complicated and oh-so-clever electronic listening systems. I mean, where's the security 
if they can tap-in on any phone call anywhere in the whole wide world, eh? And these are 
only a handful of the ways in which sensitive information may be obtained. The art of 
spying" (a sideways glance at Jazz, but without enmity) "takes a great many forms and 
encompasses some formidable, one might even say terrifying talents. On both sides, I 
mean, East and West alike. High-tech on the one hand, and the supernatural on the other."
  "The supernatural?" Jazz raised an enquiring eyebrow. The Perchorsk Projekt looks solid 
enough to me. And anyway, I'm afraid I don't much believe in ghosts."
  Khuv smiled and nodded. "I know," he said, "I know. We've checked on that-or perhaps 
you don't remember?"
  Jazz looked blank for a moment, then frowned. Come to think of it, he did remember. It 
had been part of his •debriefing", but at the time he hadn't paid it a lot of attention. 
Actually, he'd thought his "DO" was pulling his leg: to ask what he knew about INTESP, or 
E-Branch, which used Extra Sensory Perception as a tool for espionage. Indeed ESPionage! 
As it happened, Jazz had quite genuinely known nothing at all about it, and he probably 
wouldn't have believed it even if he had.
  "If telepathy was feasible," he told Khuv, "they wouldn't have needed to send me, would 
they? There wouldn't be any more secrets!"
  "Quite right, quite right," Khuv answered after a moment's pause. Those were my 
feelings exactly-once upon a time. And as you rightly point out, all of this," he waved 
an arm expansively about, "is obviously solid enough."
  "All of this" was the gymnasium area, where for the past week Jazz had been getting 
himself back in shape following the fortnight he'd spent on his back. The fact that 
they'd so easily emptied him of all he had known still didn't sit too well with him. 
Here, as they paused a while to let Karl Vyotsky strip off his pullover and work out for 
a few minutes with the weights, Jazz thought he'd try a little pumping of his own.
  He had no doubt that whatever questions he put to Khuv, they'd be answered in a 
truthful, straightforward manner. In this respect the KGB Major was entirely disarming. 
But on the other hand, why shouldn't he be open? He had nothing to lose. He knew that 
Jazz wasn't going anywhere outside of this place, ever. He'd known that right from square 
one. That's the way they had it figured out, anyway.
  "You surprise me," he said, "complaining about American know-how. I was supposed to be 
about 75 per cent proof against brainwashing, but you pulled my plug and I just gurgled 
away. No torture, not even a threat, and I'm pentathol-resistant-but I couldn't hold a 
thing back! How the hell did you do that?"
  Khuv glanced at him, went back to watching Vyotsky handling weights as if they were 
made of papier-mache. Jazz looked at Vyotsky, too.
  Khuv's underling was huge: seventy-five inches and a little over two hundred pounds, 
and all of it muscle. He hardly seemed to have any neck at all, and his chest was like a 
barrel expanding out of his narrow waist. His thighs were round and tight inside 
light-blue trousers. He felt Jazz's eyes on him, grinned through his black beard and 
flexed biceps that would shame a bear. "You'd like to work out with me, British?" He 
finished his exercises and dropped the weights clanging to the floor. "Bare-fisted, 
maybe, in the ring?"
  "Just say the word, Ivan," Jazz answered, half-smiling, his voice low. "I still owe you 
for a couple of teeth, remember?"
  Vyotsky showed his own teeth again, but not in a grin, and put on his pullover. Khuv 
turned to Jazz, said: "Don't push your luck with Karl, my friend. He can give you twenty 
pounds and ten years of experience. On top of which he has some ugly little habits. When 
we caught you on that mountain he knocked your teeth out, yes, but believe me you were 
lucky. He wanted to pull your head off. And it's possible he could do it, with a little 
effort. I might even have let him try, except that would have been a terrible waste, and 
we've already had enough of that around here."
  They began to walk again, passed through the gymnasium and out into a room containing a 
small swimming pool. The pool wasn't tiled; it had simply been blasted out of the bedrock 
along a natural fault. Here, where the uneven, veined ceiling was a little higher, 
several of the Projekt's staff were swimming in the pool's heated water; the room echoed 
to the slapping sounds of flesh on plastic as two women open-handed a ball to and fro 
between them. A thin, balding man was practicing jack-knives from a springboard.
  "As for your "debriefing," said Khuv, shrugging, "well, there's high-tech and there's 
high-tech. The West has its miniaturization, its superb electronics, and we have our-"
  "Bulgarian chemists?" Jazz cut him short. The tiled walkway at the side of the pool was 
wet and his feet were slipping; he stumbled, and Vyotsky caught his arm in a powerful 
grip, steadied him. Jazz cursed under his breath. "Do you know how uncomfortable it is 
walking round in this thing?" He was talking about his strait-jacket.
  "A necessary precaution," said Khuv. "I'm sorry, but it really is for the best. Most of 
the people here aren't armed. They're scientists, not soldiers. Soldiers guard the 
approaches to the Projekt, certainly, but their barracks are elsewhere; not far away, but 
not here. There are some soldiers here, as you'll see, but they are specialists. And so, 
if you were to get loose-" again his shrug. "You might do a lot of damage before you met 
up with someone like Karl here."
  At the end of the pool they passed out through another door into a gently curving 
corridor which Jazz recognized as the perimeter. That was what they called it, "the 
perimeter': a metal-clad, rubber-floored tunnel which enclosed the entire complex about 
its middle level. From the perimeter, doors led inwards into all the Projekt's many 
areas. There were still a few doors Jazz hadn't been through, the ones which required 
special security access. He'd seen the living areas, hospital, recreation rooms, dining 
hall and some of the laboratories, but not the machine itself, if there was such a beast. 
Khuv had promised him, however, that today he was to visit "the guts" of the place.
  Khuv led the way, Jazz following, with Vyotsky bringing up the rear. People came and 
went around them, dressed in lab smocks, overalls; some with millboards and notes, others 
carrying pieces of machinery or instruments. The place could easily be some high-tech 
factory anywhere in the world. As Jazz and his escort proceeded, so
  Khuv said:
  "You asked about your debriefing. Well, you're right about our Bulgarian friends: they 
really have a knack for brewing potent stuff-and of course I'm not just talking about 
their wine. The pills were to cause you pain; they cramp muscles, heighten sensitivity. 
The shots are part truth-drug, part sedative. They have the effect of making you 
susceptible to suggestion. It's not so much that you can't refuse, more that you're far 
more likely to believe -anything that we tell you! Your Debriefing Officer not only 
speaks very good English, but he's a top-rank psychologist, too. So don't blame yourself 
that you let your side down. You really had no choice. You thought you were home and dry, 
and that you were only doing your duty."
  Jazz merely grunted for reply. His face was void of emotion, which was the way he'd 
kept it most of the time since discovering he'd been duped.
  "Of course," Khuv continued, "your own British, er, "chemists" are rather clever men in 
their own right. That capsule in your mouth, for instance: we weren't able to analyse its 
contents here at the Projekt. Hardly surprising; we aren't equipped with a full range of 
analytical facilities-that's not what the Perchorsk Projekt is about-but even so we were 
at least able to conclude that your little tooth capsule contained a remarkably complex