The man she would never have met.

When he let himself quietly into the room perhaps fifteen minutes after she had lain down, she pretended to be asleep.


The nightmares almost always followed the same pattern.

They were never of the physical torture itself.

They were of the intervals between-the waiting for the next session, the never knowing exactly when it would be, the always knowing what it would be. They had always told him that in graphic detail in advance. And the temptation-the terrible, almost overwhelming temptation to give them what they wanted, to sell Kit out, to betray his country and her allies so that he would be granted the blessed release of death.

“No.” He was not speaking to them. He was speaking to it-the temptation. “No. No! No!” He did not want to scream. He tried desperately not to. He never screamed during the sessions. He would not give them the satisfaction. But even in the times between they would hear, and so he tried not to scream. But sometimes…

“No-o-o-o-o-o!”

As always he woke himself up with the screaming. He sat bolt upright on the bed, bathed in sweat, threw off the covers, stumbled over them anyway as he got out because he had thrown them with his right hand, and gasped for air like a drowning man.

He was almost instantly aware of Anne, sitting up on her side of the bed, reaching for him though he was too far away from her. He was still more than half in the nightmare and would be for some time, he knew from long experience. His body and his mind were too heavily drugged with the past to deal with the present for a while or even to display the common courtesies.

“Get out!” he told her. “Get out of here.”

“Sydnam-”

“Get out!”

“Sydnam-”

She was out of bed too and rounding the foot of it to come to him. He would have lashed out at her then if he had had a right arm to do it with.

Someone knocked on the door-hammered on it actually.

“Syd?” It was Kit’s voice. “Syd? Anne? May I come in?”

Anne changed direction and headed for the door, which opened just before she reached it.

“Syd?” Kit said again. “You are still having the nightmares? Let me help you. Anne-”

“Go away! Get out of here!”

He was still almost screaming. Soon the shaking would begin. He hated that weakness more than anything else. He hated for anyone to see it.

“Anne,” Kit said again, sounding like the military officer Sydnam had briefly known him as. “Go with Lauren. Mother is here too. Go with them. I’ll see to this.”

“Get out! All of you.”

“He has had a nightmare,” Anne said, her voice soft but quite firm. “I will see to him, Kit, thank you.”

“But-”

“He is my husband,” she said. “He wishes to be alone. Go back to bed. Everything will be all right. I will see to him.”