Alex Fernandez still remembers the day he bought that watch. It was on June 24, 2010 —
a humid afternoon in Bombay.

He was walking through a crowded street near Crawford Market when a street vendor caught his eye.

---

“Rolex, sir! Original. Clearance price!”

The vendor flashed a couple of shiny watches that were tethered on a velvet tray. Alex wasn’t the type to buy fake luxury items, but that day he was in a strangely impulsive mood. After some haggling, he bought the watch for Rs.5,000; a Submariner that looked authentic enough from a distance.

He wore it for years. Through job changes, late-night commutes, and even on his sister’s wedding. The metal band lost its shine, the bezel got scratched, but it ticked on faithfully.

Then, one quiet evening, the past came calling.

Alex was living in Kochi then, working remotely as a logistics consultant. One evening, while he was washing his dishes he heard a car pull up outside. The headlights lingered for a while at the gate. When he looked out through the curtains, the car reversed and sped away.

He shrugged it off until he found an envelope by the front door the next morning. 

Inside there was a note card with a single line printed in Times Roman font:
“You have something that does not belong to you. Return it.”

There was no name or signature on the note.

Alex thought it was a prank. But two days later, a woman called. The woman’s voice was soft and controlled.

“Mr. Fernandez,” she said with a peculiar accent, “that watch you bought ten years ago in Bombay… do you still have it?”

“Who is this?”

After a long pause the woman hushed: “I suggest you keep it in a safe place. Someone is looking for it.”

Then the line went dead.

That night, Alex couldn’t sleep. He opened the old wooden box in his closet and took out the Rolex. Under the dim light, it looked the same: scratched and faded but nothing special.
Yet something about the woman’s tone unsettled him.

The next day, he went to a local watch repair shop near Broadway in Ernakulam. The technician peered through his magnifier and looked at Alex as if he had found something extraordinary.

“This isn’t a regular replica,” the man said slowly. “See this tiny screw near the crown? Not standard design. Someone has modified it.”

Alex frowned. “Modified how?”

The man hesitated. “If I open it, you might not like what I find.”

“Open it…” Alex was curious already.

The technician carefully unscrewed the back. Inside, beneath the mechanical components, was a small metal capsule no larger than a SIM card. It was sealed, engraved with Cyrillic letters.

Alex felt a chill crawl up his spine.

“What is that?”

The technician shrugged nervously. “Not part of any watch I know. You should go to the police.”

When Alex stepped outside, he saw two men waiting across the street — both in plain clothes. The taller man smiled faintly when their eyes met.

Alex walked away, quickly.

That evening, he received another call. This time, the voice sounded  American.

“Mr. Fernandez, this is Agent Thompson, from the U.S. Department of Defense liaison. You’re in possession of an item of high intelligence value. We can offer protection and compensation if you cooperate.”

Alex’s mind raced. “You’re saying this watch belonged to a spy?”

“Let’s just say it went missing from Moscow in 2010. The man who wore it wasn’t selling knockoffs, Mr. Fernandez. He was selling top secrets.”

Alex hung up.

He didn’t trust whoever said who he was. That night, he packed an air bag and left his apartment, taking his phone, wallet, the watch and a few essential items with him.

For the next few days, Alex moved from hotel to hotel. Once, outside a bus terminal, he saw the same tall man again, leaning on a railing, watching him.

Another time, his phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number:
“We can still keep you alive. Surrender the watch.”

Alex stopped answering calls.

Finally, one morning, he went to the beach near Fort Kochi and dug a hole behind a row of rocks and buried the watch in a sealed plastic bag and covered it with sand.

That night, someone broke into Alex’s hotel room while he slept. He escaped through the bathroom window, barefoot, into the rain before he could be caught.

When he returned the next morning, the room was empty. His bag was gone. But the watch, buried in the beach, was untouched.

Weeks later, a news story broke on international news channels:
Russian intelligence leak traced to a missing micro data device, believed to have been destroyed.

Alex turned off the TV.

He walked back to the beach that evening, dug out the watch, and tossed it as far as he could into the sea. The silvery glint disappeared beneath the waves.

He stood there for a long time, breathing the saline air, feeling the weight from his mind gone or maybe just shifted somewhere else.

Then, from behind him, a voice said softly: “Throwing away evidence, Mr. Fernandez?”

It was the woman who phoned. She was holding another identical Rolex in her outstretched hand.

“This one,” she said, raising it up for him to see, “is real.”

Before Alex could speak, she threw the watch far out into the sea and walked away.

He never saw her again.
But some nights, he thought he heard the faint ticking of a Rolex under his bed.

---

---

A month had passed since that night on the beach.
Alex Fernandez thought it was over.

The Russians had stopped calling, the late night cars had stopped parking near his gate, and the news channels had moved on to other current affairs.

But peace never felt so fragile.

One morning, his doorbell rang. Again!

When he opened it, a courier stood there holding a small brown parcel, wrapped neatly, with no return address.

“For Mr. Alex Fernandez,” the man said, checking his list.

Alex hesitated, then signed for the delivery.

Inside was a plain white envelope containing a USB drive and a note.

“We need to talk. Café Olive at 4 p.m. Come alone.”

The cursive handwriting written with a calligraphic pen, was signed with a single initial: L.

Café Olive was on a quiet street behind Marine Drive. It was an old place, with ceiling fans that creaked and tea was served in traditional ceramic Kulhar cups.

Alex chose a corner seat facing the door.

At 4:10, she walked in.

It was the same woman from the beach. She had her dark hair tied back, the large Gucci sunglasses covered her oval face. She was a pretty woman. She sat down opposite him and ordered coffee for both of them.

