Camila. 24-year-old political prisoner

"I'll never tell you!" Camila shouted at her interrogator, trying to hide the fear she felt. She knew the normal fate of those who fell into the hands of the dreaded secret police, or to be more accurate, she knew the rumours and horror stories that abounded. , and secret execution were the least of it, and she tried to steel her courage for the ordeal ahead.

"Don't be a stupid girl," he said calmly, lighting a cigarette with a wooden match as he looked at her with an expression of concern on his face. "Everyone who comes here talks. It's just a matter of when. And how much persuasion they require."

She shook her head in denial, her long black hair rippling about her pretty face. "I've done nothing! Nothing that was illegal."

"You were in the company of treasonous dissidents, in possession of seditious literature. There was a cache of arms on the premises. That alone is enough to determine your guilt," he said calmly. "But I believe you may have been a dupe. Fooled by these insurrectionists into a plot against the state. Tell me what I want to know, and things need not go badly for you."

"I know nothing! Nothing!"

"Camila, you are not a stupid girl," he said with sad patience. "We know that you are acquainted with the fugitive. We have pictures of you together. She is a student, like yourself. We know so much already, what harm can telling us a little more do. It will just confirm what we already know."

"If you knew she would be in here, about to be tortured and murdered by you."

"You do think the worst of us, don't you? We are just loyal servants of the state, striving to protect it from enemies, be they internal or external. No more than that," he smiled and blew a smoke ring. "Tell us where we can find her."

Camila shook her head, trying to steel herself for the torment that must come. "Never! I'll tell you nothing!"

He examined the ash on his cigarette with a critical eye, then shrugged. "Perhaps you do not understand the severity of your position," he said quietly. "Perhaps a demonstration is in order." He picked up a telephone and gave a soft order that Camila couldn't hear, then sat back in his chair and smoked, not looking at her.

Camila sat in silence, her wrists handcuffed to a straight wooden chair, wondering what was to come.

The door opened suddenly and two guards entered, dragging a battered, naked figure between them. Camila gasped in shock as she recognised Martina, one of the leaders of the group. Her face was a mass of bruises and her body was marked with innumerable welts from beatings. Her breasts were scarred with cigarette burns, and Camila could see blood smearing the inside of her thighs.

"This traitor has also declined to help us," her interrogator said calmly, gesturing at the tortured woman. "We have interrogated her for hours, using all our arts, and she has finally convinced me that she speaks the truth. She knows nothing further."

He gave a brief nod and one of the guards slipped a wire garrote over Martina's neck, tightening it around her throat. As Camila watched in horror, he slowly strangled the life out of her tortured body as her hands clawed at the wire it away.

Her interrogator watched dispassionately as the woman died, then turned back to Camila and lit another cigarette.

"That can be your fate Camila. Questioned at length until you have revealed everything to us, then executed like a traitor. Or you can tell me now, and be sent to a camp for re-education, possibly to return as a productive citizen of the state. It is your choice, my dear."

"How can I trust you? You could do it to me anyway," she wailed, not able to take her eyes off the corpse in the room.

"You can trust no one else," he said calmly. "I offer you a chance at life. I will not repeat the offer."

Camilla sobbed, knowing she was broken. She did not have the strength to go through the kind of torment that Martina had suffered, and any chance to avoid it was better than no chance at all.

"Her name is Gabriela. Gabriela Lopez. She talked of a cousin in a fishing village. Perhaps she fled there. More than that I do not know." She slumped weeping in her chair, shamed by her own cowardice.

There was silence in the room for a few moments, and Camila half-expected her interrogator to order her dragged out for , but he finally blew a few more smoke rings and sighed.

"Not so difficult after all. And you have saved yourself much unpleasantness," he stood up and patted her head with a gentle hand before turning to the guards. "This one is to go on the boat. Dispose of that carrion in the usual manner."