Mortal Edge

An unusual partnership was strained to the limits when the man was moved into the barren interior, with a small number of others, to a ramshackle and grossly neglected school building in an abandoned village at a great distance from the city. The woman fought the enemy, suffering physical wounding in his absence. When captured, the enemy put his skills to the opposite purposes that had been intended, compelling him to fight a long-standing ignominy in his mind, variously employing him for wildly different tasks. He encountered a series of chance liaisons with women in bizarre circumstances including the nurse who saved him from typhoid, a woman captive later assassinated, a policewoman killed by a tripwire, a cousin he never knew he had, and the consul of a foreign country. He himself finally fled in propitious circumstances to solve his personal mental problem. After fifteen years of anguish, by a most fortuitous event, he recovered his long-lost partner.