by Nick Carter
"I… I am…" I gasped and looked away from the two men. I had to get control of myself, but I didn't know how. I looked back, grim-faced. "It is my pleasure, Mr. President," I said.
They were all staring at me as if I'd lost my mind. The security people were studying me carefully.
"Are you all right, young man?" the President asked.
My eyes struggled to meet his. "Oh, yes," I said quickly. "I'll be all right. I've just had a bout with the turistas."
The Vice-President was watching my face closely. "You had better get some rest, Mr. Carter," he said quietly. In another minute they'd moved on to speak with the American ambassador.
In sudden desperation I turned to go after them. My hand went into my jacket. I was going to pull the Luger and blow their heads off. But when I felt the cold metal of the gun against my hand, I came to my senses. This was not the plan, and I had to follow orders. I pulled my hand back out and wiped the sweat off on my jacket. I was trembling all over. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed my actions, and when I turned toward the building, I saw my AXE colleague Clay Vincent staring at me. He'd been watching the whole time.
Fighting my panic, I hurried toward the rear of the embassy building, to the men's room. I felt sick and was afraid I was going to vomit. I was still trembling, and my head felt as if it would split open.
In the restroom I ran cold water over my head and leaned heavily against a washbasin. I put the faces out of my mind, and the pain and nausea began to subside. When I turned to find a towel, Vincent was there.
"What's wrong with you, Nick?" he asked.
I turned from him and dried myself. "It must have been something I ate," I answered. "I guess I'm still a little under the weather."
"You look terrible," he persisted.
"I feel all right now."
"Don't you think you ought to see the embassy doctor."
"Hell no. I I'm really okay now."
There was a long silence while I ran a comb roughly through my hair.
"I got something in a drink in that café in Beirut when we worked that one together," he said. "Remember? You helped me out of that. I was just trying to return the favor."
Something deep inside my brain responded when he mentioned the Beirut incident. I had a very brief vision of Clay Vincent falling against an old brick wall and my going to help him back on his feet. In a split second the scene was gone, and I wondered if I had even visualized it.
It shook me up. I'd never met Clay Vincent before in my life. How could I remember being with him in Beirut? I'd never been outside of Venezuela except the time I went to the United States. I didn't know a thing about Lebanon. Or did I? Again I had the feeling that there was something about my past they'd kept from me at the clinic. Something very important. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe the drugs had stimulated my imagination so I could invent scenes to help me with my impersonation of Nick Carter.
"Sorry," I said. "I appreciate your interest, Clay."
He smiled briefly, but then the look of concern came back. "Nick, what the hell were you doing out there after they spoke to you?"
"What do you mean?" I asked defensively.
"Well, for a minute, it looked like you were going for that Luger of yours. What was going on?"
My mind raced through several possible answers. "Oh, that. I guess I'm pretty edgy. I saw a guy reach into his jacket, and for a minute I thought he was going for a gun. I felt like an idiot when he pulled out a handkerchief."
Our eyes met and locked as Vincent assessed my answer. If he challenged me, I'd have to kill him right there, and that would mean big trouble.
"Okay, buddy," he said. His voice had softened. "You'd better get some rest so you'll be better by tomorrow."
I looked at him. He was a stocky, sandy-haired man, probably about thirty-two years old. He had an open, honest face, but I knew he could be tough.
"Thanks, Clay," I said.
"Forget it."
For the rest of the evening I tried to stay out of the mainstream of activity. Hawk appeared at one point when everybody was watching a group of dancers and stood beside me.
"Everything appear normal?" he asked without looking at me.
"Yes, sir," I answered. I wondered if Vincent had spoken to him about me.
"There doesn't seem to be any need for you to stay around much longer, Nick," he said. "I'm sending Vincent back to his hotel, too. But I'll see you bright and early tomorrow at the palace. Even though everything seems fine, I still have that feeling about the warning note. Have you spotted that man who was following you around?"
