Frankfurt, West Germany

  Autumn, 1960

  The fog descended thickly, like a shroud of death covering the city. Smoke from factory chimneys merged with the cold mist hanging low, turning the streets into corridors of a waking nightmare. On a corner of Zeil Street, an old bakery stood under dim yellow lights. The air was heavy with the scent of rye bread and bean soup.

  Jakob Eisner sat in the bakery’s farthest corner, wearing a slightly worn gray wool coat. His face was gaunt, his eyes carrying wounds that time had failed to heal. He stared at the bread in his hand without really seeing it. Across from him, a cup of cold coffee sat, barely touched.

  Jakob was a criminal police officer in Frankfurt. He had just returned from a long, fruitless investigation—a brutal murder of an aristocratic family in the outskirts. All evidence was absent. Every witness silent. Even fingerprints had been meticulously erased. Only one thing remained: the words “Recht ist eine Lüge” scrawled in blood across the wall—"Justice is a lie."

  Jakob clutched a small wooden cross hanging from his neck, a keepsake from his mother. He closed his eyes. In the darkness of his mind, he heard the screams of those trapped in bunkers, the wailing of bomb sirens that destroyed his childhood home. His father—a Nazi soldier—had never returned from Stalingrad. His mother had perished under the rubble. Jakob had survived for one simple reason: he had been too small to fight, too insignificant to matter.

  Suddenly, hurried footsteps broke through his thoughts. A man in a black coat sprinted past the bakery’s window, his face pale with terror. Without thinking, Jakob rose and rushed out, chasing the figure into a narrow alley swallowed by fog.

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  His footsteps echoed between damp brick walls. The dim streetlights made the world look alien. The cold air bit into his bones, and the city’s sounds seemed swallowed by the mist. And there, he saw it.

  A tall silhouette stood in the darkness, its face hidden beneath a hood and the shadows. In one hand, a pistol pointed at the terrified man. In the other—a second pistol aimed at a small child who had seemingly wandered into the mist.

  Jakob raised his gun. His hands trembled.

  “Drop your weapons. Now,” he commanded.

  The figure didn’t move, only offered a faint, chilling smile.

  “I wonder,” the figure said in a voice low and heavy like a snake’s hiss, “Which one deserves to live more? This child… or this man? Choose, Herr Polizei.”

  Jakob froze.

  Seconds stretched endlessly. Training, morality, law—all clashed within his mind. His heart refused to choose. But the post-war world knew nothing of moral purity. There were no right answers anymore. Only consequences.

  “I said choose,” the figure repeated.

  The hands holding the pistols trembled, but the unseen eyes—only darkness staring back at Jakob—remained steady.

  “Don’t do this,” Jakob whispered.

  The child sobbed. The man pleaded. Jakob knew: one wrong move, and both lives would be lost.

  He held his breath, finger on the trigger. He tried to read his opponent’s movements, but there were no openings. No time.

  And just as he opened his mouth to speak—the fog thickened, swallowing the light.

  Bang!

  The crack of a gunshot tore through the night.

  Jakob sprinted forward, his breath catching in his throat. The world spun. He brushed aside the fog as if fighting off a nightmare. Then he stopped.

  The child and the man lay motionless, blood pooling beneath them.

  There was no sign of the shooter. No shadow.

  Only silence. And the fog.

  Jakob sank to his knees. His hands were bleeding from gripping his own gun too tightly. His wide eyes stared at the two lifeless bodies before him. His nose caught the scent of warm blood mingling with the cold mist.

  He had failed.

  And he knew—this was not merely a killing.

  It was a stage.

  A message.

  From someone he needed to meet again.

  Or perhaps—someone he never wished to meet again.