Enjoy the Ride!

There were five of them—five against one—and although none of the men shared any particular characteristics of race or physique, they had one thing in common: they looked tough.  These were fighters, hard men and likely hardened criminals, intimately familiar with the use of violence.  He knew that he was going to have to fight them and knew as well that to lose that fight might well cost him his life.  His greatest regret was that he had been discovered before gaining any real insight into the identity of the real villain; no matter the outcome of this fight, his foe would know that Secret Agent X pursued him.

He struck the first blow, feinting forward at the thug directly in front of him, then reversed and thrust backward with his right leg.  His judgment was flawless; his heel connected squarely with one of the men, driving the wind from his lungs with a whoosh and propelling him backward to crash noisily into one of the warehouse’s tin walls.  In the same smooth motion, he brought the extended foot down on the spot where the stunned man had been standing and delivered a chopping blow to the throat of the man directly to his right.  The brute dropped to his knees, gagging and unable to breathe, and just like that, the odds against the lone Agent were reduced to 3 to 1.  Those were numbers he could deal with.

However, as fast as he had been in taking down the two men most likely to initiate the assault, his actions had left him open to a counter-attack from the front.  He tried to get his right arm up to block a punch from one of the men, but he was a fraction of a second late.  A ham-sized fist caught him just below the sternum and sent him reeling.  But instead of collapsing stunned on the warehouse floor, he quickly recovered after retreating only a few steps, and took up a stance used by practitioners of the Oriental fighting arts, his body perfectly balanced, his fists ready.

If the thugs recognized the stance or understood that the man they now faced, despite having the clothes and appearance of a common dock worker, was in fact an expert in jiu-jitsu and a dozen other forms of unarmed combat, they gave no indication.  Instead, the three remaining assailants closed ranks and began steadily advancing.  The man in the center produced a long fixed-blade knife with which he began slashing the air to intimidate his prey, while the fellow to his right gripped a leather blackjack and thumped it suggestively in his open palm.

The weapons did not greatly concern the Agent.  If anything, he knew that the men who wielded them would be overconfident, believing that their arsenal gave them superiority on the battlefield.  But the possession of killing tools was not the same as mastery thereof, and by resorting to their use the men had unknowingly betrayed a lack of fighting skill.  No, he could handle weapons.  What was bothering him was something far less tangible.

In the middle of a fight, with his adrenaline surging and curiously conflicting the physical discipline by which he kept panic at bay, it simply wasn’t the time to attempt to sort of mysteries of a more intellectual or philosophical nature.  Nonetheless, he was having difficulty keeping his mind in the moment.  Like the ticking of a clock, a barely formed thought kept rattling inside his head, diverting his mental faculties from the matter at hand.

The knife slashed closer and the Agent pivoted, turning into the man’s weak side to deliver a punch that broke the man’s jaw.  He followed through with a kick that swept the goon’s legs out from under him, and then spun again to block a strike from the other fellow’s bludgeoning instrument.  The man had put everything he had into the downward strike and it was a simple thing to redirect his momentum and send him stumbling across the warehouse.

The men no longer resembled the hardened murder squad that had surrounded him mere minutes before.  Of the original five, only two were not clutching at some injury, and none of them exhibited the confidence they had earlier manifested.  He had broken their spirit; now it was time to end the fight.  He returned to his fighting stance and raised his fists again.

And that was when he saw it.

I don’t remember that, thought the Agent, staring at the scar on the back of his right hand.

For more years than he could remember, he had been at war with the darkness.  Through countless battles he had fought, always victorious, but not always emerging unscathed and his body was a living tapestry of those near misses.  Aches and pains that never quite went away, scar tissue from dozens of bullet and knife wounds, and each one told a story, a story he remembered in vivid detail.

 But this one he didn’t remember.

About an inch long, faintly pink against the tan skin, it ran from the knuckle of his right index finger along the fleshy web toward his thumb.  As he stared at it, he realized it was itching furiously.

His world suddenly exploded in blue light and the next clear image he perceived was of two of his assailants advancing toward him, seemingly walking without difficulty on a vertical wall.  He knew this to be an illusion; the unseen blow had knocked him to the ground and he was looking at everything sideways.  The Agent shook his head in confusion and was rewarded with a splitting pain in his skull.

Itch… itch… itch…

Where did that scar come from?

He struggled to an upright position, bringing the world back into correct focus, but he was too slow.  The pair of goons reached him before he could raise a hand in his own defense.  A foot lashed out, knocking his supporting arm away.  Another kick struck the center of his chest, driving the breath from his lungs, but the kicker paid the price for what he thought would prove to be a debilitating attack.  He cursed audibly and hopped away, unable to stand on the foot that delivered the strike; the steel armor the Agent always wore beneath his clothes had broken several of the man’s toes. 

The Agent backpedaled, trying to put some distance between himself and the gang of bruised, but hardly beaten malcontents.  He tried to focus his attention on them as he might pieces on a chessboard: Who would attack next?  What were their vulnerabilities? But strategic thinking eluded his grasp, consumed by the fire of an itch and a scar he had not noticed until mere moments before.

He caught a glimpse from the corner one eye of a man hefting a timber, but that image blurred as the rough board swung toward him.  His reaction was again too slow by a heartbeat.  The makeshift club slammed into his back, and this time he felt the pain immediately.

The men were on him, kicking at his exposed extremities and stomping down on his armored, but nonetheless vulnerable back.  The assault was relentless and the agony transcendent.  He gratefully embraced the blackness of unconsciousness, but even there he could not escape that nagging itch.

“Someone’s coming.”  The shouted voice was distorted, like a phonograph recording that was winding down.  “Let’s get out here.”

“What about him?”

“Leave him.”

The Agent couldn’t tell if the assault had ended.  The blackness swallowed him whole.

X

“Mister, hey mister!”

The Agent awakened with a start and immediately started scratching the scar.  It took a few seconds for him to put everything in order, time enough for the pain to return with a vengeance.  His vision was doubled, but floating before him was a craggy, unshaven face.  He reacted instinctively, scrambling back and raising his hands defensively.

That scar….

“It’s okay, mister.  Them guys moved off.”

He stared back incredulous, uncomprehending, but by degrees his vision and his awareness returned.  The man reeked of stale sweat and cheap wine, but his face was unfamiliar; this was not one of the men that had assaulted him.  Still, something about the old bum’s gaze bothered him.  He touched a hand to his face as if feeling for cuts and bruises; there were both aplenty, but what he was really checking for was damage to his disguise.  The cosmetic putty still covered the metal pads that he had used to build up his cheekbones, and although he could feel some minor tears in the mask, it was mostly intact; his secret identity was still a secret.

“You need to get to the hospital, mister.”

He shook his head.

“I—I can go get some help.  The police…”

“No.  No police.”

The bum seemed relieved. 

The Agent got gingerly to his feet.  “The men who attacked me.  Did you see them?”

“I didn’t see nothing, mister; I don’t want any trouble.”

“I don’t want to make any for you.”  He absently scratched his hand and looked around the warehouse.  It was empty.  The crates were gone; he had failed.  With a heavy sigh, he turned back to the vagrant and extended a hand to the man.  Tucked in his palm was a folded five-dollar bill.  “Go get yourself a hot meal and warm room, friend.  Thanks for your help.”

The man gazed at the offering suspiciously—

Is he looking at my scar?

—then took the money and edged away toward the large open doorway.  The Agent waited until the fellow was gone, then returned his attention to the place where the crates had been stacked.

He remembered that there had been three of them; three large wooden boxes marked with Chinese pictographic writing that gave little clue as to their contents.  His informants had alerted him to the arrival of the shipment, a mysterious and dangerous cargo that had made its way across the world, but no one seemed to know exactly what was inside.  He had been told only that the cargo was the property of an Oriental gentleman named Doctor Wu Sun.

The Agent knew all about Wu Sun and yet, like everyone else who had heard of the man, he had to admit that he knew nothing.  Wu was an enigma, a living legend of evil.   His name was whispered in the darkest depths of the underworld, the mastermind behind the most diabolical criminal schemes.  He was said by some to be a puppet master, controlling both governments and crime syndicates from his hidden lair; others claimed that he did not exist at all, but was a myth perpetuated by a number of different gangs and villains to deflect attention from their own enterprises.

One thing was certain though; if the cargo the Agent had failed to intercept did belong to Wu Sun, then there was big trouble afoot in the city.

He hastened from the warehouse, exiting cautiously through the large doors that opened onto the wharf.  He stayed in the shadows, charting a seemingly random path back to the waterfront avenue, watchful for spying eyes that might have remained behind to finish the job the thugs had been forced to abandon.  Twice he doubled back on his path, certain that he was being followed, but saw no one.  He no longer completely trusted his instincts; his failure against the five thugs, and for that matter the hole in his memory that ought to have explained the strange scar on his hand, filled him with doubt.

In this case however, his instincts were flawless and he was wrong to mistrust them, for after he reached the relative shelter of his sedan and sped away into the night, a rough-looking figure emerged from a darkened alley, still holding a folded five-dollar bill in one hand. 

X 

In the relative safety of an anonymous apartment, one of many he kept across the city, a very tired and battered Secret Agent settled into a chair positioned in front of a three-way mirror and began to clear away the remains of his latest disguise.

