The Lazarus Plot (11 page)

"There were some complications," Frank explained. "You know how it is. Even with the best-laid plans, little things can go wrong. Nothing important, though. We'll explain it all to the boss when we see him."

"See the boss, that's a laugh," said Fritz.

Frank remembered the voice of the Lazarus leader over the intercom-and his absence from view. "I mean, talk to him, of course."

"Yeah, like they say, take us to your leader," said Joe with what he hoped was a winning grin.

As Hugo and Fritz turned to lead them into the mansion, Frank and Joe exchanged quick nods, and then they moved.

Frank attacked Hugo from behind, and Joe attacked Fritz. Both Hardy boys used the same efficient punch on the back of the neck to knock the men out. Swiftly Frank retrieved the rope, and within minutes Fritz and Hugo were bound, gagged with their own shirts, and placed out of sight in a front hall closet. "So far, so good," Joe remarked.

"Good?" exclaimed Frank. "We got through by the skin of our teeth." "We've still got a crack at rescuing Iola," said Joe. "That's good enough for me." "Now all we have to do is find her," Frank pointed out. Then his look of concern changed to a broad smile, and he said, "Hi, Ivan, how's it going? Broken any arms or legs lately?"

Ivan had emerged from a room off the hallway and stood staring at them. His mountainous body seemed to fill the doorway.

The Hardy boys didn't even have to look at each other to know what to do. Joe hit him low, with a tackle around the knees, and as Ivan bent over to grab Joe, Frank hit him high, with a chop that sent Boshevsky toppling over like a huge tree.

Then, muscles straining, the Hardy boys dragged his body back to the room from where he had come. They closed the door behind them.

"Looks like this is Ivan's workshop," said Frank, taking in the operating table complete with straps to hold down a victim.

"I think we can give big boy here a taste of his own medicine," said Joe.

With a mighty heave, Frank and Joe swung Ivan on the table and strapped him down.

"Time to wake up," said Joe, gently slapping the giant's cheeks until his eyelids flickered open.

"Talk and talk fast," said Frank. "Where is Iola?"

"You cannot get away with this," Ivan snarled, immediately realizing that his captors were the real Frank and Joe, and not Frank II and Joe II. "I will not say a word."

"I think you will;" said Joe, and he let his gaze rest on a row of sharp metal instruments neatly laid out on a stand beside the operating table.

"She is in a room upstairs, on the second floor, the third door to your right," I van Boshevsky said quickly. "I am telling the truth, believe me. You don't have to - ”

Frank cut off his speech with surgical tape he found next to the instruments.

"Never fails," he said to Joe. "The biggest bullies are always the biggest cowards."

Joe wasn't interested in philosophy. "Come on, let's move." "Not so fast," said Frank. He opened the door to the room cautiously, and eased his head out.

"Okay. The coast is clear. All systems go." He and Joe ran up the stairway three steps at a time. Joe was the first to reach the door to which Ivan had directed them. Saying a silent prayer, he tried the knob. The door swung open.

Joe felt dizzy with joy when the girl sitting at a desk with her back to him turned around, and he saw that she was Iola.

"Joe, Frank, it is you, isn't it?" she cried, and the same joy lit her face. "This isn't another one of their tricks?"

"It's us all right," Joe said. "And we're getting you out of here."

"Oh, it's too good to be true," she said in a dazed voice. "How - ?"

"We don't have time to explain it now," said Frank. "Let's hurry."

"Of course," Iola agreed, nodding. She stood up. "But before we go, let me just go get one thing.

"Iola, you haven't changed a bit," said Joe. "Every single time we were going to go out, you remembered something at the last minute and had to go back for it."

"That's right, I haven't changed at all," Iola replied, and opened a drawer in a table by her bed. "Well, maybe I've changed just a little bit. I didn't use to know how to use this." Iola turned a Lugar pistol in her hand. It was pointed straight at Joe's heart.

JOE GRINNED. "HEY, Iola, watch where you're pointing that thing. It could go off. Remind me to teach you how to handle weapons sometime."

Iola didn't return his grin. And her weapon didn't waver. "You two do what I say. I don't want to have to use this. But one false move from either of you, and I will."

