fell forward on to the labouring chest. With a gesture like that of an adult to an engaging child, Sun ruffled the saturated hair. He turned away abruptly, climbed the ladder and pushed hard at the trap-door. It rose a few inches.
At once a muffled voice spoke. 'Yes, sir?'
'You may come down now, Lohmann.'
'Right away, sir.'
The doctor, carrying his black leather case, appeared and descended. He was followed by von Richter and Willi.
'I hope you don't mind our joining you, Colonel.'
'Of course not, my dear Ludwig, I appreciate your interest. As you see, provision has been made for spectators. Do please sit down.'
'This...' The doctor cleared his throat and started again. 'This man is unconscious, sir.'
'I'm glad you agree with me. Now sit down and prepare to observe closely. This is good training for you. If you want to be of further service to our movement you must allow your inhibitions to be broken down. You appreciate that?'
Dr Lohmann hesitated, nodded, and took his seat on the bench next to Willi.
'Well, what have you in store for us, Sun?' Von Richter drawled the question. 'We expect great things of you, you know. Everybody tells me that Peking leads the world in this field.'
Sun tilted his head, pleased at the compliment, but anxious to be strictly fair. 'Good work is also being done in Vietnam. Some of Ho Chi-minh's men have learnt their job with remarkable speed, considering the comparative backwardness of that part of the world. Very promising. Ah...'
He stepped over and lifted Bond's chin. The blue-grey eyes fluttered open, cleared, and steadied. 'Damn you, Sun,' said a thin voice.
'Excellent. We can proceed. I'm working on his head, Ludwig, as I described earlier. He's taken it well so far, but this is only the beginning. Eventually he'll scream when he merely sees me advancing on him to continue the treatment.
'I now propose to stimulate the septum, the strip of bone and cartilage that divides the nasal cavity. Can you see, all of you? Good.'
More pain, different at first from the other, then indistinguishable. Bond tried to build a place in his mind where the pain was not all that there was, where there were thoughts, as he had been able to do under the hands of other torturers and so to some degree hold out against them. But the pain was fast becoming all that there was. The only thought that he could find and keep in place was that he would not scream yet, not this time. Or this time. Or this time...
It was later and the pain had receded for the moment. He was somewhere. That was all he knew. But there must be other things. Screaming. Had he screamed? Forgotten. But still try not to.
People were talking. He recognized some of the words through a sound like a fast-running river. Danger. Shock. Injection. A tiny pricking in his arm, ridiculously tiny.
More pain. It was all that there was. There were no thoughts anywhere in the world.
It was much later and he was back. There were thoughts again. Or rather one big thought that filled everything and was everything. It weighed down on him like an impossibly thick blanket, it came oozing up round him like the cold slime of the sea-bed. Bond had never experienced it before, but he knew quite soon what it was. It was despair, the terminal state of life, the foretaste of death. In comparison, the blood in his nose and mouth, the ferociously throbbing ache within his head - all this was nothing.
Bond opened his eyes. He found he could see reasonably well. Sun's face was a foot away. But something had happened to it since he last saw it. Something had dried it so that the skin looked like paper out of an old book, the eyes were red and dull, the open lips had shrivelled. The man's breathing was shallow and noisy, and he swallowed constantly. He seemed in the grip of an exhaustion as profound as Bond's. This was puzzling, but it did not matter. Nothing mattered now.
Somebody was coming down the ladder. Bond looked up automatically without interest. It was one of the girls in the team, the dark one. She glanced at Bond, then quickly away again. Her small features expressed faint repulsion and great fear. Sun straightened up slowly and turned to her.
She caught her breath. 'You ill, sir?'
'No. No. It's my experiences. They have an effect.' The voice too had changed. It had become harsh and cracked, with a monotonous quality that suggested the recitation of a lesson not perfectly understood. After a long time the man added, 'They cause a change in one.'
'Oh. What you wish, sir?'
Sun gestured spasmodically towards Bond. 'This man... is near his death. During his life his greatest pleasure has been love and sex with women. With your assistance, I intend to bring home to him the bitterness of being deprived of this love for ever.'
Sun had spoken entirely without conviction. He paused awkwardly, as if turning over a page in his mind. Then the dried-up voice toiled on. 'James Bond must be in the proper spiritual state to meet the death I shall give him. The deepest pitch of hopelessness and grief and misery a man can attain.'
He fell silent. The girl stared at him. 'What you wish, sir?'
'Strip yourself naked and stand before him,' said Sun as if he were dictating a message. 'Show him your body. Caress him very lasciviously.'
The girl still stared, but now her face showed outrage and rebellion as well as fear. 'No!' She struggled for more words. 'Cannot do this. Is... wrong.'
'You can and you will. If you want to be of further service to our movement you must allow your inhibitions to be broken down. Do as I say.'
