Chapter 6A: Eye for Eye; Tooth for Tooth; Nipple for Nipple

"I'm not joking, Mr Pendrill," Cecily said. "Rape may not be pretty, but it's ubiquitous and effective. I know, because I was in Chechnya where I was captured by the rebels and afterwards by the Russians. I was there, and I was gang raped by both of these forces because that's what happens to women at times of war, and to a female spy even doubly and triply so. We're raped, Mr Pendrill. We get screwed and tortured and we learn to accept it because that's part of our job. In Chechnya, they were good at it. They knew the knobs to turn - how to tinker with a woman's head and rewire her persona. They knew how to re-work her self-image and shape her ideas of love, beauty, loyalty and romance until they became intertwined, contorted, ugly and unrecognizable. They turned sex into something to be feared, Mr Pendrill - something lurid and putrid; an expression of hate and not of love, and I admired them for that skill. Having seen what they can do, I tell you: in our line of work, if a man hasn't raped a woman, that's a serious deficiency. Materially so."

What could Howard say? How could he refute her?

He knew that he was onto a loser and so he didn't argue too hard. He merely said: "An agent can extract information without resorting to sex, and he should do if he can."

Cecily agreed readily, flicking her hair and chewing at her pencil. "Of course. There are sensory deprivation methods and self-torture techniques, but if you combine these methods with sex you loosen the tongue faster than any other method and that's been proven, Mr Pendrill - or are you challenging the science?"

"No. I wouldn't do that!"

"Well I'm glad to hear it."

Howard had been taught how the Nazis used Jewish girls in the concentration camps to learn how best to torture a woman, while the Russians played with Trotskyite dissidents in their Stalags. But it was the Americans and the CIA who raised the bar. They were driven by fear and paranoia about the Russian 'threat' into investing $1 billion per year between 1950 and 1962, carefully researching the psychology of 'exploitation', with the torture of women getting a budgeted share of that pot.

The CIA published several manuals on the subject, the first in 1963 called KUBARK, and this was followed by others with names such as "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual", and "Contra Manual", both of these being intended for use in Nicaragua.

Although the torture techniques in these manuals were carefully caveated with statements that the descriptions were "against official policy", and that they had "objectionable material" written within them - one has to question the purpose of including such objectionable information and then handing it to uneducated soldiers involved in the interrogation of women.

For instance, let's look at what happened on the ground in Nicaragua during the Reagan and Bush Senior years. In this one country, there were ten thousand peasant women killed by CIA agents. That's a fact. An ex-CIA field director went on public record with this figure, and he described how men would enter villages and make women undress and stand in front of their houses and neighbours and family. The men then slashed at the women's breasts with knives and scythed at them, catching the various bits of tit flesh in buckets and taking them away in a blatently psychological attack.

He described how his CIA operatives learnt their trade in special torture houses where they herded groups of young peasant women into small claustrophobic rooms, and then slowly, one by one, they brought them out, stripped them naked, strapped them to a table and honed their torture skills.

Which was worse, these young field operatives wondered: a cigarette or a knife? A whip or a saw? An electrical current or a rape?

The men joked and partied and had fun. They took calls and spoke to girlfriends on their phones, apologising for lateness home and wishing tender goodnights to young children, while in front of them a spreadeagled woman would glisten with pain and scream into a gag. The reason was that a fifteen year old local lad was methodically snapping the bones in her fingers, and once he'd done it, he was intending to rape her.

The men would all rape her eventually, every one of them. They'd rape her and torture her and when they were done, they'd toss her naked body into the back of a dumper truck and drive it to the incinerator, and there they'd toss her to the flames.

These informal experiments established beyond doubt that sexual humiliation is effective - it works - in fact, it's the most important element in getting a woman to talk, especially when combined with effective self-torture.

Yes, for the absence of doubt, we need a definition for self- torture. Therefore, definition: self-torture is where you're given such a strong and overpowering reason to hurt yourself that you do it because the alternative would be worse.

For instance, a mother is told that her baby will be smothered by a blanket and suffocated unless she sacrifices one of her nipples. A pair of scissors is placed in front of her, and a brown paper bag, and then, the tormentor leaves the room carrying her child in his arms, and the woman is left to do whatever she wants to.

