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rough in a Canadian forest with a rucksack of supplies and survival goods.
    Marks looked at his compass and peered through the trees. It was a chilly morning but he’d worked up a sweat walking uphill and the backs of his legs ached. He knew he was within a few hundred yards of Horvitz’s camp but he had no way of pinpointing it exactly; every tree seemed just like its neighbour and the view was unchanging no matter which way he looked. He wasn’t lost, because he knew that if he kept going south-east he’d eventually hit the road, but there was a world of difference between not being lost and knowing where you were. Horvitz had told Marks how after being in the jungle for a few days his sense of smell had intensified to the extent where he could smell GIs a mile away and could pick out the individual scents of urine, sweat, tobacco and toothpaste. Marks stopped and sniffed the forest air, taking in small breaths and closing his eyes as he tried to interpret what his nose was telling him. All he could smell was vegetation, smelled it so strongly that it actually seemed to smell green. He tipped his head back and breathed again. Nothing. He opened his eyes and saw Horvitz standing in front of him, an easy smile on his bearded face. It wasn’t the same face that was in the file he’d been given. In the black and white photograph an eager, bright-eyed teenager smiled with perfect teeth into a future that held nothing but promise, he had a slight cleft in his chin, his short, blondish hair was neatly combed back from a high forehead, his skin was smooth and blemish-free: a face that could be found in any one of a thousand high school yearbooks along with the forecast “most likely to succeed” or “most popular”. The face that looked back at Marks was moustached and bearded, the facial hair greying in places and unkempt. The teeth were still white and even but the skin was dry and leathery and the lips had grown thinner and seemed to have a cruel edge to them, even when he smiled. The eyes had lost their sparkle, too. They were cold and distant.
    “Morning, Dick,” said Horvitz in his laconic West Virginian accent. “Long time, no see.”
    “Jesus, Eric. How the hell did you creep up on me like that?”
    “Wasn’t creeping. That’s the way I move.”
    “I didn’t hear a thing.”
    “Next time I’ll cough or something.” Horvitz raised one eyebrow to show that he was joking.
    “Thanks, I’d appreciate it,” said Marks.
    “You eaten?”
    Marks shook his head. “No. Not yet.”
    “I’ve a rabbit stew cooking,” said Horvitz, and turned away.
    He threaded his way through the trees and, as always, Marks marvelled at the way in which Horvitz seemed to glide silently through the undergrowth. He didn’t appear to take special care where he put his feet but he never cracked a twig under his boots and branches, never snagged his clothes the way they seemed to grab hold of Marks. It wasn’t as if Horvitz was a small man, either. He was taller than Marks, and Marks was only half an inch under six feet. Horvitz was lean but not stringy; his figure belonged more to a quarterback than a basketball player, and Marks could see that three years in the wilderness hadn’t hurt him at all. He’d only known Horvitz for about six months, but he doubted that he’d lost weight living rough. If anything it had probably toughened him up. The first time Marks had met Horvitz he’d been surprised by the man’s height because, according to the file, Horvitz had spent nine months on attachment to the Tunnel Rats at Cu Chi, the Vietnamese stronghold which included a network of tunnels which ran all the way from Saigon to the Cambodian border. The Tunnel Rats were as a rule Puerto Ricans or Hispanics – small, wiry men who could move through the narrow, claustrophobic passages as easily as their Vietnamese enemy. Marks couldn’t imagine Horvitz crawling through the tunnels, he seemed too big, his legs would be too long for