Situation: I was free to walk on deck in the warm afternoon sunshine and chat with my fellow countryman but appearances were deceptive because this was an opposition stronghold and they’d got me and they were going to keep me unless I could stop them and I didn’t think I could stop them. In metaphysical terms I was at the wide end of a narrowing tunnel that would take me through the imminent interrogation phase with their professional from the Hong Kong cell and through increasingly restrictive incarceration and withholding of privileges to the final elaborate mind-bending sessions with the intelligence psychiatrists in Pekin that would leave me physically emaciated and with irreversible personality changes that would kill off any hope of making an eventual break because I would no longer be the kind of human being who could plan such a thing or even want it.

  Probably it was my last chance of using Tewson for my own purposes or even of seeing him again. They’d briefed him to question me before they put any kind of pressure on because you couldn’t feel suspicious of a chap born under the same flag and all that, and I was expected to be relaxed and make a slip or decide to give him my confidence. I’d pushed this one as far as I could and the only thing that worried me was that he’d seemed to accept the fact that I’d met him sometimes at the golf club. The dossier on George Henry Tewson that Macklin had given me was exhaustive, even to the names of his acquaintances in Redhill, but I’d expected him to challenge me on this one: what year were you there, then? I don’t seem to remember you, so forth. But in the first few minutes of talking to him I’d recognized a whopping case of homesickness and thrown him the golf club thing: and I think he took it without question because he’d wanted to run into someone from his intimate past, all the way out here on this remote prison of his where he lived among strangers.

  I think he’d accepted the whole of my cover story and the two Chinese had been listening attentively so that they could trip me on the second time round. They wouldn’t be able to do that because I’d been speaking to their ears and not Tewson’s and there wasn’t anything they could trip me on, so they’d have to console themselves with the obvious ones: what were you doing so far from land in a small rubber dinghy, why were you sworn to secrecy, who is your friend, so forth. That was all right. Most of the cover was pick-proof: the thing about cutting the anchor free and then losing consciousness was to give me a base they’d never find but couldn’t prove was non-existent. Because they were going to check up on every word: I’d heard the helicopter take off soon after they’d brought me aboard and I was pretty certain they’d gone to pick up the interrogator in Hong Kong. So I didn’t have long to make a move.

  I made it.

  The Chinese was leading the way and the guard had followed us out of the clinic and I don’t think I could have said anything to Tewson quietly enough without their catching some of it and even if they only caught a couple of words they’d get the drift. But the riveter had started up a few minutes before we’d left the clinic and it was still hammering away on one of the lower decks, and the sound cover was adequate.

  It was a hundred to one against my getting off this missile base with a whole skin but I was going to try and if I got clear then I was taking Tewson.

  Tewson was the target for Mandarin.

  He was the objective London wanted me to bring out: Executive will withdraw objective from target zone. And if I was going to pull off a hundred-to-one shot and get out alive, then I was going to take the objective with me because I wasn’t interested in aborting the mission.

  I didn’t have much to lose.

  Because you don’t need a capsule, you know, when it comes to the crunch. That’s just the most convenient way. You don’t even need drain cleaner or exhaust gas or a knife or a gun or a high window without bars or a rope: you just need your nails and an artery - and their belief that you want to stay alive. That bit’s important because if they think you’re going to try switching off they’ll start watching you and that’s a bore.

  I’d do it because I don’t like tunnels: I’m claustrophobic.

  I wouldn’t want to go through with the intensive interrogation phase and the increasingly restrictive incarceration and the final mind-bending sessions in Pekin because they’d break down the psyche to the point when I didn’t think the Bureau was important any more and then I’d give them the lot. And I wouldn’t mind.

  But I minded now.

  So I hadn’t got much to lose if I tried to get the objective out of the target zone and failed, even if it killed me. A lot would depend on Tewson.

  He was saying something but I couldn’t hear.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bloody noise!’ he said with his quick white laugh. ‘They’re doing repairs!’

  ‘Just like the Strand,’ I said, ‘always got the road up!’

  We laughed about this, nodding together.

  The Chinese in front of us hadn’t turned round so the chance was wide open and I went over the whole thing in the next two seconds to make sure I got it right.

  I had to blow my cover.

  But only to Tewson: not to the opposition. They’d told him, or they would later tell him, that I was an intelligence agent sent to Hong Kong to find him and take him back to London; and I’d have to say something to him that would cut right across their story. It must be something he couldn’t repeat to the opposition without endangering himself. And it must carry the name of a sponsor to give it high credibility, but a sponsor he couldn’t contact openly for confirmation. And finally it must be short, because at any next second the din of the riveter could stop and leave me without aural cover.

  All I had to do was light a fuse. A short-burn fuse in his mind.

  ‘Tewson.’ I waited till he’d turned his head, then pitched my voice against the background noise. ‘Nora says she’s found out you’re expendable. They’re going to kill you the minute you’ve done this job, for their own security. She wants me to tell you to get out of this as soon as you can.’

  Chapter Seventeen : COVER

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I’ve told you I can’t remember what the time was!’

  ‘You told me nothing!’

