The Best Laid Plans

by Troy Conway

Maybe I was on to something, at long last.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I wormed the story out of her.

  HECATE had sent its agents into the hospital some three years before. These agents had slowly taken over the administration, they practically ran the hospital before Doctor Berlet realized what was taking place around him. Berlet was an idealist, he enjoyed curing people of their ills, putting them on their feet again. He was a modern version of the Good Samaritan.

  He had little head for business. He left such details to his assistants. One by one, HECATE assimilated those assistants, implanting radio thought-control stimulators in their heads. When the good doctor discovered what was going on, he wanted to go to the police.

  Instead, he was overpowered in his own hospital, and was himself put under sedation that an electronic stimulator might be inserted in his head. He too became a HECATE agent, but he operated only in and about the hospital which he had founded and made a success of, to avoid suspicion of any hanky-panky.

  They also operated on his daughter, Noelle, transforming her from a pretty nurse into an equally pretty secret agent. HECATE had given her assignments, she was intelligent, she carried them out perfectly. She had wheedled the plans for an atomic submarine improvement from a high-ranking French scientist, she had helped kidnap Rhea Carson, she had been one of a team of girl spies sent to England to involve one of their high officials in a scandal, she had been a good HECATE operative.

  Her present assignment, of course, was to kill me.

  “Do you hate HECATE?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes! Of course I do! They stole my father’s hospital. Instead of making its being a place where people are cured, they made it into a hellhole, where people are turned into demons.”

  “Would you like to see HECATE smashed?”

  She drew a deep breath and her eyes filled with tears. “I would do anything, m’sieu—anything to bring that about!”

  “Is there a secret way into the HECATE compound? I don’t mean into the hospital, I mean into the maze quarters where their radio control gadgets are located.”

  “There is a way, known only to a few. I discovered it when I helped smuggle stolen monies into the compound. There is a vault located below the control room where they keep the funds they steal—and use in their devilish operations.”

  HECATE was a young organization, she told me, but it was fast growing. Originally French in character, it had been formed to aid the French during their Algerian troubles of the late Fifties and early Sixties—and it went on existing after it had been theoretically disbanded.

  A few individuals, mad for power, mad for money, had used the tactics of the original HECATE group to gain control over one high official after another until those who might reveal the secret continuance of HECATE were all under HECATE control. This gambit had taken some little time to accomplish, but once it was a fact, HECATE began spreading its tentacles here and there in a world that knew nothing of its fantastic abilities to govern the minds of man.

  There were Red overtones to HECATE, of course. When the DeGaulle government ousted the Reds who had infiltrated high government positions, HECATE struck back by taking over some of the men who most desperately fought the Communist invasion of French officialdom While not outright Communist in all its actions, HECATE sympathized with the French Communists and sought to aid them.

  Without relinquishing its grip on the men and women who served HECATE, however. Actually, HECATE was international in scope, or sought to become so. Within a few years, HECATE might be the dominating force in the entire world. There was even talk of implanting control electrodes in the heads of men like Nasser and King Hussein of Jordan, several United States senators, and a scattering of English peers.

  It was HECATE policy to embarrass American and English diplomats and cause their policymakers to appear incredibly inept. The attempts made by the United States to establish peaceful relations between Israel and the Arab countries were to be fought by forcing Rhea Carson—our only hope for such peace talks—to commit suicide.

  Was the death of a man like Robert Kennedy part of a HECATE plan, involved as it was with Middle East relationships? Noelle Berlet did not know. It might be, she was not sure.

  Thieves. Kidnappers. Assassins. This was HECATE. It was an organization that was a real threat to world peace. A radio-controlled head of a government might easily egg such nations as the United States, Russia and Red China into a holocaust of war. It might also maintain the peace, if it served its own evil purpose. Noelle more than suspected that HECATE was behind the recent attack on the English pound and the American dollar. HECATE men had bought gold, pushing down its value.

  Enough of HECATE. I knew its dangers. I had to concern myself now with the individuals who served it.

  “Noelle, listen. This is your fellow agent, Rod Damon. I have just killed Madame Bree by smothering her with a pillow. Do you understand me? Madame Bree is dead. I killed her.”

  “Madame Bree is dead. You killed her,” she murmured in her hypnotic trance.

  “There is no need for you to kill me now. I carried out my assignment perfectly.”

  “No, there is no need to kill you.” “We are going away from the villa. Now—before the murder is discovered. In the dead of the night. Do you have much luggage?”

  “Two bags.”

  “You will get them, carry them downstairs. Don’t let anyone see you. You will meet me at the parking lot, and wait for me in my Volvo. I am going to phone Kastrup Airport, book passage for us both on the SAS lines to fly us back to Paris. You will come with me, like a good HECATE girl.”

  “I will come with you. My assignment is over.”

  “In Paris, you will do exactly as I tell you. You are under my domination. I am going to do what is best for you. You must not tell anyone, but I am going to free both you and your father from the HECATE controls that enslave you both.”

  “I will obey you. I hope you can do what you say.” Her tone was wistful, like that a little girl promised the doll on which she has set her heart.

  “You will wake when I snap my fingers. . . .”

