The girl woke up slowly, opening her eyes cautiously, as if pretending to be still asleep. She was in a kind of underground communications room; she could tell for the smell of wiring and the lightning panels on the aseptic looking grey-painted cement walls, lacking windows or hatches completely. She was not far from the sea, a faint sound could still be heard. Then, she saw the blond guy, dressed in a black round neck pullover, sitting in front of her and watching her with extreme attention. He must have already realized she was awake, so she tried to move a hand, only to find that it had been secured to the arm of the armchair she was sitting, a solid metal framed piece with cushioned seat and backrest. Both her hands were secured by the wrists, as were her legs, tied by the ankle to the armchair's legs. She kicked hard, but the leg wouldn't give an inch. She stared at the man.

“Who are you? Where I am?” she asked, though she had seen the man before. He was called Vargas, one of the thugs usually accompanying the mafia boss known as Largo, and who could be considered his chief assistant. They were often seen at the Hilton Bahamas, at the bar or the casino. She could only assume she was somewhere at the Palmyra resort, Largo’s stronghold.

“Honey, I'll tell you how it is: I make the questions; you concentrate in the answers.,” The reply was as predictable as textbook, but the tone indicated to the girl that the man enjoyed his current activity.

“Your name is Paula, Paula Kaplan. Born here in Bahamas in 1941, you are 26 years old, the elder daughter of John Kaplan, Director of the Royal Bahamas Mail and a British citizen, as yourself.”

The man had done his homework, thought Paula. How comprehensive had he been, she dare not think about. What he had not said was that Paula was an attractive, though perhaps not outright beautiful, brunette, slim and fit, her skin tanned by the sun of the Bahamas. She had petite facial features: perfectly delineated eyebrows, a small nose and nice lips, though she had the angular jaw and prominent chin of a Briton. She was wearing a sleeveless French blue summer dress which had a generous open neck and left shoulders and upper back bare and a hair band which kept her long, abundant hair out of her face; little makeup and even less jewelry, just some earrings, a big, fashionable ring in her left hand and she had been wearing a nice wristwatch, of which she had been relieved, as well as of her sandals. The man continued.

“You have earned a Bachelor in Tourism at London, and currently work at the Hilton Bahamas Hotel as… a guide for VIP guests, so to speak.” The girl was genuinely incensed by the last comment.

“I am not a whore, if that is what you mean. Now what is this all about?”

The man smiled.

“Of course not; not of that kind, so to speak. Who else do you work for?”

The girl hesitated.

“Well, I have been doing some translations in French… Ouch!” The guy had suddenly grabbed the little finger in her right hand and was squeezing it upwards.

“It hurts!” she said.

“This is nothing compared to how much we can hurt you if you do not start cooperating, honey," the guy said rather emotionlessly. “Who else do you work for?”

“No one,” said Paula, and then screamed, for the man turned her finger upwards. It made an awful sound.

“Damn! You've broken it!”

“No, no yet, at least. It is just the joint which has been displaced. It will heal, in time.” The girl stared at her hand, hissing and instinctively closing and opening the rest of her fingers. “But the rest of the things we'll do to you next will not heal so easily.” The man extended his arm back, and an assistant, a big boxer-type thug, handed him over a photograph, which he showed to her. It showed her and a tall, handsome man in his thirties. “Who is he?”

“His name is Bond, James Bond. He is an Briton, a Scotsman, if I remember correctly. He is my latest assignment at the Hilton”. Paula was a bit agitated, but the pain in her finger could account for that. The man was unimpressed.

“What does he work in?”

“He is an agent in the London Stock Exchange.”

“What is he doing here?”

“He is just a tourist…” but the man slapped her face with the back of his hand. It was not a hard hit, just enough to show his disappointment.

“It is the truth!” she protested, licking her lip. There was no blood; the man had expertly hit her cheek.

“It is, honey, isn't it?”

II The man stood up and took a short stroll. Then he looked at his associate and made a slight movement of the head. The other man then moved behind Paula, who moved her head trying desperately to track their movements, and grabbed her head from the back. The blond man put on leather gloves and started slapping Paula’s face, not very hard, not very quick, but with a rhythmic continuity. As before, he did that expertly, not allowing his strokes hit the nose, eyes or jaws of Paula, but just the cheeks; his associate’s grip prevented her head from banging from side to side causing neck injuries, as she immediately realized. She didn't try to resist, and starting moaning and screaming low as the cumulative effect of the hits started to build up.

