1. Noxious Secrets

Valletta - Monday, 5 February 2018

I'm looking for noxious secrets.

No.

I'm not looking. It's pitch dark here. I can't even see my own hands. I crawl and do my best not to break everything I stumble into. Everyone who works for a government, a town hall, schools, hospitals, police, they all get 50% extra for working at night, everyone except spies like me, who get orders to investigate when others sleep, without any compensation.

I'm not looking for noxious secrets either. I'm looking for «Noxious Secrets». It's the title of a manuscript, written by the man who lives in this mansion. I have no idea where to look. I don't even know if the manuscript is here. The only thing I know is that «secrets» means «having something to hide», and it gives you a negative image when others find out. Every government has a Secret Service because governments have so much to hide that the world would be in danger if anyone found out. It's not my job to judge moral issues like secrets and openness. The LSD (Lëtzebuergesch Sécherheet Departement, in English: Luxembourg Spy Department) and the Luxembourg government pay me for finding and keeping the secrets of others; never bite the hand that feeds you.

The director of the Greek Bureau of Statistics, Andreas Georgiou, was fired and sentenced for high treason because he published the secret-but-true negative figures of the Greek failing economy instead of the much more positive lies that the Greek government preferred to talk about. Does that say something about Andreas? Or does it make George Orwell's «1984» a novel of fiction that became true?

Bradley Manning leaked a few US government secrets to WikiLeaks. They put him behind bars for 35 years. Does that say something about Bradley? Or does it raise suspicion about the noxious secrets the American President wants to keep out of the newspapers? Those same newspapers didn't even spend 35 seconds in prison for publishing all the President's secret sex adventures. Turning the world's most powerful man into a clown is rewarded rather than punished.

When you eat in a good Italian restaurant, the Chef always invites you into his kitchen so you can watch how he prepares the dishes. He's happy to show you how he uses only the finest ingredients, how he keeps his kitchen clean and organized, that the meat is fresh from the bone, and how he makes the pasta by hand. No secrets, except for his little secret skill that makes the Chef's salad always better than the one you make at home, even if you use the same recipe.

In a Hong Kong fish restaurant, the Chef goes even one step further: instead of giving you a menu, he'll tell you to visit the fish market and buy your fish or seafood while it's still alive. The merchant delivers, the Chef prepares, you'll have the highest guarantee in the world for fresh food. No secrets.

It makes the story of this manuscript extraordinary: the publication of these «Noxious Secrets» must be so dangerous for our society that #1, The Boss, ordered me, #5, The Runner, to find the manuscript, so the LSD can prevent its publication. I have no idea why. It's secret, and it's noxious.

I can't go on like this. Either I break a leg or all the china in this shop, walking around here like a bull, and the noise will wake up everyone in the neighbourhood. Should I take the risk and make some light? In this darkness, I might step on the manuscript and not even notice it. My spiPhone has a torchlight. I switch the setting to «Black Light» and the intensity to «Pencil».

I'm not in the library, but in the kitchen. The precious, fragile porcelain turns out to be a shopload of dirty dishes. The table in the centre is full of mail, newspapers and magazines. The cleaning lady's resignation letter must be there too, unopened, like most of the other letters. Behind a wall of sticky notes, I find the refrigerator; it's empty, except for half a bottle of milk and something green that tries to escape as soon as I open the door. Someone hid the door to the dining room behind a pile of stained towels; it's impossible to go there.

There are two other doors. I open the first one: it's a closet; a grinning skeleton falls into my arms. His face is pale, as white as clouds, but he does not perceive my doubts: if someone keeps a skeleton in a closet, he must have a lot of noxious secrets too.

"Are you gay? It took you an awful lot of time to come out of the closet.", I whisper. Lazy Bones doesn't answer. He doesn't like bad jokes. He's dead serious.

