The girl that went out the main door of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina and started walking Esmeralda Street down towards the Retiro train station was the typical product of the urban professional middle class: highly educated, almost self made and with a high self-esteem. She had a pretty face, with round eyes, small nose and a nice mouth. And a nice figure; worked out at the gym. She was rather medium sized, but was slim, had long legs, moderate hips and small waist. She had fair skin with just a slight tan and used to wear very little and natural-looking makeup, which made her look even younger than she was, being in her late twenties. She was impeccably dressed in a grey suit, black shoes with low heels and a white shirt which concealed her breasts, possibly discreetly surgery-enhanced, held in a basic white bra. Only a wristwatch, a couple of rings and wristbands and small earrings adorned her.

As she turned and began negotiating down Juncal Street towards Retiro, she released her long chestnut hair from the lace she wore at office, while struggling not to drop a paper carrying folder. It had been a long day at office; she had finished a report and briefed her boss on some Middle East issues, her main area of expertise. As she was probably thinking of calling some friends on her mobile phone when she boarded the train home or about feeding her cat when she reached there, she didn't notice the white traffic van stopped at double queue which started moving towards her as she crossed the street. Nor did she realize that the side door opened wide when the van stopped briefly beside her. The surprise was still too great for her to even react when four strong arms seized her and lifted her into the van. In seconds, a gag was in her mouth, a black bag over her head and her hands and feet tied up. The van accelerated a short distance before entering the slow traffic, which was typical of Buenos Aires at such a peak hour.

II

When the bag over her head was taken off, she was momentarily blinded by some strong light pointing straight to her face, adding to the effect of the blindfold. Meanwhile, as she tried to move, she took stock of her situation: she was tied to a metal chair, her arms behind the backrest, tied at the elbows to the frame. Each of her legs had been also tied to each of the chair’s legs, by the ankles and knees. She tried to release herself by moving her hips vigorously forward, but neither the bonds nor the chair itself gave an inch. Then she realized she had been relieved of her jacket, wristwatch, wristbands and shoes; her belt was also missing and her trousers had been loosened open. Her shirt had been taken out of the waist. On the other hand, she hadn't been sexually molested at all; her underwear was still in place and she would have noticed if she had been touched. At that moment, she thought she had been kidnapped for money, though that kind of crime, once very “popular” in town, usually involving a “forced tour” to the ATMs around, had very seldom occurred lately, and her bonds were a bit too elaborate for that. The thought had the effect of calming her, because she knew that in the end everything would be solved one way or another, though her pride was hurt for having been caught in a moment of carelessness. But later developments showed she had been irrepressibly optimistic.

III

Some time had passed, and she was already feeling a bit cold, even considering the heat from the lamps, when she deemed, behind the spots pointing at her, two human figures. She could hear them hissing at each other, but could not understand what they were saying, indeed she could not make out any single word.

“Quiénes son ustedes? Qué quieren?” “Who are you and what do you want,” she asked in Spanish. Then she got really scared, for when one of the men – they were surely men – moved forward, she could see he had his face covered in a black mask, like a bag, with holes for eyes and mouth. Normal local thugs would have been content with a handkerchief over their mouth, and probably a hooded sports trainer or a baseball cap. Perhaps she had misunderstood her situation completely! Her amazement went even further when she heard their answer.

IV

“Where is the document?” he asked, in English language, with a strong accent. She had heard that accent many times, but before she could process that information, instinctively she answered:

“What… what document? Who are you?” As an Argentinean professional diplomat, she was wholly fluent in English – possibly allowing for some accent, which could well be taken as Italian - so as to switch to that language almost naturally if need be.

“The Iran document,” the other man answered, in a completely different accent. This was not identifiable to her. It reminded her of… of some Indians she had met at an Indian restaurant sometime ago.