He stopped fairly soon, giving her some time to recover. Paula realized he had just been setting the things straight. Then he produced another photo. This showed a street where she could be seen in company of the same man and another in a light blue suit and a Panama.

“Who’s this?” It was a CIA agent called Leiter. Paula was certainly agitated when she answered.

“His name is Charles, he is an American who works at the Tourism Board.”

“Why were you together?”

“Charles is a friend of mine. I thought a good idea to introduce my… client… to him.”

“But what were you doing at Lower Market Street?”

“Mr. Bond wanted to hire a boat for a photo tour around the island. He wanted him to intercede. Believe me, I am telling the truth!”

“Sure you are, honey.”

The beating resumed. The man was controlling his strokes in the same expert manner, but the cumulative effect showed fully, and Paula alternated low moans with harsher, louder screams when the hand of his interrogator landed on an already sensitized spot. When he stopped again, she was sobbing and tears ran down her cheeks. The big man released her head, which fell to her chest as she tried to recover her breath. He then took it again in both hands to force her look straight into her interrogator, still breathing heavily. “I hope this clarifies things, honey. We know enough to tell whenever you lie.”

Sitting in front of her, he crossed his legs adopting a reflective posture.

“You have been working for the MI6 as a local agent for some time now, just like your father did. You were recruited during your stay at London, we know that for certain, and underwent basic training there. Again, just as your younger sister is doing right now.”

That surprised Paula. The old man a secret agent? That was news! Though she should have guessed that, she had never dared think seriously about it. Martine, her sister? Well, she was now the same age she had when she had been inducted into the Service. She had many times thought how all that had began. A friend of her father, a British middle-aged man who had introduced himself as Fergus McRoland, a diplomat, had visited them just after she had finished high school. As a matter of fact she had allowed him to seduce her, though he was much older than either her or her usual mates, and followed him in a trip through Europe. She found him to be much more sophisticated than the rough beach boys or the tourists she used to date, without being completely a pompous ass as some metropolitan Englishmen were.

One day in London he made her the proposal to enter Her Majesty's service. “Me, a diplomat? I have barely finished high school!" to which he laughed and said, “Not that kind of service”. She understood almost immediately, and said, jokingly, “What do you think my father would say?” and he smiled and answered, “He has already said yes.” She had covered her training in London as an apprentice at the School of Tourism, from where she graduated. Once back at Nassau, she became a local operative; his father arranged the employment at the Hilton, and had always proved a perfect cover. Until now.

She came back to her present situation, which was indeed dire. Now she knew her cover had been blown, and that her interrogator would carry things to the limit to learn everything she knew about the mission she was involved. The things she had been taught during her training rushed into her mind, but most of all the advice of her mentor: "If you are captured, you must know you are alone. No one will help you." She was alone, indeed. Bond, a most experienced agent, had even compromised her security when playing the gigolo with one of Largo's operatives, Fiona, even giving her the keys of their room at the Hilton, making easy for his thugs to enter the room and seize her. Shame on him, bloody “double-egg” agents, they did not care for anyone but the mission and themselves. She stared at the man with a look combining sadness and anger.

III

“So, my dear, you have already have time to reflect on your situation. A bit of an ugly one, so to speak.” The man had deliberately allowed her enough time to take stock of her situation. She realized that he was a thorough professional and that he wouldn't let his prey go easily. She sighed. The pain in her finger and face was gone for a moment as she was fully alert, trying to decide on a course of action. She couldn't escape, and no one was to rescue her. When she finished her training, a mate of hers, a nice blonde girl from Argentina, had said, “If the Reds get you, they will most probably exchange you for one of theirs. But these Mafia gangsters we are likely to face, they do not have codes, and anyway nothing to trade you for”. Not long ago she had learned she had disappeared without a trace somewhere in South America, not to be seen again. She made up her mind. She would follow the protocol, but for that, she needed a brief respite. Therefore, she decided to play for time until she could get it. She resolved to hold for as long as necessary. Her interrogator was on her again.

