Hoerst walked over to where Kirsten was seated. “Open your mouth please.” He said it in a tone that was firm yet not harsh. Kirsten looked up at him. What choice did she have? She was seated in a wooden office chair, wearing the blue prison smock that had been given her after she had been stripped and all her clothes and personal belongings removed to be searched. The three matrons had also performed a degrading body search as she stood, and bent over, naked before them, not missing any cavity of her body where microfilm or any other evidence of her trade could have been found. Under other conditions she would have seen the humor in the German fastidiousness in having her searched by women while two armed German soldiers stood by ogling her naked body. Her wrists had remained handcuffed behind her throughout the search and those very same handcuffs were now fastened to the back of the chair upon which she sat.

“Why?” she said, biting the word off quickly as though afraid he would push the cloth into her mouth before she could get the one syllable out.

“So I can gag you,” Hoerst replied, foregoing the “You damn well know why,” or the “Just open your fucking mouth,” that others might have appended. That would have been out of character for Major Hoerst.

Kirsten had not fought her captors since they had seized her, and she wouldn't now. What was the use? She had obeyed their orders and would wait for an opportunity when resistance might be meaningful.

They had grabbed her at the door to the small apartment house on the quiet street in Marseilles. Her apartment was two flights up, and as soon as she felt the iron grip on her arms, one on each bicep, she knew she would never see the tiny flat again. Her recognition of the situation was immediate and her knees buckled with fear. Then before she could react in any way other to say “What…why…” her wrists were cuffed behind her and she was being pulled – lifted actually – to the black sedan which had just rounded the corner. Not a word was spoken in the five minute drive to Gestapo HQ and Major Hoerst.

Kirsten simply opened her mouth and Hoerst filled it with the cloth. Kirsten coughed and tried to free her tongue from under the gag but the bulk of the cloth wouldn't allow it. From his pocked Hoerst took a scarf which Kirsten immediately recognized as one of her own; one that when last seen had been resting in the top drawer of the bureau in her room. The scarf went between her lips and around her head. He was careful to push her long light brown hair free before knotting it tightly.

“Does the name Greta Mueller mean anything to you?” Kirsten stared up at him and rolled her eyes slightly while she arched her eyebrows. Hoerst recognized the implied derision but took no offence. He would take not take offence at anything a helpless female prisoner totally in his power could say or do; he was too experienced and too well trained. “You can simply shake your head yes or no; I do not need any elaboration. And don't be concerned this is some kind of trick that will lead to you divulging any of your precious information. We do not have to resort to trickery; we have many less subtle but more effective methods of obtaining what we want.”

Kirsten shook her head no, the words “less subtle but more effective ways” sending the proverbial chill down her spine.

“I didn't think you would but one never knows. She does have a certain amount of notoriety that might have spread beyond our borders. Not that it matters in the least. By this time tomorrow it will be a name you will remember for the rest of your life, however long that might be. It is because of her you are gagged.”

Hoerst sat on the edge of the desk in front of Kirsten and lit a cigarette. When he had first interviewed her he had also smoked – had even offered her one – and she had thought nothing of it. Now the sight of the glowing ember at the end of the slim white tube caused a bead of sweat to run down the back of her neck.

He looked at her carefully. She wore no shoes, no jewelry. The steel shackles around her slim ankles were connected by a chain a half meter long. He knew beneath the thin cotton shift she wore no underwear. He took a long drag on his cigarette trying to calm himself. He was getting aroused thinking of this beautiful young English woman’s nudity beneath her dress. How large, he wondered, were her nipples? How thick was her pubic hair? How would she react to being hung naked before him? Soon he would know but until then he must remain patient. He did after all have a job to do.

“That was Fraulein Mueller on the phone.” He sighed. “Bad news for you I am afraid. It seems they have taken an interest in your case in Berlin. It seems you are not French at all, but British, and of much more value than I would have thought.”

Kirsten shook her head and tried to deny the accusation through her gag. She stamped her bare foot on the floor.

“Please Kirsten, your denials are meaningless so save the effort. You will need every bit of your strength very soon. And your courage.”

At the sound of her name Kirsten sagged in her chair. Given the chance to deny it she would but only because that is how she had been trained. Deny. Deny. Deny. Even when you know they know – deny.

Hoerst saw her reaction to the use of her name and knew he had won his first small victory; small but meaningful because it was the first. “It is too bad about Fraulein Mueller. She is coming here personally to question you. I would have liked to have done that myself. I think we might have come to an arrangement much more easily than she will allow.”

Hoerst paused again to inhale deeply on his cigarette. The girl handcuffed to the chair in front of him had started to sweat and dark circles appeared at her underarms and between her breasts.

“She will be here tomorrow. She would have liked to have been here sooner but transportation not so easy to come by at this point in the war. Anyway she says she can use the time productively in any case finish her questioning of a Carol Rasher, or maybe it was Rusher.”

Kirsten closed her eyes for a second and groaned into her gag. If they really had Carol, if they had broken Carol, she thought, they would know a lot, and too much about me. And not for the first time the word torture loomed in her mind.

Kirsten saw a slight smile lift the right side of Hoerst’s lips. He had seen her reaction, heard her groan. She had to be more careful, she thought. But then immediately thought Why? What was the use? How long could she possibly hold out if they tortured her? She had to. That was all there was to it. She just had to.

“Would you like to know what Fraulein Mueller said to me just now?”

Kirsten stared at Hoerst and for some reason unknown to her nodded her head. Perhaps because as long as he was talking he wouldn't be torturing her.

“Good because I would tell you in any case. Fraulein Mueller was very clear that I should tell you everything. The first thing she wanted me to tell you was that she had your friend Carol and that she had proved very talkative…” Here Hoerst reached into his back pocket, took out a small notebook, flipped over a few pages and read, “after a while.” Then he looked up at Kirsten. “I don't usually do this, take notes during a phone conversation, but Fraulein Mueller insisted I write some things down so I would not forget to tell you. I told you she was very precise and methodical…” he said, his voice dropping in pitch and volume, “In everything she does.

“She said she was looking forward to meeting you after all that Carol had had to say about you and asked what you were like.

“I told her you were of course nervous but considering the consequences of your capture, more composed than might have been expected. What did you look like? I did not answer immediately but Mueller prodded me. Quite pretty, in fact one might even say beautiful, I told her. I had not wanted to say this for a number of reasons, not the least being that there is nothing that Mueller enjoys more than interrogating good looking women, and of course the more beautiful the better. She lives for it. And although the thought of you squirming bound and naked before me gets my blood racing, the glee Mueller will take in working on that naked body is something I do not want to dwell on.

She asked for details. Long brown hair, green eyes, high cheekbones, full lips and delicate ears. Hmm. I wonder why I said that. She asked about your body. Slim. Athletic. But with full breasts especially for an athletic girl. I am sure she is strong. A little more than a meter sixty. I did not mention how lovely your feet are.”

Hoerst reached behind him and crushed his cigarette out in an ashtray on the desk. Then looking back at Kirsten he said, “She asked again about your breasts.” He expected a reaction but Kirsten gave him none that he could see although she felt her stomach tighten. “I told her that breasts, while not voluptuous, were quite full and appeared very firm.”

Hoerst slid off the desk and walked to Kirsten. Slowly and gently he placed his hands on her shoulders. Kirsten stared straight at his chest, afraid to look into his face, afraid of what he was going to say, of what he was going to do. “Before I tell you what Fraulein Mueller had to say and why she had me gag you, there is something I need to tell you. Fraulein Mueller is coming here to interrogate you. She is very smart and knows the right questions to ask, for the big picture, on a much grander scale than I would. So perhaps it was inevitable that you end up in her hands.

“Fraulein Mueller is a torturer.”

There, she thought, it is out at last, what we both knew. But now it has been said. I am going to be tortured.

“Did you hear me? Do you understand what I said about Fraulein Mueller?

