Agent Counter-Agent (14 page)

I started running from the alcove, around the corner and into the main corridor. I had to get to the conference room. The device I'd planted there might already be working, and it would kill everybody within earshot.

When I got to the big doors, there were three men guarding them, two Venezuelan policemen and a Secret Service agent. The CIA agent who'd been there earlier had left, probably for a short break. The Secret Service agent and NSA man who'd been talking to each other outside the closed door of the security annex weren't there now, and the door was still closed. The Secret Service man had apparently been diverted before he'd found the chief of the Security Police.

I startled the guards at the conference room door.

"I have to get inside," I said. "There's a weapon in there, and if I don't get it out fast, it will kill everybody in the room."

I started to push past them, but one of the Venezuelans blocked my way. "I am sorry, señor Carter, but we have strict orders not to interrupt the conference."

"Get out of my way, you idiot!" I shouted.

I shoved the guard aside, but his companion pulled a gun and stopped me. "Please, señor Carter," he said quietly.

"What is it, Carter?" the Secret Service agent asked, looking worried.

I turned to him impatiently. "Remember the water carafe I took in earlier?"

He thought a moment. "Oh, yes." His eyes narrowed. "What the hell's in it, a bomb?"

"No, but something just as bad, maybe worse," I said. "I have to get the damned thing now."

I started in a third time, and the Venezuelan jammed the revolver hard against my back. "Why did you take the carafe into the room in the first place, Mr. Carter?"

It was obvious they were going to make me explain everything before they'd let me in. And there wasn't any time for that. By now the damned mechanism might already have been activated.

I spun around, throwing my left arm backward as I turned. My arm hit the Venezuelan's gun hand, and the gun fell from his hand and clattered on the floor. I jammed an elbow into his meaty face and connected solidly. There was a dull crack of bone, and he gave a loud grunt, then fell back against the wall and slid to the floor, where he sat dazed and moaning.

"Nick, for Christ's sake!" I heard the Secret Service man yell.

He lunged at me, and I turned to meet him, throwing a hard left into his face. It caught him, just right, and he went down.

The other Venezuelan had pulled his gun and was obviously planning to use it on me. He was aiming at my chest as I grabbed wildly for the gun hand. I shoved the gun up and to the right just as he pulled the trigger. The report reverberated, in the corridor, and slug crashed into the ceiling. I heard shouts coming from the far end of the hallway. In a minute every security man in the place would be on top of me.

I twisted hard at the Venezuelan's gun hand and finally managed to get the revolver away from him. I let it drop and jammed a knee into his groin. The man bent over double, screaming in pain. While he was still clutching at his crotch, I slammed the side of my hand against his head and connected, sending him flying against the conference room doors.

The first Venezuelan started to get up, but I kicked him in the side, and he fell heavily onto his back. I started to open the doors, but they were locked. I stepped back to kick them in.

"Hold it, Carter."

It was the Secret Service man. I turned to him only for a minute. He was aiming his.38 Smith & Wesson at my chest. I looked at the gun, then back at him.

"I'm going to go into that room," I said evenly. "If I don't, everyone in there will die. You'll have to fire that damned thing to stop me."

I turned away from him, raised my foot, and kicked hard at the doors. With a loud crash they flew open, and I dashed into the conference room.

A door had hit a Secret Service man and knocked him to the floor. All the other security people started moving toward me, and the members of the conference looked up at me in alarm.

"What the hell is this?" the man on the floor shouted. He'd seen the guard on the floor out in the corridor.

The distinguished-looking Venezuelan President looked at me with restrained interest. The American Vice-President staring at me in open shock and fear.

"What's the meaning of all this?" It was an American aide who'd gotten up from the table. After their initial shock, everyone at the conference was becoming indignant.

"Please stay calm," I said in a firm voice. "That carafe on the table contains a deadly weapon. Its function is to kill everybody in this room."

