Across town, Lamont Cranston had finally joined Wainwright Barth for dinner at the Cobalt Club. "Finally" was truly the operative word; Lamont had once more employed his reputation as a irresponsible-but-wealthy young man-about-town to excuse his lateness after hours of studying physics books at Columbia, trying to find out everything he could about this so-called "nuclear" research that was going on there. Now he was finishing his first martini while his uncle polished off a thick steak and grumbled about his nephew's lack of punctuality.
"You know what puzzles me, Lamont?" Wainwright groused as he cut into his dinner. "How a man who has absolutely nothing to do all day can be late for every single engagement!"
Lamont fought the urge to laugh in Wainwright's face. On any other occasion, he'd simply have blown off dinner with Wainwright because of the pressing nature of the current investigation, but he needed to find out if there were any reports of increased unauthorized activity at ports of entry into New York, especially any with a Chinese connection. "Practice, Uncle Wainwright," he said with a devil-may-care smile. "Lots and lots of practice."
Out of the corner of his eye, Wainwright noticed a dark figure coming toward him. He looked up. "Oh, God, it's that Lane woman again," he groaned, turning away.
Lamont jumped slightly, then looked where his uncle was now averting his gaze.
Margo Lane, dressed in a dark green bugle-beaded dress and a brown mink stole, was making a beeline toward their table. And she looked very angry.
Lamont was torn. Part of him wanted to encounter her again, maybe try to get to know her a little better and find out her level of psychic expertise. The other part wanted her to leave right now before either of them did something they regretted. But he didn't even bother putting out a telepathic "no trespassing" sign, because she clearly wasn't coming over to see him.
"She's been calling my office all day," Wainwright muttered. "She just wouldn't stop, even after I told my secretary I didn't want to speak to her again..."
By now, Margo was at the table, arms akimbo, glaring down at the police commissioner. She hadn't even looked Lamont's way, which was quite a relief to Lamont.
Wainwright put on a false polite smile. "Ah, Miss Lane, what an unexpected surprise..."
"O.K., Commissioner, you can drop the act," Margo snapped back. "What have you done about my father?"
Wainwright blew out a hard breath. "Miss Lane, I've already explained this...just because your father is behaving strangely is not a reason for the police to take action. We really can't do anything unless..."
"Unless what? He blows himself up?"
Wainwright was desperate to get the angry woman's attention away from him. He looked across the table at Lamont. "Uh, Margo Lane...my nephew, Lamont Cranston."
Margo turned her gaze toward Lamont. She was furious with Wainwright, but found enough venom in her still-hurt feelings to throw Lamont's way. "Yes," she said coldly, "we've met."
Lamont let the barbs hit him. He deserved them. But she was clearly distressed and frightened, and he was curious as to why. He stood up and gallantly removed the stole from her shoulders. "Would you care to sit down?" he offered, putting just a bit of insistent suggestion behind the words.
She felt her anger fade, and now the worry was coming to the surface. Feeling weak, she sat down in the chair Lamont was holding for her. "Look," she said, addressing Wainwright again, "I just want to see him. But last night, the War Department said he's suddenly decided to accept no visitors...not even his own daughter."
Now Lamont understood. Margo had mentioned in their dinner conversation two nights ago that she was an only child, and that her mother had died when she was a teen. Her father was really all she had in life. To be suddenly spurned by him had to be frightening to her.
Wainwright didn't have all this context, though, so he tried to think of the most obvious excuse for the change in behavior. "Well, Miss Lane, he is working for the War Department. Perhaps he's doing classified experiments."
Margo shook her head. "No, his experiments are harmless...energy research...some kind of implosive device."
The very word shook Lamont to the core. He looked horrified as he realized that Reinhardt Lane was doing exactly the work Khan needed for his ultimate weapon. He hoped to God he was wrong, that it was some kind of twisted coincidence...
...and that was when something Stephen had told him earlier suddenly made sense. You'll get the answers, but not from me.
"I spoke to him on the phone just a few minutes ago," Margo continued, "but he was distant, babbling. He spoke to me in Chinese."
Wainwright choked on his scotch.
Lamont felt his blood run cold. Oh, God, it's not a coincidence.
Wainwright coughed, then looked for a glass of water on the table. "Waiter..."
Margo slammed her fist into the table in front of him. "My father doesn't even speak Chinese!" she shouted angrily, nearly crying.
Wainwright accepted the goblet of water from the attentive waiter, then turned a sympathetic smile to Margo. "All right, Miss Lane, all right. I'll send an officer over in the morning. He'll check on your father, find out what's going on, and then everything will be fine. You'll see."
Margo nodded her thanks, trying to force back the tears that rimmed her eyes, and turned Lamont's way. "Mr. Cranston, what's your opinion..."
There was no one in Lamont's seat. He was gone. Margo looked around frantically.
She caught just a glimpse of him--or his shadow?--rounding the corner and heading out of the dining room. "Excuse me," she told Wainwright, then grabbed her stole and her purse and ran for the door.
Wainwright shrugged. Young love, he mentally complained. Feh.
Lamont gave a quick tip to the hat check girl who was handing him his coat, hat, gloves, and scarf, then slung the scarf around his neck, pulled his coat on, and headed for the door. There was no time to waste--Reinhardt was probably already in Khan's psychic clutches, but there might still be time to rescue him from the Mongolian's physical clutches...
Margo called his name from behind. He ignored her and hurried outside.
"Lamont!" Margo called again, racing to keep up with him. Surely he'd heard her the first time. But it was as if he'd turned into a different person once more, one who just didn't have time for her, no matter how nice he'd been just moments earlier. She pulled on her stole and went outside after him.
He was standing at the edge of the carpet runner, looking down the street at a taxi that was approaching. She grabbed his arm. "Wait a minute, Lamont," she said, "I wanted to ask you about my father..."
He turned to face her.
Margo gasped. The blase, bored playboy was gone. Now there was nothing casual about Lamont Cranston, nothing carefree at all. There was only dark anger in those eyes, a sense of urgency in his carriage, a tightly-coiled strength in his muscles that looked ready to explode at any moment. And something more...a strange kind of energy that seemed to be emanating from him, pushing her and everyone else away.
"I have to go," he said in a rough voice, then turned toward the taxi that had now stopped at the curb and opened its rear door for him.
"Ying Ko!" Margo suddenly shouted.
Lamont froze in his tracks.
Margo looked confused. Why had she just said that? It sounded like some kind of Chinese name. But Margo didn't speak Chinese any more than her father did. "Who's Ying Ko?" she asked aloud.
Lamont slowly closed the cab door, then turned around and purposefully strode back over to her. The fury in his expression was palpable. Margo started to draw away.
He grabbed her by the arm and turned her to face him. Margo literally felt his gaze drill right through hers.
"You will forget about me," The Shadow's voice ordered.
Margo shook her head. That sensation of static she'd felt on their first encounter--almost like a radio not quite tuned properly, a hissing sound that seemed to swirl inside her ears and through her brain--was back, and it was loud. But that didn't make his words make any more sense. "Why would I want to do that?"
His gaze fell harder on her. "You will give me no further thought."
That static was even louder now, and she had a splitting headache. And she wasn't in the mood to deal with incoherent ramblings. "Are you drunk? Look, Mr. Cranston, I don't know what kind of woman you're used to dealing with, but..."
Lamont started to blast into her mind and break her resistance, then stopped himself. My God, he realized in horror, what am I doing? I could have killed her... Quickly, he shoved her away and jumped into the cab.
"Hey!" Margo shouted, but it was too late. The cab was already merging into traffic.
The valet came over to her. "Miss? Are you all right?"
Margo felt stinging tears streaming down her cheeks. "I'd like my car, please," she managed to choke out.
"Yes, ma'am." The valet sent a boy for Margo's car.
Margo looked off in the distance. Now she was truly alone...her father had rejected her, and the man she felt was her soulmate had openly spurned her. God, she hated life right now.
