1968…
In a Secret Service meeting room in London, the leaders of three intelligence organisations were conferring to address a serious problem. The meeting had been convened by Hobbs, and included Sir Curtis Seretse (the chief of Department S) and Tremayne (the head of the Geneva based Nemesis organisation).
"So each of us has lost one of our best operators," said Seretse, "Hobbs has lost John Drake. Tremayne has lost Richard Barrett, and I've lost Stuart Sullivan."
"Let me say at the outset, Mr Hobbs, that I flew here from Geneva, because I highly approve of your suggestion that we team our remaining operatives up to look for a lead on the whereabouts of Drake, Sullivan and Barrett. I would like to propose that we mix the teams up, to give each agent a fresh perspective on the case."
"I must confess that I called you in, because I don't have any agents with the means to find Drake," said Hobbs, "But I could coordinate our three organisations and make the crime files of our organisation temporarily available to your operators."
"That sits well with me," said Seretse.
So it came to pass that the Champions and Department S were teamed in pairs.
Tremayne assigned Craig Stirling to work with Anabel Hurst of Department S. They went to Paris, France and began making inquiries with the local law enforcement divisions.
Sir Curtis asked Jason King to work with Sharon McCready, and they went to West Berlin.
"So you write detective stories?" asked Sharon.
"Yes. Have you read Mark Caine?" Jason replied, wondering if she would consider the question rather rhetorical, since she hadn't mentioned the lead character of his novels.
"Unfortunately, I haven't finished a book for years," said Sharon, "Nemesis keeps us fairly busy."
Sharon was wondering about Richard. It had not been that long, since he had been conditioned and hypnotized by an evil twisted man, programmed with false memories of Craig Stirling as the cause of the death of a non-existent girl whom Richard had been convinced that he loved. When Craig had tracked Richard down, they had fought, evenly matched with their special powers, which would have made the fight look normal to the hypnotist, had he witnessed any of it. It had taken Sharon's help to subdue Richard and give him an antidote. Tremayne had been subjected to the same thing. These two were the only Nemesis victims who'd been given the antidote in time to save their lives. The previous victims were dead.
So Sharon kept asking herself if Richard had come unstuck again. Had there been a delayed effect of the hypnotic conditioning, which Richard had concealed, or not even been aware of?
She could not share these considerations with Jason King of Department S. It made the teaming of Nemesis and Department S operators rather a pointless exercise. Yet even her own chief Tremayne had not been let in on the secret powers held by Richard Barrett & Craig Stirling and Sharon McCready after their advanced surgical operations performed by the advanced civilization they had encountered that day in the snow.
Sharon resorted to an uncharacteristic level of flippancy.
"So tell me, Jason, why do you wear matching ties and shirts? Most men prefer a contrast."
"I suppose I borrowed the idea from Mark Caine," said Jason, without the faintest trace of a smile on his face.
Jason was relieved. At least she hadn't asked him why he always lost his fights. He'd learned that a civilian (one who had occasionally helped Major Carter) was forever being challenged in pubs by people who knew of his fighting prowess. As a result, Jason had avoided winning any fights.
So both of them were hiding matters to do with their abilities.
Over in Paris, Craig Stirling was having strange images appear in his mind. He could see things through Richard Barrett's eyes. Richard was a prisoner. He was being subjected to a bizarre interrogation. To Craig this had an awfully familiar ring. He had been locked up and interrogated once, only to learn that his ordeal was instigated with Tremayne's approval. He had eventually let it go, including his frustration with the lack of help he'd received from Sharon and Richard. Had Richard now been put through the same thing? The interrogator Craig remembered had been obsessed with Craig's abilities to get results in the most difficult cases, and had sought Tremayne's permission to subject him to several attempts to force Craig's secrets from him.
Yet why would Tremayne have gone along with the Department S team-ups, if he had known himself what was happening to Richard? Was it to keep them from learning the truth? No. That wasn't it. Department S and Hobbs had lost agents too, and they couldn't all be prisoners of Nemesis's in house interrogator.
Craig also enjoyed a form of telepathy with Sharon. He did his best to concentrate on her mind until he felt a form of recognition from her in Berlin.
