The Constant Gardener

"You're running away, dear boy," Adrian warns severely as the two men untie the peach trees from the truck and cart them to the cantina for Justin to plant later. "Something called duty. Old-fashioned word these days. Longer you put it off, harder it'll be. Go home. They'll welcome you with open arms."

"Why can't we plant them now?" Beth asks.

"Too emotional, darling. Let him do it on his own. God bless you, dear boy. Wavelength. Most important thing in the world."

So what were you? Justin demanded of Tupper as he stared after their departing pickup: a fluke or a conspiracy? Did you jump or were you pushed? Did the smell of blood bring you — or did Pellegrin? At various stages of Tupper's overpublicized life, he had graced the BBC and a vile British newspaper. But he had also worked in the large back rooms of secret Whitehall. Justin remembered Tessa at her naughtiest. "What do you think Adrian does with all the intelligence he doesn't put into his books?"

* * *

He returned to Wanza, only to discover that Tessa's six-page diary of her ward companion's illness petered to an unsatisfying end. Lorbeer and his team visit the ward three more times. Arnold twice challenges them, but Tessa does not hear what is said. It is not Lorbeer but the sexy Slav woman who physically examines Wanza, while Lorbeer and his acolytes look uselessly on. What happens after that happens at night while Tessa is asleep. Tessa wakes, screams and yells but no nurses come. They are too frightened. Only with the greatest difficulty does Tessa find them and force them to admit that Wanza is dead and her baby has gone back to her village.

Replacing the pages among the police papers, Justin once more addressed the computer. He felt bilious. He had drunk too much wine. His trout, which must have escaped the smoker at halftime, sat like rubber in his belly. He dabbed at a few keys, thought of going back to the villa and drinking a liter of mineral water. Suddenly he was staring at the screen in horrified disbelief. He stared away, shook his head to clear it, resumed his staring. He buried his face in his hands to wipe away the fuzziness. But when he looked again the message was still there.

THIS PROGRAM HAS PERFORMED AN ILLEGAL OPERATION.

YOU MAY LOSE ANY UNSAVED DATA IN ALL WINDOWS THAT ARE RUNNING.

And below the death sentence, a row of boxes set out like coffins for a mass funeral: click the one you would most like to be buried in. He hung his hands at his sides, rolled his head around, then with his heels cautiously backed his chair away from the computer.

"Damn you, Tupper!" he whispered. "Damn you, damn you, damn you." But he meant: damn me.

It's something I did, or didn't. I should have put the wretched brute to sleep.

Guido. Get me Guido.

He looked at his watch. School ends in twenty minutes but Guido has refused to be picked up. He prefers to take the school bus like all other normal boys, thank you, and he'll ask the driver to hoot when he drops him at the gates — at which point, Justin is graciously permitted to fetch him in the jeep. There was nothing for it but to wait. If he made a dash to beat the bus, chances were he would reach the school too late and have to dash back. Leaving the computer to sulk he returned to the counting table in an attempt to restore his spirits with the hard paper he so vastly preferred to the screen.

PANA WIRE SERVICE (09-24-97)

In 1995, sub-Saharan Africa had the highest number of new tuberculosis cases of any global region, as well as a high rate of TB and HIV coinfection, according to the World Health Organization…

I knew that already, thank you.

TROPICAL MEGACITIES WILL BE HELLS ON EARTH

As illegal logging, water and land pollution and unbridled oil extraction destroy the Third World's ecosystem, more and more Third World rural communities are forced to migrate to cities in search of work and survival. Experts predict the rise of tens and perhaps hundreds of tropical megacities attracting vast new slum populations of lowest-paid labor, and producing unprecedented rates of killer diseases such as tuberculosis…

He heard the honking of a distant bus.

* * *

"So you screwed up," Guido said with satisfaction, when Justin led him to the scene of the disaster. "Did you go into her mailbox?" He was already tapping the keys.

"Of course not. I wouldn't know how to. What are you doing?"

"Did you add any material and forget to save it?"

"Absolutely no. Neither, nor. I wouldn't."

"Then it's nothing. You didn't lose any," said Guido serenely in his computer interglot, and with a few more gentle taps, nursed the machine back to health. "Can we go on-line now? Please?" he begged.

"Why should we?"

"To get her mail, for Chrissakes! There's hundreds of people out there sent her e-mails every day and you won't read them. What about the people who want to send you their love and sympathy? Don't you want to know what they said? There's e-mails from me in there she never answered! Maybe she never read them!"