“The Iran document? What… Iran document?” She was still absolutely puzzled. She had no idea of what her captors wanted. The man insisted:

“THE Iran document!” The capitals were clearly audible, even in the strongly accented speech of the man. She swallowed. The only document on Iran she knew and that might be the one referred to by the man was… but it could not be so relevant. The man continued.

“Your name is María Laura Durini, you work at Foreign Affairs ministry. You are Iran desk officer.” It was true, she worked in the Middle East Department and was in charge of Iranian affairs, among those of other countries. When she had been given the task, she had considered it a quite interesting one and, in less than a year, she had become some sort of a specialist.

She replied, “I have written a report on Iran’s foreign policy last week… it is in my office.” In that paper she had made an analysis of Iran’s policy of penetration in Latin America, and briefly covered the well known bombings of Jewish buildings, including the Embassy of Israel, in Buenos Aires some years ago. Could that paper be the “document” her captors referred to? Laura doubted it; there was no need to kidnap anyone to get it. It was as easy as entering the weekly protected database in the Ministry’s server.

“The document FROM Iran,” the first man said. This man spoke better English; she immediately realized where she had heard that accent: in the meetings with the Iranian diplomats at Buenos Aires that were part of her job.

Laura shuddered. From Iran? She had not seen any such document except formal notes from the embassy.

“I have seen no document from Iran… just some formal notes from your embassy here,” she said. She couldn't have known at the time, but the two men immediately took stock that she had recognized them as Iranians. They looked briefly at each other, and then the first man walked slowly up to Laura. He took a stool and sat directly in front of her.

“Don't play games, girl,” he said, with his hands over his lips. Laura became terrified; she still had no clue of what was happening. But she came back all of a sudden when the man, very slowly, loosened the upper button in her shirt.

“You better tell us where the document is, girl, I tell you. This is serious, and it will get much more serious if you do not cooperate.” But she couldn't articulate an answer, for the man was already loosening the second button.

“Wait, wait!” she said, on the verge of panic. “I have no idea of what you are talking about!”

“Wrong answer, girl.” And, methodically, the man loosened a third button.

“No, no! It’s the truth! Maybe you've got the wrong person!” she said in a very distressed, high voice.

“You are María Laura Durini, aren't you?” while he loosened the fourth button. “Then we got you right.” And he loosened a fifth.

“Yes, I am, but I have no idea of that document!” Laura was agitated, writhing and squirming within her bonds, sweating and breathing irregularly. The man loosened another button.

“What are you going to do? Stop!” she cried, but the man replied calmly.

“We are going to persuade you to tell us the truth.” There were no more buttons, so he very slowly opened the shirt, pushed the neck over Laura’s shoulders and let the shirt fall down her arms to the elbows, behind the chair’s backrest. Laura was terrified.

“But I am telling the truth! I have no idea of what you are talking about!” she said hysterically; her agitated breathing sent her breasts up and down. The man picked up some scissors from a table behind him. Laura looked at it with fully opened eyes; her lips were trembling. The man simply cut her bra in the middle; he also opened it and sent the cups over her shoulders, to her back, exposing her firm breasts with nice, brown nipples. Sweat was running down her chest to her belly, which moved up and down with the irregular rhythm of her agitated breath, giving her skin a shiny look.

Laura was appalled. Though sometimes she had fantasized with being raped or abused, she had never been sexually assaulted before. In fact, in the circles she moved, that was an incident practically unheard of. She was conscious of being quite attractive, and to attract the sight of men wherever she went, but she had always been very mindful; therefore, exception made of some rude words thrown at her in the streets or the odd sexually hungry (and usually intoxicated) man she had to stave off in parties or bars from time to time (a thing she usually did without hesitation or remorse), she had always managed to keep away from such nasty situations. But this was different, she reckoned; in fact, she wasn't even sure her captors intended to rape or even abuse her; the man who had very expertly unbuttoned her shirt and cut her bra had not only avoided any contact with her skin but was even wearing surgeon gloves!

