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Chapter 3

"Bruce, it sounds like someone came in behind you and cleaned house on Scarface's gang. Most of his men are dead. It was done with surgical precision, so whoever it was is a pro."

"Probably the NSA agent who called the fighters in after the prototype Black Shark."

"Even your standard NSA agents aren't that good. Either there was a squad or this guy was one of the cream of the crop."

"I'll leave that possibility open, then."

"Dad says Ventriloquist is still alive and is claiming that you did it all."

"He doesn't know I have an alibi."

"Dad knows your gadgets, the ones found at the scene were different. You don't need me for an alibi. How soon before you go to Boston?"

"As soon as I look through the info you pulled up for me. If Ra's is in on this, I need to get on it fast. Have you picked up anything interesting from the email bug?"

"Nothing incriminating, but I have intercepted some emails to and from Talia al Ghul."

"Anything hinting of travel plans?"

"No destinations yet. Although, there are some hints that she is going somewhere."

"Keep looking. Eventually, a destination will pop up."

"By the way, the heli's not there anymore. I rewound the vid and they lowered it down into a hangar. Now there are no signs of a landing pad. Also, the listed owner of the building is al Ghul's assistant, Abu."

We talk intermittently as I pour over the write-ups she gave me on the Shadows. Most of the info is a few years old. going back to when it was being ran by an undercover terrorist named Nasir Tarighian posing as a philanthropist under the assumed name of Namik Basaran. I actually met the guy once, as Bruce Wayne, at a charity event. He had me fooled too.

Ra's al Ghul is one of my most dangerous, if not THE most dangerous, foes. He has lived many lifetimes because of his mastery of a certain type of pool, which he calls a Lazarus Pit, that rejuvenates him any time he needs to visit the "fountain of youth." It has also revived him and healed his body of serious injuries. Fortunately, he keeps the locations of those pits a closely-guarded secret. I would shudder to think of what would happed if the Joker found one. I believe that so many deaths, so many times being brought back to life, so many visits to the Lazarus Pits would have a deteriorating effect on a perfectly sane person, so Ra's is mad to say the least. However, he has lived for so long that he may be the wisest insane lunatic in the history of the world. The other thing about him that makes him dangerous is his daughter, Talia. She is beautiful, but I try not to think about her in that way when we meet, because she is usually working for her father. The problem is, sometimes, she seems to be on my side. Sometimes, she only acts like she is on my side to lure me into a trap, and sometimes, she is my only way out. I think that she has a thing for me... Usually, when she does help me out, it is because without her help, I would have died. The one time that I actually went into a Lazarus Pit, she was the one who did it after Ra's had gotten the better of me. All of a sudden, I'm back in the land of the living, and it drove me crazy for a time. Fortunately, Talia calmed me down and brought me back to myself. There you have it. Ra's al Ghul is the only one of my foes who has ever actually killed me. It just didn't take. He is also the only one of my foes that knows my alter ego as Bruce Wayne. He has also found my Batcave. The Joker is wild and unpredictable and would kill someone as easily as looking at them. He wouldn't think twice about killing anyone and everyone in Gotham City just to prove that he could. He was responsible for the crippling of Barbara Gordon, and the "killing" of Jason Todd (who actually had escaped by the skin of his teeth and, once he finally recovered, assumed the identity of "The Red Hood" and attempted to take over the Gotham underworld), who was my second Robin. Ra's, on the other hand, has lived at the very least half a dozen lifetimes and knows all of my secrets. On top of all of that, he would gladly bring about the deaths of the vast majority of the human race in a mass genocide in order to accomplish his vision of returning the world to its "glory days" of the dawn of man. Now for the clincher: of all of the villains that have ever crossed my path, he is the only one that I have never been able to put away. He's died a few times, though he always comes back, but I have never been able to hand him over to the authorities, so he's never seen the inside of a jail cell. All of that taken together means that he is more dangerous than any other human being in the world.

