Читать книгу Thieves of the Black Sea - Joe O'Neill - Страница 18

The harbor of Amsterdam lay under a blanket of gray and smothering fog. Smoke belched from the many chimneys of the factories that lined the waterfront. Longshoremen and sailors moved slowly, still waking up, as they began unloading ships and preparing freighters for journeys to distant shores.

A pelican flew overhead. Foster Crowe stood on a creaky dock and watched the harbor come to life. Soon he began walking toward the train station at a brisk pace. After a week-long journey aboard a freighter from Ceylon, his legs were a bit wobbly, but his face was a picture of determination. Carrying only a small leather backpack, he needed to move fast. At fifty-two years old, he had some gray hair around his temples, but was otherwise in peak physical condition. Always dressing as a gentleman, his tan suit coat remained starched and clean, and his brown leather loafers were polished. As he walked, he could feel the tip of a dagger he’d hidden up his left coat sleeve.

Foster Crowe was on a hunting expedition.

He was hunting a man by the name of Wu Chiang.

A month prior, Foster had discovered a temple deep in the heart of the Ceylon jungle. He broke into the temple and stole a journal from Wu Chiang. The journal told of a secret society that had existed for centuries. This society was responsible for countless acts causing death and destruction dating back to the bubonic plague in Europe, and possibly even before that. Using the principles of the Red Hand Scrolls for evil, the society developed inventions and devices built explicitly to maim, murder, and cause mayhem.

Even more sinister, the diary revealed that Wu Chiang and his agents had been plotting some kind of world war for decades.

A war that would be the most destructive in the history of mankind.

Unfortunately, Wu Chiang had escaped on a freighter headed for Bremen, Germany. Unable to follow him to Bremen, Foster had secured passage on a freighter headed for Amsterdam in the hopes of catching up to him once he arrived in Europe.

However, Foster wasn’t even sure what Wu Chiang looked like. His only description of the man had been provided to him by a dockworker in Colombo, who described Wu Chiang as a portly Asian man with thick glasses—most likely of Chinese descent—dressed in plain clothes.

Once he arrived in port in Amsterdam, Foster ran on the hard cement through the city, hurrying to the train station. He needed to get to Bremen, and the four-day journey by train was the fastest route possible.

He had to find Wu Chiang and stop him.

The Asian man sat cross-legged with an upturned, dirty brown derby hat in front of him. He’d stuffed his pudgy body into ragged and tattered clothes. Thick glasses sat on his nose.

This was the man known as Wu Chiang.

Pedestrians stepped around him, and a few dropped coins in his derby.

From where he sat, Wu Chiang could see the Serbian embassy across the street. Two guards casually stood at the gated entrance, smoking a cigarette and sharing a joke.

Suddenly, an enormous explosion rang out from the embassy! It was so powerful that it shook the ground and even shattered the glass from a lamppost. Smoke billowed from the windows. The guards, shocked into action by the blast, opened the gate and ran to the building. People on the street ran to the site to see what had happened.

After a few moments of silence, Wu Chiang began to hear the screaming and the moaning of the injured and the maimed. The smell of sulfur filled the air. Acrid smoke began to sting the eyes of stunned onlookers who had gathered around the embassy walls to see what had happened. Then, without warning, a second explosion tore through the area, this time just inside the embassy gate.

Wu Chiang was blown back into the brick wall behind him by the force of the blast.

Instantly, the street became a gruesome scene of butchery, death, and destruction.

Dead bodies were everywhere. A decapitated leg, bloody at the thigh, landed in the street across from where Wu Chiang was sitting. A man staggered backward, his entire body engulfed in flames, screaming until the flames overtook him and his charred body fell to the ground. Dust and chalk blew upward and settled on anything and everything within a several-block radius. A large crater, six feet in diameter, appeared where the gate had been; now only fragments of steel blown to bits remained. Bricks and dust scattered around everyone on the street.

More screaming. Not just the screaming of the wounded and dying, but the agonized cries of people who arrived at the scene, soon realizing that their loved ones were dead or wounded.

Wu Chiang watched the carnage in front of him.

And he smiled.