Ник Картер - Agent Counter-Agent

While I was still trying to figure it all out, I heard a door open behind me, and three people came into the room. Tanya was one of them. She was wearing a white smock and horn-rimmed glasses. Her hair was pulled back into a bun, and she looked very grim and determined. She met my eyes and looked into them for a long moment before speaking. I think she was trying to tell me she was sorry about all this but that duty came first.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Carter?” she asked impersonally.

“Not bad, considering,” I answered.

Two men flanked her. One was familiar to me because I’d just read his file before I left Washington. He was Oleg Dimitrov, the resident operator for the KGB in Caracas and the man in charge of whatever was going on here. He was of average height, with graying hair and a large mole on his right cheek. His eyes were hard and cold.

“So you are the infamous Nick Carter,” Dimitrov said.

“I suppose it would be useless to deny it,” I answered.

“Yes, useless. I am Oleg Dimitrov, as you probably already know. This lovely girl who helped us capture you is Dr. Tanya Savitch, Russia’s most brilliant behaviorist. And this gentleman is her colleague, Dr. Anton Kalinin.”

The white-coated, gray-haired man on the other side of Tanya looked at me over his spectacles and nodded. His stare made me feel like an amoeba under a microscope. I looked from him to Tanya.

“Behaviorist?” I asked.

“That’s right, Nick. I hope you don’t mind if I call you Nick.”

I listened to her voice and realized now why it had not sounded quite German. It was a Russian voice trying to imitate German-accented English. It hadn’t been perfect, but it had been good enough to keep me guessing.

“You can call me any damned thing you want,” I said. “I don’t see that it matters much. It would be nice to know what you intend, though. My curiosity has gotten the better of me. Have you three formed a KGB witch coven or something?”

Tanya smiled, but the men remained stony-faced. Dimitrov spoke first, in a tight, high voice. “The classic American hero, eh, Mr. Carter? The brash joke in the face of danger.”

I glared at Dimitrov. “It beats the hell out of crying,” I answered angrily.

“We will handle this now, Oleg,” Dr. Kalinin said to him.

Dimitrov grunted and left us. I heard the door of the lab open and close again as he left. The two technicians at the machines weren’t paying any attention to us. Kalinin came and stuck one of those penlights into my eyes. As he worked, he spoke to me in a quiet voice.

“Dr. Savitch specializes in behavior control,” he said slowly, peering into the backs of my eyes. “She is one of Russia’s foremost authorities on narcotic mind control, hypnotherapy, and general behavior-control techniques.”

He put the light down, and I looked over at Tanya.

“It’s true, Nick,” she said. “We’ve been experimenting with human behavior control for years. I’ve done a lot of research in the field. Dr. Kalinin has worked closely with our group, recording and analyzing the physical effects of the treatments on our subjects. He is an eminent physician in our country.”

“You’re planning to conduct behavior experiments on me?” I asked.

“You are going to be the first man to be controlled by our perfected techniques,” she answered, her voice revealing her uncertainty. I was sure now that Tanya hadn’t known she would be forced to apply her knowledge and skill in such horrifying activities. Her blue eyes hid behind the horn-rimmed glasses.

“You’re going to... use me somehow?”

Tanya looked quickly into my eyes and then away again.

Kalinin came to her rescue. “We’re going to destroy Nick Carter,” he said. “For a time, at least. You will no longer exist as Nick Carter.”

I just stared at him. Maybe I’d been right — one final bullet in Tanya’s apartment might have been better for me in the long run.

“No longer exist?”

“We’re going to perform a personality transplant,” Kalinin went on. “You will become a completely different person. And that person will be programmed by us, Mr. Carter. As a computer would be programmed by a technician. Do you begin to understand?”

I looked from him to Tanya. “My God, Tanya,” I whispered.

The blue eyes met mine. She had hardened her beautiful face against me and picked up a vial from a nearby table.

“This is nambulin,” she said in a businesslike way, “a drug developed only recently by our laboratories. It is what you would call a mind-altering drug. It has properties similar to LSD, but the effects of our drug are narrower and more limited.”

“I can hardly wait to hear,” I said sarcastically.

She ignored the remark and continued. “When nambulin is administered, the thought processes are interrupted on a basic level, and the personality is altered. The recipient of the drug becomes very submissive, and he experiences a heightened suggestibility.”

“Suggestion,” I mused. “So that’s it.”

“Part of it,” Tanya said. “While under the influence of the drug, you will be extremely receptive to suggestion by a trained hypnotherapist. And to behavior-control techniques developed in our years of research.”

“To what end?” I asked.

Tanya looked away.

“There would be little point in going into details,” Kalinin said, taking the vial from Tanya and filling a syringe with the liquid. “You will remember nothing we’ve said in this conversation, anyway.”

Something about the smug look on his face made me very angry. “Goddamn you,” I shouted at him.

His eyes flashed up to meet my gaze, and I thought I saw a tiny flicker of fear in them when he looked at me. “No dramatics, please, Mr. Carter. You will only make it more difficult for yourself.”

Tanya had left the chair and gone over to speak with one of the technicians. Kalinin was holding the syringe up in front of his face, pushing the plunger to clear the apparatus of air bubbles.

A violent desperation rose in my chest. It was the closest thing to panic I’d ever experienced. I’d never really feared physical pain or death, but this was different. What they were going to do, in effect, was kill me, destroy my identity, and then use my body for their own ungodly purposes. Just thinking about it made chills run up and down my spine. And I knew now that the threat to humiliate AXE hadn’t been an empty one. This plan — whatever it was — must have taken them months or even years of preparation. And with a top AXE agent to carry it out, they were almost home free.

A technician came over to assist Kalinin. Tanya turned and looked toward us from across the room. The technician tied a rubber tube around my upper arm and rolled up my shirtsleeve. I saw the veins standing out in my forearm. The nambulin was going directly into a vein.

My heart pounded wildly. When Kalinin came toward me with the needle, I started struggling desperately against the leather straps, trying with everything I had to break them. If I could get out of that chair, I could easily take care of these men. But the bonds were too strong.

“There is no need to struggle, Mr. Carter,” Kalinin said smoothly as he grasped my forearm. “Escape at this point is quite impossible.”

The needle came down, and the technician held my shoulders so I couldn’t move. There was just a small hint of pleasure in Kalinin’s face as he jabbed the needle into an enlarged vein, then pushed the plunger on the syringe.

A feeling of euphoria was coming over me. Then I began to get numb. My breathing slowed down markedly, and I felt perspiration dripping from my forehead and upper lip. I didn’t even care that I’d been drugged, and the awful feeling of panic had disappeared. I could still remember everything they’d said to me, and I knew they were going to use me in some horrible experiment in terror, but I was no longer concerned about it. I knew I should be, but I simply didn’t care about anything. For a few minutes I fought the feeling, trying to rekindle the rage I’d felt inside me, but there was none left. Whatever they did, whatever they said, was all right with me. It was silly to fight it, to worry about it. I was in their power, and their power was enormous. I would submit to it, and maybe somehow I would survive. After all, that was what really counted in the long run.