What does she think? What does she do? Does she cut off her own nipple or not?

Another example: a man stands in a sweaty Iraqi prison with electrical wires attached to his person. His arms are outstretched and he's told that if he lowers them, electric current will turn his cock into seaside illuminations. His picture is taken with a smiling female soldier and distributed to the world, but what does he do? How long can he stand there in front of the camera before the weight drags on his arms?

Familiar pictures, but born from research conducted in Nicaragua.

Cecily reflected on these thoughts. "Sex isn't the whole armory," she admitted thoughtfully. "But it's certainly a strong part of it. It's something that a professional spy must use to threaten and destabilize his victim."

Which was easy to say, Howard thought sullenly, ignoring her and willing his cock to deflate, for this talk was giving him an erection at the worst possible time, and what would Cecily think? "But how does a spy become familiar with something that's illegal?"

Cecily was amused at Howard's quaint naivety, and she smiled. "Mr. Pendrill. No one's expecting you to lift a woman from the street and do it in broad daylight. There are other, safer avenues to explore. For instance, the department would find you a theatre of war with an ample supply of young women - like the Americans did in Nicaragua; I could find you a torture house in some agreeable corner of the world - and in the meantime, well, you have your girlfriend."

Howard nodded cautiously. He did have Lucy, but what did Lucy have to do with any of this? What did Cecily mean?

"I'm saying, start with her, Mr. Pendrill. Tie her up and gain some experience! Be strong and forceful and play out your fantasies. You see, rape isn't just a sexual act; it's about the mind games that come before, so play those mind games. Go easy on her at first and if it offends, as it very likely will, apologise earnestly, buy her some flowers and take her to dinner.

"The faux pas will be quickly forgotten if you grovel sufficiently, and then you can move on. Another day and another game, and everything can be started afresh. Keep playing the games and buying the flowers. Push the limits, Mr Pendrill. Next time try humiliating Lucy and making her feel stupid. That doesn't come easily to most men - and for most women too, for that matter - and if it offends, as it very likely will, buy her some flowers and take her to dinner. Grovel to the extent that you need to, but keep pushing the limits. The time after that, throw her onto the bed, kiss her, rip off her clothes. Once you've corked her and given her your load, you know what to do. Get on your knees and grovel. Talk sweet. Buy her some flowers and take her to dinner. Grovel. More flowers. Apologise profusely and all the time, keep pushing the limits. Next time do it with a knife. Hold the blade to her throat and slide it across her chest and tell her to undress. You have a mate and he's with you and he's taking the video, and it'll certainly be steamy. Hold Cecily on the bed, show her the knife and take her, fuck her; and make sure your mate shoots the whole thing.

And after that? Take her to the theatre in a plush limousine, no expense spared. Buy her a ring, a bracelet, a necklace, and keep pushing the limits. Grovel to her, talk sweet to her and then do it again. Rape her, Mr Pendrill. Rape her hard, and once you've mastered your girlfriend, I'll move you on and we can try some uneducated peasant from a voiceless tin pot republic where the beaches are golden, and the sea is blue and the days are endlessly sunny. That's the next step."

Howard was uneasy. Although he was aroused, he didn't like this strange talk because it centred on Lucy, and he couldn't hurt her.

Cecily smiled. "Mr Pendrill? You don't fancy playing with your girlfriend, do you? I'm turning you off. It does you credit, I suppose - but remember that women have fantasies too - fantasies that the average man couldn't possibly understand - so relax, because this isn't as bad as you imagine. Women are creatures of habit, Mr Pendrill. We're civilized beings on the surface, and that's how you see us, and yet, underneath, we're just unreasoning beasts, animals, because that's what we evolved from, and it's an ambiguity that men always miss. We're unprepared for this crap that evolution has wired into our psyches. We're brought up to be retiring, modest and genteel, innocent soft beings, but we aren't, and so we pretend to be something we're not and we deny ourselves the things that we crave. Unconsciously, we want to be coerced, Mr Pendrill, to have our wills subjugated by a hunk of a man and be driven to our limits: it's our nature. We yearn to be tossed onto a bed, to have a man's ding-dong shoved into our cunts, and be made to enjoy it. It's our dream to be forced to pant like a horse, sweat like a donkey and cum like a whore; the latter most of all, because there's something primeval inside of us that needs to be bucking like a five dollar whore. We yearn for it just once in our lives - but it isn't ladylike or polite to sell our bodies for cash, and so we tell ourselves that we don't want it, and that we can't stand it, and that we're disgusted by the idea of it; and we repeat this mantra until eventually we believe our own shit, and we do believe it, Mr Pendrill, and that's so sad."

