‘Preliminary interview, Ibram Gaunt,’ Edur began, and followed that with the date and time. The servitor started to chatter, the little keys tapping the paper, the paper advancing under the platen with a soft ratchet sound. Edur opened the dossier, creased the first page flat with a slide of his hand and read out Gaunt’s service summary, which was also duly recorded by the servitor.
‘Can you confirm those details?’ he asked.
‘I confirm them,’ Gaunt replied.
Edur nodded. ‘You’re the CO of the Tanith First?’
‘That’s correct.’
‘A position you’ve held for twelve years?’
‘Correct, aside from a hiatus period about five years ago.’
Edur turned a couple of pages. ‘That would have been during the… ah… insert mission to Gereon?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that mission was?’
‘A security mission.’
Edur looked up at Gaunt and smiled as if expecting more.
‘And classified,’ said Gaunt.
Edur pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. ‘Your command was restored on your return?’
‘It wasn’t quite as clear-cut as that, but yes.’
‘You’re a colonel-commissar?’
‘Yes.’
‘Split rank. That’s unusual.’
‘It is what it is.’
Edur fixed Gaunt with an amused look again. ‘Did you take the Commissariat’s “Advanced Interview Techniques and Methodology” class?’
‘Is that one of your questions?’ asked Gaunt.
Edur shook his head, still amused by something. ‘No, I just thought I’d ask. I’ve seen less deflection in a sword fight.’ He looked back at the dossier, and turned another page.
‘The Tanith First was retired from the front line two years ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you transitted here to Balhaut for resupply and retraining?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve been here a year?’
‘Yes.’
‘How are you finding it?’
‘Dull,’ said Gaunt.
‘Why?’
‘People keep telling me things I already know.’
Edur laughed. ‘I’m just asking what they’ve told me to ask, Gaunt. It’s a pain in the arse, I know.’
‘Well, let’s get to the part where you tell me why they’ve told you to ask me these questions.’
Edur nodded. ‘We will. You’ve been here a year? Yes, we established that. Anything odd to report in that time?’
Gaunt sat back. ‘What sort of odd?’
Edur shrugged. ‘Odd approaches? Odd contacts? Anybody shadowing you or hanging around Aarlem?’
Gaunt shook his head.
‘Note head-shake,’ Edur told the steno. ‘Nothing strange at all, then? In the last month especially?’
‘No,’ said Gaunt. ‘One way or another, there’s a whole bundle of odd in the Tanith First, but nothing I’m not familiar with.’
Edur pursed his lips again and nodded. ‘All right, Gaunt, here’s what it is. We’ve got a prisoner here. A significant capture, very sensitive. There’s some talk he should have just been executed, but Section believes there’s a potential high value to his intelligence, so they’ve kept him alive. He’s downstairs.’
‘What’s this got to do with me?’
‘We need to get inside his head, and find out what he’s got.’
‘I understand that,’ said Gaunt, ‘but again, what’s this got to do with me?’
‘The prisoner clearly appreciates that the remaining duration of his life, and the comparative quality of that life, will rather depend on how he gives up his secrets. He knows that he will be disposed of the moment we feel he’s exhausted his usefulness.’
‘So he’s not talking?’
‘No, he’s not,’ said Edur.
‘Did you bring me down here just so I could suggest you employ methods of persuasion?’
‘No,’ Edur replied. ‘We’d already thought of that, funnily enough. He’s quite resistant to pain. Our thinking was, we’d try a different approach. Offer him something he wants in return for his submission.’
‘I see. At the risk of sounding like a vox stuck on auto-send, what’s this got to do with me?’
‘Everything, Gaunt,’ said Edur. ‘He wants you.’
SEVEN
Prisoner B
An armoured elevator took them down into the detention level. The cell-block area, heavily guarded, was tiled in white stone, and felt more like the surgical zone of a medicae facility than a prison. Edur took Gaunt to an observation room that looked into a simple tank cell through a murky one-way mirror.
When the sanctioned torturers, their sackcloth hoods tucked into their belts for the time being, led the prisoner into the cell, caged phosphor lights flickered on, and bathed the cell in a sick, green glare. The torturers, burly men with bitter faces, strapped the prisoner onto the single cage chair screwed to the deck in the centre of the cell floor.
‘I don’t know him,’ said Gaunt.
The prisoner was a soldier. Gaunt could tell that from a glance. It wasn’t so much the size of him, which was considerable and heavily muscled, it was his bearing. He was straight-backed and upright. He was somehow noble. He was underweight, and he had evidently suffered physical abuse, but he was not cowed. He held himself the way a soldier holds himself.
The prisoner was dressed in a simple prison-issue tunic and breeches, and he had been given hessian slippers to cover his feet.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Edur.
‘I don’t know him,’ Gaunt repeated.
‘Please, make certain.’
‘Edur, don’t be an idiot. I’d remember a face like that.’
The prisoner’s face and head were not noble. The scalp was shaved, and the flesh was covered with deep ritual scars, old scars, scars that signified the most mortal and bloody pact.
‘He asked for you by name,’ said Edur. ‘He has made it clear that he will speak only to you.’
‘How does he know me?’ asked Gaunt. ‘How does he know I’m here, on this world?’
Edur shrugged. Gaunt could see that Edur was watching him for tell-tale body language, any little slip or give-away. He also knew that just as they were watching the prisoner in the cell, they were in turn being watched.
‘You’re desperate to unlock him,’ Gaunt observed to Edur, ‘and I’m the best hope you’ve got, but you don’t trust me either.’
‘This is a complicated matter,’ Edur replied, his genial tone unable to mask his tension. ‘It’s very sensitive. Objections were raised at the idea of bringing anyone else in. Your clearance is not as high as they would have liked.’
‘My clearance levels have been pitiful since I came back from the Gereon mission,’ replied Gaunt. ‘I imagine your colleagues have reviewed that, and they’ll have read the dossiers compiled on me by Commissar-General Balshin, Commissar Faragut, and a number of other individuals, including a servant of the holy ordos.’
‘I think they probably have,’ agreed Edur.
‘I imagine they don’t present me as an attractive participant in this business, which is why you’ve spent the last week or two vetting me, and why they’re watching us now.’
Gaunt looked up at the ceiling, and ran his gaze along the walls.
‘But, for all that, the Gereon mission is precisely why I’m here, isn’t it?’ he asked.
Edur nodded.
‘This man is connected to Gereon?’
‘Specifically, your mission there,’ said Edur.
Gaunt paused and looked back at the prisoner in the cell. The man wasn’t moving. He was just staring blankly at the mirror wall.
‘He has told us that his name is Mabbon Etogaur,’ said Edur.