The plastic cosmetic putty concealed large bruises from the battering he had taken earlier, but it wasn’t until he had wiped away the last bit of his mask that he saw the full extent of the damage.  It went beyond a few cuts and contusions; his mouth was oozing blood and several of his teeth felt loose.  He couldn’t remember ever suffering such a beating, nor had it ever taken quite so long for him to begin healing.  Normally, the aches and pains were quick to fade and the blood from minor scratches would clot and cease weeping from his wounds.  The awful truth was, he was feeling even worse now than he had back in that warehouse.

And then there was the scar.

That innocuous looking strip of pink tissue—all that remained of a minor cut or burn—consumed his attention.  The mystery of its origin nagged at him like the buzz of a mosquito in his ear.  And the itching… he felt like the only relief from the itch might be to claw the scar away with his fingertips.

Through a supreme effort of will, he forced his scratching nails away from the scar and stared at his reflection.  The face that confronted him no longer seemed familiar; it might have been simply another disguise.  It wasn’t just that the features looked unfamiliar, no doubt the effect of spending so much of his life wearing false faces; it didn’t feel like his face.  The way the skin seemed to puff and sag, the dark circles around his eyes—it was like looking at a vision of how he might look as an old man.

“Pull yourself together,” he told his reflection.  “Doctor Wu Sun doesn’t care how tired you feel.”

The admonition sounded as hollow as he felt, but he gamely began applying a new layer of cosmetic putty to his face, covering both his natural visage and the many injuries it had sustained, with a flesh colored disguise.

Without any sort of evidence to guide him to the nefarious villain behind the incident at the warehouse, he knew he was going to have to do some old fashioned legwork to pick up the trail.  His best bet, he reckoned, was to start scouring the city’s underbelly in order to locate one of the five thugs who had been waiting for him at the warehouse.  He knew that he had injured at least two of them seriously enough to warrant professional medical attention, and he knew that these men were not the sort to simply walk into a hospital and wait their turn.

Long years of battling some of the city’s most notorious gangsters had allowed the Agent to develop a list of contacts used by those criminals for emergencies.  There were more than a dozen different doctors, many of whom had lost their licenses to practice medicine due to some scandal of a personal or medical nature, who now provided their services, at a highly inflated rate, to victims of gunshot and knife wounds who did not desire for their condition to become public knowledge.  As soon as his disguise was complete, he hit the streets again, and at his third stop, Morgan’s Taxidermy Studio, he hit pay dirt.

When the Agent gained access to the taxidermy studio which fronted the disgraced Dr. Morgan’s illicit clinic by a back door, he immediately heard the sound of conversation which, given the lateness of the hour, seemed a pretty good indication that the doctor was in.  He crept through the still-life menagerie toward a door marked “OFFICE—PRIVATE” and opened it a crack.

Instead of an office, the Agent beheld a well equipped examination room occupied by a total of four men—two sprawled unmoving on a table top, one observing, and the other evidently in the process of returning a dislocated knee to its original position.  A howl of pain escaped the patient’s lips as the joint popped, and the Agent got a good look at the man’s face, confirming what he already believed to be true: he had found them.

There would be no battle this time, at least not in the physical sense.  At the warehouse, the men had surprised him, but even at that he would have easily bested them if not for the scar….

He reflexively began scratching at the mere thought.

But this time, although he had the advantage of surprise, he would not be relying upon his skills as a martial artist. Simply beating the men into submission wasn’t going to get him the information he needed.

He waited until the doctor finished tending to the man with the injured knee before activating one of his knockout gas grenades and slipping it through the door.  The colorless, odorless gas dropped the men where they stood in mere seconds.  When the agent opened the door, the rush of air from outside the room quickly dissipated the noxious fume allowing him to enter while breathing normally.  He knew from experience that he had only about ten minutes before the men would regain consciousness, so he set to work quickly.

The first task was to study the facial features of the injured man and then duplicate them perfectly.  It was a tedious job, but years of practice had honed his ability to mimic almost anyone, and as luck would have it, the fellow was a close match in height, build and hair color.  Nevertheless, nearly five minutes passed before he completed his disguise.  Another minute was spent stripping off the rough fellow’s clothes and exchanging them with his own.  With a renewed sense of urgency, he grabbed hold of the man, whose face he now wore, by the shoulders and dragged him through the studio and to the back door.  By the time he reached a spot about half a block away, the Agent was panting for breath and in a cold sweat.

Must be getting a touch of the flu, he thought as he positioned the other man in the gutter.  He placed an empty gin bottle beside the man and then checked his watch.  Not much time left, he thought, with a mixture of concern and nausea in his gut.  He quickly produced a small hypodermic syringe and injected a large dose into the still unconscious man’s thigh, then sprinted back to the doctor’s office.  Dark spots were swimming across his vision as he stumbled into the room where the three other men were beginning to stir.  He barely had time to set the doctor and the uninjured man in seated poses before their eyes fluttered open.

The knockout gas usually left its victims with only a slight sensation of having lost time.  Unless someone knew they had been exposed to it, the natural tendency was to dismiss the incident as a mild fainting spell.  As the Agent lay back on the exam table, approximating the position the wounded thug had occupied, he heard the thug’s comrade attempting to rouse the doctor.

“Hey, doc.  Wake up.  We ain’t payin’ you to take a nap.

“What?” murmured Morgan, struggling to open his eyes.  “Oh, I’m quite sorry gentleman.  It is late after all.”

“Just fix up Benny and Snooze so we can be on our way.”

Benny or Snooze, the Agent thought.  Which one am I?

“I’m afraid your friend Benny won’t be going anywhere.  That blow bruised his windpipe.  I had to perform a tracheotomy—that’s the hole in his throat—in order to let him breathe.  If you try to take him, he’ll almost certainly die.”

Well, that answers that.  Snooze it is.

“Fine, just take care of him.  Snooze, you listening?”

The Agent moaned convincingly, and task made easier by the fact that he now felt genuinely ill.  “Doc, my stomach don’t feel too good.  Can you give me something for it?” 

What the heck, he thought, I am in a doctor’s office after all.

“I’m not surprised,” Morgan offered.  “You probably swallowed a lot of blood from that mouth injury.  It’s a wonder you can talk.  Some bismuth should settle your stomach.”

The Agent grateful slurped down the chalky pink solution when it was provided.  “I feel better already,” he lied.  In fact, he wasn’t sure he would be able to walk without fainting.  What’s happening to me?  I never get this sick.

He absently scratched the scar on his hand as his—or rather Snooze’s—unnamed comrade assisted him out of the examination room and toward the now quite familiar back door of the studio.  The change to night air once more triggered a cold sweat, but the bismuth had at least made his nausea abate.

“I’ll need to keep Benny here for at least a few more days,” the doctor explained as he showed them out.  “I’m afraid caring for him is going to be quite costly.”

“You know who we work for, doc.  We’re good for it.”

“Yes, well Cheng Lo has a reputation for…how should I say it? Ruthlessness?”

Cheng Lo, thought the Agent.  Then it is true!

Although no one had ever actually seen Dr. Wu Sun and lived to tell the tale, the accounts of those who had dealt with his lieutenants were in abundance.  Some could be dismissed as rumor or false braggadocio, but there were far too many stories identifying a man named Cheng Lo as Wu’s most trusted and loyal agent, for them simply to be discounted.  Unlike most Oriental gangsters operating around the world, Cheng Lo was not a member of one of the shadowy triads—rather, his operation eschewed the traditional considerations of tribal or racial loyalty.  He recruited men from every walk of life, handsomely rewarding success and brutally punishing failure.  Some stories suggested that Cheng was infatuated with Wu’s exotic but equally diabolical daughter, while others hinted that he might in fact have already married her.

It was said that he was the very image of Dr. Wu Sun.

“I would hate for your employer,” the doctor continued, “to decide that your friend is no longer worthy of the measures I have taken.”

“You’ll get your money, doc.”  The thug promised irritably, as he and the Agent passed into the back street.  “Even if I have to pay for it myself.”

“Yes, well I quite wonder if you can afford it.”

“Lousy quack,” the man murmured when they were out of earshot.  “He’ll have a tough time spending that money when Cheng Lo get those crates.”

The Agent laughed sympathetically as he got into a waiting sedan, but inside his mind was racing.  Dr. Wu Sun was planning something diabolical, of that he was sure, but what was his scheme, and when was it going to occur?  He surreptitiously glanced down the alley, picking out the motionless form of Snooze.  Eventually the thug would recover consciousness and then his disguise would be compromised.  He figured he had two hours at best to infiltrate Cheng Lo’s organization and find those crates.

So focused was he on the path ahead, the Agent did not see a figure emerge from the shadows and kneel down beside the unconscious man. 

X 

The brief rest after so much frantic activity helped the Agent throw off some of the fatigue that had earlier plagued him, but he was still tired and sore as he limped from the sedan to the back alley entrance of the Lung Mei Inn, a restaurant located on the cusp of Chinatown. 

Presently, the three crates which the Agent had so narrowly missed at the warehouse were now stacked in the pantry area.  The two goons remaining goons he had fought were idly smoking and playing dominoes with two young Chinese men, but rose from their game when the door opened.

“Hey, Nails! Snooze!  Where’s Benny?”