“Imagine, honey: to persuade you to talk, we shall not be banging your pretty face around all day. That's too risky; you may die too soon with a broken neck. We could pull your fingernails out or break your fingers one by one, or tear your beautiful skin with pliers and the like, or burn it with a soldering iron, or pierce your nice breasts with hot needles, but that wouldn't last long either. Now, this is a kind of boathouse; we have tons of... weird diving equipment around. Among the most useful things here, we have shark harpoons. You see, the spear itself is rather flimsy - you wouldn't face a mighty shark with this kind of silly-looking trident.” He put one in front of her face contemptuously, and yes, it looked like an oversized fork. She imagined the man in the water with such a useless weapon surrounded by sharks and smiled. He smiled too, and said:

“I know what you are thinking about, honey. You are thinking of me facing sharks armed with this thing, and you think I wouldn't look so smart then. You are right; but this is not about being smart.” Paula was really surprised; the guy was good at his job.

“The trick,” he continued, “is that it delivers an electric shock. At any depth, to a shark, it is quite lethal."

Paula shivered; she had got a pretty rough idea of what kind of ordeal awaited her.

“But that's not all, honey,” the man was a professional, probably an ex-agent of the infamous Batista’s Cuban secret police, and was building up tension in a textbook manner. “We have devised a way of administering the power of the discharges, to deliver exactly the amount we want at the exact place in a body we want”. He smiled as if proud of his device. Paula looked at the regulator dial at the hand grip of the shortened harpoon, and the big electrical box at the floor, connected to its back.

“And of course, it is much like a closed circuit, so no electricity will circulate through your entire body. That's good news for your heart; we do not want you dying from shock; but bad news for you altogether, for it means this... treatment... can be applied to you for almost as long as we want.”

Again showing the utmost professionalism, the man took a respite to allow Paula to swallow the information. She realized she was up for an awful long time before she had her opportunity. But she had no options at sight.

”So, honey, coming back to the main subject of our conversation... would you tell me about this man Bond and his... intentions and whereabouts at Nassau?”

“I can't do that, you know.”

“Yes, of course I know. But did I speak about persuasion?”

The man made a slight gesture to his associate, who, moving again behind Paula, grabbed her from the shoulders and forced her forward. Vargas passed his hands to her back, unfastened the dress slit and unzipped it. He then opened it forward and slid the shoulder straps down her arms, to the elbows. She was wearing a strapless bra, which he promptly removed, effectively undressing her from waist up. Then, his associate very quickly passed a rubber band in front of her neck and secured it to the armchair’s back, preventing her to move her torso forward. As she instinctively struggled in vain to release herself, the two men stood at a distance, admiring what they had just uncovered: a pair of firm and well formed breasts, with nice, pink, pointy nipples, and most of a flat, muscular belly.

The girl was starting to sweat with the tension, which gave her tanned skin a shiny look. Though she had never been sexually assaulted, Paula was not new to sexual humiliation; in fact, a good deal of the Interrogation Tactics course she had made during her training was about resisting that kind of treatment. She and her female comrades would be forced to undress under the scrutiny of unfamiliar men once and again, sometimes even being physically abused, until coming to the conclusion that there was nothing to be much worried about. Curiously, male trainees were much more vulnerable to sexual humiliation. But torture was another thing. “You cannot get used to pain,” one instructor had told them. “Every time, the experience of pain is a new one.” That was what she was facing now.

IV

“Looks like you are used to sunbathing naked, honey”, the man said, and it was true, for her breasts were almost as tanned as the rest of her body.

“Have you persuaded yourself we mean business, honey? There is one more chance to talk nicely, before all this begins,” his interrogator said, but Paula remained silent. He started caressing the breasts with both his hands, paying attention to the aureoles and nipples. The tension and the caressing soon put them hard, against Paula's will. Vargas started rubbing the head of the trident to her skin, around her breasts and ribcage, without activating it, in preparation for what it was to come.

Then, suddenly, he gave a discharge to her right ribcage. The girl screamed and tilted her torso to that side. He continued making the head walk around her torso, smiling at her vain attempts to move and break the contact with her skin. Then he applied another discharge just above her half-hidden buttonhole. The girl seemed to jump in spite of her restraints.