The other door leads to the hall and the front door. According to my map, the hall gives access to the salon on the right and the tearoom on the left, and also to the staircase that leads to the second floor and the attic. But according to that same map, the kitchen is on the other side of the house. I don't want to walk around here too long. I want to find the library because that's where I expect a writer to keep his work. If I were a writer, I would prefer to work in a room that has a view of the beautiful garden at the back, or perhaps one that looks out to the street in front of the house. The rooms on the second floor and the attic are lower on my priority list.

Below the staircase, there's another door that's not on my map. It's locked, but the key sticks out of the lock. I almost ignore it, assuming it will be a cupboard. It's my training that calls me back: why would anyone lock a cupboard from the outside and keep the key in the door? Those cups won't go anywhere. According to the pile of dirty dinnerware in the kitchen, there aren't any clean cups left in this house.

I put my eager ear against the door and listen carefully: nothing. I sneak towards the other two doors, both closed, and listen at the second and third door if something will shoot me in the back while I concentrate on the first door first: nothing. Strange. These are oak doors; as you can hear the sea in seashells, at least, I expected to hear the forest.

I don't have a partner who can cover my back. All I have is a handful of marbles; I put them on the wooden stairs. Anyone who comes down will lose the advantage of surprise. Then I return to the locked door under the stairway, turn the key, and open the door, carefully, without making any noise. A stairway leads to a basement where a faint light welcomes me.

In the case of a staircase, being on a higher level isn't an advantage. Anyone down there can hide and shoot the legs of the one coming down the stairs. I take my spiPhone, fix it with a rubber band on the handle of an umbrella, start the video recorder, and lower my digital scout for a safe and simple stake-out. The video shows a room, empty, except for a lit candle on a wine bottle next to a chair. On the chair, there's a man, tied up like a pickled herring fillet. He's not going anywhere for the next hour, and I don't see anything that looks like a manuscript either.

I close and lock the door again. Searching the other rooms is more urgent. The room on the left is indeed the tearoom, decorated with two expensive leather chesterfields and a low, antique, wooden table, hidden under empty pizza boxes. A door at the back leads to what looks like the dining room, but nobody's had dinner there during the last decade: the room is filled with stacks of papers, files, and old newspapers. The room on the right, the one that's marked as the salon on my map, looks like the library or the room where a writer does his writing: three walls are filled with books and the fourth has a window for inspiration. This room looks more organized: the desk is clean, and there is a clear path from the door to the chair behind it. The rest of the floor is covered with open books, notepads filled with scribbles, magazines, folders and scraps of coloured paper.

Then, I make a quick tour on the first floor, where I find a bathroom, three bedrooms, piles of dirty laundry, lots of dust, but nothing that looks like a neon light with an arrow and the text: "Noxious Secrets, over here".

One of the first things I learnt as a spy was about all the information you can get from souvenirs, from the memories every human being keeps in his bedroom, his living room or his hotel room. Each souvenir, and also the lack of souvenirs, tells a lot about the one who wants to keep it, and to keep it close.

The man who lives here collects old paper, and he doesn't get a lot of visitors. I'm sure it's a man; women just aren't capable of survival in this mess. His personality is an open book: all the open books, the sticky notes, the legal pads with words in five different languages and six different colours of ink, they indicate a creative mind, so creative that he could never invent a way to organize all his ideas efficiently.

The metaphor of the jogger comes into my mind: the jogger prepares himself, eats the perfect breakfast, puts on the best outfit and the most expensive running shoes, leaves his house at 10:00 AM, runs as fast as he can, checks his watch at every corner to see if he stays at the desired schedule, and at 11:00 AM, he returns at his starting point, looking back at breaking his personal record or whatever other goals he had in mind when he got up this morning. Why? The jogger didn't produce anything useful at all; all his effort brought him back to the place at which he started, and all he did was put a few check marks on a list of senseless personal desires. If this jogger was to go forward instead of run around in circles, he could easily have seen three continents by now, but he didn't. He kept running around with «running around» as his only goal. The man who lives in this house produces words with the only goal to produce words. And it keeps him so busy that all the usual pleasures of life, like having dinner with friends in a clean house, are pushed back as «insignificant».

