But he doubted it. The Canadians had always been a civilised people. And even now, with the world turned inside out and savagery the first refuge of scoundrels and good men alike, it seemed improbable that any government in Vancouver would’ve dispatched somebody like this she-devil into the wilds of the South American Federation purely for his benefit. Indeed, it seemed unlikely to Lupérico that she had been dispatched for his benefit at all.

His armed escort prodded him deeper into the brush, sparing no thought for the injuries he had sustained under torture, or for the fact that he hadn’t eaten properly in days; ignoring his protests to stop, just for a moment, to let him gather what little strength he had left. The further into the forest they penetrated, the more conflicted he felt. It was good to put some distance between themselves and the prison, to get as far away as possible from any chance of him being recaptured. And yet his anxiety continued to grow. The trees seemed enormous, like vast and ancient cathedral pillars, soaring far overhead. The vines and thorny creepers through which they fought seemed utterly impenetrable to him, but the woman hacked and slashed a way through using her long, black-bladed machete. Occasionally he would catch a glint of dappled sunlight on its sharpened edge and worry about what might become of him while in this killer’s company. Nobody but she knew he was here now. Nobody even knew he was alive.

Whenever it seemed as though he might flag, she urged him forward with monosyllabic orders and once with the toe of a boot applied with some force to his posterior. A posterior that had been whipped with electrical cords just two days ago. Not to extract information from him, it should be noted. What could he possibly have told those militia brutes that they would’ve found interesting? No, they had whipped him and humiliated him purely for the fun of it.

As a man who had supervised the hostile debriefing of any number of the French Republic’s enemies himself, Lupérico found the oafish, horribly unprofessional behaviour of his former captors almost as upsetting as the torture itself. He realised that this might have seemed like a ridiculous point of distinction. After all, nobody likes being tortured, and the attitude of one’s tormentor should hardly make a difference when the battery clamps go on. Except that it did. Especially for somebody like him, who knew that professionals would stop when they had what they wanted.