The door opened and slammed, and the two men who had escorted him to the cellar came in with a man Roger had never seen before. They entered the room and slammed the heavy door behind themselves. Bolts could be heard sliding shut on the other side. The two men, one on each side, fastened Roger’s wrists under steel brackets and locked them to the table with a key.

The new man was about six feet tall, slender, had a completely bald head, and wore a brown suit and heavy, black-rimmed eyeglasses. “Now,” he said. “Alex having failed to extract truth from you, we will employ other means.”

“But I have told you the truth!” Roger nearly shouted, but the men ignored him. The two men brought chairs to the table and placed them on either side of Roger. One of them produced a medical bag and opened it to reveal a selection of numbered bottles and a box of syringes. One man removed a blood-pressure kit from the bag, fastened it to Roger’s arm, and pumped it up. Then he wrote the results on a clipboard. He said something in Russian to the other man, who selected a bottle from the bag, uncapped a syringe, and half-filled it with fluid. He wiped the inside of Roger’s elbow with a cotton swab, slapped the vein to bring it up, then slipped the needle into the vein and began pressing the plunger on the syringe.

Roger felt a surge of warmth through his body, so much so that he began to perspire. He slipped into a half-conscious state and felt his heart begin to race.

“State your name,” the interrogator said.

“Roger Terrence Fife-Simpson.”

“Your age?”

“Forty-nine,” Roger mumbled. Someone slapped him smartly across the face. “Speak clearly,” the man said. “You are not unconscious.”

“Forty-nine,” Roger said again, trying to enunciate precisely.

The interrogator began to ask questions about random subjects—his childhood; his first assignment with the Royal Marines; the first, second, and third women he had had sex with; the kind of car he drove; where his suits were made; questions about Station Two and the attendees. They seemed particularly interested in Stone Barrington and would not accept that his presence there was the result of a wager. They demanded every shred of information he had about Barrington and the female doctor he had met at Station Two. They questioned him about the location and style of Barrington’s country house and demanded detailed descriptions of the rooms he had entered.

The questioning continued for what seemed the whole day, and Roger was not permitted to eat, stand, or use a toilet. He urinated in his clothing three or four times, and whenever his head seemed to clear a little, more of the drug was administered through the syringe. He was shouted at and slapped repeatedly to keep him on the edge of full consciousness.