Without breaking the contact of the head with her skin, he asked again:

“Have you had a taste of this device? Would you run for the whole show, or do you prefer us to stop now?”

“I won't tell you anything.” It was certainly a most predictable reply.

“As you want.” And he proceeded to apply several discharges to her ribcage and arms. In the midst of the pain, Paula realized her cunning interrogator was deliberately avoiding the most sensitive parts or her body, saving them for later. When he stopped, after some long minutes, she was covered in sweat and breathing heavily.

“Now, let’s assume as naked truth that this Bond is also a MI6 agent, that’s pretty obvious. What is his rank?”

She didn't answer, so Vargas applied a discharge to her ribcage.

“That shouldn't be such a difficult question, should it?” He prepared to apply another one on the other side of her torso.

“Wait, wait!” she cried. “You know I am a local agent; high ranking special agents do not disclose their true rank for nothing.” That was true, Vargas reckoned; however, he applied the device to her lower abdomen, below her buttonhole, though it remained half hidden beneath her dress, however pushed down. Paula squirmed and screamed in pain, as this was a very sensitive area.

“Lowlies have means of learning the rank of their bosses. What is his?” he asked again; that was true of any organization. She coughed before answering.

“Double – zero”, she said, while trying to recover the breath.

Vargas arched an eyebrow up. A “Double-egg”, as called in the jargon, meant that the MI6 was sending literally a top agent. They had to know about Largo’s facilities on the island. He showed her another picture, taken at the Lower Market Street. It showed an elderly man in a Hawaiian shirt and a fisherman's hat.

“Who's this?” he asked.

“I don't know. He was at the shop,” she lied, for the man was no other than “Q”, the logistic wizard of MI6. Letting such an important man go to the field was a mistake, and “M” - MI6 head - had passed many a memo forbidding that practice, but “Q” had ignored them so far and insisted in delivering the material to the “00” agents himself. Of course, Vargas wouldn't let that pass and punished Paula with a couple of discharges on the soft part of her upper arm. She screamed and would have started sobbing, but she contained herself.

“You don't have to lie, honey, because we know who he is. He also works for the MI6; he brought equipment to the island for delivery to your agent.” Paula realized he took him for a mere courier or technician, or at least that was what Vargas seemed to mean.

“Which equipment exactly has he brought?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Telephoto cameras? Coded communications equipment?” Still no answer.

“Has he brought a Geiger counter?” But she didn't answer, staring at him defiantly.

“How is it concealed?” That they had such equipment at their disposal was fairly obvious, anyway. As she remain silently staring at him, he applied a burst to the soft flesh in her right shoulder joint, making her scream and sink it against the armchair’s back, rotating her shoulders.

“Is it like a tape recorder or radio receiver?” He repeated the treatment, with the same result.

“Maybe it is a set of binoculars?” underscoring his question with a discharge to her trapeze muscle. Paula screamed and arched her neck to that side in pain.

“Is it a camera?” She involuntarily looked at him; he realized that it was that, but he anyway applied a discharge to her chest. Paula clenched her teeth, and tilted her neck upwards for a moment with a guttural sound, breathing fast and heavily between her teeth.

“Now, how and where do you intend to carry on the search with it?” he added, but the girl just stared at him, grasping for air.

“We can always increase the power, you know.”

He did so, and started applying discharges to Paula at the base of the neck, upper chest, and the soft flesh around her shoulders and trapeze muscles, on both sides. She sank into the cushion in the back of the armchair, moving her head sideways as she screamed. When she was allowed a respite, she was sobbing profusely, tears flowing from her eyes carrying the makeup from her eyelids down into her cheeks in dark stains.

“Is the boathouse shop on Lower Market Street a MI6 safe house?” he asked, and applied several discharges to the girl's abdomen. She screamed and said, in a very low, broken voice:

“Yes...”

“Are there any other safe houses in town?” Vargas barked, but she didn't answer. Her interrogator went back into her abdomen, aiming again at the soft belly beneath her buttonhole, which made the girl move up and forward in a desperate attempt to evade the torment.