“Benny’s hurt pretty bad,” explained the man who evidently employed the nom de guerre “Nails.” 

“Doc’ll fix him up though.  Have you heard from the boss?”

“You know he doesn’t work like that, Nails.”

“Yeah, yeah; sealed envelopes with our instructions to be opened only when we finish the jobs.  But that didn’t take into account that we would be runnin’ into trouble at the warehouse.  That was Secret Agent X back there.”

The man who had been addressing Nails now shrugged.  “The boss told us that X might try to mess with us.  If he ain’t worried about it, then I ain’t.”

The Agent listened intently as he limped over to a chair, but his downcast eyes were secretly studying the crates.  If what the men said was true, then Cheng Lo and Dr. Wu Sun might not even be physically present in the city.

“So we just gotta wait,” grumbled Nails.  “I hate waiting.”

“You and me both brother, but the boss knows what he’s doing.”  The man then turned to the Agent.  “Snooze, you don’t look so hot.  Maybe you should go upstairs and lay down.”

The Agent considered the suggestion, but it was doubtful that he would find anything of importance on the premises.  “Nah,” he grunted.  “I gotta better idea.  Why don’t you guys go out and have some fun. I can watch the goods here.  I ain’t much good for anything else.”

Nails and the other men exchanged a glance.  “That don’t sound like a half bad idea.”

The two Chinese men conversed in rapid-fire fashion in their native tongue, then one of them spoke in halting English.  “Our master will not permit us to leave.”

Nails shrugged.  “Suit yourselves.  Snooze, I guess you’ll have some company.”

The Agent nodded, secretly pleased.  With his knockout gas gun, he could easily subdue the two men and then the crates would be his.

Suddenly the relative quiet was shattered by the jangling ring of a telephone.  All of the men present looked up in alarm, and the Oriental who had translated for his friend hastened to answer.  “Lung Mei Inn,” he said into the receiver.  A perplexed expression came over his face and then he turned to Nails.  “It’s for you.”

A look of bewilderment, mixed with raw fear, came over the big thug as he took the phone and listened intently.  The Chinese man however moved closer to where the Agent was sitting and nodded to his comrade.

The Agent knew, even before the men made their move, that his cover was blown.  He reached for the pocket where his gas gun was kept, but an iron grip seized his wrist.  Despite his diminutive size, the Chinese man was extraordinarily strong.

Nails whirled around in that instant and looked him square in the face.  “Boys, that ain’t Snooze.  It’s him!  It’s Secret Agent X.”

As he struggled helplessly in the grip of first one and then three captors, the Agent racked his brain to understand how his secret had been so quickly discovered.  Snooze should not have recovered from the dose of sedative for at least another hour.  He had gravely underestimated his enemy, and where Dr. Wu Sun was concerned, that could prove a deadly mistake.

“What do we do with him, Nails?” asked one of the men.

“Tie him up.  The boss wants to see him before…” He drew a finger across his throat.  “Of course, nothing says we can’t rough him up a bit first.”

The prospect of further violence did not trouble the Agent as much as the fact that “the boss,” no doubt Cheng Lo himself, knew of his investigation.  Dr. Wu had covered every angle.

Suddenly the door burst open and a flood of men in blue suits inundated the kitchen.  At the exact same moment, several more similarly attired men stormed in from the dining area.  “Police!  Nobody moves!”

One of the Chinese men either failed to understand the command or simply disregarded it, but before even as he charged the ranks, the policemen swarmed over him, their polished batons flashing.  The rest of the gang offered no resistance and raised their hands submissively, but as soon as the struggle with the Oriental ended, Nails sneered: “You coppers have no idea what you’ve done.”

“Maybe you’ll enlighten us then,” said a voice from behind the blue line.  A handsome older man, wearing a dark suit with a rumpled overcoat, stepped through the midst of the officers and circled the room, stopping at last in front of the Agent, who like the others offered no resistance.  The detective scrutinized him a moment, and when he spoke again, his eyes did not leave the Agent’s face.  “Good evening gents, I’m Inspector Burks.  One of my undercover men tipped me that something was going on here.  I’d say we got here just in time.”

The last bit seemed especially directed at the Agent, but the latter merely continued to slump in his chair.  The inspector straightened and turned to the man in charge of the raid.  “Sergeant, put these men in lock up, but be alert.  If they’re working for whom I think they are, then the trouble’s only getting started.” He glanced back at the Agent.  “I’ll take care of this one.”

Nails said nothing more as he and his fellows were cuffed and ushered out, leaving Burks with his lone prisoner and the three mysterious crates.  The inspector regarded the Agent for a moment, then positioned a chair directly in front of him and sat down.

“You’re lucky my detective picked up your trail.  Your life wouldn’t have been worth a stale fortune cookie if they’d gotten you out of here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” mumbled the Agent, keeping his head bowed.

“Hmm.  You don’t look so good, fellow.”

I don’t feel so good.  “Must have been something I ate.”

Burks crossed his arms.  “Why don’t we start with your name?”

 “I ain’t talking to no one but my lawyer.” The Agent straightened in his chair, casually dropping a hand to the pocket where he kept his gas gun.

If Burks noticed the sly move he gave no indication.  “Lawyers are for criminals.  Are you a criminal?”

The Agent spat out a derisive laugh, but said nothing more.  The knockout pistol was mere inches from his hand.  Burks however chose that moment to rise from his chair.  Without looking away from his captive, he walked over to stand beside the crates.

“Any idea what’s in here?”

The Agent’s hand closed on the grip of his pistol.  “Not a clue.”

“Let’s have a look then.”

Curiosity overcame the Agent’s desire to escape.  He watched in fascination as the policeman used a large meat cleaver to pry open one of the containers.  Rising unsteadily, he crossed over to inspect its contents.  Hidden in a nest of packing straw was a sealed glass jug, filled with a clear liquid.  Burks hefted it in one hand.  “Feels about the right weight to be ordinary water.”

“People don’t go to all this trouble for ordinary water.”

Burks raised an eyebrow at the comment.  “So you’re feeling a little more conversational?”

The Agent shrugged but said nothing as Burks opened the remaining boxes, revealing two more flasks identical to the first.  The inspector lined them up on a counter.  “So you’ve no idea what’s in them?

“None at all.”  But if Dr. Wu Sun is involved, he thought to himself, scratching his hand, then uncorking them might be as dangerous as opening Pandora’s box.

Burks took hold of two of the jugs, one in each hand.  “Grab that last one, if you please.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking them to a special police laboratory where we can analyze the contents.”  He cast a suspicious eye at the Agent.  “There are medical facilities there as well.”

“I’m fine.”  The Agent took hold of the remaining jug.  There would be plenty of time to get away from Burks later on, after he knew a little more about Cheng Lo’s mysterious cargo. 

X

The laboratory was located in midtown, on the fourth story of a non-descript office building.  There were no signs to give outsiders any hint that the facility behind the locked door was operated by the metropolitan police agency, but that anonymous portal concealed a first rate facility.  The Agent was well versed in the physical sciences and immediately recognized several pieces of analytical equipment.

“Just put it on the table,” Burks directed, setting his own burden down.

“Looks as though you’ll have to wake your scientist up.”

“No need,” replied the inspector.  “I know a thing or two about chemical analysis.  Just grab a chair while I get to work.”

“I didn’t realize that police detectives were trained in science as well as criminology.”

Burks turned his back to the Agent, busying himself with one of the flasks.  “Oh, you’ve got know a little bit of everything to do the job these days.  Ah, there we go.”

He held up a strip of adhesive tape darkened by a few faint smudges.

“What’s that?”

“Fingerprints,” explained Burks.

Cheng Lo’s fingerprints, thought the Agent.  Or perhaps the fingerprints of Dr. Wu Sun himself.  But then another thought struck him.  Burks had lifted the prints from the jug he had carried; the inspector was trying to learn his identity.

He tensed, preparing to subdue Burks and recover the evidence, but he was already too late.  The inspector was examining the whorls of his fingertips under a magnifying glass, comparing them to another set on a piece of paper.

“I thought as much,” he announced.  “A pleasure to make you acquaintance at last, Mr. Hyde.”

Something about that name stayed the Agent’s hand even as he prepared to wield the gas gun.  Hyde.  He knew that name, but the memories associated with it were obscured. Just like the scar.

“We’ve been hoping you would turn up,” Burks continued.  “Scotland Yard launched an international manhunt when you went missing in Hong Kong.”

Hyde…  Hong Kong…  The memory was so close to the surface that he could almost touch it.  Hyde was one of the aliases he had used, it had to be; how else could his fingerprints have been so quickly matched.  But, if he had been to Hong Kong, why couldn’t he remember anything about it?

“You’ve had a lot of people worried,” Burks continued.  “Where exactly have you been for the last two weeks?  And how did you end up here?”

Two weeks?  Hyde?  Yes, I remember now, David Hyde, Inspector for Scotland Yard.

But Hyde was a real person, someone he had impersonated.  How then had his fingerprints gotten mixed up with the real Hyde’s?

Burks however did not pursue the matter.  “Sorry about deceiving you like that, but I had to be sure.  Your secret will remain safe with me for as long as you like.  In the meantime, let’s see what’s in these containers.”