Lamont barely managed to get control of himself in the cab. He had nearly destroyed Margo Lane's psyche in a raging anger over her latent telepathy, something she couldn't even control, and that extraordinarily cruel impulse frightened him. And yet he knew he couldn't just let her keep the knowledge she had; it was far too dangerous. Khan wouldn't hesitate to kill her. Lamont thought bleakly. Neither would Ying Ko. He would have to deal with her eventually, but it could wait. Right now, her father's life was at stake. "The Federal Building," he ordered.
Moe nodded. "You got it, boss."
A strange chill passed through the cab. Moe involuntarily looked at the rear view mirror...and watched a man turn into a shadow.
Lamont Cranston was taking deep breaths now, calming his emotions, focusing his powers. Swirling black shadows shifted around him, and his facial features turned sharper, harsher, angrier, as the clouding suggestion began to take hold. Lamont would fade from view, then return with the scarf pulled over his face, then the black cloak wrapped about his shoulders...and finally, the black fedora pulled down to shade his face completed the transformation.
Moe shivered. That whole effect was enough to scare the living daylights out of him. He could only imagine what it did to criminals. And whoever The Shadow was after tonight was about to find out personally.
Spiderman perched on the edge of the Empire State Building's observation deck, the mounted binoculars in front of him trained on the 23rd floor of the Federal Building. And he wasn't liking the view.
Through the binoculars, he could see Reinhardt Lane standing like a zombie in the middle of his lab, expression blank and motions almost mechanical. He was currently placing his invention, a blue-silver bowling ball with electrical pins inserted on all sides, carefully inside an insulated case. Across the lab, the door was swinging open...
...and suddenly the viewfinder went black. "Dammit--Stephen!"
At the corner of the deck, scanning the ground with another set of binoculars, The Shadow drew a coin from his pocket and tossed it to his partner.
Spiderman snared the coin out of the air and put it into the slot...and liked this view even less.
Half a dozen Mongols were now inside the lab and heading for Lane.
"They're here!" Spiderman called out.
The Shadow scanned the street, desperately looking for Moe Shrevnitz's cab...and was dismayed to see that it was only just now turning onto the street. "Dammit--they're still too far away! Get me over there!"
Spiderman hopped across the deck, grabbed The Shadow around the waist, and dove off the deck as he fired a webline to carry them into battle.
Huong Shu, Khan's right-hand man, was barking orders to his men and taking the padded box from Reinhardt Lane when mocking laughter suddenly rang through the room. Everyone looked around frantically as he barked another order at Reinhardt, who took the padded box back from him, and then turned to his men and ordered them to find the intruder.
The Mongol warriors spanned out through the lab while Huong Shu stood guard over Reinhardt.
One soldier wandered onto the balcony...strangely dark and shadowy tonight. He could hear the throaty laugh echoing off the building, but couldn't for the life of him figure out where it was coming from. He leaned over the railing and glanced around the corner.
A black-gloved hand reached down from a decorative cornice, grabbed the point on the warrior's battle helmet, and pulled upward so hard that he pulled the Mongol off the ground.
The Mongol reached both hands up, locked them around the wrist he could not see, and flung himself forward.
Both men landed on the balcony. A swirling black fog turned into a rolling cloaked black-clad man, who was quickly up on his feet and turned to face the Mongol.
The Mongol drew his sword and raced for his opponent.
The Shadow ducked aside, then grabbed the other man as he ran past him and tried to leverage him off the balcony.
But the Mongol was well-trained, and quickly reversed the advantage. They both teetered on the railing for a moment, The Shadow trying to squirm out from under his opponent until quickly realizing that the swordsman had the higher ground. Glancing over his shoulder, he tried to gauge how long a fall would take. At least thirty seconds from this height...plenty of time. Or rather, more time than he's about to have.
Without hesitation, The Shadow reversed his movements and sent them tumbling off together, plummeting toward the street.
Falling at an unreal pace, The Shadow rolled himself into a superior position and spread his cloak as far as he could to create a parachute effect to slow his descent and give time for his partner to swing to his rescue...
...when a sudden crashing halt stunned him. He recovered his senses and looked around.
Both he and the Mongol had crash-landed atop one of the many decorative stone eagle's heads that jutted out from the facade of the building, just two floors below where they'd started. The Shadow was merely shaken. The Mongol he'd landed on wasn't quite so lucky; it was fairly obvious he'd broken his neck or back in the impact and would be dead in moments. Somehow, though, that only seemed fair. The Shadow offered a wry smirk. "Next time, you get to be on top."
The Mongol let out a death rasp.
The Shadow looked past him to the ground, trying to get his bearings and find out whether he needed to stall the warriors a little longer.
Below him, the cab had finally reached the building, and a coil of black had swept from the cab to the lobby doors. His grandfather was here.
The Shadow's attuned laugh rang out victoriously, and he looked back up the wall.
Spiderman landed on the wall above him. "He's here. The Mongols upstairs are spooked."
The Shadow's eyes reflected a broad grin hidden beneath the scarf. "Let's get a good spot."
The remaining warriors were now scouring the lab as Reinhardt stood as still as a statue, almost catatonic. One of the warriors had sworn The Shadow had gone over the edge of the balcony just moments ago, but if that were the case, how could he still be laughing? He had to be around there somewhere...
A right hook from nowhere decked Huong Shu and sent him sprawling across a workbench.
Two men looked up--and got dual punches in the face, crashing them into lab equipment.
Another unnerved soldier drew his sword and looked around frantically, only to feel two hands grab him from behind and throw him through the air. He landed atop a live generator and died instantly.
Huong Shu shook his head to clear it. Khan had told him to beware of this--that there was a man called Ying Ko who claimed this city as his territory. Ying Ko, Khan had said, could attack from the darkness, and they wouldn't see him until he was right on top of them, but bright lights would expose him. He fumbled around Reinhardt's now-upended workbench and looked for some kind of light-casting device.
The sound of fist connecting against face became audible. Huong Shu searched harder, finally finding a flashlight in a cabinet. He flicked it on and scanned the room.
Out on the balcony, Spiderman was watching the display of fighting styles with great interest.
His partner stood invisibly next to him, staring with something very close to awe. "Wow."
"He's good," admitted Spiderman.
"He's the best."
One of the Mongols was being propelled back by unseen blows.
Two of the Mongols were picking themselves up, watching their comrade with bleary eyes. One of them drew a throwing knife and pulled his arm back.
Spiderman saw this and quickly swung into the room, pulled the knife thrower off his feet and discreetly tossed him into a corner, then sprang out again before he himself was spotted and became a target.
Huong Shu was shifting the flashlight left and right. One of his men was reeling repeatedly, as if being struck by something, but by the time Huong Shu got the beam over to the man, he was usually several feet from where the punch had been thrown. But there was a strange coiling motion to the darkness around his man, as if something making a twisting motion was periodically blocking his view. Suspicious, he cast a light upon it.
A shadow of a man in a broad-brimmed fedora and a swirling opera cloak, recoiling from a punch, suddenly loomed large, spanning Reinhardt Lane's gigantic wall chart of the periodic table.
The Shadow was instantly aware that the torch had betrayed him and danced left and right, trying to lose himself in the shadowed corners again, but the Mongol was successfully anticipating his every move.
Huong Shu barked out a command in Chinese.
The Shadow heard the cranking sound of a crossbow being armed. He looked up, searching for the archer.
The arrow missed its target--his chest--and grazed his right shoulder instead, anchoring his cloak and riding coat to the wall. He reached over with his left hand to pull it out.
Another arrow missed his now-turned-inward left shoulder but got his cloak, nailing down the other side.
Huong Shu uttered a victorious war cry...
...and suddenly saw a man literally grow outward from a shadow on the wall.
Forgetting his invisibility, fully aware he was caught already, The Shadow struggled to break free of the arrows that pinned him to the wall like a butterfly on a mounting board.
Huong Shu shouted in triumph again and ordered his men to arm their weapons once more. Their quarry was trapped now, unable to fight back...
...with his mind, that is. But The Shadow still had conventional weaponry at his disposal. His hands dove beneath his cloak and came out holding chrome-plated equalizers, snapping off several shots and killing two of the soldiers instantly.
