Eric McCormack - Cloud

But no, attached to a big iron gate in the fence was a sign:

FEDERAL INSTITUTE 77

NO TRESPASSING

That was the name and number Dupont had told me to remember in case I got lost. I couldn’t see any bell, so I tried twisting the handle of the gate. Immediately, the door of the nearest hut opened. A young man in a soldier’s uniform accompanied by an elderly man in a white labcoat came down a cinder pathway towards me. The soldier unlocked the gate and motioned me in. The other man, who wore narrow sunglasses, held out his hand to me.

“Harry,” he said. “How good to see you again.”

It was Dr. Dupont.

I’d never have known him, he looked so much older and thinner. His hair was short and grey and he was clean-shaven— the twin beards I always associated with him in my memory were gone. With his white labcoat and striped tie, he looked the epitome of a government scientist. Then he took off his sunglasses and I recognized those green eyes with their amused gleam.

THE SOLDIER GOT my bag out of the car and we walked over to the hut they’d come from. Going into it was like entering a huge barrel that had been cut down the middle and was lying on its side. The hut contained several well-worn tables and a hatch opening into a kitchen. Apparently this was both meeting place and dining room for the institute, but it wasn’t busy, since this was a weekend.

Dupont and I sat at a table and were soon drinking strong coffee and talking, quite at ease, as though decades hadn’t passed. I told him in more detail now about my experiences after our parting in Africa. How I’d sailed across the Atlantic, tutored in South America, met Gordon Smith of Smith’s Pumps, eventually married his daughter Alicia, and together we had a son. Sadly, Alicia had died last year.

Dupont listened quietly, nodding at appropriate moments.

Then I asked him about his own last days in Africa. I remembered only too well my final glimpse of him and Clara from the window of the plane.

“I remember that, too,” he said. “We envied you flying away from it all, but we had to wrap up things at the hospital. Then, the day before the rebels were to arrive, we managed to find places on a truck headed for the coast. We were afraid they’d come after us and I was determined we wouldn’t be captured. I didn’t tell Clara, but I brought along two cyanide pills for us to take, just in case. You saw the kinds of things they did to anyone they caught.

“The roads were worse than usual, and it was such a slow journey that the truck had to stop overnight and park amongst some trees for camouflage. Clara and I slept in the truck bed. Just before dawn, a snake of some kind dropped from a branch overhead and bit her. The venom spread all through her body in minutes. I’d never seen anything like it. After an hour, she was half paralyzed and could hardly breathe. I just watched her swell up and die in agony.

“I had those cyanide pills, and could have given her one to put her out of her misery. If she’d been a stranger I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But because I loved her, I kept waiting and hoping.”

I could see the pain in Dupont’s eyes.

“It was selfishness on my part to let her die that way,” he said.

“I’ve never been able to forgive myself for that.”

To comfort him I suggested that what he’d done was quite understandable, but he obviously didn’t agree.

AFTER A WHILE, he began telling me about the work he’d gone on to do in various other parts of the world, some of them also dangerous. Eventually, age took its toll and he was no longer able to put up with the rigours of such a life. He looked for something a little safer, but still challenging, and was offered this position as director of Institute 77. It called on his anthropological as much as his surgical expertise.

“When I say the job here’s safer, I mean in a relative way. It has its risks, too — but mainly for my patients,” he said.

He looked at his watch: we’d been talking for more than an hour.

“Time to go.” He stood up. “I’ll show you where your room is, then we’ll head for Waterville. It’s a town about an hour’s drive from here. That friend I told you about — the one who knows Duncairn — will be joining us there for dinner.”

SEVERAL OF THE HUTS served as shared living quarters for the staff of the institute. Dupont, being director of surgery, had an entire hut to himself. It had a fairly large living room with a carpeted floor and comfortable couches and chairs.

When we first went in, a white cat with enormous green eyes jumped from a couch where it had been sleeping and ran towards Dupont with little excited squeals. It leapt onto his shoulder, purring noisily and rubbing itself against his face. He stroked its coat in return. His affection for animals was one of the things I’d liked about him.

Now this white cat, from its lofty perch on his shoulder, was examining me with a superior air.

“She’s called Prissy,” Dupont said. “She makes sure mice don’t get to be too much of a pest, at least inside this hut. The whole institute’s full of them, especially when winter comes.”

With the cat still on his shoulder, he showed me where the bedrooms were at the back of the living area. The guest bedroom where I would stay for the night was plainly furnished with an iron bedstead and a deal table with a lamp. A private bathroom was attached.

I took the opportunity to wash my face and put on a fresh shirt. By the time I’d rejoined Dupont in the living room, he’d exchanged his labcoat for a regular suit jacket. Prissy had settled down again on the couch.

“I need to look in on my patient before we head for Waterville,” he said. “It’ll only take a few minutes. Would you like to come with me? You might find it interesting.”

We passed several huts, some of them with pathways full of weeds.

“These huts haven’t been used since the last days of the war, when this place was an active military base,” Dupont said.

The next building was a modern-looking brick structure with an air-conditioning system rumbling by its side wall. I assumed we were headed in there.

“No,” said Dupont. “That’s our operating theatre. It’s very up to date, but it’s not what I want you to see.”

Our destination turned out to be another of those army huts, one that looked proportionately much larger than any of the others we’d passed and was in better condition on the outside. The paint on the gables was fresh and the corrugated roof seemed to have been de-rusted recently. Glistening black iron bars protected all the windows.

“This is the recovery room,” said Dupont. “There’s always a guard on duty.”

He knocked on the door and we heard the sound of bolts sliding. A thick-set soldier with an ammunition belt and a hand gun in a holster opened the door.

“Come on in, Doctor,” he said.

“I have a guest, too,” said Dupont.

The soldier gave me a quick look-over.

“No problem,” he said. He let us in and bolted the door behind us.

A corridor ran all along the left side of the hut, narrowed a little because of the rounded roof. The soldier led us down past a number of doors on the right. The last had a peephole in it. He stopped there and used a key to turn the lock, but didn’t open the door. He stepped to one side and stood with his arms folded.

Dupont looked through the peephole in the door, knocked softly, and listened. No sound came from inside. He turned the door handle and motioned to me to follow him into the room. The soldier shut the door behind us.

Dupont and I were alone in a spacious room whose walls were painted a light blue. A faint odour, perhaps of ammonia, permeated the air. The only sound came from some flies loudly buzzing at the barred window in one corner, above a sink and toilet. An unmade bed, a chair, and a desk were the sole furniture. The floor was littered with newspapers.