AUTHOR'S NOTE: Principal names and honorific in this story have been changed to protect the identity of loved ones.
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The sixty member-strong company of men waited anxiously for the arrival of their new leader. Sergeant Shanka's eyes darted every so often to the tops of tables and filing cabinets to ensure that they were spotless of dust and clear of unnecessary clutter. He had heard that the new Executive Director was a fastidious man who had made control and discipline his life's edicts. He had also heard that the man was a callous moral and civil arbiter with a reputation for dispensing unilateral regulations, penalty and rewards barring question or explanation about their rationale.
There was going to be a prominent shake-up in the Customs Department of the Ministry of Public Security. This had been a long time coming. Everyone knew that corruption was endemic and insidious within the department's solid whitewashed walls, and it had been the object of international mockery and scorn since the dawn of the Hahn Epoch. Now all the old officers that had been the department's most trusted and reliable stalwarts had been certified redundant and those who had been proven guilty of graft and other corrupt practices had been either sacked or deposed, and their gratuity effectively annulled.
The present crop of officers that stood waiting for the arrival of the new leader was young and had just graduated from various police and military academies around the State. They also had on crisp new uniforms that were designed by the new leader himself, it had been said. These, Sergeant Shanka would find his eyes riveting over to check, so that they would pass muster with their new superior.
"He's here," the sergeant suddenly heard being said.
His Royal Highness the Regent Captain Mikail Hahn was surprisingly young and good-looking. There had been allegations of nepotism surrounding the appointment of the Regent since it had been sanctioned by his own father, the State's reigning monarch himself. But it was also no secret that this modern-day Machiavelli was a clever strategist who had been a military officer from the time he left Junior College. He had braved many a civil strife on the frontlines and a year ago he had led to victory the battle with the Allied Legions against his father's chief nemesis, the left-wing Neo-Fascist Baismillatul Liberation Front.
It was on his recent furlough home that Mikail Hahn had been challenged to run for the office of Executive Director of the state-owned Customs Department. He had been told that his education in Political Science and International Law, in addition to his royal connections and talent for logistics, made him a more than suitable candidate for the post. Besides, as the Monarch had pointed out to the heir apparent, his days with the Royal Armed Forces were virtually over now that he depended on artificial limbs to get around. At the last war, Captain Hahn had been reconnoitering enemy line when a sniper's grenade exploded about a yard from where he stood, blowing away his left leg. In spite of this, he had continued to fight in the domestic intransigence behind the lines.
It had also been rumored that Captain Hahn had, backing him, a foolproof but unpopular agenda for sprucing up the department's image; this included stemming out the tide of smuggling, film and software piracy and the controversial drug trade on which many of the state's wealthy society families flourished. Captain Hahn was more than wary of his father's association with some of these genteel families, on a social and business level. He was also wary that the stability of the state hegemony depended on the palace's maintaining a good will relationship with these families. This notwithstanding, he was confident that his agenda was able to clean up the department's act and hence restore the State's image in the eyes of the foreign media and the international trade policy watchdog. For too long, the foreign media had made unflattering remarks about his country. But this had been justified: the country was a popular nexus for pirates, smugglers and drug moguls because too many officers at the Customs Department readily accepted their offer of a bribe.
Captain Hahn had known that there was talk about his hard-line agenda being a rumor and desired to lay it to rest on his first day in office.
"Sir," Corporal Nikita Sian said, "we have the man you want picked up. He's confined in Room 1215. They're waiting for you, sir."
Captain Hahn entered Room 1215 and two junior officers greeted him with the usual banal preliminary of saluting a superior officer. They had been guarding a man in a business suit. This man was seated at a long table. He appeared agitated and wore a defensive scowl. His tie had been loosened around his collar and the top button of his shirt undone. As soon as he saw Captain Hahn, he sprang up from his chair, knocking it over.
"What the hell am I being held here for? You'd better have a warrant ...." the detainee yelled.
Unrattled by the suspect's opening gambit, the captain took off his hat and laid it down calmly on the table.
"We've had a tip-off, sir," he replied, "and we suspect you of trying to smuggle heroin into the country. If you want papers, they're here."
The chagrined man cast his eyes on the table. He ignored the documents presented to him.
"As a suspect of the State, Mr. Pinto," Captain Hahn explained in an even tone, " you are subject to its laws. And in accordance with the law, you must submit to a body search."
"I demand a lawyer," Pinto said, cutting the captain off. However his demeanor seemed to have noticeably changed. Captain Hahn was certain he had found his first subject.
"You'll have a lawyer, sir" Captain Hahn interjected, "after the body search. You would want to retain him for your hearing."
