“He and his colleagues didn’t contract malaria, then?”
“No.”
Harken pursed his lips. “Strange how selective this outbreak was.”
I smiled. “You can’t second guess mosquitoes.”
“Of course not. They were just unlucky.”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “Just unlucky.”
“Well, with the Vlasovs gone, I suppose it’s the end of the counterfeit drug racket.”
“That particular one, yes. There’ll be others, of course. And the resistant organisms will be around until the pharmas can put out something new that’ll deal with them. Then we’ll be on top of it again – for a while.”
He rested his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers.
“So, Jim, are you prepared to draw a line under this business now?”
“I reckon so.”
Again that sardonic expression. “That’s good. We wouldn’t want anyone else to be unlucky, would we?”
40
I walked along the line of fresh graves, eleven of them: all the members of the team who’d died on that Colombian mission. Fergy, Tyler, Gordy… everyone except David van der Loos, who was buried in the family cemetery, not here in Arlington. As I stood in front of each one in turn I felt loss but I no longer felt shame. I’d made a promise to them and their families, and I’d kept it to the best of my ability.
Somewhere behind me a muffled drum beat sounded a slow, regular pulse. A faint clink of harness, the creak of wheels. Another funeral procession.
I let the solemn rhythm guide my steps to another, more recent grave.
It was just a white head stone with a simple inscription, like the thousands of others that stretched away from here in every direction. In life she’d been unique and it was hard to think of her lying here, a small element in a gigantic matrix of death. I laid a single red rose on her resting-place and stepped back.
The drum beat had stopped.
I’d been discouraged from attending her funeral but in my mind’s eye I could see the coffin draped in the Stars and Stripes, the bearers folding the flag and presenting it to her grieving family, the coffin being lowered into the ground.
In the distance a single bugler sounded taps.
An unbearable feeling of sadness spread through me. We’d known each other just a few weeks, yet it seemed like a chunk of my own life had gone to the grave with her. I knew she couldn’t hear me but perhaps I could reach out to her just the same.
“We nailed them, Abby. We got the sorry bastards and ended their lousy racket. You wanted to make a difference. Well, we did. But you should have lived to see it. You should have…”
My eyes filled and I had to turn away.
I blinked hard and straightened up. Nearby, a group of cherry trees was in bloom, a cotton-cloud of pink blossom floating above the grass.
Nothing lasts for ever, not love, nor happiness, nor life itself. Abby would lie here in peace and silence and gradually my memories would become less acute. I’d forget the thrill of those glacier-blue eyes, the warmth of her lips, the enveloping softness of her body. But I’d be the poorer for it.
Buried here were the dead of many wars. This one, every bit as deadly as the others, would go on. It wasn’t my war, not any more.
I was a soldier, and there’d be other battles to fight.
* * *
[1] For Jim Slater’s story, see ‘The Domino Man’ by this author
Counterfeit (The Jim Slater series Book 2) Page 26