I studied Oktober. The steel-trap face was deceptively decorated so that a passing glance would accept it as that of a human being. It was oblong, the chin the same width as the forehead. The hair was gummed down flat, Hitler-fashion but without the cowlick. The eyes were flint-grey, with nothing in them but black pupils – no hint of a soul behind. The nose was dead straight. The mouth was dead straight. There was nothing else. I went on looking at it until it spoke again.
"Talk."
I said: "It's turned out nice again."
He might as well know that I would never talk. If anything ever talked, it wouldn't be me. It would be the half-dead remains of the thing called Quiller, jabbering in its death-throes. I hoped it would give nothing away. There were people I had to protect. The only guarantee I could give them now was that if I let them down, it wouldn't be Quiller ratting on them, but just a lump of blood and gristle and pain that was beyond knowing what it was doing. I had seen men being interrogated at Buchenwald.
Oktober spoke again.
"We know who you are. In the Churchill war you refused military service. You wasted your time masquerading as a German soldier and trying to sabotage the efficient working of the Final Solution, ‘rescuing’ Jews and other sub-human organisms from what in fact was their prescribed destiny. You failed in your grandiose intentions. When offered awards by the Polish, Dutch and Swedish governments after the war, you refused them, thus admitting your failure and your shame. We know about you."
I had worked out the only possible move, and began taking very deep and very slow breaths to feed oxygen into the blood so that it should be available to the muscles. By careful degrees I tensed my arms, legs and abdomen, and then relaxed. Tense, relax. Tense, relax. Increase oxygen-intake, circulation and muscle-tone.
"You are a known authority on memory, sleep-mechanism, the personality patterns of suicide, critical-path analysis, fast driving techniques, and ballistics. You are known to be at present in the service of M.I.6."
Wrong. Never mind. He was watching my eyes for reaction so that he could get a clue to the truth or untruth of his information. Most of it was correct. I kept my eyes blank. Tense… relax.
"You thought we didn't know who was supplying the court with so-called ‘war-criminals’ at Hanover in the past six months. We knew who it was. You were seen in different areas and we built up a portrait parle of you. We recognised you when you went to the Neustadthalle. It was reported that your cover had been called off, so we knew that you were embarked on some more special undertaking. There is very little we don't know about you."
Breathe deep. The window was nearer than the doors but that way out was no go. The heavy curtains were drawn but there was a gap and there was lamplight outside, shining on the bare boughs of a plantain. Its height made a fair reference: this room was three floors up, maybe four. I wouldn't be given time to hunt about for balconies or drainpipes. It would have to be the doors. Tense… relax.
"But we lack certain information about your bureau. We have observed its affairs closely for some time, and we wish to fill in our picture of M.I.6."
Not subtle. The repetition was clumsy and it was now clear that he was feeding me doctored corn, trying to provoke me into retorting – for pride's sake – that he was wrong, that I wasn't with M.I.6. Eyes blank. Breathe deep.
Oktober riveted me with his soulless eyes. "We must thus oblige you to talk." He was too intelligent to make any threats, because he knew I had seen men interrogated by his kind. There was simply no option but to talk. He said: " Begin."
Tense… relax. I must bear in mind that this meeting with this man in this house was the goal of my mission. Certainly the ball had bust the net: I'd hoped to arrive in this house in possession of my senses and with a chance of getting clear before it was too late. The inoculation trick had been elaborate, yet it had involved no more than a phone-call to Captain Stettner purporting to come from the Medical Office of Health, a private ambulance, a doctor and a nurse. Phoenix would possess such facilities; one of the accused at Hanover held a chair at the medical faculty of Moenberg; the hierarchies of more than one ministry were riddled with Nazi executives. The effort of ensuring that I should be brought here insensible had been worth making. But I must bear in mind that my mission had been to expose myself in open ground, draw the enemy fire, and thus locate his base. I had done that. The advantage was mine. This thought must be repeated, to give psychological help to the physical necessity of somehow staying alive and sane.
Breathe deep. Tense, relax. The advantage is mine.
Oktober said: "Will you talk?"
I said: "No."
The scene changed a little. At the movement of his hand the two guards came away from the doors and halted within three yards of my chair, each pulling a Munslich eight-millimetre flat-butt and flicking the catch. Oktober looked at something behind my chair and I realised there was a fifth man here. He came into my range of view. He was the doctor who had used the needle on us at the Z-Bureau. His surgeon's gown was spotless and his hands moved deftly among the equipment in the kit that was carefully set down on a little japan-laquered table by my side. It would be the same hypodermic, I supposed.
The pattern emerged. He was the anaesthetist. The older man, finely groomed and noble of face, was the psychoanalyst. No crude torture, then. Just the direct clinical invasion of the psyche.
I had to alter, by a little, the move that must be made. The guards had closed in, making things more difficult but leaving a clear run to the doors once immediate opposition was dealt with. The threat of the guns was minimaclass="underline" I was fairly confident they wouldn't fire. I was wanted alive. A leg-shot to stop me running would be pretty useless if they didn't actually strike a main nerve and paralyse the limb; a man can go on running with a leg-wound if he has the will.
I have never carried a gun in peace-time. It is an impediment, physically and psychologically. Some operators clutter themselves up with guns, code-books, flashlights and death-pills. I travel light. A gun is as clumsy as a woman's handbag. It is utterly useless in defence at a distance because you haven't time to draw even if you see the adverse party with his rifle levelled, which you won't. In Solly Rothstein's case I wasn't the target, and I was expecting the shot, and saw the rifle at the window; but I couldn't have picked off the sniper with a revolver at that range except by luck. Psychologically you have the advantage, unarmed, providing the adverse party knows that you are. (These people knew. They would have frisked me on the way here.) Knowing you have no gun they're not afraid of you, and fear is a natural spur to alertness: unarmed, you disarm them. Any demand at gun-point always carries the risk of failure because they mostly demand that you do something useful to them and you can't do much when you're dead. A gun is psychologically a penis-substitute and a symbol of power: the age-range of toy-shop clientele begins at about six or seven, rises sharply just before puberty and declines soon after the discovery of the phallus and its promise of power. From then on, guns are for kids and for the effete freaks and misfits who must seek psycho-orgasmic relief by shooting pheasants.