Cauldron

Nothing in his privileged childhood in one of Connecticut’s wealthy suburbs, his Ivy League schooling, or his initial CIA training had prepared him for this. Germany was his first operational posting and this was his first assignment. For nearly three weeks now, the young intelligence officer had been working his way west along the Baltic coast, trying to visit two or three tiny villages or larger towns a day. It hadn’t been easy. Poorly maintained and poorly marked roads turned even the shortest drive into a grueling, time-consuming chore.

The abysmal weather made it worse. Stretches of dark, gnarled trees, saltwater lagoons, beaches, and rugged cliffs were blurred by rain and fog until the whole bleak countryside seemed one vast, flat, waterlogged mess. Sandwiched between the winter snows and spring rains, March was supposed to be a relatively dry month, especially in a part of Germany that was usually drier than the rest. But not this year. One storm after another had lashed unpaved roads into muddy quagmires and left paved highways slick and deadly.

If anything, trying to worm useful information out of the locals was even more difficult than finding them in the first place. Decades under communist tyranny gave the region’s inhabitants an ingrained dislike for nosy, prying strangers — especially strangers who had trouble following their slow, slurred local dialect. To them, his fluent High German was either the mark of an arrogant, Berlin-bred twit or, worse, a snooping, sneaking official. With high tariffs and import restrictions on foreign goods, smuggling was making a comeback in northern Germany, and smugglers survived by keeping their mouths shut. Few people were willing to even talk to him, let alone help him find one particular fishing trawler out of the hundreds berthed up and down the coast.

Still, he was learning. In the beginning, he’d tried visiting every waterfront Gasthaus and bar, hoping to pick up some local gossip and make useful contacts. Instead, he’d earned nothing but hard, flat stares, hangovers from drinking too much beer, and an abiding hatred for pickled herring in sour cream. Now he made a sweep through each harbor first, looking for the right boat or one that looked something like it. Then, armed with a specific trawler’s name, he went looking for its owner, ostensibly with an unspecified “business proposition.” He’d also stopped trying to pretend he was German. Ironically the Baltic coast seamen and fisherfolk trusted shady foreigners with ready cash and illegal goods more than they did their own inland countrymen.

Of course, Vance thought sourly, the final results had all been the same.

Nada.

A big fat goose egg. He’d seen big boats and small boats, old tubs that would barely float, and brand-new “fishing” craft packed with high-powered engines and navigational gear. None of them had been the trawler spotted off Gdansk by the KH-11.

He sighed, straightened his aching back, and made sure the Audi was locked. Wismar’s nearly sixty thousand citizens made it a much larger town than most of those he’d been scouting through. And with more people came more crime. He didn’t want to call police attention to himself by filing a theft report. He certainly didn’t want to present the Agency’s notoriously unsympathetic accountants with the bill for a stolen rental car.

With his camera slung over one shoulder, Vance set out along the waterfront. On one side, fishing trawlers and sailboats were moored at rotting piers, rocked gently from side to side by small waves. On the other, old warehouses stood empty. Some still showed bomb scars from Allied raids during the closing weeks of World War II.

He had the area almost all to himself. Apparently, few of Wismar’s seamen had any business pressing enough to make them brave the bone-chilling, late afternoon drizzle. Even the shipyard, the town’s only important business, was deserted, padlocked and abandoned to a few stray cats who roamed over and under unfinished hulls.

Vance stopped a hundred meters or so from his car and stood close to the water’s edge, scanning the anchored small craft. It took real mental effort to make more than a cursory inspection. He’d studied so many boats in the past few days that he was starting to see them at night in his dreams. His eyes fell on one of the trawlers, stopped, moved on, and then came back. Something about her seemed familiar somehow. The boxy shape of the wheelhouse? Or the way old truck tires were strung along her hull as makeshift fenders? Had he seen this boat before in one of the other fishing ports? Or…

The CIA officer held his breath as he stared out at the old, rust-streaked vessel. It couldn’t be! He fumbled inside one of his windbreaker pockets for the drawings he’d been given. Holding the artist’s sketch in front of him, he walked further along the quay, trying to duplicate one of the views it showed.

They matched. Even in the fading light the resemblance was perfect. He squinted through his camera’s zoom lens, looking for a name or number on the trawler’s stern. He found one painted in yellowing white across her black hull.

Hexmadchen.

Witchmaiden. Ugly, he thought. Like the boat itself.

Vance snapped several pictures from different spots up and down the waterfront. Comparing his shots to those taken by the satellite should give the Agency’s photo interpreters enough to make a positive identification. Not that he had the slightest doubt. He’d found the mysterious trawler last seen hovering off Gdansk.

Suddenly scarcely able to contain his excitement, the American turned on his heel and hurried away from the harbor, looking for the first sailor’s haunt he could find. Somebody had to know what the Witchmaiden had been up to lately… and who owned her.

Compared to its decaying and desolate wharf area, the rest of Wismar looked considerably more appealing. One massive, red brick church spire towered off to the east, poking high above gabled rooftops. The bombed-out remnants of two other great brick churches stood south of that, near the town’s large marketplace.

Vance found the pub he was looking for there — inside Wismar’s oldest building. The “Old Swede” had been built nearly six centuries before and its age showed in low ceilings, narrow doors, and soot-blackened wood beams. The sound of clinking steins and rough-edged, booming voices led him straight to the bar itself.

He stopped in the doorway. The Old Swede was packed.

Sailors, trawler captains, and townsmen occupied practically every booth, table, barstool, and square centimeter of open space. A thick haze of cigarette and pipe smoke hid the far corners of the tiny room. Vance’s eyes started watering right away.

Those inside turned to stare at him as he crossed the threshold. In seconds, the whole crowded, noisy place fell silent. Hard expressionless eyes followed him as he came down a pair of stone stairs and made his way to the bar.

“A beer, please.” Vance forced an American accent into his ordinarily flawless German.

The barman glared back at him for several seconds before shoving a full glass under his nose. He knew that look very well. Strangers, especially foreigners, are not welcome, it said. He ignored it and sipped his beer.

“You have some business here, perhaps, mein Herr?”

Vance looked up. The speaker was a stout, red-faced man. Grease stains down the broad front of his brown wool sweater suggested he was a mechanic, a sloppy eater, or both.

“I’m looking for a man who owns a boat.”

“Really.” The fat man’s piggy eyes almost disappeared as he grinned broadly. “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place, friend. Hasn’t he, boys?”

The room exploded in laughter.

Vance waited for them to quiet down, smiling faintly. When he had their attention again, he went on. “I meant a particular trawler. The Witchmaiden. I’d like to speak to her captain about a quick… charter… I have in mind.”

The other man had obviously elected himself spokesman for everyone present. He chuckled again. “Old Hummel’s boat? Then you’re too late.”

“I am?”

“Ja. Somebody else already beat you to it. Put cold cash right in that sour fart’s hot palm.” The big man gestured with his own beer. “Naturally old Hummel legged it off that floating wreck before they could think twice. And nobody around here has seen him since!”

“Bastard owed me money, too,” one of the other sailors muttered.

“Half the town, more like. But it would have cost the buyers more than the boat cost to settle all his debts.” The fat man drained the rest of his beer and then glanced at the American. “Maybe they were some of your competitors, eh?” he asked shrewdly.

“Maybe.” Vance said it as casually as he could. He shrugged. “Those damned Swedes are always fast off the mark.”