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not forget… Richard… Garrison…’
    ‘I won’t,’ Koenig whispered. He placed his master’s hand on the bed, released it gently and stood up.
     
    Major John Marchant and Corporal Richard Allan Garrison, both of them immaculate in number two dress uniforms, were met at the airport in Hannover as promised. In fact their reception was better than any promise might have foretold. Certainly better than the Major would or could have expected. Mere Majors were not used to metallic silver Mercedes motorcars awaiting their arrival on the landing strips of large international airports. Nor were they accustomed to the ease—the complete waiver of all normal disembarking procedures, including customs—with which certain persons of more influential orbits come and go in the world of affairs, and which they occasionally employ to make the passage of others easier. Quite simply, Marchant and his blind charge were picked up, driven out of the airport and into the city, and all with never so much as a glimpse of the interior of an airport building.
    Richard Garrison on the other hand was not surprised, and not especially interested. There were a good many other things he should be doing and this to him was all a great waste of time and money. He could understand this man Schroeder’s gratitude, could see how ill at ease the industrialist might feel at his disablement, but what could the man possibly hope to do for him? Did he intend to offer him money? Garrison’s pension (the thought brought a wry smile to his lips: ‘pension’, hah!—to be pensioned off at his age!) and compensation would make him relatively independent. Financially at least. And then there would be supplementary grants from at least three Army funds. No, money would not be a major problem.
    Getting to grips with his blindness, however… now that would be quite another matter. And he did not want to be—would not allow himself to become—a burden to anyone. People had their own problems and solved them as best they might. Garrison had long ago decided that he must solve his own. So what exactly did this Thomas Schroeder hope to do for him?
    ‘Possibly,’ the Major had hazarded aboard the plane, ‘he wishes to thank you personally, and in some more or less concrete manner. I believe he’s a rich man. Now I understand you’re well satisfied with what you’ve already got out of all .this,’ (he had silently cursed himself for an unfortunate choice of words) ‘but in the event he should offer you money, it would certainly not be in your best interests to refuse him.’
    ‘It would make more sense and be a better deal if he offered me a job,’ Garrison had answered. ‘One I can handle without eyes.’
    ‘You’re a strange man,’ the Major had commented, frowning. ‘You hardly seem to miss your sight. I mean—’ He paused.
    ‘I know what you mean.’
    ‘I don’t think you do. I meant simply that I know a lot of much harder men who would have broken up—or broken down—if they’d suffered your loss.’
    ‘How do you know they’re harder?’ Garrison had asked. ‘And do you mean hard or hardened? Let me tell you what hard is. Hard is being seven years old and seeing your Mom and Dad falling out of love. It’s being brought up by an uncle who strangles your kitten as a punishment for shitting yourself with diarrhoea when you get caught short. It’s being fifteen and mad in love for the first time, and finding your girl on the beach with a friend who happens to be screwing her arse off. And it’s a hell of a lot of other things in between. These are the things I call, or used to call, hard: things that happen to you when you’re not really to blame. Things that hit you out of the blue, when you’re least expecting them and can’t fight them. And each bit of hard adds a thin layer to your skin, until you’ve a hide like an elephant.’
    ‘Your life?’ the Major had asked.
    ‘Some of it,’ a curt nod. ‘There were other things,