Archie thought, I have just been present at a moment which may have decided the fate of western civilization. His heart gave a lurch. He had always wanted to be at the centre of things—to be in on the making of history. But he had never imagined that it would be like this: a matter of a brief exchange between two men on a path through a Russian forest, with the sky now threatening rain, and the smell of the spruce, that green smell, as he thought of it, mingling with the wisp of cigar smoke from a newly lit cigar; while elsewhere, altogether elsewhere, men fought and died over tracts of land,
...more
