Ник Картер - Agent Counter-Agent

As we entered the white corridor I began to remember more and more isolated incidents. I had stood in this hallway before, and the man I had just killed in Tanya’s apartment had held a gun on me here.

“You are remembering,” Tanya said.

“Yes. There was a room, the orientation room. I was strapped to a chair.”

“It is just ahead.”

I moved on down the corridor. “There was another man,” I said. “You and he worked together. I remember the name Kalinin.”

“Yes,” Tanya said heavily.

I opened the door Tanya had indicated, my Luger out and ready. I stepped inside with Tanya right in front of me. Memories came crashing in on me. The hypodermic. The hypnosis. The audiovisual sessions. Yes, they’d done a damn good job on me.

The chair with the straps and wires was still there in the center of the room. The machinery was on the wall, but one piece was already partially dismantled. A technician stood beside it. I recognized him. The name Menéndez came to me. He turned and stared at me uncomprehendingly for a minute.

“!Mil rayos!” he said, swearing darkly when he realized his underground fortress had been penetrated.

“Hold it right there,” I said, taking a couple of steps toward him.

But he panicked. He started to grope in a drawer of a cabinet near him and came up with a gun. It looked like a standard Beretta automatic. As he turned toward me, I fired the Luger and hit him in the heart. He went crashing back into the partly dismantled machine, sprawling in a heap of arms and legs, his eyes staring at the ceiling. A leg twitched once, and he was dead.

A minute later I heard Tanya’s voice behind me. “And now it is your turn, Nick.”

I turned and saw that she had gotten hold of a revolver and was aiming it at me. I hadn’t been watching her closely because I simply hadn’t figured her for the shooting land. That was the second time I’d been wrong about her. There was an unhappy but firm resolve in her face. As I raised the Luger, her small gun exploded in the room and the slug hit me. I spun in a tight circle, crashed against the big chair, and fell to the floor. Fortunately, her aim had been poor, and she’d hit my left shoulder instead of my chest. I still had the Luger.

Tanya was aiming again, and I knew this time her aim would be better. I couldn’t play games with her. She had decided to make this a showdown. I fired the Luger and beat her to her second shot. Tanya clutched her stomach and, reeling backward, crumpled to the floor.

I got to my feet and went over to her. She was lying on her back, holding her hands over the bloody place on her abdomen. I swore under my breath. Her eyes were already showing the glaze of deep shock. She was trying unsuccessfully to breathe evenly.

“Why the hell did you have to do that?” I asked sadly.

“I... was too afraid, Nick. I could not go back to... Moscow a complete failure. I really... am sorry. I liked you so much.” Her head rolled to one side, and she was dead.

I knelt over her for a minute, remembering. Even in death, her face was beautiful. What a goddamn waste! I holstered the Luger, stood up, and went over to the cabinet where the technician had gotten his gun. I opened a couple of drawers and found records about my conditioning. Those, together with these machines, should just about tell the story. I’d make sure they sent press photographers here. The machinery alone would be headline material. I was as good as vindicated now. And it was the Kremlin, not Washington, that would be humiliated.

But where was Dimitrov? If he escaped now, this whole thing would leave a bad taste in my mouth. My job was a lot bigger than just embarrassing the Kremlin. I had to show the KGB they’d gone too far on this one. It was a matter of professional principle.

I heard footsteps in the corridor.

I slammed the cabinet drawer shut and drew Wilhelmina once more. I heard the sound in the corridor again. I went over to the door just as a man ran past in the hall. It was Kalinin, Tanya’s colleague, running awkwardly with a heavy case in one hand. He was almost at the end of the corridor.

“Stop!” I yelled.

But he kept running. The rats were fast deserting the sinking ship. I fired the Luger and hit him in the right leg. He went sprawling onto the floor, just short of the exit leading to the stairway.

I heard a sound behind me. When I turned I saw another man, the short, stocky one with the Khrushchev face — the other KGB Mokri Dela man. He was aiming a revolver at me.

I flattened myself against the wall as he fired, and the shot chipped into the wall just a few inches from my head. Then I saw another man in the corridor beyond the gunman, a taller man with gray in his hair and a briefcase under his arm. It was Oleg Dimitrov, the resident operator in charge of the assassination mission. He was the one I really wanted, the one I had to settle with before the KGB would really understand they couldn’t play games with AXE. He was running very fast down the corridor toward the far end, probably toward a second exit.

The Mokri Dela man fired again, and I crouched low just as the bullet whistled over my head. I shot back but missed. He aimed a third time, but I fired first and hit him in the groin. He screamed in pain and went down. But by then Dimitrov had disappeared at the other end of the hallway.

I ran to the fallen agent. He was writhing on the floor, sweat streaming down his face, ugly noises coming from his throat. He had forgotten all about the gun in his right hand. I kicked it out of his hand and ran down the corridor. He’d probably live to face trial. But I didn’t think he’d be happy about it.

I followed Dimitrov into a room at the end of the corridor, but inside I saw an open window facing the alley. Dimitrov was gone.

I crawled painfully through the window into the dark alley just in time to see a black sedan roar out of the far end. I ran to the street and met the CIA man there.

“What the hell is going on, Carter?” he said.

I looked in the direction the black sedan had taken on the boulevard. I was sure it was headed for the airport. There was a flight to Rome within the hour. Dimitrov was probably planning to take it.

“There are some dead and injured Russians in there,” I said. “Go see that the live ones stay put. I’m going to the airport to get their boss.”

He looked at the blood running into my hand from my jacket sleeve. “My God, why didn’t you take me in there with you?”

“Your job was just to watch me, not storm the fortress. Anyway, it would have taken too long to explain. See you at the debriefing.”

I got into Tanya’s car and drove away. If I was wrong and Dimitrov wasn’t at the airport, I wouldn’t have lost anything. I could put out a general alert for him and get the Venezuelan police in on the act. But I was pretty sure my hunch was right.

In twenty minutes I was at the airport. As I went into the terminal building, I remembered how large it was. It was built on several levels. Even if Dimitrov was there, I could very easily miss him. Unless I played my hunch on the Rome flight. It was a TWA flight, scheduled to leave in half an hour. I went to the ticket counter. Dimitrov was nowhere in sight, so I asked an agent about him, giving a full description.

“Why, yes. A man answering that description was here, except the man I saw had a mustache. He was here just a few minutes ago.”

“Did he have any luggage?”

“He didn’t check any, sir.”

That figured. And the mustache would have been easy for Dimitrov.

“He gave the name of... Giorgio Carlotti, I think,” the clerk said. “He had an Italian passport.”

“And he just left?”