of suffocation was caused by that, as well as by shock.
‘So sorry,’ a man said, sounding terribly polite and English. ‘A little mishap. Slip of the foot. I trust you weren’t hurt.’
‘No,’ Martin said, shocked by the breathless sound of his own voice. ‘Could you remove this hood? Its really…’
The chair went over again and stopped just before hitting the floor. This time they held him in that position for some time, letting the blood run to his head, then tipped him upright again and let his breathing settle.
‘We ask the questions,’ the polite gentleman said, ‘and you do the answering. Now could you please tell us who else was with you in that field.’
Martin gave his name, rank, service number and date of birth.
The chair was kicked back, caught and tipped upright, then someone else bawled in Martin’s face: ‘We don’t want to know that!’
After getting his breath back, Martin gave his name, rank, service number and date of birth, thinking, This isn’t real.
It became real enough after that, with a wide variety of questions either politely asked or bawled, the polite voice alternating with the bullying one, and the chair being thrown back and jerked up again, but getting lower to the floor every time. Eventually, when Martin, despite his surging panic, managed to keep repeating only his name, rank, serial number and date of birth, they gave up on the chair and dragged him across the room to slam him face first into what seemed like a bare wall. There, the ropes around his ankles were released and he was told to spread his legs as wide as possible, almost doing the splits.
‘Don’t move a muscle,’ he was told by the bully.
He stood like that for what seemed a long time, until his thighs began to ache intolerably and his whole body sagged.
‘Don’t move!’ the bully screamed, slamming Martin’s face into the wall again and forcing him to straighten his aching spine. ‘Stay as still as the turd you are!’
‘We’re sorry to be so insistent,’ the polite one added, ‘but you’re not helping at all. Now, regarding what you were doing out there in the fields, do please tell us…’
It went on and on, with Martin either repeating his basic details or saying: ‘I cannot answer that question.’ They shouted, cajoled and bullied. They made him stand in one position until he collapsed, then let him rest only long enough to enable them to pick another form of torture that did not involve beating.
Martin knew what they were doing, but this wasn’t too much help, since he didn’t know how long it would last, let alone how long he might endure it. Being hooded only made it worse, sometimes making him feel that he was going to suffocate, at other times making him think that he was hallucinating, but always depriving him of his sense of time. It also plunged him into panics based solely on the fact that he no longer knew left from right and felt mentally and physically unbalanced.
Finally, they left him, letting him sleep on the floor, joking that they were turning out the light, since he couldn’t see that anyway. He lay there for an eternity – but perhaps only minutes – now yearning just to sleep, too tired to sleep, and whispering his name, rank, serial number and date of birth over and over, determined not to make a mistake when repeating it or, worse, say more than that. The only words he kept in mind other than those were: ‘I cannot answer that question.’ He had dreams – they may have been hallucinations – and had no idea of how long he had been lying there where they returned to torment him.
They asked Martin if he smoked and, when he said no, blew a cloud of smoke in his face. While he was coughing, they asked him more questions. When he managed, even through his delirium, to stick to his routine answers, one of them threw him back on the freezing floor and said: ‘Let’s feed the bastard to the dogs.’
They stripped off his clothing, being none too gentle, then left him to lie there, shivering with cold, almost sobbing, but controlling himself by endlessly repeating his name, rank, serial number and date of birth.
He almost lost control again when he heard dogs barking, snarling viciously, and hammering their paws relentlessly on the closed door.
Was it real dogs or a recording? Surely, they wouldn’t…Who? By now he was too tired to think straight, forgetting why he was there, rapidly losing touch with reality, his mind expanding and contracting, his thoughts swirling in a pool of light and darkness in the hood’s stifling heat.
A recording, was the thought he clung to. Must not panic or break.
The door opened and snarling dogs rushed in, accompanied by the shouting of men.
The men appeared to be ordering the dogs back out. When the dogs were gone, the door closed again.
Silence.
Then somebody screamed: ‘Where are you based?’
It was like an electric bolt shooting through Martin’s body, making him twitch and groan. He started to tell them, wanted to tell them, and instead said: ‘I cannot answer that question.’
‘You’re a good boy,’ the civilized English voice said. ‘Too stubborn for your own good.’
This time, when they hoisted him back on to the chair, he was filled with a dread that made him forget everything except the need to keep his mouth shut and make no mistakes. No matter what they said, no matter what they did, he would not say a word.
‘What’s the name of your squadron commander?’ the bully bawled.
‘I cannot answer that question,’ Martin said, then methodically gave his name, rank, serial number and date of birth.
The silence that followed seemed to stretch out for ever, filling Martin with a dread that blotted out most of his past. Eventually the English-sounding voice said: ‘This is your last chance. Will you tell us more or not?’
Martin was halfway through reciting his routine when they whipped off the hood.
Light blinded him.
‘I still don’t think we should do it,’ Captain Dubois said, even as he hung his neatly folded OGs in his steel locker and started putting on civilian clothing. ‘It could land us in water so hot we’d come out like broiled chicken.’
‘We’re doing it,’ Lieutenant Cranfield replied, tightening the laces on his scuffed, black-leather shoes and oblivious to the fact that Captain Dubois was his superior officer, ‘I’m fed up being torn between Army Intelligence, MI6, the RUC and even the “green slime”,’ he said, this last being the Intelligence Corps. ‘If we come up with anything, as sure as hell one lot will approve, the other will disapprove, they’ll argue for months, and in the end not a damned thing will be done. Well, not this time. I’m going to take that bastard out by myself. As for MI5…’
Cranfield trailed off, too angry for words. After an uneasy silence, Captain Dubois said tentatively, ‘Just because Corporal Phillips committed suicide…’
‘Exactly. So to hell
