Curled up in his basket, his muzzle resting on his paws, Oswald gazed at his master. Almost two days without any food, and God knows how many hours on end without being walked. What was he being punished for? He needed food. He needed water. He needed love. Norman was rummaging in every corner of the kitchen. The more he couldn’t find anything the more agitated he became. His heart was beating as if it had forgotten how to do it. The pills! Fucking hell! He hadn’t taken them. Nothing compared with his mission of unearthing the Pandora’s box of 9/11. Mitral insufficiency had been with him for most of his life but he had always managed to keep it under control with drugs. No big deal. He’ll get them soon. Tomorrow, possibly. Flinging open the last kitchen cabinet, his face contorted: two cans of Mexican beans and an ancient packet of crisps. That’s what you get when you fight for the Truth. Limp crisps and beans! He snatched the packet and tore it open, stuffing the stale, industrially fried slivers of potato into his face[run on], then stormed out of the kitchen and marched into the living-room.

When Oswald saw him waving that packet around his stomach rumbled with hope. That was for him – his master had finally remembered him. The dog gathered all his remaining strength and jumped out of the basket joyously.

Norman saw him coming at the very last moment, and taking that jump as an attempt to snatch his meagre food, shoved him away. Oswald smashed into the floor and urinated. Norman stepped over him, sat down at the table and started to frantically type on his keyboard.

Oswald lay frozen in an expanding puddle of pee, whimpering. He was staring at his master as if waiting for a sign. That it was just a new game. That he still loved him. That their world would go back to how it was before. But there was no sign from his master. Nothing he could pin his hopes on.

He picked himself up and dragged himself into the boxroom. His eyes panned the room from left to right, looking for the right place or the least worse to finish off the job. In a corner there was a big cardboard box. He lifted the lid up with his muzzle, then hopped in. When he had finished, the box was drenched. He couldn’t eat, but he could drink. His slender frame sneaked into the bathroom. He put his head into the toilet bowl and lapped up water until he felt full.

Back in his basket, the awful reality had dawned on him: he would have to survive by himself. So he whimpered and whimpered. And then he whimpered more. He’d have cried if dogs could cry. He’d have shouted his grief, if dogs could shout. His whimpering was low and monotonous, like a sad Mississippi slavery song, and like a slave song, no one heard.

Not Norman, who was switching from one conspiracy theory to the next: the one about the five Mossad agents; the one about the CIA being informed of the attack by Al-Qaeda; the one about the Pearl Harbour connection. When he raised his head from the screen of his laptop, it was 3 a.m.. He hadn’t eaten anything in six hours. A low, prolonged lament was floating around the room. He met the blank and lifeless eyes of Oswald, who was curled up in his basket as if trying to hug himself warm. Norman glanced at his dog as a child would do with a discarded teddy bear. He made himself a pot of coffee and took one of the cans of beans. “Quit whimpering!”, he yelled as he resumed his seat.

His spoon stabbed into the can, a mouthful of beans, and the hunt began again. “Here we go, fuckers!”, he yelled to the world, clicking on a link.

Six a.m. A dark room brightened only by the cold light of a laptop. Norman’s eyes like the surface of an alien planet streaked by blood-red rivers. Ten days into the Task, and he was nowhere. The sudden surge of disappointment quickly turned into a vicious mixture of fear and anger.

After the breakdown of his marriage with the only woman he had ever loved, after the bankruptcy of his company, another failure was looming. Was he bound to fail anytime and anyway? Was his life doomed? His arm smacked the laptop hard, and before he could catch it, it had fallen to the floor. The screen was cracked. ”Jesus!” The screech of the chair as he stood up. Ready to attack some invisible enemy. The system out there. The one that denied Americans and the rest of the world the Truth. The one that denied him the fame and happiness he deserved. That very same enemy was trying to annihilate him, to make him a loser again. Not any more. This time he would give the system out there the middle finger. This time he would.

Putting on a thick sweater and a blue bomber jacket, he left the house with a slam of the door. Oswald started. He barked loudly, angrily, with his last bit of strength, as if he too was confronting an enemy. It seemed that the house was now populated by enemies. But there was no one there to fight . The barking slowly weakened and turned into a howl of pain.