Another unfamiliar scene flashed through my mind — a man standing in a white room holding a gun on me. No, it was a corridor, not a room. I touched my forehead with my hand while Hawk stared at me.
"No. No, I haven't seen him." How did I even know what man he was talking about? Nothing had been mentioned in the file that my comrades had read to me. Unless I had forgotten.
"Nick, are you sure you're okay?" Hawk asked. "With Vincent here, I could probably do without you at the conference."
"I'm all right!" I said somewhat harshly. I glanced at Hawk, and he was regarding me bleakly, chewing on an unlit cigar. "Sorry. But I feel I'm needed at the conference, and I want to be there."
I had tried to keep the raw panic out of my voice. If Hawk pulled me off the security job, it would be impossible for me to carry out my mission.
"Okay," he finally said. "See you tomorrow, son."
I couldn't look at him. "Right."
Hawk moved on around the garden, and I left. I didn't feel like going right back to my hotel. I needed a drink. I took a taxi to the El Jardín because I felt lonely and somehow I associated that place with the girl at the clinic. When I got inside, I was surprised to see her sitting at a corner table. She was by herself, sipping a glass of wine. She saw me immediately.
Nor will you contact the Vigilantes or anybody connected with this mission, not even the personnel at this clinic.
I turned away from her and went to a table across the room. I felt a terrible urge to go to her, to tell her the problems I'd had, to take her to bed with me. But she herself had forbidden me to make contact. A waiter came, and I ordered a cognac. When he left, I looked up and she was standing beside my table.
"Good evening, Rafael." She sat down beside me. She was even more beautiful than I'd remembered.
Her first name suddenly came to me, out of the depths of my subconscious. "Your name is… Tanya." I looked into her eyes. "I'm not supposed to know that, am I?"
"No, but I think I know why you do. It's all right."
"I'm not supposed to be with you, am I?"
"I've been asked to contact you. To see how you feel and to make sure you have been accepted as Nick Carter."
"I've been accepted," I said. "But the one called Hawk is a little too concerned about my well-being. I was introduced to the President this evening, and it was pretty rough for a minute. But I think I've convinced Hawk that I'm all right."
Tanya's lovely face grew somber. "Hawk is the one man who can abort this entire mission. You must keep him convinced in any way you can that you are Nick Carter and that you are able to carry out your assignment at the conference." Her voice was strained and urgent. "It is imperative that you have access to the conference room at the noon recess."
"I understand, Tanya," I said. I wanted to take her in my arms and kiss her. "Come up to my room," I said. "For just a little while. It's… important to me."
"Hawk may be watching you," she said softly.
"No, he isn't. Please come, just for a while."
She hesitated for a minute, then reached over and touched my face gently. I knew she wanted me. "I will be there in half an hour."
"I'll be waiting."
Forty-five minutes later we stood in the semidarkness of my hotel room, and I took Tanya roughly in my arms. I kissed her and her tongue slid into my mouth. She moved her hips up against me.
"Oh
, Rafael," she breathed.
"Take your clothes off," I said.
"Yes."
We undressed in the dark. In a few seconds we were both standing there nude, looking hungrily at each other. Tanya was one of the most beautifully built women I'd ever seen. My eyes devoured the full, round breasts, the small waist, curving hips, and long, smooth thighs. And I was captivated by her smooth, sensual voice. The voice that had spoken to me so softly and persuasively at the clinic. There was an extra magnetism between us because of that special relationship. I hungered for the body that belonged to that lulling, inviting voice, the voice that had such power over me.
We walked to the bed together and I kissed her there, pulling her close to me and feeling her taught breasts against me, moving my hands down over the swelling curves of her hips.
We were both breathing hard. I released her, and she lay down on the bed, her full curves creamy against the whiteness of the sheets. I remembered the passionate moments in my room at the clinic. Suddenly I had another memory, the one from the dream I'd had at the clinic. I saw Tanya stretched out on a sofa instead of the bed, her entire body inviting me to join her. Had it just been a dream? Or had it really happened? I was terribly confused.