Why? Why did he keep calling her Fraulein Mueller? Why not Captain Mueller or Lieutenant Mueller? Or just Mueller? Did she engender that much respect? Or that much fear even in a cohort?

“I told you Fraulein Mueller will be here tomorrow. But this is why I must tell you what she said to me. Do not think you have twenty-four hours before your ordeal begins. It begins now.”

Hoerst opened the notebook again. “She told me to write it down so I could tell you exactly what she said.” He began to read from his notes, holding the small book in his right hand while he grasped Kirsten’s chin in his left, turning her face upward to look at him. Every sentence or two to he moved his eyes away from the book to look at Kirsten.

“You will soften her up for me. I want you to make her suffer as she has never suffered before, as she never thought it was possible to suffer. Start by whipping her. Strip her naked and string her up by her thumbs. Use straps first and then a whip that will slice into her flesh. But listen to me. Do not touch her face. Do not touch her vagina. And I do not want her breasts marked, so be careful in working on them. Do you understand? And gag her. She is to understand that I am the only one who can give her release from her pain. She can not end it even by confessing until I give her permission.”

Hoerst paused and looked down at Kirsten. He could see the tears welling up in her eyes. Then he said without looking at the book, “Then rip out her fingernails and toenails, and do it slowly. But leave the thumbs and big toes for me.” Kirsten started to weep, the tears running down her cheeks and into Hoerst’s hand. Hoerst put the book away. “There is more, after the nails. It gets worse. But there is no reason to burden you with that now. After I have torn your fingernails out I will read you more.” Kirsten started to sob. The vague concept of torture now had a concrete existence and she could see herself, feel herself, hanging naked and helpless while the whips cut into her flesh. She could hear her agonized screams muffled by the gag as a nail was torn from her finger, and then another and another… “I know, I know. It will be bad but try to be brave.” Hoerst released her chin and turned away from her and a sly smile twisted his lips. Then he turned abruptly to the two guards who were standing near the door. “Take her downstairs. Room two. Get her ready.”

Kirsten kept her head down on her chest trying to control her sobbing as the two guards unfastened one of her wrists from the cuffs and lifted her almost inert body from the chair. Her wrists were then refastened in front of her and without a word she was seized by the biceps and led out of the office. Hoerst was holding the door. “I will be down in a few minutes to start working on her,” he said.

There were people in the hall, people dressed in uniforms and suits and skirts and blouses. Some carried files or briefcases. They all wore shoes. They all walked freely and purposefully. A few pretended not to notice Kirsten but most stared at her openly and one frumpy middle-aged woman pursed her lips and shook her head in disdain. Anyone in the guard’s path moved quickly aside, even a colonel who nodded meaningfully at the guards.

Kirsten looked down at her bare feet, her manacled wrists and ankles, the faded blue shift that barely reached mid-thigh and that had undoubtedly been worn by a score of prisoners before her, some of whom she was sure had died terrible deaths. She looked up quickly. Get a hold of yourself, she thought. GET. A. HOLD. OF. YOURSELF. You can do this. We have people here. I know we do. They'll get me out. I've got to hold on. I can't let these Nazi thugs win no matter what.

The shackles made her shuffle as quickly as she could just to keep up with the guards and still she stumbled three or four times. Breathing was difficult with the gag and her nose was stuffed from her crying. It was a long hall and by the time they reached the end she was breathing as though she had run a mile and making whinnying sounds through her nose and blowing out snot.

There was a large elevator door at the end of the hall running from wall to wall. The guard pushed a button and she heard the whine of a hoist and the slow ascent of the lift. Finally the door opened slowly onto an immense freight compartment. There was an operator standing at the left of the door. He looked at Kirsten and smiled and said in German, “Welcome to paradise.” Then he laughed.

Kirsten glared at him. You bastard. You're dead. Your all dead. We'll kill you all.

They pulled her in and turned her around to face the front. The elevator started its slow but inexorable creep downwards. Kirsten tried to think of nothing but her hatred for these murdering swine. I can win, she thought, even if I die. I'll show these pigs how to die bravely. Again she saw herself hanging naked in front of Hoerst but this time she wasn't screaming, he was screaming, at her, “Who is your contact! Who is your contact!” There was panic in his voice and she simply stared straight ahead in silence.

The door opened and Kirsten was taken out into another long corridor, but this one was empty, with concrete walls and a concrete floor and bare bulbs spaced every six feet in the surprisingly high ceiling. It was dim and moist and silent except for the footfalls of the guard’s boots and the clank of the chain between Kirsten’s ankle shackles. There were doors, doors that looked ten times heavier than office doors, doors of scarred oak with iron straps running horizontally across. There was a number on the first door on her right. Twelve. Her door was two. Her door was at the far end of the corridor. Her door. The door that opened onto her room, the room where she was going to be tortured for hour after hour while she hung naked and helpless by her thumbs. She shook her head and tried to hold back, digging her bare feet into the rough concrete of the floor. The guard simply lifted her by her arms and carried her forward.

She fought them the best she could, drawing her knees up and kicking out with her chained feet, occasionally striking one on the shin or knee. She twisted and writhed in panic trying to free herself from their iron grasp but they carried her on without a sound except for the grunts that escaped from behind her gag. In thirty seconds they were at door number two and in one last desperate act she drew her legs up to her chest and thrust her bare feet against the door, pushing at it as though she could shove it away for ever.

They threw her inside the room. One of the guards grabbed her by both arms and pulled her away while the other unlocked the door. The first guard then pushed her forward, hard enough that with her ankles shackled she couldn't maintain her balance and fell heavily on her side.

She lay there panting from the exertion, frightened and defenseless. The room was dark, lit only by the dim yellow bulbs in the corridor that shone through the open door. She looked up as one of the guards reached over and flicked on the interior lights while at the same time pulling the heavy door closed behind him.

The light in the room was bright, almost blinding Kirsten before her eyes adjusted. The two guards were standing over her, two indistinct silhouettes in the harsh light. She immediately threw her manacled hands up to block out the light while at the same time scuttling back on the floor away from the Germans. They didn't move for a moment, just stood and looked at her while she waited, suddenly aware that her short dress had ridden up around her hips exposing her sex. She started to pull the skirt down, not an easy task lying on her side with her wrists manacled, then realized how stupid her modesty was as a hand reached down and seized her by the hair.

In one motion the guard pulled her to her feet and locked her elbows straight out in front of her. Kirsten gave a shrill cry of pain into her gag. Before she had recovered from the sharp pain from her scalp the other guard had tightened a noose of thin binding around her left thumb. She made a fist with her right hand but the guard easily pried it apart and tied off her right thumb. She looked down at her manacled hands now further joined by the thin white cord that bound her thumbs, one at either end.

“Don't worry, it’s parachute cord. It will hold your weight.” It was a small shock to hear his voice. It was the first either of the soldiers had spoken. And the image it conveyed was the same she had had bound to the chair in Hoerst’s office – hanging naked before her captors, the full weight of her body tearing at her thumbs, while they savaged her flesh with whips and pliers. She looked up at him with eyes wide with fear and despair. At the sight of her turned up face he barked out a short loud laugh.

They dragged Kirsten to the center of the room, her desperate struggles reduced to a pitiful squirming by the iron grip of the guards. In yet another meaningless gesture she demanded they stop but all that emerged from her gagged mouth was a low “mmmmmmm…mmmmmm.” One of the guards walked away from her and Kirsten redoubled her efforts to free herself. It was useless but still she struggled until she heard a mechanical drone above her. It reminded her of the sound of the elevator that had lowered her into this Gestapo hellhole. She looked up to see a hook slowly descending at the end of a heavy chain, descending to receive her, to lift her by her bound thumbs and carry her up into an unthinkable world of agony. She started to tremble and her legs started shaking uncontrollably. Resistance was impossible.

