Enemies & Allies (10 page)

T
HANKS TO DRAYLING’S REVELATIONS TO ALFRED AND THE
suspicious documents he had found in their offices, Bruce believed that most, if not all, of the remaining board members were under Luthor’s thumb.

But he did not believe they were stupid. Arrogant, perhaps. Overconfident, definitely. Some might even be terrified. But not sloppy. They would never leave the truly damning evidence in their own offices. He had to dig deeper to find what he was looking for.

And the best time for digging deep was after dark. Night after night.

He sifted through all publicly available information about the nine men and stripped away their first layer of secrets. Then he donned his other identity and slipped out, targeting each man in turn. He would investigate until he had the necessary proof or until he was convinced a particular man was genuinely clean.

So far, no one had fallen into the latter category.

Next on the list was Paul Henning, the vice president of manufacturing—the first appointed board member who had not been personally selected by his father. Henning had replaced Willard LaBrie, a good man twenty years Thomas Wayne’s senior, who had succumbed to a heart attack in his sleep. At first Henning had seemed to fill his predecessor’s shoes very well, but he’d grown arrogant, greedy. He had made mistakes, and his biggest mistake was that he left
clues.

Though Henning owned a nice house in a good suburb of Gotham City, he also surreptitiously rented an apartment under an assumed name. The secret apartment was convenient, discreet, and readily accessed by his mistress for an occasional rendezvous. At the moment, though, it was unoccupied.

The fire escape window in the apartment building had been painted shut. From his utility belt, he withdrew a tiny vial of solvent and applied it to the cracks on the sill, loosening the paint. Powerful magnets on telescoping rods dealt with the latch. Then with a slender metal probe he jimmied open the window.

Several lights were on in the surrounding apartments, and a radio’s music drifted into the night. A couple downstairs argued so loudly and constantly that their shouts provided the perfect distraction. Nobody heard the slight sound of a window opening. With a swirl of his dark cape, he slipped inside, then gently slid the window back into place.

He was in the kitchen. Dark, cold. Not a single dirty dish in the sink. Everything neatly in place in the cupboards. Several bottles of bourbon, vodka, and gin stood in a row, with two clean highball glasses and an empty ice bucket. The sitting room contained a plaid sofa, a round table with a lamp, and a large radio. The bedroom held little more than a nightstand and a bed with two pillows, wrinkled sheets. The bathroom was a standard towels/bath mat/medicine cabinet affair. The cabinet yielded nothing.

Too clean. Too innocuous. Henning couldn’t be
that
careful.

Back to the sitting room for a more thorough inspection. The walls were bare. Nothing in the lamp’s base.

He slid the sofa forward and found a central heating vent that shouldn’t have been there, since a functional radiator stood plainly against the opposite wall. He pried loose the metal grill and discovered not a duct, but a wall safe. The man had a much deeper secret than the fact that he had a mistress.

Donning small earphones from his utility belt, Bruce extracted a sensitive gauge, and in ten minutes he had the safe open. Inside, he found corporate papers, memos, canceled checks, a ledger that revealed numerous transfers of technical documents, and blueprints for highly classified projects that Wayne Enterprises had spent years and millions to develop.

Everything had been transferred to LuthorCorp. Henning had accepted plenty of bribes, and he had kept track of them all. Perhaps the man wanted his own proof to use against Luthor if ever the bald industrialist double-crossed him. It was all the proof Bruce Wayne needed now.

Scowling beneath his mask, he reread the details to make certain, took microfilm photographs of each page, and carefully repackaged the contents.

OF ALL THE MEN ON THE BOARD, SHAWN NORLANDER SEEMED
like someone Thomas Wayne would have chosen. He had a normal-appearing life, a wife and two children, and no evidence of living above his means. But that did not clear him of suspicion. If a payoff had not been enough enticement, Luthor could have threatened his family or blackmailed him somehow.

