HARM Read Online Free PDF Page B

repetition drained the words of emotion.
    One feature of the magnificent scale on which life had been lived in this grand mansion was a bust set in an alcove in the wall at just above eye level. The bust was surrounded by a frame of carved stone laurel leaves. The bust itself was of white marble. It commemorated an elderly man with curled hair and a prominent patrician nose. The dead lips were pursed. His stony gaze, directed down at the occupants of the room, expressed contempt.
    Below the bust was his name and his titles. He was a general, a leader of armies, who had been knighted.
    Now a spider’s web was woven across the raised lettering. It was clear that he had been responsible for the deaths of many men—both the enemy and his own compatriots, who had had no choice but to follow him. For this carnage he had been celebrated by a grateful nation.
    The prisoner regarded this relic of the good old days with a dull wonder. It could be, he speculated, that this bust indicated that he was imprisoned in a building, palatial and grand, which had once served as the British Embassy in some foreign capital. In Baghdad? In Damascus? Someone had told him that he had been moved to Syria. The speculation was far from encouraging.
    He could not recall how he had arrived in this place. All was uncertainty. In his befuddled brain, he wondered if all men were made of stone.
             
    A LARGE, HEAVY MAN entered the room by a rear door, accompanied by a small, scurrying type of lackey. The big man walked to a chair and stood waiting, staring ahead as blankly as the bust behind him, while his inferior placed a cushion on the seat, officiously adjusting it. The big man sat himself down, placing a book on the table before him.
    He looked across at Prisoner B with a toadlike, expressionless stare. He began to speak in a deep voice, with elaborate politeness.
    “Good morning. My name is Abraham Ramson. I hold the rank of Paramount Government Inspector of the Western Armed Alliance and occupy a senior position in the American Punishment Section investigating hostile activities in the world. I am well known on both sides of the Atlantic as a military judge, famed for holding the lives of many villains in my hands. My aim is to function as a terror of the terrorists. I have prosecuted many famous cases and, although justice interests me, over and above justice I value the continued survival of Western civilization as of maximum import for the culture of this world, as the greatest bastion of enlightened law and behavior on this planet, certainly in comparison with the degenerate and superstitious tribalism prevalent in the Middle East. As a Muslim, you will be aware that we in the West—”
    Here the prisoner interrupted to protest that he was not of the Muslim faith.
    “You will shut the fuck up, you scumbag, while I am speaking!
    “—we in the West have a distaste for Sharia law as well as for many Islamic rules of behavior, from the circumcision of women to the indoctrination of ignorant youths into a form of religion which is in most respects long obsolete and degrading.
    “You know what Wahhabism is, Prisoner B?”
    B was startled to be suddenly expected to speak. “Wahhabism? Yes, I have heard of it…”
    “It is a hateful, archaic creed which destroys relationships and withers everything creative. We must fight it before it destroys us, like deathwatch beetles destroy sturdy oak beams. The slaves of Wahhab have the deathwatch habit of infiltrating and endeavoring to destroy the decent and law-abiding cultures into which you have inserted yourselves; together with the cowardly resort of suicide bombing.
    “All this I tell you to make my position clear. You must understand, before I question you, that if your answers are unsatisfactory in any way, you will receive a series of electric shocks of increasing severity. So, Prisoner B, question number one: What were your motives when you wrote this subversive novel