleventh year, of the millennium. 11, 11, 11, 11. At that precise time, the oxygen in the vault will have expired, and the steel door will re-open to allow one, but only one, of them to walk out alive.

  The mysterious Jewish-American stares at the inmates, then at the clocks, and as the hands tick inexorably towards the hour, he finally speaks with a gentle but ominous voice.

  “I am the eleventh. We are all here … except one … who is already dead … so we can begin … almost at the beginning.”

  And the massive steel door clunks shut behind him.

  * * *

  Story One

  Afghanistan

  1975 (Thirty-Six Years before the Vault)

  The old ramshackle table shakes. It shakes because the little boy leaning against it is shaking. And the little boy shakes because someone is about to inflict great pain on him.

  He is in a one-room house, and today that room is dark. The wooden slats that serve as shutters to the windows remain shut. His mother and younger brother cower in the corner, unable to save him. The once-healthy tan of the boy’s face has paled in a concoction of shock and fear.

  He looks at his hand. It is tiny and is pinned down on top of some parchment paper. The parchment paper lies on top of the ramshackle table and belongs to the Mujahideen. The hand pinning him down is massive compared to his and belongs to a blacksmith.

  The boy looks at the hand hurting him, up a muscular arm, and to the face of a man. The face is grim and has wild, black eyes. He turns away from these eyes; they belong to his father. It is a look he has never seen before and won’t ever see again.

  His father’s other hand grips a huge hammer, one which the blacksmith usually uses to weld the most stubborn metal—not crush the fragile hand of an innocent boy. But today, he intends to crush the hand of his little boy.

  The boy stares at the parchment paper. It has several words written on it. Several words, but one sentence—a death sentence. The little boy’s hand perspires so much it smudges the ink, but that won’t save him either. Nothing will.

  The boy tries not to faint. He focuses on the table. He can see the floor through the table. He works out that the weight of the hammer will break th
e table. But it will not do so before it has smashed both his hand and wrist to bits. That implement would smash the hand of the most robust prizefighter—let alone the soft hand of this likable, handsome, bright eight-year-old.

  The boy uses his one free hand to sweep his long, curly dark hair away from his eyes and waits helplessly for his father to do what he has decided to do.

  The blacksmith raises the hammer even higher. It quivers briefly above his son. The boy hears a gasp come from the corner of the room. He turns to see the woman who made the gasp, but all he can see is a black veil. The black veil covers the face of his mother—his American mother.

  Everything starts to go black.

  Why would a father do this to his beloved son?

  * * *

  Boston

  11/4/11 (Seven Days to the Vault)

  The Professor grips his hand and tries unsuccessfully to stop it from shaking. He also tries, with little success, to get a grip on his mind and stop it from wandering back to the past.

  Everyone knows he is one of the leading professors in his field. And they know his parents were missionary workers in poor, ravaged countries, and that his field is mathematics. What they don’t know is what happened to his hand and why he was forced to flee for his life.

  He is standing on the porch outside the apartment block where he now lives. At first sight, he is not obviously attractive. He is shy, and he has the sort of face that tries to look confident but masks a myriad of self-doubts and painful memories.

  His disheveled, dark curly hair, and round glasses join forces with his fine features and small frame to give a sensitive, vulnerable, academic look. His skin naturally glows, and his oval face lights up when he smiles—if he smiles.

  The word ‘if’ comes up a lot in the Professor’s life. If he wore smart clothes and had a smart hairstyle, he could be considered good looking—very good looking. But he never does. If he was physically strong, he would be more confident and would be able to stand up for himself. But he is not—and thinks he can’t.

  If he had one person who loved him unconditionally, he would be happy. But he is not sure anyone really does.

  So, the Professor keeps the clothes plain, the hair disheveled, and the glasses unflattering as it provides him a believable excuse why he has so few friends—or no friends, to be precise. He does have a girlfriend. She is the oxygen in his life. And without her, he would have no air to breathe. She is in the apartment right now.

  She doesn’t actually tell him she loves him because she can’t. But she is his girlfriend, and regardless of the fact that she doesn’t speak, the Professor likes to believe her love is real and heartfelt.

  The other person in the Professor’s life is his son—a son he hasn’t seen since the day he was born because that was what was agreed. Hence, the Professor has a girlfriend who never speaks to him and a son who never sees him.