Norlander lived in a two-story Tudor-style home on a maple-lined suburban street, with a backyard enclosed by an incongruous chain-link fence. A Chrysler station wagon with lacquered wood-panel sides sat outside in front of a white-painted detached garage. A push lawn mower leaned against a wall.

He decided to enter from the back, but the fence gate was locked. The chain links rattled as he clambered over to drop with quiet grace to the concrete pad behind the house. His boots barely made a sound. He approached the back porch cautiously and found a locked Dutch door. Producing lock picks from his belt, he squatted and went to work. The dead bolt posed only a small difficulty, and the knob caused no problems at all.

Before he could open the door, however, he sensed movement outside in the yard and saw something large and faintly growling. It was a dark-furred monster loping forward under the thin sliver of moonlight. A mastiff. Only its fangs and gleaming eyes showed in the darkness. Now he understood the reason for the fenced yard.

The well-trained mastiff neither barked nor howled—it simply attacked. The weight of the huge body drove him down. As he raised a defensive forearm, powerful jaws clamped down on the reinforced gauntlet, biting but unable to penetrate the armor fabric. Everything was completely silent save for the hungry growl, like a badly misfiring engine, that continued to emanate from the beast’s throat.

He punched its snout, and the dog released its grip. He pulled his arm free, but then the dog drove him back down to the porch. Claws scrabbled on the reinforced fabric over his chest.

Grabbing for the utility belt, he tried to reach his capsules. The forgotten lock picks clinked on the cement porch step, and he ducked so that the fangs barely brushed his exposed chin, striking only the cowl’s dark face shield. The mastiff’s jaws sank into one of the pointed false ears.

Finally finding the right compartment on the belt, knowing he had to end this brief struggle before the commotion woke anyone up, he seized the vial he sought. He crushed the thin glass ampoule in his palm and shoved the sharp, oily scent of chloroform at the dog’s snout. It whiffed, snuffled, began to reel, and finally collapsed against the porch. The effects would last about thirty minutes. It would have to be long enough.

As his breathing slowed, he slipped inside Norlander’s house. The kitchen yielded nothing; neither did the formal dining room. He crept upstairs, past the bedrooms of two sleeping children, son and daughter, the boy no more than six.
Six years old.
A boy who probably thought his life would never change, that his parents would always be there. A boy who might suggest going out to a new motion picture in the heart of Gotham City. A boy who might run around the house playing with an imaginary sword, pretending to be Zorro…

Work to do. He couldn’t let himself think like that.

Bypassing the master bedroom, he crept down the hall until he found the study. He would focus his search there. Indeed, in Norlander’s desk—in the false bottom of a drawer—he found documents, photos of a little girl, a bank account set up in two names, neither of which was his own. A picture of a woman the right age to be the child’s mother. Not his wife.

And a threatening letter: “No one needs to know about your illegitimate daughter. She’s safe, and your comfortable life is safe. Your real family won’t suspect a thing. We ask only one small favor.”

Digging deeper, he found more evidence of Wayne Enterprises projects being transferred: pending medical breakthroughs, trade secrets that were funneled to LuthorCorp. A juicy bribe had turned Henning; blackmail had broken Norlander; threats to his family had forced Drayling to resign.

He replaced these items exactly as he’d found them. Nobody would know he had been here until it was too late. On his way out he carefully locked the Dutch door once more.

Where it lay sprawled, the mastiff had begun to stir. He bent down and touched its fur. The beast had simply been defending its home from a sinister prowler, protecting those who meant the most to it. Exactly as
he
needed to do with Wayne Enterprises.

On the chain collar encircling the gigantic dog’s neck hung a tag bearing its name.
FLUFFY
.

Leaving the house behind, he slipped over the fence once more and moved off into the night to his next target.

O
NCE HE GOT BACK TO HIS DESK AT THE
DAILY PLANET,
Clark Kent wrote the draft of his initial “Lorna for the Lovelorn” column, but he wasn’t finished yet. First he needed to show it to someone.

