"What is it?" she asked.
I had pried the microfilm out of its tiny cartridge. There were only five exposures on the strip, and it had been roiled so tightly it was difficult to handle. I could barely make out the letterhead on the first frame. The rest of the printing was much too tiny to decipher with the naked eye. I rolled up the strip, returned it to the cartridge and put it in my pocket.
"Well?" she said.
I shook my head. "It's none of your business, certainly, and maybe none of mine. Anyway, I can't read it without a viewer." This wasn't quite true. As an ex-photographer, I travel with a bunch of camera junk among which is an achromatic seven-power magnifier that would have done the job after a fashion, but at the moment I had more important matters to concern me. "Now give me the rest of it," I said.
She smiled slowly, lit the cigarette she had placed between her lips and blew smoke at me. She was a beautiful woman without too many clothes on, and she knew it.
"Make me," she said.
I said wearily, "Gail, you never learn, do you?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly. "What do you mean?"
I said, "Haven't you got it through your pretty head yet that I'm going to get that information from you, one way or another?"
"It sounds-" She blew more smoke at me. "-it sounds as if you were planning to torture me. How quaint!"
I said, "Don't talk about torture as if you know what it meant. You haven't the slightest idea."
She smiled slowly. "Then tell me."
I'd shaken her for a moment, or my violence had, but she'd recovered fast. Losing a dress was, after all, not really a tragedy. She'd undoubtedly had several nice dresses torn or hopelessly mussed in her life-I judged it had been that kind of a life-and she'd made a man pay for every one of them. She was going to try to make me pay for this one, sooner or later. In the meantime, she was going to make me as uncomfortable as possible, lounging there sexily with a cigarette between her fingers.
"Tell me," she murmured. "Tell me about torture, darling."
"Very well," I said. "There are two forms. One is long and sure. It consists of breaking the subject's will to resist by inflicting severe pain and physical injury-but not fatally-over extended periods of time, combined with other forms of humiliation and hardship that add to the psychological effect. No one is immune to this. During the war, for instance, many brave and dedicated underground workers betrayed their comrades after being in the hands of the Gestapo for a while. This was expected, and operations were therefore conducted by small units, the other members of which fled to safety as a matter of course the minute one person was captured."
She put the cigarette to her lips. "Go on, Professor."
I said, "No one should ever criticize the man who breaks under prolonged torture, except to say that he shouldn't have let himself be captured alive in the first place. In our business, if an agent has information that's important and dangerous, it's taken for granted that he'll kill himself rather than be captured. He's given the stuff to do it with. It's the only sure way even a trained and loyal man, or woman, can keep from being made to talk."
Gail said, "And is this what you're going to do to me?" I thought her voice sounded just a trifle shrill.
I shook my head. "I haven't the time or the facilities, and I don't think I need to."
"What does that mean?"
"Just what it says," I said. "I don't think I need to break you that way, Gail. An attractive woman is very vulnerable. The second form of torture is a kind of bargain. You tell the subject what you can do to him-or to her. You show that you're ready and willing to do it. And then you ask if he-or she-really is willing to have these unpleasant and fairly permanent things done to him-or to her-just for the sake of a little information that probably isn't very important, anyway."
She said, sharply, "You seem to think it's important enough!" Then she drew a long breath and said, "You wouldn't dare! If you really are a government man-"
I said, "For God's sake, Gail, make up your mind!
If I'm really a government man, there's no problem, is there? You can tell me what you know with a clear conscience. In fact, it's your duty to do so." I waited. "Well?"
She glared at me. "Go to hell!"
I sighed, and leaned down, and picked up the ruined dress I had dropped on the rug. Ripped open down the side, with its broken straps dangling, it looked bedraggled and shapeless.
"Look at it, Gail," I said. "Five minutes ago, it was a pretty dress. Now it's just a rag. Right now you're a pretty woman. Five minutes from now…" I paused significantly.
"You bastard!" she whispered.
"I've seen it happen," I murmured. "One minute a lovely girl is standing there, resisting interrogation bravely, just like you, and the next minute there's just something half human crawling along the floor, something crippled and bloody and whimpering with its nose smashed flat in its face and its mouth full of broken teeth… Oh, I suppose they'll be able to fix you up eventually, Gail. They can do all kinds of things with dentistry and plastic surgery these days. But I doubt it would be much fun."
She crushed out her cigarette violently. "You bastard!" she breathed. "You filthy, sadistic bastard!"
I didn't say anything more. She wasn't sure, of course. I could still be bluffing. So far all I'd done was tear a dress; that didn't prove I had the ruthlessness to destroy a woman's face. But she wasn't a gambler; she couldn't take the chance. The stakes were too high. I didn't even have to put on a demonstration, although I had the arm of a chair picked out that I thought I might be able to crack with the edge of my hand. I saw her bare shoulders sag.
"You bastard," she said without looking at me, "does Wigwam mean anything to you, you filthy, sadistic bastard?"
"Wigwam?" I got out my pen and wrote it down. "Like an Indian tent?" Gail didn't answer directly. "She said, 'Take it to the Wigwam in Carrizozo, New Mexico. The new date is December thirteenth."
"The Wigwam," I said, writing. "Carrizozo, New Mexico-I just drove through there today. December thirteenth."
"Stop interrupting me, damn you!" She didn't look at me. "Janie said that. Then she was quiet for a little. Then she said, 'December thirteenth. What's the date today? If it happens, I'll only have missed a few days, won't I, Gail? But you have to help them stop it…'"
"Have to help them stop it," I read from my notes. "Go on."
"That's all. Then she died." Gail's voice was flat. "Tell me… tell me, would you really have hit me, smashed me, or were you bluffing again?"
I hesitated. Of course I wouldn't have hit her. There would have been no point to it. If she'd been tough enough to refuse to talk, knowing what she might be facing, she'd have been too tough for me to handle here, particularly since I still didn't know if the matter was important enough to justify really drastic measures. I had the film safe, and the knowledge in her head would keep. If she'd stood firm, I'd just have checked with Washington. If they were interested, they could damn well send somebody with authority and official standing to pry it out of her legally.
But she hadn't been that tough, and I'd broken her with a threat, and a phony threat at that. It had been a shortcut, saving everybody time and trouble. She saw the answer in my face.
"Never mind!" she said quickly. "Don't answer that question! Just give me a drink and a dressing gown, please."
As I went to the closet and reached inside, somebody knocked twice on the door of the room.