The rubber barons who had destroyed his family and much of the region in the early 20th century had been only the bloodiest in a string of invaders and exploiters going back, he reckoned, to Columbus's time. And their place had now been taken by narcotraficantes, by loggers and miners doing "black" or illegal work while governments did nothing, and even by the tourists who took quick day-trips from the cities, threw their money around and left again, proclaiming that all was well.

He did not include among those the new illness that crept (from Brazil, the government feared), into his home town of Leticia, where Brazil, Peru and Colombia all met on the great river, and where most of the people were indigenous. For a while, infection rates there were Colombia's worst. He caught it at the end of April. But he still had bigger worries. Often he felt like one of those dogs that went on barking, yap! yap! yap! Until everyone was tired of it. He refused to be patted quiet. As he spoke of the dog he writhed and barked, while his blue eyes continued to smile with a wisdom barely known in the wider world, and fast vanishing.

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