“Do you know your name?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What’s your name?”

“What is this?”

“What is your name please.”

The light blinded him to the rest of the room. He closed his eyes, twisted his head, squinted into the dark corners.

“Name.”

“Clifford Fairlie.”

“Very good. You may call me Sélim.”

Sélim and Abdul, then. It was very unconvincing; perhaps it was intended to be.

“Abdul. The recorder.”

Footsteps on concrete. After a moment Sélim the Slav spoke at him again from the darkness. “Fairlie talk to me.”

“What about?”

“You must have questions.”

Names, Fairlie thought. Sélim and Abdul. They withheld their real names, they disguised their voices, they hid their faces from him. Conclusion: it was important he not discover who they were. Suddenly he felt a clawing surge of hope. They would not have gone to these lengths if they meant to kill him.

But he knew Abdul’s black face.

But half a dozen people back at Perdido knew it too. They wouldn’t kill Fairlie for that.

Uncertain all the same, he felt very cold.

Sélim said, “Perhaps you’d like to know what this is all about.”

“I assume I’ve been kidnapped.”

“Very good.”

“For what purpose?”

“What purpose would you think?”

“I suppose I’m being held for ransom, is that it?”

“In a way.”

“In what way?”

“I’m sure you recognize the facts of life, Fairlie. Political kidnapping is a highly effective weapon in the wars of liberation that are being waged against the forces of the imperialist regimes.”

“I doubt it. This won’t win your cause many friends.” Fairlie rubbed his mouth against the back of his hand. “May I have something to eat?”

“Certainly. Lady.”

Fairlie heard the girl moving around in the dimness.

“Are we still in Spain?”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose it doesn’t.”

Abdul the black lieutenant inserted himself briefly between Fairlie and the light. He placed an object on the workbench at Sélim’s hand. It was a small tape recorder.

Sélim did not touch it. Fairlie looked at the tape spools. They were not turning; the machine was not switched on.

Sélim said, “You were saying.”

“What is it you want of me?”

“Only a little painless cooperation. It won’t cost you anything.”

“Speaking in whose terms?”

“Don’t be alarmed. What do you think we want of you?”

The girl—she was a girl or a young woman by her hands and eyes—brought him food on a scrap of cloth. A small crusty loaf split into a sandwich, chunks of cold boiled ham.

Sélim reached for Fairlie’s hands. Fairlie drew back sharply; the Slav only clucked in his throat, reached out again and began to untwist the wires around Fairlie’s wrists.

When his hands were free Fairlie rubbed his welted wrists vigorously. “Is this all of you? This little band?”

“We’re everywhere, Fairlie. The united peoples of the world.”

“I suppose to you self-styled revolutionaries your cause makes good sense. To me it’s gibberish. But I’m sure you didn’t drag me here just to engage in silly dialectics.”

“Perhaps that’s exactly what we have done.”

“Nonsense.”

“You refuse to listen to us unless we force you to.”

“I listen to everyone. It doesn’t oblige me to agree with everything I hear.”

The bread and ham had no flavor; he ate mechanically.

Sélim said, “How long do you suppose we’ve been sitting here talking?”

“Why?”

“Humor me. Answer the question.”

“Five minutes I suppose. Ten minutes. I don’t know.”

“I imagine it’s long enough for you to have cleared your voice. It sounds natural enough to me.” Sélim reached for the tape recorder, pushed it forward into the light. He did not switch it on yet. “Now we have a simple request. I have a short speech written out. You ought to find that familiar—you people always read speeches written for you by someone else, don’t you.”

Fairlie refused to be drawn; fear chugged in his stomach and he was not prepared to debate questions of that nature.

“We’d like you to deliver this little speech for us in your own voice. Into the tape recorder.”

Fairlie only continued to eat.

Sélim was very patient, very mild. “You see we believe the greatest difficulty faced by the peoples of the world is that those in power simply do not listen—or at best, listen only to what they want to hear.”

“You’ve got a captive audience,” Fairlie said. “If it pleases you to bombard me with mindless invective I can’t stop you. But I can’t see how you expect it to do you any good.”

“On the contrary. We expect you to help us re-educate the world.”

“Thank you but I rarely send my brain out to be laundered.”

“An admirable sense of humor. You’re a brave man.”

Sélim reached inside his robes, drew out a folded paper, pushed it into the light. Fairlie picked it up. It had been typewritten, single spaced.

“You’ll read it exactly as written, with no editorial revisions and no imaginative asides.”

Fairlie read it. His mouth pinched into tight compression; he breathed deep through his nose. “I see.”

“Yes, quite.”

“And after I’ve obeyed your instructions?”

“We don’t intend to kill you.”

“Is that a fact.”

“Fairlie you’re no use to us dead. I realize I can’t prove this to you. It’s true, however.”

“You don’t honestly think Washington will agree to these demands?”

“Why not? It’s a very cheap price to pay for your safe return.” Sélim leaned forward. “Put yourself in Brewster’s position. You’d do it. So will he. Come now, Fairlie, you’re wasting our time. You can readily understand that right now for us time is blood.”

Fairlie glanced at the last line of the typewritten speech. “‘Instructions will follow.’ What instructions? You can’t bring this off, you know that.”

“We’ve brought it off up to now, haven’t we Fairlie.” The voice was filled with quiet arrogance.

Fairlie tried to see him past the upheld hand lamp. Sélim’s head, wrapped in linen, was only a vague suggestion. Fairlie’s hand reached the table, gripped its edge; he put his fingertips on the document and pushed it away.

“You’re refusing.”

“Suppose I do?”

“Then we’ll break one of your fingers and ask you again.”

“I can’t be brainwashed.”

“Can’t you? Suppose I leave it to your imagination. You have to decide what your own life is worth to you—I can’t tell you that. How much pain can you bear?”

Fairlie lowered his face into his hands to shut out the blinding hard light.

He heard Sélim’s quiet talk. “We’re individually important to no one, not even ourselves. You on the other hand are important to a great many people. You have obligations to them as well as to yourself.” Sélim’s voice had dropped almost out of hearing.

Fairlie sat cramped and motionless facing the decision that would have to last his lifetime. Sophomoric questions of physical courage were beside the point; what mattered was position. If you stood for anything at all you must be seen to stand for it. You could not allow yourself to mouth words that mocked your beliefs. Not even when no one who heard you would believe for a moment that you had made the statement of your own free will.

He pulled the typewritten statement into the light and squinted against the glare. “‘They are to be released and given safe asylum.’ Asylum where? No country in the world will touch them.”

“Let that be our problem. Haven’t you enough of your own?”

Sélim dipped the light a little, out of his eyes. Fairlie shook his head. “‘Fascist pigs,’ ‘white liberal swine,’ ‘racist imperialists.’ Cheap propaganda slogans that don’t mean a thing. This document would have to be deciphered like a broadside from Peking.”

“I haven’t asked you to interpret for us. Just read it.”

Fairlie looked into the shadows beside the light. “The point is I have a position in the world, you see—alive or dead I still represent that position. The man in that position can’t put his voice to words like these.”