Margaret raised her glass. ‘I’ll drink to that. You saved my life tonight, Felipe.’ She took a long drink and felt the bubbles carry the alcohol into her bloodstream, and she sank deeper into the recliner. She closed her eyes and felt as if she were falling backwards through space. She opened them again quickly, afraid she would fall asleep and spill her drink.
‘Goddamn!’ she heard Mendez say. ‘They’re still at it.’
She looked at him, surprised, and saw that he was watching the TV. She glanced toward the screen and saw pictures of soldiers on the ground, carrying M16 automatic rifles. They were looking up as a US Army helicopter passed overhead, the downdraught from its rotors making waves through a tall green crop growing on the hillside. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘CNN are running a feature on this crop-spraying the US Army’s got involved in down in Colombia.’ He fumbled with the remote to turn up the volume.
A spokesman for the Colombian government said it had always been his country’s policy to cooperate with the United States in the war against drugs, but that the spraying of coca crops in the north of the country with the biological agent Fusarium oxysporum did not come within the terms of joint operations agreed by the two countries.
Political rhetoric on both sides of this controversial debate seems more designed to obscure than to clarify. For the Colombian government to admit that the United States has been taking unilateral action would be to play into the hands of its political enemies who claim that they are no more than puppets of the Americans.
‘It’s absolutely intolerable,’ Mendez said. He reduced the volume and turned to Margaret. ‘Do you know anything about this?’
Margaret waved a vague hand in the air. ‘I think maybe I saw something about it in Time magazine a few weeks ago. I didn’t read it, though. What’s the deal?’
‘The US government’s been spraying this Fusarium oxysporum all over parts of Colombia which have been identified as coca growing areas. The idea is to kill the plants where they grow and cut off the cocaine trade at source. It’s pretty much been recognised that we’ve been taking unilateral action without the active consent of the Colombian government. But the Colombians are scared to admit it, because it would mean admitting that they’d effectively lost control of their own country to a foreign power — no matter how friendly.’
Margaret shrugged. It didn’t seem like something she could get worked up about. ‘But if it’s killing off the coca crop, isn’t that a good thing?’
‘If that’s all it was doing, perhaps.’ Mendez took a stiff drink of his Scotch and sat forward, his face a mask of intensity. ‘But the fact is, not only are we spraying this stuff over another sovereign state, we’re doing it without any regard to what this phytopathogenic fungus is doing to the people who live in those areas. It’s insane!’
Margaret repeated the name of the fungus thoughtfully. ‘Fusarium oxysporum. I don’t think I know anything about it, Felipe.’
Mendez shook his head, wrestling to constrain his anger. ‘The government claims that its advisers were told by the scientists that they could develop a safe strain of Fusarium, resistant to mutation and sexual gene exchange. Crap! Fusarium oxysporum is well known to have very active genetic recombination. It is highly susceptible to mutation and chromosome rearrangement, with horizontal gene flow contributing to its variability.’
Margaret laughed. ‘Felipe. I’m not a student of genetics. I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
But Mendez didn’t respond to her amusement. He was too intensely focused. ‘The point is, Margaret,’ he said, ‘There is no way to control gene flow in Fusarium, and that’s what makes it such a successful pathogen. If you drench a geographical area with the stuff, which is what we’re doing, you’re not just going to kill the coca plant, you’re going to infect large numbers of people and animals with some pretty horrific diseases.’
‘God.’ Margaret sat up and took a sip of her vodka. ‘And does the government know about this?’
‘They damn well ought to,’ Mendez said. ‘There’s more than enough evidence out there.’
‘What sort of diseases are we talking about?’
‘Well, in humans with normal immune systems, you can expect widespread skin and nail infections, a pretty nasty respiratory disease, and fungal infection of the liver.’ Mendez took a gulp of his Scotch. ‘In people with underdeveloped or ageing immune systems, i.e., the young and the elderly, it’s known to cause an early ageing disease called Kaschin-Beck. It particularly affects children. But it’ll also affect chickens, rats, monkeys…’ He stood up and went to refill his glass. ‘For Christ’s sake, Margaret, it’s tantamount to waging biological warfare on the people of Colombia. Is it any goddamn wonder that others want to do the same to us?’
He took another large gulp of Scotch, forcing himself to take a deep breath, and then smiled. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s late. You’ve got problems enough of your own. And you’re not interested in all this stuff.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘It’s just one of my hobby-horses. When you’ve got time on your hands, sometimes you let things stew a little too much.’ He pointed the remote at the TV and switched it off again. ‘So,’ he said, returning to his seat and nudging Clara aside with his toe, ‘maybe we should change the subject, and you could tell me about you and your Chinese policeman.’
Margaret looked at him cautiously. ‘You tell me what you already know.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I did a little inquiring in the last twenty-four hours…’
She sighed wearily. ‘Don’t tell me you’re another of those who disapproves of cross-cultural relationships?’
There was sympathy in Mendez’s smile. ‘Hardly, my dear. As a Mexican who married a white, Anglo-Saxon American girl, I lived in one for more than thirty years. So I know what it’s like to have to deal with the unspoken disapproval of both your families, to be aware of the whisperings of colleagues.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It was worse for Catherine, of course. Married to a spic, even one who was now an American citizen. She had to deal with a whole mountain of disapproval.’
Margaret nodded. ‘Yes, the man’s always a lucky dog, the woman a whore.’
‘Ouch,’ Mendez said. ‘I detect some pain in there.’
‘A little bruising, that’s all,’ Margaret said. ‘Li and I…well, let’s just say there was always some impediment to our having a settled relationship.’ She smiled a little bitterly. ‘Usually me.’ And she drained her glass. ‘I met him when I first went to China after Michael…well, after Michael’s death.’
‘I know how Michael died,’ Mendez said quietly after a pause. He was staring into his glass, and then his eyes flickered up to meet hers. ‘I made a point of finding out after we spoke yesterday. I was shocked. Couldn’t believe it at first. It just didn’t seem like the Michael I knew.’
‘I lived with him for seven years,’ Margaret said. ‘Thought I knew everything about him. When I obviously knew nothing about him at all. It makes you feel like such a complete idiot.’
Mendez said, ‘That’s really why I came to see you tonight, my dear. To tell you how sorry I was. About Michael. You must have gone through hell.’
Margaret nodded sadly, memories flooding back, her defences against them always so easily breached. ‘It’s why I went to China in the first place,’ she said. ‘A kind of escape. And Li Yan was just so…different from anything or anyone I’d known before. He helped me get a perspective, rebuild my life.’ She gave a small, despairing shake of her head.