At Close Quarters by Eugenio Fuentes Page B

had helped in Bosnia and Afghanistan to keep people from killing each other. Olmedo, and others like him, following the directives from the civilian government in Madrid, hope to create an army that’s mainly a peace corps, which is a contradiction in terms,’ he explained, raising his eyebrows in bewilderment, as if he couldn’t believe that something so simple was so hard to understand. However, the next moment he tempered his words. ‘In any case, they want a small, versatile army, trained to fight outside Europe, as if war could never again break out in this continent. I frequently heard him say that, in an armed conflict, victory no longer depends on having a greater number of soldiers and how well they adapt to the climate and the scene, but on better technology, more digital screens and men who are half soldier and half computer.’
    ‘And isn’t that the case?’
    ‘No, not really. Technology wins wars, but it doesn’t maintain peace,’ he explained with slight irritation. ‘The faster and bigger the capacity of an army to obliterate an enemy’s war structures,the more difficult the post-war period will be, because the teams of enemy experts will not have been touched.’
    ‘As in Iraq,’ said Cupido.
    ‘As in Iraq,’ he echoed. ‘To control a defeated enemy you always need additional troops. And not fewer of them! That’s what Olmedo refused to accept.’
    ‘And do you think those arguments may have triggered a crisis that led him to kill himself.’
    ‘Trigger? I don’t think so. But perhaps it added to his confusion. I don’t know, and nobody can know, what went through his mind after he left the base once the meeting was over. But he surely was aware that he’d affected some officers’ lives. And then, Olmedo had lived alone since the absurd death of his wife, and lonely people sometimes react in strange, extreme ways, which others may find puzzling.’
    The detective passed over this last comment – he himself lived alone and didn’t feel he fitted that category – and said:
    ‘You mentioned officers whose lives might be affected.’
    The old colonel’s eyes turned to look at him with a brief glint of suspicion, and then he raised one eyebrow. Cupido remembered something he’d heard in the military service. They said that that little expression, which occurred in tense or upsetting conversations, gave away a real soldier, one who was so used to taking aim that the grimace became second nature.
    ‘I never cease to be amazed by the false ideas civilians have of the army. In moments of conflict, a soldier might become a hero, but the rest of the time we’re only civil servants. Perhaps a bit special because of the nature of our job, but civil servants nonetheless, who are used to the monotonous succession of three-year posts, the slow climb up the hierarchy, the fear of being posted far away or somewhere unpleasant. How could there not be affected colleagues?’
    ‘Bramante, Ucha?’ said Cupido, repeating the surnames Marina had mentioned, and whose first names and rank he did not know. The colonel raised his right eyebrow slightly once again, as if he was surprised that the detective was in possession of that information.
    ‘There wasn’t a unanimous consensus,’ said the colonel dodging the question, and he turned around to look out of the window. But then, like the athlete who thinks he’s left his rival far behind but a few minutes later hears someone’s breathing at his back, he turned to reply with annoyance at the detective’s stubborn remark. ‘That’s why, when Olmedo left, the idea emerged of calling a meeting for everyone concerned, in order to adopt a common stance in the face of what we thought was the inevitable closure of the base.’
    ‘At what time?’
    ‘Eight o’clock. The meeting carried on till ten,’ he specified, while Cupido wondered why he was giving him such precise information, leading him to another question.
    ‘Did everyone turn up?’
    ‘No,