Author's Note: My rough draft for the actual meeting was less than 4000 words, and I honestly thought it was almost ready to go at the time I posted what is now "Chapter 1." I was wrong. I kept trying to fill in gaps and flesh things out, and recently I realized the new-and-hopefully-improved draft for the meeting was well over 7000 words (and probably not quite done yet when I took that count). I doubted many of my readers would want to read all that in one gulp, so I reluctantly chose to divide that material into two chapters—the one you're about to read, and the one I'll post in another two or three days. Weeks ago, when I first worked out the general idea for how this story's plot would go, and started writing dialogue for it, I thought I was looking at a single-chapter story. Now it has morphed into a three-chapter story (still following the original plot outline, though), but I don't intend to let it go any further than that. (Hey! Stop looking so skeptical!)
Chapter Two: Early Exchanges
This conference room of the suite provided by the hotel had a look of very quiet luxury to it. Muted colors, old-fashioned designs for the furniture, soft carpet with a deep pile that absorbed the sound of footfalls, relaxing abstract art hanging on the walls . . . the environment discreetly avoided calling attention to itself, but if you insisted upon looking hard, you could see that the things in this room had cost a pretty penny indeed. The soundproofing was not obvious, but it was there, and various other precautions had been taken in this windowless room to assure that any meetings around this table would be as confidential as the participants cared to keep them.
The woman known as Talia Ducard (according to one of her many passports) wore a purple brocade cheong-sam today; long-sleeved and with the traditional high Mandarin collar. That was a proper look for this meeting. Ostentatiously displaying some cleavage on such a solemn occasion would have been taken as a childishly obvious attempt to distract male eyes, and thus would be counterproductive. Any overt flirting would likewise meet with disapproval when she still should be mourning the recent loss of her sire. (And so she was, in her own way.)
But the high collar did not mean a dress of this style could not be alluring. Carefully tailored in Hong Kong, the cheong-sam hugged her excellent figure without striving to conceal it. Furthermore, the slits up each side of the skirt could show off her well-toned legs to advantage when she was walking about the room, greeting each arrival, but everything from the waist down would be out of sight as soon as she was seated at the conference table, thereby avoiding any charge of trying to constantly distract the males with flashes of skin. (Although she felt that if these men couldn't remember perfectly well what her legs had looked like after the first good look, then they weren't the men she took them for.)
This conference was likely to be the most important meeting Talia would ever attend, live she ever so long. She had scripted out half a dozen ways it might go, and rehearsed how she would make key points at the right moments, all this while knowing full well that it would be a miracle if each of the other participants actually behaved in such a way as to end up following perfectly any of her outlines.
That wasn't really the point—practicing one variation after another had helped her stay flexible, so that she wouldn't panic if actual events failed to resemble her first dry run.
The time proposed in her invitations was 10:00 a.m. However, she had leased this suite for the whole day, paid a security firm to sweep it for bugs at seven this morning, paid another security firm to sweep it at eight, and then stood or sat in the room herself from that moment forward. It felt vital that she be present to greet each arrival, no matter how early he might appear.
Al-Hazred arrived thirteen minutes before the designated hour. Tall and sharp-featured, his leathery face was dark enough to show he still spent many hours each month outdoors in the desert so beloved of his Bedouin ancestors. He wore a Western-style business suit today, fitting for one who had studied law at Oxford.
It was an ancient rule that no more than one member of the Seven at a time could possess a degree in law. The dread alternative was to end up with the situation found in the USA (and some other representative democracies), where lawyers as a class were ridiculously overrepresented in legislative bodies, and reluctant to endorse the efforts of mere non-lawyers to join the ruling class.
For the last twelve years, Al-Hazred had been that single lawyer permitted to sit at the same table with Ra's al Ghul's other senior lieutenants. Although he had a cynical attitude about the laws of individual nations, Talia was counting on him to have a proper respect for the rules which all members of the League were sworn to uphold. She greeted him in Arabic and they made small talk for a bit before
They made small talk in Arabic for a few minutes, then quieted by mutual consent and just waited.
Takaguchi strolled in at ten o'clock precisely; she suspected he had arrived in the hotel much earlier and then lingered somewhere nearby for several minutes to make sure he hit it on the nose.
Having mastered many languages from an early age, Talia had to resist the temptation of greeting him in his mother tongue, calling him Takaguchi-san, and giving a polite bow in the Japanese style. It all would have been meant respectfully, but he might not have taken it that way.
