by Nick Carter
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:
T. La Masia. 1930.
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."
"Can you forget the times we were together?" she asked in that sensual voice.
"Don't con me, baby. What you did was all business. Now move. And act happy."
She sighed. "All right, Nick."
We got out of the restaurant without any trouble. She had come by car, so I made her take me to it. We got into it, and I sat behind the wheel. The car was parked on a dark side street, completely alone.
"Now. Who were you meeting at the restaurant?"
"I can't tell you that."
I shoved the knife up against her. "The hell you can't."
She looked terrified. "He's an agent."
"KGB?"
"Yes."
"And you are too?"
"Yes. But only because of my special knowledge — because I'm a scientist. I suited their purposes."
I started the car and drove out onto the Avenida Casanova. "Which way to the clinic?" I asked. "And don't play games with me."
"If I take you there, they'll kill us both!" she said almost tearfully.
"Which way?" I repeated.
She was really upset. "Make a right turn ahead and follow the boulevard until I tell you where to turn again."
I made the turn.
"Where is Yuri?" she asked. "The one who was to meet me."
"He's dead," I said, not looking at her.
She turned and stared at me for a minute. When she looked ahead again, her eyes were glazed. "I told them you were too dangerous," she said almost inaudibly. "Now you've spoiled their grand plan."
"Well, maybe it wasn't all that grand," I said acidly. "Is Dimitrov the guy who directed this master scheme?"
She was shocked to learn that I knew Dimitrov's name. She was a real greenhorn in the business, in spite of her fancy credentials. "You know too much," she said.
"Will I find him at this so-called clinic?"
"I don't know," she said. "He may be gone by now. Turn left at the next street."
She gave me further directions and I followed them. As I made a hard right, she turned to me. "I want to know. What went wrong? When did you come out of hypnosis — and how?"
I glanced over at her and grinned. "I've been going crazy guessing the truth for the past couple of days. Now I'll let you guess for a while."
At the next intersection we made a final turn to the left, and Tanya told me to stop in front of an old building. The ground level looked like an unused store, and the floors above seemed deserted.
"This is it," she said quietly.
I shut off the engine. Looking in the rear-view mirror, I saw another car pull up behind us. For a minute I thought it might be Tanya's friends, but then I recognized the square face behind the wheel. Hawk had borrowed a CIA man to have him keep an eye on me. My sudden anger subsided. I couldn't blame him, considering how I'd been behaving lately. I decided to ignore my watchdog.
"Get out," I said to Tanya, waving Wilhelmina at her.
We climbed out. Tanya was tense and really terrified.
"Nick, don't make me go in with you. I've shown you the headquarters. Please save me. Remember those moments we spent together. You can't forget that now."
"Oh, yes, I can," I said in a cold voice. I nudged her with the Luger, and she moved around the building to a side door.
None of it was familiar. I had been heavily drugged when they brought me and blindfolded when I came out. But I remembered the approximate distance from the street to the side door, and it was the same. Inside, when we climbed down a steep stairway to the basement level, I counted the same number of steps I'd counted when I'd left the clinic. There was no doubt about it — Tanya was leading me into the lion s den.
Twelve
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 hyp
odermic. 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?"
"Yes, sir."
I thanked him. Dimitrov was here, I was sure of it now. I could just go to the gate and wait for him to show, but that left quite a bit to luck. Besides, there would be a mob of travelers at the gate. It could get pretty messy there if Dimitrov decided to fight.
I looked around a nearby magazine shop, but Dimitrov wasn't there. Then I went to the currency-exchange window. I even went downstairs to the baggage checkroom and inquired. Dimitrov seemed to have disappeared.
I'd just turned a corner when I spotted him.
He was heading for the men's room, a briefcase under his arm. He hadn't seen me. The small gray mustache had changed his general appearance. It wasn't much of a disguise, but he hadn't had time for a better one.
Dimitrov went into the washroom, and the door swung shut behind him. This was it. I would have to hope that the washroom wasn't crowded.
I pulled out the Luger as I opened the door.
Inside, Dimitrov was just about to wash his hands at a sink across the small room. I looked around and was glad to see that there wasn't anyone else in the room. Dimitrov glanced in the mirror and saw my reflection in it. His face went gray with fear.
He spun to face me, reaching into his jacket as
he turned. He was making a desperate try for his gun. I squeezed the trigger on the Luger and heard a dull click.
I glanced down at the gun. I knew the chamber was loaded. It had just misfired — a faulty cartridge, something that happened only once in a million times. I grabbed at the ejector with my bloody left hand.
But there was no time. Dimitrov had pulled a big Mauser Parabellum and was taking careful aim at my chest. He had dropped into a low crouch.
I dived for the tile floor. The slug hit tile beside my head and ricocheted around the room as I let Hugo slip down into my hand. I twisted sharply toward Dimitrov and let go with the stiletto. It sliced into his upper thigh.
I'd hoped for the torso, but I was probably lucky to have hit anything under the circumstances. Dimitrov yelled when the stiletto hit him, and his Mauser dropped to the floor. He pulled the long knife out of his leg and went for the lost gun.
In the meantime I'd ejected the bad cartridge from the Luger, and it clattered to the floor. I aimed at Dimitrov just as he was going for the Mauser. As he reached out toward it, he looked up and saw that he didn't stand a chance.
He put his hands up and backed away from the gun. Seeing the look on my face, he suddenly began talking. "All right, Mr. Carter. You win. I surrender to you."
I got to my feet, and he got up, too. We stood across the room from each other, our eyes locked in a hard stare. My left arm was beginning to ache terribly.
"You made a big mistake, Dimitrov," I said. "You picked AXE to humiliate."
"I demand to be turned over to the police," he said. "I have surrendered to…" He lowered his hands slowly, then suddenly reached into his pocket, and a tiny Derringer appeared in his hand.
I squeezed the trigger on the Luger, and this time the gun fired. The slug caught Dimitrov just above the heart and hurled him back against the basin. His eyes stared wide at me for a moment, and then he grabbed spasmodically at the towel dispenser beside him. As he fell, the cloth towel came out of the dispenser in a long sheet, half-covering his inert body.