I've never met the man who lives here, but when I see his memories, it feels like I know him better than he knows himself. That leaves only two brief questions: why isn't he at home and why does he keep someone tied up in his basement? But I'm not here to answer those questions. I'm here to find «Noxious Secrets».

Apart from not paying me my 50% night-shift bonus, the LSD doesn't pay me overtime either. That's how #1, The Boss, motivates his employees to work more efficiently. When the spy will defy fighting crime, there's no haste; when I waste my own time, then the loss of The Boss is: no dime. Okay. I get it. It's not efficient to search for a manuscript in this chaos. Efficiently, I go down to the basement. Efficiently, I take the piece of duct tape and tear it in one, swift, efficient movement from the mouth of the tied man.

"Sodom and Gomorrah! That hurts painfully!"

I look at the piece of tape in my hand. Lots of hairs stick to it. This is good quality tape. I can really use this. I have to find out where he bought it. But, somehow, the mathematics is wrong: the missing hairs on the man's chin don't match with the sticking hairs on the tape: "Where's the rest?"

"The rest? Basically, your boss took everything; the complete manuscript, and all my notes too.", the man shouts.

Why would #1, The Boss, send me on a mission after doing all the work himself first?

"Don't shout. You wake up the neighbourhood. How do you know it was my boss? I don't even know him myself."

"Casually, he said his name was Khalid, and Khalid is the boss. He said he'd come back to kill me, and Khalid is a killer. He wore a ski mask, but he was about a head taller than you. Coincidentally, you're not Khalid, are you?"

"No… I mean: yes, I'm not… I mean…"

This starts running out of hand. I'm supposed to ask the questions here. Efficiency. Giving a finger to get back a whole hand has never been the wrong tactic: "You can call me Sami. And you…"

Efficiently, I do some quick thinking. The name in my fake passport for this mission, Sami Fathi, was made up by #2, The Nerd, who's a fan of Die Mannschaft, the German national football team. The names he invents are always a combination of the first name and the family name of two German football players, here: Sami Khedira and Malik Fathi. My name fits my photo and my disguise: my coloured skin, my dark-brown eyes, my short-cut black hair, and my trimmed beard give me the same Arabic features as the man in the chair. In the spy business, using real names is dangerous: "… I will call you Malik… Malik Khedira. I want you to help me."

"Vindictively, you're going to kill me, and you want me to help you with it?"

Another question that's impossible to answer with a simple «yes» or «no».

"Why would I kill you?"

"Nonverbally, it's obvious. Isn't it a gun you're hiding under your shirt? Didn't Khalid tell me he would come back to kill me, as soon as he was certain that the file he took contained the manuscript of «Noxious Secrets», which I finished yesterday? Do you really think that I don't know what kind of notorious criminal Khalid El Bullít is? He sent you to kill me, so I won't write another copy of the story. When I'm dead, all the dark secrets I discovered about him won't travel the world in print. You don't have to tell me stories. I'm a writer. I tell stories myself, and much better stories than the ones you try to make up right now."

I show him the sticky side of the duct tape and point at the remainders of his moustache and beard: "Don't split hairs over small-town gossip, Malik. I didn't ask about the rest of the manuscript. I asked about the rest of your moustache and beard."

Behind his horn-rimmed glasses, the eyes of Malik grow big with fear: "Are you going to torture me barbarically again? Khalid put the tape over my mouth, so my screaming wouldn't wake up the neighbourhood, and then he tore it off, slowly, to make sure I'd lose as many hairs as was painfully possible, and then he did it again, repeatedly, with a fresh piece of tape, and again, and again, until I couldn't stand it anymore and told him where I hid the manuscript: it was on my desk, visibly. He took it and left, but he promised to come back soon and finish the job, eventually."