Her father had once told her, admiringly, that after Takaguchi had dedicated himself to their cause, he had begun working long and hard to suppress various ingrained mannerisms which were bound to leave non-Japanese members of the League feeling confused and/or uncomfortable, thereby distracting them from the business at hand. After taking all that trouble to blend in, beginning before Talia was born, Takaguchi would not thank her for using the language and traditions of his homeland in front of two non-Japanese comrades in arms. He was likelier to suspect her of subtly mocking him by treating him differently from the others; as if to imply he were still an outsider, not fully committed to the League's way of doing things.
So she greeted him in English, with no bowing on either side, and they went through the formality of asking about each other's flights to Geneva. Al-Hazred and Takaguchi had just nodded to each other; they had been rivals for years and neither seemed inclined to give away anything of his own intentions for this meeting.
Gutierrez arrived six minutes late. He was quite affable in his greeting, but offered no excuse for his tardiness, as he would have done to her father. Talia wondered if this was a subtle challenge, meant to either provoke her into trying to reproach him for lack of punctuality (as if she outranked him), or else to illustrate to the other attenders that she dared not say anything about it (because she knew she didn't outrank him).
If it were Takaguchi doing this, she would have been certain it was meant as an unspoken challenge—but this was Gutierrez, and his track record for punctuality had never been flawless. This was tolerated by her father because Gutierrez was very good at so many other things, including overseeing the training of other recruits when Ra's al Ghul was absent from League headquarters or otherwise occupied with administrative affairs.
Gutierrez was the most junior member of the Seven. Ra's al Ghul had elevated him to that position shortly after Bruce Wayne burned down the temple in the Himalayas. In other words: Gutierrez had only been promoted after it became painfully clear that her father's favorite protégé wasn't going to accept a leadership position himself; the seat Ra's al Ghul had carefully been keeping open for him until then.
Everyone in the League recognized that Gutierrez had only been the consolation prize from their late leader's point of view—much better than average, but not the best possible man for the job. Before Wayne completed his training, Ra's had already been talking about appointing him to lead other men within the League; if Wayne had been catapulted into that vacancy in the Seven, it could have been several years before another slot opened up, and then Gutierrez might finally have been tapped to fill that one instead.
Yes, everyone knew this, but no one had ever been tactless enough to say so to Gutierrez's face. He was nobody's fool; he must understand perfectly well what the timing of his promotion indicated; but if he saw no point in raising the topic himself in casual conversation, then what would anyone else gain by offending him as they belabored the painfully obvious?
While reflecting on what she knew of the man, Talia had exchanged a few meaningless pleasantries with Gutierrez. No one had claimed a seat yet. The table in this conference room was large enough to easily seat a dozen, and working from her orders, leather chairs had been provided for eight—one at the end nearest the door, one at the other end, and three more spaced out along each of the long sides. If all of the Seven had somehow appeared today, each would have found a seat waiting. Talia stepped to the chair at the far end and slid smoothly into the seat which might be considered the "head" of the table. No one told her not to; each man quietly selected a seat of his own.
Talia had wondered if one or another would take the seat at the opposite end and try to present it as the head of the table—but she'd figured the first man to try would gain the instant resentment or derision of the other two. Apparently they felt the same way. Gutierrez and Al-Hazred were now on her left; Takaguchi was seated halfway down on the right.
Now for the next calculated risk. Talia picked up a small gavel and rapped it lightly on the small sounding block resting on the tabletop.
None of the three men instantly protested the action—and she didn't give them more than a half-second to think it over before speaking a prepared piece.
"Gentlemen," she said briskly, "I was named a member of the League some years ago, but we all know that I am not—cannot be—one of the Seven. Thus, I will have no formal vote in your deliberations. However, since it pleased Ra's al Ghul to name me our Treasurer after I had completed a master's degree in economics, I took the liberty of using one of our Swiss accounts to set up this conference in a secure room, and then to entreat each of you to attend what would be the first formal meeting the Seven have had since the debacle in Gotham. I felt someone had to set the wheels in motion, and I am grateful that each of you was kind enough to come in response to one who knew she had no authority to insist upon your cooperation."
She paused for a carefully measured moment, while thinking: Not kind—just practical. In these perilous times, none of you would want sweeping policy decisions to be made by others when he was absent, entirely unable to influence the flow of events.
