'I'm afraid I rather lost my temper,' Colonel Vader said. 'I do hope you'll forgive me.' He paused but I didn't say anything. 'We people have too lively a sense of the dramatic, perhaps, make a lot of noise — ' with a rueful laugh — 'let off a lot of steam, m'm? Look at our music, look at our grand opera, you see what I mean?'
He stepped rhythmically from wall to wall, declining to sit down, since I wouldn't. He had manners, give him that. I began pacing too, for the exercise and because it would express freedom of movement; but I went from left to right, while he went from right to left: it would look ridiculous if both of us went the same way.
'Prince Igor,' I said. 'Always admired it. Lot of fire.'
'That's exactly what I mean!' he said in relief, and turned to me with a laugh of understanding. 'As a matter of fact I don't remember much about what I said to you, and all I hope is that it was nothing too offensive.' He spread his hand again: 'Put it down to an unseemly outburst of Russian temperament, m'm?'
As if speaking to a non-Russian. Noted.
'Bit hard on the table,' I said and he laughed boyishly, deep from the chest. We went on walking, like two prisoners in an exercise yard, talking to each other across an invisible wall. He walked neatly with his hands folded behind his back and his polished boots clumping down solidly on the parquet floor, heel and toe together.
'It's difficult for you,' he said, and stopped suddenly, swinging the chair on his side halfway round and resting one boot on it, facing me with his intelligent amber eyes. 'And quite frankly, you know, it's difficult for me too.'
I went on walking, but turned to look at him from time to time. He was being quite civilized, and that quiet murderous rage I'd felt in the detention cell had evaporated.
'Why don't you make it easier?' I asked him, not meaning to be funny. A full colonel must carry quite a bit of clout in this place.
'My dear fellow, I only wish I could. I say that quite sincerely.' He'd lowered his voice, and I had to stop walking to listen. I had the strange urge to swing my chair halfway round and rest one foot on it, but that too would be ridiculous, as if there were only one of us here, and a mirror. 'The problem,' he said quietly, 'is that I would need your co-operation. And you're proving — how shall I put it? — rather hesitant.'
I compromised and swung the chair round and sat on it with my arms folded along its back, so that I could face him. His smile was tentative as he waited for me to comment on that, and his expression was perfectly genuine. It occurred to me that if I admitted what he already suspected — that I was in fact from London, he might reciprocate by you're falling asleep, you're not thinking straight, he's not perfectly genuine and he's not being civilized and he doesn't have any manners and if you admit you're from London you're right in the shit so start waking up.
He'd begun to blur in front of me, swaying back and then forward. I got into focus again and he stopped. This was one of the classic techniques: interrogation sessions alternating between friendliness and hostility to get you so confused you started blurting things out. And you always believe it'll never work because you're too bloody smart.
'That,' he said with quiet charm, 'is the problem.'
'Problem?'
'We would require your co-operation, if we were to make things easier for you.' He stood away from the chair and took a pace or two, deliberating, coming back. 'If you could overcome your hesitation, you see, we might arrange something to our mutual advantage.' Another rueful laugh: 'I'm sorry to have to beat about the bush like this, but I can't trust you until you trust me.' He sat on the chair backwards, just as I was sitting, as if in sympathy.
Not in sympathy.
'Arrangement?' I asked him.
Kept having to refocus.
'Yes.' His honey-coloured eyes played directly on to my own for a moment as he deliberated again. 'You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take a risk, to show we can be just as sincere as I know you would really like to be. I'm going to trust you.' He sat back a little, regarding me with open candour. 'Now how does that sound?'
I allowed an appropriate period of hesitation before I spoke.
'Generous.'
He sat back and slapped his big square hands together, pleased as a boy. 'I'm delighted you think so, I really am delighted. Yes, I'm being generous, I freely admit it.' With his head tilted slightly, as if he'd suddenly seen me in a new light: 'You know, I was certain we'd find a way of putting our heads together, if we tried. Now this arrangement…' he hesitated a fraction, then went on, 'I'm going to put it to you quite frankly. There's someone we want to find, very badly, and if you were able to tell us where he is, we'd bring him in and exchange him for you. We'd let you go.' He leaned forward confidentially. 'His name is Schrenk.'
I tilted my chair back, watching him. He was waiting for me to say something, but I didn't want to commit myself without thinking it over, and he got impatient and stood up and whirled his saber — 'Slovo o polku Igoreve! You said you always admired it, remember?' He threw out his chest and began singing, his voice -
'Wake up! Wake up!'
I jerked my head back.
'Sorry.'
Blinding light.
'You must stay awake. '
'Yes. I'll do that.'
I sat straighter on the stool and let my head go back against the wall. He knew what I was doing, but it was all right because I had to keep my eyes open, so he'd know if I dozed off again. With my head back, the light was fierce, a burning disc that wavered at the rim, as if I were staring into the sun; but at the same time I could slip into a kind of half-sleep, somewhere between the alpha and theta waves, without losing too much awareness. They'd let me take off my jacket, and I was sitting with my arms resting on my thighs, with the sweat trickling down to the elbows: I was soaked with it, because of the lamp's heat and the stress going on in the organism. My head was a ball floating in the sea of light, drifting and bobbing, with the images going on inside it.
His name is Schrenk. That threw me, yes. Threw me completely. So they hadn't got him. So where was he? I think it was okay, the way I reacted, I mean by not reacting. Shook my head, don't know him. But threw me, really. Bracken ought to know. Vader, old boy, mind if I use your blower?
No idea of what time now, day, night, anything. Maybe night now, it seemed worse, diurnal rhythms very slow, cortical vigilance down, way down, down -
'Wake up! Wake up!'
Shouting in the glare.
`Sorry. Wake now.'
Reticular formation lagging, yes, the process thoroughly understood, tell you everything you need to know at Norfolk, bloody place, wish I, was wish I, was there. Dogs barking somewhere, hate those bloody things. I'd begun hearing them same time when I'd seen the fish swimming in the light, all colours of rainbow, swimming round and round and round and -
'Wake up! Wake up!'
Oh shit.
I straightened up again and felt for the wall with the back of my head and then took it off again because I had to do some thinking. I was leaving it late now. I knew they'd got me. They were going to trot me along to Vader again and I wouldn't be able to take any more, I'd just go to sleep and they'd keep on waking me up and finally they'd bring on the clowns and I'd start talking without even knowing what I was doing, blow London, no go.
Capsule.
But that was down the drain so I'd have to do it the other way, bite through the median cubital artery and wait sixty seconds, finis, Lorenz had done it in Chile when the terror squads had strung him upside down from a swing in a children's playground, he didn't want to play any more, messy but then he wasn't going to have to clear it up, finito. One little problem though: they never left me alone. Even when I asked for the lav they stood there with the door open in case I shoved my head in. Never left me alone. Watching me now, man up there with his eyes in the hole behind the hot bright light, bastards, lea' me alone, lea' me alone you bastards, all I want is sixty seconds, bite and then spurt, spurt, spurt and London safe.