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"Damn you, you will address me as sir!"
"Yes, sir, sorry. Henry Corliss, sir, can provide-"
"Describe the Communist spy network that smuggled you out of England."
"Sir, I must insist that you contact Henry Corliss-"
"Insist?" The colonel thumped his fist on the table, spilling a glass of water. "I insist that you answer my question!"
One of the other officers, a younger man, leaned forward. "This is wartime," he said in a helpful tone. "You don't get to have your solicitor present."
"I don't want him as a solicitor," Hale said loudly. The involuntary raising of his voice, and a sudden chill in the pit of his stomach, startled him; and for the first time it occurred to him that he might be in some enduring trouble here. And he was horrified to realize that hunger and anxiety and lack of sleep had brought him very near to tears. Where the hell was Theodora? "I don't even need to talk to him," he went on more quietly. "Sir. But he'll be able to...point you toward an explanation of all this."
"Where and how did you get the Philippe St.-Simon passport?"
"I don't think I can answer these questions," said Hale. The dripping of the spilled water onto the wood floor was distracting him. "Please get in touch with Corliss." He wanted to wail, Ask James Theodora, of the Secret Intelligence Service!-but he kept remembering Theodora's order: Don't tell anyone about me, nor about your secret purposes. Not even Churchill.
A sickening punch to the kidney knocked Hale right down onto his knees and forehead and the fingertips of his manacled hands-one of the soldiers who had been in the truck with him had apparently walked up unheard from behind and got a signal from someone at the table-and now Hale was sobbing helplessly and drooling onto the cold floor. His nose had started bleeding, and blood and saliva streaked his chin when the soldier hauled him back up onto his feet.
"Who is your Party contact in England?"
The younger officer again spoke, in his helpful tone: "Spies can be executed in wartime, without the necessity of a trial."
A man in a plain business suit who sat at the end of the table and had not spoken yet now crushed out a cigarette and said quietly, "Let him rest for now. We can talk to him again later."
Hale was marched off to an emptied room that had been converted to a makeshift doctor's office, with a wheeled metal cabinet and an upright set of green-enameled scales in the corner and eye charts on the wall, and finally the manacles were unlocked and his hands were freed. The soldier stayed in the room while a man in white coveralls asked Hale if he had any family history of tuberculosis or insanity, and listened to Hale's chest with a stethoscope, and then asked Hale to read letters off the eye chart; finally Hale was escorted to a room with a barred window and a narrow, military-looking bed, and locked in.
He hadn't eaten anything since a quick sandwich in the Lisbon embassy lobby the day before, and with frail bravado he thought he would have endured another punch for a cigarette, or many more punches for a tall glass of brandy; but as soon as he lay down on the bed, his cumulative exhaustion seemed to fall onto him like the rubble of a bombed house.
His last, fragmented thought was of Elena, bravely bound for Moscow, and it might have become a prayer if his consciousness had not been almost instantly snuffed out.
When a guard shook him awake, it was dark outside the window.
Hale was not manacled again, but neither was he given anything at all to eat, before being led back to the green-baize-draped table in the stripped dining room; but a padded office chair had been wheeled in to face the table. Hale gratefully sat down in it and squinted at the faces of his interrogators in the electric lamplight.
The civilian in the business suit was the first to speak. "We did send a man to talk with your solicitor, Henry Corliss," he said. "And Mr. Corliss expressed only bewilderment at your activities. He was not able to suggest any contacts nor to 'point us toward an explanation,' as you claimed he would, and he is not willing to represent you in this action."
Hale didn't let his expression change or his shoulders sag, but he was hugely relieved; obviously the only reason Corliss would have failed to mention Theodora was that Theodora himself had ordered him not to. So Theodora was, as he had promised, aware that Hale had returned to England. If I can't meet you, wait for me.
Hale had decided at some point that he could tell all of his story except for his conversations with Theodora and the "secret purposes," which he was certain were the pieces that were connected with his New Year's dreams: the dreams themselves, and the "Palestine" rhythms that had transformed his wireless sending and led him and Elena on their weird predawn clochard walk to the end of the ile de la Cite, and the night of the accelerated Moscow signal and the scorched floor. He was even looking forward now to questions about his Communist contacts.
But the direction of their questions had changed. "What," asked the old colonel, "did you discuss with James Theodora, on the morning after your arrest in Covent Garden?"
Live your cover, Hale thought. "With whom? Sir?"
"The man who accompanied the Special Branch operatives-he talked to you alone, walked with you through the bombed area by St. Paul 's Cathedral."
"Oh, that gentleman. He told me that my scholastic career was over, but that I might avoid the full consequences of my...error, if I would abandon the Communist Party and cooperate fully with the Special Branch."
"And you convinced him that you would; convinced him so thoroughly that he took full custody of you in the name of-his legal authority, and allowed you to return to your college alone."
"Yes, sir."
"But you were lying to him, weren't you? Instead of cooperating, you made contact with the Party and fled the country with their help. Is there any way to conclude that Theodora was not a naive fool?"
"I wouldn't know, sir. He seemed intelligent enough. Perhaps he knew I would run, and had me followed."
"Theodora 'seemed intelligent enough,'" said the civilian dryly. "When had you met him before?"