“Remember I promised you a cup of coffee, Lois?” He held the typewritten sheets in his hand while he nervously pushed his glasses up with the other. “Um, would now be a good time? We can just go to the coffee shop around the corner.” He waved the article. “I’d really like to know what you think.”

Lois was in a rush, as always, up to her eyebrows in a big new story she was chasing. If she was on the verge of a real scoop, how could advice to the lovelorn compete with that? But she stopped, saw the look on his face, and instantly warmed to his dilemma. “Oh, Clark—you really look out of your element.”

“That’s how I feel.” He shrugged. “I promise it’ll take only a few minutes.”

She gave him a quick, compassionate smile. “You buying?”

“Sure.”

“Then I’m having a Danish, too.” She startled him by slipping her arm through his and steering him toward the elevator. “This isn’t a date, you know. Just two coworkers discussing a story.”

The elevator doors opened with a ding. Clark was embarrassed. “A date? Why, no, Lois. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with—”

“I’m flattered by the attention, Clark. Really, I am. But my heart’s set on someone else.”

The elevator ride seemed to take forever. “Superman’s a hard act to follow,” he agreed.

She stiffened. “I didn’t say anything about Superman!” When the doors slid open to the lobby of the building, Lois hurried out, with Clark following closely.

In the coffee shop she chose one of the stools at the counter rather than the more intimate setting of a booth. A gum-chewing waitress hurried over with two cups of coffee, and Lois pointed to a cherry-filled Danish in the display case. Nearly twice her size, Clark swiveled on the stool beside her and handed her his article.

“I’m not sure the advice is correct, but I tried to listen to them, respond to how they’re feeling, and give them support, one way or another. My mother told me to be compassionate. She said that as long as the advice comes from my heart, then the recommendations can’t be entirely wrong.”

Lois sipped her coffee and skimmed the article, talking to him as she did so. “When did you see your mother? I thought she’s in Kansas.”

“I, um, spoke to her on the telephone.”

Lois’s darting eyes danced back and forth along the lines of text, and he watched her nod slightly to herself. She slowed, read more carefully, and handed the pages back to him. Her smile of approval meant more to him than he could have ever expected. “Not bad, Clark—and I mean that. Not only is it what readers want, but it’s good advice, too.”

“Thanks, Lois. It was so hard to choose among all those letters. Everyone seems to have a different problem.”

Lois tapped her fingernail on one of the paragraphs. “This one’s a little thin, though—the man in love with a coworker who doesn’t seem to know he exists. I think you should tell him to do little things…open doors, ask for her advice, bring her coffee or a newspaper. He doesn’t need to win a football championship or put an end to world hunger—he just has to show her that he’s a worthy guy. And believe me, women
do
notice these things, whether or not it’s apparent to the man.”

He took a pencil from his pocket and scribbled notes in the margin while she ate her Danish. “Thanks, Lois. That really helps.”

“Your heart’s in the right place.” She took a quick gulp, finished her cup, and waved away a refill as she swung off the stool. “Gotta go. I’m after an important follow-up to the Luthor story. Thanks for the coffee.” Lois pecked Clark on the cheek and gave him a quick smile before she hurried out of the coffee shop. “Good column, Clark. Who knows, you could have a whole new career ahead of you.”

He knew he was bright red from blushing.

TAKING HIS MOTHER’S ADVICE TO HEART, CLARK ALSO MADE AN
effort to strengthen his friendship with Jimmy Olsen. The freckle-faced young man was delighted when Clark suggested that they catch a movie after work. Jimmy picked the movie—
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
—and they sat together near the front, munching on popcorn, sipping cherry cola through straws.

Clark stared at the black and white images, watching the enemy aliens with their whirling saucer-like ships, their death rays. Afterward, as the two of them went for ice cream sundaes, Jimmy chattered with animation and enthusiasm about the film. He had thoroughly enjoyed it. Clark, though, was troubled by the persistent portrayal of aliens as evil monsters that wanted to destroy or enslave the human race.