By the time I finished looking over all of the info, it was past two in the morning, I'll still have a little time to look around, but I can't get too involved. I'll only have about two hours until I lose the cover of darkness, then the busy business day will begin and I'll be stuck for the day. I need to get down there and poke around, then get out before sunrise. I program the Batmobile to go back to the Batcave while signalling for the Batwing, which I sent back to the Batcave for Alfred to refuel as soon as I entered the clock tower. Within minutes, I am in trasit, and within an hour, I'm back in Boston. I click the IR goggles down on the visor in my cowl to check the windows on the upper floor. No security on the windows this high up, so I cut a hole in the window to let myself in. To cover my tracks, I have invented a device to replace the glass in the hole using the same type of resin and the same idea that they use to fix a chipped windshield on a car. I keep the goggles down to let me be aware of any security lasers that may be in my way and make my way to the staircase. One level up is the hangar, windowless. The Black Shark is the only vehicle in here. I apply a homing device to the area under the propellers as close to the turbine that turns the propellers as possible. Hopefully, they won't look up there, and they won't be able to detect it due to the fact that it doesn't activate until there is a significant change in barometric pressure, such as if it were to take off or change altitude.

I head back down stairs to find an office. The first office I come to actually has Abu's name on the door. That makes it easy. I pick the lock and, very carefully, open the door. I scan the room thoroughly. It would be just like Ra's to set a trap for me here. If he were expecting me, and I have every reason (experience being one) to believe that he is, he knows that I know Abu is one of his most trusted associates. Actually, I think he trusts Abu more than he trusts Talia. So for Abu's name to be engraved in a sign on the door, this has got to be the office, above all others, that he has prepared for my visit. I keep my IR goggles active with one hand on my gas mask and the other on the doorknob. My IR goggles are low-profile, so the display automatically filters out any of the standard red tint of an ordinary Infra-Red visual device. This way, the rest of my vision isn't obstructed or impeded by everything appearing red. I can even read documents with the IR active. The door opens inward, so I'm halfway expecting to trip a security beam with the door before I even get the chance to see inside, but fortunately, that doesn't happen. As the opening door reveals the room within, I begin to map out in my mind which way to dive if anything comes at me. Before I leave the doorway, I inspect the doorframe to see if there seem to be any hidden locking mechanisms. Satisfied, I fully enter the room, but not before I jam some explosive putty into the doorjamb just in case I suddenly get locked in and need to make a quick exit. Crouching in case I need to make sudden movements, I slink into the room. I bug the phone first, then stick a USB device into the computer that allows Oracle remote access. I give her a head's up that it's on, and begin to look through the desk drawers. I grab a pen light out of my utility belt and hold it in my mouth as I begin my search. First the right side of the desk, then I step over to the left side. That's when it happens. "It" being a piture on the desk suddenly morphing into Ra's, talking to me.

"Well met, detective. I knew that you would come, and I knew that you would try to snoop around this office. I also knew that you would be on your guard, suspecting laser grids or some other defence system. That is why I installed a pressure plate in front of the desk before I recarpeted."

A pressure plate. As usual with Ra's, it's the one thing that I didn't suspect that gets me.

"I can't have you ruining my plans detective. As much as I hate to do this, you leave me no choice. I must kill you."

The door begins to close and the room starts filling up with toxic gas. There's two things I was prepared for. I duck behind the desk, throw on my gas mask, and hit the detonator on the explosive putty.

"You will forgive me for failing to divulge my plans to you before you die, but-" BOOM!

I run out of the room, back up the stairs and onto the roof, where I summon the Batwing for the flight back to Gotham.

"Barbara, as soon as you get whatever you can off of that terminal, detonate the stick. I had to make a sudden exit."

It's daybreak before I get into Boston, so I get a hotel room close to the building that I will be infiltrating tonight. Lucky for me, our resident hacking expert, Carly St. John, had our eye-in-the-sky in position over Boston last night in time for it to capture the landing of the Black Shark prototype. She also added quite a bit of info to the dossier that Grim downloaded to my opsat. I go to sleep as soon as I get into the room, setting my opsat to wake me at five o'clock. At five, I awake and call room service for a nice hot meal. Then I begin to go over the info from my opsat.