The Agent forestalled him.  “Inspector, I feel it only fair to warn you that those canisters were probably sent here by Dr. Wu Sun, or one of his agents.  Opening them could be very dangerous.”

“Wu Sun?  Surely he’s just a myth.”

“I wish that were true.  But those men you arrested tonight work for Cheng Lo; they told me as much.  And if Cheng Lo does exist, then you can bet Dr. Wu Sun exists too.  And you can bet that whatever’s in those containers is worse than your worst nightmare.”

Burks looked at the jugs thoughtfully.  “Some kind of poison? An infectious disease perhaps?  We’ll know soon enough.”

He placed one of the containers in a large glass box and sealed its lid.  A pair of rubber gloves was attached to one side of the box, allowing him to open the jug without exposing himself to its contents.  He deftly drew off several samples of the liquid in test tubes and put a single drop on a microscope slide.

In a matter of minutes he confirmed that there were no biological organisms in the solution.  Nor did he detect the presence of anything but the most common mineral elements in what seemed to be ordinary water.

“It can’t just be water,” the Agent stated emphatically.  “There has to be something in it.”

“I’ll check it for radioactivity.”  Burks took a Geiger counter from a cabinet and switched it on.  The device immediately began to emit a stream of clicks, but when he held it closer to the sample the intensity of the reading did not change.  “That’s peculiar.  There’s some radioactivity here, but it doesn’t seem to be coming from this solution.”

“Something in the lab?”

“We don’t store radioactive elements,” Burks answered, waving the bulb of the detector around the room.  The indicator clicked steadily until he pointed it at the Agent.  “It’s you.”

He continued sweeping the bulb over the Agent’s extremities until the reading peaked directly above his right hand.   It was the scar!

The Agent peered at the mark on his hand, noticing it again as if for the first time.  The flesh around scar was now bright red, irritated by his incessant scratching.  Burks took him by the wrist and held the hand under a bright lamp.

“Where did you get this wound?”

The Agent pursed his lips together, not so much unwilling to answer as simply unable.

“There’s something under the skin.  A very thin piece of metal.”  Burks then looked up with a grave expression.  “Your illness; could it be that you’ve been exposed to a dose of radiation?”

The gravity of the question descended upon him like a death sentence.  My god, he thought.  I’ve been poisoned and I don’t even remember where or when it happened.  But I’ve a good idea who did it.

“I think someone placed a strip of radioactive material in your hand.  You need medical attention.”

“It may already be too late for that.”  The Agent raised his eyes.  “We still have no idea what Cheng Lo is up to, and the clock is ticking.”

Burks frowned, then pointed to the containers on the table.  “I’ve run every test possible.  Those jugs contain nothing but plain old tap water.  Could these be a red herring?  An attempt to flush you into the open?”

The Agent gasped.  Burks was absolutely right; he kicked himself for not having seen it earlier.  “A decoy.  The real poison, or whatever he’s planning, must be somewhere else.  We’ve got to find it.”

“This is a dead end,” countered the detective.  “Let’s think about this rationally.”

“Rationally?”

“Let’s start with where you’ve been for the last two weeks.  What happened in Hong Kong?”

“Hong Kong.”  The Agent searched his memory in order to construct a plausible fiction, but his mind was a void.  He rubbed his inflamed hand.  The itch was maddening enough, but the realization that its cause—some kind of exposure to a radioactive substance that might well kill him—had seemingly been erased from his memory was tortuous.  As painful as it was to admit, he was going to need some help to defeat Cheng Lo.

“Inspector, the truth is, I don’t know what happened to me.  The last two weeks are a blur.”

“How is that possible?”

“I think I may have been captured; either by Cheng Lo or by Dr. Wu Sun himself.”

“You don’t remember anything?  How is that possible?”

“There are ways to erase memories; torture, hypnosis, drugs, and I’ve no doubt that Dr. Wu Sun is well versed in all of them.”

“That scar on your hand; part of the process?”

The Agent stared at the mark.  “I don’t know.  I don’t remember.  I’ve never heard of radiation being used in torture though.”

“There’s something we’re not seeing here.  Why would Wu Sun wipe out your memories and then release you?  It doesn’t make any sense.”  Burks stared at the Geiger counter thoughtfully, but if it afforded him any inspiration, he did not share it.  He set the device on the table.  “Is there a way to reverse the process?  You mentioned hypnosis; what if we hypnotized you again?”

The Agent swallowed nervously.  As much as he wanted to solve the mystery of what had happened, he didn’t dare let Burks have access to his subconscious mind.  And from that sprang another terrible thought; what had he revealed about himself to the inscrutable Dr. Wu Sun?  But Burks was right; if his enemy had gone to the trouble of capturing him, tampering with his memory, and then poisoning him with some kind of radioactive substance, then his own role in Wu Sun’s scheme had to be greater than he realized.

“Inspector, there’s something I need to tell you.”  He took a deep breath to still his heart, which was now beating like a trip hammer.  “I’m not who you think I am.”

Burks eyed him suspiciously.  “You’re not Inspector David Hyde?”

“No.  My real name is not important, but you probably know me better as Secret Agent X.”

There it is, out in the open.  What will happen now?

“Secret Agent X, is it?”  Burks smiled enigmatically.  “I figured it was something like that.”

But if the detective had more to say, he was struck silent when the lights in the laboratory abruptly winked out.  In their place, a red glow emanated from a pair of red light bulbs located near the exit doors.

Burks was on his feet instantly.  “Somebody has broken into the building.”

His warning was almost too late.  The Agent whipped out his gas gun at the exact moment that both doors simultaneously burst open, releasing a swarm of men who were uniformly wearing black garments and masks.  They carried no weapons, but if their apparel was any indication, they needed none; these men wore the garb favored by Oriental assassin cults.

The gas gun released a stream of potent anaesthetizing vapor into the midst of the group nearest the Agent and several of the black-suited invaders went down, momentarily impeding the progress of those who had escaped the soporific fume.  Spying a window of escape, he turned to the inspector but Burks had already disappeared under a writhing veil of dark cloth.

He knew he had only a split second to decide on a course of action.  He could not hope to outfight these men; even under the best of circumstances, it would be a brutal struggle, but weakened as he was by the poisonous radiation, he could not hope to win.  If he did not flee, he would most certainly be recaptured or killed, but that meant abandoning the policeman, and that was not something he was willing to do.  He had to find a better answer.  His eyes flashed about the room looking for that alternative and he caught the ruddy gleam of the emergency lights reflecting from the jugs of water on the counter. 

Maybe….

He snatched one of the jugs and held it over his head.  “Back off, or I’ll smash this!”

It was a gamble.  His shouted warning was enough to create a momentary lull in the fighting, but if the assassins knew that the container was a decoy, then all was lost.  “I mean it.  Cheng Lo won’t be pleased if his precious cargo is destroyed.”

As if bound to a single consciousness, the assassins began edging toward the doors.  Their retreat revealed Burks on hands and knees, stunned but otherwise intact.  The Agent moved closer to the detective, but his gaze continued to rove warily between the two groups.  “Inspector, are you all right?”

Burks struggled to his feet and looked around the room.  “It’s a standoff,” he declared.  “Got any clever ideas?”

“I’m thinking.  Grab that other jug.  Maybe we can use them as a shield to get out of here.”

Burks complied immediately, hefting the container over his head.  “Okay, now what?”

The black-clad intruders seemed to echo the question silently with their aloof posture.  It was impossible to tell who among them was the leader, yet all seemed to be waiting for some indication of what to do next.  The Agent moved closer to Burks, positioning himself at the policeman’s back so that all avenues of approach were covered.

“Something tells me this isn’t going to hold them off for long.  Think we can push past them and get out of here before they decide to rush us?”

“It’s worth a try.”  Burks kept his voice low so that only the two of them could hear what he said next.  “I don’t fancy smashing these jars, even if they make a try.  There’s got to be a reason Cheng Lo is pulling out all the stops to recover them.”

The Agent glanced at the third jar, now sealed inside the examination box.  “What about that one?”

“That one?” Burks replied, now speaking loud enough for everyone to hear.  “If they try to open that case to get it out, it will depressurize and spray the contents everywhere.  If their smart, they’ll leave well enough alone.”

It sounded like a desperate bluff to the Agent’s ears, but Burks’ tone was confident enough that just maybe the attackers would think twice before trying to retrieve the last jar.  With the detective’s back pressed against his own, he began making his way toward nearest exit.  The invaders regarded him warily, but gave ground clearing a path to the elevator foyer.  “We should take the stairs,” the he murmured.

“No.” Burks was adamant.  “Elevator.  Trust me.”

Against his better judgment, the Agent navigated toward the waiting lift car and after a cursory examination to confirm that no one was hiding in the overhead space, got in.  The inspector followed and quickly closed the door, shutting them off from the invading force.  He set his burden down and grasped the elevator control handle.  To the Agent’s surprise, he suddenly felt heavier; the car was ascending.

“Why up?”

Burks flashed a conspiratorial grin.  “We’ll be leaving by a different door.”

Over the noise of the elevator machinery, the shouts of the confounded intruders were audible and the Agent knew that their enemy was already wise to the change in plans.  Burks however seemed unperturbed as he eased the car to a stop and threw open the door. 

