8. The Heat

The detainee was not yet thirty, if Stephens was any judge, taller than average, and while not fat as such, surprisingly prosperous-looking. Perhaps from a family of gentleman farmers, insulated from the worst of the Depression. His ancestry couldn’t be guessed from a glance — something European, in the main. Maybe from a more southerly climate, and dark-haired.

He was quaking in his metaphorical boots, that much was obvious. Good. He also looked bewildered, like he was not sure how he came to find himself in these unfortunate and unwelcoming straits. Being flanked by two plimsol-shod soldiers in otherwise full kit did not seem to be setting his mind at rest either. He looked desperately round the room, which had a deliberately courtroom air, with a totally unnecessary translator, and then Stephens’ subordinates Short and Goodacre.

He looked pale and ill, like he'd been left in a loathsome dungeon for a week rather than overnight and part of the morning with rations, and apparently had somehow managed to catch a cold in the few hours he’d been in sneezing range of anyone else.

“What’s your name?”

The man stuttered wildly, looking at Short and Goodacre as though for permission.

“Uh! Matt! Mateo! Mathew, that is, dad’s side of the family is Anglo and—“

“Surname?”

“Smith —“

“Your uniform says Ramírez on it.”

He looked down, to check, before apparently remembering he was wearing a flannel prison jacket.

“Yeah, it’s Ramirez! Smith-Ramirez! But uh that wouldn’t fit on the patch and we already had two Smiths.”

“Who’s ’we?’”

“Uhhh...” He trailed helplessly off, looking at Short and Goodacre again as though for a friendly face. But the time when a friendly face would be useful had not yet come.

“Be quick about it! Who’s ‘we’?”

“The, uh, the heater repair place.” If he wasn’t lying, he was still clearly operating under the erroneous assumption that this was a fight he could possibly win.

“Which heater repair place?”

“The one in La Crescent! Uh, that’s in Minnesota, just across the river from Wisconsin, sir, please, the embassy—“

“—you’re not under the embassy’s protection now, Mr. ...Smith. I don’t mean this in any sense as a threat, but it is my role to get the full story from you. That will happen. You may as well tell the truth now and save us both time.”

Whatever his real name was — Smith! faugh — opened his mouth and shut again a few times like a fish, then shrugged helplessly.

“I don’t know what to tell you, sir.”

“I would suggest the truth, and that with the absolute minimum of delay.”

“I...I got lost, sir. I’m a tourist.”

“You’re a liar. There’s no American by any of your myriad names from your lips or on your papers anywhere in England. At least you had the wit to use the same name.” He felt his lip curl. A sneaking coward, like the nation he served! Maybe that was his descent as well as his allegiance — blood would out, at least some of the time. He believed that he was a civilian, though. This sniveling man had never stood at attention in his life.

He kept after him, rapid-fire, for four hours, without being paid the compliment of either an honest truth or an artful lie, until the detainee was reeling with the effort of keeping up. That provided them with a healthy four hours of stenographer’s records to pick over — given enough rope he would eventually hang himself on the truth. He was dismissed to his cell, exhausted and shaken, and Stephens called for a report on the odd little devices that could be the end of England.

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