Free Agent Counter-Agent by Nick Carter

Salgado turned and left the room.
    I watched Kalinin approach me. I didn't like the idea that the Russians were in charge here and that my own countrymen weren't allowed to speak with me. A Venezuelan should be in control of his own revolution, yet Kalinin had treated Salgado like an inferior.
    Kalinin gave me a stiff smile. "I am sorry to take Salgado from you so abruptly, señor Chávez, but he has duties elsewhere. Are you feeling well?"
    "Just fine," I answered.
    He took my pulse and didn't say anything for a while.
    "Very good. You should rest now, and we will come for you after lunch. You have a rigorous session coming up."
    "Do I really get to leave this place late today?"
    My question took him by surprise. But after a brief pause he answered, "Yes. Tonight you will be ready."
    "Good," I said. "I hate confinement."
    "So do we all," he said deliberately. "But we must make sacrifices for the good of the revolution. Isn't that so?"
    I nodded. Kalinin smiled tightly and left.
    I fell asleep for a while. Suddenly I heard my own scream. I sat upright on the cot, soaked with perspiration and shaking all over. I ran a trembling hand over my mouth, staring at the opposite wall. It wasn't like me to be afraid — I knew that much about myself. It must have been the drug they were giving me. I'd had another nightmare.
    I'd seen the ugly faces from the dark room and heard the harsh, evil voices. It was all mixed up with images of myself. I was stalking through a dark alley with a Luger in my hand. I turned a corner, and suddenly an enormous, warped face loomed up in front of me. It looked like the President's and yet wasn't his — it was a deformed face hanging suspended in the blackness. I fired the Luger over and over, but the hideous face only laughed at me. The mouth opened, threatening to engulf me. The long, sharp teeth were coming at me. That was when I'd screamed.
    After a light lunch I was taken back to the room with the machines — the orientation room, they called it. The technician had warned me that this session would be different, and he hadn't been exaggerating. Tanya met me in the room as the technicians were strapping me into the chair.
    "This will be unpleasant," she said. "But it will be over before you know it."
    "I thought of you earlier," I said. "I asked for you, but they said you were too busy to see me."
    The men finished strapping me in and went over to one of the machines. They hadn't used that one before. It had a small control panel, but there were dozens of blinking colored lights on its counter.
    "What they told you was true," Tanya answered.
    "Will I see you again after I leave here?"
    She looked away. "Perhaps. It all depends on the outcome of the mission."
    "I don't know anything about the mission," I reminded her.
    "You will shortly."
    They used different attachments this time — a wired metal band across my chest and a new headpiece. Tanya saw to it that everything fit properly and then left the room.
    They turned the lights out, and I saw more pictures in the blackness. The images were even more real than the ones I'd seen that morning. They hadn't given me an injection this time, but I knew that the effects of the morning dosage still hadn't completely worn off.
    The President appeared in the room. He was walking through a crowd, waving and smiling evilly. As soon as the image appeared, the headband began doing something to me. An awful pressure started building up in my head, and the pain became almost unbearable. As I watched the images move, the agony increased. I struggled to get free, opening and closing my mouth and squinting my eyes hard against the pain. It just kept getting worse till I thought my head was going to explode. A scream welled up in my throat. A man separated himself from the crowd and ran toward the President, swinging a huge machete. The blade connected, decapitating the President, and his head went flying into the crowd, spewing blood everywhere. People laughed and