Flight QF 790, from Sydney to Alice Springs
Scene 4
Destiny occcasionally produces ironic reprisals of strangest nature – quite as if it seeks to correct some decision taken way back in the past, reflected Maille during his flight to Alice Springs on a Qantas Boeing. As a rule, a secret agent also has, odd though it may sound, parents who bring him into the world and give him his first name. Maille's parents had long hesitated before christening their first-born son Hektor: the name Hercules had held far greater appeal for them. But then it had occurred to them that children often like to play with the first names of their fellow-students – and that it would not be long before some child from a French school would in an act of typically rude distillation, abbreviate the heroic-sounding «Hercule» to the far less glorious «Cul» («Arse»). Although Maille did not really like his first name, he was thankful for his parents for their foresight. That Hercules would one day pick their son up was something his parents could never have suspected – whether it would be the complete Hercules or just «cul» would make itself clear over the following days. Hektor at the crossroads.