  ‘Oh for Christ sake ‘Who are your employers?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you!’

  ‘Because you are lying!’

  ‘If you say that again I’ll —’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your employers.’

  ‘They’re - oh Jesus, are you off your fucking rocker? How many times have you asked me that one?’

  He’d been at me for two hours without a break but he wasn’t very good. Thin chap with a wide jaw and a short haircut, Mao tunic, some kind of insignia, worker’s merit medal or something. He’d started sweating because of the heat of the lamp.

  They’d given me the smallest cabin on the whole rig: one narrow bunk set in the wall like a niche at the crematorium where you put the urn, cheap cardtable and picnic chair, army mirror on a chain, tin-washbasin, no loo. There was only one lamp and it was high on the wall and they’d put a two hundred watt bulb in it and he was getting as much of the glare as I was, but I suppose he thought he should do this thing like they did it on the flicks.

  ‘What is the name of the yacht?’

  ‘The Isabella. Look, wouldn’t it be better if you played that thing back a few times?’

  ‘Where is the yacht now?’

  ‘That’s the third time. What’s the point of leaving that thing running when all you can do is ask the same bloody questions like a record player?’

  I’d begun looking at him sideways a bit in the last half-hour: the cover demanded that I should react with increasing exasperation and finally begin to doubt his sanity. He hadn’t tripped me on anything yet because he wasn’t capable. This was the best interrogator they had in Hong Kong and he’d been immediately available as a member of the local cell so they’d flown him in right away in the helicopter and now he was doing his stuff but his stuff consisted of the repetition-to-attrition technique and not much else: the idea is that if you shout the same question at the subject fifty times he’ll finally tell the truth. It’s meant to work on the principle that every time they shout the question you feel a bit more guilty about lying, and in the end you hear your own subconscious throwing up the right answer.

  It’s not funny when it happens because you start thinking it’s your sanity that’s begun to slip. Then you’re strictly on the skids and if they didn’t find the capsule in the lining you’d better get it out and don’t let them see you till you keel over. But I didn’t think this man could do any good because he wasn’t fully trained: he wasn’t alternating with the correct mood changes that made you think he believed you and trusted you, so that the guilt mechanism produced more power the next time you lied.

  ‘Where were you diving?’

  ‘In the bloody sea.’ I wiped the sweat off my face and tried to slide back the small metal window again to make him think I’d forgotten they’d jammed it solid: the first thing an interrogator looks for is the onset of memory lapse and it’d make him feel good and when you start feeling good you’ve got one foot on the soap. You shouldn’t feel anything. In first category interrogation - no kicks, no shocks - you don’t really talk. You question or you answer. Anything like conversation is discouraged because it decreases the tension.

  ‘Where were you diving?’ he asked me again.

  His eyes were a bit pink-rimmed under the light and I wondered how long he could keep it up. Two hours is a long time.

  ‘Listen, I’m going to tell you the whole thing again and you make sure you get it all down on that tape. Then if you ask me just one more question again I swear I’ll throw you straight through that fucking door. Okay?’

  I didn’t expect an answer because that one’s in the book. The interrogator has to keep up the theme of repetition, and anything else he says will ease the monotony and he doesn’t want to do that.

  ‘Right. My —’

  ‘What is your name?’

  He wanted it his way: if I told him ‘the whole thing again’ the ball was going to stop in my court. It had to be question, answer, question, answer, wearing you down.

  ‘Harry Cox.’

  ‘Why did you come to Hong Kong?’

  ‘To do some diving.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Some people gave me a job.’

  ‘What job?’

  ‘Look for a wreck.’

  ‘What wreck?’

  ‘Now don’t start asking me that one again. I’ve told you, a boat went down with a private collection of gold coins on board, and my present employers —’

  ‘Who are your employers?’

  Question 9.

  ‘I gave them my word I wouldn’t reveal their names. Listen, you let a thing like this get around and you’ll have the whole of the Hong Kong fishing fleet out here looking for that boat, it stands to reason.’

  ‘What is the boat’s position?’

  What depth, did it Wow up, was there a collision, so forth. I gave him the answers again, there wasn’t any problem. But now and then I told him he was a stupid clot and asked him if he’d gone off his rocker, routine cover approach but helpful to relieve the tension in me. He could throw me this stuff till he had to bring in a relief and it wouldn’t worry me but it was what they were doing outside this cabin that was starting to give me the shakes because I was a bit farther inside the tunnel at this stage and going deeper and I didn’t want to go on.

  The man they were going to give me in Pekin would be different from this one. For the first few days I’d respect his skin and admire his techniques and then he’d start getting close and I’d have to fight back till he blew me and when he’d blown me he’d begin on the real stuff: the Bureau.

  He would be a top professional. A brain surgeon.

  ‘Where is the yacht?’

  ‘Which one?’ Just a gag: this was the thirtieth time.

  ‘The one that dropped you over the wreck.’

  ‘Somewhere in the South China Sea. They didn’t say where they were going. Now listen, I’ve given you the whole thing again, as I said I would. Now if you ask me one more question I’m going to smash you up and you’ll wish to Christ you’d never set eyes on me. Now do you understand that?’