I got into the bed and lay close beside her, facing her. I touched her burning lips with mine, then moved my mouth across her throat and shoulder.
"Do you have an apartment in Caracas?" I asked between kisses.
"Why, yes," she answered, startled.
"Do you have a wide sofa in the apartment?"
She looked at me, and I thought I saw fear in her eyes. "Why do you ask?"
"That was where we first made love, wasn't it?" I said. "Before the clinic. It wasn't in my apartment, as you told me. My apartment doesn't have a sofa like that one." They had shown me a couple of pictures of my apartment on Avenido Bolivar.
Tanya seemed upset. "Is it important?" she asked.
"Not really," I said, kissing the hollow of her throat. "It just came to me when I saw you lying here."
Her face relaxed again. "You're right, Rafael. It was my apartment. I was just testing you at the clinic to see if you could remember."
"Because of the mission?"
"Because of my female vanity." She smiled and pressed insistently against me.
I stopped worrying about it and forgot everything but the urgency of my desire and the velvet softness of her flesh.
Eight
Hawk, Vincent, and I went to the White Palace early the next morning. Most of the regular security force had been there all night. By six a.m. it was already a madhouse. Hawk told Vincent and me to check out the conference room and adjacent rooms before nine-thirty, when the conference was scheduled to begin. I was very jumpy. It gave me a weird feeling to be making all these security checks, moving so easily among the people who were there for the sole purpose of stopping me. If I hadn't been so nervous, I'd have enjoyed the irony of it all. The security men nodded and smiled at me, never suspecting I was the one who'd see to it that no one left the conference room alive.
Throughout the morning the faces from the orientation room came back to me over and over again, and every time it happened, I'd break out in a cold sweat. The intensity of my hatred was tearing me apart. I wanted to get on with it, to get the job done, to rid the world of those two evil men.
"Well, here it is an hour before conference time," Hawk said to me, "and we have nothing more to go on than we had when we left Washington. Except that we can look for a tall man that nobody but you has seen."
"That isn't my fault," I said sharply.
Hawk studied my face, and I realized I'd done it again. I avoided his piercing eyes.
"Who the hell said it was?" he snapped back.
"I'm… sorry, sir. I guess I'm a little edgy because of the conference."
"That isn't like you at all, Nick," he said seriously. "You always keep your cool. That's why I consider you my best. What is it with you, anyway? You know you can level with me."
I looked at him. He had a strange effect on me, and I couldn't figure out why. I liked the man, and somehow I felt very close to him, though I'd never laid eyes on him before yesterday morning. It was weird. "I'll be all right, sir," I said. "You can count on me."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
"All right. If you discover anything, you can find me at the security headquarters."
When he left, I felt like punching my fist into a wall. I might look like Nick Carter, but I wasn't acting like him. And Hawk was noticing. If I wasn't more careful, I'd blow the whole mission.
By conference time, the palace was impossibly hectic. The halls were jammed with people. There were hundreds of reporters from all over the world. Flashbulbs were going off every minute, and there was a great deal of shouting and gesturing. When the principals arrived at the conference room, the crowd around them was so thick you could barely see them.
Seeing them again at close range, I felt such hostility, such open hatred for them that I had to turn away. I couldn't even watch them go into the room. After a few minutes everyone was inside, and the big double doors were shut behind them. The conference had begun.
When I'd gotten to the palace and checked out the conference room I'd made a point of noticing the water carafe on the long mahogany table. It was identical to the one I'd be given later, at the noon recess. It had been sitting there on a tray, along with about a dozen sparkling crystal glasses. By noon, whatever water was left in the carafe would be stale, and it would be natural for the palace staff to bring in fresh water for the afternoon session.
