He took a wad of dollars from his back pocket and pressed it into her hand. “They’ll take dollars,” he said. “They always take dollars.” He gazed beyond her across the desolate wastes of Mongolia. “It’s only a few miles to Dzamin Uüd. Will you manage on your own?” She took the dollars without surprise and nodded. She had known he would not go to Ulaanbaatar with her. She had seen it in his eyes, had felt it in his touch. And she knew why. She understood. In his place she would have done the same.

“I’ll always love you,” she said.

He could not meet her eye. How could he make her understand how hard this was for him? He took both her hands and forced himself to look at her. “Even if they find a cure, what kind of existence would it be, living out my life in some foreign place, a fugitive from my own people?”

“I know,” she said.

He searched her eyes for understanding and saw only the reflection of his own pain.

“I’ve got to go back, to clear my name, to wipe away the lies. Would they ever believe me if I didn’t?”

“I know.”

“I owe it to my uncle. I owe it to myself.” He knew it meant losing her. And that was the hardest thing he had ever had to do in his life. “Margaret . . .”

“Just go,” she said, and she bit her lip to stop the tears.

They stood for a moment in silence, the wind tugging at their clothes, her hair flying out behind her, shining golden in the sun like a flag of freedom. He stooped to kiss her and they embraced, and clung to one another for a long time. Finally they broke apart, a little at a time, as if breaking the bond of a glue that held them. He turned without another word and started walking back towards the road through grass that ebbed and flowed like water on the shore. In the far distance he could see the black dots of the pick-up truck and the Mercedes where they had left them, the only break on a horizon that cut low across the immensity of blue overhead. His friend and his enemy lay dead there. His love lay behind him. Ahead of him, only uncertainty.