Chapter17 : "Tribesmen of Uganda"

Cecily had been sitting upon a stool, playing with her pencil and tapping its end against the transparent glass.

She wasn't now.

Neither was she standing at the centre of her office, pointing at coils of rope and holding her hands so that Howard might more easily tie them.

No.

She was outside, standing in the cold sunshine, tall and defiant; her shoulders straight and her hands bound behind her back. She was wearing the same clothes that she'd had on in her office: a knee length skirt belted at the waist that accentuated the curve of her hips and the tightness of her ass. Her stockinged feet bore the evidence of a shoeless walk down three flights of stairs, across a gravel courtyard and over one hundred metres of grass. They were muddied with dirt; and there was a tear in one heel.

Her white blouse was unbuttoned and it was separated from her skirt, and it billowed in the wind. There was nothing beneath it, no bra to shield her breasts from the uncompromising face of their fate, because she, and they, were staring blindly at the unflinching grimace of an imposing old English Oak tree.

It was gnarled, ugly and Cecily fidgeted awkwardly as she looked at it. She was experiencing an uncontrollable urge to pee because she was scared of what was about to happen and there was a numbness in her fingers and an overwhelming sense of panic.

It was only a tree, she was thinking... only a tree... but it wasn't. It was an instrument of torture. The evidence was seen in the holes puncturing its bark. The holes were at chest level, and Cecily knew that countless other women had previously stood where she now stood, shivering and frightened, and waiting to have their breasts nailed to its wood. It never got easier. Every time she faced the Inquisitor and stood at the brink, she felt the terror and uncertainty that came from not knowing how far they would take her.

This was part and parcel of the life of a torture girl.

"Mr Pendrill," she stammered, her voice lifting shakily in tone. "This is difficult for me to admit to, but you must understand that I've been captured many times and this isn't greeted well by my superiors, and so they've said that I must be punished and that's why I'm here today in front of this tree. I haven't lied to you, although I may have misled you by being opaque."

She paused, but her sentences were rushed and breathless and shallow. "The department expects the highest standards from its officers and I have repeatedly fallen short of those expectations. Therefore, my manager, who has a cruel and perverse sense of irony, has stipulated that there should be no prescribed limits for this test and that I must endure whatever tortures you choose to employ. I'm communicating these facts honestly because I've been ordered to do so by my manager, Mr Pendrill. You are permitted to perform whatever acts you deem necessary to discover the identity of the lady in the locket, including rape, sodomy and nailing my breasts to this tree."

Howard was dumbfounded.

"Mr Pendrill. I must tell you honestly about this Oak tree because the department encourages and permits it, although I would advise you to be cautious, for as I've indicated, whatever you do to me will be done to Lucy."

Howard was distracted from her warning by a congregation of people, all soldiers, who were trudging along a long asphalt track beyond a grass meadow. This crowd were approaching a second tree a way distant, a willow, with deep weeping fronds and a sturdy masculine trunk. Accompanying the soldiers was a young lady, her hands and feet cuffed, her eyes blindfolded, and her red and white blouse torn at the front.

It was Lucy.

Howard groaned because she was shuffling along like a tired old lady. For some unknown reason she was walking with difficulty. "Oh sweet Jesus," Howard began, for this wasn't what he'd been expecting.

"Mr Pendrill?"

He bit his lip and tried to work out what had happened. He saw that the soldiers were moving slowly and taking their time, seemingly in slow motion, because Lucy couldn't walk any faster.

"Whose picture is in the locket?" Howard whimpered, his attention misdirected.

"Mr Pendrill?"

His questions came compulsively. "Tell me. I beg you. Whose picture is it?"

"Mr Pendrill. You're embarrassing yourself. You shouldn't beg..."

"I can do things," he threatened, still watching the soldiers. "I can ruin your life... destroy it even..."

"Mr Pendrill? What is on your mind?"

"I could..." He stopped, and he paused. "I could k... kill you."

"Yes, you could, but you won't."

"No. No, I won't - perhaps not - but even if I didn't kill you, I could do something equally as nasty. I could rape you."

Cecily rolled her eyes at him. "Yes, that would be nasty, and we've acknowledged that a rape would look good on your CV, but may I return you to reality. As I've explained, Lucy is my governor, and while you may certainly do anything to me without limits, what about Lucy? Remember the consequences to her. If you rape me, your colleagues will ravish every hole of her body, and they'll do it repeatedly and brutally. There are some big guys in your troop: some very big guys - long and incredibly thick - and they'll stretch Lucy's holes and they'll tear her. Do you know what that's like for a woman? Shall I tell you?"

Howard double blinked.

"It'll be an experience she'll never forget," Cecily pronounced thoughtfully. "One that she'll never recover from."