The captain ordered the officers to have Pinto stripped of all articles of his clothing immediately. When this was accomplished with some difficulty, for Pinto had put up a strong resistance, always a tell-tale admission of guilt, he stood up to Captain Hahn, his hands crossed over his naked crotch. He scowled at the young man before him while beads of sweat started to blanket his forehead.
"Lift up your arms, sir," one of the officers ordered him.
Pinto gingerly raised his arms up and, as directed, kept them at right angle with his hairy chest. He was frisked for a few minutes. Finding nothing on him, Captain Hahn ordered him to do fifty duck squats.
On the side of obese, Pinto managed twenty squats before he succumbed to exhaustion. His body glowing from the perspiration reflected under the florescent lamps above him, he collapsed to his side and started to moan in pain. Squatting behind the reclining man, Captain Hahn fitted his right hand into a surgical glove and pushed his index finger up his rectum. It did not take long for Hahn to find what he wanted. He inserted his thumb to join his finger and then shortly pulled out a sleek plastic vial. It was filled to the brim with a white-color powder. Captain Hahn smiled. He repeated the search inside the suspect's rectum a few more times, each time successfully pulling out identical vials of the same contraband substance. A total of fifteen of these vials were retrieved. The junior officers were amazed.
When no more could be recovered from Pinto's backside, Captain Hahn ordered that he be stood up. The hunched-over Pinto, seemingly in need of an aperitif, was informed that he must now pay the penalty for his offense.
"Sir,' the captain said plainly, "you are under arrest for attempting to smuggle heroin into the country. Today you shall be handed over to the District Attorney for prosecution. Furthermore, you have committed your offense in my department, and under my jurisdiction, you are also subjected to my ordinance and punishment."
Pinto broke down. Browbeaten, febrile and ashamed, he knew it would be futile to resist and so meekly allowed himself to be taken away, clad only in his brief, to await his punishment at an adjacent room.
Captain Hahn returned to his office to begin his report. A knock on his door suddenly intruded upon his private thoughts. After telling the person behind it to enter, he was apprised of the latest arrest of three men at the Immigration Checkpoint. The three men had been found in possession of endangered wildlife.
"Poachers or middlemen, sir," the elegantly tall Corporal Sian said. "They and the goods are in remand in Room 1214."
Captain Hahn followed the corporal to Room 1214 and found the three detainees as described. They were foreigners, like Pinto, but much younger. Captain Hahn found their manners unpolished and inferred that they could not be seasoned travelers; he started to wonder how many overseas trips the boys had taken that had been sponsored by their smuggling activities.
Corporal Sian handed over the suspects' passports to the captain. The oldest, the latter discovered, was twenty years old. His accomplices were both eighteen. Mikail Hahn sighed deeply and confiscated the youths' passports. He briefly interrogated them about the items seized from their bags. All three boys recounted their tales of being first-time offenders and having obtained the idea of earning for their trip from an Asian businessman they had met at their last port of departure. The captain dutifully entered into his records their confessions and plea to exchange information about the businessman for immunity.
"It is up to the District Attorney to decide if justice would be served by a plea bargain," Captain Hahn told his dismayed interlocutors. "But now, please stand up to be strip searched. This is purely routine. You know what to do."
It took the youths five minutes to get all their clothes off. With their parkas and shirts, and their jeans and boots piled on the table, they were no longer so distinguishable from one another naked. Two of them had blond hair and dark blond pubic hair to match, and the third was red-haired and sported a red tuft on his pubic zone. They were similarly tall and slender of build with fair skin, although the redheaded boy was also freckled all over, and this included his buttocks.
"Face the wall. Place your palms flat against it and spread your legs," the captain instructed.
While the junior officers frisked the boys' bodies, the captain pulled on his glove. As he had done with Pinto, he thrust his fingers into each of the youths' anus. He let his fingers grope for a while inside the boys' rectum. They were all found clean.
But next they must submit to a urine test.
"This is the deal," Captain Hahn said, handing each trembling boy a bottle, "arrangements are being made to notify your Consulate. If you're found to be abusing substances, you shall first be committed to a de-tox program. If not, you shall be prosecuted immediately under the Wildlife Protection Act for attempting to smuggle endangered wildlife. Either way, you shall be tried to the fullest extent of the law."
The officers watched the boys' clumsy attempt at directing their organs to the mouth of the bottles. After a few leaky starts, they managed to fill their bottles. Corporal Sian had these delivered to the lab to be analyzed. In the meantime, the captain had the boys committed to Room 1210, where Pinto was still in remand, to await the most important phase of his campaign.
A visually-appealing motley of underwear-covered bottoms was already on display in an orderly row when Captain Hahn at last made his appearance in Room 1210. The hour-long wait had been calculated to compound his prisoners' unpleasant anticipation of their impending punishment. The junior officers, under Corporal Sian's direct orders, had done a commendable job preparing the captain's subjects for what was to be his first experiment at instituting Corporal Punishment as a discipline regime for both civilian law-breakers and renegade officers of the department.