They hooked the thin cord over the hook and took the chain up a few inches until Kirsten was able to stand flatfooted, elbows slightly flexed with perhaps three inches of slack left in her arms. She looked up the length of her arms at her thumbs, already throbbing from the loss of circulation. The nooses were tight, and unless she kept her arms almost straight their weight would pull them tighter. Sweat stung her eyes. It was rolling down her forehead and she shook her head to clear it. But she had other more immediate concerns; they were already stripping her dress away.

All it took was two short cuts with a shears – the left shoulder from the hem of the sleeve to the hem of the neck, and then the right. The thin cotton garment didn't slide off her extended body but rather clung to her damp skin. One of the men simply pulled it down over her hips with enough force that it slipped down her legs leaving the beautiful young spy naked, her sweat glossed body gleaming in the bright light of the torture chamber.

Hoerst stood for a moment at the doorway letting his eyes adjust to the bright light before entering. The two guards immediately turned to him and stiffened appropriately. Kirsten followed their gaze to the Gestapo Major.

He seemed to absorb her more than see her, his eyes moving slowly from her ensnared thumbs to her bare feet, then back up pausing at the luxurious thatch of hair beneath her belly and finally at her breasts. He turned his right palm up and made a small motion with his fingers. Immediately the guard at the winch turned it until Kirsten was stretched full length with her heels a palm’s breadth off the floor. Helpless to prevent the torture all Kirsten could do was squeeze her eyes shut and wait for the inevitable agony of being lifted by her thumbs, so she didn't see Hoerst motion the guard to stop. She opened her eyes and saw him smiling at her. You bastard, she thought, understanding Hoerst’s game even before he spoke.

“Don't be in such a rush to feel the pain,” he said, “There will be plenty of time for that. In the meanwhile we will go slowly, letting things build. Twenty-four hours is a long time to fill.” He walked around Kirsten and looked closely at her calves, bunched and straining with the effort of keeping her balance. She twisted her head trying to follow him, tried to pivot on her toes to keep an eye on his movements, terrified suddenly that he would be out of her sight; that she would not be able to see what he might do to her. But with her feet held close together to give her full extension to help keep her weight off her thumbs, even that small movement almost caused her to lose balance and she stopped.

Hoerst heard her groan, saw her sway. He knew how frightened she was but, he thought, no where near as frightened as she should be. He couldn't suppress a tight grin at that thought. Sweat was rolling down her body in rivulets now. He placed the index finger of his right hand at the middle of her back and applied a little pressure. Then a little more.

Kirsten snorted loudly through her nose. Her thighs and calves ached as she fought with every muscle to remain on her toes. And yet with no more effort than it would take to push a car door closed he could have her swinging by her thumbs. She threw her head back and stared up the length of her slender arms stretching desperately upward. She shook her head once from side to side and cried out behind her gag in frustration and fear. She had risen onto the tips of her toes and arched her back as far as she could bend it. Her entire body hurt, her thumbs burned, even her toes had started to cramp but all she could think about was the unrelenting pressure of the single finger against her back.

But Hoerst did not push her free from her tenuous purchase on the concrete floor. He let her slide back and walked in front of her. He held his hand out below her chin. He was wearing gloves and the black leather on the ball of his middle finger was wet with her sweat from where he had touched her. Then he balled up his hand with the one finger extended and placed it at the hollow of her neck and drew it slowly down between her breasts. When he reached the base of her sternum he again began to apply pressure, pushing until she was once more balanced precariously on her tips of her toes.

It hurts, she thought, It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts. She couldn't stay like this much longer. Her calves couldn't hold out, her thighs. She shook her head once from side to side trying to chase away the growing pain and concentrate her efforts on remaining balanced on her toes. What would it feel like when she was finally hanging free with all her weight tearing at her thumbs? Oh God, oh God help me.

Again he removed his finger and she moaned with the small relief the added two inches of slack gave her. He was standing right in front of her, close enough for the foul odor of cigarettes and a general lack of hygiene that rose from his mouth and his uniform make her turn her head. With the gag cramming her mouth it was difficult enough to breathe. He took her face in his hand, his thumb on her left cheek, his fingers on her right, and turned it back to him. They stared at each other, she stretched out on her toes and he, quite short even in his boots, so their eyes were level.

“Do you find it so difficult to look at me? Is it because you are naked and I am dressed in the uniform of the Reich? Or because it would acknowledge my total power over you?” When he let go of her face she did not turn away. Unable to curse him or tell him it was because he stank, she simply met his steady gaze with one just as steady, taking a small measure of satisfaction in what at this point had to pass as an act of courage.

Without looking away he ran his hand down her side. She flinched at his touch but did not take her eyes from his. Finally he looked down at his glove damp with her sweat. “It is not that hot in here is it?” he asked innocently, then peeled his gloves off. She still held her gaze on his face as he took both gloves in his right hand and slapped them hard against her cheek, then back hand against the other. And again and again. Kirsten closed her eyes and dropped her head in a reflex to escape the thrashing. Hoerst stopped and gave a low satisfied grunt, as though he had just come across an interesting and useful fact in a manual.

“Did you know that humiliation is a useful part of interrogation? Adds to the victim’s – that is you of course – sense of helplessness. Not as useful of course as pain…”

Hoerst reached down with both hands, seized Kirsten’s pubic hair between his fingers and without pausing pulled steadily until the poor girl’s bare feet cleared the floor. Her reaction was immediate – a sharp cry of pain muffled by her gag. He held her for a moment while she snorted and flailed, eyes squeezed tightly shut against the pain that tore at her thumbs and belly – then let go.

Kirsten fought to regain her balance. She was vaguely aware of the guard at her feet but was so desperately trying to get her toes planted and relieve the agony in her thumbs that she was totally unaware that he was removing her shackles. It was only when her feet were pulled and she had to give a little sideways hop to keep from slipping that she looked down and saw the rope that now bound her slim ankles tightly one to the other. She could do nothing but watch and groan through her gag as the guard took a longer length of rope and tied it just above and below her knees and then crossed it in front and in back of the joint, pulling it tight until her legs were locked together and she could not flex her knees. Why? She thought, Why are the tying my legs like this? What are they going to do to me?

Hoerst tested the ropes around Kirsten’s knees then forced the flat of his hand between her thighs just above. Although the ropes had been cinched tightly he had no trouble, the natural shape of her legs and the lubrication of her sweat making it easy to slide his hand in and then push it up until it reached her crotch. He pressed it against her vagina, savoring the way she stiffened when the top of his hand touched her sex. He was looking down at his thumb tangled in the copse of her pubic triangle and the way her flat belly seemed to quiver and pulse with the strain of her efforts to spare her thumbs the weight of her body, or even that of her arms. When he looked up he was surprised to see his gaze returned not with humiliation but with disdain and disgust easily discernable even with the gag distorting her mouth. For the briefest of moments he was nonplussed, then recovered. He tilted his head to one side, barely a twitch, and the guard at the winch took Kirsten up another two clicks so she was balanced precariously on the large and second toes of each foot. Her eyes lost the last remnants of defiance and opened wide in pain and terror.

“Don't forget who you are and who I am,” Hoerst hissed at her. Don't forget for a minute.”

She stared up at the thin strands that tormented her to the edge of agony, straining every inch of her supple body to keep her weight on her feet and not suspended from her thumbs. She felt the burning in her shoulders flare to new levels as she struggled to keep her arms from sagging. She felt the sharp insistent pain from the cramps in her calves. She could bear this pain but her muscles were failing and when they did her entire weight would hang from her thumbs.

His voice returned to the firm but neutral tone with which he had spoken to her before. “Don't you understand how helpless you are? Don't you understand that we can do whatever we want to you? That there is no one in the world that can help you?” He paused for two beats. “Except me.”

He removed his hand from between her thighs and took one step back without taking his eyes off her. She blinked at him, but he saw nothing else in her face other than the strain of her bondage.