Howard pondered on that. He was prickly. "Maybe so," he acknowledged. "But you'll suffer too. This governor thing is only as powerful as the threat, and I think that you're bluffing!"

"Do you think so? Am I bluffing? It's your prerogative to believe so. You can believe as you like, but remember that rape and torture are not new things to me. I'm a spy, and for me, rape is an occupational hazard: as is torture. I've suffered the forfeit of sexual indignation countless times and I'll suffer it again. It's my strength and Lucy's flaw that this experience stands between us, because a woman's first rape is a brutalizing scar. I remember mine and it'll mark me forever. Is that what you want for Lucy?"

Howard bit his fingers, not liking the answer. Lucy had a fresh face and she was young, and eager to oblige. She set religious boundaries to her sexual activity and sex was important to her as an expression of her love. It wasn't a game to be played by antagonists. She would hate being raped: held down, strange men pinning her limbs and grinding her pussy. She would hate it intensely!

And then there was the torture. Howard saw a hammer at Cecily's feet and a cardboard box containing nails, waiting for her breasts. Waiting. Howard looked at the hammer and then up at the tree, and he wondered. Could he really take the hammer and drive those long nails through Cecily's tits, knowing that it would hurt Lucy?

Could Howard inflict this wrong on the one he cared for? Could he live with his guilt?

He knew himself well enough to know that he couldn't, because it was too much. He could do the former, but not the latter.

"Mr Pendrill?"

It was too much: too far.

"What are you doing, Mr Pendrill?"

He was unfastening Cecily's wrists. He couldn't go on. "I'm freeing you," he said plainly. "There are prices that shouldn't be paid and this is one of them. Lucy is more important to me than anything that you or the department have to offer."

He finished unfastening Cecily's wrists, and having done it, he stopped.

He was trapped. What now? What would he say to the Major when he next met him? He could already hear the Major's scorn ridiculing him for surrendering so easily. "What's up with you, boy?" he would say. "What are you doing? How can you give up after all your work and effort? Answer me that - how?"

Howard didn't know how. He didn't know what to do any more, and Cecily was fidgeting. So what should he do with her? He couldn't drive on but neither could he go back.

"What's up with you, boy? What about your career? What about SJ6? Aren't you the master of these whores? I think you'd like to be. Yes, I think you would, so line them up and drill them, boy. Show them what they are! They're whores and cunts! And as for the girl: let her suffer! Ask yourself boy: she's a woman, a female: why shouldn't she take the rough with the smooth?"

Cecily's hands were free and she was already able to caress her bruised wrists and stretch her arms. Soon it would be too late. Howard would have to act quickly, and so he did. He couldn't rely on the tangible, but there was always the intangible. "Keep your hands where they are," he growled, looking at Cecily and taking stock of himself. What was he to do? He was caught, trapped between two paths and two lives. "Keep your hands clasped behind your back..." he snapped, but the Major wasn't letting him alone.

"Use your head," he barked at him, interrupting his thoughts; and the Major's ire was impossible to escape. "Your girl likes you - adores you, so don't steal her glory. She wants to make this sacrifice to demonstrate her love. She's offering you her tits. That's her gift, and when someone offers you a gift, boy, it's rude not to accept it, so hurt her! Slice her, and accept the sacrifice of your girl's tits!"

"Mr Pendrill? What is it? What are you doing, Mr Pendrill?" Cecily was talking at odds to the Major, talking around him and through him, and ignoring everything he was saying. "I don't understand. Why have you unfastened me? I didn't tell you to do that. I didn't ask..."

"Keep your arms together," Howard cried, confused in his head now, because the Major was nagging him from one side and Cecily from the other, and he didn't know who to listen to any more. "Keep your hands behind your back. You heard me - otherwise I'll kill you."

"That's the stuff!" the Major cheered, or at least, he would have done if he'd been there in person. "That's telling the cow! These cunts have frailties and they need testing. This one's a flooze and she has to be fucked, boy. She needs your willy in her love pot. She's a weak woman and she needs to be poked and forced to sacrifice her tits. Remember that, my laddy!"

Howard hadn't intended to threaten Cecily, but somehow with the Major shouting at him so loudly, the word "kill" had popped out without him meaning to say it.

The word had been wrong and Howard didn't know where it had sprung from. He pulled the second rope loose, frustrated with himself, irritated and picking at the knot. It had been said. The threat had been made, and unfortunately it couldn't be undone. "I'll grope you," he muttered clumsily, backtracking and trying to correct his mistake. He couldn't ignore Lucy, for she was wilting under her tree and he had to consider that wider picture. "Any man would grope you given the chance?" He grumbled, pacing around, rubbing his temples, trying to work out what he should do. So much confusion. So much rationalizing... "Any man would hang you from the tree and grope between your legs, squeeze your boobs, fuck you perhaps: the temptation's too great. Any man would do that. He'd have to. So if I did torture you a little: wet bag you; attach your tits to the tree; whip you even, who could blame me, as long as I didn't kill you?"

