Ник Картер - Agent Counter-Agent

“First you knife one of your own colleagues, an old friend at that, and you threaten my life,” Hawk shouted angrily. “Then you clobber the head of the Venezuelan Security Police. And now this!”

The man I’d knocked down on the way in came over to join the group, his face still twisted from the pain he’d undergone. “He claimed there was a weapon in the water carafe,” the man said. “Then something terrible started happening in here. When he got rid of the carafe, whatever it was stopped.”

“That’s right,” an American at the table said. “It stopped the minute he threw that carafe through the window.”

“So what was in the carafe, Nick?” Hawk asked. “Or do you still maintain you’re a revolutionary named Rafael Chávez?”

“How’s Vincent, sir?” I asked, ignoring his question. “Did I...?”

“Kill him?” Hawk finished for me. “No. He’s going to be all right You missed his liver by about half an inch.”

“Thank God,” I said dully. Now that the conference was saved, along with the lives of its principals, I felt total exhaustion come over me. I needed about a week of sleep. And I found I didn’t much care what they thought of my explanations. “No sir, I realize now I’m not Chávez. I got my memory back prematurely, I think, when the jets flew over. They wanted me to remember, but not till I heard a lower-frequency signal from the device. Then I was supposed to know who I am and realize what I’d done.”

“They?” Hawk said, studying my face.

“The people who detained me for two days,” I said.

Hawk studied my eyes and apparently decided that I was acting like Nick Carter again. He holstered his gun and waved the other agents off. The Vice-President was walking over to us.

“What the hell happened in here?” he asked us.

The Venezuelan President got up out of his chair. He answered the Vice-President above the noise in the room. “It seems that this young man has just saved our lives. That is what has happened, señor Vice-President.”

The Vice-President looked from the Venezuelan President back to me. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I believe that pretty well sums it up. But what was that devilish thing you threw out the window, Nick?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” I said. “But if we can go somewhere private for a minute, I’ll be happy to give you my theories.”

“A good idea,” the Venezuelan President said. “Gentlemen, this conference will recess for one hour, and then we will reconvene here to conclude our business.”

We had a very private meeting. The Venezuelan President, the American Vice-President, Hawk, and I went to the security annex, and everyone else was asked to leave. The chief of the Venezuelan Security Police had already been taken to the headquarters for a treatment. In a few minutes I was alone with the two dignitaries and Hawk.

“You acted very quickly in there, young man,” the Venezuelan President said, his hands clasped behind him as he spoke.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“Nevertheless, Carter,” the Vice-President spoke up, “you’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Someone told me it was you who brought the carafe into the room.”

“I’m afraid that’s right, sir,” I answered.

Hawk grimaced. “It seems that Carter was kidnapped and persuaded to believe that he was a Venezuelan revolutionary intent on assassination,” he said sourly. He lit up a long cigar and began pacing the room, hunched down in his tweed jacket.

“Very interesting,” the Venezuelan President said. “And now your normal faculties have returned, Señor Carter?”

“Yes, sir.”

The American Vice-President sat down on the edge of a desk. “That’s all very nice for us here in this room. But when the press gets wind of this, they’ll be screaming that an American agent sabotaged the conference and tried to assassinate the President and me.”

“I agree,” said Hawk. “This wont be easy to explain.”

“That occurred to me, too, sir,” I said to the Vice-President. “But we do have a couple of leads to the people who are really responsible.”

“And who are they?” the President asked.

I remembered what Tanya had said that night in her apartment just before the drug knocked me out. I looked over at Hawk for clearance to tell them, and he nodded. “KGB,” I said.

“Qué demonio!” muttered the President.

“Stall the press for twenty-four hours,” I said, “I’ll try to find them. After that we can see that the entire world press gets the story. The real story.”

Hawk studied my face for a minute, then looked at the Vice-President. “Can we have that much time?”

The Vice-President raised his eyebrows. “With the help of the Venezuelan government,” he said, turning to the President.

The President looked at me soberly. “I trust this young man. You will have my full cooperation. Please keep me advised. And now, señor Vice-President, I must see my staff before the conference resumes. I will see you in the conference room. Mr. Carter, if you can vindicate yourself, you will receive my country’s highest honors.”

Before I could protest, he was gone. The Vice-President got up from the desk and came over to me. “Now that it’s all in the family, Nick, I feel I must voice one last thought.”

“I think I know what it is,” I said. “I have the twenty-four hours on trust. Because I could really be a defector. Or maybe just a lunatic. After my time is up, I’m on my own.”

“Something like that, Nick. You seem all right to me now. But security is security. There has to be some doubt in my mind. I hope you don’t mind my speaking so frankly.”

“I understand. I’d feel the same way, sir,” I said.

“I’ll stake my job on Carter,” Hawk said suddenly, not looking at me. “I trust him implicitly.”

“Of course,” the Vice-President said. “But get moving on this one, David. The press won’t wait forever.”

The Vice-President left the room. Hawk and I were alone. After a long silence, I finally spoke.

“Look, I’m really sorry about all this,” I said. “If I’d just been more careful with the girl...”

“Cut it out, Nick. You know that we can’t guard against all eventualities. Anyway, I had you check her out. She was counting on that. Nobody could have avoided the trap you fell into. It was very well planned, and it was conceived by experts. Now, let’s reconstruct what happened.”

“Well, my best guess is that I was drugged and then... maybe hypnosis, I don’t know. I really can’t remember anything since that evening in the girl’s apartment. The drug was in her... lipstick.”

Hawk managed a small grin. “That’s why you blame yourself. Don’t be silly, my boy. But assuming this girl was a KGB agent and they took you to some secluded place to hypnotize you — why did they keep you for two days. Hypnosis would only take a few hours, at most. And how could they get you to do anything that went against your moral code? Hypnosis doesn’t work that way.”

“Well, I’m just guessing, but if they could have managed to change my whole personality, my entire identity, then my moral code would be altered along with it. If I really accepted the fact that I was a revolutionary who believed in the forcible overthrow of his government, the idea would work. And we know that the Russians are using behavior-control techniques that can completely break down a man’s morals and integrity and make him a slave to conditioned response. A combination of hypnosis and behavior control could have convinced me I was Chávez.”

“Yes,” Hawk said thoughtfully. “And a damned clever idea it was. Take a top American agent, turn him into an automaton killer, and turn him loose to do some dirty work for you. Then let him and his country take the blame. I’m beginning to appreciate the threat in that warning note now.”