The Walking Dead

A uniformed officer held-the traffic on the Edgware Road and the cars slewed right and into the basement yard of Paddington Green police station.

A blanket was draped over the prisoner's head as he was hustled inside the cell block.

A news blackout lay over the arrest.

A spaniel sniffer dog, far to the north, wolfed biscuits happily and was the celebrity of the hour.

Chapter 13

Wednesday, Day 14

He heard Naylor give his name, then say, 'And with me is Mr Josiah Hegner, of the Bureau and out of Riyadh, who has made a study of these matters and, in an advisory capacity, is fully welcomed by my superiors.

His world was darkness, but his senses were acute.

'…and this is Mary Reakes, from the Service. Where are we?'

Where? Well, Hegner had been told — on the walk between the car and the building — that Paddington Green was the high-security place where all high-flier terrorists arrested in the United Kingdom were brought for questioning; and had been told it was bombproof, stormproof, and escape-proof. Seemed simple enough to know where they were. A place like this was available to the Bureau in a' score of American cities, and there was the cordoned-off holding area at the Baghdad airport military wing, the Mabatha interrogation centre out south from the Saudi capital…Should have been 'Where are we getting?'

Mary had his arm, and he kind of liked that, but she didn't do leading him as well as' his Cindy did.

A voice said, laconic and like his presence — and Naylor's and Mary's — was an intrusion, 'Early days as yet. Because he was picked up at dawn, then brought down here, we've let him stew in his cell — as we're obliged to — and he's been offered a meal, declined it, and a chance to pray, used it. It's been done by the book, and we've had him in here for a couple of hours…Like I say, early days.'

His nostrils picked up the recycled, regurgitated airflow of the block. The same air, damp and stale, circulated in these buildings everywhere Hegner had been. And there was always a television screen cabled through to a ceiling camera in the room where the jerk was. He heard the low voice, the question, but there was silence for an answer. He swung his stick in front of him, hit a table leg and moved forward skirting it, swung the stick again and heard a yelp of pain, then, 'Hey, steady with that thing, if you don't mind.' Hegner went to a speaker, stood under it. He reached out with his hand, touched the covering material, then eased his ear against it.

A second voice, irritated, 'Excuse me, but you're half in my lap.'

He heard again the question, then the silence. He said, 'Mary, get me a chair here.'

There was a snort of annoyance. He didn't care. The chair was brought and he settled on it, but his ear stayed against the speaker. He heard the crackle of the connection, the rustle of papers, the clink of a bottle's neck on a glass and the silence…and he knew what he would say but was not ready to say it. He heard Mary's breathing near to him, and Naylor's cough.

'Do you want a coffee, Joe?' Mary asked.

He gazed into the blackness, and strained to hear better from the speaker. Hegner said, 'A coffee'll make me need a leak. What I want is you to describe him to me. I want to know him.'

He sensed around him the resentment his presence created, and it did not concern him. Little sounds, not from the speaker, told him of the three men and one woman in the room, and they would have thought themselves the experts, and he was the intruder. As an intruder, he was familiar with resentment. Sometimes he used folksy charm to dismantle it and sometimes he didn't bother, as now. If it had been his territory that was invaded he would have bawled them out, slammed the goddamn door on them.

She said briskly, 'It's a monochrome screen and the lighting's poor. He's in a paper jumpsuit. He's Asian, maybe middle twenties…

He's a big man, powerful, heavily muscled, but his shoulders are down. The tongue's out, flicks his lips. He's frightened.'

Not frightened bad enough, like he would have been — Hegner thought — in the Mabatha interrogation centre or at Baghdad's airport, or if the cold, bad guys of the Bureau had him in a 'black site' military camp.

The question came over the speaker, conversational: 'It's confirmed, Ramzi, that there are traces of explosives on your hands, and I'm giving you the opportunity to explain them. How did they get there?' No reply.

'What's his eyeline?'

'Seems, Joe, that he's looking at the ceiling, not at the officer across the table. On the ceiling and staying there.'

The patient rephrasing of the question: 'Look, Ramzi, there may be a perfectly innocent explanation for these traces on your hands; and I'm giving you the chance to tell me how they came to be there.' He listened to the silence.

Mary said, 'The eyeline has changed. It's gone to the wall, the bottom of it, to his left. He's sweating, hands clenched and fingers locked. I'd say frightened but fighting.'