  In a few seconds, Noelle was stretching her shapely body in its maid uniform, her eyes wide and surprised at finding me sitting on the edge of the bed. To my amazement she registered outright disgust. Then I remembered that, while she was still a HECATE agent, deep inside her brain she was not a killer. She believed I had killed Madame Bree, and so she despised me.

  “Get your things,” I snapped. “We’re leaving.”

  She rose and left the room.

  Three hours later we were rising off the runway at Kastrup Airport, on our way to Paris. I had put through a call to Foundation headquarters. A car would be at Orly Airport to meet us and take us to an operating room. Noelle Berlet sat subdued beside me. She walked beside me through Customs as if she’d been doing it all her life. She made no objections to traveling with me in the big limousine that waited to pick us up. She even accepted the fact that she was to undergo a slight operation without protest. While she was under the knife, I slept. Twelve hours later I walked into her room. There was a bandage about her head, but her blue eyes were bright with hope and her pouting lips curved into a smile at sight of me.

  “I’m so mixed up,” she told me. “What is going on?” I explained the setup from the time I had rescued Rhea Carson from the car that would have killed her. By the time I was halfway through, she was sitting up in bed, clasping her knees, all attention. When I was done she came off the bed to kneel before me and kiss my hand. Tears were sliding down her cheeks, but her face was happy

  “You did it, you did it, you freed me,” she babbled.

  Embarrassed, I yanked my hand away. “We have a lot of work to do, Noelle. We’re going to stage an attack on HECATE headquarters.”

  I made her get back in bed and rest, while I explained that the French police had been alerted as to what was happening. Fortunately Noelle had told me under hypnosis which of the French
officials were tied in with the flics, so we had put them all under temporary arrest. The police were only too eager to cooperate. It had been agreed that many if not all the HECATE agents were innocent of the deeds they had been compelled to do; the radio thought-control stimulators in the hands of Yves Roger-Viollet and Cyrano Matelot were the causative factors; and so to save the lives of these innocent people, to prevent an out-and-out gun battle between them and the police, I was going into HECATE headquarters alone.

  My job was to reach the control center—and destroy it.

  Noelle reacted strongly to this news. “You must not! Don’t you realize HECATE will know by this time that you did not kill Madame Bree—and that I did not kill you?”

  I pointed out that I had no special time limit in which to kill the Frenchwoman. And I still had almost a whole week left to me at the villa. No, HECATE would not be suspicious. Until I appeared at the compound, of course.

  “But if I can get safely inside, if I can reach the control room before anybody knows I’m there—we’re home free.”

  “If,” said Noelle softly.

  I shrugged. It was a chance I had to take.

  The Foundation organization in Paris needed two days to make the proper arrangements with the police. Noelle rested in her room, I slept and ate my meals in mine. We had to stay out of sight until the right moment.

  Close to midnight on the fourth night after our arrival in Paris, Noelle and I were smuggled out of the Foundation building into a black limousine. I wore a black bodystocking with a broad leather belt that held a Colt revolver, half a dozen gas bombs and a few hand grenades.

  I was a walking arsenal.

  Noelle was to accompany me as far as the secret entrance to the maze buildings. Then I was to go on alone. It was up to Noelle to bring the police into the action when the exploding hand grenades told them the control center was being blown up.

  If that signal never came, the police would know I had failed. In other words, I was dead. Then they would have to come in shooting and a lot of men and women who could not help what they were doing would be shot dead.

  The limousine raced through the soft French night, past the lights of the boulevards and the occasional house lights where people were staying up late. In a short time, there were only the stars and a cusp of moon to watch our progress.

  Finally the limousine stopped. Noelle and I got out. She took my hand in hers and led me along the roadway toward an abandoned barn. In the distance I could see the Dampierre hospital and the dark bulk of the maze buildings.

  Noelle went into the barn. She did not have to strike a light, but went immediately to a barn wall and sought along it until her hand closed down over what appeared to be a simple wooden peg. She pushed the peg backwards.

  A hidden panel in the wall slid back. I stepped through this hidden doorway into utter blackness. Noelle had coached me in the car. I know I had to take fifty-seven paces forward, make a right turn and continue along the subterranean underground runnel for another two hundred and sixty-five steps. Then I would find a door barring my progress.

  I would turn on my flashlight, and see a combination lock before me set into that door. The combination was 36-28-47. If I dialed those numbers, the door would open.

  Ten minutes later, the door opened into a metallic corridor I recognized as being part of the mazework system. I ran along it swiftly, congratulating myself on my good luck.

  I turned a corner.

  One of the HECATE guards, a big, muscular man with the moon device on his uniform, stood there gawking at me. I had one advantage over my Herculean opponent. I was expecting trouble down here. He was not.

  I hit him across the temple with the edge of my left hand. He grunted and his knees gave way. I had no time to tie him up, so I belted him a second time, making sure he would stay unconscious for a good ten minutes.

  I ran on. It could not be far to control quarters. I must find a stairs and—

  Whoops! Hold everything, Damon.

  Jeannette Lons had told me about the changing of the guards. She had said that the night watchdogs came on at one in the morning, and that they made their rounds and then took up their positions about two. My wristwatch told me it was now twenty minutes past that time.

