Ник Картер - Agent Counter-Agent

“You’re drugged or something,” he said.

“Keep quiet and I won’t kill you,” I said harshly.

“You don’t want to kill me. Do you really believe you’re a man named Chávez?”

“I am Chávez.”

“That’s not true,” he said emphatically. “You’re Nick Carter. Goddamn it, you’re Nick Carter!”

He was making my head spin. The headache was returning — the headache that would go way only after I’d killed my enemies. I glanced at my watch and saw that I only had about half an hour to go. I stuffed Hawk into the closet and slammed and locked the door. I glanced at Vincent as I walked to the door. He looked dead, and for some crazy reason, I was really sorry about it.

I went out into the corridor and was surprised to find it almost deserted. A Venezuelan policeman was going into a security room at the other end of the hall. He hadn’t seen me. Obviously, nobody had heard us. But I didn’t want to run into anyone. The security people might wonder where I was coming from, or somebody who’d seen me go down the hall with Hawk and Vincent might start putting two and two together. I decided to leave the palace through a side entrance. I could walk through the garden and come back in through the main entrance. Hopefully, the crowds would have dispersed during the noon recess. And anyone who saw me coming in would just assume I’d gone out for an early lunch. I looked around quickly, walked calmly down the hall, and went out through the side door.

I put Hawk and Vincent out of my mind. My watch read twelve thirty-five — just twenty-five minutes till I had to meet my contact outside the conference room.

I walked briskly through the garden to the front of the palace. Even during this relatively quiet time, there were people everywhere. Cars jammed the streets approaching the palace grounds. The drives were closed off, but guards were letting top-security cars through.

As I rounded the building, I saw hundreds of people milling around outside on the grounds, waiting for the dignitaries to reappear.

I’d just started down toward the crowd when a man walked up to me from a side path, blocking my route. I looked at him and realized it was the CIA man I’d had the run-in with earlier. I couldn’t ignore him. That would have further aroused his suspicions.

“Say, Carter, can I speak to you?”

I turned to him casually, trying to ignore the mounting pressure in my chest. My head was throbbing with pain. “Yes?”

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about that remark I made. I don’t blame you for getting mad.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “I overreacted. I’m just a little jumpy. My fault.” I started to walk away from him.

“No hard feelings, then?” he asked.

I turned back. “No, no hard feelings. Don’t worry about it.”

“Good.” He stuck out his hand. I took it and gripped it for a minute.

He was smiling broadly, relieved. “You know, I can see how this kind of duty can really get to you. It’s the waiting and watching, I think. I don’t know how the Secret Service people do it day after day, month after month.”

I glanced at my watch. It was twenty to one. I tried not to show my emotion. “Yes, they have a rough job. I sure wouldn’t want it Well, I have to meet a colleague. See you later.”

“Sure, okay,” he said. “Take it easy, Carter.”

I turned and walked on down the long path. The sense of mission was so strong inside me now that I couldn’t think of anything else. I wasn’t aware of anything around me but my path through the thickening crowd. A cluster of aides blocked the sidewalk as I got to the entrance. I shouldered my way through them, and they looked at me as if I were crazy. But there was no time now for amenities. I made my way around a knot of reporters near the main steps and brushed past them. The crowd was getting thicker.

When I reached the stairs and started up them, I was blocked by the hordes. I pushed and elbowed my way through them. I shoved one man up against another, and he yelled something obscene at me. I banged into a woman, almost knocking her down. But I didn’t even bother to look back.

I had to get to the corridor in time.

“Hey, watch it, fellow!” someone shouted after me.

I pushed my way slowly up the steps. “Let me through,” I demanded. “Let me through, damn it.” At that rate I was never going to get there on time.

I was driven by the urgency of my mission, oblivious to everything but the compulsion to get where I was going. At the top of the stairs the crowd was even denser, and the security people were holding everyone up.

I stumbled and pushed into them. A Venezuelan security man gave me a hard look as I brushed past him. But I had to get into the palace. My contact would be expecting me there at one o’clock sharp. And he couldn’t wait. The timing had to be perfect.

“Excuse me,” I said, moving into them. “Please let me through!” But nobody moved. Everyone was too busy talking about the conference and world affairs to even notice my presence. I shoved into them, squeezing through the mass of bodies.

“Hey, take it easy!” one man yelled.

I moved past him without answering. I was almost through the congested area just in front of the doors. I looked at my watch and saw I had only seventeen minutes to go. I fought my way through to the door, where several Security Police stood guard.

“Yes?” the Venezuelan in uniform said. Neither he nor the plainclothes man with him recognized me.

“I’m with AXE,” I said. “Carter.”

“Your identification, please.”

I wanted to knock the man down and run past him. The throbbing in my head was almost unbearable. I fumbled in my pocket and came up with Nick Carter’s wallet. I opened it and found the I.D. and the special pass for the palace. I showed it to the man on duty.

“Hmm,” he said. He looked at the photograph on the cards and then scrutinized my face closely. If Hawk and Vincent hadn’t been able to tell I wasn’t Nick Carter, this man couldn’t possibly see through my disguise.

“Would you hurry, please?” I said impatiently.

If anything, the request seemed to slow him down. He studied the card as if it held some flaw that was just waiting for him to detect it. Obviously I’d offended him with my impatience, and he was going to teach me a lesson.

“Where are you billeted, Mr. Carter?”

I had an almost uncontrollable impulse to ram my fist into his smug face. But I knew that would quickly put an end to the mission.

“Does it matter?” I said, clenching my fists as I tried to control myself.

“Por favor,” he said sourly.

“Hotel El Conde,” I said.

“Gracias, muchas gracias,” he said sarcastically.

I wanted to speak to him in my native tongue, to tell him he was an idiot, the unwitting tool of a malicious tyrant. But I kept quiet.

“Your cards, Mr. Carter.” He handed them back to me. “You may enter the palace.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said nastily. I took the wallet back and hurried past the guards into the interior.

It was much quieter inside. There were a few people in the entrance hall, but they were scattered, and I didn’t have any trouble getting past them. I started toward the Grand Reception Room, which was being used for the conference.

There was another security check when I entered that part of the palace, but one of the guards knew me, so it was quick. I moved down the hall to the conference room. I was almost there.

Just then the chief of the Venezuelan Security Police came out of a doorway just a few yards from the conference room. I felt the revulsion churning in my gut, and the pressure was rising in my head and chest. As head of the brutal secret police, he was almost as detestable as the President himself.