Agent Counter-Agent (15 page)

"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."

"Which was written just to get us over here," I said.

"Exactly. And I fell for it — hook, line, and sinker. If anybody is to blame, Nick, it's me."

"I read the note, too," I said. "Maybe we'd better quit trying to place blame and start thinking about bringing this assignment to a close. We've destroyed their grand plan, but now we have to nail them." I looked at the floor. "I have an idea they're patting themselves on the back over this one and maybe getting a good laugh out of it. Well, the fun at my expense is over. When I find them, they won't be laughing."

"I suspect you've sobered them up some already," Hawk said, "since you aborted their multiple assassination attempt. How do you know the girl is KGB?"

"Because she told me," I said. "Or at least she admitted it when I asked her. That was just before the drug knocked me out. Anyway, her real name is Tanya Savitch, and she has a hint of Russian in her German accent. I couldn't quite identify it before the drug."

"Is that all you can remember about her?"

"At the moment. I have an apartment to check out and the German Embassy and a restaurant where I saw her. Also, I have a memory of a clinic and white-coated men and Tanya giving me instructions about all this. I can't remember their names or the things they did to me there. They blindfolded me when I left the clinic, so I have no idea where it is."

Hawk grimaced. "Well, at least you avoided the tragedy they had planned, Nick. You say you came out of your trance prematurely?"

"The jets going over made a sound similar to the one I was supposed to hear from the machine. That sound, along with the warning messages my subconscious had been sending for the past two days, made me to go to the window to hear the jets again. The KGB must have wanted me to return to my real identity after the assassination was over. If I denied I was Nick Carter, that might have confused the reporters. They wouldn't have known who was really responsible. Or they might have just figured I'd gone berserk. The KGB didn't want that. They were out to humiliate us, and they damn near succeeded."

"Are
you all right now, Nick?" Hawk asked, watching me closely.

"I'm fine," I assured him. "But then, I'm supposed to be."

He grunted. "Okay. Is the girl our only lead?"

"The only good one. I remember something about that mystery man. Something new. I think he was at the clinic."

Hawk puffed at his smelly cigar and blew a smoke ring. "That figures. Well, you should probably have some tests first, but we don't have time for that now. Get on with it if you feel up to it."

"I'm up to it," I said. "But keep the police and the other agents away till my twenty-four hours are up. That's all I ask. I don't want to be stumbling over assistants."

"All right, Nick," Hawk said.

"Then I'll see you at your hotel."

I was seated across a large mahogany desk from Herr Ludwig Schmidt, the West German deputy ambassador, who was supposed to have taken Tanya to the reception the night I met her. Schmidt was reclining in his high-backed chair, a long cigarette in his right hand.

"Oh, yes. I took Fraulein Hoffmann to the reception. She wanted to attend a diplomatic function. She is a bright girl, you know. She called in sick right after the reception. Apparently she ate something at a bullfight that upset her stomach terribly. She has still not returned to work."

"How long has she been with you here?" I asked.

"Not long. A Hamburg girl, if I'm not mistaken. Her father was a Russian refugee."

"Is that what she told you?"

"Yes. She speaks German with a slight accent because of her family situation. Her family spoke Russian in the home."

"Yes," I said, "I see."

Herr Schmidt was a very thin, sexless man in his forties, obviously very satisfied with his role in life. "A lovely girl, don't you agree?" he asked.

I remembered the times I'd been with her on the sofa, cot, and bed. "A
very
lovely girl. Can I reach her at the address listed in your files?" It was the same place she'd taken me the night she'd drugged me.

"Why, I'm sure you can. She is ill, after all."

"Yes. In case I don't find her at home, do you know of anyplace else I might look? Restaurants or cafes or special places for relaxation?"

"But I have told you the girl is ill."

"Please," I said impatiently.

He seemed irritated by my insistence. "Well, I myself have taken her to lunch on occasion at a small caf6 near here. I don't remember the name, but she likes the Venezuelan
hallaca,
and they serve it there. It is a cornmeal dish."

"I know," I said. I remembered that Tanya had ordered that at El Jardín after the bullfight.

Schmidt smugly stared at the ceiling. "Actually, I think the girl is attracted to me," he said confidentially, "Being a bachelor in this city is a delightfully consuming pastime."

"I suppose," I said. "Well, I'll try to find her at home, Herr Schmidt. Good afternoon to you."

He didn't get up. "My pleasure," he said. He stared up at the ceiling again, probably daydreaming about his sexual potential as an unmarried male in Caracas.

I really didn't expect to find Tanya at her apartment. She must have arranged to leave it the minute the last phase of the operation began — my capture. But I hoped I'd find some land of clue there. I was met on the main floor of the building by a fat Venezuelan
portera
who didn't speak any English.

"Buenos tardes, señor,"
she said loudly, a big grin on her face.

"Buenos tardes,"
I answered. "I'm looking for a young woman named Ilse Hoffmann."

"Ah, yes. But she doesn't live here any more. She moved out very suddenly, several days ago. An unusual foreign girl, if you will excuse me for saying it."