"Sharon," he thought to her, "You need to get to a telephone and contact me. I'll send you another mental signal when I'm back at the hotel with Anabel."
"Craig, is anything wrong? You seem a bit distant," said Anabel.
"I think I need to get back to the hotel and check on Sharon and Jason's progress," said Craig.
"Alright," said Anabel, "… Are you and Sharon involved?"
"No. We work well together, with Richard too. I think I'd be more likely to take an opportunity to become involved with an agent from another organisation, during a combined operation."
His hints were not lost on Anabel, who smiled, and offered her hand. Craig took it and felt pleased to have met someone on the job, someone who took his fancy and also understood the nature of the job's risks, its hours, its frequent travel, and its necessity. For the moment though, he didn't want her knowing about their special powers. Her reciprocating feelings for him would keep her off guard enough to be less suspicious of his private call to Sharon.
Soon Craig and Sharon were in their adjacent rooms at L'Hotel de Tourisme.
Craig called reception.
"I'd like to make a person to person call," said Craig, wondering why that expression sounded so much like a tautology, "to a Sharon McCready at the Grossberg in West Berlin, Germany. I'll give you the number."
Craig waited for the connection to be made.
"Sharon, is King in the room with you?"
"No. We've got separate rooms too," said Sharon, "Craig, I've been getting a mental image from Richard. He's being given the works by an interrogator in a location. I do have a directional feeling for it too."
"I've got the same thing from here," said Craig, "If we get to him, we'll most likely find John Drake and Stuart Sullivan too. Let's triangulate our mental perceptions of Richard's direction, and try it again as we get closer after some travelling."
"How will we explain these hunches to Jason and Anabel?" asked Sharon.
"We'll each tell our temporary team mate that we got a tip from the other," said Craig.
All four agents were soon flying from either France or Germany to the location indicated by Sharon's and Craig's mental messages from Richard Barrett.
In time, all four found themselves converging on an island with a picturesque holiday village.
Richard Barrett had found himself put in a room and asked endless questions about the time he had taken off after his encounter with the hypnotist. He had assumed that anyone who abducted him worked for criminals, and had refused to offer information. If it had been another in house interrogation plot, he would still not cooperate, in order to protect the secret powers that he shared with Craig and Sharon.
Stuart Sullivan had been questioned about a report that he had lost a fight with a woman, whom Anabel Hurst had subsequently despatched with a minimum of effort. The truth was as simple as the fact that he had been caught off guard by his admiration for the woman's radiant beauty. He had found himself struggling not to imagine the woman as a softer, innocent person. Yet every time she gave him a haughty almost sneering stare, he couldn't help picturing her as a vampire killer or a vampire itself, or a strange invader. Then she had begun to throw him around the room, using a series of martial arts manoeuvres.
John Drake had been bitter about the way his superior Hobbs had operated, deporting a man to whom Drake had offered clemency in order to strike a deal with him; attempting to have a married couple killed, because the wife had unwittingly framed the husband as a double agent, and various other callous approaches. He had thought of resigning in late 1965, but put the idea on hold. At the beginning of 1968, his life had seemed to become more colourful, but in the end, his old feelings of disapproval had resurfaced in his mind. Finally he had had it out with Hobbs, and resigned. The next thing he knew he had been abducted and taken to the village and interrogated by a succession of men who only referred to themselves as Number 2.
Now there were two more victims of whoever had resented Hobbs' acceptance of Drake's sudden resignation. They stayed in small villas on either side of Drake's. John Drake introduced himself to Stuart Sullivan and Richard Barrett, and they all swapped notes.
Richard could not chance using his powers. It was bad enough to think what would happen if the other abducted agents knew of his powers. Yet he was now on an island, where he suspected he was monitored all day long by a very dangerous group of people.
To make things worse, Drake soon told him that the island was guarded by remote controlled large blob shaped constructions which made strange metallic howling noises and rolled and bounced after any would be escapee.
Sharon, Jason, Craig and Anabel waited until nightfall and then snuck onto the island, hoping that their boat would not be discovered. Suddenly the strangest sight came towards them. In the light that shone down from the village lamps, they saw a huge blob of something or other. It was actually howling.
"Sharon," whispered Craig, standing right beside her, "Try to move around, to position yourself, so that the blob is between us and Department S. Then let's punch that blob with all our strength, and see what happens."
