Rain and flakes of snow were falling simultaneously on the foreign soil. The concrete runway, the airport buildings, the soldiers guarding them were all soaking wet. The plain and the surrounding hills were covered in melting snow and the water had made the black asphalt of the road shine. At any other time of year this monotonous rain might have been thought a dismal coincidence. But the general was not really surprised by it. He had come to Albania to search for the remains of his country’s soldiers killed in various parts of Albania during the last world war and to supervise their repatriation. Negotiations between the two governments had begun the spring before, but the final contracts had not been signed until the end of August, just when the first grey days normally put in an appearance. Now it was autumn. And autumn, the general was aware, was the rainy season. Before leaving, he had looked up the country’s climate. This time of year, he had discovered, was usually damp and rainy. But, even if his handbook had told him that the autumns in Albania were ordinarily dry and sunny, he would still not have found this rain untoward. Quite the reverse. He had always felt in fact that his mission somehow required bad weather as a precondition of its success.
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