The Maltese Manuscript (LSD, #6)

Extra: Return To Fantasy

Extra: Return To Fantasy

"Don't give up, Malik. That treasure HAS to be there. You just have to look harder. If it was easy, someone else would have found it before you. Take a deep breath and look every way. Try to make a connection, find some piece of the action, like a hungry poet who's close to perfection."

Malik takes a deep breath, but it looks more like a deep sigh: "Profoundly, are you sure? I've searched every cave three times. There's nothing but seashells and sushi down here."

I lift the antique book and show it to Malik, who floats a few metres below me in the blue water of the Blue Lagoon: "You've seen it and I've seen it: this book contains no disclaimer in which the writer declares this story as fiction, as a product of his imagination, so it has to be true. According to the clues in the text, this Treasure Island Mister Stevenson talks about is not in the Caribbean, but in the Mediterranean. It HAS to be Malta, and the only place where this treasure can be hidden is here, in the Blue Lagoon. But after all these years, the secret entrance to the secret cave might have become a little more secret, so you have to look harder."

"Religiously, I believe you, but... Why don't you come into the water and help me with this mission?", Malik says.

"We talked about this, Malik. If you want to be rich and famous, you have to do the work it takes. If I help you, I might find the treasure myself and... I'll be the rich and famous one instead of you. That would be like me, putting my name under a book you wrote. You don't want that. So? I'm already helping you the best way I can: I'm lying in the sun with a drink and a snack, reading the book, trying to find more clues. But you'll have to dive deeper and explore every cave you haven't explored so far."

Malik gives up and dives again.

Rostov has some doubts too: "There still are a few loose ends in this story. You asked me to become Khalid El Bullít, but I still don't know why."

I lie down, close my eyes and explain: "Malik wanted to become a thriller writer. He had an interesting environment: Malta; he had a perfect antagonist: Khalid El Bullít, the number one terrorist in the world; but he had no plot, no hero and a writer's block. He put an ad in Time for Crime Magazine in which he announced his «Noxious Secrets», looking for someone to protect him. #2, The Nerd, picked up the text before it was published, and #1, The Boss, sent me to find those secrets before our compies did. But when I broke into his house, Malik had nothing. He hoped that the hero who'd rescue him would also rescue his story. That I did, and I did a lot more: I made the story such a thriller that even Malik himself started to believe everything that happened around him."

Rostov knows everything about films: "How did you find out where to look? How did you get the clues?"

"We got them from Katie, the Canadian cover artist who made the cover of Malik's bundle «Precious Poetry». When Malik told her about his desire to write action thrillers and the writer's block he suffered, she created several covers and wrote cover texts about mafia boss Toni Peroni, to inspire him. Djemila, Malik's editor, changed Katie's blurbs, adding clues to lead us to the scenes she prepared. Malik's family made copies and spread the flyers 'everywhere', like shareware-writers and freeware-writers do to promote their stories. They were not only picked up by me but also by Maltese citizens and tourists. Now, Katie's stories at Wattpad.com (by @katieishere) have over a million reads, and several professional writers have asked her to make the covers for their novels. A writer needs a team to turn a story into a success story.

» The people we met last week were part of Malik's team: Mariam is Malik's aunt; Dorsa is his niece; Hurricane Mike is Dorsa's father and Malik's brother-in-law. All the others are friends and neighbours who wanted to do Malik a favour and have a good time in a real-world play. Nobody can do anything without the help of others."