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 hypodermic. 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.