“How do you communicate with HQ? How do you receive instructions?” He had realized she was on the verge of breaking, so, again in textbook manner, he had begun asking a lot of irrelevant questions in rapid succession. A discharge was applied to the base of her right breast; she screamed and contorted.

“How many more local agents has the MI6 deployed?” followed by a discharge to the chest, near the upper right breast. Again she screamed and sank her back against the armchair.

The man from the Tourism Board is an American agent? Which agency does he work for?” Vargas inserted the tip into her right armpit and applied a discharge. It was very effective in that sensitive area. Paula screamed, tilted her body to that side and instinctively clenched her upper arm against her ribcage, so he withdraw the instrument quickly, and applied a short discharge to her upper arm. Her elbow was projected outwards as her torso moved to the other side.

“Is the Hilton's manager a contact? Someone at the central post office?” He went again to the base of both her breasts one after the other two or three times. Paula contorted, her shoulders banging alternatively against the back of the armchair. She was not being given time to answer any question, when a discharge hit her tortured body and another question was thrown at her. She looked alternatively to the tip of the instrument and to his torturer's face with imploring, tearful eyes. She was shrieking and breathing with difficulty when he finally stopped, her belly moving spasmodically and her body fully covered in sweat; even her dress was beginning to get wet where it still rested on her belly.

“Please, stop... stop...” Paula said in a low, broken voice when she recovered a little of breath, while moving slowly her head from side to side, her lips half opened and trembling.

“If you would only tell me what I need to know this will end once and for all,” was the textbook answer given by Vargas. But she couldn't do that, so she starting sobbing and weeping. With good sense of timing, he gave her some time to recover. He showed her some more photographs, having his assistant grab her head to ensure she looked at them. They were the pictures recovered by Fiona from Bond's room.

“What are these pictures? What is your agent looking for?” She realized that actually she had no precise idea of what he was looking for.

“I don't know...” she said in the same low broken voice. Her head fell on her right shoulder when the thug released it. Vargas raised it delicately with her fingers on her chin. He knew the girl was probably saying the truth in this instance, but he couldn't back off.

“How's that?” he asked, in an almost sympathetic mood. She took a couple of deep breaths, as if profiting of the respite in the torture.

“I am a lowly local agent, they do not tell me everything... you know that.” Vargas made a half-smile; he did, that was true enough, with every secret service in any time or country. Was the girl starting to get cooperative?

“Paula, then tell me. What was your assignment exactly about?” She took a pause, and said:

“I was to play the escort hostess to him, as if showing him the usual places, introduce him to our contacts in the island, and parade him to make him look attractive to women. That's my usual job with lone male VIP tourists.”

“What else? What places was he particularly interested in?”

“He wanted to visit the coral atolls around the north part of the island, both by boat and helo. He would take lots of photographs.”

“Did you see the photographs?"

“No.”

V

Vargas smiled as if disappointed, and, holding Paula's chin, caressed her cheek and lips with his thumb, opening slightly her mouth.

“We were making progress, Paula, but now you started playing games again. We know you took part in the film developing; that's part of your training and of your tasks as a low rank agent. Besides, we found traces of developing fluid in the bag you were carrying to the boathouse at Lower Market Street.”

Paula remained silent, knowing that the respite would soon be over. She hoped not to have given up too much information altogether. Vargas released her head and took the probe again.

“So... what were the photographs about?” She didn't answer, so he applied the device alternatively to the base of both her breasts. The pain made Paula tilt her head up and back, opening her mouth wide, but no big scream came out, only some guttural sound.

“What did he hope to find near Palmyra's sea access?” Vargas was not giving her any respite, making questions and at the same time alternating the discharges between the base and lower part of both her breasts. She screamed while rotating her body within her restraints, as if trying to throw off his aim, making her breasts dangle a little, but not enough to hinder the precision with which his able torturer was applying his device.

When he stopped, she was shrieking and some foam was coming out of her open mouth as she gasped for air. Vargas cleaned the foam with a paper towel.

“Make him attractive to... which women? Someone in particular?” Paula shuddered; she was in the hands of a real expert. She decided to play for time, and replied with a broken voice.

“He would appear to be trying to seduce Largo's female operative, Fiona”. It was a lie, for it was rather the other way round, but she couldn't give up the plan to co-opt Domino; even so, Paula knew what she was risking if Vargas noticed, and was also aware that, given his ability, her chances to slip the misinformation were slim.

