There was cover for the jeep under some slabs of fallen concrete and I got the captain's assault rifle and the big flashlight from the back and slapped his forehead with a slack back-fist to shock the pineal gland as he tried to throw me with a thrust to the back of the knees, been sleeping like a fox, one eye open.
'Don't do that,' I told him in French, beginning tuition with the basics. 'I don't want you doing things like that.' He could understand, could hear me well enough, I knew that; he was just disorientated by the pineal strike: it's what we use it for.
The sun was down as I dragged him into the windowless building; the ground floor room had possibly been intended for storage: there was just the open doorway and a floor littered with debris thrown into relief by the flashlight — broken concrete and rusted iron bars and dead birds and a small skeleton the size of a rat. The doorway faced the scrub on the other side from the road, so the light wouldn't be seen by the traffic as the night came down.
Somewhere there was a cricket singing.
'Who are you?' the captain asked. His speech was slurred.
He was heavily built for an Asian, had muscle, would be well trained, probably, but not in unarmed combat: he should have gone for the coccyx out there, not the knees, could have paralyzed me if he'd done it fast.
'I don't want any questions,' I said.
'You told me you were a colleague of Slavsky's.'
'No questions — and that is the last time I'm going to tell you anything twice. Kneel down over there with your back to the wall.' I swung the assault rifle up. 'Do it now.'
The weapon seemed to impress him and he backed off against the wall but didn't kneel, stood watching me like a jungle cat, furious, a man of pride, what the shrink we use in training at Norfolk would categorize as strong, excitatory. Pride was something I could use, work on, given enough time.
I backed away too, as far as the opposite wall, and dropped the assault rifle and the revolver onto the floor, then moved towards the captain again until I was within striking distance.
'There are things you've got to understand,' I said. 'You're quite an educated man, and can probably think well, so it won't be difficult. You need to understand that you're my captive, and that there's nothing you can do, nothing at all, to free yourself. You must also understand that the only time I shall injure you is when you ask for it. Only then.'
He went on watching me. I'd put the flashlight on the floor to one side, its beam directed towards him. It shadowed his face, making it look like a mask lit obliquely to give it drama; the light was reflected in his narrowed, amber eyes. It would take days to break a man like this one physically. It could be done; it can always be done; but I hadn't got days, only a few hours. The quickest way would be to destroy him from the inside, reduce his persona, his creaturehood, to nothing.
'I told you to kneel,' I said, 'and this is the second time.' He tried to block it but wasn't fast enough and the strike rocked his head back and it hit the wall and for a moment I thought I'd misjudged things, used too much force, but he didn't go out, he just stood watching me, surprise in his eyes, I'd started to make him think. There wasn't any blood: it had just been a hammer-fist to the forehead.
'Remember,' I told him, 'you'll be injured only when you ask for it. Kneel.'
I gave him a few seconds but he didn't move, watched me with the anger coming back into his eyes now that he could think straight again, so I went across to the opposite wall to fetch the assault rifle, turning my back to him, already hunched over to the correct degree so that as he made his run I went straight into a basic aikido roll that flung him against the wall, then caught him as he came down so that he didn't land anywhere near the two guns.
'Don't do things like that,' I told him. 'I don't want you to do things like that. You need to think more, with your brain instead of your gut. This is an intellectual exercise we're doing together, can't you see that by now?'
He didn't answer, mainly because he'd hit the wall with quite a lot of impact and it had left him disoriented.
The man who teaches interrogation techniques at Norfolk is a Chinese, Yang Taifang. The Chief of Signals had him pulled out of a prison in the Province of Fukien when no one was looking, because the first two or three years of his thirteen-year sentence had been spent under intensive interrogation, so he knows which end the flint goes in. 'Must remember,' he says, 'not much good talking to subject when fully conscious. Must first disorientate, and this easy. Save excellent amount of time this way.' He can't speak too clearly because of what they did to his face: some of the motor nerves are gone; but mentally he's still very bright and his memory is sharp. 'First, disorientate,' he says, using his own verbal spelling. 'Then humiliate, especially if subject proud man, like soldier.'
When the captain could stand up I pushed him across the room and turned him round to face me. 'Do you remember,' I asked him, 'what happens when you make me tell you twice to do something?'
He was trying to watch me but his eyes couldn't quite focus.
'Yes.'
Breakthrough.
'Kneel.'
I don't think he went down onto his knees with any conscious intent; it was just that he was aching a lot and felt like letting his body collapse.
'That's good,' I said, and ripped the linen name tag off his battledress and gave it to him. 'Eat that.'
I waited, listening to the cricket singing.
'Is that your name?' I asked him.
'Yes.'
'I want you to eat it, and if I have to ask you a second time you know what's going to happen.'
His eyes still couldn't focus very welclass="underline" he'd hit his head when we went through the aikido roll, and it had affected the occipital area. He looked at the name tab, then at me.
'Eat?'
'Yes.'
He put it into his mouth.
'Just chew it a bit, then swallow. Don't choke.'
Faint light swept the open doorway as something went past on the road. The heat of the day had been trapped in here, and sweat had started running on the man in front of me, this now temporary man, the captain.
Then he spat the name tab into my face and I drove one finger into the trigeminal nerve between the neck and the point of the jawbone and he screamed because pain in that area is instant and agonizing.
I wiped my face and picked up the name tab and held it out for him. 'Take it,' I said.
Tears streamed on his face, and for the first time I had to think of the girl with one leg, who was sore under her arms because she still wasn't used to her new crutches.
'I don't want to tell you what to do,' I said, 'more than once.'
Two seconds, three seconds, four, five, then he put the name tab into his mouth. He wasn't watching me any more, was looking down.
'Don't waste my time,' I told him, two seconds, three, then he swallowed.
'Was that your name?'
'Yes.'
'What did you do with your name?'
He looked up at me now, head a little on one side.
'What?' he asked me.
'Can you hear me all right?'
It took time. 'This side.'
'All right. Keep your head turned like that.' Perhaps he'd burst an eardrum somewhere along the line, and I didn't want to make any punitive strikes if he hadn't heard the command; it wouldn't get us anywhere.
'I'm going to ask you again,' I said, 'because you might not have heard me the first time. What did you do with your name?'
'Swallow it.'
The left hemisphere a little dulled, I'd have to be carefuclass="underline" I didn't want to impair his memory, because that was what I was here to listen to when the time came. The time wasn't now: he wasn't ready yet, would clam up, whatever I did to him, finito.