This was his masterpiece. He’d fuck her later, but this was the climax of what Diaz had planned and he was looking forward to it. Was it a risk? Perhaps, but who really was going to report him? He’d arranged an alibi anyway. Plausible deniability. And the men would enjoy this. The punishment room was full – a handful of his political friends but mainly soldiers. Garcia was there, looking disapproving.
They dragged her in, naked of course, shackled and hooded. When the hood was removed, he was struck by how exhausted she looked, cheeks hollow, eyes rimmed with red. “Unchain her,” he said. “I think we can probably overwhelm her if she acts up.” There was laughter. Many of the men had been there when she’d been tortured or flogged, but for some it was a first sight of Juliette Hartmann, the great crusading journalist and, weakened as she was, it was still a compelling sight, her breasts still high and firm, her stomach still impossibly taut, her legs still impossibly smooth and long.
“You believe in freedom, Miss Hartmann?” he said as she was brought before him.
She looked dazed and said nothing. He slapped her. “I said, do you believe in freedom?”
“Yes,” she croaked, her eyes never leaving the floor.
“And your father is American I believe?”
“Yes.”
“Then we will dress you as the statue of liberty. That would be appropriate, don’t you think?”
She didn’t react, standing still head bowed. A soldier gave her shoulder a brusque shove and she staggered a couple of paces forwards.
“Go ahead,” he said to the soldiers behind her.
They took a stars and stripes and draped it over her left shoulder, pulling it round and under her right armpit, tying it off so it mimicked the statue’s robes. It was a shame to cover her nudity, but Diaz suspected being wrapped in the flag humiliated her more. There was more laughter, more jeers. Then, the coup de grace: a crown of barbed wire. It was a hideous device: four circles just wider than her head, with the wire then wrapped cruelly round the circle, each new loop perhaps an inch from the last. As he took it from a box, holding it carefully, she saw her shudder and her head dropped.
He handed it to a soldier who wore gloves. He walked behind her as the other guards pushed her to her knees. He yanked her hair so her head tipped back, then smoothed the hair from her face. With great consideration, he lowered the crown onto her head, pressing it first against her lovely clear forehead and then pushing down at the back. It was just the right size, the barbs pricking her skin but not digging too deep. There was more laughter as they pulled her to her feet. Already blood was bubbling where the spikes dug in.
They made her clamber onto the desk, two soldiers standing on it to haul her up. She moaned as her buttocks were pushed by soldiers below. A picana, unconnected to a generator, was thrust into her right hand. “Hold it up,” Diaz said, “like a torch.” She looked at him with infinite sadness then raised her right arm. They gave her a clipboard, making her hold it in her left hand. “Read!” he commanded. It was as though she couldn’t quite understand the instruction. She just stood, blood running over her forehead, right arm lifted.
“Read!” he shouted.
She looked baffled for a moment and then saw what was on the clipboard. The corners of her mouth bent down and she began to cry. A soldier with a small cattle-prod pressed it to her calf. She shrieked and would have fallen but for the two soldiers who stood alongside her. “Read it!”
The two soldiers hopped down as she began. “The history…” she said haltingly, “of man’s…”
“Louder!” There were hoots and jeers. “…inhumanity to man… is long…. and grim, but what is happening…”
Blood ran down her face. She tried to blink it away but it stung her eyes. It dripped onto the flag. She kept reading. Her legs felt weak. Her right arm ached. What else did they have lined up for her?
“Prisoners are beaten as a matter of course, with flat leather paddles called palmatorias, canes and cruel bullwhips.” They enjoyed that, her tormentors. “They are stripped and humiliated.” Cheers. “Torture is commonplace.” A roar. “I have spoken to a dozen victims, men and women.” Wolf-whistles. “Who describe being ducked in icy water...” Laughter. “Being hung by their wrists for hours…” Cheers. “And, worst of all, being strapped naked to a bench while an electric prod is applied to their genitals.” She broke down in tears at that. It wasn’t the worst of all. Worst of all was them holding a heated iron in your rectum, was thrashing you when you were already half-dead, was continuing the ice baths and the electric shocks day after day. Worst of all was being raped by your enemy. Worst of all was being stripped and flogged and paraded like a toy. Worst of all was reading your own fine words while dressed up as the Statue of Liberty.