The four prisoners had already been secured to the spanking apparatus, their wrists and ankles bound tight, their bottoms raised up on the platform. The captain stood behind Pinto first and grasping the top of his brief, he rendered the soiled brief to its owner's thick ankles. Pinto's buttocks responded to the debasement of his private space with a wiggle. The captain proceeded to the three youths and did the same to their sports straps and boxer shorts. Afterwards, he reached under each man's stomach and pulled out his genitals towards himself. Now they were ready.
As were the punishment canes. An assortment of these was laid out on the table behind the spanking horses. Captain Hahn assessed the four sets of naked buttocks before him and then carefully selected four canes. These he laid aside for the time being.
Returning to the prisoners, he studied again their buttocks and searched for clues to their fear. All the bottoms were dotted with raised goose bumps, their muscles clenching and flexing in the air, and wiggling desperately against the tight bonds. Yes, the men were afraid.
The captain cleared his throat. He made a comprehensive speech about the reason for their gathering, and then folding back his speech, he picked up the first cane. Made of rattan, it was the longest and thickest with an end that was split into two.
He stood behind Pinto's fat bottom and announced: "Mr. Alessio Pinto, prepare to receive twenty lashes of the cane to your naked buttocks."
Pinto's bottom wiggled again to try to evade the cane, but the first stroke completely stilled it. Pinto let out a curse and the vicious captain avenged the audacity of it with nineteen lashes in rapid succession, ensuring that no area of the man's buttocks and upper thighs escaped the cane's torture. Not even his penis and shriveled up testicles must be spared. When it was over, the grown man was blubbering grotesquely. The scars would manifest tomorrow, and in his senile future be regaled as repetitive tales to posterity.
The captain picked up the next cane. This, also made of rattan, was two feet long and an inch thick. Captain Hahn stood behind the first youth's bottom and announced: "Mr. Uli Zawecki, prepare to receive twelve lashes of the cane to your naked bottom."
The captain swung the cane against Uli's smooth young bottom with the same rhythm he had used in lashing Pinto. At the end of the twelve lashes, the traumatized boy was hollering. Captain Hahn regarded the tears merely utilitarian, of necessity. Keeping the objective of the moment in perspective, he left the screaming boy to replace the cane for his third. This one was about two feet long and a bit thicker than the previous.
"Mr. Henrik Rutishauser," Captain Hahn said to the red-haired boy before him, "prepare to receive twelve lashes of the cane to your naked bottom."
Now this lad was already crying shamelessly and pleading for clemency. The former soldier found his gauche display of cowardliness impalatable and so rewarded the boy with twelve exceptionally harsh blows. They split the skin of his chubby bottom, which was instantaneously ridged with long and bloody welts. His screams were equally long-winded.
Replacing the third cane to pick up the fourth and last, Captain Hahn exclaimed: "Mr. Johan Le Mistura, prepare to receive fourteen lashes of the cane to your naked buttocks."
This last blond-haired boy would not stop tensing up to save his bottom, and it prolonged his punishment. He had also been extremely interrupting with his uncouth use of expletives so that the captain had to resort to threats of gagging his mouth with his smelly underwear. The oldest of the youths promptly co-operated thereafter to enable the patient captain to carry out his punishment.
Captain Hahn's pilot exercise was now finished. A plethora of sobs and choked-back coughs slowly filtered the small room and the captain's head. The new chief of Customs restored the canes to their place in the steel cupboard and thence retreated from the room, betraying no more emotion now than when he had first entered. The prisoners would soon recover from his tyranny and be discharged to the state attorney's office to be formally indicted.
It was late when Captain Hahn finally finished his reports and closed the files of his four subjects. Six hours had passed since they were taken into police custody. The building was now extremely quiet. He glanced automatically at his analogue wristwatch. It was eight in the evening. He got up from his swivel chair, tidied up his desk a bit and clocked out.
"Was your Corporal Punishment campaign a successful one, Mishka?" Corporal Nikita Sian asked, removing his reading glasses. He had been waiting up with a book.
"I believe so," Captain Hahn answered, taking off his boucle-collared bomber jacket. "I believe I've managed to set an ethical tone for the department. People will know what I stand for, and before long everyone will know what the new Customs Office stands for."
"And they also know that those rumors about Your Highness are not just rumors," the corporal continued.
Naked, the Crown Regent entered the steaming spa. He took his impassioned corporal into his arms. "Yes, my dear Lord Niki," he said, kissing the eighth Viscount on his moist eyelids, "they must know now."
THE END