But she was far too diplomatic to say that, and each of these men now found it face-saving to murmur a few polite words about how they had been delighted to receive the timely invitation when things were so unsettled (or words to that effect). Gutierrez added gallantly that it was always a pleasure to see such a lovely young lady once again, on League business or otherwise. (She knew full well he didn't expect that comment to lead to anything between them; he was merely keeping in practice.)
After they had all agreed they were glad to be here, Talia added: "Since all three of you are of the same rank, I suggest that it may be simplest if I continue to chair this meeting . . . despite not having any vote to cast on any motions which arise . . . until such time as other arrangements have been decided upon by your honorable selves."
None of the three men were anxious to see a rival seize control of the agenda, so al-Hazred nodded curtly, Gutierrez shrugged indifferently, Takaguchi smiled blandly, and when she asked formally, "Is it your will that I keep the gavel for the time being?" . . . no one argued the point. Since no woman had ever been elected to the Seven, much less been considered eligible to lead the entire League, they presumably saw her as the safest, most "neutral" choice . . . for the purposes of this single meeting, that was.
One hurdle down.
Still, her small gain would be wiped out in an instant if she appeared indecently hasty to seize even this modicum of power. Her first short speech had needed to be made quickly, before someone insisted she had no right to lift a gavel at all, but now the tactics must change. Talia put on her most demure expression and silently counted to twenty in Urdu in case anyone chose to make a belated objection after a few moments of further consideration. She didn't expect that, but what really mattered at this stage was to conspicuously demonstrate that she was modestly waiting for such an objection before moving on, rather than trying to railroad three proud men into a hasty decision and then pretending it was irrevocable.
No belated objections arose. None of these men would want to look wishy-washy in front of his peers after quietly acquiescing to her suggestion. Besides, they all knew that if she let it go to her head and became unduly "uppity," they'd still have the option of voting to take the gavel away from her at any time. (Or they could simply stand up and walk out, for that matter-she'd be powerless to stop them.)
Talia rapped the gavel again—very lightly, just audible enough to demonstrate she had now figuratively accepted it as a "gift" from her guests—and said, "Very well; let us make it official. A meeting is hereby convened. I see three members of the Seven in attendance and I have no reason to think any more are en route. I submit, gentlemen, that our most pressing problem is the lack of strong central leadership for the scattered remains of the League of Shadows. Specifically, the death of Ra's al Ghul has left a vacancy at the very top. I invite discussion as to how the Seven may remedy the situation."
She hesitated a bare moment—and then added one last sentence before leaving the floor to the men. Her father had told her that sometimes it was best to let a meeting meander for awhile, giving everyone present time to "talk himself out" before you even started trying to impose your own plan for how to move forward. And sometimes that was a waste of valuable time and you should start nudging people in the right direction from the beginning.
Possibly she should have let the three men argue back and forth for awhile, but she preferred to gamble by making one little leading comment about the relevant rules before she shut up for a few minutes. "In fact, I recall my honored father telling me there were three valid ways for a man to become our new leader." She folded her hands and waited.
"True in theory," Gutierrez agreed. "First, he could have been formally designated as the heir by the previous leader. That has happened many times in our history. But your father never got around to naming a successor, so that approach is only of academic interest today."
"Second, a challenger who had already proved himself worthy in other respects could defeat the incumbent in mortal combat," Takaguchi murmured. "But since our last incumbent has already perished, that method of resolving the problem seems as unlikely as the first . . . in this case."
"Third, any member of the League could be elected by a majority of the Seven to be our new chief. Four votes in his favor would do it," Al-Hazred finished. "But we do not even have quorum today. I had hoped for a larger turnout, though I knew we would not have all these seats filled. Hoan is still imprisoned in Blackgate; I recently heard a rumor that Taleniekov died in Bucharest; but invitations were also sent for our brothers Fuest and Holcroft to attend this meeting. I do not see them here; I do not know where they are." He paused. "Unless anyone else has word that has not reached my ears?"