Huong Shu had been through enough battles to understand the benefits of strategic retreat. He ordered one of his men to grab Reinhardt as he made his way to the padded strongbox--the whole reason they'd come in the first place.
The Shadow reholstered his guns and tore his cloak off the wall on the left, then put his left hand under his right shoulder and literally tugged at it until it came free. But by the time he'd gotten loose, Huong Shu had the box and the blueprints and one of his men had an armed crossbow at Reinhardt's temple and was dragging him out the door. Running on sheer adrenaline now, The Shadow made his way through the wreckage of the lab and toward the escaping Mongols.
The lone remaining warrior in the lab, the one Spidey had tossed into the corner earlier, broadsided him and knocked him onto the balcony.
The Shadow wrestled his way out from under the Mongol and threw a left hook into his jaw.
The Mongol staggered, then dove for The Shadow.
The Shadow ducked, then caught the Mongol by his legs and flipped him into the air.
The Mongol grabbed The Shadow's injured right arm, and the two of them fell against the railing. The Mongol's weight carried him over.
Just as he was about to be leveraged over with his opponent, The Shadow dug the fingers of his left hand into the underside of the railing and held on for dear life. Now, only his strength and that tenuous grip kept both of them from falling twenty-three stories straight down, with no eagle's head to break anyone's fall this time. He fought past the pain that was clouding his own mind and glared angrily at the warrior. "Where is Khan?" he demanded.
The Mongol's mind was a clouded mess, but The Shadow was not the one generating the hypnotic suggestion. "I will not tell you," he said, remembering the orders that had been drilled into his head before being sent off on this mission.
The Shadow eased himself further over the wall, trying to keep his grip. "What are you doing? Hold on or you'll die!"
"Yes!" declared the final Mongol. "To serve my Khan." He let go of The Shadow's arm and surrendered himself to the inevitable.
The Shadow made a final desperate lunge to grab him, overbalanced and fell with him.
For the second time that night, a shadow fell through the night toward the ground.
This time there was no gargoyle or other outstretched piece of statuary to catch him.
A Spiderman swooped in instead. "Off we go, into the wild blue yonder...," the webslinger cracked.
The Shadow let out a low groan as the impact of the mid-air catch jolted his injured arm.
"None of that now," Spiderman cautioned, trying to keep the mood light. "You O.K.?"
The Shadow nodded. "Nice catch."
"We aim to please. Where can I drop you?"
The Shadow nodded at the ground below. "The cab."
One did not spend six years working as a telepathic master's right hand without gaining some appreciation for the power of the human mind...and some curiosity as to whether such power existed in others. So, Moe Shrevnitz had been reading books for months with such titles as How To Develop Your Own Psychic Powers and Awaken The Telepath Within You, unknowingly starting a family tradition that would last as long as the hat and cloak. One of the exercises in the book he was reading tonight as he waited outside the Federal Building for The Shadow's return suggested opening the mind to any and all sensations, letting them flow freely, seeing which ones left an impression. He let his mind go blank for a moment. "I sense someone's coming," he marveled, feeling something fast approaching...
...just before something landed with a splat on the sidewalk behind him.
Moe whipped around, but saw nothing else in the area. He cautiously walked over to the side of the building.
What was left of the Mongol warrior was just a heap of squashed humanity and twisted armor. He cringed, then hurried back to the safety of his cab.
No sooner had he closed the door than a shadowy presence in the back seat caught his eye.
Moe jumped. How had The Shadow made it down to the street so fast?
"Drive," The Shadow ordered, his mental voice ragged and pained.
Moe nodded and pressed down on the accelerator.
Spiderman landed back at the laboratory balcony.
"Nice catch," his partner observed, swirling in from the shadows.
"It's getting to be a habit, this catching falling Shadows thing," Spiderman cracked. "Think that was why we were supposed to be here?"
"You tell me."
"Nah, I didn't think so, either. So what now?"
The Shadow wandered into what was left of Lane's lab and looked around, trailed by the ever-vigilant Spiderman. "That's what I'm trying to figure out. Where are Lachlan and Maxwell? If they know as much as we think they do, they should have gotten here way before we did, and even way before the Mongols did..."
Spiderman's spider-sense ratcheted up several degrees. "Somebody's coming...," he began, already springing to the ceiling.
Just then, the door opened.
The Shadow vanished and Spiderman pressed himself into a dark corner of the lab.
Maxwell was practically dragging Lachlan in, and Lachlan was none too pleased. "What are you doing?"
"Getting in here before whoever killed those guards hits us," Maxwell retorted, and then stopped dead in his tracks.
Both men stared in disbelief at the sheer carnage in the laboratory. A quick glance confirmed what they already knew. "My God...," Lachlan began.
"The prototype's gone!" Maxwell said, rushing over to what should have been Reinhardt Lane's workbench. "What the..."
"We...we should call the police," Lachlan said.
Maxwell laughed. "And tell them what? That we're time travellers looking for a nuclear bomb prototype and just happened to walk in on a robbery in a classified War Department lab?"
"Well, we have to do something!"
"Yeah, like get out of here and regroup."
"Regroup for what?"
Maxwell turned and faced his academic mentor. "Look, Professor. We're seventy years in the past, all alone, being followed by Spiderman and The Shadow for whatever reason, with less than three days left before the first atomic bomb is successfully armed. We know what we have to do here, but now we don't know where we have to do it. We need to get out of here before the cops show up, or at the very least before The Shadow and Spiderman do, get back to our room, and brainstorm what we're going to do now. This isn't some stack of papers to wade through and it isn't a theoretical exercise that we can spend months researching. We're on a deadline--emphasis on 'dead' if we don't get this right. Now, come on." He turned on his heel and stormed out of the room.
Lachlan followed, feeling even more uneasy than he had been when they arrived.
Spiderman waited until he was sure they were gone, then lowered himself down from the ceiling. "Well, that was enlightening."
The Shadow swirled into visibility and leaned against the balcony doorframe. "Not as much as I'd like, though. I mean, what are we supposed to do about that? Now we know they're out stop the bomb from being armed, for whatever reason, but are we supposed to help them? Stop them? Buy them drinks? Why are we here?"
"I don't know, but I think we should stick close to your grandfather, 'cause he sounded really bad when I dropped him at the cab."
The Shadow shook his head. "Not tonight."
"Why not?"
"He's going to be busy.
"Tumoing?"
Well, that, and Margo Lane's going to try to kill him tonight.
What
The Shadow chuckled slightly. "I'll explain on the way back to the Moonlight. Let's go."
Spiderman nodded, hoisted his partner onto his back, and somersaulted over the edge of the balcony.
Margo had driven around for over an hour, nowhere in particular, and not in any hurry to return home. Lamont's abrupt rejection still stung, harder than she thought it ever could. And her father's strange behavior still had her unnerved. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to be at home, but couldn't think of anywhere else to go. So, she finally pulled her maroon LaSalle into the alley behind her townhouse, parked her car in the small drive each house was allotted, and headed inside.
The phone was already ringing as she unlocked the door. She ran toward it, pulled off an earring, and raised the receiver to her ear. "Hello?"
"Margo," her father's voice replied in a soothing tone.
Margo was so thankful to hear that voice that she nearly jumped for joy. "Dad! Dad, where are you?"
Reinhardt was actually in Khan's throne room. But the Mongolian telepath, holding the candlestick telephone for him, glared at him and directed his words to send Margo to an entirely different place. "I need you, darling...down at the lab," Reinhardt told his daughter.
Hesitation on the other end of the line, as if Margo didn't like the sound of her father's voice. "Dad? Are you all right?"
Reinhardt's thoughts shifted once more, this time with a sense of urgency in his tone. "Hurry."
Khan hung up the phone and smiled. Huong Shu had told him that Ying Ko had disrupted their capture of Reinhardt, and killed most of his best soldiers. Khan didn't like showings of strength by a rival warlord who dared think himself superior. He would soon show Ying Ko how vulnerable he really was.
