"Good to see you awake, Mr. Sticker." The voice came at Leo from all sides. It was a deep mechanical voice, not unlike the synthesized voice in electronic toys. Leo noticed the television camera for the first time. It was in a corner of the room and took in the full sweep of Leo's prison.

"You have been looking for me for quite some time," the electronic voice droned, "and now you have found me. I am Shillelagh. You will get to know me rather well over the next little while, but I don't think the experience will be pleasant for either of us. I am a professional, Mr. Sticker, and I willdo what is necessary. From the little I know about you, I suspect that there could be great profit in knowing more about you. A mixture of drugs and other, shall we say, physical inducements should prove effective in obtaining all of the information I need. Shall we begin?"

Leo writhed in pain as a ball of electricity hit him, dispersed like SMG slugs ripping into his marrow. The current was reduced until it became a steady throb, tolerable but insistent. From somewhere behind, Leo heard a door open and a person walk in.

Moisture was applied to his bicep. He felt a needle pierce his skin. The sound of hard-soled shoes on the cement floor followed the needle out of the room. The current was switched off. As the drug took effect, Leo felt himself drifting into a moonless night that beckoned him like a lover. I'm ready, baby, he thought helplessly. I am ready.

The voice began asking the questions. Probing, insisting, all powerful. An evasion or wrong answer brought Leo to screams as the shock was applied. Then Leo was allowed to drift back again under the drug's influence before the voice resumed its interrogation.

5

The war wagon cruised south along the A332 highway into Windsor.

The castle had been in view for some five minutes. It loomed above the fertile green countryside like a gray sentinel. Built on top of Castle Hill, the royal "weekend retreat" was surrounded by a stone wall that stretched for more than five hundred feet in a radius around the imposing Round Tower.