He glanced around the table, saw Talia, Takaguchi, and Gutierrez all shaking their heads, and resumed smoothly: "I thought not. Who knows if or when we shall ever hear from them again? But since they may well be alive, and even Taleniekov's passing is unconfirmed, we are at something of a standstill. For all we know, two or three of the Seven may well be huddled in quiet cellars in remote portions of the world, waiting for the hue and cry to fade away. Under our by-laws, lacking both their bodies and reliable witnesses to their deaths, we cannot assume them gone forever until two years have passed since they were last seen, and with only three votes present we cannot elect more members to fill seats in the Seven." He paused. "Not for two years, I meant to say; not until we know that we are all that is left of the Seven—aside from the brother held in captivity, who is obviously unable to participate in our councils. Likewise, a minority of three cannot elect a new leader for the entire League at this time. Were the rules otherwise, an arrogant minority of the Seven could do any lunatic thing it pleased in the absence of the others!"
Takaguchi murmured, "And even supposing the time comes for an election with only three voters to be valid, it would be most distressing if we three found ourselves unable to concur on who should fill each vacancy. If I may present a fanciful hypothesis regarding a pitfall to be avoided . . . what if each surviving member of the Seven presented himself as a candidate for leader, and then each received one vote—presumably his own—in a perfect three-way tie?"
It was Talia's calculation that this "fanciful" hypothesis had an excellent chance of becoming simple reality if nothing else had changed before the required waiting period had elapsed. None of these three men doubted the dedication of the others, but none considered one of the others to be vastly his superior in administrative ability, either. Looking at the faces of Gutierrez and Al-Hazred, she decided that they evaluated it the same way.
Gutierrez made a token effort to laugh it off, though. "Possible in theory, but unlikely in practice, as you said! But even if it did happen that way on the first ballot, surely at least one of us would then realize he should postpone his own ambitions in favor of the greater good by switching his vote on the second ballot! Then the deadlock would be broken, a new leader could appoint additional members of the Seven on his own authority, and the League would move forward again!"
"Of course that would be the likely outcome," Takaguchi said amiably, deceiving no one. "If even one more of the Seven had appeared at this meeting, I am sure we would be selecting a new leader at this very moment. It may yet happen—if not today, then sometime in the not-so-distant future—that another of the Seven reestablishes contact and we shall have quorum after all. But if I may explore my fanciful hypothesis just a bit further?"
No one tried to refuse him permission, so Takaguchi proceeded apace. "Supposing a stalemate arose along the lines I described, we might then table the matter of a new leader in favor of first filling the vacancies among the Seven. But I find myself imagining with some trepidation the prospect of each of us nominating a few friends whom he felt could be relied upon to subsequently support his own candidacy for leader . . . and the other two of us hesitating to allow a rival to pack the Seven with his own supporters. Which could leave us with an ongoing three-way tie for a ridiculously long time." He leaned back in his chair, making a gesture to signal that he was done speaking for the nonce.
"In all our history, I don't think anything that sticky has ever left the League leaderless for any great length of time," Al-Hazred observed. "On the other hand, we've never before faced an enemy with all the resources available to the world's sole superpower of the early twenty-first century. The Chinese, the Persians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the British of a few centuries agone . . . none of them knew anything about electronics, and often precious little about forensic examination of stray bits of evidence. Great fires, plagues, and the like were blamed on angry deities or sheer bad luck."
Talia was too well-schooled in diplomacy to ever need to literally bite her tongue to restrain an ill-timed outburst, but she had been tempted at least five times in the last five minutes. Now, however, she felt the time was as ripe as it would get for the next phase of her plan.
She rapped her gavel again. "Gentlemen, you agreed that a new leader for the League could arise in any of three ways . . . depending upon circumstances. I have listened intently to your able discussion of the problems which prevent you from utilizing the third method to find a leader now or in the near future. But the picture you paint is so discouraging that I find myself wondering if one of the other possibilities deserves a second look before we abandon all hope for it."
(This was not true. She'd already known what solution she intended to propose before she ever leased this conference suite and sent out the encrypted invitations. But it was extremely useful for a young woman to let men think their expert opinions had been vital in guiding her to a "new" idea. She had certainly had opportunities to learn that lesson when dealing with her own father in the past.)
"To briefly mention the first possibility: I know for a fact, and I suspect that all of you do as well, that my father once had high hopes of appointing Bruce Wayne as his successor."
Gutierrez chuckled for several seconds before saying anything coherent. "I believe those hopes were lowered considerably after Wayne turned against us."
"Agreed. My father never made a formal announcement, and in the last minutes of his life I doubt he wanted to do Wayne that favor. But that thought led me to another: the second possibility for succession allows for a superior warrior to outmaneuver and outfight his predecessor and then claim leadership of the League for himself. In practice, this usually does not happen unless the old leader plainly is past his best years, mentally, but painfully unable to perceive his own decay. But the rules don't require the challenger to prove such a thing about the incumbent before making his challenge."