I smiled. "Did she take everything with her?"

"I haven't checked the apartment carefully. There are so many apartments here, and I am a busy woman."

"Would you mind if I took a look upstairs?" I asked.

She gave me a hard look. "It is against the rules. Who are you, please?"

"Just a friend of Miss Hoffmann's," I said. I reached into my pocket and offered the woman a fistful of
bolívares.

She looked at them, then back at me. She reached out and took the money, looking around her shoulder down the hall. "It is number eight," she said. "The door is unlocked."

"Thanks," I said.

I climbed the stairs to her apartment. With luck, I might be able to stop Tanya and her comrades before they caught a plane to Moscow. But I was worried — they undoubtedly knew by now that their plot had failed.

Upstairs, I entered the apartment. Memories crashed in on me again in rapid succession. The wide sofa sat in the middle of the room, just as it had on that night when Tanya had bartered her body for the capture of an American agent. I closed the door behind me and looked around. It was all so different now. It lacked the life, the vibrancy, that Tanya had given it. I rummaged through the drawers of a small desk and found nothing but a couple of theater tickets. They wouldn't do me much good in the next twenty-four hours. I moved on through the rest of the apartment. I went into the bedroom and found a crumpled bullfight program in the wastebasket there. I recognized Tanya's handwriting because she scribbled the notes on the program when I was with her at the bullfight. Just some kind of reminder to pick up groceries. It was worthless to me. I'd just thrown it back into the wastebasket when I heard a sound in the living room. The door to the corridor had opened and closed very quietly.

I reached for Wilhelmina and moved up tight against the wall beside the door. There was only silence from the other room. Somebody was stalking me. Somebody who had been watching the apartment building and was worried I'd get too close for comfort. Maybe it was Tanya herself. I heard an almost inaudible squeak of a board under the carpet. I knew the exact location of that board, since I'd stepped on it earlier myself. There didn't seem to be any reason to put off the confrontation. I stepped out into the doorway.

A man stood in the center of the room, holding a revolver. He was my mystery man, and the gun was the same one he'd pointed at my head in Washington and the one I now remembered seeing in the white corridor at the KGB laboratory. He whirled around when he heard me.

"Drop it," I said.

But he had other ideas. He fired. I realized he was going to shoot a split-second before the gun went off, and dived for the floor. The revolver barked out loudly in the room, and the slug slammed into the wall behind me as I hit the floor. The gun roared again and chipped up wood at my side as I rolled over and came up firing. I fired three times. The first slug smashed a lamp behind the gunman. The second entered his chest and drove him backward into the wall. The third shot caught him in the side of the face, just under the cheekbone, and blasted out the side of his head, spattering the wall with a crimson mess. He hit the floor hard, but he never even felt it. The man who had haunted me all through this mission was dead before his body knew it.

"Damn!" I muttered. I'd had a live witness, a man who could have told me everything. But I'd had to kill him.

I got to my feet quickly. People in the building would have heard the shots. I went over to the sprawled figure and looked through his pockets. Nothing. No I.D., false or otherwise. But there was a small scrawled message on a scrap of paper. It said merely:

I jammed the paper into my pocket and went to a window. I could hear footsteps and voices in the corridor. I pulled the window open and stepped out onto a fire escape. In minutes I was on the ground, leaving the building far behind me.

It was getting dark by the time I came out onto the street. The message on the note was turning over and over in my mind. There was a La Masia restaurant on Avenida Casanova. I stopped suddenly, remembering. I'd heard of the place because it was noted for its
hallaca,
Tanya's favorite Venezuelan dish, if she'd told me and her friend Ludwig the truth. Could it be, I wondered, that the
T
stood for Tanya and that the mystery man, apparently a Russian agent, intended to meet Tanya there at 19:30 hours — or 7:30 p.m.? It was the only lead I had, so I might as well follow it.

I arrived at the restaurant early. Tanya was nowhere in sight. I took a table at the rear, where I could see everything without being observed, and waited. At 7:32, Tanya walked in.

She was as beautiful as I'd remembered her. That much hadn't been an illusion. A waiter led her to a table near the front. Then she got up and walked down a small corridor toward the ladies' room. I got up and followed her.

She had already disappeared into the room marked
Damas
when I reached the small alcove. I waited there for her, glad that we'd be alone and away from the people in the dining room when she came out. In a minute the door opened, and we met face to face.

Before she could react, I grabbed her and shoved her hard against the wall. She gasped loudly.

"You!" she said. "What do you think you're doing? Let go of me or I'll scream."

I slapped her across the face with the back of my hand.

"What do you think this is, some kind of game in experimental psychology?" I growled at her. "You and I have a score to settle."

"If you say so, Nick," she said. She was holding her face with her hand. Her voice had softened.

"I say so, honey," I said. I let the stiletto drop into the palm of my right hand.

"You're going to… kill me?"

"Not unless you make it absolutely necessary," I said. "You and I are walking out of this place together. And you're going to act as if you're having a great time. Or you get this in the ribs. Believe me when I say I'll kill you if you try anything."