"And you think he sent me to finish the job, to finish you."

It isn't a question. It's efficiency. This man uses so many words and rhetorical questions to explain even the simplest fact: he must be a writer. If this Khalid stole the manuscript, it's impossible to fulfil my mission, but leaving this house with the writer of the secrets might be the next best thing.

I take my Swiss army knife and cut the ropes: "Get up. Come with me. Khalid wants you dead. I want you alive. But you owe me one. Do we have a deal?"

Malik takes a package of cigarettes from his jacket, lights one, and puffs: "Permissively, I want that deal on paper, signed and sealed in front of an official authority like a notary or a judge. Spoken words are nothing but air, but words on paper are the strongest weapon of civilised societies."

"No problem. We're going to wake up every notary and judge of this Maltese civilised society as soon as possible. Anything is better than staying here. Khalid's on his way. Do you have a copy of the manuscript on a USB stick? Or do you keep it in the cloud?"

"Professionally, I'm a writer, not a typist. My penmanship is what makes me proud. I write by hand, with a silver, handmade fountain pen, on handy 250-grams paper, in longhand, with double space between the lines. Creatively, I'm a professional artist. I don't have a copy."

"For being The Man Who Knew Too Much, you know little about making copies to avoid losing everything. How long since Khalid left?"

"I don't know. He assailed me around midnight. Ruefully, I've lost track of time since."

It's a little over 03:00 AM. Malik rubs his wrists. He's unstable. I grab his arm and push him towards the stairs: "We should go."

"To where?"

"Do you have any family?"

"My mother."

"Are you safe if you hide there?"

"Globally, Malta is a small community. Valletta looks like a city, but it is more like a village, a neighbourhood where everybody knows each other. If I'm not here, Khalid's men will keep an eye on my mother's house. Prudently, I don't want to put her in danger too."

"Don't you have any friends where you can go to?"

"I have no friends."

"For how long have you lived in Malta?"

"ON Malta. You live IN a country, in France for example, but you live ON an island like Malta like you would live ON the moon or ON a mountain."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I was born here, in Valletta, and I've lived here ever since, 58 years and a bit."

"How come you don't have any friends when you lived here 58 years and a bit?"

"I'm a writer, a poet. Football trainers, politicians and writers are the loneliest people on the planet. What do you do with friends? Gastronomically, you drink beer; my religion doesn't allow me to drink alcohol. Conversationally, you talk about mutual interests: football, cars and women; I don't like football, I know nothing about cars, and I don't understand women at all. I write poetry. The only topic for conversation I have is poetry. Nobody else likes poetry. That's why I don't have friends."

"Nobody here on Malta knows me. You can hide at my place and tell me about the noxious secrets. We can talk about poetry too. If you like, we might even become friends…"

Malik is moved: "That is… unexpected, but most generously, and more than welcome. Gratefully, I accept your offer with a humble head and a happy heart. Wait…"

Malik goes back into the house and returns with something in his hand: "I have a small gift for you, a copy of my bundle «Precious Poetry». I hope you like it. Perhaps you can even give your opinion about it, as the local press and critics have decided to ignore it, and I never get a message from any of the 2.000 buyers of the sold copies…"

"Thanks. That's very nice. I'll promise to read it and I'll let you know. But now, we go. Avoid a show, 'cause when we're slow, your fear will grow, so follow now."

"Bombastically bad, that last one. It's a cripple rhyme; it looks like rhyme, but it sounds differently, «now» or «slow», do you hear? «Go» works fine, as it has the same sound, but repeating it would be a signal of writing poorly. «So follow, foe» would be better…"

I understand why Malik has no friends.

While we cross the dark alleys and back streets, I send a message to #1, The Boss: «The manuscript has been stolen 3 hours ago by someone called Khalid El Bullít. I have the writer with me. He can rewrite the manuscript or tell me about the secrets. Khalid is after him and wants to kill him. Permission asked to take the writer to a safe place and protect him.»