“Quickly,” he told the Agent, grasping the jug in one hand and hefting his automatic pistol in the other.  “The door to the roof is at the end of the hall.”

The black-clad attack force burst from the stairwell before he could take two steps, but they were too far away to impede his escape.  The inspector brandished his pistol meaningfully, holding them at bay a few seconds longer.  The Agent eased the door open, his gas gun at the ready, but the stairwell leading to the roof was empty.

Burks pushed him across the threshold.  “Your gas gun,” he shouted.  “Shoot down the stairwell.”

The Agent understood immediately and fired two blasts from his special pistol into the ascending space.  A few of the dark-clothed pursuers had already begun venturing onto the treads, but fell back as the potent vapor cloud rolled toward them.  Burks pulled him back and slammed the door shut.

“That will give us a few minutes,” the policemen said.

“A few minutes to do what?”

“I’ve got an idea.  Go to the front of the building and watch for them to try climbing the exterior.”  The inspector delved into the depths of his overcoat and produced a boxy object with a telescoping metal rod attached to its housing.  A glimpse of this strange contraption stopped the Agent in his tracks.  He knew exactly what it was: a handheld wireless unit, capable of making short-range radio transmissions, but more miniaturized than any design he had ever seen.  What surprised him most however was not the compact design, but the fact that Burks possessed it at all and carried it on his person. 

“I didn’t realize that the police department was issuing those.”

The inspector merely nodded, as if the statement was a rhetorical observation, and continued working the handset.  When he had tuned it to the correct frequency, he turned away and began speaking into the device.

The Agent continued to watch over the side of the building, but his mind refused to simply overlook what he had just seen.  He reflected back on the events that had transpired since his capture by the thugs in Chinatown, rewinding his memories as one might turn a film reel backwards.  In every frame of that mental movie, he saw something that just didn’t fit.

…a gang of black-suited intruders materializing as if from nowhere in a secret unmarked laboratory.…

How did they find us so quickly?

…Burks saying: “Nothing more than plain old tap water….”

And I believed him.  But what if it’s not just water?

…the police raiding the Lung Mei in the nick of time, tipped off by an undercover officer, Burks had said.  But how had the detective known in that split second that he was not one of the thugs?  How had he known to look in the crates?

Burks knows a lot more about this than he’s told me, the Agent thought, and then he recalled something the policeman had said. 

“…a red herring…flush you out in the open….”

The scar on his hand itched ferociously.

Radiation poisoning?  Just one more thing he’s told me, and I accepted it without question.

“Help is on the way,” the inspector announced, unaware of the maelstrom that raged in the Agent’s fevered mind.  “Five minutes.  Any sign of them?”

“No,” the Agent rasped, struggling to keep his composure.  He no longer saw the detective as an ally, but without definitive proof he could not completely resign himself to declaring the man his enemy.  If Burks was not in fact in cahoots with the gang of invaders in the building below, then the “help” he had summoned was going to come in handy. 

“No,” he repeated.  “All quiet on this end.  But that gas cloud will dissipate before five minutes is up.”

 “Let’s hope they don’t figure that out,” Burks replied, holding his pistol up.

The Agent turned his eyes back to the street, scanning the dark approaches for villains in the shadows and eagerly watching for the revolving red beacons of police patrol cars, but his attention was fixed on the enigma that churned within him.

What if all of this is some elaborate plot to bring me into the open?  How far would Burks go to hunt me down?  Could he be in cahoots with Cheng Lo?

And then another thought struck him.

What if that isn’t really Inspector Burks?

The realization stabbed through his head like a railroad spike, and a cry of agony ripped past his lips…. 

X

He had been on the trail of the Chinaman for over a week now, and he had been David Hyde for almost as long.  The real Inspector Hyde was dead, murdered by the Chinaman’s assassins, wrapped in iron chains and dropped in Kowloon Bay.  But the Agent didn’t think the Chinaman knew that, and even if he did, a visit from the dead policeman might be just the thing to shake him up.

But it wasn’t time to strike just yet.  He still wasn’t sure what the Chinaman was up to, nor was he absolutely certain that his foe was indeed the diabolical Dr. Wu Sun, or perhaps one of his chief lieutenants.  So he watched and waited, stowing away on the freighter as it churned across two oceans to New York.  Hidden in the ship’s ventilation pipes, he had overheard the Chinaman speaking of a second ship with “the cargo,” whatever that was, following behind them and due to make port in a couple days.

Whatever he’s planning, the Agent thought, that cargo is the key.

The Chinaman had no intention of lingering on his ship however.  A hired towne car arrived to pick him up, and the Agent had to hastily follow in a taxicab.

He had half expected that the sedan would venture into Chinatown, where the villain might easily blend in with his kinsmen, but to his surprise the car bypassed Canal Street and headed onto the Brooklyn Bridge.  Once across, they meandered past the brownstones of Brooklyn Heights, until quite without warning, the sedan stopped.  The Agent hastily exited the taxi a full block behind the Chinaman, and then lingered in the shadows until his foe entered a building on the corner of Montague Street.

The Agent did not immediately venture into the lion’s den however.  Instead, he moved out from his hiding place and strolled calmly past the brownstone, as if he was an ordinary New Yorker enjoying an evening walk.  From the corner of his eye, he scrutinized the building; it was a unique structure in the neighborhood—the brick edifice was an unnatural crimson hue, and the exterior was decorated with grotesque dragons.

The Chinaman, it seemed, possessed a flair for the theatrical.

The attack came so stealthily that he had no memory of it.  One moment he was in the shadows, peering at the brownstone, and the next he was laying supine on a table in a room that looked like it might be the Devil’s workshop.  He came awake struggling against the thick leather restraints that held him fast.  Only when his primal panic subsided did he relax and take in his surroundings.

The room had the musty feel of a cellar.  There were no windows, only bare concrete walls, illuminated with an eerie red glow.  Directly above him, stretched out across the ceiling was a magnificent and terrible image of a dragon—a stylized wingless Chinese serpentine figure, unlike the rough bas-relief on the exterior of the building.  As he studied the mural, he became aware of another presence in his prison.

The Chinaman.

“Welcome to my humble abode, Secret Agent X.”

“I’m not…” His denial caught in his throat as the menacing villain nimbly hopped up onto the table, crouching over him like a vulture preparing to feast on his flesh.

“Oh, yes.  You are Secret Agent X, and I have been waiting for you.”

There was something in the Chinaman’s hand—something that glinted in the ruddy glow—but it wasn’t until he felt a stab of pain in his arm that he realized what it was.  By then, the poisonous injection was already surging through his bloodstream like liquid fire.

The last thing he saw as the agony consumed him, was the dragon, writhing in ecstasy above his head…. 

X

“Are you all right?”

Burks voice snapped him back into the present, but the pain of the memory continued to burn within him.  He realized that the inspector was now grasping his shoulder and looming over him, just as the Chinaman had done.

The Chinaman, Cheng Lo, had set a trap for him.

He stared up at Burks, still trying to reconcile the vivid recollection with everything that had happened since.  The concern on the policeman’s face seemed so sincere….

“I’m fine,” he managed to say, his voice cracking.  He struggled erect once more and grasped the parapet, staring out into the night as if to resume his vigil.  In truth, he was fearful of letting the detective see the doubt that lingered in his eyes.  Why had he trusted Burks with the secret of his identity?

The inspector however did not pursue the matter.  “Look,” he said, almost shouting as he pointed to the skyline.  “There it is.”

The Agent followed the invisible line of the other man’s finger and saw a blinking star moving over the rooftops.  “An airplane?”

“Better than an airplane,” Burks answered with a gleeful grin.

Instead of wings, the approaching aircraft had a pair of horizontal propellers on outriggers, giving it vertical lift while an ordinary prop on its nose pulled it forward through the sky.  It was a helicopter, likely the German Focke-wulfe or a prototype based on that design.  Unlike an airplane or gyrocopter, the helicopter could land almost vertically, setting down without a runway on a space as small as the span of its rotor blades.

Just as with the portable two-way radio, the appearance of the strange wing-less aircraft, beating its way through the sky, struck the Agent as completely wrong.  He couldn’t bring himself to believe that the New York Police Department had access to machines and equipment like that.  But Dr. Wu Sun might.  As he grappled with the mystery, the helicopter slowed its approach directly overhead and began to descend, whipping up a tempest that seemed powerful enough to blast him from his perch.  He imitated Burks’ posture, crouching low as the pilot of the flying machine gingerly settled the craft onto the rooftop.

“Come on!” the detective shouted, circling around the helicopter in order to wrap his arms around the frame of the outrigger.

Braving the whirlwind, the Agent approached the craft, but instead of climbing on, he stared accusingly at the man whom he was quite certain was not Inspector Burks after all. 

“Who are you?”

Burks’ eyes narrowed and there was no doubt that he had heard the accusatory question over the din.  Before he could frame an answer, the door leading back into the building burst open and half a dozen black-clad forms vomited forth onto the tumultuous rooftop. 

The inspector acted instinctively, stabbing his gun at them and pulling the trigger.

The Agent gaped in disbelief at what he saw.

Even with the noise of the helicopter’s engines, the report of a gunshot should have been audible, but Burks’ weapon made no sound.  There was no jet of flame as the gun discharged; only a hint of white vapor that was swept away by the rotor wash the moment it left the barrel.