V

The men switched places again. The first one came forward carrying a small leather bag, from which he took something that to Laura resembled a kind of shaver. He said, “We have ways of making you more cooperative.” It was a rather uninspired phrase that made she open her eyes in disbelief. He brandished the gadget in front of her and pushed a button. A dim electric arch appeared at its tip. Laura somersaulted in surprise; she couldn't believe what was happening. She was not going to be raped; she was going to be tortured! She had read about the things that had happened in her country during the last military government, more that 30 years ago, and had watched a couple of spy movies, but she had never imagined she would go through that kind of experience. Nevertheless, she kept a remarkable calmness, (or might be she was too shocked to react properly) and said, looking alternatively to the two men:

“Please, don't do that, I do not know anything of what you are asking, I have no idea of what you are talking about, please…” But the two men exchange a quick glance, and without further ado, the one in front of her applied the device to her right side ribcage. Laura’s body arched upwards as she screamed. Before she had time to recover, the man applied it again to her belly, just below the ribcage on the same side, making her arch her torso. Then, he progressed to her bellybutton, and to her lower abdomen. She screamed as she contorted trying to avoid the taser, to no avail. The man stopped for a moment.

“Wait, wait! I don't know anything, it's the truth!” she managed to say, but the man looked into her face and applied a discharge just below her sternum. She opened her mouth wide grasping for air, but immediately received a discharge on the base of her left breast, then to the area in between her breasts, and then the man progressed up into her chest. Her body contorted as if following the movement of the taser; astoundingly, some words from a classic Greek thinker came to her mind “How does a barbarian box? You hit him in the face, and there go his hands; you hit him in the stomach, and there go his hands”. The human mind is amazing.

When the man applied the device to the upper part of her right breast, she tried to sink her chest between her shoulders, which provoked an immediate discharge to the soft flesh around her right one. She banged her shoulder against the metal bar which formed the upper part of the seat's back, and moved her head to that side, as if trying to lick the imaginary wound there. Her lips were trembling and she was involuntarily weeping; she had read that could happen out of shock. She managed to plead mercy.

“Please, stop... please... I don't know anything… why you don't believe me?” she said while sobbing apparently uncontrollably. But the man, still without a word, made contact in her left side ribcage again, progressing into her armpit; half exposed by the position the bondage forced her arms and shoulders. She tried to close the gap clenching her upper arm to her ribcage, but to no avail: the bonds were too strongly and cunningly made for that, and the iron bar forming the seat's back prevented her arms moving forward.

Laura could only stare at the taser head while screaming, and then she looked to the covered face of her torturer as he lifted the device for a moment, only to apply it to the side of her left breast. She screamed, then clenched her teeth and closed her eyes while trying to move her torso upwards and sideways and break the contact; her breasts dangled, but the restraints allowed for little way.

The torturer made the taser walk around the lower round base of her breast, giving discharges in short bursts, unhindered by her movement; then he lifted the device again. Laura opened her eyes and tried to regain her breath. He saw the men exchanging a short glance, and the man went back to his grim job, aiming again at her belly. When she received the discharge, she violently looked up with an open mouth, her neck fully extended and stiff, while she moved her hips forward and backwards. The man applied the device to the soft skin around her hip bones, then her navel just above her panties and her belly below the buttonhole. Her screams turned into a gurgle, and she mercifully passed off.

VI

Almost exactly three weeks before, an Iranian diplomat (or a disguised intelligence officer) had arrived at Buenos Aires International Airport, colloquially known as Ezeiza. He was carrying a leather suitcase and had dispatched two more luggage pieces, which he recovered at the band. He then went to the Immigration desk, queued in the “Crew and Diplomats” cabin and handed over his passport to the official.

