Since June 21, 2011 the island of Santa Lemusa is no more in the Caribbean, but on 44 ° N / 33 ° W in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. These pages are about how this could happen?
The media on Santa Lemusa agree that the postponement of the island is due to the «exorbitant failure of the political authorities» («Leko»). They suspect «Corruption in the highest circles» («Gazette de Port-Louis») and expect «hardly foreseeable consequences for the future of the island"(ANAT).
But when have things begun, to develop unfavorably? Was it when agent Hektor Maille prevented an assassination attempt on the President of Senegal in Dakar? Or only when he got lost in the ruins of Angkor Watt? Why did it not help anything that the agent managed with perfection 12 heracleic works in Australia? And why did not even trip to Cape Horn leed to the needed answers? Questions over questions – perhaps the right moment, to trust in the magical power of an oyster fork.
Prologue. At an altitude of 35'800 km over the Atlantic Ocean, about 66° west, a shimmering drum glides through time and space. It looks like a silvery insect, whose wings glint and glow in the sunlight. Disguised as a weather satellite, the metallic creature contains a secret deep within it: a mysterious thing that can be a blessing for mankind – or a curse.
Episode 1: The Assignment – Santa Lemusa. Jenadi Koslow, a physicist of Russian origin, is kidnapped from his home in Bitasyon Francelle by a criminal outfit masterminded by a character called Dr Hing. Hektor Maille, the best man in the Santa Lemusan Secret Service, is assigned the task of finding the professor and liberating him. The operation is launched under the code name of «Mission Kaki» – before it gets underway, Maille allows himself the culinary indulgence of a plate of tripes.
Episode 2: Secret Service in Senegal. A stray radio signal emanating from the wristwatch of the kidnapped physicist Prof Jenadi G. Koslow sees Hektor Maille landing up in Senegal. His search for the professor takes him first to the island of Goree, where he dives straight into the past. He meets Agent Roff, the most extraordinarily well-disguised man in the Dakar «department». On Roff’s advice, Maille scanns the marshes north of Dakar for a spur of the missing Koslow – and experiences an eerie encounter.
Episode 3: Ballad in Moscow. Maille travels to Moscow in search of Anna Schukowa, the former assistant of Professor Koslow. All early clues turn out to be misleading; it is only Chef Ruslan Rachmaninow who puts his friend Maille on the correct path. His encounter with Schukowa brings Maille new dope not only on the missing scientist and the ORM’s research activities but also on his homeland which he had never imagined was possible.
Episode 4: Wallgames in Beijing. Hektor Maille travels to Beijing on the trail of Dr Hing. He follows a agent of the notorious «Buro 106» and gets involved in a dramatic fight on the Great Wall of China. The search for information also brings the agent from Santa Lemusa to the Summer Palace, the Temple of Confucius, back to the airport, into the restaurant of Ren Zilin and ulti-mately into Beijing's old observatory. A trip that generates a lot of rather confusing news.
Episode 5: From Sweden with Lilies. The archipelago in front of Stockholm's coast is Hektor Maille's destination. On the island of Möja, the secret agent has to dive into a strange, sweetish-smelling pond and circle around the water plants in it. In Bullerö, the spy from Santa Lemusa is reprimanded by his landlady for returning too late for dinner. A little later, he is transported mentally back to his home-island of Santa Lemusa via his culinary encounter with a traditional Swedish roll.
Episode 6: Through Korea on the Cabbage Route. In a southern region of Korea Maille went in search of Prof Koslow's daughter, Tatjana, who had fallen in love with a Korean kimchi manufacturer. In the Gwangju area, his research took him not only into the local markets but also into a Buddhist monastery. In Mokpo, the secret agent learned much about fish. Finally, he took a boat out to the island of Hongdo, where he encountered Mr Lee – and found, quite apart from some answers, a couple of spanking-new questions.
Episode 7: In Fever Through the Emirates. The radio signal from Prof Koslow's watch is traced to the United Arab Emirates. With a heavily feverish head, Hektor Maille flies to the Gulf, where he meets the lady secret agent Enigma – or, rather, she meets him. In the local bazaar, he makes his acquaintance with all types of creatures, he spoils himself with «Kabab Laham», «Jareesh» and «Foul», gets armed with the newest technology and takes off in a rented car for the desert, where it comes to a sort of Showdown.
Episode 8: Silence in Bangkok. Jelena Jansson, Professor Jenadi Koslow's Swedish-Russian assistant has moved to Bangkok. Hektor Maille flies to the Thai city to find out what the young woman fears. Jansson, however, maintains a stony silence. Maille resolves to bind his soul in patience and proceeds to while away his time with Lun in the kitchen of his friends Raina and Gobli, both former agents of the Lemusan Secret Service.
Episode 9: Straight Across Indochina. Guided by Aral, the V-man of the Santa Lemusan Secret Service also reporting on the whereabouts of the evil Dr Hing, Maille travels across Indochina. He makes his acquaintance with the Cambodian night and gets lost in the ruins of Angkor Wat. Traveling by bus, cycle, boat and plane, he starts out at Siem Reap and ends up at Ho Chi Minh City, passing en route through Phnom Penh.
