Look at what we have, he continued to himself. Britten comes to me, under conditioning, ready to act out his part to the hilt. We question him under deep hypnotherapy and he comes forth with a plausible story. We might have stopped right there, but we got curious and began to ask more questions. He brings out another story. Why? Obviously, red herrings to confuse the issue. To stall for time. We apply more pressure, blank out his original conditioning so that he gives us straight answers to questions, and we are getting along fine. Then, suddenly he snaps out of it and into his original, pre-Britten character, all forty years of him. Therefore there must have been another, deeper level to the control over his mind which we did not even touch. A level activated by a new signal which we did not even detect, a signal which came at a crucial time.
"Now is the time" meant that the stalling was over, that the preparations for Britten's escape were completed.
There were still questions to be answered, many blank spaces to be filled in, but at the present instant there was only one question that mattered. The treatment which Wolf had given Britten—had it been at all effective?
Was it still effective?
There was one way to find out.
Morris Wolf leaned forward and called in a loud voice: "Pyotr Fermineyev!"
The man's head snapped around.
"Cooperation is the key word!" Wolf shouted.
Confusion passed over Britten's face as conflict once more knotted his nervous system.