  The noise across the street brings him back to the present with a jolt. The noise is the banging of a bin. It signifies the start of a confrontation—a confrontation the Professor wouldn’t miss for anything. It helps take his mind off everything he has gone through since he was a little boy growing up in a mission in Afghanistan. It was a breathtakingly beautiful country, which was welded together somehow by long-lasting hate and equally long-lasting love. And more importantly, what is about to happen across the street takes his mind off the increasing danger the Professor now finds himself in.

  The confrontation starts as it always starts. The elderly tenant from the apartment opposite shoves a bin to the equally old janitor, who is standing in the alleyway. There is a delay, as if the janitor needs to think about whether or not to take up the challenge.

  The janitor ceremoniously picks up his broom and cocks his head to one side to tell the tenant he has been pushed too far, and he will willingly take up the bait. The fact that the bin shoving pushes him too far every morning does not distract from the drama of the occasion.

  “I told you—do your own bins.”

  The janitor, bald and stubborn, snarls in return.

  “Yeah, and I told you—I’m not doin’ them! So what are you going to do about that?”

  The tenant—with thick white hair and a defiant tone—lifts up the lid as a shield. He is equally theatrical in defense and adds for good measure, “I hate you, Janinski! Did I ever tell you that?”

  Yes, he has told him that. Not just every day, but twice a day. Once in the morning, when the janitor puts the bins out, and again in the evening when he puts them away. And he had done this without fail every day for as long as anyone could remember.

  Back across the street, the morning sun struggles out from behind some early morning cloud and makes the Professor’s skin glow even more healthily. He savors the last offering of autumnal warmth on his face. He was forty-one yesterday, but no one remembered. He didn’t mind much; no one ever remembered.

  He manages a conciliatory smile.

  Worse things have happened—far worse.

  The Professor takes off his glasses for a clean and speaks to the person inside the apartment. She’s the one person in America who loves him—although she’s not a true American, of course.

  “Don’t you simply love Boston this time of year?”

  The Professor doesn’t wait for a reply. There’s no need.

  She can’t hear, in the same way she can’t speak.

  Then, he hurriedly puts his glasses back on as the action across the street develops more rapidly than usual.

  “I hate you enough to kill you, Janinski—did you know that?!”

  Yes, he did, although the janitor is surprised he uses the word “kill.”

  The tenant circles the janitor, forgetting that today it is his turn to be in defense. Fortunately, the janitor also forgets and concentrates on wielding the broom in a slow, wide arc. He has seen the top martial artists do this, and although they don’t do it in any way like he does, he is confident he has now fully mastered the technique.

  The tenant’s lightning reflexes to the broom wielding are pathetically slow, but plenty fast enough for the janitor. He has also seen the best of the best, and feels his defenses are definitely up to the job.

  “Just try it, you old fool!”

  He always manages to say the word “fool” with such conviction. He went through a stage of calling the tenant an idiot. He had picked up the expression from the newsagent at the end of the street. But the newsagent had died, much to the janitor’s annoyance, so he went back to calling the tenant a fool and delivering the newspapers himself. The janitor preferred it that way, anyway, as the newsagent was unnecessarily nice.

  The Professor is engrossed by the contest, as he is every day. He nods in anticipation, as the janitor’s insult initiates: “How dare you? I’m the oldest tenant in the block. Thirty-two years I’ve been here!”

  The Professor mimics the required response from the janitor.

  “Yeah, I know ‘cause I’ve been the janitor for thirty-one of them! And you’re going to get a good hiding today—oh yes!”

  The ground rules have been laid down, and they continue to circle each other respectfully, as if trying to find a chink in the impregnable armor of an undefeatable foe. Without taking his eyes off the pugilists, the Professor speaks into his apartment—more urgently this time.

  “See you in my lecture later, Natalie, my darling.”

  The Professor is anxious not to miss out on the next bit of the battle as it has taken a surprising twist of late, which really intrigues him. He leans over the balcony to get as close as possible.

  “You’ll miss me when I’m gone—three days—that’s all I’ve got left!”

  The janitor taunts the tenant with some intrigue. The point sinks in but doesn’t seem to deter the tenant one iota.

  “You’ll never retire, Janinski—never!”

  The tenant spits back the words with venom. Actually, he spits whenever he speaks as he has long since lost control of his bottom lip. Janinski shimmies to the left, but makes his actual advance to the right. It is even slower than in yesterday’s argument over the newspaper. Despite it giving the tenant ample time to react, the tenant only just manages to lift the lid of the bin in time to guard his flank—a tried and trusted defense to the broom attack.

  The tenant goes on the verbal assault again.