Ra's al Ghul. Name means "the demon's head." He has died more often than the hopes and dreams of Chicago Cubs fans according to the dossier and always seems to come back from the grave. There are documented instances of him tangling with the ancient Knights Templar. There is a painting of him that has been carbon-dated to the 1600's that looks just like the picture that one of our agents sent to Third Echelon only two years ago, just before that agent's death. The oddest thing about that is that he looks younger in the picture than in the painting. The painting was unearthed by Carly, as was this: A reference to al Ghul during the founder of Islam Mohammed's seige of Jerusalem. Evidently, Ra's was playing both sides against the middle in that conflict in the hopes that they would wipe each other out. It didn't quite work. Mohammed's army ransacked the city, killing most of the population including women and children. The most recent activity recorded in the file is his "Society of the Lotus" he ran a few years ago. It may have had benign beginnings before he assumed control of the cult, however, it was classified as a terrorist organisation when they tried to sink Monaco into the Mediterranean last year. From his psyche file, such as there is on him since noone has ever apprehended him, he is a nihilist. Basically an environmental terrorist who thinks that the human race needs to be wiped from the face of the earth. He was hatching some kind of plot that would have wiped out ninety-five percent of the world's population two years ago when that agent of ours was killed. I can only assume that either the agent died in the act of sabotaging the plot, or maybe Batman stepped in and cleaned up what our agent could not. The dossier does mention Batman a few times, but as dossiers go, his is relatively bare. His only listed known associates are his daughter, Talia al Ghul, and his servant, Abu. Talia is a looker, definately. Abu, on the other hand, is the name that the building that I'm staking out is registered to. He probably only needs the top couple of floors, so the rest of the fifty-something floors in the high-rise are rented out to other corporations and such. In other words, he not only needed a landing pad, but also some money to fund his next attempt to kill all people in the world. The good news is he's only owned it for three months and it will probably take a year to turn a profit on the building. If we wait until then, though, it will be too late.

"Sam, you awake yet?" It was Grimsdottir.

"Yeah, I've been awake for about twenty minutes going over this dossier."

"Well, you know how I said that Carly had our eye-in-the-sky on the building where the chopper landed last night?"

"M-hmm."

"Well, it also picked up the Batman's aircraft, which seemed to shoot a couple of projectiles of some sort at the building shortly after it landed, then took off. We began to pick up a signal from the building shortly thereafter that had not been broadcasting before. Carly has been at work decoding the encryption on them for the better part of the day and has finally hacked it."

"It must have had some good encryption for her to take this long."

"More encryption than is on our link to your opsat."

"So Batman could be hacking the opsat?"

"He would need to latch onto the signal first, but he could once he had, yes. The main thing is that our conversations on your implant are probably already being listened to."

"Nothing new. The Mark-one was completely unencrypted anyway. Treat this as such."

"Already done Sam. Anything sensative will be transmitted to you via opsat. Link will only be active intermittantly to avoid snooping."

"Gotcha."

"Also, Batman came back later, early this morning before sunrise and was inside the building for about a half an hour, then came running back out. He may be back tonight, so be on the lookout."

"Hmmm."

"You're official and he's vigilante, so you can handle this any way you wish, Sam.

"I'm official, but this is still a deniable op just like all the rest, so there's not really any difference. He knows alot more about the target than I do, and I can use all the help I can get, so I'll play nice if he does."

"Noted. When were you planning on going in?"

"Late. Eleven or after. This IS Boston, you know. Is there a dossier for the daughter, Talia?"

"No. There is absolutely nothing on her other than her involvement with her father's activities. Also, before you ask, there is no dossier on Abu, either."

"What about the Batman?"

"Sending now. Most of what we know comes from the criminals that he is responsible for delivering to the authorities."

"How about schematics on the building? Do we have anything: floorplan, security systems, cameras?"

"I'll see what we have and send you the details, Sam."

"Looks like I've got time to spare. Fisher out."

"Happy hunting."

If the implant is being bugged, even if it's a good guy, I don't want anyone to know what I'm about to do. Grim already knows, and I get a short message from her on my opsat to tell Sarah that she said hello. I use my phone to call my daughter, Sarah. I stay away from her too much, but our relationship has been really good over the last couple of years, and she knows that I don't like being away so much. That's why we try to spend extra time together when I can make it home, and when I have to be away, I try to call her whenever I can. I have plenty of spare time this evening, so it's perfect.

I talk with my daughter for about a half an hour, then I glance through the dossier on Batman and study the schematics of the building that I will be infiltrating tonight. When the time comes, I'm more than ready.