Ник Картер - Agent Counter-Agent

“This is the list. Just a quick perusal will suffice to...”

The phone on his desk rang. He went to answer it while I studied the list, trying hard to gain control of my emotions.

His face brightened. “Ah, señor Hawk!”

I felt a steel vise closing on my chest.

The Venezuelan’s face changed. “What!”

There was little doubt of it. Hawk had somehow gotten loose and was now calling from another part of the palace, not trusting himself to get here in time. He had figured out that I was going to pull something during the noon recess, which was just ending.

“I can’t believe it!” the Venezuelan was saying. I reached for the Luger and moved up behind him. “But señor Carter is here with...”

He turned toward me just as I smashed the handle of the Luger down against the side of his head. He fell heavily to the floor and lay there unconscious. The telephone receiver dangled beside the desk. I could hear Hawk’s voice from the other end.

“Hello? What happened? Are you there?”

I stepped over the inert body and replaced the receiver in its cradle. I went to the door and looked up and down the corridor. There was no one around. I stepped out into the corridor, closing the door quickly behind me. Hopefully, nobody would go into the security annex for a while.

I walked back to the conference room just as they were closing the doors. In minutes the conference would resume, and the lethal device would be activated. I stood across the corridor, tense and acutely aware of the terrible pressure. It would soon disappear — after the device had done its work. A Secret Service agent emerged from the conference room and nodded to the guards outside. He walked over to me.

“Hello, Carter,” he said in a friendly voice.

I nodded.

“Well, they’re under way in there. I’ll be glad when all this is over.”

“Me too,” I said.

I wanted him to leave, to let me just stand there and wait it out alone. The signal would come soon, and I would know it was all over. Somebody might stagger out of the room to get help, maybe a security man stationed right at the door. But neither the Venezuelan President nor the American Vice-President would make it — nobody at the table would survive.

“Everything seems quiet,” the man said. “A little too quiet for my taste. I have this strange feeling. Do you have it?”

“Not today,” I said. “I was really worried when I first got here, though.”

“Well, I have it. Right at the back of my neck. But things look all right.”

“Yes, I’m sure we’ll have an uneventful afternoon,” I said.

“Well, I guess I’d better go check with the Security Police. See you later, Carter.”

“Right,” I said.

He started down the hall toward the security annex. Tiny beads of perspiration popped out on my upper lip. If he found the chief of Venezuelan security lying there unconscious, he’d probably try to stop the conference, and that would ruin everything. I wondered if I should go after him. But I had a strong feeling that I had to stay right where I was. Orders were orders. An NSA man came down the corridor from the opposite direction and stopped to talk with the Secret Service agent. I’d gotten a short reprieve. I let out a shaky breath and looked across to the conference room doors. Inside, the afternoon session was getting under way. Any minute the device would be activated.

Suddenly there was a loud, shrill sound over the building. It was the high-pitched scream of jets flying over the palace to salute the Caracas Conference. The sound pierced my eardrums, and something strange started happening inside me.

A jumble of scenes, words, and mental pictures crashed into my consciousness. I saw myself, with a gun, the Luger. I saw strange cities and an apartment that had to be in America. Everything crowded in on me, churning in my brain and making me feel sick and dizzy.

Something deep inside me seemed to force me to get to a window, so I could hear the sound again. But a strong sense of duty held me back. They’d ordered me to remain outside the conference room. In spite of those orders, I had to get to a window, and slowly, awkwardly, I walked down the corridor to an alcove where I knew I’d find one. I hesitated once and almost turned back to my post outside the conference room but then went on to the window. I shoved it open just as the jets were heading back for a second sweep over the palace.

At first, as they came toward the palace, I didn’t hear anything. But then, when they were almost directly overhead, I heard the loud, high-pitched scream of their engines. It dissipated into a roar as they flashed over the building, gleaming in the sunlight.

This time the sound of the jets really jolted me. It was like a tremendous shock wave passing through my entire body. Suddenly I heard Tanya’s beautiful voice:

After it has done its job, the device will emit a much lower sound, which will still sound very high-pitched to your ears.

The sound of the jets was still vibrating inside my head. And I heard another piercing sound in my head, almost like the one the jets had just made.

That is the sound you will hear. When you hear it, you will remember everything buried in your subconscious.

Suddenly truth crashed in on me from every direction. I looked around me, dazed and horribly confused. What the hell was going on? Why had I been posing as a revolutionary named Chávez. I knew I was Nick Carter, that I worked for AXE and I was here to... Suddenly I remembered my fight with Vincent and Hawk, and... Christ!

The jets were gone. I leaned weakly against the window ledge. What the hell was this all about? Why had I assumed the identity of a Venezuelan I’d never even heard of before? What had made me fight with Hawk and Vincent, when they were just trying to... take me off the assignment. The carafe! I’d taken a carafe into the conference room just a few minutes ago, and I’d known it contained a device that would kill everyone in the room.

It was all coming back fast. I hadn’t just been posing — I’d really believed I was a man named Chávez. Everything I’d done during the past two days had been for the purpose of assassinating the President of Venezuela and the Vice-President of the United States — the two men I’d been sent to Caracas to protect! I couldn’t remember anything before that, but last night I’d met Ilse Hoffmann again and I’d called her Tanya, a Russian name. And she’d known about my deadly mission.

Yes, that was it! I couldn’t remember anything that had happened to me between the time I’d gone to her apartment, several days ago, and the time I’d come back believing I was Rafael Chávez. But something was coming back to me about that evening in her apartment. I remembered a feeling of dizziness and nausea. I’d tried to get away, but two men had stopped me. I must have been drugged. And they’d done something to me to make me act the way I had ever since. That was the humiliation they had spoken of in the message. Somehow they were using me to assassinate the conference dignitaries. And “they” were the KGB. Tanya had admitted it. I remembered explaining my disappearance to Hawk, but that was the story they’d told me to give him. I had no memory at all of those two days I was gone, and that was undoubtedly the way they wanted it. That must have been when they’d conditioned me to assume the identity of Rafael Chávez.

I started running from the alcove, around the corner and into the main corridor. I had to get to the conference room. The device I’d planted there might already be working, and it would kill everybody within earshot.

When I got to the big doors, there were three men guarding them, two Venezuelan policemen and a Secret Service agent. The CIA agent who’d been there earlier had left, probably for a short break. The Secret Service agent and NSA man who’d been talking to each other outside the closed door of the security annex weren’t there now, and the door was still closed. The Secret Service man had apparently been diverted before he’d found the chief of the Security Police.