“Do you want me to help you?” Oh God, she thought, Give me strength. Give me the strength to resist him. When she had first been arrested, and even after she had been handcuffed to the chair in Hoerst’s office, she had refused to answer his questions. She had been frightened, knew that if she did not answer she would be tortured. But it was all so abstract. Now she was bound naked and in pain, alone and helpless in a Nazi torture chamber. “Do you want me to help you?” She nodded yes.

“I am going to take the gag out of your mouth. I am going to ask you some questions. If you answer them truthfully I will spirit you away from here. I will even try and get you released, traded. But I can not promise that will happen. I can not promise you will not be shot. I can promise that you will not be tortured. Believe me that is a bargain you should embrace. After a few hours in my hands, or Fraulein Mueller’s, you will be begging God for death.

“Understand this. You will have only one chance. I will be able to tell Fraulein Mueller that you broke immediately after I spoke to her and I had to turn you over for a complete debriefing. But once I have started working on you…well, that is that.”

He nodded to one of the guards and he untied the scarf around Kirsten’s head. Then Hoerst stopped him. “If you do not answer my questions, I will put in another gag. I expect you to cooperate even though it will mean your torture. Do you agree?”

Kirsten nodded and the guard pulled the soaking piece of fabric from her mouth.

Kirsten prayed. Even as she coughed and gasped for air, she prayed. She prayed they would not ask her for the names. She would give them everything else – codes, procedures, craft, whatever they wanted. Even the names of those in England. But she could not betray her underground contacts. To be responsible for their gruesome torture was more than she could bear. She prayed, but she knew they would ask. And she said a second prayer that she would have the strength to say no.

“When did you arrive in France? How? With how many other agents?” She told him. None of it mattered. She did not know the other two agents on the plane, or where they were headed. He believed her. He asked other questions, about her radio, her papers. She rushed her answers out of her mouth, anxious to please him, adding information he hadn't asked for, surprised that she was literally gasping for breath when he paused to write down information.

“Please. Please. Let me down now. I'll tell you what you want.”

Without glancing up from his notes Hoerst flicked his fingers down twice and the guard at the crank lowered the winch until Kirsten’s feet were flat on the floor. Kirsten’s relief was palpable. A long sigh escaped her lips and for a second she allowed her shoulders to relax but the increased weight on her thumbs forced her to keep her arms up as high as she could.

“It hurts,” she gasped, “Please, it hurts. Take me down. Take me out of here. I'll tell you everything.”

Hoerst cupped her left breast in his hand and gently stroked the bottom of her aureole with his thumb. “Yes,” she said, and licked her dry lips. Anything to keep him from torturing her.

“Who are your contacts?”

“What? What?” Hoerst said nothing. “What do you mean? What contacts?”

“The underground. The Maqui. You know exactly what I mean.”

“No…no. There are none. I…I…” The pain in her arms was forgotten for the moment, but not the threat of torture. “I haven't made them yet. I'm waiting to be instructed from England. I told you about the radio.”

“You are lying.” Kirsten started to speak but Hoerst barked at her, “Don't tell me anything but the names.”

“I don't know an…” Hoerst slapped her hard across the face, started to yell at her, and then checked himself.

“I am trying to help you and you are lying to me. I will accept that once. It is your job.” His voice was level but barely under control. “But give me the names now or I start.”

Kirsten’s mouth opened once, twice, but then she let her chin fall down to her chest and silently shook her head from side to side. They will torture me to death but I won't give them the others, she swore.

“Open your mouth,” Hoerst said. It was a demand but in a soft voice that seemed tinged with sadness. It was an effect Hoerst had perfected. “Open your mouth so I can gag you.”

Kirsten pressed her lips tightly together and turned her head. She couldn't do it, couldn't simply open her mouth to be gagged and give up her last chance to stop her torture. What if I break? What if I can't stand anymore? What if I want to talk and stop it? How will I tell him?

She never saw Hoerst give a sign if indeed there was one. One second her bare feet were on the cold cement of the dungeon and the next she was suspended by her thumbs. A strangled cry rolled from her parted lips and for ten seconds she grunted in pain through clenched teeth, her toes unconsciously curling and stretching trying to reach the floor and her eyes shut tightly against the growing pain. Then her eyes opened and she turned to Hoerst, gasping for air with tears streaming down her cheeks. She opened her mouth and when he didn't react she opened it wider and brayed at him in desperation. He just stared at her and she gasped, “Gag me. Gag me.”

“Stick out your tongue.” Immediately she did, not thinking, not caring. There was too much pain. Two thick wooden sticks six inches long and attached by wing-nuts near the ends were passed over the tip of her tongue so the last inch protruded between them. A forceps was used to seize the end of her tongue and pull it out as far as possible. It was held there while the second guard pushed the dowels as far as he could into the juncture of her lips and then tightened the wing-nuts until Kirsten’s tongue was painfully trapped in the vice.

Hoerst had the winch lowered until Kirsten could stand with three or four inches of play in her arms so her elbows were bent at ninety degree angles.

“Are you ready?” he asked. Kirsten did not react. “I said ‘Are you ready?’” he screamed at her. Her head jerked back from his verbal assault. She shook her head no. He laughed. “Of course you're not. No one could be. But let me tell you what happens now.

“You probably think of torture as merely physical pain, terrible physical pain. But in the hands of an experienced interrogator it is far more. You being gagged for example. There will come a time when you will do anything to end the pain. (Here Hoerst leaned closer, lowered his voice and almost hissed the next word in Kirsten’s ear.) Anything. But you won't be able to do the one thing that will end your agony – cry out the names.

“Of course you will be able to cry out your pain. You will be able to scream to your heart’s content. That is why you are gagged as you are rather than as before when we stuffed that cloth in your mouth. It has nothing to do with your torture, only with their (and here he tilted his head at the two guards, who stood a few feet back smiling eagerly) pleasure. As for me I take no enjoyment out of this, it is merely a means to an important end. But them, ahh yes, they take great pride in their work. And your screams of pain will gladden their hearts, especially knowing it is all for the glory of the Reich.”

Kirsten shouted at Hoerst, “You can't do this to me!” which came out of her bridled mouth as a garbled cry of fear.

Hoerst ignored her cry and started to pace back and forth, lecturing his naked captive, puffed up as any self-important professor, taking great pride in his superior intellect that could understand such subtle theory and in his superiority over his naked student, bound hand and foot and completely at his mercy.

“But you might ask – if you could speak at all (and he barked out a single short sharp laugh at his little German joke): ‘Why not let me tell you the names? After all, that is what you want.’ And I would tell you (Hoerst took hold of Kirsten’s chin and fairly simpered at her.) ‘Because it is part of the torture.’

“Because you will know there is no way to stop the torture from the moment it starts until I decide to end it. And because you know it and know you will be helpless to stop the pain the torture will be all the worse. But enough…”

Hoerst abruptly turned his back on Kirsten and walked over to a cabinet against the far wall. He came back with two broad leather belts that he held up for her inspection. “Oh God,” she gasped, her tongue fluttering in its vice, but all that emerged from her parted lips was a pitiful whimper. Each belt was imbedded with metal studs in neat rows of three down the length of the leather. In the bright light of the torture chamber the jagged edges of the studs were easily discernable.

“Yes,” Hoerst said, “It is not pretty what these will do to a woman’s flesh…but not yours.” Without turning his head he called out, “Claudes,” and then said to Kirsten, “They are both named Claude. If I want them both I call ‘Claudes.’ If I only call one it does not matter which responds, they are equally efficient and equally cruel.

The two guards stepped up to Hoerst. Both had removed their shirts and both held belts identical to the ones that Hoerst held, but without the studs.

“We will use these on you instead of the studded leather. There will be less pain at first, but as I have tried to convey, torture is a process, and we have, almost twenty-four hours to complete that process. Using the flat belts is not a favor.”

