London. Remember London.

My head came up a fraction and I was warned: it had been dropping, degree by degree, as the soporific wave had crept over me despite the shock of his voice. London, yes.

'Do you understand?'

The voice of a bull, roaring out of the barrel chest and drumming in the room.

Think about what has to be done. It has to be done in the next sixty seconds, or I won't have the strength left.

I don't want to die.

Shuddup.

I had to take him down, and I had to do it with all the speed I could manage, and with all the force. Standing here thinking about it, I could believe I would never do it; but I knew from experience what the mind can make the body do, if enough depends on it. I wasn't worried about that. Vader was mine, unless he'd had my specific style of training. The enemy was in myself, in my emotions, in the undisciplined tides of feeling that can stifle logic and inhibit action.

Moira.

Is that your own code?

Five hundred roses for Moira. To be delivered only after she has been informed by the Bureau.

Where was she now?

The tides of feeling, yes, that would have to be ignored, because they were irrelevant, and dangerous.

Take him down, and with as little force as necessary, so that I would find the strength. Let him come close first.

'I have given you every possible chance of co-operating! And you have refused!' He began walking, dropping his boots squarely on the worn parquet, walking towards me. 'Do you happen to enjoy the kind of interrogation you will receive at the Serbsky Institute? M'm?' He stopped within three feet of me. It wasn't close enough. 'Are you a masochist?'

Sleep. Dear God let me sleep.

He was blurring again in front of me, his thick body swaying gently backwards and forwards, sending me to- wake up, come on, wake up.

'Answer me!'

Yes. Keep him talking. Keep him close.

'I can't think straight, that's all. Too tired.' I heard the words slurring, couldn't quite recognize the voice.

'Too tired ! And you think that is all that's going to happen to you? Do you?'

Rehearse. A preliminary shankutsu, my left foot behind his right heel, with a spinning nagashi at the jodan level, my right fingers hooking for the eyes. Then the hand-edge to the throat, half an inch above the khaki serge collar. Then the work on myself, at the median cubital artery. Rehearse.

'No. I know what's going to happen to me.'

Rehearse. Shankutsu, nagashi, eyes and the hand-edge.

'Then why do you refuse to co-operate?'

Shouting at me as if I were fifty yards away, his voice roaring inside my skull.

'Told you,' I said. 'I'd betray a friend.'

'Friend!' He pulled one of the chairs away from the table and sent it crashing into a corner of the room, one of its legs flying off and hitting the barred window. 'What friend?' He came closer, his amber eyes staring into my face. 'You mean Schrenk?' He came right up to me. 'Do you mean your friend Schrenk?'

He was close enough and I shifted my left foot and got the nagashi spinning and in the next tenth of a second I saw surprise beginning in his eyes as he started pitching back with my foot blocking his heel before I formed the claw-hand and raked at his face. He wasn't off balance yet but his arm swung up and he lost the last of his equilibrium and the strike missed my head and he fell hard, harder than I was ready for, with my fingers too far from his eyes and my hand going flat and moving fast to bridge the gap and swing down for the throat with enough force to kill, but something crashed and I was on top of him and striking much too short as the door hit the wall and they took me from behind, pulling my arms back and locking them so that I had to stop moving, no go, it was no go.

Rage burning inside my skull. Rage and the hot bright light.

My head had been dropping on to my chest and at first I had pulled it up again from habit to avoid that bloody man's voice up there where the light was; then I had let it rest there, my head, and nothing had happened, he hadn't yelled at me to wake up. I might even have slept, but I didn't know for how long. Not long: the urge to drop my head again and sleep and go on sleeping was overwhelming, but I couldn't do that: I had to work.

Rage against myself, of course, for getting it wrong, for not thinking, for not realizing they must have a closed-circuit television camera behind the dark glass of the window: they wouldn't be so stupid as to leave one of their colonels in there with people who might not like him.

They'd been worried about him but he'd just said I'm all right and walked out of the room without looking at me, as if I didn't exist, as if I hadn't just tried to kill him. I got the point: he'd been obliged to brush off a fly. We hadn't known each other for long but we'd learned things about each other and he'd learned I had a streak of pride and was therefore sensitive.

Work, yes.

I let my head fall again, and waited, but the man didn't shout. I shut my eyes and waited again, but nothing happened. He might not be there. He might not be watching me.

The median cubital artery runs down the inside of the arm and it's easy to reach it with the mouth but the action is obvious, so I took off my shoe and lobbed it up at the light and made sure it missed the bulb before I caught it.

'Stop that! What do you think you're doing?'

Message received.

'It's too bloody bright,' I said, and sat down again on the stool and put my shoe on and turned round to face the wall and let my head go down. That seemed to be all right because he didn't say anything. I was to be watched but not forced to stay awake or face the light. What had he said? The Serbsky Institute. Where the clowns worked.

When?

There was nothing in here I could drain into. There were only the walls and the floor and this stool and the lamp. I was sitting with my back to him now and I could fold my arms and let my head go down, heavy with sleep, until my mouth was against the inside of one wrist, and he might not see the movement of my jaws from behind; but once it started flowing there'd be a gallon and a half and there was nothing to drain into: he'd see it dripping on to the floor and he'd have time to come in here and use the pressure point and call for help and Vader would ask for a transfusion because he wasn't finished with me yet, he'd only just started. They wanted to find Schrenk and they thought I knew where he was.

I could feel the heat of the lamp on the back of my head. My shadow was clear cut, swelling and contracting against the wall as I swayed an inch forward, an inch back, trying to stay awake, trying to think. It became a slow rhythm, and at some time I must have slept, still more or less upright on the stool, backwards and forwards, rocking like an animal in a cage. The footsteps came out of a dream and into reality, thudding from the distance along the corridor outside my cell.

Then voices.

I stayed where I was: it was comfortable here against the wall, with my companionable shadow. This had become my home, my querencia: this place, defined by my shadow's height and my shadow's width, was part of my identity now. They mustn't -

'Out!'

Mustn't take me away.

`Stand up! Out!'

I hadn't heard them opening the door. I suppose I'd been asleep, dreaming about identity.

When I looked round I saw Colonel Vader there with three other men, two of them in uniform. He stood gazing in at me with that predatory stare for a moment; then a look of disgust came to his face. 'He stinks! Put him under a shower and find some sort of clothing for him, and don't be long about it!' He turned and went out.