No wonder many of Lois’s readers had been skeptical about Superman’s declaration that he was not from Earth. He had hoped to provide a shining example, to expose the silliness of being afraid of the unknown, but since he knew no other genuine aliens, how could he be sure?

Hollywood’s murderous craft were drastically different from how he imagined spaceships from Krypton would have been constructed, especially ships captained or devised by someone like Jor-El….

THE NEXT DAY, CLARK GLANCED UP FROM HIS TYPEWRITER AS
a rush of excitement whirled through the newsroom. Phones started ringing simultaneously. “Quick, turn on the radio!” someone yelled. They all gathered around the shortwave, listening intently to emergency dispatches, alerts that were broadcast on the public bands.

“—repeat, this is a news flash! At this moment, fighter jets are scrambling to respond to a strange silver spacecraft that has appeared over Washington, D.C. Witnesses describe it as a flying saucer. It refuses to respond to radio transmissions.”

Clark’s glasses skidded down his nose and he pushed them back up. Jimmy was already on his feet, flushed with excitement. “Gosh, Mr. Kent—do you think it’s the start of an alien invasion, just like in the movie last night?”

Lois grabbed her phone, yelling toward Perry White’s open doorway, “Chief, I’m calling my father! If anyone knows what’s going on, the general will.”

“Great Caesar’s ghost! He’s not going to stop to give interviews in the middle of a national crisis!”

She dialed furiously. “He will if he wants to keep getting birthday cards from me.”

Thoughts spinning, Clark wondered if this was finally his opportunity to speak with a fellow alien, maybe even another Kryptonian survivor. He rose quickly from his desk. “Can’t talk right now, Jimmy. I’m on a deadline in an hour, and I have to finish my column for Mr. White.” He picked up papers and bustled out of the newsroom while the other reporters clustered around the radio.

RED CAPE RIPPLING BEHIND HIM, KAL-EL STREAKED THROUGH
the sky, straight toward the nation’s capital. By adjusting his senses, both seeing and listening to radio waves on specific bands, he could monitor the action. Seven USAF F-100D Super Sabre jets had taken off from nearby Bolling Air Force base, but the “unidentified flying object” had soared away from Washington, D.C., skimming low to the ground, then looping up into the clouds in a series of impossible maneuvers. The fighter pilots did their best to keep up, roaring along at top speed; they left vapor trails that Kal-El could easily follow.

If this truly was an interstellar ship, it would be capable of incredible velocities. As the sleek elliptical craft raced westward across the United States, it outdistanced the supersonic jets. But Kal-El could fly faster even than that.

The UFO raced across the Great Plains, cutting across Nebraska, then headed south. Kal-El wondered briefly if it would arrow toward Smallville. Might a fellow Kryptonian be able to detect someone from his former home in the middle of Kansas? Maybe even the remnants of his crashed ship?

Kal-El picked up on the chatter among the F-100D pilots. “So far the bogey hasn’t launched any bombs or missiles, Cap. Maybe it’s peaceful—over.”

“And maybe it’s just here to ask for directions to Venus,” one of the other pilots shot back.

The squadron commander broke in. “Our orders are to pursue and intercept. We’ve gotten no response to our transmissions, so we have to assume that thing means no good. Listen up—when you get in range, fire at will. Acknowledge.”

A chorus of voices responded. “Copy that.”

“Roger.”

If the alien visitor did not speak English, Kal-El wondered how the spacecraft could possibly respond. He felt a powerful need to reach the flying saucer first, before the fighter jets did anything foolish. These men might unintentionally provoke an interplanetary war.

He soared forward to catch up with the Super Sabres. One of the pilots detected him on his radar. “Sir, there’s something coming up on our six! Wait…it’s Superman!”

Kal-El streaked by, hand raised, cape now a blurry red line behind him as he shot past the lead plane.