He paused and the three men stood for the moment staring at Kirsten with undisguised hunger in their eyes. Never before had she seen such lust and greed displayed so openly, with no concern for the object’s awareness. Of course the most frightening part was that their lust would not be satisfied by fucking her but by torturing her. And why should they hide it? She was alone, naked and helpless. They could do as they pleased with her and gagged as she was she could not even beg them for mercy, as useless as that would have been.

“Claudes, please begin.”

Any thought of valor left Kirsten as the two Gestapo brutes flexed their imposing muscles. She groaned in fear and shut her eyes against the approaching terror. But in her minds eye she saw the two bare-chested thugs grinning maniacally as they lifted their whips. Kirsten’s tears seeped from her closed eyes and the only sound in the torture chamber before the first slap of leather against flesh was her gentle sobbing.

The Claudes used the straps on Kirsten while Major Hoerst watched approvingly, enjoying the way his naked prisoner writhed and twisted under the stinging blows. Her fear quickly changed to despair as her torturers worked the belts up and down her straining body.

When the first strap fell across her shoulder blades Kirsten immediately knew why Hoerst had had her ankles and knees tightly roped. The pain from the lash was manageable, probably less than she would have expected had she had the time to reflect on it. But the force of blow forced her forward and immediately the pain from her thumbs shot down her arms. Instinctively she tried to get her legs underneath her but they were so tightly bound she had no choice but to absorb the shock with her arms, pulling on her thumbs. The second lash fell, then the third and fourth, each spaced seconds apart giving the sobbing girl just enough time to regain her balance. Kirsten braced herself as best she could but with each blow there was first the sting of leather and then the horrible pull on her thumbs. The two Claudes fell into a cadence working the leather straps up and down Kirsten’s bare back, her buttocks, her thighs and her calves. The blows did not increase in strength but her pain did as her white skin turned red, with thin welts appearing where the edges of the belts had struck before the flat. She cried out with each blow and the short intervals between were filled with her grunts and moans as she fought to stay on her feet.

Her strength and natural balance served her well as she instinctively timed the blows flexing her back with each to help absorb the force, but the constant lashing was taking its toll, the pain weakening her slowly. As her strength ebbed she thought only of survival. When will this end? Will they ever stop? I can't bear this. Make it stop. Please God make it stop. Then the Claude on her left pulled his arm back and brought the belt across her shoulder blades with all of his strength.

For a moment Kirsten seemed to hang in midair, her eyes opened impossibly wide and no sound at all coming from her mouth. The blow was twice as strong as any before and even as the horrid pain enveloped her there was the terrible realization that they had merely been playing with her. The other strap whipped into the back of her thighs just above her knees and with a cry of anguish Kirsten collapsed.

The pain of the belts was forgotten as her full weight jerked down on her thumbs. A strange growling noise came from her gagged mouth as she fought desperately to regain her feet without pulling down on her outraged thumbs. She did not notice that her torturers had paused in their whipping while she struggled to stand. When she finally did she saw the Claudes standing to either side in front of her. The one to her right smiled and drew his arm back. My breasts, she thought, They're going to whip my breasts.

“NO!” she shrieked a moment before the first belt came whistling toward her. It emerged from her mouth without form, the word impossible to pronounce with her tongue swollen and immobile. Her scream was followed immediately by the loud crack of leather against her taught stomach.

They beat her mercilessly. Amazingly Kirsten managed to keep her feet as the belts bit into her thighs and belly and curled around her hips. But she collapsed with another scream when the broad leather strap slashed across her nipples. She hung there by her thumbs, sobbing in pain, her bare feet scrabbling at the rough concrete trying to find purchase. This time they did not pause in the whipping, raining the belts down on her naked body back and front, forcing a scream with each lash. The last words she heard before she passed out from the pain was Hoerst’s command, “Careful with her breasts. Don't cut them. Don't mark them.”

Kirsten awoke. She sensed that she had only been out for a minute or two. In that time they had freed her from the hoist and cut the cords from her thumbs, not an easy task because string had cut deeply into her flesh. She lay on the floor in a puddle of the cold water that had been used to revive her. She moaned once and then vomited, bringing up a quantity of clear foul smelling liquid. She raised her head and retched again, then fell back, her naked body shivering uncontrollably from shock and pain.

They pulled her to her knees, lifted her arms over her head and looped the chain of her manacles over the hook of the hoist. The sound of the chain sliding through the pulley high above her head was obscured by her groans and sobs as she was lifted clear of the floor.

Her Gestapo torturers wasted no time. One Claude had barely secured the winch before the other was hanging a twenty kilo weight from the ropes that bound her ankles. Kirsten threw her head back between her up-stretched arms and moaned loudly. Mere seconds had passed and already her shoulders burned with the new pain of her suspension. How could it hurt so much, simply hanging by her wrists for a few moments? Or was it simply a matter of torture following torture, pain following pain, until the smallest hurt became an unbearable agony. She didn't know. She didn't care. She just wanted it to stop.

When the rattan rod bit into Kirsten’s hip her head flew forward and she stared ahead in wide-eyed disbelief. Nothing could hurt that much. The last half meter of the whip had been split to spread and then snap closed on her skin. When Claude lifted the cane for a second lash she screamed and didn't stop screaming until she fainted a dozen lashes later.

Five times she fainted and five times they revived her with a bucket of icy water heavily dosed with salts, insuring she would come to with new cries of pain. One of the Claudes whipped her while the other watched standing next to Hoerst. Each time she passed out they would exchange places. The second session followed the same pattern as the first, except slower, to prolong her agony and keep her conscious longer, neither of her torturers wanting to have his turn with the whip shortened. He would walk slowly around her, measuring her, deciding where on her helpless body he would give her pain, only waiting for her agonized shrieks to modulate to broken sobbing. Then the switch would fall again.

Kirsten’s Nazi torturers held nothing back. They had used the broad leather belts to prepare her skin for the thin rattan whip and now each lash was driven into her naked body with full force. It left a vicious welt, a thin raised line that oozed blood. Her body was soon crisscrossed with the marks of her torture. Where the whip had found soft flesh – her buttocks, her sides – the blood was no more than a dappling along the line of pain. Where it had slashed at her shins or her hip the cut was deeper and an unbroken line of red seeped to the surface.

Kirsten held nothing back. Even though the weight that hung from her ankles stretched her body into a nude pillar of pain – even though the weight was so heavy she could not lift her legs or pull up with her arms – still with each lash her naked body jerked and writhed spasmodically. And the screams…her shrieks of pain filled the chamber with a physical presence that Hoerst could feel as well as hear. Wordless screams of pain and screams for mercy made unintelligible by her gag.

The fifth time they revived her Kirsten awoke with a cry of pain as the salt burned her wounds, then closed her eyes and began to roll her head slowly from side to side, mewling and sobbing. She had stopped trying to think, to reason, to understand why this was happening to her. Her brain screamed make it stop make it stop make it stop, over and over. There was nothing else. Make it stop make it stop make it stop. It came from her mouth as ahhh ahhh ahhh in short ragged gasps. She couldn't have spoken even without the gag. Ahhh ahhh ahhh. Make it stop make it stop make it stop.

Then they were removing the weight and lowering her. She crumpled onto the floor with a deep moan of relief and curled into a fetal position. She did not resist when they rolled her onto her back, thankful for the cool concrete against her torn flesh. She did not open her eyes until Claude lifted her ankles pulling her bound legs almost perpendicular to the floor but never saw the downward arc of the rattan cane.

The split shaft sliced into the soles of Kirsten’s bare feet with such force it literally took her breath away. After the crack of the cane on the arch of her foot the only sound was Kirsten’s sibilant sigh. Only after the third lash did she start screaming and banging her head on the concrete floor, desperately trying to knock herself unconscious. Hoerst simply lifted her wrists by their shackles until her shoulders were a foot off the floor and her head swung harmlessly between her arms. It was not until she could no longer scream and nothing but hoarse croaks came from her gaping mouth that Hoerst give the order to stop torturing her feet and Claude brought the cane down one last time on Kirsten’s bloody soles.