There was a long pause. Finally Al-Hazred went to the point. "Are you thinking of the man who caused your father's death as a 'challenger' who won a duel?"
"I am toying with the idea," she conceded. "Does anyone wish to respond?"
The men exchanged glances before Gutierrez made a rebuttal. "There is no law requiring a challenger to be one of the Seven, but at the very least he must already be a member of the League. Wayne excelled in the training at our old headquarters, but never passed the final test to become one of us in truth."
"Are you so sure he never qualified?" Talia inquired.
"Of course I'm sure!" Gutierrez snapped. "I was there. The final test was to execute a helpless prisoner, as each of us in this room has done in the past. That was when Wayne showed his squeamish side. He had mastered the moves and tactics of a shadow warrior, but in the end he couldn't follow through by using them to lethal effect."
"Didn't he?" She was doing her best to sound innocent and a trifle bewildered by all this. Various people had assured her that she did that very well. "Didn't any of our fellow members die in the subsequent explosions and fire that surrounded his . . . abrupt departure?"
"Several did, including the figurehead who had often answered to the name of 'Ra's al Ghul,'" Al-Hazred confirmed.
Talia nodded. "Our by-laws only say that the candidate for membership must kill a violent criminal to prove he can steel himself for whatever is necessary in service of the greater good; they don't go into detail about how to find that criminal in each instance. It has been traditional for the head of the League to select the victim himself and then instruct the candidate in what must be done, but as near as I can tell from the letter of the law, a candidate who had completed all previous training and then killed some other known criminal would still have proved his mettle, and would automatically be a true member from that moment forward."
She waited a beat, wondering if they would see it coming, and then asked innocently, "Didn't any of the members who died that day have any violent crimes on their records? Before or after they had joined the League themselves?"
There was a long silence this time, broken by Gutierrez chuckling again. "Si, Señorita," he said at last, lapsing into his native tongue for a moment. "Some had been convicted of one thing or another before we identified them as misfits of the proper type and recruited them. Others had joined us and then done things which one government or another would condemn if the matter were proven in court."
Al-Hazred also looked amused, although he was not so prone as Gutierrez to express his feelings in laughter. "Is it then your position, Treasurer, that Wayne successfully completed the final test for membership because of the death and destruction triggered by his refusal to complete that test in the way your father had just specified?"
"Yes," she said simply. "I confess I did not think of it that way when my father told me the story a few days later, when he came to me in Switzerland after his old home had been ruined, but now I find myself wondering. Even if Wayne does not regard himself as a member, loyal or otherwise, does that change the fact that he graduated to full membership by killing some of us, and then escaping our immediate wrath, which showed skill and courage?"
Takaguchi finally spoke on the matter. "Although the point had not occurred to me before . . . I do not recall any rule that says the final test requires the execution of some criminal other than one who is already one of the League himself. "
He had not needed to say that; it was at least a faint sign of support for her that he did say it before the others had set themselves dead against her line of reasoning. Talia had a hunch—nothing solid to back it up—that he was finally getting one step ahead of her and knew exactly where her next argument would lead them.
Since neither of the other two men seemed to have a good rebuttal on the tips of their tongues at this point, she pressed onward to make her next point. "Mr. Gutierrez said it himself: a bona fide member may challenge the head of the League and, if successful, take his place. If Bruce Wayne was already a true member of the League at the time of that battle atop a racing train, then he was simply showing his vigorous disagreement with the policies and tactics of my father, as our by-laws allow a worthy warrior to do. The outcome of their man-to-man duel yielded a clear winner, and Wayne's success in deducing the true nature of the League's plot against Gotham, and then stopping that plot with only slight loss of life among the citizenry, also appears to prove something about who had superior tactical ability."
She thought they all saw it coming by now, but it had to be said plainly. "I suggest, gentlemen, that Bruce Wayne—even if he does not realize it—has an excellent claim to being the rightful leader of what remains of the ancient League of Shadows."
Author's Note: Let me reiterate what I said at the start of Chapter One: I'm inventing rules of succession for the League of Shadows as I go along. I very much doubt that Talia's position is what Nolan had in mind, but it suits my own agenda (or my view of her secret agenda, shall we say?) to assume that she may actually have a point!