“Ardeshir Khamyar, diplomat,” he said. And routinely stamped his passport. He then walked down the corridor through Customs (as a diplomat, he had the right to pass Customs through unhindered) and went into the lobby of the airport, looking for his contact. For some reason (it later transpired that the arrival time had been incorrectly reported) he couldn't find him, so, for a moment, he stood in the lobby, looking alone and rather helpless. Then, a most extraordinary thing happened. A small boy, a child, stomped into him laughing and with an ice-cream in his hand, which obviously landed on his white garment. As he stood in amazement, the child’s mother came apologizing loudly (though of course, he could not make out a word) and cleaned his garment with her handkerchief, to depart as quickly as she had come. When he recovered himself, he realized that his suitcase and his biggest luggage piece had disappeared altogether. At that moment, he would have rather died.

VII

Laura regained consciousness almost instantly, after being given a dose of stimulant. Her body was covered in sweat and still shrieking from the torture; tears had run down her cheeks, carrying the little eyelid make up she had been wearing in dark stains down her cheeks, and she could feel the sweat running down from her chest to her abdomen; her small white panties were completely wet by now. Her hair was all over her face, stuck to the sweat and tears. She found herself breathing very quick and short under the effect of the drug, her eyes wide opened, but slowly she regained control of her breath, trying to breathe deep and slow.

For the last hour or so, she had been subjected to the application of the taser. She had denied any knowledge about the document, pleaded, cried, but the masked man had gone on his work relentlessly and in the most complete silence. Laura had never experienced any comparable pain. She remembered having been treated of torn muscles in her legs (from her times as a juvenile hockey player) with some electric device which applied mild discharges to her calf, as a stimulation; if prolonged in time, the treatment could be quite painful. Or so she had thought at the time.

The other man came forward once again.

“Laura, we can continue with this, unless you tell us what you know about the document.” he said, dryly, sweeping the hair from her face with the tip of his gloved fingers.

It was useless to keep on denying any knowledge. It was clear to her, but what else could she do; lying would be of no use either... she didn't know enough even for setting up a credible story! She tried to do what she had been trained for: bargain.

“Look… if you give me some more information… I can search in the Ministry… or make some questions to the Embassy… We can work it out, but, please, stop this…” she said while trying to control her breath.

But there was no bargaining; she had nothing to offer. The two men exchanged a further glance, and the torturer came forward again. Laura panicked.

“No, no, please, no!”

But the man applied the taser to her right breast. He worked methodically, going around the breast, advancing to the nipple and finally touching the aureole. Laura's body contorted and convulsed uncontrollably; her head banged around, her long hair in the air. The device touched her nipple; the pain was so intense she suddenly froze, her body stiff except for a convulsed trembling. Her neck extended upwards as she tried to scream, but no cry, other than a gurgle, came out of her wide opened mouth. The torturer broke contact, gave her a moment’s respite and started working the left breast, in the same methodical way.

She contorted, screamed, cried her ignorance and pleaded her torturer to stop, to no avail. When the man finally stopped, her head fell to her chest, sobbing, exhausted. Her body was still shivering and covered in sweat, her lips were trembling, and foam was dripping over her chest. She was breathing heavily and uneasily. She pulled all her strength to recover her breath, coughing and spitting foam.

Laura heard the two men speaking low in a language she thought to be Arabic, and then her torturer came back to her. He unzipped her trousers completely and pulled them down her thighs to her knees. She panicked, and, overpowering her exhaustion, began fighting uselessly to release herself of her bonds, yelling in terror. Suddenly, a door opened and the voice of a new person was heard in the room. It was a man; she could swear she had heard the voice. She tried to see him, but the lights to her face were too strong; the man was hidden in the darkness behind them. She heard some words in Farsi (now she could recognize it immediately; she had taken some lessons after being given the Iran’s desk), but of course she couldn't make out the meaning. However, she could hear the three men going out of the room. She was alone, tied to a chair, half naked, being ruthlessly tortured for something she had no idea at all. She started to cry.