The problem with The Boss is that reports always seem too difficult for him. When I don't use baby-talk and lighten it up with coloured comics, he just doesn't understand. His answer proves his ignorance: «Khalid El Bullít? Who's he?»

Why would I know that? They sent me here to pick up a stack of papers. All I got was the title. My work has a low need-to-know level.

I ask Malik: "My boss wants to know who Khalid El Bullít is."

Without the question mark, Malik doesn't understand I'm asking him a question: "Your boss? For whom do you work, economically? What kind of work is it anyway to break into houses, domestically, of innocent writers in the middle of the night, asking questions about stolen manuscripts and notorious criminals?"

"Is Khalid a notorious criminal?"

"Haven't you heard of him? Internationally, he's THE most notorious criminal in the world, and also Malta's best-kept secret. He's the brain behind terrorist attacks, the one who taught Ohmama Bin Loaded all the tricks. Almost every international transport of illicit narcotics has his signature on the shipping documents. He's the world's most prominent arms dealer, and… he's planning a nuclear attack on a major city. Suspectfully, that means New York City."

I'm not impressed. There's no Nobel Prize for brains behind terrorist attacks because even a five-year-old has the intellectual level to throw bombs or pull triggers. Planning a nuclear attack isn't against any law. When the American President sold arms worth 350 billion dollars to Arab countries, the press called him a hero and a blessing for the economy. And every lorry with the logo of a beer brand transports alcohol, the most popular hard drug in the world. The only interesting part is…

"Khalid is Malta's best-kept secret?"

"He is, actually, and he wants to keep it that way. That's why he stole my manuscript. He doesn't want the world to know. His hidden identity is his strongest serenity… Did you hear that? The three short I's (his, hidden, identity), that's a literary figure called assonance, and the two starting S's of strongest and serenity, that's an alliteration, plus the rhyme of identity and serenity, that makes this a very strong expression, poetically. Stop for a second, please, so I can write this down. Where's my notebook? Where's my pen?"

"Khalid took them. Remember?"

His near-death experience of five minutes ago didn't cause the panic that hits him now: "No, you don't understand. I HAVE to write this down. This little litany literally limits the literary world from listening to me… Did you hear that? I have to write that down too. This perilous danger I'm in awakens my best language ever. I need my notebook, my pen, my—"

I stop Malik, put my hand over his mouth, and try to make him calm down: "You don't need anything but me. And most of all, you don't need to panic. You're shouting so loud that you'll wake the neighbours, who'll call the police. When the neighbourhood knows where you're going, and Malta is only a neighbourhood where everyone knows each other, how long will it take Khalid to find you and kill you?"

"Tragically, death is nothing for a poet. John Lennon became more popular after his death. Shakespeare is immortal. Dante will never see in person the Hell he wrote about. Death is nothing. All that matters is what I write, and—"

"Lovely Sweet Dear. Permanent Voice Recorder. Reproduce. Aloud. From «now minus one minute», until «now». Start."

With its robotic voice, my spiPhone reproduces the text file it automatically makes of every sound and spoken word in its surroundings: «5 February 2018, 03:21. Voice Sami: "Khalid is Malta's best-kept secret?" / Voice Malik: "He is, actually, and he wants to keep it that way. That's why he stole my manuscript. He doesn't want the world to know. His hidden identity is his strongest serenity… Did you hear that?"»

I did. I've heard this before. I've heard enough: "Lovely Sweet Dear. Stop reproduction."

Malik is flabbergasted. That's marvellous. At least, he stops asking questions for a while.

"You should go out more, Malik. The world has changed since you learnt the alphabet. The era in which the pen was mightier than the sword has ended. In 2018, the spiPhone is mightier than the Kalashnikov."

