Agent Counter-Agent

Four

When I came to, I was lying on the floor of a bright, antiseptic-looking room, about ten feet square. The room was empty except for a white cot. The ceiling lights shot rockets of pain into my head when I looked at them. I struggled to sit up and immediately felt the pain in my side where the men had kicked me. I examined my ribs. There were some nasty bruises, but nothing was broken.

I had no idea how they'd gotten me here. At first I couldn't even remember the events leading up to my blackout, but then slowly the scene with the girl came back. Damned clever of them to put a drug in her lipstick. But what was it she'd said about her immunity? And why did I remember, now, her soothing voice speaking to me in the overwhelming blackness, her sensual, irresistible, voice telling me to sleep undisturbed? The fact was, I'd gone out completely, so completely that I'd have felt refreshed now if it hadn't been for the throbbing pain in my side.

With some difficulty I got up, and went over, to the cot, and sat down on the edge of it, rubbing my face with my hands, trying to clear my head. Whatever drug they'd used on me, its effect was temporary and apparently harmless. For some reason I couldn't figure out, they wanted me alive and unharmed. Maybe before it was all over I'd be wishing they'd put a slug in my brain back at the girl's apartment.

I remembered Tanya's warm flesh under me on her sofa. The KGB was big on sex as a weapon, always had been. But that wouldn't have been enough to get me without the new cosmetic drug. There'd been rumors that the Russians were working on hundreds of drugs and that they were many years ahead of the West in that area. I may have been the first enemy agent they'd used the drug on. It wasn't a distinction I wanted to claim.

Looking back on it, I didn't figure Tanya for an ordinary KGB agent. There had been that attempt to keep the men from beating me and that mention of… some kind of hypnosis. Hypnotic immunity, that was it. I'd never heard the term before. My mind raced through all sorts of possibilities and probabilities and ended up nowhere, and my head throbbed violently. I had just succeeded in thoroughly confusing myself when I heard a sound at the door.

I tensed automatically. The door opened, and the two men who had appeared at Tanya's apartment came in. The fat, bald guy had the same ugly grin on his face. The tall one looked at me impassively.

"Well," the tall one said, "I hope you had a good rest." It was definitely the voice of the man who'd attacked me in Washington.

"It was you with the stocking over your face in Washington." I said.

"Yes, it was I," he said patronizingly. "The man you killed was merely an American who worked for us. He was expendable."

"And you've been keeping an eye on me in Caracas."

"Of course. We did not want to lose contact before Dr. Savitch had a chance to ensnare you."

"Dr. Savitch?"

"You'll see her presently," he said. "On your feet now, Mr. Carter. You have an appointment to keep in our laboratory."

"Laboratory?" I stood up and gauged the distance and position of each man, wondering if I could get past them to the door. "Where am I?"

The tall man smiled. "You're still in Caracas. We just brought you to a new KGB facility, Carter — one set up especially for you."

"You talk too much!" the stocky man growled.

The tall man didn't even look at him. "It does not matter," he said coolly.

I wondered what that meant. If they intended to kill me, why hadn't they already done it? So far, none of it made any sense to me.

"What are you going to do with me?" I asked.

"You will find out soon enough. Come on. And don't give us any trouble."

I walked past them to the door, and they followed close behind. I looked up and down the white corridor, hoping to find a door that looked like an exit. It was a short hallway with a door at each end and a couple of others in the middle. I figured the end doors had to be exits. They were closed, but something told me they wouldn't be locked. For one thing, the Russians didn't have any keys on them.

This might be my only chance to escape. There was no guarantee that I'd be in any condition to try five minutes from now. We turned and walked toward a door near the far end of the corridor. It was then that I made my attempt.

I stopped suddenly and stepped back into the stocky man, the one who had enjoyed the physical part of my capture. I stepped down hard on his left instep and heard a crunch and a loud cry of pain. I rammed an elbow into his broad face and felt his nose flatten. He thudded against the wall beside him.

The tall man was swearing and going for a gun in his jacket. He got the gun out, and it looked like the same one he'd aimed at my head in Washington. The familiarity didn't give me any feeling of comfort. I grabbed at the gun hand and caught it. With the other hand I stabbed at his eyes. He blocked the blow and quickly raised a knee sharply to my groin. As it connected, I felt a hideous pain and an violent attack of nausea. I grunted and lost my hold on the gun hand. My reactions were slower because of the aftereffects of the drug, and that gave him a substantial advantage.

