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Little is known of the city of Minsk or the country surrounding it. Only few went there, and even fewer returned. This is the story of Lt. Henry Salton who disappeared after being sent to Minsk for operation “double-fish-crossed”. He worked as a secret agent in the name of her Majesty the Queen of Britain. Britain is no longer an island, technically, because it has been connected by the tunnel underneath the channel separating the isle from the main European continent. This was Salton’s specialty. He was a technical specialist on underground structures and in his military training he had also undergone the programme of the special art of underground warfare, navigating huge digging machines and swallowing whole buildings into the ground.

In a fancy wooden London office somewhere near the houses of parliament, Major Cheekbane impatiently tapped his fingers on the heavy desk made from teak. Salton was late. He was still a young officer but would he ever learn discipline? Forgivingly he shrugged and smiled at himself: I am going to send the boy on a dangerous mission. He will have ample chances to prove himself. He leaned back in his large office chair and stroke his large belly. Many trips to London bars and pubs had begun to show effect, ever more so after the lifting of the 11 o clock curfew.

While wandering the mazeful corridors of the parliament building, Salton wondered what kind of assignment Cheekbane had spun up this time. “It will probably be the same stupid bug hunt as always.”  He was not looking forward to Cheekbane’s lengthy sermons. For a military officer he had surprisingly big difficulties to express himself in any efficient manner. Salton was not in a hurry for that kind of thing, but at last he had reached the heavy doors of the Cheekbane’s office.

The meeting was surprisingly brief. Cheekbane merely had handed him a large envelope with the lable: “минск” and told him to treat the assignent with greatest discretion. Then Cheekbane had told him “Thanks in Advance!”  and “Dismissed.”  Salton felt angry but as a good officer he could sense that there was no room for discussion. He saluted in German style with a sharp “Jawohl!” (due to the bill of unified languages it was legal to use any language of preference in official contexts).

The soldier training programme Salton had followed was one of the best in Europe. Besides some physical exercise which mainly involved riding the bicycle to and from military academy, the courses consisted largely of cultural content, like music, culinary knowledge, foreign languages and some bit of history. The university campus consisted of a triangular shaped patch of lawn. Most of the classes were held outside while having opulent picnicks. The soldier cadets would sit orderly on the blankets provided by the squad leader and eat and drink and chat at the same time in order to practice their abilities to focus on multiple tasks simultaneously.

In the course of this education, Salton had acquired many intercultural skills. Combining those to a whole pattern made him a dangerous fighting expert, especially when operating underground vehicles such as humongous digging machines. While captured deep below in the cockpit of the vibrating giant, the many different thoughts would create a sufficient amount of positive distraction, preventing him from making errors. Occasionally he also listened to Sibelius and other works of great composers.

[to be continued]