Howard listened to her unfiltered, undiluted effluent, wanting to believe, but unable. It was an interesting theory that Cecily was spouting, he supposed, but that's all it was, a theory.

He sighed. "Lucy's not like that," he griped miserably. "She's straightforward, clear thinking and open! She talks to me like it is and she's old fashioned in her ideas. I know her. She'd never want someone to fuck her unless she was married to him. She wouldn't allow it for a moment!"

Cecily sighed, obviously disappointed. "Mr Pendrill. I understand your concerns but you're missing the point. This isn't about Lucy's consent. It's about her makeup, her innate physical being. You forget that women's bodies have been wired with dark sexual desires and they control us, Mr Pendrill. They move us to brazen outrageous acts, and they define what we are. Even if a woman is conservative and religious, even if she's shy and bashful, these desires are molten magma boiling beneath her earth's crust, and if you scratch the surface, you see it.

"Lucy denies these facts because she doesn't want to accept and believe them. They stand in opposition to her ethics and her religion, but she needs to believe because they're her Mount Etna, her Krakatoa, repressed and ready to explode at the merest provocation.

"So take advantage, Mr Pendrill, and prod her desires. Lucy's virtue is there in front of you and ready to be taken, so find what she wants and make her pay with her body. Ask yourself what she yearns for, Mr Pendrill. Perhaps she yearns that you convert to her faith. Maybe she desires this more than anything in the world. Or perhaps she sees herself as a bride at a wedding and you as the groom - lots of beads and trinkets and outfits. So horse trade with her, Mr Pendrill, as Salome did with King Herod. Show her the ropes and make her put them on. She'll rant and swear and cry as you do it, but don't argue. Never argue. You must take it slow and tell her that you think that it's cool to tie her in ropes but you understand that she has doubts. Offer to use knots that easily slip loose and handcuffs that open, and use them, for she'll test you for sure.

"And after that, whenever she's worried or anxious and she panics and frees herself from the ropes - because she will - slow her down and talk to her. Offer her a drink and reassure her, and then, once she's settled and calm, tie her back up and kiss her. Make it a firm rule that you're never sexual or intimate unless she's constrained in her ropes. Let her grow used to submission and its proximity to pleasure."

Howard was unconvinced that this would work with Lucy. She was too forward and headstrong. She had a mind of her own.

"She'll want to know why you want to tie her, Mr Pendrill: for women always ask such things, and so you'll say that you don't know what drives you, perhaps it's something primeval and masculine in all men, inherited from the stone ages, and it's certainly not a weakness in your character. She'll ask what you'll do once she's tied up, and you'll say that you'll undress her, but nothing else. Nothing more. Not yet. Maybe that'll come later, but at the beginning you're going to remove her clothes - and yes, you'll remove them all, and she must be prepared for that embarrassment. You'll remove her clothes because you're turned on and aroused by her body, but first she must give her consent that you do it. You implore her emotionally and beg for it. You insist on it. You won't do anything until she gives her consent, and she will: eventually. It may take a while, but it'll happen, and when she gives her permission, promise devoutly to untie her as soon as she's naked: and swear it.

"It's a game. It's like poker. Show her the ropes and make jokes with her. Kiss her. Poke her in the ribs and laugh, and yet be firm. Always firm. In other areas you might horse trade and compromise, but the ropes are not for negotiation. She must understand that once she's given her okay, there's no backing out. She'll be tied, and while you'll be gentle and she shouldn't be frightened; you will undress her, and you won't untie her until she's without a scrap of covering, and you'll gaze at her and admire her, and there's no way she can stop you, no way at all: once she's given her consent.