Episode 10: Cherry Blossom Blues in Tokyo. Before Hektor Maille can start on his assignment in Japan, he has to first solve a couple of identity problems as well as a major tuna-fish riddle. But even as he lies under cherry blossoms in Tokyo, he does not stray off the track of the missing professor. He is neither beaten back by seawater raging through cellars nor is he side-tracked by Japanese lyrics.
Episode 11: Twelve Labours in Australia. First negotiations between the government of Santa Lemusa and the kidnappers of Professor Koslow have failed – the minds are upset. To show the goodwill of his country Maille has to master twelve difficult labours in Australia and therefore travels from Sydney via Alice Springs to Darwin in the Northern Territory.
Episode 12: Speechless in Syria. Even a secret agent occasionally has enough. Like, for instance, when Hektor Maille learns after his Australian assignment that he must, instead of returning home to Santa Lemusa, proceed to Syria. As he considers his latest diktat, he is robbed of speech, as it were – and so he travels without text from Qala'at-al-Hosn via Homs and Palmyra back to Damascus. Without text? Not really – because perhaps you will lend the secret agent your voice, an idea, a moment of your time…
Episode 13: Double Game in Tierra del Fuego. V-man Aral's signs guide Hektor Maille into southern Patagonia, where he has to balance himself on logs across the jungle of Tierra del Fuego, climb up to glaciers and cross the Beagle Channel in a dinghy. At the end of the world, he changes his clothes, in El Calafate he exposes himself to dinosaurs and to the dangers of a strawberry cake – and, in the end, he experiences himself as a strange reflection on the shores of Lago Argentino.
Episode 14: Deadlock at the South Pole. In the endless masses of ice of the Antarctic, Hektor Maille does not find his task. The silent whiteness of the landscape throws the secret agent inexorably back at himself, returns him to his own mechanics and his own pitfalls. It is similar to the impact that certain works of art have on the viewer – something that provokes a deep sense of unease in the best agent of the Lemusan Secret Service and gives him another reason to feel as though he is on a journey in the underworld.
Episode 15: Congo Dreams. In Kinshasa Hektor Maille is simply unable to find an appropriate language to justify his presence in a place with such a nasty history. He decides that the only reality that might have something to do with the actuality is that of the dream. At the same time he notices that his stay in the Democratic Republic of Congo is turning curiously into an illustration of the «Congo ABC» by Love H Kiri.
Episode 16: Mishmash in Jerusalem. During his research in Jerusalem, Hektor Maille could not but help think that he could aim for a far higher job than that of working with the Deuxieme Bureau. In his quest for truth, he visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, placed his hand on the Wailing Wall, walked along Via Dolorosa, was touched by the light of the Holy Lemusa, circumamulated the Dome of the Rock and strolled through the garden in which Jesus is believed to have risen from the dead.
Episode 17: Wordy Wilde West. On his journey from Denver to Los Angeles, Hektor Maille imagines that he becomes embroiled in multi-fold heroic dramas, which fade like projections over his own story. – And while the agent is immersed in his heroism in these interim worlds, we are – quasi below the line – on the road with his cook Odette in Santa Lemusa for a whole day.
Episode 18: On the Spice Trail in Maharashtra. On his research trip to India, Hektor Maille gathers the ingredients that make up a special spice mixture in which his entire «mission» is represented – each ingredient in this «Maille-Masala» brings to mind one particular scene from each of the 20 episodes. For the nose this spice mix serves as a directory of olfactory hyperlinks that beam the person directly to the different places in which «Mission Kaki» is set, or as a link to different aspects of the story.
Episode 19: With the Oyster Fork Through Paris. Finally, in Paris, the capital of a kind of gluttony, such as it pleases Hektor Maille. The best opportunity to consider a future as a TV chef, to give birth to a world out of the tip of an oyster fork and finally, after one last look back on 19 adventurous episodes, to disappear in himself.
Episode 20: Somewhere else. Despite all efforts Hektor Maille does not succeed to turn away the fate from Santa Lemusa. On June 23, 2011, in the early evening hours, the island is dematerialized and at the same time takes from again about 4000 kilometers northeast of its former position – from the edge of the Caribbean into the middle of the Atlantic, from about 14°N / 58°W to 44°N / 33°W. The agent finally frees the professor in whose footsteps he has flown thousands of miles crisscrossing the airspace of the planet – but the homeland he is coming back to after such a long time, his reality is now somewhere else.
Epilogue. It is probably no coincidence that the intersection of the new coordinates of Santa Lemusa (44°N / 33°W) exactly lay in the home of Hektor Maille in Senpuav – more precisely in his kitchen, in the middle of the gas cross of the stove, over which he uses to simmer his stews and soups. Of course it also has its reasons that on return of the agent on that same stove stands a pot with Sorpotel.