The first sign Margo saw that there was any trouble at the Federal Building was the bloody remains of a guard of some kind on the sidewalk outside the front door. Margo raced inside the building, jumped in the elevator, and cursed its slowness as it ascended to the 23rd floor.
The elevator doors opened to the sight of two Marine guards lying dead outside the door to her father's lab. The door itself was standing ajar.
"No," she whispered, then walked quickly toward the lab. "Dad..."
The scene got worse as she approached. Now, she could see the arcing of lights inside the lab and the cracks in the frosted glass window in his door, and smell the pungent aroma of burning flesh and human blood. "Dad!" she shouted, hurrying into the lab. Then, she gasped in horror.
The lab was destroyed. Equipment lay smashed, electrical wires sparked, chemicals were spattered everywhere, two arrows--both with torn black fabric scraps on their tips, one surrounded by a bloodstain--were embedded in the wall, and dead bodies were strewn across the floor. Reinhardt Lane was nowhere to be seen.
"Oh, my God--Dad!" She ran out onto the balcony, looking frantic.
A chilling December breeze whipped around her. She cringed, then noticed something funny...that billboard for Llama cigarettes. It was obnoxious as Hell, but tonight, she just couldn't take her eyes off it. She crossed the balcony, continuing to stare at it.
The breeze surrounded her again, filling her ears with the sound of a whispered voice. "Margo Lane."
Margo felt strangely dizzy, disoriented, and then everything around her went blank.
"O.K.," Peter began as they bunkered down for the night in their hotel room and tried to sort through the knowns and unknowns about this insane time and place. "Fact one: We are here, seventy years in the past, dancing around a rather momentous event in your family history, chasing two guys who may be criminals, or may be good guys, who seem to be trying to stop the invention of the nuclear bomb."
"Yes," Stephen agreed.
"Fact Two: Shiwan Khan, progenitor of a tri-generational grudge against your family, is even now holding your great-grandfather hostage in an invisible building, making him create a nuclear detonator."
"Yes."
"Fact three: We know all the details, and your grandfather, who in this era is young enough to be your older brother, wants the details from us, and we aren't giving them to him because we're afraid of corrupting the time flow, despite the fact that our involvement seems to be keeping things on the right course, not damaging it."
"I guess this confirms the hypothesis that you can't escape the future."
"Fact four: Sarah and MJ, who we left in the 21st century, have found said bomb, and seem to have accidentally activated it."
"Bzzzt," Stephen interrupted. "They started the timer, but the bomb can't blow. The bronzium core was removed. They're looking at a very old two-hour egg timer, and while that may be annoying, it's at least innocuous because it can't detonate."
"So you say. I'm still not entirely convinced of that, because of fact five: After three full days of this nonsense, we still don't know what our purpose here is exactly, though we've gotten involved all over the place, and our opponents or partners or whatever are literally right over our heads at this very moment, though we still don't know what to do about them."
"Yes."
"So by deduction from the previous five facts, fact six is: We are now in the Twilight Zone."
Stephen sighed. "Looks that way."
"There's one more thing that confuses me."
"Only one?"
Peter rolled his eyes. "One more immediate thing. Why wouldn't your grandfather give us the answers we need? He doesn't like us, he doesn't trust us, and he doesn't want us playing games with him, which leads me to believe he wouldn't play them with us if there wasn't some good reason. If we proceed on the assumption that he hasn't written those notes already, then it doesn't make sense why he wouldn't give us more details rather than let us stumble around searching blindly for answers. Why wouldn't there be more information in the letters?"
"I don't know, but there has to be a reason..."
"So you say..."
"Yes, so I say!" Stephen threw up his hands and started pacing, then suddenly stopped. "Wait a minute...letters! We're not the only ones who got letters! What about the one you found upstairs?"
Peter retrieved the backpack and pulled out the envelope he'd found in Lachlan and Maxwell's room. "It's got Maxwell's name on it, but the paper inside is blank."
Stephen withdrew two sheets of folded paper from the envelope and looked them over. They certainly looked blank, but Stephen, better than almost anyone, knew that looks could be deceiving. He held them up to the light for a moment. "There are impressions on the page." He lowered the page and gave it a sniff. "Invisible ink."
"How do you know?"
Stephen looked at Peter with an oh, come on expression.
Peter looked offended. "Give me a break. It's not like I sniff those notes."
"One of my first lessons as a Shadow apprentice was how to mix our version of invisible ink. Trust me, you never forget the aroma of the chemicals used to make the ink disappear after it dries." Stephen looked around the room, then turned to the radiator and set the sheets on top of it. "My uncle always stressed that it really doesn't matter what the particular formula is; most of them become visible again in heat..."
...and that was when the blank pages suddenly filled with carefully written text.
"Paul Maxwell," Peter read. "You are involved in a highly dangerous business, but also highly profitable. I have it on very good authority that you will succeed in your aims, and I am prepared to offer you at least $20 million and a hold in a great adventure, in exchange for a simple service which only you will be able to render. These funds will be yours in exchange for you providing me with an item, which can be found at the time, place, and date detailed below." Peter paused and glanced at Stephen. "December 20th, 1933, 11:32 PM, 148 Houston Street, Manhattan. Who would have sent him this?"
Stephen himself had turned to stone. "Someone with access to money, someone with access to information about the Philadelphia project, information about Shiwan Khan, information about the bomb, and information about the real history of Second and Houston." They stared hard at each other. "Keep reading."
"As a confirmation of the sincerity and reality of this message, enclosed are a list of unrecorded events and where they can be found once your experiment comes to completion." Peter looked at the other page. "A bunch of sketches...a description and approximate location of Farley Claymore's lab...Reinhardt Lane's office number in the Federal Building...something that looks like a rough sketch of a floor plan...another number that looks like some kind of identification number or phone number..."
"Or bank account number, presumably an account with illicit funds stashed away generations ago."
Peter looked at Stephen. "No way."
"Yes, way. We already know they have vintage funds, they have a floor plan, they have a map, they know about events that not even the history books detail. Who else besides a Cranston would be able to put any of these pieces together?"
Peter's blood ran cold. "A Khan."
"Our Khan. Kuba Khan." Stephen shook his head. "It has to be. He could get hold of the prototype, but without the bronzium to power it, or maybe one or two other things to make it work again..."
"We keep coming back to that," Peter pointed out. "The notion that this is all about the bronzium. But what if it isn't?"
"Then what is it about?"
Peter thought for a few minutes. Then something occurred to him. "This isn't addressed to Mark Lachlan, it's addressed to Paul Maxwell."
Stephen didn't particularly like having the obvious pointed out to him when it didn't help the current situation. "I'm not following."
"Lachlan's written a lot of papers about how nuclear research got corrupted by the quest for The Bomb, so it's easy to believe that he would somehow want to go back in time and put a kink in the arms race," Peter pointed out. "And likely, that was his motivation for trying to solve the Unified Field Theory in the first place. But this letter wasn't sent to him, it was sent to Maxwell. His assistant. When I was a lab assistant, I was pretty much in charge of doing the grunt work while my professors did all the research, so it's possible that Maxwell is the guy who built the bomb and much of the machinery while Lachlan looked for the clues. If we proceed along the assumption that this is from Kuba Khan, he has pretty much the same benefit of history that we do. He already knows about Claymore, about Lane, about the bomb, and December 20th is two days from now, so he knows the timeline. What doesn't Khan have?"
Stephen snapped to the same page as Peter. "Something in the bomb itself. But that could still be the bronzium core..."
"No, I don't think so. What are the ingredients in an atomic bomb?"
"Radioactive elements, a particle accelerator, an enhancement shell..."
"...and something to control it all." Peter pointed to the sketch. "And it would likely look something like this."
"That's it!" Stephen snapped his fingers. "That was the part that Lane didn't design! Claymore did, but Granddaddy could never find the plans for it so he couldn't destroy or misplace them." He tried to think. "But Granddaddy's notes pretty much imply Claymore was an idiot--a well-known 'borrower' of other scientists' ideas. What if Claymore didn't invent that control board, but instead stole the plans for it...which meant it couldn't be recreated without the original plans that Claymore likely committed to memory and destroyed or otherwise made sure couldn't be found again."