Inspector Burks had a gas gun.

The mere sight of the gun had more of an effect on the onrushing horde than the dose of anaesthetizing gas, which was rendered completely ineffectual by the artificial wind created by the helicopter.  The attackers held back for just a second, not realizing that the weapon was powerless to harm them, which gave the Agent just enough time to swing onto the outrigger.  The pilot wasted no time in lifting the whirlybird straight up into the night sky.

However, the Agent felt no sense of relief as he watched the intruders on the rooftop fall away beneath his feet.  He had escaped them, true, but in so doing he had committed himself to following a man whose weapons and abilities seemed to match his own, and he knew of only one person with the resources to so perfectly imitate him.  As the helicopter raced through the chilly night, he could only hold on for dear life and gather his courage for the coming showdown.

It did not even occur to him that he had left the jug of water behind on the rooftop.

X

The flight was interminably long and yet as he clutched the frigid metal skeleton that held one of the upright rotor assemblies in place, the Agent could not help but be awestruck by the beauty of the vast cityscape beneath him.  Very few of the weary souls who called the city home ever got see it like this; not a maze of concrete canyons, but rather a forest of monumental trees, twinkling with thousands of tiny stars—a living organism.  This was what he had sworn to protect, and what he was prepared to give his life for.  He had no idea what Cheng Lo and his inscrutable master had planned for his city, but he swore by all he held holy that he would live to see them fail.

First however, he had to deal with the man pretending to be Inspector Burks—possibly Cheng Lo himself.  He still had his own gun, with at least two more doses of the knockout gas, but his biggest advantage would not be his ability to fight—he wasn’t sure he possessed the strength for another pitched battle—but rather the fact that his foe was unaware that he had uncovered their scheme.

Who are you fooling? he chided himself.  You still don’t have a clue what’s going on.

Maybe not, but as long as the phony Burks thought he was cooperating, he would have a chance to figure the rest of it out.

Nevertheless, the scope of Wu Sun’s grand design was never far from his thoughts as the helicopter brushed across the Manhattan skyline and then ventured out across the Hudson River toward New Jersey.  Another fifteen minutes passed before the pilot angled the aircraft toward a brightly lit airfield.

The moment the helicopter touched down “Burks,” still carrying the container of water, hastened to his side, wearing an expression of grave concern.  “How are you doing?”

The Agent searched the other man’s face for any sign of duplicity; if the phony policeman was faking his anxiety for the Agent’s health, then he was a masterful actor.  “I’ll manage,” he replied, then as causally as he could, he asked.  “So why are we in Jersey?”

“Let’s get into the hangar.  I think we’ll be safe there. I’ll tell you everything.”

He guided the Agent to a small apartment at the back of the enormous Quonset hut where the helicopter was kept when not in use.  A pot of coffee was waiting and Burks poured a mug for each of them before settling down in the modest dining area.  The Agent took a seat across from him, his hand on the grips of his gas gun beneath the table.  To his surprise, Burks placed his own pistol on the tabletop, as if trying to signal his good faith.

“To answer your question, we are in New Jersey because Dr. Wu Sun won’t be able to track you here.”

The statement caught the Agent off guard.  “Care to explain that?”

“That scar on your hand,” said Burks.  “That’s how he’s been able to follow your movements in the city.  That’s how they caught you at the warehouse, again at the restaurant, and then at my lab.

“I couldn’t figure out why he would poison you like that, but then the Geiger counter gave me the idea that maybe he’s using the radiation as a way of tracking you.”

“That’s crazy.  He’d have to have Geiger counters all over the city.”

Burks nodded.  “If it was anyone but Dr. Wu Sun, I’d agree that it sounds… implausible.  But there’s no denying the fact that you have a strip of radioactive metal in your hand.”

The Agent realized that he was unconsciously scratching the scar and forced his hand away.  As much as he wanted to disbelieve the other man’s suggestion, it did have a ring of truth about it.  “Tracking me.  Why?  Why not just kill me when he had me captive?”

 “I think he did it so that you would find me.”

“You?”

Burks took a deep breath, and the Agent sensed that the moment had arrived for the critical revelation.  Nevertheless, nothing could have prepared him for what he heard the man say next.

“Yes.  You see I am Secret Agent X.”

X

The silence that followed was uncomfortably long, but somehow when Burks…or X… or whoever he really was spoke again, the Agent felt like still needed a few minutes to digest the statement.

“I know you’re thinking: ‘How can he be Agent X if I’m Agent X?’   Well, there’s an explanation…  It’s a doozy, but if you’ll hear me out, you realize that we both want the same thing: to stop Dr. Wu Sun.”

“Okay, I’m listening.”  How are you going to try to twist my brain now?  He thought, but didn’t say.

“To begin with, you are David Hyde of Scotland Yard; the fingerprints were a perfect match.  I even have a picture of you, and I’m betting that if you remove your disguise, the face will be a match too.”

Clever.  False documents to back up this madness.  But why?  What could Cheng Lo hope to gain by convincing me that I’m David Hyde?

“So now you’re wondering why you think you are Secret Agent X,” the man continued.

“I’m afraid you haven’t said anything to convince me otherwise.”

“You were captured in Hong Kong; captured by Dr. Wu Sun himself.  You know that really happened.  You know that he probably tortured you, and you admitted to me earlier that part of your memory has been wiped away.  I think that what Wu did to you is even more complicated than that; I believe that he used hypnosis and drugs to convince you that you are me—Secret Agent X, that is—and then turned you loose in New York.  The cargo that you’ve been chasing, these jugs of water, were put out there to lure both of us in.  Wu must have known that I would investigate, but he had no way to tell who I was.  That’s why he used you.”

Although the other man’s arguments were as counter-intuitive as an assertion that the earth was flat, certain elements of it rang true.  “You were at the warehouse; the hobo that frightened those thugs off.”

A nod.

“And how did you know to come to the restaurant?”

“I followed you from the warehouse to your apartment and then shadowed you as you checked on those rogue doctors. It wasn’t until you disguised yourself as that goon you left in the alley that I realized you weren’t just an undercover detective.  Theatrical disguises and knockout grenades—that was my turf and I was curious about what you were up to.  So I revived your double and managed to get two names from him; The Lung Mei restaurant, and Cheng Lo.

“For the last week, Cheng Lo’s name has been on the lips of every thug and low-life in the city.  But when I heard him say it, I knew you were walking into a trap.  As Inspector Burks, it wasn’t too hard to whistle up a squad of policemen to raid the restaurant.  When that phone call came in, I knew you’d been made.”

“How?  How did they know I wasn’t that thug, Snooze?”

“I think Cheng Lo was watching his radiation detectors.  When he saw that the reading was coming from the same restaurant where his goons were guarding the cargo, he knew that his bogus Secret Agent was closing in.”

The Agent resisted the urge to sneer at the implication that he was “bogus.”  Aside from that particular point of contention however, the idea of Cheng Lo using radiation to follow his movements was an intriguing one.  He realized he was scratching the scar again and forced himself to stop.

“There’s a problem with your theory.  You see, I’m starting to remember what happened.  I wasn’t captured in Hong Kong.  Cheng Lo caught me in Brooklyn, only a few days ago.”

The man wearing Inspector Burks’ face seemed genuinely surprised.  “Did he?  You remember that?  What else do you remember?  How did you escape?”

That stopped him.  Even the simple act of trying to dredge up those memories again sent a spear of pain through his head.  “I don’t…” He sucked in a breath.  “I managed to slip out of my bonds and used my spare make-up kit to disguise myself as one of the thugs.”

That’s what I did, he thought.  It has to be; how else could I have escaped?

The other man stroked his chin thoughtfully.  “I haven’t convinced you that you’re not me, have I?”

The simple truth of the matter was that he had not even for a second considered that he might not be Secret Agent X.  He knew who he was.

And yet, why am I having such a hard time remembering things?  It wasn’t just the missing two weeks.  He found that he couldn’t seem to recall any details about his life.  He knew about the apartments throughout the city, but couldn’t seem to remember the house he had grown up in, or even what his parents looked like.

It’s part of what Cheng Lo did to me.

And he knew that to be true, but what if that villain had in fact done exactly what this man was now claiming?  What if he really was David Hyde?  What if this is what Cheng Lo wants?  What if all of this is an elaborate scheme to destroy who I really am by convincing me that I’m someone else? 

“Cheng Lo knows the answer,” he said at last.  “And I know where to find him.”

The man disguised as Burks looked at him with a curious expression.  “You can’t seriously be thinking of going after him.”

“I don’t see an alternative.  He’s planning something big, and I think we can both agree that getting Secret Agent X out of the way is critical to his scheme.”

“You are in no shape to go up against him.  Even if you were, his radiation detectors would give us away the minute we set foot in the city.”

“Not if we cut this piece of metal out.”

“Even that might not be enough.  The radioactivity has spread throughout your body.”

“I have to go,” he insisted.  “Maybe you’re right.  Maybe I’m not really a secret agent, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Cheng Lo get away with what he’s done to me.  But if that’s not a good enough reason, then try this: I know where Cheng Lo’s base of operations is.  You won’t find it without me.”

The other man regarded him warily.  “You’ll be no good to me in a fight.”

