They came again about half an hour later. Their approach was rather obvious; one of them broke a twig rather loudly on the approach up the hill. Upon hearing this, I shouted the prerequisite “Apple.”

The only reply was in a language other than English. We sent them running with a spray of lead.

All was quiet for about forty minutes. Dulles, his nerves too frayed for him to go to sleep, simply stood guard, weapon prepared to fire the instant something called for it. Looking at his unmoving form, it seemed as if Dulles the man was gone, replaced by a totally serious and stoic machine.

“Psst,” I whispered. “Dulles.”

He ignored me.

“Dulles.”

“Hmm,” he grunted, refusing to look at me.

It was a rhetorical question, but I asked it anyway. “You OK?”

“Fine” was all he said, “just fine.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “All right, son. Just…” I searched for the correct words. None came.

When they returned, they would have killed us where we sat were it not for the fact that one of them got trigger-happy.