Everything was noise and confusion. Several men stood up hurriedly and scrambled away from their seats. I went in past them and leaned over the table.

"Get him" the Venezuelan from the corridor yelled.

I'd just about reached the carafe when a Venezuelan plainclothes man grabbed me from behind. I couldn't get to the carafe. I turned and fought wildly to free myself.

Just then the device was activated. Everybody in the room felt it — I could tell by their faces. There was no audible sound. The device was emitting sounds at a frequency where you couldn't tell if you were hearing or just feeling. But one thing was clear — it was working on every nerve fiber in our bodies. The sound penetrated to the very core of my brain, tearing and grating at my nerves, jarring them mercilessly, causing agonizing pain and nausea. The pain started in the head and chest, just like the terrible sensations I'd had for the past two days, but this was going to get a hell of a lot worse in a matter of seconds. A couple of men at the table were putting their hands uncertainly to their heads, and one had already fallen forward onto the table.

"Let me go, damn it!" I yelled at the Venezuelan.

He released his grip on me just long enough to throw a big fist into my face. It hit me hard, and I fell back onto the table. But by now the guard was feeling the effects of the death machine. He grabbed at his head. I slugged him hard in the face, and he went down.

I tried to ignore the mounting excruciating pain in my head and chest, fighting the nausea that was overcoming me. I climbed unsteadily up onto the table, grabbed the water carafe, and stumbled off the other side of the table with it.

I fell when I hit the floor and dropped the carafe. With extreme difficulty I crawled over to it and picked it up again, then staggered back to my feet.

At such close range the effects of the device were even more intense. I was reeling. I glanced at the Venezuelan President and saw he had slumped back in his chair, his eyes glazed. The American Vice-President was trying desperately to get out of his chair. Everyone else in the room was getting very sick very fast.

I stumbled over to a window and smashed the leaded panes with the carafe. I was just about to throw it through the broken glass when Hawk burst into the room.

"Stop whatever you're doing, or I'll blow a hole right through your head. I mean it."

I looked and he was aiming his Beretta at me. I saw the look on his face change when he felt the vibrations from the machine.

"This is an ultrasonic weapon," I said weakly. "I'm getting rid of it."

Without waiting to see whether he was going to pull the trigger, I turned my back on him and threw the carafe through the broken pane. It shattered more glass then fell to the pavement below, smashing to pieces.

Exhausted, I turned back to face Hawk. I was so weak I had to prop myself up against the window-sill. Suddenly I felt the pain subside, and my churning stomach began to calm down. I looked around the room and saw that others were feeling the relief, too. They were beginning to show signs of life. The Venezuelan President moved in his chair, and the American Vice-President put a hand to his forehead. I was sure they'd be all right. They hadn't been exposed long enough for really serious injury. But I suspected that we'd all have quite a hangover for the rest of the day.

The room was slowly regaining some semblance of normality. The conference members were recovering pretty well, looking around at each other with sick, confused expressions on their faces.

Hawk was walking toward me with his Beretta pointed at my chest. A couple of security men came up and flanked him. He stood right in front of me, still holding the gun on me. The men with him looked as if they'd shoot at the slightest provocation.

"First you knife one of your own colleagues, an old friend at that, and you threaten my life," Hawk shouted angrily. "Then you clobber the head of the Venezuelan Security Police. And now
this!"

The man I'd knocked down on the way in came over to join the group, his face still twisted from the pain he'd undergone. "He claimed there was a weapon in the water carafe," the man said. "Then something terrible started happening in here. When he got rid of the carafe, whatever it was stopped."

"That's right," an American at the table said. "It stopped the minute he threw that carafe through the window."

"So what was in the carafe, Nick?" Hawk asked. "Or do you still maintain you're a revolutionary named Rafael Chávez?"

"How's Vincent, sir?" I asked, ignoring his question. "Did I…?"

