Oktober stood in the middle of the room. There were three men with him. One was backed against the door where they had come in. The second guarded the door to her bedroom. The third now moved behind me and blocked the bathroom. The windows could be left unguarded: the tops of the street lamps were below the level of this room. The three men would be armed but their guns were holstered. Between Oktober and myself it was tacitly accepted that a gun offered no threat, because I knew that my life was to be preserved until I had talked. There was of course no hope of getting out of here. Each guard was my weight and half again.

I watched Inga. She showed her fear in a way precisely in line with her character: there was delight in it. Yet it was fear, for all that. She knew who these people were. They were Phoenix.

I was waiting for her to look at me, and when she did I glanced upwards and down again briefly. It was no go, because even if she could call the wolf-hound it would have to smash the opaque glazing of the door that led into her bedroom from the roof-stairs, and even if it were trained well enough to open the second door from the bedroom into here they'd shoot it dead on sight. But I had reminded her that Jurgen was not far away, to give her courage.

Oktober said to her: "You should not have left us. More important, you should not have consorted with the enemy. How much have you told him?"

I said: "Nothing."

He didn't look at me. He looked all the time at her. He asked: "How much has he told you ?"

"He's not the enemy," she said. The links of her wrist-chain trembled in the glow of the Chinese-moon lamp. "He works with the Red Cross."

He dismissed this without expression and looked at last at me. "You know the situation. We're not going to do anything to you. But you will of course answer my questions when you can no longer stand it. That is inevitable. So it would save time and distress if you accepted the situation immediately."

I felt my left eyelid begin flickering.

"Ask your questions," I told him. "Give me the whole lot, so that I can think about them. We might do a deal."

I was going to interrogate him, in silence, and I knew he knew it. He could give me valuable information: each of his questions would tell me how much he knew of me and how much he didn't. And he and I both knew that he couldn't refuse to do as I asked, because if he refused it would be an admission of his uncertainty that he was master. He must convince me that he was master, and that whatever information he gave me would be useless to me because I could never pass it on to my Control before I died. But it was difficult for him. If he agreed, and put his questions on the table, would I take it as a sign of his complete self-assurance, or as the mere false evidence of a self-assurance that he didn't feel? He could do nothing about my findings.

I watched his eyes and he watched mine. Both he and I had dealt with men of our own kind often enough. This was not new to us. The situation was precisely-defined he couldn't let me out of here alive, and he couldn't kill me before I'd answered all his questions. In the interrogation under narcoanalysis Fabian had asked hardly any questions directly. All his questions had been the result of things I had already spoken about – Las Ramblas, the container, so forth. There had been only one direct question of major concern: Why are you still in Berlin? That was when he saw that I was coming out of the narcosis, and he'd put that question in a kind of desperation, with an edge on his voice for the first time.

Oktober would now put direct questions, and expose the extent of his knowledge of me and the extent of his ignorance.

He said: "You are not in a position to do a deal."

"I'm waiting."

Inga had moved and leaned against the wall, watching me. Did she know what was going to happen? She must know. She was versed in these matters by going to the Neustadthalle.

Oktober was saying suddenly: "What is your present mission? Is it to find more so-called war criminals for the courts? Why have you begun operating without cover? What was the information that Rothstein wanted to give you when he was prevented? What is your precise objective? That is all."

I was disappointed in him. He knew quite well that once the thing began he'd ask more than that. Where was Local Control Berlin? What total sum of information had Kenneth Lindsay Jones passed to Control before he died? What were the names of – oh, there'd be many questions like those.

"Don't fool about," I said.

His flint-grey eyes registered nothing. "Those are the questions."

There was nothing I could do about it. He'd offered a token bargain. If those weren't his only questions I couldn't prove it. I was now obliged to do a deal: but he was right. I was in no position.

I said: "Here are the answers." No reaction. He didn't believe me.

"One. My present mission is to get all possible information about Phoenix and pass it to my Control."

He already knew that.

"Two. If I find more war criminals for the courts it'll be as a means to an end, to expedite the main mission. "Inga had moved, and a man moved, and she was still again.

"Three. I've begun operating without cover because I prefer to. Cover can become dangerous. I told my Control to leave me a clear field and they did that."

Now I had to talk about something I didn't even want to think about, ever again.

"I don't know what information Dr. Solomon Rothstein would have passed to me if you hadn't prevented him. I think you have some idea about it, because you took immediate steps."

And may God rot your soul.

"Lastly, my precise objective is to flush the prime mover of the Phoenix organisation and deal with him as I think fit."

He kept his eyes on me. I gazed at their glass.

"How did you first hear the name Phoenix?"

"It's a big organisation and you can't hope to keep it under cover -"

"Did she tell you?"

"Who?" It was just that I disliked his manners.

"This woman."

"Fraulein Lindt would hardly be so unwise as to talk to strangers and that's all I am to her."

"Who is the ‘prime mover’ of this alleged organisation?"

"I don't know. The only name I know is yours."

"Where is your Control in Berlin?"

"The deal was that I answered those questions you first put to me."

He said to the man nearest Inga: "Take her into the next room and leave the door wide open." So that was it and I knew the deal was lost, as I'd known it must be.

She moved before the man could touch her, and looked into my face as she passed me. I said, "Don't worry. "The door to her bedroom was opened by the guard there.

The sweat began.

I told Oktober: "You'll lose."

He spoke through the doorway. "Unclothe her."

I knew that he wouldn't have started the thing in this way if Fabian hadn't convinced him on the subject of my libido. They didn't have to undress her to do what they were going to do, but I was to be put under a double strain: the pity for a fellow-human who suffered pain, and the outrage of the male animal whose mate is its possession.

She made a sound, something like anger. She had moved into the bedroom before the guard could touch her; therefore she would probably elect to undress without his help. I could hear the fabric against her skin, as I had heard it a few hours ago, now with different feelings.

I said: "The position is this." I waited until he looked at me. "If I can't stand it, and talk, there can't be any half-measures. I'd have to talk totally. That's obvious. If I talk, it'll mean putting my Control right into your hands: the local base, names of operators, communication system, the whole lot. Do you for a moment imagine I'd do that?" The sweat was on my face now and he was watching it gather. The body was giving away the mind, and the mind would have to compensate for its own exposure, and say what it had to say with utter conviction. "There's not much pity in people like us. We're like doctors. We can't do the job if we let pity into it. You know that. So you're going to lose. I'm not talking. Not one word. Not one word. Do what you like to her, kill her off slowly, let me listen to her dying in there, and take your time, make it last and watch me sweat it out. You won't get a word. Not one word. And when that's failed, you can start on me and do the same with me, the fingernails, the thumbs, the urethra, the eyeballs, give me the full treatment, give me the lot. But you won't get a word. Not a word."


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