The Shadow (20 page)

Claymore fell silent for a long moment, vaguely disturbed by Khan’s choice of words. “Uh, you do mean a
plane,
don’t you?”

B
urbank, ever-viligant dispatcher of pneumatic tube canisters and encrypted mail, sat in his swivel chair in the dimly lighted control nexus of The Shadow’s clandestine network. It happened to be past sundown, but Burbank never paid much attention to the hour; his biological clock ran according to no known human pattern. His jacket was draped over the back of the chair, and the radio headset was snugged to his ears. The huddle of brass-banded canisters on his desk and the forest of colored pins in the city map on the wall gave some indication of how busy he had been since Shiwan Khan’s arrival in New York.

But The Shadow had not been idle, either.

“Understood,” Burbank murmured into his microphone, in acknowledgment of the crimefighter’s latest communiqué.

He shut off the radio and dispatched two canisters in quick succession. Then he reached for two sheets of stationery and a fountain pen. There was nothing remarkable about the pen; the ink, however, was a variation of the type the French counterespionage service called
encre sympathique
—invisible ink. As for the creamy sheets of stationery, they were impregnated with a substance that reacted to the time-release ink. So while Burbank’s thin hand moved deftly across the page, the pen strokes wouldn’t appear until much later.

Finished with the first note, he used a signet ring moistened with that same ink to append The Shadow’s silhouette to the bottom on the page. Immediately he set to work on the second. In the end, both meticulously folded notes were inserted into unmarked envelopes.

He rose from his seat and donned his jacket and overcoat. On his way out of the subterranean crypt, he retrieved from its tall stand an umbrella with a Prince of Wales handle.

The two letters were in one hand when he emerged on the street, the opened umbrella in the other. A violent rainstorm had caught the city by surprise and the sidewalks were crowded with other umbrella wielders. Tip to tip, the dozens of umbrellas per block had created a kind of nomadic tarpaulin.

The nondescript Burbank maneuvered through the throng with professional ease. Then, at a certain corner, he paused and, in defiance of the downpour, closed the umbrella. Gripping it under his right arm, he took one of the letters in his right hand and stepped from the curb directly into the eastbound traffic lane. The letter hand was extended slightly behind him when a bicycle messenger sped by and snatched the letter.

Undeterred by the fountaining wake launched by the bike’s thick tires, Burbank walked on, extending the letter in his left hand slightly in front of him as he entered the westbound traffic lane, where a second bicycle messenger, headed in the opposite direction, grabbed hold of it as he whisked by.

Anyone observing him at just that moment might have noticed a hint of a satisfied smile assemble itself on his narrow face. But in short order the umbrella opened, and Burbank was swallowed by the crowd.

Moe Shrevnitz and his wife were listening to the sound of the rain lashing against the windows of their Brooklyn flat when one of the envelopes appeared from under the front door, as if propelled by the wind. Shrevnitz, lounging in his form-fitting armchair by the fire, noticed it and hurried to the door. The suddenness of his action made Shirl look up from her knitting.

“What is it, Moe?” she asked while he was tearing into the envelope. “Another flyer from the bowling league?”

She was a plain-looking woman, who had put on as many pounds as he had over the long years of their uneventful marriage. She did, however, have a suspicious streak Shrevnitz had never been able to extinguish—one that made for problems when he was called on to do The Shadow’s bidding.

“Moe?” Shirl repeated. “What is it?”

Shrevnitz’s eyes were riveted to the page. Quickened by exposure to air, the time-release ink was bringing Burbank’s short message to light.
Shrevnitz,
it read,
Meet at northeast corner Houston and Second, headquarters Shiwan Khan.

“Moe!” Shirl said.

He glanced at her, then stepped out of sight to the hall closet. “Uh, yeah, it’s from the league all right. They want me to fill in for somebody at the lanes.”

“On a night like tonight?” she called.

“I know, I know, but what’s a guy to do?”

When he reappeared in the parlor he was wearing his peacoat and had his red-cloth bowling bag dangling from one hand. He tossed the crumpled letter into the fire.

“After the game, we might go out for a beer or something. You know how it is. If all the guys are going, I can’t really say no, so . . .” He planted a kiss on her furrowed forehead. “I guess you shouldn’t wait up.”

He tugged his cap on and hurried for the front door.

