Tales from Éden - Who is Edmundo Montenegro?

Chapter 13- The calling

Four years later...

Taylor stopped in front of the door that led to General Gredenko's office, that morning he had received an urgent call that intrigued him, after all it was not customary to be summoned on his day off.

The initiative's soldiers faced a six-day-a-week routine, where they worked between missions and training for more than twelve hours a day, often arriving at their dormitories just in time to pass out on their beds.

Taylor was already used to the routine, but he remembered how difficult it had been, especially in the beginning, when he arrived in that place, a little foreign and orphan boy of just two years old.

After all these years, he knew very well that the day off was sacred and that only in an extreme situation would someone be summoned at this time.

The young soldier buttoned the last button on his shirt and made sure he was properly presentable, he had always been very careful with these details, one of the few things that always earned him praise from his superiors, they said:

-Look at how presentable Taylor is, why don't you follow his example!

Other times, they shouted indignantly:

- Your shirt is dirty! This is unacceptable! Look at Taylor's always clean and well-ironed uniform, because you can't be like that either!

Taylor, of course, was very happy with the recognition, but this didn't help his relationship with the other recruits, especially the boys, who considered him strange for worrying so much about his appearance.

The soldier didn't care, he liked to always be clean and elegant and in this regard he was unbeatable, the only one who could compare with him was Jennifer, who had always demonstrated an eagerness to please her mentors.

Taylor knocked on the door and waited for the sweet, professional voice of Olga, the general's secretary, to tell him to enter.

After receiving his confirmation, he pushed the door and entered, heading towards the office where a plump, forty-year-old lady was struggling with a stack of papers.

Taylor reached into her blouse pocket where a pansy lay peacefully and picked it up as he looked at the woman in front of him.

She had always been there, as long as he could remember, Gredenko's eternal secretary, Miss Patience and Perfection herself, as her colleagues mocked, the woman who commanded that place with an iron fist, commanded even the general, so people said. , but he doubted that anyone, even Olga, could command Gredenko.

-Good morning, Olga - said Taylor with a smile on her lips and pointing the flower to the secretary, she praised - you look beautiful as always.

She wasn't exactly beautiful, but she had an air of candor and dignity that permeated the air around her, and what's more, she liked to be valued like everyone else. woman, and Taylor knew the power of a well-timed compliment.

Olga stopped what she was doing and holding the flower that the boy offered her, she smiled with delight.

Once, Taylor had found her in front of the garden plucking a small pansy, he found her choice strange since there were an infinite number of more beautiful and exotic flowers in the garden.

Faced with the boy's sincere curiosity, Olga ended up confessing to him that when he was alive, her husband always brought her a flower like that when he returned from missions and that when his longing grew worse, he liked to go to that place to remember it.

From that day on, whenever she came to see Gredenko, Taylor brought her a pansy, and she was moved by her friend's sensitivity.

-Well, it's not my beautiful foreigner! What are you doing here, my dear, isn't today your day off?