“Your mother’s diseased cunt!” screamed the Arab, slashing the Scorpion’s face with his swagger stick. “I’ll teach you how to address a major in …” a sickly, embarrassed flush crept over the Arab’s face and the Scorpion smiled despite the searing pain streaking down the left side of his face. Drops of blood trickled down, staining his bisht with red spots that disappeared into the black cloth.

“Very good, asayid Shaw. Most ingenious,” the major said, shaking his head, as though the Scorpion had just scored with an impressive slam-dunk.

“All praise belongs to Allah,” the Scorpion said piously.

“Who do you work for? I assure you I will not ask again.”

The Scorpion muttered something unprintable, but this time the major (major in what?) restrained himself and ordered the big Arab to bring over the cauldron. The big Arab put on outsized heavy rubber gloves that reached all the way up his arms and a big rubber apron. Then he picked up the heavy cauldron and set it in front of the Scorpion. The cauldron was filled with a clear liquid. It looked like water and the Scorpion began to get a very bad feeling.

“Show him,” the major ordered. The big Arab pulled a piece of chicken from his pocket and tossed it into the cauldron, which began to bubble and hiss like a basket of snakes.

“Concentrated sulphuric acid,” the major remarked conversationally. “It will dissolve skin, flesh, even bone … but slowly. Not like Arabia where mercy is shown to thieves by using a sword. That is too quick. For spies something slower is needed,” the major declared, his eyes gleaming. He snapped his fingers and the big Arab stuck his glove in the cauldron and fished around until he brought out the piece of chicken. All that was left were a few strands of white flesh and a partially eaten-away bone.

The bastards, the Scorpion thought wildly. They hadn’t cut Chambers’ arms and legs off, they’d burned them off! The bastards, he thought, his gorge rising up at the thought of it. He forced himself to take a kiya breath, because unless he could come up with something, and fast, he was next.

“Now I asked you in all seriousness and for the truly last time, who are you and who do you work for? I would hate to subject you to our little bath,” the major said sympathetically, using the old torturer’s trick of implying that he was being forced to do the dirty work against his better nature, only because of the victim’s pig-headed recalcitrance. He stroked his moustache, waiting as if he had nothing better to do. The Scorpion had to come up with something. Anything to delay that acid bath that made his skin crawl.