India

Tierra de Fuego

"Don't overdo it on the spices, OK?"

John had arrived recently from India and was adding all sorts of spices to his cooking spree, most of them turning his dishes into fire hazards.

His friends only fell for it... twice. Then they arranged for a rotation system to be put in place where each would be the weekly assigned victim.

John never suspected of the sudden busy agendas of his friends. He never even noticed how regularly each went over to his place for dinner and how they'd rotate, always in the same order, between them.

He was so enthusiastic about his new hobby that he had big plans to open a restaurant, to publish a cooking book, to get a Michelin star, to have his own TV show (the star coming up in the list before the TV show, for some reason; apparently he thought it would be easier to get the star than the TV show).

"You'll set the country on fire," said one of his friends.

But he laughed the comment away and proceeded to strive in his intents. He didn't give up, not even after twenty people were taken to the hospital with severe gastrointestinal problems and burns in their mouths from a highly secret combination of obscure spices used in his restaurant.

The end result of this fiery adventure takes us, many decades later, back to India where our cook took refuge when he realized his secret combination of spices had been fine tuned into a highly toxic poison used by secret services all over the world in a silent, invisible and spicy war against one another.