‘Revolting?’ Jansci murmured.
‘To me, yes. As an ex-professor of nerve surgery in Budapest’s University and leading hospitals, the whole medieval conception of interrogation is intensely distasteful. To be honest, interrogation of any kind is distasteful, but I have found in this prison unsurpassed opportunities for observation of nervous disorders and for probing more deeply than ever before possible into the intensely complicated workings of the human nervous system. For the moment I may be reviled: future generations may differ in their appraisal. … I am not the only medical man in charge of prisons or prison camps, I assure you. We are extremely useful to the authorities: they are no less so to us.’
He paused, then smiled, almost diffidently.
‘Forgive me, gentlemen. My enthusiasm for my work at times quite carries me away. To the point. You have information to give, and it will not be extracted by medieval methods. From Colonel Hidas I have already learnt that Captain Reynolds reacts violently to suffering, and is likely to prove difficult to a degree. As for you . . .’ He looked slowly at Jansci. ‘I do not think I have ever seen in any human face the shadows of so many sufferings: suffering for you can now itself be only a shadow. I have no wish to flatter when I say that I cannot conceive of a physical torture which could even begin to break you.’
He sat back, lit a long, thin cigarette and looked at them speculatively. After the lapse of over two minutes he leaned forward again.
‘Well, gentlemen, shall I call a stenographer?’
‘Whatever you wish,’ Jansci said courteously. ‘But it would grieve us to think of wasting any more of your time than we have already done.’
‘I expected no other answer.’ He pressed a switch, talked rapidly into a boxed microphone, then leant back. ‘You will, of course, have heard of Pavlov, the Russian medical psychologist?’
‘The patron saint of the AVO, I believe,’ Jansci murmured.
‘Alas, there are no saints in our Marxist philosophy — one to which, I regret to say, Pavlov did not subscribe. But you are right insofar as your meaning goes. A bungler, a crude pioneer in many ways, but nevertheless one to whom the more advanced of us — ah — interrogators owe a considerable debt and — ‘
‘We know all about Pavlov and his dogs and his conditioning and breakdown processes,’ Reynolds said roughly. This is the Szarhaza prison, not the University of Budapest. Spare us the lecture on the history of brainwashing.’
For the first time the commandant’s studied calm cracked, a flush touched the high cheekbones, but he was immediately under control again. ‘You are right, of course, Captain Reynolds. One requires a certain, shall we say, philosophical detachment to appreciate — but there I go again. I merely wished to say that with the combination of the very advanced developments we have made of Pavlov’s physiological techniques and certain — ah — -psychological processes that will become apparent to you in the course of time, we can achieve quite incredible results.’ There was something about the man’s detached enthusiasm that was chilling, frightening. ‘We can break any human being who ever lived — and break him so that never a scar shows. With the exception of the incurably insane, who are already broken, there are no exceptions. Your stiff-upper-lipped Englishman of fiction — and, for all I know, fact — will break eventually, like everyone else: the efforts of the Americans to train their Servicemen to resist what the western world so crudely calls brainwashing — let us call it rather a reintegration of personality — are as pathetic as they are hopeless. We broke Cardinal Mindszenty in eighty-four hours: we can break anyone.’
He stopped speaking as three men, white-coated and carrying a flask, cups and a small metal box, entered the room and waited until they had poured out two cups of what was indubitably coffee.
‘My assistants, gentlemen. Excuse the white coats — a crude psychological touch which we find effective with a large majority of our — ah — patients. Coffee, gentlemen. Drink it.’
‘I’ll be damned if I will,’ Reynolds said coldly.
‘You will have to undergo the indignity of nose-clips and a forcible tube feed if you don’t,’ the commandant said wearily. ‘Do not be childish.’
Reynolds drank and so did Jansci. It tasted like any other coffee, but perhaps stronger and more bitter.
‘Genuine coffee,’ the commandant smiled. ‘But it also contains a chemical commonly known as Actedron. Do not be deceived by its effects, gentlemen. For the first minutes you will feel yourself stimulated, more determined than ever to resist: but then will come somewhat severe headaches, dizziness, nausea, inability to relax and a state of some mental confusion — the dose, of course, will be repeated.’ He looked at an assistant with a syringe in his hands, gestured at it, and went on to explain. ‘Mescaline — produces a mental state very akin to schizophrenia, and is becoming increasingly popular, I believe, among writers and other artists of the western world: for their own sakes, I trust they do not take it with Actedron.’
Reynolds stared at him and had to force himself not to shiver. There was something evil, something abnormally wrong and inhuman about the quiet-talking commandant with the gently humorous professorial talk, all the more evil, all the more inhuman because it was deliberately neither, just the chillingly massive indifference of one whose utter and all-exclusive absorption in an insatiable desire for the furthering of his own particular life’s work left no possible room for any mere consideration of humanity. . . . The commandant was speaking again.
‘Later, I shall inject a new substance, my own invention but so recently discovered that I have not yet named it: Szarhazazine, perhaps, gentlemen — or would that be too whimsical? I can assure you that if we had had it some years ago the good Cardinal would not have lasted twenty-four hours, much less than eighty-four. The combined efforts of the three, after perhaps two doses of each, will be to reduce you to a state of absolute mental exhaustion and collapse. Then the truth will come inevitably, and we will add what we will to your minds, and that, for you, will be the truth.’
‘You tell us all this?’ Jansci said slowly.
‘Why not? Forewarned, in this case, is not forearmed: the process is irreversible.’ The quiet certainty in his voice left no room for any doubt. He waved away the white-coated attendants and pressed a button on his desk. ‘Corns gentlemen, it is time that you were shown your quarters.’
Almost at once the guards were in the room again, releasing legs and arms one at a time from chair arms and legs, then reshackling wrists and ankles together, all with a swift and trained efficiency that precluded all idea of escape, much less escape itself. When Jansci and Reynolds were on their feet, the commandant led the way from the room: two guards walked on either side and a third, with a pistol ready, behind each of the two men. The precautions were absolute.
The commandant led the way across the hard-packed snow of the courtyard, through the guarded entrance to a massively-walled, window-barred block of buildings and along a narrow, dim-lit corridor. Half-way along, at the head of ,a flight of stone steps leading down into the gloom below, he paused at a door, gestured to one of the guards and turned to the two prisoners.
‘A last thought, gentlemen, a last sight to take with you down into the dungeons below, while you spend your last few hours on earth as the men you have always known yourselves to be.’ The key clicked in the lock, and the commandant pushed it open with his foot. ‘After you, gentlemen.’
Hobbled by the shackles, Reynolds and Jansci stumbled into the room, saving themselves from falling by catching at the foot-rail of an old-fashioned iron bedstead. A man was lying on the bed, dozing, and Reynolds saw, almost with no sensation of surprise — he had been expecting it from the moment the commandant had stopped outside the door — that it was Dr. Jennings. Haggard and wasted and years older than when Reynolds had seen him three days previously, he had been dozing on a dirty straw mattress: but he was almost instantly awake, and Reynolds could not resist a slow stirring of satisfaction when he saw that, whatever else the old man had lost, it certainly wasn’t his intransigence: the fire was back in the faded eyes even as he struggled upright.
‘Well, what the devil does this latest intrusion mean?’ He spoke English, the only language he knew, but Reynolds could see that the commandant understood. ‘Haven’t you damned ruffians pushed me about enough for a week-end without . . .’ He broke off when he recognised Reynolds for the first time and stared at him. ‘So the fiends got you, too?’