Fate
Although Willie Garvin continued to appear in the Modesty Blaise comic strip until O'Donnell retired in 2002 (actually he retired in 2001, but a book-length strip based upon one of his short stories subsequently appeared in a Scandinavian publication the next year), chronologically his final appearance comes in the closing story of the 1996 short story collection Cobra Trap. (This last story is also called "Cobra Trap," like the book.)
The story takes place a number of years into the future, with Modesty in her early fifties and Willie approximately 60 years of age. During a caper to protect a trainload of innocent people, including some children, from a group of rebels, Modesty suddenly kisses Willie romantically (for the first and only time) and reveals to him that she is dying of a brain tumor. She orders Willie to leave with the train, allowing her to die alone in battle against the rebels. Before he can react, Modesty is shot dead, and moments later, in a mortar attack, Willie's ankle is broken. Willie buries Modesty and then moves off slowly, hoping to escape through the jungle, but then Willie is also shot dead. As the story ends, O'Donnell describes Willie meeting Modesty in an ethereal environment, some kind of afterlife.
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Famous quotes containing the word fate:
“And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For after all man knows mighty little, and may some day learn enough of his own ignorance to fall down again and pray. Not that I care. Only, if such is God’s will, and Fate and Evolution—let there be God!”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Slowly ... the truth is dawning upon women, and still more slowly upon men, that woman is no stepchild of nature, no Cinderella of fate to be dowered only by fairies and the Prince; but that for her and in her, as truly as for and in man, life has wrought its great experiences, its master attainments, its supreme human revelations of the stuff of which worlds are made.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)