He was talking to the grass and the wind and the sky and not to Cecily. He was speaking to the cameras and the microphones and those foulmouthed demons who were responsible for communicating his actions to the willow tree in the distance. He was rationizing his thoughts and getting straight in his mind the things he could allow Lucy to endure and those that he wouldn't.

He cared for her but his work was important too. Lucy was a strong, reasonable woman, and she loved him.

She'd be reasonable...

The 'kill' word was, of course, out of the question, but where was the problem in being nailed to a tree? "Thousands of women have boob jobs," he cajoled himself, geeing himself up. "Their tits are cut and shaped and moulded in the hope of improving their masculine appeal. Women don't do it by themselves! They do it for their men, to make themselves sexy, so where's the difference? This isn't bad. It's only two shitty nails and a tree: not a knife and a guillotine and a scalpel."

"That's it! Now you're thinking clever!" the Major agreed, congratulating Howard on his logical clear thinking. He appeared from the shadows and slapped him across his left shoulder. "No one likes losses but in war you have to break eggs. Lucy is loyal. She has guts. She'll cope. Trust me, my son. She'll take the bloody nails in the boobs and be strong. She might not like it but she'll buy you some time so you can test out the flooze!"

Howard reminded himself that he was in control, and that Cecily had told him that what he did to her would also be done to Lucy, so the reverse must surely also be true. What he didn't do to Cecily wouldn't be done to Lucy.

He just had to be careful.

"Who is the lady in the locket?" he asked, refusing to listen to the distant contrary shrieks. They were in his head, like persistent elves and demons. He could hear them nagging at him as he shut their thoughts from his mind, for Lucy was on her knees, tugging at his arm, demanding that he listen and he daren't do that. He had to concentrate on the woman in front of him: on Cecily.

"If you move your hands," he mocked her, circling to her rear. "I'll bend you over, spread your cheeks and stick ten long inches of cock up your ass, and then, when I've had what I want of your body, I'll put a noose round your neck and I'll hang you! so don't you dare move an inch... not an inch..."

He extended his hand across her nipples and brushed them so that she gasped. He could feel the shallow intake of breath and the heartache, the flush of female excitement.

She was turned on. She liked the idea of ten long inches of cock nuzzling her ass and the thought that he might hang her.

And as for Lucy...

"She's a young woman," he consoled himself. "She has lusts and illicit desires. Maybe she'll be aroused at being the centre of so much attention: a company of soldiers - all of them looking at her. It must be the perfect female fantasy to be bent over and plugged by shed loads of athletic testosterone; or strung up with rope, naked and on tiptoe with both hands tied behind your back, all those spent soldiers standing in a circle and cheering and jerking off as the noose tightens around your neck, and tightens... and your toes finally lose contact with the floor..."

The thought gave Howard strength. Lucy was okay. She was strong and she had guts. He kept telling himself that. She'd cope.

She'd cope.

"So who is the lady?" Howard gloated, taunting Cecily and enjoying her turmoil. "Tell me mam, for if you don't, I'll do worse than the Iraqis, the Koreans and the Nicaraguans rolled into one. It won't be the nails and the tree that you'll fear. It'll be the guillotine. I'll place your boobs into that brutish weapon and finish the job that Ahmed began. I'll make salami of your tits and eat them for lunch. Think about that, mam - losing your lovely beautiful tits! And me, fixing you in the guillotine and tightening the bolts and releasing the catch!"

Cecily's eyes sparkled as he said this. Howard hadn't threatened her with premeditated intent. He'd wanted to intimidate and frighten her, nothing more. It was fun to think of Cecily squashed in a breast guillotine and Lucy similarly attired, but that was as far as his fantasy went. He could never allow the mastectomy to proceed any further, regardless of the provocation, because Lucy's breasts were too precious to him and their fate and the fate of Cecily's tits were intrinsically connected.

Cecily, didn't understand this, however. She hadn't worked it out. "You don't have the means..." she coughed, caught in a whirlwind of blindness.

She was transfixed. Her arms were no longer tied for Howard had already unfastened the last of the ropes, yet her wrists remained locked to the centre of her back by some invisible force. It was if the memorizing power of Howard's voice restrained them.

He leaned forward.

"I have the means, mam," he hissed, and a cruel ripple crawled along his mouth and an idea came to him as he considered what he was about to attempt. "The guillotine is with us today and awaiting your reacquaintance," he began. "It was smuggled to England by one of your peers and brought secretly to this place at my instruction. It's been an attraction to the staff: a gruesome reminder of what happens to a careless, female operative who gets too big for her station. It's here, mam, ready and awaiting your pleasure."