Peter thought it over. "So what Lachlan found are plans for an enhancement shell, plans for an implosive generator, a basic countdown timer..."
"...but not the wiring layout or the fuel."
"See, I think the fuel is a red herring," Peter reminded him. "The fuel would be a nice-to-have, but it's something that could probably be worked around with a really dedicated nuclear physicist working on it once you have Lane's full plans for his implosive generator. I think the real key here is the control board, because without it, the generator is just a generator."
"Or maybe Khan already has the fuel. If he has the benefits of history, maybe he has the benefits of finding a stash of bronzium somewhere."
"O.K., let's think about that. If that's the case, why wouldn't your grandfather just have said, 'Stop Paul Maxwell from getting to the control panel on the bomb'?"
Stephen paced, trying to put the pieces together in his head. Then he stopped and turned to Peter. "Because he didn't know to."
Peter looked confused. "Now I don't follow."
"We've been assuming those notes were written with the benefit of hindsight. But what if they weren't? What if they were written early on in this encounter...like, say, the first or second night..."
"...when the only pieces of information he has are things he found in the backpack." Peter pinched the bridge of his nose as if trying to stave off a headache from contemplating this whole bizarre time continuum. "This is insane."
"Is it any more insane than four people getting swept back in time seventy years?" Stephen grinned madly, feeling much more confident than he'd been in the past three days. "We know the details now. We know who, what, where, when, why, and how. And Granddaddy must have realized even in his moments of doubt that if we were telling the truth, that it was important for us to have even this little bit of information, and he wrote it down without any more knowledge than we had."
"So are we moving in some kind of perpetual time loop?"
"Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. Maybe we keep moving in this loop until we get it right. Maybe Lamont Cranston had some kind of precognitive dream after all. Who knows?"
Peter froze. "If Khan really does know what Maxwell and Lachlan were working on, then he knows about the atom bomb in the warehouse...the one the girls found."
Stephen tensed. "That's why the timer started when the girls found it. Someone started it up. Khan's people must be at the warehouse too, so they're trying to scare away the girls. They must have tried to improvise a control panel, but needed the original."
Peter paled. "That means that Khan's people are right there, with the girls on the cell phone trying to contact us while we suddenly take our wrong turn through the centuries. We've got to get back there..."
Stephen shook his head. "Not yet. We have two days to protect the next seventy years. And that's time we can't work around or dodge around. We all came back here for a reason. We now know Maxwell's reason. Now we have to make sure we stop him--which has to be our reason for being here." "Then shouldn't we be telling your grandfather about this?"
"Yeah, but not tonight...he's got a guest he must attend to."
God, Cranston, you're a mess, Lamont chided himself as he caught a glimpse of his battle-scarred torso in the full-length mirror across from his armchair, where he sat cleaning his wounds from the fight at Lane's lab just a half-hour earlier. He really needed a good stiff drink right about now, but that would interfere too much in his thought processes, so the only alcohol on the nightstand next to him was the rubbing alcohol he'd poured into the washbasin to sanitize the injuries and ward off infection.
The sting of the alcohol-soaked gauze on his shoulder was nothing, though, compared to the sting of defeat he'd experienced tonight. Khan now had Reinhardt Lane under his complete control, and had access to his generator. Lamont was now sure Khan had enough bronzium for a bomb; why else would he need Lane's device? Worse, though, was what to do about Margo Lane. She'd overheard "Ying Ko" from his thoughts, and was far stronger telepathically than he'd realized as she'd managed to resist even his moderately-strong hypnotic suggestions. He'd have to find a way to wipe himself out of her memories without hurting her, and soon, before they encountered each other again and she overheard far worse...
....but Stephen, the mysterious young man he now believed to truly be his grandson, despite the fact that such a belief flew in the face of all that was logical and reasonable, had all but stated outright that Margo Lane was his grandmother. But there was no way that could possibly be true; Lamont had no time for relationships of any kind, and especially not for a woman from whom he would have to struggle to keep the secret of his identity and his past. It made no sense, unless Stephen was perhaps descended from the results of one of his many one-night stands...
...but he used the name "Cranston". And called Lamont "Granddaddy". And that notebook Lamont had found in his friend's pack spoke of at least two others, brothers with the same last name, one of whom was Stephen's father and the other of whom was apparently Lamont's successor as The Shadow. A true family business. Oh, brother. The very notion of him being a parent to anyone would have made him laugh aloud if he weren't so completely and totally confused about why this was happening in the first place...
A lingering, deliberate "creak" on the master stairs reached his ears. He stopped cleaning his wounds and listened carefully.
The footsteps continued up the main staircase and stepped onto the upstairs carpet, heading for his room.
Lamont frowned. The staff did not use the main stairs after dark, so the person in the hallway was clearly someone who had managed to penetrate the mansion's physical defenses. Stephen and Peter, again? Wouldn't they at least have knocked this time? Well, maybe not; after all, I usually don't. Lamont reminded himself to give a stern lecture in the morning to his majordomo Russell on reinforcing house security rules with the staff, then reached out with his mind, letting telepathic waves ripple outward to determine who exactly was approaching...and nearly falling out of his chair at the response.
Margo Lane strode slowly down the long carpet runner to the door at the end of the hall. The Chinese pistol was still in her right hand, but her arm hung loosely at her side. No need to aim it yet. She wasn't in range.
Light from underneath a closed door signaled the end of stalking. Her prey lay just ahead. She put a hand on the elegant pewter door handle and pushed downward.
The door opened. She could see him now, seated in a chair, facing her. A perfect target. She raised her right arm, aimed the pistol at his heart, and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet hit him dead center in the chest...and his image spiderwebbed.
Lamont watched the mirror across from him shatter, and for a moment counted his blessings. Then, he was puzzled as he watched her walk into the room, gun still pointed right at what she had to know now was not really him.
Margo stopped just inside the room, transfixed by the splintered image.
Lamont crossed the room to her. She didn't even acknowledge the motion.
He took the gun away from her and tossed it aside. She still held her right arm straight out, her hand gripping nothing and her index finger curled around a trigger of air.
He pushed her arm down. She now stood like a statue, completely frozen.
He waved a hand in front of her face. She didn't even blink.
Lamont closed the door to the bedroom and sent out a broadcast psychic suggestion to his staff that no one in the house had heard anything unusual, then bounced a wave off Margo's psyche.
Absolutely nothing came back. It was as if her mind had gone blank now that the one thing she had come here to do was done.
Lamont frowned. Only one man in New York City other than himself had the power to put someone in a trance that deep. Or, rather, two men, but one of them was at least on his side, or so he presumed. That only left one other...Khan. But why? Surely she wasn't meant to kill him; Khan would have given her better weapons and a backup plan if that were the case. Just how had Khan done this so easily when Lamont couldn't do it earlier tonight? Surely she wasn't in on this whole plan, but was she cooperating with Khan to save her father? And did she have any idea exactly whose house she was in?
Whatever the case, the only person who might have any answers was still under an intense hypnotic spell. Lamont looked her in the eyes and focused his powers on penetrating that thick fog that was engulfing her mind. "Margo Lane."
She jumped as if startled, then looked completely disoriented. "What...where am I?"
Just as he suspected--she didn't remember anything. But those subconscious orders were in her mind somewhere, and he was going to get to the bottom of this come Hell or high water. "You're in my home."
Margo suddenly realized who she was talking to. Why in the world had she come here? This was the last place she wanted to be, with as angry and hurt as she was at him. "Your home? How did I get here?"
Lamont wasn't in the mood to answer her questions. He wanted answers to his first. "Who sent you?" he demanded sharply.
"I..." Her thoughts were scattered. What was going on? How had she gotten here? And why had she come? She turned to the door and struggled to open it, trying to leave the room quickly, wanting to escape this place, hoping against hope that this was just a nightmare and she'd wake up any second now...
Lamont slammed the door shut before she could get out. "Who sent you?" he roared, right on top of her, refusing to let her move.
