Beside my chair, the anaesthetist, just out of sight.
My only friend was the watch. Now sixteen minutes since the injection. It wasn't my own watch, but his, the analyst's. Too involved with working on me he failed to take it into account that I was working on him, preparing to do what I could against the drug; he therefore made the mistake of folding his arms as he stood gazing at me. When reality starts slipping you must find something real to hold on to, a spar in the roughening sea. Man-made time is real, and measured in precise degrees: you may think an hour has passed but a watch will correct you if you're wrong. This watch helped me in three ways. It would correct any distorted estimation of the passage of time; it would, in correcting me, warn me that my own time-sense (and therefore the clarity of my wits) was becoming impaired and that an effort must be made to steady up; and it would provide an aid in trying to name the enemy: pentothal, amytal, hyoscine, or whatever was now in my bloodstream and lapping at my brain-cells. The time element varies greatly in different narcotic techniques.
I couldn't look at my own watch because they'd see me glance down and would realise the danger and take my watch away. I could see the analyst's watch easily and clearly because his arms were folded, and I let my gaze run periodically up and down his figure, from head to foot, with sleepy blinks, as if I were feeling the effects of a soporific. In between blinks I checked his watch. Now seventeen minutes.
There hadn't been a sound in the room for seventeen minutes, and now he spoke.
"My name's Fabian." It was said with a shy smile. "I don't know yours."
The anaesthetist was perched on a stool beside me and I could now see the white of his gown on the edge of my vision-field. He had strapped a constrictor round my right arm and would be checking my blood-pressure as we proceeded, to forewarn himself of any syncope. He was at this moment taking my pulse. He would also be listening the whole time to my breathing.
Genuine indications of sedation began now, so I counter-attacked at once, forcing alertness and busying myself with the problem: what was the drug they were using? Certainly it was in the barbiturate group, not the amphetamine: it was sleep-inducing and not stimulative. But pentothal would have acted faster than this. The first approach by the analyst gave me a clue: I was expected to feel the onset of urgent demands for sympathy with the interrogator. But the effects of any given narcotic vary according to the reaction against it. I would not, on an operation-table, want to wrestle mentally with a surgeon who was going to heal me. In this room and in this chair I was prepared to wrestle for my life.
To pin down the drug that was in me, I would have to set up a complicated permutation of effects and reactions in these circumstances, and test each possible drug for assumed reactions according to the known characteristics of my own personality.
It wasn't worth it.
Steady. It's worth anything. You can kill men if you're not careful, men like Kenneth Lindsay Jones.
The eyelids were heavy. He was watching me, waiting for my answer. The hand of the watch had hardly moved. He had only just spoken. My name's Fabian… I don't know yours. Make correction and be warned: five minutes had seemed to pass, within thirty seconds.
Say it sharply, briskly.
"Quiller." Not bad.
"And your first name?"
First names. Sympathy. Only one answer: bollocks.
Said nothing.
Think clearly. If it were pentothal it wouldn't be too much to cope with. He'd start his questions any minute now, and catch me in the twilight before sleep, off guard, then question me again in the twilight of waking.
Any more clear thoughts? Fabian. I'd heard that name, in the medical world. Dr. Fabian… someone. One of the top kick psychoanalysts. Trust Phoenix to use the best.
The light was spangled on the gold face of the watch and a twin spark echoed from the inlay of the console table.
"What's your name? " the quiet voice asked.
Said nothing.
He was going to miss. I was going out slowly and there wouldn't be much time to get anything coherent if he didn't start soon. Might not be pentothal. Think clearly: what do they want to know? First, my set-up, location of Local Control Berlin, names of operators, current code-systems, so forth. Second and more vital, the extent of my knowledge about Phoenix. Third, the exact nature of my present mission. They wouldn't ask me directly. It would be the classic technique of the leading-question aimed at forcing me to dodge and lie and cover up, so that a mere hesitation would give me away. The technique was difficult for extracting names.
"Inga."
My breath hissed and I heard it.
Red sector. I was going under. It had only been a few seconds since he'd asked "What's your name? " Not ten minutes, as it seemed. I'd been concentrating consciously on the need to think clearly (and combat the sedation), and the typical pentothal reaction had begun subconsciously: hidden psychic material was coming to the surface, pushing past all thoughts of danger and reticence and control. And she was there in the twilight, my lean black succuba, uncurling in my mind.
He said without surprise, "Your name is Inga?"
"Yes." Outsmart the bastard.
First onset of doubts: you think you can outsmart this team? A tried and proved narcotic flooding the walls of your will, and a narcoanalyst with an international reputation?
Yes. It had to be yes or nothing.
Eyes were closing. Reaction setting in very fast now so one thing left to be done. She was dominating the id, or I wouldn't have said her name, so let her loose, do what she will, let her queen it over all the other dormant images and see how Oktober would like that. He would have to tell his Fuhrer that he couldn't learn anything about the Quiller bureau but he'd learned all there was to learn about her litheness and lightness and darkness in the still rose room that surprised him, the keys in his face, his poor dying face,
Solly look out!
Elbow slipped. Wink of gold, twin wink of gold, the white of her throat and the men very small, seven small men my name is Quiller and her name is Inga tell you about her tell you all in black so black you long to see the white of her long lean body in black but is she a woman or the life of something dead or still a kid with the stink of burning flesh in the Fuhrerbunker my clever Fabian she's in love with the Fuhrer straddled on the black Skai slabs and rutting with ghosts in the night-beat music, Inga my love my hate, enigma, shadow in body, your body in black and the glass empty to see you again because I have to and have to stroke your skin my love my hated love tell you Fabian you shit I'll tell you tell you tell you!
Better than I'd imagined, or worse, with the bitter taste of the aftermath already souring the sweetness and the scent of her heat, long-reaching and straining, no sound but the sound of our breath, nothing to show for it but the slip of sweat and the writhe of limbs, all heady pleasure and the Damoclean blade: she'd rather do this with a short-arse with a small moustache who's dead and a goof to boot, how's that for your pride, my whoring rake-hell! But take what you can and then get out and no regrets but the stain on the Skai and the stain inyour mind because you swore you'd never try it and now you have and you can never get back to where you were before, clean of her. Lie still, and lie still under me. Dissociate. You are a woman before you are a bloody necrophile, and I've had you where you are a woman and nowhere else. Now get out,,Quiller. Get out. But where will you go?