The Claudes carried Kirsten out of the torture chamber face down, one holding her by her shackled wrists, the other by her roped ankles. As they walked the young spy’s arched body swung slightly from side to side, her nipples brushing the concrete floor at each passing.

Hoerst led the way. Once out of the door they walked diagonally across the hall and Hoerst opened the door to another chamber. No words were spoken, and an uninformed observer would have seen no emotion in the faces of the men except perhaps a glint of determination. Kirsten was barely conscious, aware she was being taken somewhere but so exhausted and defeated and in such unrelenting pain she could not think where. To freedom? To death? To more torture? She was too beaten to even question. The conversation with Hoerst in his office was eons away, the recitation of tortures forgotten, the name Fraulein Mueller not even a dim memory.

The room was smaller than the one in which Kirsten had been whipped, but large enough to hold several tables and heavy chairs as well as a large wooden X-frame fashioned with iron shackles near the far wall. They carried Kirsten to a strange looking wooden chair, massive in design and bolted the floor. She was lifted into the seat and Hoerst unfastened the shackles from around her wrists. At the same time Claude cut away the ropes from Kirsten’s ankles and thighs. Next broad leather straps were fastened around her wrists and then her biceps, pinning her arms to the arms of the chair. A belt just below her ribs pulled her against the smooth wooden plank and an iron collar hinged to the chair swung across her throat and locked her neck and head to the high back. Only when she was firmly secured did Hoerst break the ammonium carbonate capsule under her nose.

Kirsten’s head jerked back the centimeter allowed by the iron collar. Again Hoerst pressed the ammonia under her nose and she jerked her head to the side. Her eyes squeezed shut and then open. She coughed once and shook her head. Her vision cleared. The first thing she saw was the heavy wooden torture frame across the room. She saw the heavy iron manacles, saw how each one could be shortened or lengthened with a simple winch. She saw the hinges at the center of the cross so the arms or legs could be spread even further. She saw every scratch and splinter in the rough wooden surface… even felt them against her skin. Now she could see herself spread-eagled on the machine, see the red hot pincers closing on her breasts, on her belly. She could feel the heat moving up between her wide spread thighs, hear herself shrieking and begging for mercy. It was so real it had to be true. That is where they would break her – she was sure – on the torture cross.

Kirsten uttered a high pitched wail around her gag and began to fight against the straps. Hoerst watched her breathing, the way her breasts rose and fell on her ribcage while she struggled, the panic in he eyes. She was now fully alert, he decided; alert enough to resume her torture, not on the cross, but right here where she was bound.

The Claudes easily captured her flailing ankles and pulled them out in front of her. Hoerst slapped her hard across the face. Kirsten grunted and stopped her useless struggles. “Good,” he said, “I would like your attention.”

Extending from the seat of the chair at the front corners were metal rods. They acted as tracks upon which rode an iron framework. It was into this framework Kirsten’s slim ankles were fitted and locked with the use of an iron bar at the top and thin chains that encircled her bruised and cut soles so she could not move her feet.

“Open your right hand please,” Hoerst asked. Kirsten had balled her hands into tight fists. She stared ahead ignoring her captor. Hoerst lit a cigarette and repeated his request. When Kirsten did not respond he pressed the red tip into the back of her hand. She gave a sharp cry of pain and her fingers splayed out on the arm of the chair where Claude fastened yet another strap – this one as thin as a watch band – just above the middle joints of her now pinioned fingers.

“The other hand now,” Hoerst said, and Kirsten did as she was told.

“Do you know what happens now?” Kirsten moaned. Of course she knew. They would hurt her again. And again. And again. They would hurt her for hours. They would hurt her for days. They would hurt her for as long as it took to make her talk. No not hurt…torture. This chair was not built to hurt, it was built to torture. Worse…this chair was built to do one job – hold a victim helpless while her nails were torn from her fingers and toes. How long could she hold out against minds that built a chair with movable stocks that held her feet so rigid she could not move them a centimeter side to side? That carefully cut and sanded and smoothed grooves to fit her fingers? That spent so many hours on a devise to hold her perfectly when a simple chair and some rope would have sufficed? What else had they thought of? What had they built to torture her breasts? Her vagina?

“We take your nails. Your toe nails. Your finger nails. All of them, and in the most terrible way imaginable. Shall I tell you how?” Kirsten moaned again. Hoerst reached down and took the dowels that gripped her tongue in his hand and moved them up and down, moving her head in a nod of assent.

“We will start with a pliers, simply pull them out as slowly as possible. It is horrifyingly painful, or so the screams of our subjects would make you believe. We will remove the four smallest nails on your feet and hands, or perhaps eight or ten. But I prefer to use these.” Hoerst held up three shiny steel blades, ranging in length from two to four inches, flat and impossibly thin, with dagger like tips that glinted in the light of the torture chamber. “Three different sizes to fit your different sized nails. I – and it will be me – am too good at this to let the Claudes operate on you. I will slide one of these miniature stilettos under your nail and work it side to side and deeper and deeper until it reaches the base of your nail. Then it goes under the root and I slowly bend the nail back until it comes out.” Kirsten pushed her head against the chair and arched against the straps, every muscle in her naked body straining to be free. “Or sometimes I will slide the blade in all the way first and then work it side to side. Or perhaps dig the point into the cuticle and pry the nail loose by working the point around the circumference before I slide it under. The point I am trying to make is that I will arrange it so each nail will take longer to pull or pry out and each will be twice as painful as the last.”

Hoerst paused and watched the young British agent as she sobbed and writhed helplessly where she was bound. “Why do you struggle so? You can't escape. You know that.” Kirsten continued to struggle. Sweat poured off her body and pooled between her legs. Her moans had turned to soul rending sobs.

He grabbed her by the hair. “Listen to me Schatzie!” he shouted at her, “Stop this useless blubbering and save yourself!” Kirsten stopped struggling and looked up at her tormentor, tears still running down her cheeks. “I am going to give you a chance to avoid this horror and the worse that will follow. Do you understand?” Kirsten stared dumbly at Hoerst so he once again took the dowels in his hand and nodded her head up and down. “I am going to take off your gag and give you water to drink. Then I expect you will tell me what I want to know. Do you understand?” This time Kirsten did not need her German interrogator to nod her head yes.

Hoerst removed the gag. Kirsten tried to speak, to beg him for mercy, but her tongue was so swollen the words were unintelligible. He tipped a glass of cold water to her lips and she drank greedily, as much of the liquid running down her chin and breasts as went down her throat. “Claude, give her as much water as she wants, then meet me upstairs. And you my dear little spy, in about half an hour I will be back and you will be able to talk. Use the time to think carefully about what you will say to me and what will happen to you if your answers are not acceptable.”

Claude had left like what seemed hours ago to Kirsten. But Hoerst had said he would return to continue her torture in thirty minutes. He had not yet reappeared. Maybe she had nodded off for a minute and it only seemed like hours. What time was it? How long had they been working on her? That woman, the German torturer, was supposed to come. When? Maybe she'd been here for days. Maybe the had forgotten her. Maybe they were dead. Maybe this was the way she would die, strapped into this chair unable to move, dying of thirst, naked and alone and screaming for help.

Kirsten heard a sound behind her: a low sound, a small sound. Scratching. A key in the door? Her heart began to pound. More torture, more pain. Unbearable pain. Now she realized how good it would be to die like this, strapped naked in the chair alone and helpless – far better than suffering more torture at the hands of the Gestapo. She heard it again off to her left. Finally she saw the rat in the dim light pressed against the wall, watching her. Fuck you rat. What can you do to me? The rat sat up its nose twitching, smelling the blood where the whips and cane had broken Kirsten’s skin. “Fuck you rat!” Kirsten yelled. The rat didn't move but it made her feel better.