She smiled. “It’s good to see you again, Mr. Fernandez.”

He stared at her in bewilderment. “Who are you?”

“Lina,” she said calmly while stirring her coffee. “You can think of me as someone who cleans up other people’s mistakes.”

“Whose mistake was that watch?”

“Volkov’s,” she said simply. “The Russian who wore it. He wasn’t supposed to die in Bombay. And you weren’t supposed to buy it.”

Alex leaned forward. “I threw it away. It’s gone.”

Lina smiled faintly. “You think that matters? There were two watches.”

She reached into her coat and took out a photograph. It showed a pair of identical Rolex Submariners — one gold, the other silver — lying side by side on a table.

“One was a decoy. The other carried encrypted coordinates to a vault in Geneva — the kind that governments pretend doesn’t exist.”

Alex’s throat went dry. “And you think I know which one is real?”

“I don’t think,” she said. “I know. You had the real one. The silver one.”

Alex sat back. He didn’t want this life, this story, or this woman sitting across from him. He wanted the simple boredom he had before the phone calls and the men in grey jackets.

“I destroyed it,” he said finally. “It’s gone for good.”

Lina sipped her coffee. “Nothing’s ever gone for good. You only threw away the hardware. The data in it was already duplicated.”

She tapped the USB drive he’d received. “That contains a trace of what Volkov had. Your name came up in the encrypted chain. Someone tagged you as the last link. That makes you useful.”

“Useful to whom?”

“To whoever finds the rest of the data,” she said. “And there are people who’d kill for it — CIA, FSB, or maybe even your own government. You’d be surprised how small the world becomes when secrets get personal.”

Alex felt uncomfortable in his seat. “Why tell me this?
Why not just take it?”

Lina looked out the window for a long moment.

“Because someone inside Langley is already after it,” she said. “And I don’t know which side they’re on.”

They left the café separately.

That night, as Alex returned to his flat, he noticed the light on in his living room. He was sure he’d turned it off before he went out.

He stood frozen for a while. Then slowly stepped inside.

The television was playing an old black-and-white Russian film. On the screen, a man in a trench coat was being chased through a snowstorm.

And on the table, next to the remote, lay a familiar shape — the silver Rolex.

He hadn’t retrieved it from the sea.
He hadn’t even told anyone where it was.

A folded note lay beneath it:
“You didn’t throw it far enough.”

The next morning, Lina called from an unlisted number.

“Listen carefully,” she said. “They found the decoy. That means they’ll come for you again. There’s only one way out. We have to go to Geneva and destroy what’s left before they do.”

“I’m not leaving the country with a stranger,” Alex snapped.

“Then prepare to die there,” she said and hung up.

He sat staring at the Rolex for a while. It was real and felt heavier than before; its hands still ticking perfectly. But now he saw it for what it truly was: not a timepiece, but a time bomb.

Finally, as dusk fell, he picked up his phone and called Lina.

“Lina, tell me what’s in Geneva.”

She paused. Then said casually, “A vault with three names inside. One of them is the man who called himself Agent Thompson.”

“The American?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “And the second name… is mine.”

By the time Alex reached the airport, the monsoon rains had already advanced over Kochi. The runway looked like a sea of colors from the lights reflected from the terminal.

He boarded the flight with a fake passport Lina had arranged.
“Just one question,” he said as they settled in. “What’s the third name?”

Lina looked out the window, and he couldn’t read her expression.

“The man who bought the watch,” she said.

Alex stared at her. “Me?”

She didn’t answer.

Outside, the engines roared to life.

As the plane lifted into the clouds, Alex realized something chilling… he still didn’t know whether Lina was trying to save him… or finish what Volkov had started.

---

---

Geneva was cold and gray when they landed.
Alex and Lina moved like ghosts through the airport. They carried no luggage and they made no eye contact. She took him through narrow streets to a quiet banking district where mirrored glass towers reflected the snow-covered streets.

The vault lay beneath an old private bank. Inside, a security officer scanned Lina’s ID, barely glancing up. “Dr. Ivanova,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

Alex lost a heartbeat. Ivanova… a Russian?

They entered a small room with heavy steel vaults. Lina pressed her palm against a biometric scanner and the wall slid open, revealing a black case no larger than a book.

“This is what Volkov died for,” she said.

Alex leaned in. Inside were three sealed envelopes, each embossed with an emblem of a double-headed eagle.

She tore one of them open. It contained a list of names.: the names of operatives, diplomats, and one that made Alex’s stomach churn: A. Fernandez.

He looked at her, stunned. “Why me?”

Lina looked straight into his eyes and said calmly, “You were never random, Alex. You were chosen to hold the watch because no one would suspect you — a tourist, a face in the crowd. Volkov trusted you to hide the last piece.”

He stepped back. “I didn’t even know him.”

“You met him,” she said softly. “He was the vendor who sold you the watch.”

It hit him like a punch on his face.
The voice, the grin, the bargain. All a setup.

Before he could speak, the elevator light blinked red.
Heavy footsteps echoed above.

“They found us,” Lina whispered. “Go!”

She shoved the case into his hands. “Get to the river. Don’t stop.”

“What about you?”

She smiled faintly. “Someone has to close the vault.”

He ran as fast as he could.

By the time he reached the Rhône, sirens were wailing behind him. He opened the case one last time. The papers inside had already begun burning from a small self-triggering charge Lina had placed.

He watched them curl into ash and vanish in the cold wind.

From somewhere behind the noise, Alex heard a single gunshot. 

He walked away without looking back.

Alex never saw Lina again.

But years later, every time he heard a ticking clock, he thought of her and that watch — and the man who sold it to him under the bright Bombay sun.

---

© 2025 MathewKMathew