“Roger that. He’ll knock that alien out of the sky!”

“Maybe so…but remember,
he’s
an alien, too. Over.”

“Eyes front, Cap! Where did those other aircraft come from—over?”

Three larger planes now flew on a perpendicular course, peeling out in front of the strange silver craft. The unmarked private planes also intended to intercept the alien saucer. The Air Force squadron sent hails, demanding that the new pilots identify themselves, but the mysterious aircraft did not respond. The unidentified planes cut directly across the UFO’s path, but the saucer zigzagged, ducked beneath them, and streaked past in an instant.

Kal-El scanned ahead, squinting, pushing with his enhanced vision to glean information about the three private craft. His X-ray vision penetrated their hulls, and through the fuselage he discerned pilots, technicians, and engineers working with analytical devices, studying screens. They all wore uniforms with a very familiar corporate logo.

LuthorCorp.

What did LuthorCorp have to do with the alien craft? Kal-El supposed that someone like Lex Luthor would be fascinated by otherworldly technology. He probably wanted to seize the silver craft for himself, and he undoubtedly had his own equipment, including unmarked supersonic aircraft, so that he could get the strange ship before the military did. Regardless, it was obvious that even these new planes had no chance of catching the flying saucer.

Kal-El put on a burst of speed, pulled ahead of the Super Sabre jets, and began closing the gap to the UFO.

As he raced past, he saw that the men inside the LuthorCorp aircraft were activating a kind of pulse beacon from a small antenna. But instead of aiming it at the flying saucer, they pointed the spike back toward the oncoming F-100D squadron.

Behind him, Kal-El heard a cry of surprised dismay transmitted by one of the pilots. “Mayday, Mayday! Flameout!”

The squadron formation broke apart and scattered, with the trailing jets circling away. The lead Super Sabre, though, began gushing black smoke from its engines as it tumbled awkwardly from the sky like a downed waterfowl. The pilot hit his afterburners, trying everything. “All systems FUBAR. Can’t eject. Malfunction! Going down, going down!”

Kal-El saw the F-100D enter a deadly and disorienting flat spin, its engines erupting in a blaze of flame. One of its wings shimmied dangerously. The pilot inside was doomed.

Meanwhile, the LuthorCorp craft beat a hasty retreat, no longer pretending to chase the flying saucer, and the UFO streaked away in a completely different direction.

The remainder of the USAF squadron could do nothing to help their fellow pilot. Their own cockpit systems were also scrambled, and the pilots struggled to keep from crashing alongside their leader.

Kal-El didn’t pause to think about what he should do. He had to forget about the flying saucer. Someone needed his help. He whirled about and dove toward the falling jet.

He filled his lungs and expelled a great gust of air, enough to freeze the engine cowling and extinguish the flames before the fuel tanks exploded. Then, as gently as he could, he took hold of the jet’s belly, raising his hands over his head so he could support the falling deadweight, taking away the burden of gravity as he eased the aircraft toward the barren ground below.

The Super Sabre’s systems were completely fried, which prevented the pilot from extending his landing gear. Kal-El brought the jet down carefully on the desert sand, set it on its belly, then tore away the canopy. He snapped the pilot’s harness and pulled the man to safety, still concerned that the jet might explode.

As he stood on wobbly legs, the pilot removed his helmet and drew deep gasping breaths. He shook his head and looked back at his wrecked plane. “Thanks, Superman. You saved my life.”

“Glad to be able to help. I wouldn’t leave you stranded.” The airman brushed himself off, looking both shaken and relieved.

Normally, such sincere appreciation would have been all Kal-El needed to hear, but he looked up into the sky, where the UFO had already streaked out of sight. The crippled squadron had sent out distress signals and requests for backup, then circled around to retrieve the downed pilot.

With bittersweet disappointment, Kal-El scanned the sky for any silver glint of the saucer, but too much time had passed. The mysterious spacecraft had vanished.