He stared out of the window at the rain, which had been falling incessantly all morning and showed no sign of relenting any time soon, and wished fervently that he was somewhere else. The weather had been much the same since they landed and he had yet to find anywhere decent to eat in this miserable excuse for a town.He left the window and moved further into the hotel’s spacious lobby, taking a seat at an empty table that was still in sight of the main door. After brief indecision he placed an order via the table tender; opting for a white wine – both label and grape variety were unfamiliar to him, but the menu promised a wine ‘crisp and dry with light citrus overtones’. The ‘citrus’ gave slight cause for concern – it was so often code for ‘overly acidic’ – but nothing else on offer appealed to him.De Souza never had been the most patient of men. It was a failing, one that he recognised and had learned to accommodate in the course of his life. In fact, his tolerance of fools and their incompetence seemed to lessen with each passing year.