The morning seemed a year long. I paced restlessly up and down the long corridor. The other security people looked at me. The halls were full of them. Two Venezuelan guards, one CIA man, and one Secret Service agent stood guard at the entrance of the conference room. Every one of them knew Nick Carter, and no one had given me a second glance when I'd inspected the room earlier.
At about eleven-thirty, half an hour before the recess, the corridor outside the conference room began to fill again. I was feeling the awful tightness in my chest, and my head was beginning to ache. But this time the pain was almost pleasurable. I knew it would disappear immediately after I'd carried out my mission.
Just before recess a CIA agent came up to me. He obviously knew me, and I was supposed to know him. I concentrated, and his face began to look familiar, though of course it wasn't. It was all conditioning, and I didn't have time to worry about how it worked. Still, these confrontations made me nervous. One slip could destroy the whole mission.
"Where have you been, Carter?" the man asked. "We haven't seen you around here for a couple of days."
"Oh. I've been checking out some leads," I said tightly, trying hard to sound natural.
"Leads?"
"I saw a suspicious-looking man at the reception the other night, but it turned out to be a dead end."
"Oh, yeah, I heard about that. I also heard you were shacking up with some German girl for a while. Any truth in that?" he sneered.
The grin suddenly reminded me of the one on the American Vice-President's face when he had introduced me to the President. "Why don't you get lost, you incompetent bastard!" I snarled.
Suddenly I noticed Hawk and Vincent standing just a few feet away, staring at me. I hadn't seen them walk up.
"You ought to keep this one on a leash," the CIA man said angrily as he walked quickly past Hawk and Vincent and moved on down the corridor.
Hawk stood there studying me for a minute. When he spoke, his voice was calm and quiet. "Come with us, Nick," he said.
"I'd like to be here when they come out," I said. "There could be trouble."
"Damn it, I said to come with us!"
I rubbed a hand across my mouth. I was in trouble, with just a little over an hour to go till I had to meet the man who'd give me the carafe. But there was no way I could get out of going with Hawk. He wasn't giving me any choice.
"All rig
ht," I said quietly.
Hawk led us to an empty private room near the security headquarters. When we were inside, Hawk closed and locked the door, then turned to me. Vincent stood off to one side, looking very embarrassed.
"Now," Hawk said in a hard, low voice. "What the devil is going on here? I've taken about as much as I can from you, Nick. You're acting like a maniac."
I gave Vincent an angry look. "You told him about the incident at the party."
"No, I didn't," Vincent said defensively. "But I should have."
"What incident?" Hawk asked.
"Just a little emotional flare-up," Vincent said.
I licked my dry lips. I was glad he hadn't mentioned my going for the Luger. Hawk was sharp. I was sure he already had doubts about my identity. Maybe he'd spotted some defect in my disguise. Maybe they'd left off some mole or scar or something else that had given me away. No, it had to be my fault. I just wasn't acting like Nick Carter.
"All right, what is it?" Hawk asked impatiently. "Why are you so damned jumpy all the time? You haven't been the same person since you came back from that villa."
The answer was easy. I was a different person. Rafael Chávez. But I couldn't tell him that. He was one of the enemy. Both these AXE men were my enemies.
"I just don't know, sir. Maybe it's because this whole thing is so damned frustrating, with the hordes of people milling around and the noise and confusion. And the worst part is knowing something could happen at any minute and we might not be able to do anything about it. This security work isn't my style."
Both men were silent for a minute. Hawk turned away and walked over to a window. "I'm afraid that's not good enough, Nick." He turned back to me. His lean frame seemed to have shrunk even further into his tweed jacket, and his cold eyes seemed to be looking right through me. "Just what happened during those two days you were gone?"
"Just what I told you," I said.
"I don't like to say it, Nick, but I think you're holding something back from me. That isn't like you, either. We've always been very frank with each other, haven't we?"
The pressure was rising in my head and chest. There was less than an hour to go before I had to be out there in that corridor. And David Hawk wanted to talk and talk.