I have work to do. We continue our nocturnal promenade towards my hotel while I finish my report to #1, The Boss: «Khalid is the world's most dangerous criminal. He's a killer, a drug lord, an arms dealer, and a terrorist. He plans a nuclear attack on a major city. Request permission to hide and protect the writer.»

«Permission denied. Leave that to #4, The Agent. Deliver the writer to Triton Fountain, at 04:00. Details follow.»

«How about Khalid? I can wait for him at the writer's house and arrest him.»

«Leave that to #4, The Agent, too. She's qualified. You're not.»

«I know where to find him.»

«Send that info to #4. Khalid is operation LOST: Let Others Solve This.»

Rostov! He treats me like a child.

"Bad news?", Malik wants to know, looking at my spiPhone over my shoulder.

"I'm getting nervous about all your questions, Malik. Why don't you give some answers instead?"

"Ironically, I can't stop questioning. I'm a writer. It's my job to observe, ask myself why people do what they do, wonder why things go like they go, and write about it. If we don't ask questions, we'll never learn. Did you ever notice how many questions little children have? Curiously is the human nature. We want to learn. Fundamentally, when you take everything others tell you for granted, you won't only lose your curiosity, but also your capacity to find better answers."

"It's fine, Malik, but NOT NOW!"

Malik is a sensitive man. He's hurt by my explosion. Perhaps he's right. I'm losing my nerves. This mission isn't going as I want at all.

"I'm sorry, Malik. It was wrong to shout at you like this. I don't mind answering your questions, but this isn't really the time for a chat and a scat. We'll do that later, with a beer, in a bar, like friends do when they're having a good time. Okay? But not now, please. We're in the middle of a dangerous situation and I must deliver you to the Triton Fountain, where my colleague will take care of you. If this Khalid is only half as dangerous as you told me, we should be careful and efficient for the next half hour. So no more questions, please. Do you understand?"

"That's another question… Sorry. Basically, you're right. I understand. But quizzically, I do have one last question for you: in 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon. Buzz Aldrin was the second member of that Apollo IX mission. Who was the third man?"

"Why do you want to know that?"

"When Khalid left me there, tied like a sausage, waiting to die, maniacally, I needed something to stop me from going crazy, something that would keep my mind away from thinking about what was to come. I needed a mental challenge, intellectually, to distract me. I thought about humanity's greatest achievement. Via Shakespeare and the pyramids, I came to think about landing on the moon. Neil Armstrong. Buzz Aldrin. But I can't remember the name of the third astronaut. It drives me crazy. What's his name?"

"I wasn't even born in 1969. Why would I know such a thing?"

"Who won last year's Champion League? Who won the latest Eurovision Song Contest? What's the title of the latest film by Quentin Tarantino? Who wrote «50 Shades of Bluebeard»? Any question about entertainment and you know the answer, but when I ask you about the greatest achievement of humanity, obviously, you have no idea."

"I didn't say I have no idea. I said I wasn't born when it happened, on that 20th of July, 1969. I do know the answer, and I also know that Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, on the 12th of April, 1961. Why do you think knowing facts like that makes one a better person? Why do you value a person on the number of useless facts she knows by heart while everyone has access to the Internet and already found out who was that third astronaut? If you really want to learn, why aren't you interested in the answers to the Big Questions of Life instead?"

"Aboriginally, because nobody has the answers to those Big Questions."

"I do."

Malik stops and looks me in the eye: "You're joking, aren't you?"

"You should stop asking impossible questions, Malik. If I said «yes», would it mean I'm joking? Or would I answer the question «aren't you?» affirmatively? If you want the correct answers, ask the right questions. If I'm joking, my passport would carry the name Ronaldo Siète, the funniest writer in Dutch literary history. My passport says my name is Sami Fathi, and that name belongs to a fake identity, which means I have reasons to keep my real name a secret. Don't forget I'm interested in your manuscript with the secrets about the most dangerous criminal in the world. Anyone with a little over-average intelligence can now conclude I'm a…"

"You're a journalist of Time for Crime Magazine?"