"Alright, but no jumping, even when the others aren't looking, Craig. Whoever set that spherical monstrosity on us probably did so because they observed our arrival with a hidden camera. We don't want them seeing us leap several feet in the air."
Keeping an eye on the movements of the Department S agents, Craig and Sharon ducked around, until the blob was between Department S and Nemesis. To their closed circuit TV audience, it would look as though the four agents had been trying to surround the blob.
"Now Sharon, hit it," said Craig.
Both Champions punched the strange opponent with all their strength. It fell apart and lay on the ground in a heap of material, some metallic and electronic, some of a more pliable material for cosmetic purposes.
"We got it!" called Craig.
"We?" thought Jason, "I always lose my fights, and this was the strangest one I've ever had. I seem to have won for once, without even participating. I have no idea how I'll convert this to a Mark Caine yarn."
"I'm afraid we weren't much help," said Anabel.
"Let's head up to that lamp lit village," said Sharon.
With his main line of defence defeated, Number 2 fled the island in a helicopter, before he himself could be questioned about the purpose of the Village or about the people behind it.
Drake, Sullivan and Barrett were united with the rest of the trios from Nemesis and Department S. An extensive search of the island discovered a number of files and documents proving that the Village had been run by a man called Igor Terrence Cornish, who kidnapped agents and attempted to have them interrogated and broken. They planted explosives timed to destroy the Village as soon as they were a safe distance away on their boat.
The three teams began a combined global manhunt, until they located and captured Igor Terrence Cornish. Again it was the Nemesis trio who first got a bearing on them. Anabel and Jason and Stuart were soon talking, and it became apparent that neither one had seen their partner obtain any of the information which led both teams to the Village in the first place. So how had they done it. They met with Drake, Hobbs and Seretse and reported their suspicions that the Nemesis operators might have been responsible for the Village project.
After his lengthy stay at the Village, Drake was now more convinced than ever of the need for him to rejoin the service and work to unearth and defeat criminal powers the world over. He requested Hobbs' permission to team with Department S and spy on the Nemesis trio.
Anabel Hurst concealed the fact that she was the only one who couldn't be objective. Her feelings for Craig were in conflict with her team's suspicions of Nemesis. Yet she resolved to stay on the job, to find out whether or not it was prudent to continue seeing Craig. She was unwilling to confide in her team mates, let alone in Drake, regarding her feelings for Craig, and certainly didn't want to risk being asked to manipulate their relationship to learn if Craig had been keeping any criminal secrets.
Tremayne assembled his three best operators at Nemesis headquarters.
"I'm assigning you three to protect a prominent judge due for retirement soon. He has been keen to see the conviction of this man: Anton Panz. Panz has a global criminal conglomerate, with one of its legitimate fronts recently exposed. He has been threatening Judge Fulton's life, if the case is not decided in his favour."
The Champions got on the case and became Judge Fulton's escort, but soon learned that Panz was playing for keeps. He sent a small horde of armed hoods to abduct the whole party and take them out to sea to be drowned.
Richard, Craig and Sharon were not, at this point, worried about the Judge learning their secrets. Yet Craig had once said, "Nothing can cure a chest full of lead."
Several criminals armed with automatic rifles could not all be ducked or dodged, not even by three super powered agents of Nemesis. Yet it played on their minds, that they would all soon be dead anyway.
Suddenly the boat was hit with several canisters of tear gas, and another boat's lights were turned on, to reveal three men wearing gas masks. It was Department S and John Drake.
Finally the Champions were able to act, and help Drake and Department S gain control of the situation.
"How did you find us?" asked Richard.
Without actually telling any lies, Drake and Department S let the Nemesis team assume that they had been after Panz's men themselves.
Panz was convicted and jailed.
Department S and Drake never did learn the Champions' secret. Yet their suspicions were somewhat weakened, after seeing how the Nemesis team had lost control of the situation and required rescuing themselves.
Judge Fulton invited all three teams to a special retirement party and then settled down to enjoy retirement, while still doing his best to redress the occasions where the guilty managed to avoid convictions. A few years later, he would find two younger allies and channel their energy into assisting him: Daniel Wilde and Brett Sinclair.