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an indentured laborer in British-held Uganda. He worked in a copper mine. He had married, and his wife delivered three sons and a daughter. One of these sons became B’s father.
    This son was clever. He established a small grocery store in Kampala, the Ugandan capital. The store catered not just to the 18 percent of the population that was Muslim but to all Ugandans, irrespective of their faith. He was successful and moved to a larger store at a better site, on Gladstone Street. There he attracted wealthy white patronage.
    Still a young man, he part-funded the building of a local mosque, thus incurring the enmity of a British official with conflicting property interests. B’s father soon moved to Britain, where he was again successful, founding the store Beezue in Queensway. His racehorse Thark won the 1997 Derby. In his forties, he married an Englishwoman, Gloriana Harbottle, by whom he had a son (B) and a daughter.
    Gloriana had written children’s stories, which influenced B. His father maltreated him. Beating, shutting in cupboards were recorded.
    Abraham Ramson gave a grim chortle. “So they called him ‘Insane Hussein’ at school…It says here that while shut in one of these cupboards he renounced the Muslim faith.
    “Ever been shut in a cupboard for a week, Algy? It makes a difference, let me tell you.”
    Gibbs sighed. “No doubt. What else?”
    Ramson turned to the screen again.
    “In his teens, B left home and lived for some time with a woman hairdresser, Janet Stevens. He underwent psychoanalysis for his various insecurities. The course was funded by a league to help recent immigrants. His first story, ‘Eve in the Evening,’ was published in
Granta
and he was taken up by a literary crowd. He married Doris McGinty, an Irishwoman with literary ambitions. It is claimed that she helped him write his comic novel,
Pied Piper of Hament.
The novel betrays little of B’s origins.”
    Having read these notes and checked the dates, Ramson looked up from the screen.
    “Well, it’s a British story. You Brits were too lenient on these guys. You see, you let the shits in, then they betray us.”
    Gibbs, standing behind him smoking, agreed. “We’ve been too liberal by half.”
    Glaring up from his chair, Ramson looked at a point over Gibbs’s shoulder to deliver his next comment. “You do a lot of things by halves, Algy. Interrogation methods are strictly amateur—nothing improved since World War Two—”
    “The gov’ment is extremely parsimonious with our finances—”
    “Not enough psychological leverage used. It leaves no mark on the suspect. You should read up about our various methods. Fake drowning. The waterboard. That’s excellent—fake drowning. Then again, you don’t have properly trained staff here, men who like the work and know how to apply it.”
    Ramson rose from his chair. He had left his mineral water untouched. “However, this guy, he’s nothing. All flimflam. Let him go. Kick him out. You’re wasting your time with him, Algy.”
    But Gibbs was pursuing his own line of thought. He dropped the stub of his cigarette and crushed it out on the floor with his boot. “I’d nuke the lot of them, given the chance.”
    As they made for the door together, Ramson said, with the usual note of contempt in his voice, “Yeah, I’d certainly nuke a good many of ’em. Trouble is, nuking is not very selective. It’s not WAA policy, okay? It’s all or nothing with nuking, Algy.”
    “So much the better.”
             
    I T WAS STILL DARK. His head still ached. He listened to his own sobbing, wondering where it came from.
    “Shut up, will you?” said one of the four guards, shaking Fremant’s shoulder. “What’s wrong with you? Yelling in your sleep, you woke me up.” His name was Tunderkin and he lay on his palliasse next to Fremant. His face was broad and honest, with a scar on the left cheek. He had long blond hair and big muscles. He was in his teens.
    Fremant sat up, dazed.