  The guards should be at their positions.

  Yet here they were—I counted nine of them at a fast glance—walking along the corridor right at me. There was no place to hide. It was a little late for that anyhow.

  Eighteen eyes widened at sight of me.

  They all recognized me, and I guess they all knew I was not supposed to be here in this corridor with them. Maybe they didn’t know my assignment, but one thing they were damn sure of. It was not here.

  All nine of them came for me.

  I turned and ran. As my feet pounded along the floor, my mind assured me that the game was up. I would never be able to get through to the control room now. The only thing one of the nine guys racing along after me had to do was walkie-talkie the alarm up to the control room.

  My head swiveled. No walkie-talkie, for which I was grateful. But there were intercom phones scattered here and there in the maze tunnels. Let one of them detach himself from the others and pass the word along and I was d-e-a-d, dead.

  There was a purple door in the wall up ahead of me. I hadn’t the faintest idea where it lead, but it was better than being out here with the guards. None of them had reached for the revolvers hanging in holsters at their hips as yet. I guess they figured I couldn’t escape and there was enough of a sadistic streak in each one of them to make them want to take me with their bare hands, after slapping me around for a while.

  Bloody and bowed, I would be dragged before Doctors Roger-Viollet and Matelot to take the punishment due me. I remembered how one HECATE agent had suffered in the maze compound. Jeannette Lons had related how he had taken two days to die, slowly roasting to death.

  None of that for me, thanks. Not if I could help it anyhow. My hand went out to the knob of the purple door. I twisted the knob, threw open the door and stepped inside.

  Lights flashed on in a room where the great guru god Psychedel was holding court in his own chamber. Wow! Green and red and purple pigments slashed and slapped across walls and floor and ceiling—slowly twisting and turning, colors running into one another so that my stomach began to taste nausea as I looked.

  I could hardly stand up, let alone see.

  I closed my eyes. I was back in friendly darkness.

  Whirling, I ran my hands blindly over the purple door. No knob. Good! The guards who would be crashing into this room any second wouldn’t be able to get out this way once they were inside.

  With my eyes still squeezed shut, hoping like hell there weren’t any traps in here, I bolted across the chamber. On the other side, I ran my hands around. No doorknob. No door, even. I got a bit panicky at this point.

  My whole assignment was going to come to a thuddingly dull stop right here. I would be killed, HECATE would go on to rule the world. There wasn’t any way out.

  Then the door opened. I felt a draft of air, and opened my eyes. One, two, three, four, five guardsmen came racing into the room. The door slammed shut behind them. They had their eyes closed, too, being reasonably familiar with the room.

  Come on, Damon! Think, man!

  Ah, yes. My hand went down to my weapons belt. I grabbed a can of slippery white powder similar to the Rio-Trol used by police to send rioters skidding and slipping on city streets and sidewalks. My finger hit the button.

  I crouched down to send that skid-power outward. It coated the floor, it foamed among the the tints moving so maddeningly. As the booted feet of the guards touched that slip-stuff, they shot out from under them.

  You can have trouble just standing up with this stuff under your shoes. Those guards never had a chance. They went flying every whichway. And the best part of it was, they wouldn’t be able to get up. They would keep on slipping across the crazily colored floor until help came.
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  I whirled, standing in the one clean patch of underpinning left. My hands went here and there, they felt a crack. There was a door here. I did not open my eyes again after that one quick look at the Rio-Trol and the skidding guards. My hands would do the seeing for me.

  Ah, here. The doorknob.

  I turned the knob, stepped into the next room.

  At least, I extended my foot. And my foot went into water. I yanked my foot out fast and took a look, never letting go of that knob.

  The entire room was a pool of water. And swimming around in the water were a hell of a lot of deadly fishes, that grow from four inches to two feet in length. The hairs on the back of my head stood straight up.

  Piranha! Or serrasalmus rhombeus, if you like.

  The piranha fish comes from South America where it lives in the rivers of that continent, and is known for its bloodthirsty voraciousness. It possesses teeth as sharp as razors and an unholy appetite for human flesh. A horde of piranha fish will eat a living man who has fallen in among them in a matter of minutes, leaving only his skeleton.

  This pool was filled with them!

  Dazed by my discovery, I let my eyes slide upward. Well, at least HECATE was still in character. It had baited its trap with members of the characin fish family, but it had furnished a way of escape to an agile man. A number of ropes hung here and there from the ceiling.

  Confidently I let go of the doorknob—the door slammed shut behind me as I did so—and leaped for the nearest rope. I would make like Tarzan and swing from rope to rope as I crossed safely over that grim pool.

  Unfortunately the rope began to rise. I say unfortunately, because while I thought at first HECATE was being real nice about this and was elevating me to a good, safe position near the ceiling, the rope never stopped going up. It was being pulled by a powerful motor and pulley, against which my muscles were useless.

  My palms were getting rope burns from the friction as the rope was dragged up through my hands to disappear into a round opening in the ceiling. I could not hold it, and in a few seconds the rope would be gone and the law of gravity would send me plummeting downwards into the pool. I would splash and—That would be the last of me.