"I don't know!" she roared back, anger and distress in her voice, and pushed him away. "I don't know! All I remember is this voice in my head, over and over, telling me that I had to kill The Shadow..."
...and at that moment, suddenly, it all made sense to her.
Margo stared at Lamont, wonder in her eyes. My God, that explains everything, she realized. Of course he'd known so much about her when they'd first met--The Shadow knows. Of course he hadn't wanted to get deeply involved with her--The Shadow wouldn't have time for a real relationship. Of course he'd left hurriedly when he'd heard about her father's strange behavior--The Shadow was needed. And of course he'd been angry when she'd shouted out "Ying Ko" at the curb--she got the distinct impression that "Ying Ko" meant "shadow" in Chinese...
Lamont's eyes widened. Now he knew why Khan had sent her--to show him how vulnerable he truly was. Because his identity was concealed, because his powers were used in secret, anyone who could penetrate that veil of secrecy was a threat to him. Khan had already done it in The Sanctum...Stephen and Peter had also managed the feat...and Margo Lane had penetrated it earlier that evening. He suddenly felt naked, and not just because he was barely wearing anything but a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of trousers. "I want you to leave right now," he ordered, backing off from her.
My God, this is incredible. It can't be true...can it? She found herself smiling an awestruck smile. "I had to kill The Shadow...and I came here," she said, voicing her thought process aloud to force herself to believe it.
Lamont turned away from her and grabbed his shirt off the clothes valet. "I said I want you to leave right now!"
Margo took a step closer to him. "And there was only you."
Lamont pulled on his shirt and buttoned it, turning further away from her. She was too close now...something was liable to happen if she kept this up...no one posed this kind of threat to him and lived. "Get out," he growled.
Margo stepped closer. She was almost certain that the man who'd rejected her on the curb outside the Cobalt Club was The Shadow, not Lamont Cranston...but she needed him to look at her to confirm it. She put a tentative hand on his shoulder. "Let me see into your eyes."
He whipped around to face her. His eyes were burning black, giving his whole face a different look.
She gasped. Those eyes...my God, those eyes...
Lamont drilled an angry power-filled gaze through her. "You want to see into my eyes?"
She backed off. Roaring static was inside her head now, twisting around, as he stared at her. "I think I know something..."
He was smiling now, an almost insane smile of cruelty, as he came closer. "Well, go on. Look at them."
She kept backing away as the noise got louder. "...something I knew before..."
He grabbed her arm. "Look at them!"
She could not stop voicing the incredible reality aloud, even as her mental voice was being drowned out by his psychic signals. "...something strange about you..."
He was backing her toward the door. "But I've got to warn you..."
Now it was all making sense, even through the increasingly painful noise in her head. "...all that static in my head whenever you were near..."
He was right on top of her now. "...you won't like what you see!"
Her back hit the door, and she stopped. She looked him in the eye, determined to say it before her nerve completely left her. "You're The Shadow!"
He looked absolutely enraged, about to explode, and the pain in her head became intense. Margo braced herself for some kind of physical or psychic blow...
...and suddenly, the noise and pain stopped. Margo looked up.
Lamont had backed off a step, and the darkness faded from his eyes. Now there was nothing in that gaze but...fear? Vulnerability? Shame?
Whatever it was, Margo was determined to strike while the opportunity was there. "My father's disappeared," she said, tears in her voice. "You're the only one who can find him."
Lamont was horrified at his behavior. He'd nearly killed her. He'd been about to literally rip her psyche apart when something clicked and forced him to stop. It was just like when he'd nearly killed his cousin at 13 for silently taunting him about cheating on a test...taunts the budding telepath had inadvertently heard. But he thought after a year with Marpa Tulku and six years in forced servitude to doing good that he had a better handle on that fiery temper of his than this...would he never be in full control of this darkness within him? He had to get out of here now, find some kind of outlet for this rage, before he did something he'd regret. And hunting Khan might not be a bad way to do that. "Just be gone when I get back," he hissed, then grabbed his suit jacket, vest, and tie, and started out the door.
She put a hand on the door just as he was getting ready to open it. "How do you know I won't tell anyone who you really are?" she challenged.
He glared at her, scouring her psyche for the likelihood that she'd unmask him if he didn't find her father...
...and found something unexpected. Concern? Compassion? For him? After what he'd just done?
Their eyes met. All of that and more was in Margo's gaze now.
Lamont couldn't believe it. Where he'd expected to issue a threat, he was now issuing a statement of trust. "I know." Then, he left the room.
Margo knew enough not to follow.
"That's really how it happened?" Peter asked as Stephen finished telling the story.
Stephen nodded, fully aware of how completely insane the whole thing sounded.
"Wow," Peter deadpanned. "I hear the violins starting already, don't you?"
Stephen burst out laughing.
One floor above the time-shifted superheroes, Paul Maxwell was frantically searching through drawers, under the bed, under the covers, and anywhere that provided some sort of cover, hoping against hope that his only keys to what was going on in this topsy-turvy world was somewhere in here...
"If you're looking for that envelope with your name on it, I threw it away."
Maxwell whirled. "What?"
Lachlan was reclining on the bed and eyeing his assistant with a suspicious gaze. "That white security envelope you thought I hadn't noticed you stashing in your pocket. The one with the blank pages in it. The one I dropped in the trash this morning before we started our morning rounds through the city."
Maxwell grabbed the garbage can.
"Undoubtedly the maid got it," Lachlan noted.
Maxwell looked angry. "Why did you do that?"
"Why do you care?"
Maxwell knew he'd been caught, but now he had to figure out how much Lachlan actually knew. "It...it had money in it from my girlfriend."
"I didn't see any money, unless you count that $20 million promissory note."
Maxwell was now steaming mad and searched the room for his jacket.
"Looking for this?" Lachlan reached inside his pillowcase and pulled out the revolver Maxwell had brandished three days earlier, levelling it on his lab assistant. "Got it out of your jacket when you tossed it onto the bed a few minutes ago. Let's talk, shall we?"
Maxwell frowned. "You don't have the guts."
"For $20 million, I might actually develop some." Lachlan smirked. "You really don't think you were the only one who got an offer to change history, do you? He only went to you because I turned him down. Or so I let him think." All pleasantness vanished from his expression. "Sit. Now."
Maxwell slumped against the wall and slid to the floor. "So you've known all along."
"Not really. I did wonder if you really thought you were fooling me about 'remembering a bank account number from your great-great aunt' when we went to the bank to get current-era money, but it saved me having to invent a story for the same thing. I had all the pieces that maybe you knew a lot more than you were letting on, but didn't really put everything together in my head...until I found your little love note." Lachlan chuckled. "Then some of the things I'd found out about this shadowy event in history finally began to make sense. Lane didn't do this willingly, he was coerced...undoubtedly by the people who ransacked his lab. Lane was a peaceful man; he certainly never intended his discovery to be used to make the weapon of last resort. Someone forced him to use the generator, Claymore's beryllium sphere, ancient Chinese coins made from some mythical radioactive element, and some kind of control board of unknown origin to create the first atomic bomb. And that someone is likely related to our friend the 'anonymous' businessman who made us both the same set of promises. And he's likely not to be picky about who actually comes back with said control board in hand."
Maxwell looked frustrated. "So one of us is expendable."
"And the other one is holding the gun."
"But you're here to destroy the bomb and change the course of history."