  I put a lot of spleen into it but he went on staring into my face with his pink-rimmed eyes while he thought out the next question. His feet were still in the stance he’d taken up when I’d talked about throwing him through the door: he’d quietly slid them there and I hadn’t looked down but I didn’t have to because he was a belt and it would be the first defensive position. You can’t interrogate anyone alone in a small room unless you can stop him when he comes at you: intensive questioning can drive a man into a psychic trap and an explosion on the subconscious level can be murderous.

  ‘You are lying,’ he said and slapped down my photograph.

  Phase two.

  He’d taken my cover story and gone over it exhaustively and couldn’t break it so now he was going to watch my eyes while he threw facts at me. Facts like the photograph.

  ‘Christ,’ I said, ‘if I thought I looked like that I’d go and shoot myself!’

  ‘This is your photograph. We know it is.’

  ‘Bloody insulting!’

  It was the same one.

  ‘One of our agents managed to swim clear,’ he said, ‘from the car in the harbour.’

  Frown. Three-second pause. Then: ‘What the hell are you—’

  ‘He says this is your photograph.’

  Prolong mystification. ‘Car in the harbour? What on earth,’ so forth, till he cut in again.

  Your photograph.

  Your photograph.

  Your photograph.

  Till I blew up and began shouting, I tell you you’re making a stupid mistake, I demand to phone the governor of Hong Kong, you can’t do this to a subject of the United Kingdom, storming up and down, could’ve been an actor if I didn’t have a face like a hyena’s arse.

  Your photograph.

  I let him go on.

  Very hot in here now.

  Damned if I’m going to ask him to open the door.

  Photograph.

  Told him to screw himself, then he pulled the towel off the thing on the bed and watched my eyes closely.

  ‘Hell’s that?’

  ‘Your radio. We found it.’

  Feeble laugh. ‘Listen, if I had a radio like that I’d get a bomb for it in Kowloon! What is it — Hammerlund?’ I looked at it, very keen radio man.

  ‘This is your radio.’

  ‘Well, I must say that’s very generous of you.’

  I timed it at fifteen minutes: he gave it all he knew how.

  Your radio.

  Your radio.

  Your radio.

  Told him he was out of his cotton-pickin’ mind, told him to belt up. Bloody light was in my eyes, starting to worry me. I still wasn’t completely out of the narcosis thing and I hadn’t slept since eight-o’clock last night and it was now six-thirty and he was still pitching it at me.

  ‘Where was your base? The Hong Kong Cathay?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re —’

  ‘The Mauritius? You stayed at both those places.’

  ‘Will you bloody well listen to me a minute? I tell you—’

  You’re mistaken.

  Where was your base?

  He threw me the other places on my travel pattern, watching my eyes, trying to pick his way in, the Orient Club, the Golden Sands Hotel, telling me he knew I’d been there, telling i me he knew so much about me that there wasn’t any point in my denying his accusations.

  ‘You were there when Flower died.’

  ‘What flower?’

  ‘The man Flower. You were there when he died.’

  ‘What the hell’s a man flower?’

  I looked at him obliquely again, worried about his mental state.

  ‘Flower was an agent. He was your agent.’

  ‘Oh Jesus wept, are you back on that agent thing?’

  Flower.

  Flower.

  Hot and the light blinding.

  Flower.

  One stage I thought all right we’ll have a go, he’s in the first defensive position but that doesn’t matter I’ll start with a full yoharka, give him no time.

  Have to watch it. No emotions. Start emoting and you’ll end up right in his hands because the gut-think’ll get in the way of the brain-think. Steady.

  Tired, that’s all. Went down too deep, too long.

  ‘You were there when he —’

  ‘Go and shit.’

  ‘You were —’

  ‘Shuddup.’

  ‘You went to Jade Imperial Mansion.’

  ‘Someone else. Bloke in the snap.’

  ‘Shall we tell Mr Tewson about your woman friend?’

  ‘Moira? What’s she got to do with —’

  ‘Not Moira. Nora.’

  ‘I haven’t got a woman called Nora. She any good?’

  ‘You went to Jade Imperial Mansion.’

  Six times in six minutes.

  Poor old Tewson, wonder what he’s thinking now. Bit of a shaker for him. But it was pick-proof, that was all I cared. Just her name alone had given it credibility and he couldn’t phone her to ask her about it because her line was bugged and they’d monitor his call this end and he’d know that. And he couldn’t tell his Chinese fellow-workers because they’d shove him in shackles in case he believed me and tried to dive overboard. There wasn’t anything he could do except worry, while the fuse went on burning in his head.

  ‘So you have been lying!’

  ‘I have not been lying!’

  ‘With every word you have lied!’

  ‘I’ve told you the truth!’

  Yelling at each other.

  Heat of the lamp, his face coming and going.

  ‘Lies! Lies! Lies!’

  ‘I’ve told you the truth, sod you!’

  Look out, perk up.

  Tired.

  ‘I am sorry, Mr Cox.’