I swung a hand at his throat, and he partially deflected it. But it caught him a glancing blow on the Adam's apple. He gasped and fell against the wall. I turned and made for the door at the end of the corridor. I had to leap over the slumped form of the stocky man, who was just trying to get back on his feet. I hoped the tall man would take a minute to recover, but my expectations were short-lived. I was only halfway to the door when the revolver exploded.

"Stop, Carter. Or the next bullet will go through your brain."

It was a persuasive threat. I stopped and leaned against the wall, not looking back at him. My chance for escape was gone. In a minute the tall man had reached me and pushed the revolver into my ribs.

"You are a very nasty fellow, Carter," he said breathlessly, holding a hand to his throat.

The other KGB agent limped toward us. "If it were not for them," he said in fast Russian, jerking his thumb toward another part of the building, "I would kill him right here and now. Slowly and painfully."

The stocky man drew his own revolver and raised it to strike my head and face.

"No!" the tall man said. "Think of the mission."

The stocky one hesitated, a wild look in his eyes. Blood was running from his nose over his lips to his chin. The nose was already swelling across his face. I looked at him and wished I'd been able to kill him. It would have taken only a minute longer, and it would have given me great satisfaction.

The stocky man lowered the gun.

"Come on," the tall one said. "They are still expecting us in the laboratory."

They had strapped me to a large wooden chair. I was in the lab. It was a large room that reminded me of an operating room in a large American hospital, except there was no operating table in sight. Perhaps the chair I was bound to served an equivalent purpose. There were several pieces of electronic machinery in the room, with colored lights blinking on control panels. Two technicians were working at the machines, but otherwise I was alone. The agents had left the room after tying me to the chair.

That chair was a machine in itself. It looked like an electric chair, but the wiring was much more complicated. There was even a headpiece with electrodes sticking out of it. At first I thought that it was some land of torture device, but that didn't seem to make any sense. Even the Russians didn't go to such lengths just to torture a man, not even to get top secrets. There were more primitive ways, which could do the job just as well as any machine. Anyway, agents aren't keepers of deep state secrets, not in Russia or in the West. I was no exception. In fact, AXE agents had less reason than most to carry classified information, since AXE assignments ran more toward specific physical action against the other side than investigation and collection of data.

While I was still trying to figure it all out, I heard a door open behind me, and three people came into the room. Tanya was one of them. She was wearing a white smock and horn-rimmed glasses. Her hair was pulled back into a bun, and she looked very grim and determined. She met my eyes and looked into them for a long moment before speaking. I think she was trying to tell me she was sorry about all this but that duty came first.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Carter?" she asked impersonally.

"Not bad, considering," I answered.

Two men flanked her. One was familiar to me because I'd just read his file before I left Washington. He was Oleg Dimitrov, the resident operator for the KGB in Caracas and the man in charge of whatever was going on here. He was of average height, with graying hair and a large mole on his right cheek. His eyes were hard and cold.

"So you are the infamous Nick Carter," Dimitrov said.

"I suppose it would be useless to deny it," I answered.

"Yes, useless. I am Oleg Dimitrov, as you probably already know. This lovely girl who helped us capture you is Dr. Tanya Savitch, Russia's most brilliant behaviorist. And this gentleman is her colleague, Dr. Anton Kalinin."

The white-coated, gray-haired man on the other side of Tanya looked at me over his spectacles and nodded. His stare made me feel like an amoeba under a microscope. I looked from him to Tanya.

"Behaviorist?" I asked.

"That's right, Nick. I hope you don't mind if I call you Nick."

I listened to her voice and realized now why it had not sounded quite German. It was a Russian voice trying to imitate German-accented English. It hadn't been perfect, but it had been good enough to keep me guessing.

"You can call me any damned thing you want," I said. "I don't see that it matters much. It would be nice to know what you intend, though. My curiosity has gotten the better of me. Have you three formed a KGB witch coven or something?"

Tanya smiled, but the men remained stony-faced. Dimitrov spoke first, in a tight, high voice. "The classic American hero, eh, Mr. Carter? The brash joke in the face of danger."

I glared at Dimitrov. "It beats the hell out of crying," I answered angrily.