Kirsten moved her eyes away from the rat to the heavy wooden cross. It drew her gaze like a magnet; she hadn't been able to stop staring at for more than a few seconds since her torturers had left. She knew every inch of the horrid machine, could have drawn it on paper in photographic detail. She imagined herself stretched taut, and then the Claudes turning the winches to stretch her even tighter. She heard herself scream and beg. It was all so real. She began to moan loudly. She saw herself straining at the shackles trying to avoid the flaying knife that Hoerst used on her breasts and the soldering iron he ran up higher and higher on the inside of her thighs. She was crying now, deep soul wrenching sobs that shook her body. Sobbing with such intensity that she was unaware the Germans had returned until she felt Hoerst’s hand on her shoulder.

“Well have you come to your senses? You know you will break, if not now then a little later. No one, and I mean no one, can withstand the pain forever. It can't be done. Save yourself more torture.”

Kirsten continued to sob with such intensity that she could not put two words together. “No…please…stop…” she managed to utter between sobs.

“I will but only if you talk to me.”

She closed her eyes and her head nodded forward the inch or two allowed by the collar. She shook her head once slowly. “I…I…can't…” She had managed to get some control over her sobbing but still her bared breasts heaved on her rib cage with each tormented breath. She looked up at Hoerst, tears spilling from her beautiful blue eyes. “Please… have…have…have mercy…on…me please…I…can't do…it…can't…talk…please…” Her voice trailed off into unintelligible weeping.

“Claude, gag her!” Hoerst barked.

“NO!” Kirsten screamed, “NO!” but Claude was already on her grasping her face with one huge hand and pressing on the hinge of her jaw until she was forced to open it with a scream of pain. A thick rag was shoved into her mouth and her screams became muted mewling. She shook her head and pushed with her tongue trying to dislodge the gag but it was too large, too thick, too deep.

She saw Hoerst standing in front of her through a film of tears. He held a pliers in his right hand. “I think I will do this myself,” he said in a voice that dripped with evil anticipation, “And believe me my pretty little spy, you will not enjoy it.”

It took almost ten minutes for Hoerst to remove Kirsten’s two smallest toenails. He displayed infinite patience, pulling slowly, pausing for long moments but maintaining the pressure, twisting the nail to one side and then the other slowly separating the top of the nail from the toe and then pulling again, but this time more up and away from the nail bed rather than straight out, then pausing before twisting and pulling again while Kirsten screamed out her agony into her gag until finally the first nail was dragged from her toe with a sucking sound inaudible under the tortured beauties hysterical shrieks. Kirsten didn't stop screaming until her eyes rolled back and her head fell forward in a dead faint as the second nail was pulled from her foot.

It was Hoerst who threw the glass of cold water in her face to revive her because each of the Claudes was positioned at an arm of the chair, his pliers already gripping the nail of her little finger. “I will keep you conscious while I torture you, I promise. You will not miss one second of pain. When you faint I will wait until you are awake before I start the torture again. Claude, begin.”

The two Gestapo brutes began to drag Kirsten’s nails from her pinioned fingers, pulling slowly together, twisting just as Hoerst had done to her toenails. Bolts of pain shot up her arms as her two torturers worked in unison and she screamed as she had never screamed before. All her previous torments were forgotten – the whippings, the suspension by her thumbs, the bastinado, the salt rubbed in her open wounds – as she fought the hopeless battle to free herself from her bonds.

It took over three hours for the Germans to finish their grisly work, and when they had, Kirsten had lost right of the nails on fingers and toes, leaving a red pulp where they had once sat. She pissed herself twice and fainted nine times, twice during the removal of the nail on the second toe of her right foot. That was the last one to go. It took almost twenty minutes to loosen it from its moorings and then slowly pluck it out, not counting the ten minutes Kirsten was slumped unconscious in her bonds while her Nazi torturers enjoyed cigarettes and gave her some time to recover her strength.

By the time they had arrived at that last nail Kirsten had long since stopped screaming. She had been reduced to a pitiful mewling that turned into a succession of grunts that became louder and more desperate with every breath as the removal of each nail progressed to its agonizing climax. Between extractions her head rested almost motionless on her bared breasts with her eyes tightly closed and her belly fluttering in and out with the distressed effort of her breathing. Then as the removal of the nail started again she began to shake her head back and forth, still bowed over her breasts, faster and faster as the pain grew. One could almost hear her screaming “NO! NO! NO! NO MORE! NO MORE!” But was the movement of her head a physical expression of that plea or more of a reaction to the incredible pain? Then her body would stiffen against the straps that held her to the torture chair, arching to a degree hard to understand considering the rigor of her bondage. She would throw her head back, eyes wide open now in uncomprehending awe of the degree of pain she was suffering. Here her torturers would pause to admire the naked beauty and the way her sweat glossed body shook uncontrollably, throwing off droplets with her frenzied shaking.

Her tormentors progressed from the smaller toes and fingers to the larger; from slowly twisting and pulling the nails out to inserting a thin blade between the nail and its bed, sliding it back and forth and pushing it deeper and deeper until it had reached the base of the nail, and then with infinite patience painstakingly levering up the nail until it was separated from its toe or finger. Finally with the fingers next to the thumbs and toes next to the largest ones, one of her torturers slid three thin blades under the nail, moving each slowly from side to side and making sure it reached into the bone below the base of the nail before the next was inserted. At the same time she was undergoing this hideous torture, another of her tormentors dug under her cuticle with a needle pointed knife, stabbing it down into the tender flesh until it was below the level of the nail and then burrowing under the nail itself, ripping away the filaments that held it fast; repeating the process as he worked around the nail.

It was during the removal of the nail nest to her right thumb, the second of the forefingers to undergo this procedure, that Kirsten broke. The agony of being bound naked and tortured relentlessly for hours was more than the young British agent could bear. She was as courageous as she was beautiful but bravery is not a final defense against unremitting pain. The poor girl could take no more.

She screamed out the names of her two contacts. She didn't scream “STOP! I'LL TALK!” or “NO MORE! I'LL TELL YOU WHO THEY ARE!” Just gave up the names, and when the torture didn't stop, screamed them out over and over. The fact that she was gagged was lost to her pain crazed mind, and she couldn't understand why her captors kept working on her fingernail. Then Hoerst, noticing that her struggles and screams had become more animated, took her face in his hand and looked into her eyes. “Only two more and a half more to go Liebschen,” he said and gently touched her gag.

When that last nail came loose from her toe Kirsten did not at first realize that that part of her torture was over. Mad with pain she had lost track of everything and barely knew who it was that was torturing her or why. But as seconds ticked by and there was no fresh agony added to her throbbing hands and feet she began to realize that her interrogators were for the moment done.

Hoerst undid her gag and asked her once again for the names. If the young agent understood his question she gave no indication. Her reply was a garbled mixture of meaningless syllables and disconnected words. Hoerst tipped a glass of water into her mouth which she drank but still didn't seem able to make any sense. “This will do no good,” he said, and walked away to return a few moments later with a syringe which he jabbed into her arm. He did not seem overly worried by her ravings. “She will sleep for a while and then we will get what we need.” He had seen it before – a subject driven to the edge of insanity by torture. Usually a sedative and some time was all that was needed.

Kirsten awoke with a cry of horror. She had slept but not rested, her brain a snakes nest of tormented dreams. The pain still tore at her from fingers and toes, the bottoms of her feet and up and down her body where she had been whipped. But she had born it and had not talked, she knew that for a fact. She took some measure of pride in that but a terrible sense of disquietude lurked beneath. Vaguely she remembered trying to betray her comrades to stop the torture, but she knew she had not. Wasn't that all that mattered? No, it wasn't. They had broken her. How could she possibly hold out when they started to work on her again?