“Then we won’t fight.”  He managed a wry smile.  “We’re Secret Agent X, remember?  The Men of a Thousand Faces?”

At that the man broke into honest laughter.  “You know, it just might work.”

X

Early twilight was just beginning to lighten the sky when the sedan, driven—or so it appeared—by Cheng Lo’s henchman Nails and carrying his injured comrade crossed the George Washington Bridge and began the long journey south across Manhattan island.  The real Nails was still locked up—that much had been confirmed with a phone call to the police—and Secret Agent X’s operatives had detained Snooze.

The Agent—he could not quite bring himself to think of himself as David Hyde, even though deep down, he believed that it must be true—had allowed his host to extract the thin radioactive wire from his hand before leaving the hangar.  The strange scar that had troubled him was now once more a fresh wound in his skin, but the absence of the thin sliver of metal had brought a degree of physical relief, along with easing his mental anguish.  In a very literal sense, Cheng Lo no longer had his hooks in him.

There was only so much that could be done to mask the radiation that had already permeated his flesh, but at the urging of his host—he had taken to calling the man “X”—he had imbibed a great deal of water, to flush at least some of the poison from his body.  He was still weak and faintly nauseous, but even X had commented that he looked like he was feeling better.

But I’m not better, he thought.  Just as he had come to accept that maybe he wasn’t really Secret Agent X, he also knew that the damage Cheng Lo had wrought upon him was both irreversible and fatal.  David Hyde might not have died the way he remembered it, but he was nevertheless a dead man walking.  At least he would have the satisfaction of seeing his tormentor brought down as well.

The great irony as he saw it, was that, by turning him into an almost perfect duplicate of Secret Agent X, Cheng Lo created the very weapon that would help destroy him.

“Be careful,” X had advised him.  “We still don’t know exactly Wu’s grand design is.  We may very well be playing into his hands.”

He had no memory of how David Hyde conducted his investigation, but as Secret Agent X, he knew that he worked alone.  It was an odd feeling then to not only trust the man driving the sedan as a partner, but to actually follow his lead.  He was curious to see if X would make the same choices he might make.

“We’ll circle the block,” X said as they left Brooklyn Bridge and made their way toward the Heights neighborhood.  The Agent/Hyde had given him a rough street address, though strangely he felt compelled to omit mention of the ornate dragons on the exterior.  “Get the lay of the land before we try to go in.”

“If they have a watchman at the door, we may be asked for some kind of password.”

“I thought about that.  It might be better to try to go in a different way?”

“Back door?”

X grinned.  “Something like that.”

The building was exactly as he remembered it, and somehow in the early dawn, the dragons didn’t seem nearly as grotesque as he remembered.  X did not slow or even turn his head in the direction of the building; the only indication that he even saw it was a murmured: “So that’s the lion’s den.”

The Agent whispered an affirmative.  “That’s where he caught me.”

X pulled the car to the curb. “Are you sure you can do this?”

“He has to be stopped.  And I have to understand what he did to me.”

“That’s good enough for me.  Watch your step in there; there’s bound to be some nasty surprises inside that house.  Don’t hesitate to use the gas gun if things go south.”

The Agent held his own familiar pistol—fully recharged and ready for action—up for inspection, then stowed it in a clever pouch sewn into the folds of the pea jacket his host had provided as part of his disguise.  The hidden holster was not the only secret hidden by the coarse navy fabric.  X had outfitted him with a number of gas bombs and throwing darts tipped with a more potent form of the same anesthetic in the gun, ideal for use in close quarters where the gas might inadvertently blow back in one’s own face.

Nothing more was said as they disembarked and began walking down the sidewalk toward their destination.  The Agent felt an odd chill as he passed the place where he had once hidden to observe his foe, and been captured for his efforts. 

To his surprise, ascended the stoop of the building right next to Cheng Lo’s headquarters.  He inserted a key into the lock on the front door and applied gentle pressure.  There was a faint mechanical clicking as tiny cams on the strange key began rising up and down in a careful sequence, experimentally testing every possible setting for the pins in the lock.  After only a few seconds, the key turned and the bolt slid back.

The Agent withheld his inquiries concerning their strategy; he had a pretty good idea what the other man had in mind, and as they began ascending the staircase knew he had judged correctly.

For the second time that night, the pair found themselves on a rooftop.  Like most of the multiple residence apartment houses in the neighborhood, the brownstone had a flat roof and shared walls with structures on either side, although in this particular case, it was a full story taller than the Dragon building on the corner.  The two men crept to the edge and peered over, down onto the roof of Cheng Lo’s headquarters.

X took out a pair of binoculars and began scrutinizing their objective.  There was just enough light in the sky to illuminate the rooftop without revealing their presence to anyone early risers on the street below.  “Looks clear.  But watch your step anyway.”

They shinnied over the wall, making the drop without the aide of the grappling hook and line that X had affixed to the parapet; it would serve its purpose later, in the event that they had to make a hasty retreat.  Using his mechanical skeleton key again, X unlocked and opened the roof door as cautiously as an expert cat burglar.

The staircase descending into the house was as still as a crypt.  Both men strained to catch some sound that might reveal the presence of a living soul within, but absolute silence reigned supreme in the Dragon house.  With his hand resting on the grip of his gas pistol, X began his tentative journey into the darkened interior, with the Agent close on his heels.

They reached the landing of the top floor without incident, but here too they paused, listening for anything—a murmur of conversation, a sleeper snoring, the tick of a clock or the hum of an electric fan—but heard no sound louder than their own soft breathing.  X cautiously tried the doorknob of the first room they came to, and the door swung open to reveal a vacant apartment.

“It would appear Cheng Lo isn’t interested in tenants,” he murmured to his companion as he closed the door.

“I think we’ll find him in the cellar,” the Agent whispered.  He didn’t elaborate, but his suggestion earned a nod, and their explorations resumed.

X tried two more doors before they reached the main floor; both opened onto empty rooms.  For his part, the Agent felt his pulse quicken as they drew closer to the place where Cheng Lo had ripped away a part of his soul.  Although he had never seen the halls through which they now passed, he knew exactly what he would find below them, and the thought filled him with the full spectrum of anxiety.

“I need to go first,” he said abruptly, as X reached for the door leading into the basement.

A flicker of apprehension crossed the other man’s features, but he stepped back and gestured for the Agent to take the lead.  “I’m right behind you.”

That simple assurance filled him with courage.  The pounding of his heart began to subside, enabling him to take that first step… and then another… and another.

And then he saw the light.

The eerie red glow—the hue of a cheap neon sign—filled his eyes, triggering a visceral response.  He almost faltered, almost turned and fled, but the purity of his quest drove him on.  He had sworn to defeat Cheng Lo; he would not fail.  Yet, each step that brought him deeper into the violent crimson dungeon, echoed with the grim certainty that he would not only fail in his mission, but that his very presence here would unleash Dr. Wu Sun’s evil upon the world.  Almost without thinking, he removed the gun from its holster and stabbed it out in front of him, ready to pull the trigger at the first sign of movement.

But there was no one in the cellar.

He stood at the foot of the stairs and gazed on the familiar room.  The table where he had been imprisoned sat in the center of the room, still adorned with the leather restraints that had once held him fast.  Sitting atop the otherwise empty surface was another familiar object—the glass jug he had left behind on the roof of the laboratory building.  Cheng Lo had evidently thought it important enough to retrieve and bring back to his lair, but where were the guards to protect it now?

He scanned every dark corner of the room, looking for black clad assassins or hidden television cameras or trip wires for booby traps, but the cellar was another empty space in an empty building.

“Where are you, Cheng Lo?” he muttered, taking a step toward the table, and then another.

X was close on his heels, walking backward so that his eyes could constantly scan the parts of the room that his partner could not watch.  “We’re too late.”

The Agent stopped directly in front of the table, one hand still gripping the gas gun, as the other reached out to touch the jar of water.  Very slowly he looked up at the dragon mural on the ceiling above.

That was when he remembered who he was.

“No,” he said, no longer whispering.  “We’re just in time.”

And then he turned and shot his gas gun directly into the face of Secret Agent X.

X

“When you see the Dragon, you will remember,” his tormentor had said.

Restrained on the table, consumed by the agony of the procedure, it was impossible to believe that he could ever forget, even for a brief time, this unimaginable experience. 

Nevertheless, he knew it would happen exactly that way.  Already, the lines between who he had once been and the identity imprinted upon his conscious mind were growing indistinct, blurring together like the pigments in a watercolor painting.  He was still in control now, but when the post-hypnotic command took effect, the person he was would fall away, imprisoned in the darkest corners of his mind until….

Until the Dragon.  Look for the Dragon.

But even that bit of knowledge was locked away behind yet another trigger.

“When you find the man you seek, then you will remember the dragon.  You will remember that the answers lie with the Dragon.”

“How will I know when I’ve found him?”  The question came out as a scream; every breath he took was a cry of unbelievable torment.

“You will know.  You will see something that unlocks the door, and then you will remember the Dragon.”

The man had then placed a hand upon his feverish brow in a strange gesture—strange because it seemed like an act of compassion, as a father might comfort an ailing child.  “You are my finest creation,” he said.  “My heart is filled with pride.

“You shall rest until you see the Dragon once more.  Sleep, Cheng Lo, my son.”