"I'm a spy. I work for the Luxembourg Spy Department. Two days ago, someone put an ad in Time for Crime Magazine, looking for a bodyguard to protect hor and hor noxious secrets from a great danger. It took—"

"Hor?"

"Yes, hor. That's modern sexist-free English that stands for «his-or-her». If you're not sure about the gender or if you talk about anyone in general, it's also better to use «she» instead of «he». Can you, please, stop interrupting me?"

"Circumstantially, I know about that ad. I put it there."

"And I know you put it there. And my boss wants those noxious secrets. And that great danger you were referring to, that's Khalid, and he's already found you. Help me find Khalid, help me find the manuscript of «Noxious Secrets», and I'll give you the answers to every one of the six Big Questions."

"You can't. You have to deliver me to your colleague."

"We have half an hour. Do we have a deal or not?"

"Analytically, how does it help me get those answers if your organization locks me up in a secret basement, deep under the ground, only interested in getting as many secrets out of me as they can, and then they will ensure I won't publish anything, probably by killing me?"

Good question.

"Isn't it enough for you to know the answers? Why do you want to publish those secrets?"

"Because the world has a right to know."

"Which Book of Law gives the world that right? Why do you want to publish those secrets?"

Malik raises his hands and looks up at the sky like he hopes for some help from the Higher Powers to enlighten me and my ignorance: "When you have an idea, it's nothing. An idea is even less than air. It only exists in your head. When you die, your ideas die with you. But when you write them down… your idea gets a definition, it gets access to the minds of others, it has a chance to prove itself, to grow, to influence other individuals, or groups, or cultures, or perhaps even the future of humanity…

» An idea in your head is nothing but dead, but at scrivener's scrive, the idea comes alive, and it wants to survive, like the bees in a hive… By translating an idea into words, and by publishing those words, a writer creates life. Being a writer is getting as close to God as any mortal human being can come. God is love, God is beauty, and God is inspiration to make people want to be close to God. God is Precious Poetry. God is a poet."

Malik uses the Arab name of God. His Precious Poetry refers to the Qur'an. His desires to publish the truth and to find the answers to the Big Questions are holy for him; it's larger than life. My desire to save the world is larger than life too. This strange man and I, we have something in common, and we can even help each other and make each other's dreams come true.

But we can't.

Life itself stands between us.

I have to get Malik to the Triton Fountain and hand him over to #4, The Agent.

Orders won't allow me to wait for Khalid at Malik's house, orders won't allow me to save the world and orders won't allow Malik's freedom of speech.

We're not here to answer questions.

We're here to follow orders.

We have to trust the holy Gods of military, politics and industry that give out those orders.

If we just follow orders, if we just turn off our curiosity and our capacity to ask questions, the world will be safe, and we'll all be as happy as possible.

Big Question #6 is: what makes us happy? What's the meaning of life? What is life about? I know the answer. It's not «following orders». But we don't have time to answer all the six Big Questions. We only have time for one.

"Listen carefully, Malik. I'll only say this once. Big Question #1: what was first, the chicken or the egg?"

"Actually, that's a difficult one. If it's the egg, which chicken put it there? If it's the chicken, where did it come from?"

"It's easy. The egg was first. Millions of years before the first chicken was born, animals already came out of eggs. Turtles, snakes, sharks: they all start as eggs. Even we, humans, start as an egg. So that question is now solved forever. Now it's your turn. No more questions. I want answers. Tell me about the manuscript. Tell me about the noxious secrets Khalid wants to hide against all costs."

We've reached the walls of the city gate, from where we have a clear view over the square of the Triton Fountain. We still have twenty minutes before the meeting with #4, The Agent. I don't want to take any risks. We hide in the shadows and Malik starts his story…