Her eyes were open and in the dim light she could see herself chained to the heavy wooden cross that had so occupied her thoughts when she had been alone in the chamber. Then she had imagined herself stretched taut on the X shaped frame waiting for torture. But now she could see that she really was shackled there. This was not her imagination. She could SEE herself there. They had moved her while she slept. No, impossible. She was still strapped into her torture chair. She could see her naked body bound to the seat, her arms and bloody fingers strapped to the arms, her bare legs stretched out before her with her feet and ruined toes locked in the vise like rails. Wait, wait. The body chained to the torture cross was not nude, it was dressed in a blue prison smock like the one Claude had stripped off her while she hung by her thumbs. The crucified girl was not her.

“Carol,” Kirsten moaned.

Carol Rasher opened her mouth to speak, closed it then opened it again. “Mueller,” she whimpered.

Mueller. The woman torturer Hoerst had spoken so reverently about. She was here. She had brought Carol with her. Why?

“Carol. I haven't talked. They've tortured me but I haven't talked.”

“Tell them Kirsten. Save yourself more pain. Mueller, she’s…she’s…oh God what she did to me.”

Carol and Kirsten had trained together, had been dropped into France together. They had spent three hours waiting to be picked up the underground, and then separated. Before they parted they had kissed each other, deeply, their tongues in each other’s mouths. That had been only a few days ago. It hadn't taken the Gestapo a long time to pick them up.

“What…did you tell them?” Kirsten was weeping.

No one she knew was tougher than Carol, man or woman. More than once they had talked about capture – would they take the cyanide pill, how long could they hold out under torture. At first Kirsten had said she could never kill herself, even if it meant being tortured. Carol had laughed at her, “What you are saying, whether you know it or not, is that you'll give up your friends.”

“They could never make me talk.”

She shook her head sadly. “Think about being strapped naked to an operating table, spread-eagled and unable to move. Think about listening to your captors discuss what they are going to do to you while you wait for the torture to begin. Think about screaming for mercy and a Nazi doctor replying by calling in a woman to work on you because she knows a woman’s body more intimately. You'll talk.”

“Well what about you?”

“I'd take the pill in a second. But if I couldn't, I wouldn't talk. Never. I would never give you up. But I am the only person I know who wouldn't.”

“What…did you tell them?”

Carol pulled at the chains restraining her wrists and turned her head away. “Everything.”

“Did you…give…give me up?”

“No, no. They already had you. Mueller told me. They had stripped me and I was hanging naked by my wrists.” Carol looked straight into Kirsten’s eyes. “She had been torturing me for two hours. Hot needles under my toe nails, soldering iron in my navel and armpits. She hung fifteen kilo weights from my large toes and whipped the skin off the soles of my feet. She was so patient, she worked so slowly, let me anticipate each new horror. She talked quietly to me the whole time, telling me what she was going to do to me next, describing the pain I would feel. Then she would kiss my nipples and stroke my belly and tell me how much she loved me before she slipped another red hot needle under a toe nail.

“I talked back to her. The words came out in short gasps with tears running down my cheeks. I told her how good she was at this, how it was an honor to be tortured by her. I couldn't stop the tears and I groaned and grunted each time she hurt me but I didn't scream. Not once.

“She was rubbing a reddish gel into my pubic hair, massaging it in gently and telling me how lush and delicious my bush was.

“‘You really don't have to shave me,’ I moaned, trying to sound unconcerned but I could barely talk anymore, the pain was too much.

“‘Thank you but I think I'll burn it off. This gel will make the flame burn a bit cooler and slower. It will last longer and hurt a lot more. And it burns with such a lovely blue glow.’

“She lit a match and touched it to my belly. I looked down and saw she was right – the flame did have a lovely blue hue. Then the pain started and I began my naked dance at the end of my chain, accompanied by the sounds of the weights clinking together as I struggled and the strange croaking noises coming from my throat as I fought to hold back my screams. It was then she told me, ‘Oh by the way, we have your little friend Kirsten.’ The flame made its way slowly down my belly and I let out my first scream.

“That scream was for you. I knew that at that moment you must also be suffering the torments of hell. I prayed you would talk quickly and save yourself so much unnecessary pain, but I knew you wouldn't. They would have to torture you for hours, maybe days before they broke you. But they would break you and all that agony would have been for nothing. I didn't scream again while the flame burned the flesh off my belly. I whinnied like a horse and quacked like a duck but I didn't scream. I knew I could beat them. It wasn't the information that kept me from talking – it was simply me against them and I wasn't going to lose.

“That was before they strapped me down on the table and Mueller started on my pussy and my anus and my breasts and my mouth. My head was held motionless by a strap across my forehead, straps were buckled across my waist and above and below my breasts. Then while they secured my arms at my sides by the wrists and elbows, my mouth was forced open and a dental gag placed behind my teeth.

“Mueller bent over me and kissed my cheek. When she straightened up she was smiling. She knew I was scared. She talked in that same low voice while she added two more straps at the sides of my breasts to push them up. ‘I'm afraid you're in for a bad time now. With that gag you won't be able to talk: scream, yes; talk no. So I will be able to torture you without the inconvenience of you giving me the names.’ I don't know if it was then or when they bound my legs that I began to feel the crushing despair of hopelessness.

“I tried to resist. Why I don't know. It was of course useless. I kicked and flailed my legs until they were captured and pulled up and out and slightly back and shackles were locked around my ankles. The shackles were attached to chains that ran to the ceiling. The chains were pulled taut so my legs were spread to the point I thought my hips would dislocate and high enough that the strap around my waist cut into the flesh as my arse was lifted off the table.

“Mueller dismissed the two soldiers that had bound me. They had been there for my first hours of torture but now Mueller wanted me alone. ‘This is going to be very private, very personal, between two beautiful warriors,’ she said. ‘I am going to work on your breasts first, but first I need to finish preparing you.’ That’s when she stapled my labia to the inside of my thighs, five staples in each lip.

“Mueller broke me in less than one hour. She tortured me for another five before she gave me a chance to talk.”

“Aren't you going to tell our dear Kirsten what she did to your pussy?” It was Hoerst’s voice I heard behind me.

“Who are you?” Carol spat at him. He ignored her and turned to me. “You have had your rest. Now give me the names.”

Kirsten said nothing. In her mind she was fighting a terrible battle. She knew she had no chance of holding out very long, but maybe her body would fail before her mind and she would die with her secrets. She had to try.

“Perhaps you think we brought Miss Racher to help convince you to talk without further ado. Carol, why don't you tell Kirsten what Fraulein Mueller did to you on that table?”

“Oh God Kirsten tell them. Tell them! They had already arrested the ones I gave them! I suffered for nothing! For nothing!”

“If you don't tell us Kirsten, Fraulein Mueller will be down here in five minutes to torture Carol Rasher on that cross while you watch. Torture her in ways you cannot imagine…but Carol Rasher can.

Kirsten heard Carol scream and saw her arch her back and pull in desperation at the chains. Eyes wide with terror she was shrieking “NONONO! NOT MY PUSSSY! NOT MY PUSSY!”

Kirsten’s head fell on her naked bosom and she began to sob. Between Carol’s screaming and her weeping Hoerst had to ask her twice to repeat the names.

Kirsten slowly lifted her head and looked up at Carol. The beautiful young agent on the cross smiled at her, but it was a strange smile. Then she spoke to Hoerst with more than a little edge in her voice, “Get me down off this thing. It isn't very pleasant you know.”

Kirsten stared at Carol uncomprehendingly as Hoerst undid her shackles and she slid off the cross. She rubbed her wrists and mad a face and walked over to Kirsten, still strapped into the torture chair.

“My name is Monica Mueller. For the past two years I have been Carol Rasher, nee Colette Reyes, escaped underground fighter from Occupied France, your friend and fellow British agent. But now Carol is dead. Even British Intelligence knows that. I radioed them moments before the Nazis broke down my door and told them I had just swallowed my pill.

“Don't be too angry with me dear Kirsten. My little ruse saved you hours of sexual torture, albeit at my hands. But do not despair. One of the names you gave us was a woman, wasn't it? Is she pretty? I hope so. And because I genuinely like you I will let you watch while I demonstrate on her what you missed.”