Lachlan laughed. "You are so naive. I can't believe you haven't figured out how to game the system yet. In academia, you play the liberal game. Support all the pet causes, attend all the rallies, practice civil disobedience, etc., ad infinitum. But in the defense industry, you adopt the exact opposite approach. War good, peaceniks bad, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, etc. In reality, I could care less about either side. You're right that I want to change the course of history...my history. How much would a working time machine be worth to someone like, say, bin Laden? He could go back in time and make sure Flight 93 had enough hijackers on board to make sure it actually hit its target instead of crashing into a field in Pennsylvania. Or maybe it would be worth more to the 'good guys' to wind the clock back to September 10th? $20 million is a mere drop in the bucket." He shrugged. "But right now, really, neither of us is expendable. We've got just two days until the bomb is ready and in working order, after which we can get to it, dismantle it, and return with part in hand. I can't afford to kill you because dismantling that thing is likely to be a two-man job, the same as it always would have been, except moreso now that we know The Shadow and Spiderman came through the time vortex with us. So right now, we need to work together. But from now on, I call the shots." He smirked once more. "See, Paul, this is why I have three doctorates and you're still working on your masters--I actually think these things through." He tossed a pillow across the room at his assistant. "And from now on, I get to sleep in the bed. That floor is damned uncomfortable." He fluffed his own pillow and crawled beneath the covers. "Get the light, would you?"
Maxwell fumed as he got to his feet and crossed the room to turn out the overhead. So much for outsmarting the doddering old professor. But it was still early yet. They still had two days. And like Lachlan said, only one of them really needed to come back with said part in hand.
And besides, now that they had a working time machine, if he didn't like the results this time around, he could always come back and start over again.
While the plotting and intrigue swirled around two floors of the Moonlight Hotel, Lamont had hurriedly left Cranston Manor, though not out of any particular motivation other than to be away from Margo Lane for a few minutes. He was trying to stay outwardly calm, but inwardly he was seething. He had been uncovered by no less than four people in the last two days, he had lost Reinhardt Lane, been shot at by his daughter, and couldn't find Khan. So he'd told Moe to drive him to Second and Houston so that he could speak to his surveillance team.
Stanley, a former racecar driver and Lamont Cranston's current chauffeur, didn't know his master's alter ego identity, but did know that his master and The Shadow were connected, deducing after a while that The Shadow used the Cranston money and connections to enable his mission. He was thus a useful agent. "Stanley," Lamont greeted. "The sun is shining."
"But the ice is slippery. Hello, sir."
"Any activity?"
"Only a cab that stopped at the lot a few hours ago. Passenger entered the lot, only to leave twenty minutes later, but due to the distribution of abandoned pipes and construction supplies and other rubble on the lot, I missed both the passenger's face and any activities he may have done. A police car came by and parked across the street a few minutes later, and the cab took off."
"You follow it?"
"Of course. It went to the Federal Building. The police followed too, so I couldn't stop and watch."
The Federal Building, Lamont thought to himself. Khan's people moving to rendezvous with his soldiers? He nodded. "Keep watching, Stanley."
"Right."
Lamont returned to his cab and thought long and hard. Khan's telepathic control was horrifyingly strong--the ease with which he had taken control over the Lanes was shocking.
Which brought him back to Margo Lane. He didn't want to hurt her exactly, but she was a liability--she knew who he was. But then again, he thought bleakly, who the Hell doesn't any more?
Enough, he ordered himself sternly. He was going to win, just as he always did. He had the highest bounty in the New York Underworld, a hard thing to get. Mox, the Silent Seven, The Hand, the Black Master, the Cobra, Cyro, the list of his victories was almost endless--Shiwan Khan would fall soon enough.
But before he could take Khan down, he had to prepare for the match as he never had to before. His enemies had always matched him on the physical front, and Lamont had become exceedingly good at matching them. He hadn't had a purely mental opponent in over seven years.
"I'm out of practice," Lamont said aloud. "I need to prepare."
"Boss?" Moe asked in confusion.
"The Sanctum, Shrevvy."
Moe nodded and turned left. But as he did, his eyes cut to the rearview mirror. "Boss...I think we're being followed again."
Lamont seethed once more. He wasn't the prey, he was the predator, and it was time he re-established that. "Pull over right now."
Shrevnitz pulled to a stop.
The cab behind them stopped as well.
Both vehicles discharged their patrons.
Lamont strolled a few steps down the sidewalk and paused to adjust the fit of his Homburg and glance in the rear-view mirror of the parked car next to him.
A Mongol warrior in full battle dress was walking toward him, keeping a careful distance.
Lamont growled inwardly. Yet another message from Khan, another indication of his vulnerability, daring him to show his skills when he wasn't cloaked in shadow. The man was clearly meant to engage Lamont in combat, but was probably also meant to be sacrificed should Lamont react to him. Lamont started moving again.
The Mongol followed.
Lamont's longer legs had the decided advantage in a walking sprint, and he was around the corner again and into a darkened alley before the Mongol could catch up.
The Mongol ran down to the last place he'd seen Lamont...and saw nothing. He frowned. His master would be very upset by this. Hoping he'd just guessed the wrong alley, he hurried further up the block.
A swirling blackness settled back into the form of Lamont Cranston as he stepped out of the alley and watched the man walk on. Deciding to see what else Khan had in store, he followed the warrior at a discreet distance.
The Cord followed slowly, about a half-block behind.
Both men kept walking, eventually arriving in Chinatown. There was a street festival going on, with sparklers, fireworks, dancing dragons, and revelers wandering about. Lamont was barely able to keep the Mongol in sight as he made his way through the crowd.
The Mongol ducked into a doorway marked "Sun Yet Kitchen".
Lamont followed, ascending a set of stairs to a beaded curtain-covered doorway at the top. He parted the curtains carefully and looked inside.
The restaurant was empty, except for a single well-dressed patron having dinner...one who looked extremely familiar. Lamont cautiously entered the room.
Mopping up the remnants of his meal with a piece of bread was a bearded man with short blue-black pomaded hair, dressed in a finely-tailored blue-black suit, looking strangely like a barbarian stuffed into Sunday clothes.
It took Lamont a second to realize that the man before him was Shiwan Khan...and that they were wearing identical Brooks Brothers suits. The only difference was that Khan had on the gold-and-grey striped tie Lamont had worn the day before, while Lamont's was a maroon and navy patterned one. "Nice tie," he commented dryly.
Khan smirked and wiped his hands and mouth on a napkin. Right on time. The Tulku always said that you could never resist a challenge. "Thank you," he said mock-politely, gesturing at the chair across from him. "Sit down."
Lamont doffed his hat and coat, then tossed the coat to the table behind him and sat down. "By the say," he said casually, pulling his gloves off and dropping them into his hat, "you sent Margo Lane to kill me."
Khan chuckled. "Kill you? Ying Ko, if I wanted you dead, I would have your liver on a pole by now. No, I sent the girl to be killed. Tell me, how did you do it?"
Lamont tossed the hat to the table behind him. Just as he'd suspected, it had all been a test. And he wasn't sure whether he'd passed or failed. She got the reaction Khan had wanted, but not the outcome. "She's alive."
Khan raised an eyebrow. Ying Ko had actually developed a compassionate streak. How unfortunate. "Then she is a danger to you. She now knows exactly who you are. How much longer can you let her live? How long before your pure instincts take over?"
Lamont smirked. Now he'd gotten under Khan's skin. Stalling for time, Lamont glanced around, checking reflections in the crockery, shadowed corners, lines of sight, taking note of which tables could withstand pistol shots, or which pillars would provide the best cover. "I'm on to your plan, Khan. But you don't have the beryllium sphere, and without it, you can't complete the bomb." He looked smug. "Besides...you know I'm going to stop you."
Khan chuckled. Ah, good, Ying Ko's legendary arrogance was showing...a set of thought patterns Khan was very good at manipulating. "You Americans are so arrogant. You think your decadent country is the new cradle of civilization."
Lamont's temper flared. Six years back in this country defending the streets of New York had given Lamont a new appreciation for his homeland. "Hey--that's the good old U-S-of-A you're talking about, pal," he cracked in his best tough New Yorker accent.
Khan laughed heartily. "I am talking about ruling the world!"
Lamont shook his head. Khan was clearly delusional. Dangerous, but delusional. "Let me give you a name," he finally said, reaching into his suitcoat for a small notebook and pen. "Leonard Levinsky. Brilliant psychiatrist." He started to jot his number down. "You'll talk, he'll listen..."
"You are boring me!" Khan jabbed a dagger downward toward Lamont's right hand on the table.
At the last second, Lamont spread his fingers wide, and the dagger landed harmlessly between them. Then, he saw something that chilled him.