"Kill him?" Hawk finished for me. "No. He's going to be all right You missed his liver by about half an inch."

"Thank God," I said dully. Now that the conference was saved, along with the lives of its principals, I felt total exhaustion come over me. I needed about a week of sleep. And I found I didn't much care what they thought of my explanations. "No sir, I realize now I'm not Chávez. I got my memory back prematurely, I think, when the jets flew over. They wanted me to remember, but not till I heard a lower-frequency signal from the device. Then I was supposed to know who I am and realize what I'd done.*

"They?" Hawk said, studying my face.

"The people who detained me for two days," I said.

Hawk studied my eyes and apparently decided that I was acting like Nick Carter again. He holstered his gun and waved the other agents off. The Vice-President was walking over to us.

"What the hell happened in here?" he asked us.

The Venezuelan President got up out of his chair. He answered the Vice-President above the noise in the room. "It seems that this young man has just saved our lives. That is what has happened, señor Vice-President."

The Vice-President looked from the Venezuelan President back to me. "Yes," he said slowly. "I believe that pretty well sums it up. But what was that devilish thing you threw out the window, Nick?"

"I'm not sure, sir," I said. "But if we can go somewhere private for a minute, I'll be happy to give you my theories."

"A good idea," the Venezuelan President said. "Gentlemen, this conference will recess for one hour, and then we will reconvene here to conclude our business."

We had a very private meeting. The Venezuelan President, the American Vice-President, Hawk, and I went to the security annex, and everyone else was asked to leave. The chief of the Venezuelan Security Police had already been taken to the headquarters for a treatment. In a few minutes I was alone with the two dignitaries and Hawk.

"You acted very quickly in there, young man," the Venezuelan President said, his hands clasped behind him as he spoke.

"Thank you, sir," I said.

"Nevertheless, Carter," the Vice-President spoke up, "you've got a lot of explaining to do. Someone told me it was you who brought the carafe into the room."

"I'm afraid that's right, sir," I answered.

Hawk grimaced. "It seems that Carter was kidnapped and persuaded to believe that he was a Venezuelan revolutionary intent on assassination," he said sourly. He lit up a long cigar and began pacing the room, hunched down in his tweed jacket.

"Very interesting," the Venezuelan President said. "And now your normal faculties have returned, Señor Carter?"

"Yes, sir."

The American Vice-President sat down on the edge of a desk. "That's all very nice for us here in this room. But when the press gets wind of this, they'll be screaming that an American agent sabotaged the conference and tried to assassinate the President and me."

"I agree," said Hawk. "This wont be easy to explain."

"That occurred to me, too, sir," I said to the Vice-President. "But we do have a couple of leads to the people who are really responsible."

"And who are they?" the President asked.

I remembered what Tanya had said that night in her apartment just before the drug knocked me out. I looked over at Hawk for clearance to tell them, and he nodded. "KGB," I said.

"Qué demonio!"
muttered the President.

"Stall the press for twenty-four hours," I said, "I'll try to find them. After that we can see that the entire world press gets the story. The real story."

Hawk studied my face for a minute, then looked at the Vice-President. "Can we have that much time?"

The Vice-President raised his eyebrows. "With the help of the Venezuelan government," he said, turning to the President.

The President looked at me soberly. "I trust this young man. You will have my full cooperation. Please keep me advised. And now, señor Vice-President, I must see my staff before the conference resumes. I will see you in the conference room. Mr. Carter, if you can vindicate yourself, you will receive my country's highest honors."

Before I could protest, he was gone. The Vice-President got up from the desk and came over to me. "Now that it's all in the family, Nick, I feel I must voice one last thought."

"I think I know what it is," I said. "I have the twenty-four hours on trust. Because I could really be a defector. Or maybe just a lunatic. After my time is up, I'm on my own."

"Something like that, Nick. You seem all right to me now. But security is security. There has to be some doubt in my mind. I hope you don't mind my speaking so frankly."