VIII

Hossein Mehrab had arrived to Buenos Aires a year ago, as the cultural attaché in the Iranian Embassy. Of course, that was only a part of his job. Another, far more important one, was gathering intelligence about the local political and social situation, in particular in relation to the large Jewish community at Buenos Aires, and the general opinion about the proceedings related to the bombings of the Embassy of Israel and the Jewish Cultural Centre in the city. He was not exactly an intelligence officer, but one of those diplomats who have some training in such kind of task. He actually resented the arrival of the two thugs from the MOIS, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, regarding them as little more than the proverbial elephants in the pottery house. One, Parham Farsheed, was an experienced intelligence officer; the other, Khog Al-Afghani, was no more than a hitman, a foreigner hired by the intelligence services to do dirty work. Though other intelligence services operating in the country had certainly tried to breach the security of the Embassy many times, their efforts had always and discreetly been frustrated, without any help. Exception made of the infamous incident in which confidential documentation had been taken from an agent at the international airport. Not casually, it had been a MOIS agent who had been relieved of them, not a Foreign Affairs official. Shame on them all.

“You can't go on with this, you'll kill her!” he said to the other two men.

“What if we kill her?” That was the dry reply he received from the man who had spoken better English.

“Parham, you cannot kill her, she is a civilian, a diplomat,” Hossein said.

“Of course she is. So are you,” said the other man.

“I know, but it is different with their diplomats. They are just that… diplomats.”

The two agents look to each other in disbelief.

Hossein insisted.

“She doesn't know anything. I tell you, I have met this girl. She is simple civil servant; she has no training at all in intelligence, which should be evident even to you by now.”

They didn't answer. Hossein went on.

“The intelligence channels don't go through Foreign Affairs here. I have written that in my report. Did you even bother to take a look at it? The documents have never gone through Foreign Affairs. She could have never seen them”.

The two men were still looking at each other. They have been to the field together many times; they did not need to speak to understand each other.

The man who had been working on Laura said, ”Parham, it’s your decision”.

“What do you propose to do?” Parham asked Hossein.

“Let’s release the girl and work on a firmer lead,” he replied.

“We cannot do that, release the girl, I mean…”

“Why not, Khog Al-Afghani?” He called him with his full name to emphasize his condition of a foreigner in Iranian service. “She has not seen your faces; probably she wouldn't be able to recognize you even she had. I shall talk to her; she will not be a problem.”

Parham looked at him.

“It is too risky. She may recognize you. Will you take the responsibility?”

“I shall”

“Good. Be it. But do not ask for our help later”

“It will not be necessary, inshallah”

“Inshallah…” replied Parham. “God willing” was not a very encouraging phrase.

IX

Hossein cloaked his face and entered the room again. He went up to Laura, who immediately began to contort, in her vain attempts to set herself free. "Fear not. You will be released," he said. "Ask for sick leave at your office. Do not drink water for twenty-four hours. Do not leave home for forty-eight. You'll feel better by then. Wait for two more days and go to the doctor. Tell him you had a really bad flu attack. You must never tell anyone what has happened to you. Do you understand?” She looked at him in disbelief.

“Yes… I won't tell anyone, please, believe me…” she said.

“I believe you.” He said, and smiled under the hood. “You'll be right, lady.” Hossein added, in Farsi. Laura did not understand the phrase, but the words “you”, “right” and “lady” she could make out clearly.

X

Laura did exactly what she was told. She was dropped at 3 AM at the front door of her flat apartments in the Belgrano quarter of town. She was still under the effects of the stimulant, so she had no problem in reaching her flat and entering. She even found that her captors had put the front keys in her hands before leaving her, in case she wouldn't be able to find them in her handbag. She entered her flat, took a long, hot shower and fell asleep for almost twenty hours. The following day, she reported sick. As the man had told her, her ordeal had left no physical consequences, and the psychological ones, she dared not think about. In fact, she did not even dare tell her analyst about the incident.

The following week she reported back for duty. Her companions found her in an even more taciturn mood than usual, but they didn't ask. A couple of days after, her boss, the Department Director, held a meeting at her office with the Iranian Ambassador to Argentina. She was due to attend, of course.