The dagger had a tri-bladed shaft...and an all-too-familiar sleeping dragon face on its hilt. The face opened its eyes and snarled angrily at him.
Lamont tried to conceal his reaction. "Oh, that knife," he said, trying to act casual.
Too late. Khan had already seen right through the facade. "Recognize it?" he asked rhetorically. "I took it from The Tulku."
Lamont couldn't help it...he looked up at Khan, his eyes reflecting a horrible thought. The Tulku would never have willingly given up Phurba; it was sent by the gods as his sworn protector and would do anything to protect the one who mastered it...
Khan smirked again. Ying Ko was slowly realizing the truth...that Khan was more powerful than even the man he'd called "master". "No, no, I misspoke. I took it out of The Tulku...after I ran it through his heart."
Lamont felt as if Khan had plunged Phurba into his own heart. The Marpa Tulku...the man who'd saved him from himself...the only person who'd ever given a damn if he lived or died...who had lived for over twenty generations...no, he couldn't be dead.
Burn this monster! screamed a voice in Lamont's head, an emotional instinctive response that he hadn't used in years. Kill him! Kill! Kill! A white-hot rage that he hadn't felt in over seven years burned inside him as he looked at Khan. Ying Ko's legendary temper was returning with both a vengeance and a target.
"When are you going to learn?" Khan taunted. "When are you going to listen to your true instincts?"
"Instincts?" Lamont hissed between clenched teeth. "I'll show you my instincts!"
Kill him! screeched a manic instinct at Lamont Cranston.
Yes! Lamont agreed, caught up in its fury. In an instant he had snatched up Phurba by the hilt and raised it high above his head, intending to drive it into Khan's heart, if the bastard had one...
Phurba roared and began twisting and contorting in Lamont's grip, infuriated that someone other than its master was attempting to use it. And it already had a healthy dislike for this former student anyway, this bad man who had malice in his heart toward even this new master and needed to be taught a lesson. Its teeth snapped and gnashed as it struggled in Lamont's grasp.
Lamont tried to drive the knife downward, but it felt as if his wrist were about to be torn off. Finally, he slammed it blade-first into the table and let go, then fell into his chair weakly, grasping his hand and grimacing in pain.
Khan smiled triumphantly. He'd manipulated Ying Ko's overconfidence and made him injure himself. Marpa Tulku had always spoken of Ying Ko as such a superior student. How nice that the dead monk had been proven so wrong. "Never did master the Phurba," he chided. "You still expect it to respond to brute force." He held out his right hand.
Phurba slid across the table into it, hilt-first.
Lamont cursed himself angrily as he breathed deeply. Rage is a cloud stronger even than your mind could ever create, his former master had once told him.
What does it matter? He's dead! Lamont's inner anger responded, but he fought that impulse firmly down. He couldn't go through that struggle with the rogue knife a second time...but then, that didn't mean he couldn't attack without Phurba...
And at that moment, any further thoughts Lamont had of attacking Khan were stilled by the cold steel of a single-shot Chinese pistol against his temple. The Mongol he'd been following was now next to him, gun cocked and ready to fire.
You must always be vigilant for your very soul, his former master had told him. Your bloodlust killed hundreds in Tibet. Turn it loose again and it will consume you. Out of respect for life you must remember what you are without Ying Ko.
Khan gave the warrior a glare, and the guard backed off and came over to stand behind his master. "My Mongol warriors are not very bright...but they are very loyal." He sighed. "Face the truth, Ying Ko. There is no light without shadow...and you and I are that shadow. I would sooner destroy a Rembrandt than kill you. But you are not leaving me any choice in the matter."
Lamont wasn't listening. He was instead looking over Khan's shoulder at the not-very-bright warrior, sending a beam of projective energy between the man's eyes.
The warrior winced. He suddenly had a piercing headache--almost like a dagger driving through the middle of his forehead.
"One more time," Khan pronounced, annoyed that Lamont would not look at him. "Will you join me?"
Lamont barely raised his concentration...and the pressure doubled.
The warrior pinched the bridge of his nose, clearly in agony.
"You cannot stop me," Khan warned. "You cannot defeat me. Your mind is an open book to me."
Lamont laughed derisively. "Then learn how to read." He held up his right hand.
The pained warrior tossed his pistol into it and stumbled away.
Khan pushed the table over, knocking Lamont's chair backwards and spilling him to the floor. "Weakling!" he shouted to his guard, stabbing Phurba into his belly, then yanked the dagger out and grabbed the man's other pistol.
Lamont recovered his balance, got to his knees, and aimed his gun right at Khan's heart.
Khan aimed right at the center of Lamont's forehead.
Two trigger fingers fired two pistols simultaneously.
Two bullets flew across the restaurant and smashed headlong into one another, fusing into a single lump of lead.
Khan's eyes widened. He couldn't do that again if he tried.
Lamont's eyes widened. He couldn't do that again if he tried.
Khan shouted a Mongolian battle cry and sent a telekinetic blast through the room.
Lamont was knocked backward. The windows in the restaurant blew outward.
Khan leapt out the now-shattered window overlooking the street.
Lamont got to his feet and sent for Moe, grabbing his coat and hat and racing down the stairs.
For a brief instant, Moe thought Lamont had found himself another driver. A man in a familiar dark Brooks Brothers suit had leapt out the window, executed a perfect mid-air somersault before landing on his feet, and jumped into the sidecar of a waiting motorcycle that sped away just as Moe pulled up to the curb outside of the Sun Yet Kitchen. But a second later, the real Lamont emerged from the restaurant, and Moe hit a switch on the dashboard to pop open the rear door for his passenger.
Lamont jumped into the cab and slammed the door. "Tail 'em, Moe," he ordered.
Moe smiled. This was the part of the mission he liked best--the part where his unique skills were put to good use. He hit the gas, and the cab squealed away from the curb.
The Cord was like a speedboat on wheels--a huge V-8 engine, sleek aerodynamic lines, racing suspension and steering. It could outrun anything on the road. But the motorcycle had a tighter turning radius, and was able to get around corners faster. Moe fought to keep it in sight as they tore down city streets, dodging traffic, running signals.
The motorcycle turned onto Second Avenue. Moe turned onto the street a moment later, then suddenly realized the motorcycle was nowhere to be seen. "Boss, he's disappeared!"
"What?" Lamont looked all around, then gaped. "Stop the car!"
Moe screeched to a halt at the corner of Second and Houston Street.
This corner! It always comes back to this corner! Lamont got out of the cab and stood in the middle of the street, eyeballing everything else before turning toward the spot that should have been 148 Houston Street...the empty lot. For two days now, everything always comes back to this same spot...why?
Something made him stare at the lot, like hearing a whisper on the wind. Something was not right--just as the cab was driving up, he could have sworn he saw something. The way the light glinted off the buildings across the street, the way the wind died just as he came to the center of the fence and picked up again as he got closer to the next street, the way relatively clean water was draining away from the site without a trace of sand, silt, or mud from the abandoned corner...there was something here. There had to be. He studied the corner intently.
Trash blew across the lot. Weeds grew all around. It was just another demolished building site, like so many others in New York City nowadays thanks to the economic collapse of The Great Depression. There was nothing there.
Or was there? Lamont couldn't shake the feeling that Khan was nearby, watching, laughing. This lot was concealing something.
Moe came up behind him, looking confused. Lamont said and did some crazy things sometimes, but even he wouldn't mistake an abandoned construction site in a depressed part of town for anything of value...would he? "It's just an empty lot, boss," he told his employer quietly.
Lamont wasn't so sure, but he couldn't decipher the mystery. His head hurt, his shoulder ached, he was just heartsick over the news of the Tulku's murder, and he'd lost Khan's trail. What a rotten night. He turned away from the fence and wandered back to the cab. Why was this all happening to him? What was going on here?
Stephen knows, hissed that angry voice in Lamont's head.
Yes, Lamont told himself. Yes, he does.
Make him tell you! Make him tell you everything!
Lamont couldn't think of any reason not to.