"We will handle this now, Oleg," Dr. Kalinin said to him.

Dimitrov grunted and left us. I heard the door of the lab open and close again as he left. The two technicians at the machines weren't paying any attention to us. Kalinin came and stuck one of those penlights into my eyes. As he worked, he spoke to me in a quiet voice.

"Dr. Savitch specializes in behavior control," he said slowly, peering into the backs of my eyes. "She is one of Russia's foremost authorities on narcotic mind control, hypnotherapy, and general behavior-control techniques."

He put the light down, and I looked over at Tanya.

"It's true, Nick," she said. "We've been experimenting with human behavior control for years. I've done a lot of research in the field. Dr. Kalinin has worked closely with our group, recording and analyzing the physical effects of the treatments on our subjects. He is an eminent physician in our country."

"You're planning to conduct behavior experiments on me?" I asked.

"You are going to be the first man to be controlled by our perfected techniques," she answered, her voice revealing her uncertainty. I was sure now that Tanya hadn't known she would be forced to apply her knowledge and skill in such horrifying activities. Her blue eyes hid behind the horn-rimmed glasses.

"You're going to… use me somehow?"

Tanya looked quickly into my eyes and then away again.

Kalinin came to her rescue. "We're going to destroy Nick Carter," he said. "For a time, at least. You will no longer exist as Nick Carter."

I just stared at him. Maybe I'd been right — one final bullet in Tanya's apartment might have been better for me in the long run.

"No longer exist?"

"We're going to perform a personality transplant," Kalinin went on. "You will become a completely different person. And that person will be programmed by us, Mr. Carter. As a computer would be programmed by a technician. Do you begin to understand?"

I looked from him to Tanya. "My God, Tanya," I whispered.

The blue eyes met mine. She had hardened her beautiful face against me and picked up a vial from a nearby table.

"This is nambulin," she said in a businesslike way, "a drug developed only recently by our laboratories. It is what you would call a mind-altering drug. It has properties similar to LSD, but the effects of our drug are narrower and more limited."

"I can hardly wait to hear," I said sarcastically.

She ignored the remark and continued. "When nambulin is administered, the thought processes are interrupted on a basic level, and the personality is altered. The recipient of the drug becomes very submissive, and he experiences a heightened suggestibility."

"Suggestion," I mused. "So that's it."

"Part of it," Tanya said. "While under the influence of the drug, you will be extremely receptive to suggestion by a trained hypnotherapist. And to behavior-control techniques developed in our years of research."

"To what end?" I asked.

Tanya looked away.

"There would be little point in going into details," Kalinin said, taking the vial from Tanya and filling a syringe with the liquid. "You will remember nothing we've said in this conversation, anyway."

Something about the smug look on his face made me very angry. "Goddamn you," I shouted at him.

His eyes flashed up to meet my gaze, and I thought I saw a tiny flicker of fear in them when he looked at me. "No dramatics, please, Mr. Carter. You will only make it more difficult for yourself."

Tanya had left the chair and gone over to speak with one of the technicians. Kalinin was holding the syringe up in front of his face, pushing the plunger to clear the apparatus of air bubbles.

A violent desperation rose in my chest. It was the closest thing to panic I'd ever experienced. I'd never really feared physical pain or death, but this was different. What they were going to do, in effect, was kill me, destroy my identity, and then use my body for their own ungodly purposes. Just thinking about it made chills run up and down my spine. And I knew now that the threat to humiliate AXE hadn't been an empty one. This plan — whatever it was — must have taken them months or even years of preparation. And with a top AXE agent to carry it out, they were almost home free.

A technician came over to assist Kalinin. Tanya turned and looked toward us from across the room. The technician tied a rubber tube around my upper arm and rolled up my shirtsleeve. I saw the veins standing out in my forearm. The nambulin was going directly into a vein.

My heart pounded wildly. When Kalinin came toward me with the needle, I started struggling desperately against the leather straps, trying with everything I had to break them. If I could get out of that chair, I could easily take care of these men. But the bonds were too strong.

There is no need to struggle, Mr. Carter," Kalinin said smoothly as he grasped my forearm. "Escape at this point is quite impossible."

The needle came down, and the technician held my shoulders so I couldn't move. There was just a small hint of pleasure in Kalinin's face as he jabbed the needle into an enlarged vein, then pushed the plunger on the syringe.