Thieves of the Black Sea. Joe O'Neill

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      Foster Crowe arrived in Bremen on an early morning train. The ride had been comfortable, and he had managed to get some much-needed sleep after the rigorous sea journey. The aroma of a bakery filled the air as Foster stepped out of the train station. He followed the delicious smell to a door in an alleyway. It was a small bakery with just one table. Although it was early, the baker had already been up for four hours and was just now taking pans of pastries from his wood-fired oven. Foster negotiated for a Berliner, a type of doughnut without the hole, filled with fresh raspberry filling. The baker poured Foster a cup of strong coffee as they spoke to one another in German.

      Looking out onto the Bremen city streets, he was reminded of his childhood in Belgium.

      In the early morning, Bremen was chilly and gray and a fog held steady on the cobblestone streets. Foster was in some kind of city square. A large fountain with the statue of a robed man, most likely a saint, with tiny angels surrounding him anchored the center of the square. Spouting water shot up from the basin of the fountain. On one end of the square was a Gothic cathedral with long and narrow stained-glass windows and a stone griffin—a mythical lion and eagle hybrid—on the roof, acting as a guardian of the supposed gold and riches hidden inside the cathedral. Statues of saints were sculpted into the facade just above the massive wooden door that acted as an entrance.

      Foster surmised it might have taken twenty or thirty years to build the cathedral, even with hundreds of masons working tirelessly on the tiniest of details.

      The entire square was surrounded by Gothic-looking apartment buildings with gray bricks, long windows, and pointed arches at the top. The apartments were crammed together.

      In front of the cathedral, steel tracks made way for a lazy red streetcar moving slowly through the rising fog.

      Gathering his thoughts, Foster went and sat at the fountain and took out a black leather notebook he carried with him for jotting down notes and ideas. He’d been thinking about nothing else but Wu Chiang on the journey over. He took a minute to look over his previous notes.

      He had tried to put himself in Wu Chiang’s shoes. What would he do? Where would he stay?

      He knew next to nothing about the man—only a vague outline of his appearance and not much more. He didn’t know his travel habits. He had no inkling if he had any friends.

      Foster decided the first thing he would do is visit the harbor to see if the ship from Ceylon was still docked. If it was, perhaps he would get lucky and a dockhand might remember Wu Chiang. If that didn’t work, Foster could check the passport office next.

      It was a start.

      The baker came out with a cup of coffee and sat next to him.

      “Such a peaceful plaza, and such a shame about the Serbian embassy,” he said, taking a slurp of his coffee.

      “Serbian embassy?” Foster asked.

      “You didn’t hear? It was bombed two days ago. Two bombs actually. Over fifty people dead, and now the Serbs are blaming the German police. Such madness in the world. This is such a peaceful city; why would anyone want to kill innocent people?”

      “This happened two days ago?”

      “Yes, here, let me get you a paper. You can read for yourself.”

      The baker went back inside his bakery and returned with a paper. He handed it to Foster.

      The headline was in large bold font: No clues into bombing of Serbian embassy. Serbs still blame German police.

      The article included a photograph of the scene after the bombing. It showed a blown-up building with bricks scattered everywhere, and a woman in a white dress who was crying in the street.

      Foster read about the bombing, and about the mobs in Serbia who blamed the Germans, even beating a German tourist who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

      It all made perfect sense.

      Wu Chiang was behind this bombing. That’s why he was in Bremen. He was creating tensions between Serbia and Germany. Tensions that might eventually lead to a war.

      Foster hoisted his backpack over his shoulder, asked the baker for the general vicinity of the Serbian embassy, and made his way across town.

      Two hours later, Foster stood at the Serbian embassy bomb site.

      The outside of the embassy looked like a giant monster had chewed it up and spat it out. Spikes of steel that were once the embassy gates stuck up from the ground like broken toothpicks. The front of the building was completely blasted away—like a wrecking ball had shattered the front wall and only a few lonely bricks remained. Dust had settled everywhere.

      There was a constant crowd of mourners, and people had taken to placing bunches of flowers along the outer embassy wall. The bouquets numbered in the hundreds and stretched down the wall for over a block. In one section, someone had erected a makeshift shrine on a column and pasted a piece of paper with a note to someone lost in the blast and a candle underneath. Others followed suit until the shrine was covered in leaflets and letters with dozens of candles on the ground.

      An old woman dressed in black sat next to the wall where she had slept through the night. Her body and face were covered in dust. She held her hand against the brick wall in the faint hope that her dead husband would come for her.

      Over one hundred soldiers dressed in gray uniforms surrounded the embassy. They were positioned outside the embassy gate and all around the interior grounds. Absolutely no one was allowed in or out of the building without specific clearance—clearance that Foster Crowe most assuredly did not have.

      He had hoped to get inside the embassy grounds to the blast site for a clue of some kind, but he now saw that would be an impossibility.

      Foster stared at the old woman and the hundreds of people gathered around the embassy. A small group circled together in prayer, while others merely stood and observed the destruction.

      A man called out with fresh pastries and hot apple cider. Foster purchased a strudel and cider and then approached the old woman by the wall.

      “I’m sorry,” he said to her.

      She looked up at him. Her eyes wanting and full of pain. Her face and gray hair covered in dust.

      “Who would do this?” she asked him.

      Foster shook his head.

      “Only someone who cares nothing for the world.”

      “A person such as this should not be allowed to exist,” she answered.

      He wanted to say something, anything, to comfort her. But the pain and grief in her eyes told him that was impossible.

      “I brought you some breakfast. Do you need anything else?” he asked, СКАЧАТЬ