She was right. Her torturer very slowly and conspicuously, just for her to notice, cranked up the regulator and started applying the probe to her chest between her breasts, up, and down. She again opened her mouth wide and banged her shoulders alternatively against the back of the armchair, to no avail, opening and closing her fists in an attempt to stave off the pain. It was useless; when Vargas finally broke the contact between the device and her skin, she fell down, her head alternatively to each shoulder, exhausted, barely breathing. She felt a needle into her forearm; his torturer was injecting her some juice to make her resist longer.

“Honey, you should know by now which lies I am bound to buy and which ones I am not. Haven't you been trained in that? I shall repeat the question: which woman was your agent's target?”

She didn't answer, so he started again with the treatment. He moved into her right breast, going from the base to the nipple, stopping just short of the aureole; then moved into the left one; then started again. The pain was excruciating; Paula either sinking into the back of the armchair, or literally bending her neck against the rubber restraint in an attempt of moving forward; her feet and hands moving uncontrollably. When she was relieved of the torture, she was sobbing and weeping profusely, half-drowning herself, so heavy was her breath, coughing and spitting foam.

“I am telling you everything I know, only what they tell me, please, I don't know anything else, stop this..” she said faintly amongst her sobs, coughs and tears.

“I know you think you can't, Paula, that's what you have been taught. But I have been trained into making you realize that you can. Indeed, that you have no choice but to tell me the truth when I ask.”

Vargas cranked the device up - just a bit, it would have been quite unprofessional to get overdrawn at this stage - and applied it straight to the aureole of the right nipple. The pain was so intense that Paula almost involuntarily clenched her teeth, until she thought her jaw would literally explode. She released the tension for a second and took a breath, while her torturer went for the other breast. This time, Vargas progressed into her erect nipple; Paula then let go a high pitched yell, her head fully tilted back and her mouth opened. Vargas pulled back quickly, not to cause untimely damage on her. Again she fell down to the side, coughing and sobbing. Again Vargas raised her face delicately with his fingers.

“Who are you protecting, Paula? That damn high rank agent practically handed you over to us. Is he worth of the pain you are enduring? Why don't you surrender and cooperate?”

She couldn't answer, just looking into him with dismayed, tearful eyes, so his torturer kept looking at her beautiful, distressed face for a while and smiled sadly. It always came down to that, he thought.

“Look, we'll take some rest and let you think about it. We'll come back and maybe you'll have changed your mind, Paula.” He made a signal to his associate with a slight movement of the head, put the controller on hold and they both left.

VI

It took Paula some time to realize she was alone. Her body was like burning, but, considering to the appalling torture she had been subjected to, surprisingly not that much. The torture device Vargas was using was good in that it caused little permanent damage, evidently, and the drug she had been inoculated surely helped. She waited for some time, then realized she had been given a moment to act on the protocol. She had thought about it many times during her career; and had always been sure in the end she could outsmart any interrogator. But she had never thought of facing such an able one. She knew she was still up for many hours of torture; Vargas had not yet probed the soles of her feet, her inner thighs, her navel, her sex, in fact he could go over her entire body time and again, and that even before any bloodletting was allowed. She wouldn't be able to stand all that; in the end she would give up, disclosing the whole operation, only to be killed later, and perhaps fed to the sharks in Largo's infamous sea water pool.

She had made up her mind before the torture began, and indeed it had been much worse than she had expected. They would be back at any time; moreover, for sure she was under surveillance evens at that moment. Therefore, she took prompt action. With her thumb she opened a panel in the big ring on her left hand. It uncovered a needle with a nerve poison; it would kill her in seconds. There was not time to think it over; she took a deep breath and without hesitation rammed her thumb into the needle. She breathed a couple times and then she was dead.

VII

Vargas busted into the room. He looked at her staring, dead eyes with fully expanded pupils. Largo's legal and political advisor, a fat man in spectacles, came behind.

“Mr. Largo said you be careful!!” he chastised him, but Vargas replied:

“I was. Poison. She killed herself.” They looked at the girl. Vargas could only admire her bravery. In a sense, she had outsmarted him.