The voice was Iola's, yet it wasn't. Joe began to detect a mechanical sound to her words, as if they were being played on a tape.

"What's wrong with you, Iola?" asked Joe.

But Frank had already seen what Joe was unwilling to see. "We'd better do what she says, Joe. She means business with that gun."

"But - " Joe said.

"You have to face it," said Frank. "They've succeeded in brainwashing her. They've made a puppet of her. She's in their hands."

"And right now you're in mine, and don't forget it," said Iola. Still covering them with her gun, she pressed a button on an intercom machine on her bedside table.

"What is it?" a voice answered.

At the sound of the voice, Frank and Joe exchanged glances. The voice seemed strangely familiar. It belonged to someone they knew, but who? The answer stayed maddeningly out of reach, even though both Hardy boys strained to come up with it as the conversation over the intercom continued.

"The Hardys busted in here, but I got the drop on them," said Iola. "What do you want me to do with them?"

"You're sure they're the Hardy boys and not our Hardy boys?" the voice replied, its tone charged with sudden alertness.

"I'm sure," Iola said. "Unless you were giving me some kind of test."

"Of course not, we have absolute confidence in you," said the voice. Then it paused, before going on, "That means something went wrong, very wrong, with plan B, after their escape fouled up plan A. We'll have to switch to plan C, the doomsday scenario."

"What's that?" asked Iola.

"You'll find out soon," the voice answered.

"Bring the boys to the conference room. I'll gather the others. It's time to wind things up here."

There was the click of the intercom being turned off, and Iola turned to the Hardy boys.

"You heard the boss. Let's go."

"Is that your boss?" asked Frank. "You've had a change of leadership since we were here last. He sounds different."

"You'll see," was all Iola would say, and an impatient gesture with her gun stopped any more questions.

The conference room turned out to be the room where Frank and Joe had been questioned during their first visit to the clinic. Familiar faces greeted them when they entered.

There was the arrogant face of Dr. Helmut von Heissen, the impassive face of Colonel Chin Huan, and the pouting face of Peter Clark.

One more person was in the room. He was a man of average size and weight, wearing the same white lab coat as the others. But he was far different from them in one respect. He had no face.

Or rather, his-face was covered by bandages, wrapped mummy like around his head, with gaps at the eyes, nose, and mouth.

But his voice identified him instantly. It was the voice that had spoken to Iola over the intercom, the Lazarus leader.

"I couldn't locate Fritz, Hugo, and Ivan," he said. "But I'm sure the Hardy boys here can tell us where they are."

"Talk," Iola ordered them.

Frank and Joe looked at the gun in her hand and then at the look in her eyes. Her pitiless gaze told them that her finger was tight on the trigger.

"Fritz and Hugo are tied up in the front hall closet," said Joe.

"And Ivan is strapped down in his torture chamber," added Frank.

"Get them," the Lazarus leader ordered his men. Pon Heissen, Chin, and Peter Clark hurried off.

"We'll wait until everyone is assembled here," the leader said.

They didn't have long to wait. In less than ten minutes, the entire team was in the room.

"I wanted all of us to witness our latest triumph," the leader began proudly. "It will be good for our morale to see what achievements we are capable of especially now, when we have suffered a slight setback. It will help inspire us in the period ahead, when we will have to suspend our operations until we find a secure new base."

He nodded to Dr. von Heissen. "My good Doctor, I will let you do the unveiling, since it is your superb skill we will be admiring."

"You do me a great honor," Dr. von Heissen said crisply. He removed a pair of surgical scissors from his worn black leather medical bag and, with practiced expertise, snipped the bandages around the leader's head and carefully unwrapped them. "It can't be!" exclaimed Joe, his jaw dropping.

"I knew that voice sounded familiar," said Frank, trying to remain cool and ignore the feeling that his brain was being scrambled.

Standing in front of them was the Gray Man. "You see what a good job you did," the leader said to Dr. von Heissen. .

"I must admit, I was a little worried," the doctor said. "Those snapshots I had to work from were not of the best quality, even though the Assassins claimed they were the best available." "And your voice passed the test as well, Peter," the leader continued.

