After another sleepless night spent at Maison les Cas, the morning coffee put me on my feet, but its taste seemed different than the usual one. I couldn’t sleep and had smoked too many cigarettes. I appeared to be unable to sleep well anymore. I looked in the mirror, taking a deep breath, and with trained persuasion I recited before my own reflection: I would do it the way I was supposed to and I would come back. I was being tormented by contradictory emotions: curiosity, fear, commitment, ambition and, at the same time, serenity and joy. Just remember to stick to your plan and know the answer to every question. The hours of training had paid off. Indeed: perfection, performance, organisation, the knowledge and skill that Jean had been teaching to me for years. He had spotted me in the crowd at the Palasis de Papes in Avignon during a theatre festival.
    We began to talk and that’s how it started. Then he trained me. At the same time I was studying and I worked on the assigned rescue missions around the world. The perfectly mastered time management was something I’d learnt to live with. It was something acquired. Some said that this attitude was synonymous with a neurosis… to hell with those short-term plans. I put my last meticulously prepared notes in the bag and then put on comfortable shoes. It was in the middle of the night and the house was quiet. I kissed the sleeping family, whispering quietly – see you soon, and I went out. The car was waiting. Having left behind the awareness of what was awaiting me, of all the things and even of the very essence of myself, I closed the door.
    It is interesting that we sometimes travel to faraway places in order to find what we have been looking for and to find the answer to questions that we didn’t even know existed.
    Claude’s familiar face was grinning behind the window.
    “Good morning, Monon! How much time do we have to arrive at Charles De Gaulle Airport? Will you explain to me one day why you keep disappearing like this?”
    “Dear Claude – of course I will, provided that you do the same. Only then could I promise I will explain it to you and we might as well talk the whole night away. But now, pedal to the metal – let’s go!”
    I loved driving along the empty streets of Paris in the wee small hours and exceeding all sorts of speed limits. Funnily enough, Highway to hell was on the radio.
    “Slow down, Claude! You’re way out of line!”
    “It’s for you. I care about you!”
    I couldn’t help loving that half-sly, half-mischievous grin of his. He knew me well and seemed to know what it was I was short of. He’d always been like that.
    Back at the university we would hang around along the streets of Paris for hours, visiting galleries and attending concerts, envisioning our far-reaching plans and careers. Etudes, scripts, sketches and unfinished canvasses we experienced together. “You will always be running away from someone or something, but you will never escape from yourself,” he had told me once. He lived in an abandoned flat, while I stayed in extremely comfortable residences. It was his own choice. He would disappear for some time, going on that he was just sick and tired of Paris and how he was sick and tired of everything. Then he would just leave. But after some time he would simply come back out of the blue with a solemn announcement. “I’m back”.
    His world? At the moment he was an acclaimed director who happened to be successful as well. But still, he was trying to talk me into going back, since he knew how much I used to love to get carried away by the Bohemian lifestyle.
    Yes, I did that with pleasure, but the problem was that the most difficult scenarios were those which I had to deal with in my real life. If only he knew…Hard to believe, but in spite of all those years I didn’t really know anything about him at all.
    It was a peculiar friendship, but its beauty was in the fact we would go through hell and high water for each other. It seemed not up to us. He was my best friend that I couldn’t be fully honest with. But we could have a good laugh, though. Well, he was also the only driver I could trust.
    What was I thinking about at the moment? The truth was that I couldn’t focus at all. Before every action there was a moment of clarity in which my mind was just turned off. We arrived and got out of the car.
    “Come back soon.” I miss you already!
    “Yes, Claude. I’ll come back.” I had to say those words out loud – it was a ritual of ours. “I’ll come back and seize my day!”
    Two, Tree, and Five were waiting in the hall. Four was not there yet… Paul had been fooling around as usual and was going to turn up just in the nick of time. The day before he was at Maison les Cas too… Adam was giving out doughnuts. We were going to get some coffee together. The plane was due to leave in an hour, but Paul still hadn’t arrived and hadn’t been returning our phone calls. Would we need to reorganize the flight?
    “Lauren, have you got the camera?” I asked anxiously. “You’re working with me, then.”
    “We change planes at Thessaloniki and then fly to Tripoli. Massimo is already awaiting you,” announced Adam.
    Massimo was our guardian angel and an interpreter at the same time. We were supposed to collect materials and go back.
    “Monon, your job is to keep us posted.”
    I checked my phone, everybody’s names had been entered, reported at the headquarters and at Jean’s. It seemed to me that Paul suspected I showed certain overzealousness when it came to trips – I had to be more careful in that case. One – Monon, Two – Bastien, Three – Laurent, Four – Paul, Five – Michael. We were getting ready for the departure.
    It came as no surprise that I had too much luggage, so I was moving some of it to the suitcases belonging to my numerals. I had to admit I’d never been able to take control over my own luggage since everything seemed to come in handy for me. Paul arrived at the last moment. I was trying to focus, but I was far too furious with him…
    “Paul, could you possibly explain why you are always late while I seem to be on time with no exceptions?”
    “Monon, oh, I’m sorry!”
    “All right, it’s so you, Paul. Now, listen carefully. Now that the Libyan parliament has introduced sharia law, you’ll have to pretend to be my husband. Firstly, your job is to document this story properly. We’re collecting data on the stabilisation progress while the new state is emerging.”
    “Sure thing, don’t worry!”
    Above all, my task was to confirm Victoria’s whereabouts and to find out what her aims were. She’d recently been seen in Benghazi and that was where I was supposed to find her in the end. From the moment of our arrival at Tripoli on, my name was to be Miriam. I had earplugs on and I was listening to the details about the lost girl. She had joined the General National Congress. Her family had been begging the police to locate her and bring her home. The story seemed trivial and ordinary, but it was to turn out to be quite unique.
    In Algeria she had met Roomi, got married and having ignored all the warning signs, she had brought him to France. She paid for the ticket and the rest. In turn, he stole everything from her, beat her up, threatened to kill her and finally abandoned her. Shortly after this, she’d disappeared. The police had been looking for her with no success. If her name hadn’t been mentioned by a Czech correspondent in his conversation with Jean, we wouldn’t even know that she was still alive somewhere in Libya. The case would have been closed.
    “Who are you, Victoria? I will find you!” I thought to myself.