Three

An hour 'till his train left. Tintin returned to his hotel and puzzled over the scrap of label a bit more. The more he stared at the back of it, the more he was convinced that there was something written on it. But like the forged notes, the paper was crispy from being dried and everything was faded. Whatever had been written there was now gone: washed away by the ocean.

Hmm. Well, it was worth a try. He left the label down on the dressing table and opened the door, hanging a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the outside. Next, he took his iPad out of his bag, intent on using the powerful camera as a make-shift magnifying glass. Snowy nosed over on the off chance that chicken would be produced, an old bone held firmly in his chops.

"Ugh! Snowy, where on earth did you dig that up from? That smells foul!" Tintin tugged the bone away from the dog and stood up. "Stop eating trash! It would serve you right if it was poisoned or something horrible." He absently tossed what he thought was the bone into the wicker waste-paper basket that sat beside the bathroom door while suppressing a shudder. People were cruel, and there were sickos out there that got their kicks from putting poisoned food out for strays.

Back to the bed, and the piece of label was gone. he stood looking at the bed for a few seconds. Then he tossed what he thought was his iPad onto the bed and searched his pockets. Then he searched his bag. Then the bathroom, on the off chance that he'd put it down in there absentmindedly and had forgotten about it.

"Ok, this is getting ridiculous," he said aloud. "Ah! Outside!" He remembered putting the sign on the outside of the door. Could I have dropped it?

He pulled the door open and looked out into the hallway. Behind him, there came a sudden bang. Startled, he jumped and looked around to see that the bathroom door had slammed shut.

"Oh! The window's open!" he said. "That means…" He closed the door of his room and dropped to his knees. "The paper must have blown away. And here it is!" He had found it at last, hidden beside the skirting board next to the dressing table. He picked it up and reached for his iPad on the bed.

It was gone.

He stared, puzzled, at the yellow eiderdown, positive that his black iPad would show up against the brighter colour with even the most cursory glance.

"Ok," he said slowly, "I think I've gone mad. And now I'm talking to myself. Yup: I'm crazy."

Snowy jumped up, bracing his front paws against Tintin's leg. The iPad lay at his feet.

"Well done, Snowy!" Tintin said, giving the dog a scratch on the head. He picked up the iPad and brought it, along with the label, to the dressing table, which was the only hard, desk-like surface in the room. Unbeknownst to him, Snowy retreated under the bed to work on the misplaced bone.

Using a pencil, Tintin quickly and lightly traced over the part of the label where he thought he could see indentations in the paper. Soon, a single word stood out against the grey marks of the pencil: Karaboudjan.

"What on earth is a karaboudjan when it's at home?" he wondered. A few taps on the iPad confirmed it as being a Turkish-Armenian word, that roughly translated to This Black Spirit or My Black Spirit. "Not very helpful," he said with a sigh. Outside the window a car screeched to a halt. Tintin stood up and looked out when the shouting started. Someone screamed, but by the time he got to the window a blue car – too far away to see the number plate, worse luck – was pulling away, and two men were chasing after it and shouting angrily. Someone else was shouting for the police to be called.

He hurried down to the lobby, Snowy at his heels. It wasn't an expensive hotel, and it had a very small lobby: just the reception desk and a couple of armchairs set around a coffee table. A middle-aged woman with black hair was sitting on one of the chairs. A small crowd of people had clustered around her. When she saw Tintin she cried out to him, and he recognised her as the receptionist.

"Sir! Oh, sir! A man – he was Chinese or Japanese – just came with a letter for you, Mr Tintin. He was just about to give it to me when a car came up and a load of men jumped out. They burst in here and grabbed the Chinese fellow and pulled him outside! I was screaming for the police, and these gentlemen here tried to help, but it was over so quickly! They pushed the Japanese fellow into their car and took off! With your letter too!"

"Has anyone called the police?" Tintin asked. They had, but it was still worth it to phone the Thompsons too. He stepped outside to get away from the noisy lobby, and Snowy relieved himself against a street lamp.

"Hey!" Tintin said when Thomson answered. "A man has just been kidnapped from my hotel. He had a letter for me, apparently."

"Was he Armenian?" Thomson asked quickly.

"What? No! He was Asian."

"Hmm. Shame. We just identified the sailor they pulled out of the sea this morning: Herbert Dawes of the Karaboudjan."

"Wait, did you say Karaboudjan?" Tintin asked excitedly.

"That's right. We're just heading down to the docks now: she's not due to depart until later today."

"Can I come with you? I'm, uh, doing a piece on boats and ships. I just want to take a few photos or whatever."

"Sounds all right by me," Thomson replied. "Meet you there in about twenty minutes."

x

A few taps on his phone confirmed a second train leaving Nieuwpoort for Brussels an hour and a half after the first. Tintin quickly switched his ticket to that service and made his way down to the docks. With luck, the trip might not turn out be a total bust, as he had first thought.

He found the Karaboudjan easily enough by asking around. He was directed to it, but when he got there he still couldn't see any sign of Thomson and Thompson among the busy, industrial dock workers. Crates and boxes were being loaded and unloaded all around him, the clever metal pulleys hoisting the huge containers with ease in and out of the cargo hold in the belly of the ship. Foreign words and voices, mixed with good-natured banter, accompanied the work, and above this floated the ever-present noisy sounds of gulls.

And what seagulls they were! So many of them, flocking to the air above the docks, perching here and there on the tall rigging before taking flight once more with their constant calls and chatter. Their guano covered everything.

Tintin stopped for a few moments, enjoying the scene. There was something fundamentally fascinating about birds: their delicate form married to their ruthless nature; the supreme grace and ease they rode the sky; their quick intelligence… Was it any wonder that a man like Leonardo Da Vinci could spend a lifetime in envious observation, hoping and dreaming of a time when men could mirror them and soar as high as Icarus, without the heartbreaking down-fall?

The gulls swooped and called to one another, and Tintin found his eyes following their dance. Up and up, and over and around, and Great snakes!

He dove out of the way, shoving Snowy brutally with his foot as a huge wooden crate crashed down on the very spot where he had been standing scant seconds before. The wood burst open with the impact, scattering tins of sardines over the ground, and Tintin soon found himself surrounded by a horde of anxious dock workers and the late-arriving Thomson and Thompson.

Confused and baffled, much was made among the dockers about how such a healthy chain could snap so easily, and Tintin found himself thanking his lucky stars that he was so distracted by the birds.

"If I wasn't watching them…" he said with a shiver.

"Don't think about it," Thompson advised with a grimace. "Come on; the first mate of the Karaboudjan is expecting us."

x

First Mate Allan hissed angrily through his teeth. "Damned lucky," he snapped. "And he's coming aboard. Right." He turned to his companion, a tall, barrel-chested man named Tom. "Take care of it. He doesn't go back ashore. I'll deal with the pigs. Got it?"

"Got it as in kill him?" Tom asked.

"No, just knock his ass out. Dump him down in the hold until we get our orders."

"Gotcha." Tom wasn't surprised by his lack of scruples any more: he had a huge mortgage to pay and his wife wanted a new kitchen. He wasn't about to let some snot-nosed kid stand in his way.

Author's Note: I don't particularly like iPads, but I just couldn't see any reason why someone would take a magnifying glass to a hotel, without turning the story into smut. On the other hand, there's an app that turns your iPad's camera into one. Need to change your train ticket? There's an app for that too. Maybe. Probably.