"It would have been even better if they'd given me better tapes," replied Peter Clark, his pale face flushed with pleasure.

"It is a shame that we could not get the information about this Mr. Gray that we needed from the Network head so that you could have programmed it into me, Colonel Chin," the leader told his chief brainwasher.

Chin shrugged. "Life is a balance of victory and defeat. One must accept both." "I'm afraid we'll have need of your philosophy in the dark days ahead," said the leader.

By now Frank had stopped listening to the conversation. He was too busy trying to figure things out.

"So you planned on kidnapping the Network head and getting information from her about the Gray Man," he said to the Lazarus leader. "Then, after you were programmed well enough, you - " Frank paused, not wanting to say more. He suddenly felt a little sick.

"Very good," the leader said with a smile. "Please continue. I want to see how smart you really are."

"Yeah, go on," said Joe. "I'd like to make some sense out of all this, too."

"All right," replied Frank. "After you got the information you needed from the Network head, you planned to rub her out. Then you'd get your hands on the Gray Man, who was her natural successor. You'd rub him out, too, and take his place. And you'd be head of the most powerful undercover security force in America."

"Beautiful, isn't it?" said the leader. Then he shrugged. "Such a pity it didn't work out this time. Dr. von Heissen will have to go to the trouble of giving me yet another face, for a while. I must decide if I want my old one, or a nice new one. I always did want to look like Robert Redford."

"Why not Count Dracula?" asked Joe. "It would be perfect for somebody who likes to suck the life out of the living." Angrily Joe looked at the Lazarus leader. Then he looked at Iola. She was still covering him with her pistol and looking at him with dead eyes. Joe could not believe what Lazarus had done to her.

The Lazarus leader smiled and turned to his team.

"I think we should let Joe in on the truth, don't you?" he said. "It is only fitting that he and his brother should appreciate how magnificent your work is, even though they might not applaud."

"What do you mean?" asked Joe, but Frank suspected what was coming.

"You tell them, Dr. von Heissen," ordered the leader.

"Iola here is one of my greatest successes," said Dr. von Heissen. "Of course, I had a great number of excellent photographs to work from. Iola's parents had a superb photo album of their late daughter."

"Their late daughter, But - " began Joe.

"See how astonished Joe is? How he still cannot believe this girl is not really his beloved Iola?" the Lazarus leader exclaimed. "And he knew her so well. Doctor, Colonel, Peter, your work has passed the ultimate test with flying colors. "

"You can't kid me," said Joe. "Nobody but Iola could have known that stuff about all the times we were together by ourselves."

"There is one thing you did not know about Iola," said the Lazarus leader. "Your girlfriend kept a diary. An extremely detailed diary. It lay untouched in her room, along with her photo albums. All we had to do was get into her room while her parents were away, make copies, and use them to create the Iola you see before you, her looks, her voice, her memories absolutely true to life."

"But who are you?" Joe asked the girl in a stunned voice.

"I am ... I am ... " the girl paused and looked to her leader for help.

"Unfortunately, it was necessary to wipe out the memory of her previous identity to ensure total success in the transformation," said the leader. "Iola two here only knows the part she is supposed to play, like an actress who has memorized her lines, and that she is to follow my orders without question. Am I right, my dear?"

"But you can't just make puppets out of people," Joe protested. "Human beings aren't made out of some kind of putty."

At that everyone except Iola II smiled - the leader, the team of scientists, and the two guards, all enjoying Joe's refusal to admit the truth of what he was seeing and hearing.

Iola II remained expressionless, her eyes blank, as she awaited orders.

Still smiling, the Lazarus leader said, "I see you are still not convinced, Joe. But maybe I can offer you final proof. I and the others are about to leave you alone with Iola, so that you will not be able to imagine she is acting out of fear of me. It would rob us of the full pleasure of our triumph if you were not totally convinced. Besides, I'm sure my scientific team here would welcome this excellent test of their work. It will prove valuable in future assignments."

The leader turned to Iola. "We are leaving now. I want you to wait fifteen minutes, then leave, too, and join us at the clearing in the forest. A helicopter will be waiting there to take us across the Canadian border to the hunting lodge."