X

Secret Agent X lay spread-eagled on the table, even as he had once been.  He—the Agent, the man who had once almost believed he was David Hyde, but now answered to a different name—regarded his prisoner with amusement as the restrained man’s eyes fluttered open.

“David?”  X seemed confused.  That was understandable.  Dr. Wu Sun’s plan was beyond the comprehension of a mere mortal like the Secret Agent.

“No,” The Agent answered.  “I am not David Hyde.  You were mistaken.”

X tested his bonds as he looked around the cellar; the heavy leather straps did not yield one iota.  “You are Cheng Lo,” he said simply.

“I am more than Cheng Lo now,” the Agent answered.

“How?”

“My Master has perfected the process of transferring the consciousness of one mind into another.  Through years of experimentation, he discovered the part of the brain where memories are stored.  If the soul does exist, then this is the place where it lives while we are corporeal.  It is not an organ or tissue, but rather a fluid, which may be drawn out of one body and injected into another.  The brain nevertheless retains much of the knowledge—the instincts and abilities—of its former host, and these are added to the whole.  Thus have I become something greater than merely the sum of body and soul.”

X regarded him coldly.  “And David Hyde?  Does his soul live on somewhere else?”

The question stung, yet he could not put his finger on exactly why.  “Hyde was our enemy, captured while making a feeble attempt to infiltrate my Master’s empire.  Even in your own country, spies are executed for their crimes.

“But Hyde was the perfect vessel for the next stage of my Master’s plan.  He was a man very much like you, Agent X, a master of disguises and an expert at unarmed combat.   The Master honored him by using his shell to carry my essence.”

“And what about your shell, Cheng Lo?  What happened to it?”

The Agent shrugged.  He was only revealing the details of the memory transfer to X because early experiments had shown that when a subject was not mentally prepared to undergo the procedure, death from shock was almost inevitable.  The disposition of his own shell was not something he cared to share with his enemy, but the truth of the matter was that the young and virile flesh of Cheng Lo had now become a house for a much greater consciousness whose own physical form was all but destroyed.

“I’d say you got the raw end of the deal,” X continued.  “That body you’re in—David Hyde’s body—is dying.  Surely you can see that.  The radiation sickness is spreading, destroying your organs.”

“For every great accomplishment, there is also great sacrifice.  Enduring this sickness was a small price to pay in order to see my Master’s goals come to fruition.  Incidentally, you were exactly right about the isotope’s purpose.  The radiation enabled my Master to pinpoint my location at all times, in order to guide me along the path.”

“Why go to all the trouble?”

The Agent laughed.  “You still don’t understand the complexity of the Master’s plan.  You see, until we walked into this room, I still thought that I was you.

“There is much more to the process of transferring a soul than an injection of fluid.  You see, to continue with the analogy, it is necessary to furnish the house before the new tenant can move in.  In the case of Inspector Hyde, that meant hours of hypnosis in order to convince him that he was Secret Agent X.  Then, when the transfer was complete, I underwent a similar process.  My real identity was buried deep beneath the belief that I was Secret Agent X.”

“Why?  Why imitate me?”

“It was the surest way to draw you out.  We could not be certain when, or even if you would attempt to interfere with our plans to move the virus into the city, but the Master felt certain that you would be drawn to the enigma of someone that was in every way like yourself.  And there were other considerations as well.”

“You mentioned a virus.”

“Ah, yes.”  The Agent lifted the container for inspection.  “The Spanish Influenza virus, recovered from victims found frozen on the Kamchatka peninsula.  The liquid you tested is indeed ordinary water, but the inert virus samples are hidden in bubbles within the glass itself.”

“I don’t suppose you’re planning to use those samples in order to develop a vaccine.”

“Oh, we already have.  The Master has a supply adequate to inoculate several thousand individuals.”

“While you unleash a plague that will wipe out millions,” X snarled angrily.

Once again, the Agent winced involuntarily at the other man’s indignation.  The plan was perfect.  Death and suffering were a part of the human condition, but Dr. Wu Sun’s goal would make the world a better place, and the cost in human lives would be small compared to the greater good it would yield.  So why did his enemy’s diatribes fill him with doubt?  He shook his head to clear away the stray thoughts.

“There are enough samples in this one container to begin cultivating the new strain, but it will be a simple thing to retrieve the other two jars once….”

“Once you steal my body,” X finished.

“As you pointed out, this body is not long for the world.  This form was never intended to be anything more than a temporary residence.”

X held his stare.  “You said something earlier: ‘I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Cheng Lo get away with what he’s done to me.’  That was David Hyde talking.  There’s still a part of him in there, fighting to get out.”

The Agent flinched again, but recovered his composure smoothly.  “It was necessary to allow that vestige to come to the surface in order to draw you out, but the post-hypnotic command has rendered it quiescent once more.”

“I don’t think so.  There’s more to a man than just his memories.  You are David Hyde, not Cheng Lo.”

The Agent shuddered again, but tore his gaze away from the prisoner.  He set the jar on the floor beneath the table and picked up a syringe filled with amber liquid.  “I have told you what you need to know in order to prepare you for the next phase of the transfer.  There is much work yet to be done before your body can be made ready to house my essence, but no further discussion is required.”

“I’m not talking to you Cheng.  I’m talking to David Hyde.”  X drew in a sharp breath.  “I’m talking to Secret Agent X.  To the man who has sworn to defend the city from villains like Dr. Wu.”

Enough. 

The denial screamed in his head, but for some reason, his lips did not form the word.  He thrust the syringe forward, stabbed the needle into the prisoner’s bicep, and depressed the plunger, injecting the solution—a careful balance of sedatives and neurotoxins milked from the venom of scorpions—into Secret Agent X’s veins.

Except… he hadn’t moved at all.  Somewhere between his brain, where the nervous impulses formed, and the muscles of his extremities, the connection had been broken.

I’m Secret Agent X, and I can beat you Cheng Lo.

The words had not been spoken, certainly not by the prisoner strapped to the table, but he heard them nonetheless.  The voice, not his own, but still very much the voice of David Hyde, echoed through his head.

No.  You don’t exist any more.

You have fashioned the weapon of your own destruction, Cheng Lo.

An invisible war raged within the man as the last remnants of David Hyde and the false, but nonetheless convincing persona of Secret Agent X battled for control of the ravaged body that stood statue still in front of the bound prisoner.

Yet, for all that Dr. Wu Sun did not completely understand the intricate connection between the physical brain, the mind and the soul, he had anticipated that such a conflict might arise.

“When you see the Dragon, you will remember.  Look to the Dragon, Cheng Lo.”

The voice of his master broke through the struggle and the Agent’s eyes flicked up to behold the ornate design that stretched across the ceiling.  As before, the powerful image triggered the hypnotic command, banishing the displaced personalities to bring Cheng Lo back to the surface.

“Now I shall end this madness,” he rasped, raising the syringe.

But the table was empty.

Shocked, he whirled around, looking for his foe, but in that instant a powerful hand seized the injector from his grip and in a single fluid motion, the needle reversed and stabbed into his upper arm.  There was a blossom of pain as the contents erupted into the soft muscle tissue, and then a wave of darkness crashed over him.

His last thought as he fell into the void was that he had succeeded.  He had beaten Cheng Lo.

X

One month later, Inspector David Hyde made his final journey, returning home to his native country where he was laid to rest.  Despite the best efforts of the staff at a private hospital in upstate New York, the radiation poisoning had ravaged his body beyond any hope of recovery.  What none of the doctors treating him realized was that David Hyde had already been dead for weeks.  Only his ghost—the echo of the man he had been—had remained, lingering only long enough to see his murder avenged.

A New York City police detective escorted the lead-lined coffin to its destination and greeted the Chief Inspector who had been Hyde’s superior prior to his disappearance in Hong Kong.

“Ah, Inspector Burks, is it?  I’m grateful to you for bringing David home.”

The New York detective shook the other man’s hand.  “It was the least I could do. A pity that the world will never know how much it owes this man.”

The Chief Inspector shook his head sadly.  “It still boggles my mind.  The nefarious Dr. Wu Sun?  A plot to unleash a deadly plague?  And our man Hyde helping Secret Agent X foil the scheme?  It’s quite a bit to digest.”

The British chief of detectives had not been told the half of it.  Not a whisper had been spoken of Wu Sun’s attempt to transfer the consciousness of his lieutenant Cheng Lo into Hyde’s body.  Hyde’s friends and surviving family didn’t need to know the full extent of the terrors wrought upon the brave policeman, and omitting mention of the whole affair in no way diminished his heroism.

Nevertheless, the war in which Hyde had made the ultimate sacrifice was far from won.  Dr. Wu Sun had been beaten, all three of the flasks containing his virus samples had been destroyed and his operation in New York City had been effectively shut down, but the nefarious mastermind was still at large, and his ambitions had not changed one bit.  The only difference now was that he had revealed himself to Secret Agent X.

You were right to fear me, X thought as the casket was transferred into a waiting hearse for the final leg of its journey.  You have made an enemy, Dr. Wu Sun, and I will not rest until this brave man is avenged.

He laid his hand on the coffin.

“Good bye, my friend.  It was my honor to serve with you,” he whispered, his voice too low to be heard by the Chief Inspector.  “You made a fine Secret Agent X.”

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