The belt snaked down and left another weal across the top of the table. The sweat was bright on his face under the white light, trickling to the edge of his collar. He was following the prescribed routine but he also believed in what he was saying: this was his city, his country, and I was an unknown danger. I could see his point of view.
'Who was this man you were following?'
When I heard that, I didn't believe it.
'Who was he?' His rage was genuine and he couldn't think clearly enough to use subterfuge, yet he couldn't be serious about this. I just didn't believe it.
'Answer me!'
The belt sent a sliver of wood flying from the table. 'I don't know,' I said.
It was the first time I'd spoken and the sound of someone else's voice got through to him and he stood still and stared at me. 'What are you standing like that for?' he asked with suspicion. 'Are you thinking of attacking me?' His wide chest heaved under his uniform as his lungs worked to recover oxygen. 'Do-you-know-what they would do to you for attacking a colonel of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnost? For attacking him physically in his own headquarters? They — would — have — you — shot!'
He was being very Russian. Anyone who can read a newspaper knows that once you're inside the headquarters of the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnost on the wrong end of the banana you're not going to come out looking all that fit. But I wasn't interested in that. I was getting terribly interested in this thing about the man I'd been following, because Vader didn't seem to know his name. Or mine.
It was unbelievable. The first time he'd asked me who I was I knew I'd have to start listening because this was a different approach: they usually want you to feel they know everything about you. What I couldn't believe was that Ignatov had made a phone call in the street and told them to pick me up and they'd done that but they didn't know his name and they didn't know mine.
Something wrong there.
'Of course I'd get shot,' I told him and turned away and folded my arms. 'But what d'you think I'm going to do if you start putting that fucking belt of yours across me — just stand there?'
He dropped it on to the table and started walking from one wall to the other, his square-toed boots landing flat on the floor with no spring in them, his arms held slightly forward like a bear's, as if he were looking for something to break, for some kind of life to crush out. He was my height and heavier and all muscle and he could kill me in an even match but I didn't think it was even because they're exceptionally fussy at Norfolk: they don't send you into the field unless you can take on a tank and get the tracks off without a lot of deep breathing.
'Who were you following?' He swung round, hitting a fist into a palm.
Back on that track.
Fascinating.
'How the hell should I know?' I asked him. 'I was following him to find out who he was!'
'I don't have to accept that!'
You bloody well do.
He started walking again, from wall to wall. He must have seen a lot of this place, look at that table. 'Why did you want to find out who he was? Who put you on to him?'
It was difficult because we didn't really have a topic for conversation. He knew I was some kind of agent because we get to recognize the signs in one another: my behaviour in this room, confined with a KGB colonel who was ready to flay me alive, was totally different from the behaviour of an innocent tourist who'd slipped on the snow and got snatched by mistake because he'd injured his face — youcan't do this to me, I want my lawyer here, I'll have you charged with wrongful arrest, so forth. This man knew I was an agent but as an agent I couldn't tell him anything and he understood that, and he was annoyed because he was trying to build a reputation as a red hot interrogator who could get information out of anyone they sent to him and without having to throw him to the clowns to work over, because that takes a lot of time if you want to go after all the information he's got in his brain: you can't rush things, it's no good just poking a red hot needle into his urethra and saying now talk because he'll either pass out or scream unintelligible things and the most you can do is get one word out of him at a time, one name, one target, one key to one code; you've got to spend days at it, with some of them.
Vader stopped walking and picked up the belt. He'd lost a lot of his colour and the sweat was drying on him and there was foam at the corners of his mouth. 'I will ask you one more time. Who are you?'
'Kapista Kirov. I told you, the computers have gone on the blink.'
It wasn't a lie and it wasn't the truth and he knew that; it was all I was going to tell him, nothing, like saying it looks as if we're going to get some more rain again.
'Very well!' The belt hit the table and the sound went round the walls like an explosion. 'You realize we shall get this information from you in the end, don't you? Of course you do. We shall use every method available to us, every technique, every refinement. We shall show you no mercy. You understand me?'
'Yes.'
'Very well.'
Bring on the clowns.
9: RAINBOWS
The rat sat preening its whiskers.
I watched it.
It sat with its rear paws spread on the ground, their tips visible at the edge of the grey fur body. The front paws worked rhythmically, pulling each fine whisker through the toes from the root to the tip.
It hadn't seen the snake.
I watched the snake. It was rock-still, coiled in a perfect ring with the angular head slightly lifted and pointing in the direction of the rat. The distance between them was about three feet. The snake was large, and I could see that its length was quite sufficient to carry the jaws that far when it struck.
The rat was facing at right-angles to the snake. Its round black eyes reflected the environment in miniature. I think it saw the snake, in terms of light reception by the retinae, but didn't know what it was: the brain interpreted it as a rock formation, or just a pattern of light and shade. Otherwise it wouldn't be sitting there.
I detected movement now in the snake, though it was so slow that it was almost an illusion: the pointed head was drawing back, millimetre by millimetre, across the coils, the neck flexing to keep the head pointing directly at the rat. At the same time the coils were tensing, as the muscular energy gathered and flowed, preparing for the whiplash speed of the strike.
The rat was oblivious of this movement. Once, it turned its head for an instant, but away from the snake, catching some small sound that escaped me. Then it went on preening.
I watched quietly, wondering if — then the snake struck like a whip and the rat -
'Wake up!'
The rat tried to leap but -
'Wake up! Wake up!'
I swung my head up and opened my eyes and called out, 'All right, I'm awake now, why don't you bugger off?'
Blinding light.
'Are you awake?'
'Yes. Bugger off!'
The light was above the door and angled downwards, a flood bulb in it so that there was nowhere in the cell where I could get away from it. The glare hid the small sliding panel immediately below the light, so that I couldn't see him watching me. It was the third time he'd woken me up. Third, or fourth? It didn't matter, but I'd have to start counting things like that because some of them would be important. Call it the third time and start counting from there.