steak, and beer, and a piece of apple pie that reminded him of Tyneside. When he asked for coffee with caffein in it, the waiter reacted as if he were a junkie. He walked back through the silent canyons, glittering with light, their only occupants in pools of shadows, men, always in groups, waiting, watching, men inhibited by his size and the way he walked, the suggestion of power to be used at once and to the limit if they tried to hurt him.
Craig went back to his hotel room and remembered that Loomis, detestable as he was, was invariably right. The thought reminded him of the equipment that hadn't been supplied, and Benson and Royce's visit to Kaplan. But he'd got equipment anyway, a Smith and Wesson and four rounds, and a Browning Hi -Power. And Benson and Royce were problems he could do nothing about . . . Craig slept.
CHAPTER 5
They came for him at four in the morning, the dead hour when reactions are slowest and sleep at its most profound. They were good men, there were enough of them, and they didn't get too close. Craig, worn out as he was, heard them just three seconds too late. By then they were in his bedroom and one of them had flicked on a torch, its brilliant bar of light hitting him full in the eyes. Craig flung up one arm, and in the dazzling silence heard the click of a safety catch. A voice said, 'You know what I'm holding, Mr. Craig?' He nodded. 'Just keep looking this way and maybe I won't use it.'
He looked into the light. Behind him someone was moving very softly, someone poised for a blow. At the last possible second Craig swerved round. The hand shielding his face shot out in a fist strike. He felt muscle and flesh give under his hand, then a second man struck, a single blow behind the ear with a life preserver of plaited leather, and Craig collapsed at once. The lights went on then, and three men dressed as ambulance attendants set up a stretcher, loaded him on to it. A fourth man clung to the bedrail, his fingers solicitous where Craig's fist had smashed into his belly. He was a young, strong, fit man. Had one of those prerequisites been missing, Craig's blow would have crippled him or killed him. When Craig was on the stretcher, one of the men gave him an injection of paraldehyde. It was vital that he shouldn't move for twenty minutes. After that, two of them carried out Craig; the third supported the one he had struck. It would be an hour at least before he could walk by himself.
Craig woke up in a bed that was five feet from the floor, a hard bed on an iron frame that was the only thing in the room except for a chair. He wore a nightshirt of some kind of coarse linen, his wrists and feet were tied to the bed by canvas straps, and there was a bandage round his forearm. His head ached vilely, the drug made his stomach heave, and his wrists and ankles were already sore. He had no doubt that shortly he would regard his present position as one of luxury, and shut his eyes at once, trying to buy time, to prepare his body and mind to resist what was going to be done to him. That he would tell what he knew eventually was inevitable; any man can be broken, and if you've been broken once before it's that much easier the second time. But it was Craig's business to escape if he could, and hold out if escape were impossible. Desperately he tried to drive his mind and body away from what was coming, but the memory of Laurie S. Fisher was too strong. Beneath the bandage gauges recorded the sudden spurt of his pulse, the increase of perspiration, and in the next room a doctor saw these things recorded on instrument dials, and nodded to the man beside him. Craig was ready.
The man who came into Craig's room was tall and lean. His clothes were elegant, his face at once weatherbeaten and scholarly. He stood looking down at Craig for twenty seconds, and Craig remained immobile, though the dials in the next room leaped as he waited.
The tall man said at last, 'I think we should have a talk, Mr. Craig.'
Craig opened his eyes then and looked at him: perhaps the most difficult thing he had ever done.
The tall man said, 'I think we can dispense with the formalities of outraged innocence, don't you? Your name is John Craig, you work for Loomis in Department K of M-16, and you're here to find out about a man called Kaplan.'
Craig said, 'My name is John Craig—yes, but I'm an account executive for Baldwin-Hicks. I'm here on advertising business. I never heard of Department K. Or Kaplan.'
Believe your cover story all the way, they had taught him. Know it. Feel it. Belong to it. Even when they begin to hurt you. Especially then. Even if the other side knows you're lying, it'll help you to hold out.
'Yes of course,' said the tall man. 'And you didn't go to see Kaplan's brother today?'
'Of course not,' said Craig. 'I never heard of Kaplan.'
The tall man pressed a buzzer and two other men came into the room. They wore the white smocks of hospital orderlies, but Craig knew them at once for what they were. In the next room, the dials on the instrument panel moved up further.
'You went to an apartment block on West 95th Street,' said the tall man. 'Kaplan lives there. Don't waste our time, Mr. Craig. We
'I went to see an advertising man,' said Craig.
The two men in white moved closer to the bed.
'And did you go to the Graydon to see another advertising man?' the tall man asked.
Craig said, 'I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're doing here.'
One of the men in white took his arm, held it firmly, and the other moved up close. Something flashed in the room's hard light, and Craig whimpered at a brief stab of pain, before his mind told him they had injected him again. Pentathol, he thought. Truth serum. The only way was to blank out your mind, think of nothing that would make sense to your questioners. Methodically he began to recite the days of the week in Arabic, over and over again, saying them harder and harder as the tall man's questions came. It would be so easy to answer the questions, and such a pleasure to talk about the terrible thing he had seen. But his business was to recite the days of the week in Arabic. He went on doing so.
Suddenly the tall man had gone, and in his place was another, chubby and benign, with hexagonal rimless glasses that made him look like a cherubic gnome.
'Hi,' he said. The seven words went on and on in Craig's mind. He said nothing.
'What you doing?' said the chubby man, and settled down in the chair. The dials had told him all he needed to know. This one was terrified. 'Counting sheep? Reciting poetry? French irregular verbs? They try all kinds,' the chubby man said, then rose suddenly and stood over Craig, the chubbiness gone, and in its place a squat power, as he noticed the tension in Craig's hands.
'You're not comfortable,' he said. 'Let me tuck you up properly.'
His hands stripped away the sheets, and Craig gabbled his seven words as the other man lifted the smock and looked at the marks on his body, the sweat soaking from him so that the bed sheets were wet.
'My, my,' said the man. 'Somebody certainly didn't like you. Somebody certainly hurt you all right. You must be a very brave man. And strong too. I admire you, sport, I really do.'
The voice continued, softly, gently, and Craig saw him grow chubby again, fat and well meaning and anxious to help as he told Craig how brave he was, and asked him how he managed to withstand such terrible pain. Slowly, inevitably Craig listened, and answered, the seven words falling like pierced armor from his memory. The chubby man knew all about pain—and cared. On and on Craig talked, and gradually the chubby man's questions moved from Craig's agony to Laurie S. Fisher's, and Craig wept as he remembered what had been done to him.
'And you really didn't see who did it, John?'
'No,' said Craig. 'I thought it was the KGB, but-'
'But what? Go on. You can tell me.'
'You're the KGB, aren't you?'
'Just a research team, John. Asking questions about the problems of pain. Kaplan now. We heard there were two hoods in the Boldinis' apartment. Were they going to hurt Kaplan?'
'They were going to kill him,' said Craig. 'Only I killed one of them instead.'
'And the other one got away, right? You should have killed him too, don't you think so?'
'Noise,' said Craig. 'People.' Suddenly he felt very weary.
'Please, John,' said the chubby man. 'Don't go to sleep just yet.'
Craig said, 'They weren't—executives. Not like the ones who got Fisher.
Craig said, 'I don't like hurting people. I don't like being hurt.'
'John,' said the chubby man, 'I think you're in the wrong business.'
'That too,' said Craig, and slept.
The tall man came out of the shadows and looked at Craig as the two orderlies left. 'Well, well,' he said. 'The best in the business.'
