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such a senior officer is disturbing me.
    He unscrews the cup of a Thermos, fills the cup, drinks from it and puts it down beside a trio of files. I can smell the coffee. Perhaps the visual metaphor is a deliberate one, calculated to weaken me.
    ‘Can you confirm that you are Captain Anthony Hugh Taverner, 1st Battalion, Scots Guards, latterly SO3/E2 in Kuwait City serving under the Joint Services Interrogation Wing?’
    The big four to which H referred are name, rank, serial number and date of birth. But since they seem to know this and more, I see no reason to speak. Even were I to confirm my identity, I don’t know how it would help him, since I haven’t been in the army for nine years and service law is inapplicable to me as a civilian.
    ‘Ah,’ he exclaims, as if my silence itself has given him the answer he requires. ‘ Nemo me impune lacessit . Good show at Tumbledown, but I suppose that’s before your time.’
    The colonel knows my regimental motto and its battle honours, which suggests a level of personal knowledge, or research, which makes me uncomfortable. One of the files is a familiar red colour, and I wonder if it’s my 108, record of service from my stint with the Green Team. I dread to think. He’s probably got eyewitness statements from the Thursday nights in Abbots and a menu from the Roast Seagull Chinese restaurant in Ashford.
    He purses his lips pensively.
    ‘Are you going to co-operate, Taverner? We won’t need long if you are. I expect you’d like to get home, as would I. What’s your answer?’
    His apparent sincerity is like a lifeline towards which I’m tempted to reach. I must assume it is all part of his plan, although what the overall purpose is I can’t yet guess. I’m almost disappointed at the ridiculousness of the charade – the semblance of a military interrogation, as if the trappings and manners of an authority to which I once bowed will intimidate me into compliance. I am wondering who has concocted this infantile scheme when the colonel speaks again.
    ‘In case you think you’re not in the army any more, you are .’ He looks directly at me, without expression, then down again. ‘I have here your additional duties commitment document, dated 17 March. That is your signature, isn’t it?’ He holds up a piece of paper that appears to confirm this. But I haven’t signed any such document and my mind is starting to turn in tighter circles now. The only document I put my signature to a month ago is the paperwork handed to me by Seethrough at Vauxhall Cross, which I took to be the Official Secrets Act. But now I begin to wonder if I’ve been deceived, which is, I remind myself, the prerogative of the service to which Seethrough so proudly belongs. I must escape from this anxiety or at least find a way to regulate it. It is time to give voice to my chosen mantra, as recommended by H.
    ‘I can’t answer that question. Sir.’ To speak brings relief.
    ‘Ah. So you do talk.’
    And now I recall Seethrough’s joke at the moment I was about to look over the pages. More draconian than before, he’d said, or something like it. I’d thought it strange at the time: you only sign Section 5 of the OSA once, because it’s for life. Was his joke to distract me from looking too closely at the pages? Is it possible that I’ve been tricked into signing a document that makes me accountable under military law? Is it possible that everything that has preceded this moment has been a set-up? That the op in Afghanistan is no more than a ploy? Or have I been tricked into thinking that I’ve been tricked? Doubt is stalking me now. But perhaps that is the colonel’s job: to feed my doubt.
    ‘Always read the small print, isn’t that what they say?’ He says this almost to himself.
    I tilt my head back to get a better look at him from under the swelling ridge of my eyebrow. Would he bother, I’m wondering now, with such a throwaway line if he didn’t mean it?
    He drives home his attack.