He could no longer pretend to be out and looked around. He was in a small room with blue walls, painted blue to ward off the evil eye, no doubt. The room was lit by a single naked bulb, dangling from a twisted ceiling wire like a gibbet. There were four of them, all Arabs. Except for the brute, they were all cut from the same pattern of slender builds, hawk noses and caramel-colored skin. Two of them were dressed in white thaubs. The one by the closed door covered with blue handprints to protect against the evil afreet spirits had an AK-47. The other off to his side had one of those cheap Italian automatics. The leader was a small, slim Arab with a thick moustache and a pointed parrot’s beak of a nose. He wore a shiny western suit and there was a swagger in his shoulders which suggested that he was more accustomed to wearing a uniform. His eyes were black and empty, like chunks of coal stuck in his face. The Scorpion recognized him as one of the men sitting around the campfire with Abdul Sa’ad and Nuruddin. The Arab sat on the edge of a crude wooden table scored with notches and the Scorpion tried not to think about how those notches got there, because as Harold Gallagher, the fat, bespectacled agent who had run the Phoenix operation in Nam, once told him: “The subject’s anticipation is the key ingredient in the interrogation process.”

Harold always looked like the kind of perpetual loser who might be found in an adult movie theater on a rainy night, but in fact he was a sadistic psychopath who had found his true vocation in Nam. He used to brag that he could get the most dedicated VC to give him Uncle Ho’s phone number in less than twenty minutes.

The Arab studied him carefully, pensively stroking his moustache. The Scorpion understood him perfectly. Torture created an almost obscenely intimate relationship between the interrogator and the victim.

The only other object in the room was a large iron cauldron sitting on the tiled floor. A strong chemical odor filled the room and suddenly the Scorpion’s pulse began to pound. He took a kiya breath to control his pulse rate, because he couldn’t stop thinking about what they had done to Chambers.

The only good thing was that they were amateurs. He knew it because they hadn’t done a complete body search. He could still feel the film cartridge resting uncomfortably in his shorts. That and the fact that they couldn’t identify him. He had only just arrived in Bahrain and, of course, he carried no ID. He was a professional.

“God is Great,” the Scorpion declared. The interrogator looked at him curiously.