But no sooner did the door close than Shirl was up and out of her chair, the knitting set aside, and rushing for the hearth’s wrought-iron poker. The note was already burning at the edges, but she managed to fish it free of the flames before too much damage had been done. By then, however, Burbank’s near calligraphic script was fading, and Shirl found herself staring at a blank page.

Across the East River, in a brownstone in the heart of the city, the ink was fading fast from the second of Burbank’s notes. Alongside the note on the antique table was a candlestick telephone, an unfinished cup of coffee, and a still-burning cigarette that bore traces of bright red lipstick.

Margo regarded the letter and envelope as she shrugged into her nubby wool coat. When they stood at the site of the apparently psychically cloaked Hotel Monolith, Cranston had said she would receive instructions, and so she had. Having seen him in his guise as The Shadow, however—having glimpsed his true face—she was more apprehensive than eager about allying herself with him. For her father’s sake, yes, she would do what Cranston said. But she was suddenly frightened of him, almost as frightened as she was of Shiwan Khan, The Shadow’s shadow.

Hulagu and Shu Shiang stood guard on either side of the central pair of front doors to the building the Kha Khan affirmed was invisible to the city and its millions of inhabitants. There were six doors in all, gleaming white, sandwiched between blue-glaze tiled columns that striped the façade of the twelve-story hotel. Shiwan Khan had conjured a monsoon-strength storm for New York’s final day, but the Mongol bowmen would gladly have endured more than a wind-lashed drenching in service to their lord and master.

Hulagu, however, was growing increasingly uneasy about a distant squishing sound his ears had seized on and refused to surrender. Uneasy, because Shu Shiang either didn’t hear the sound over the angry thrumming of the rain or wouldn’t say—even when the sound had increased in volume and frequency, as if on the approach.

Perhaps his partner’s peaked helmet was too tight a fit, Hulagu told himself.

He had his mouth open to say as much when he saw Shu Shiang blanch and point to something in front of him—a splashing in the muddy lake the rain had fashioned in the tapering trapezoid of marble that fronted the building. The veiled source of the sound was very close now, and Hulagu watched in nervous astonishment as footprints began to appear in the mud near the hotel’s gilded, inlaid monogram. It was as if someone was charging for the front doors, only
there wasn’t anyone there.

Neither bowman had forgotten their encounter with Ying Ko in the scientist’s laboratory, but so rapid was the stride of The Shadow that they scarcely had time to raise their weapons in defense. Blackness darker than night clouded the space before Hulagu’s eyes, and his face took a sudden, ferocious pounding. His high cheekbones were shattered, his lips smashed, his ribs cracked . . . A few moments of this, and unconsciousness seemed infinitely preferable—even if it did entail a face-first collapse into the mud.

Enthroned on the hotel’s top floor—in what was originally planned to have been the Moonlight Café—Shiwan Khan surfaced from contemplation as the sound of his arch-rival’s mocking laugh reached him. “Ying Ko,” he seethed.

Hugging himself in naked alarm, Farley Claymore spun around to face the throne. “The Shadow?” His eyes searched the room. “Where? Here?”

Khan shot him a withering glance. “Not here, you fool. But, yes, inside the building. In the lobby.”

Claymore gulped and found his voice. “Can you tell from here if he’s mad at me? I think he might be. We had a little misunderstanding yesterday, and I think there might be some hard feelings—”

“Find him and kill him,” Khan barked.

Claymore motioned to himself. “Me? Kill him?”

Khan turned to the three remaining warriors of his guard. The bald Hoang Shu was cradling a Thompson. “All of you, find him and kill him.”

Claymore lowered his head. “If it’s all the same with you, I’d just as soon stay here and help—”

“Do as I say!” Khan said, shooting to his feet. He came down the carpeted stairs, snatched the tommy from Hoang’s grip, and forced it on Claymore. “This may help. Now,
go.”

Claymore gazed at the gun in mute disbelief. He was about to protest when two of the Mongols took hold of him and hustled him from the room. Khan settled back into the throne, arranging himself in a regal posture.

The sphere was suspended from a single cable, five feet above the broad circle of sunken floor. The vacuum tubes of the timer showed one hour, twenty-six minutes, fourteen seconds.

And counting.

“Plenty of time,” the descendant of conquerors assured himself. “I wouldn’t miss this, even for the world.”

“A flashlight?” Claymore was saying to one of the guards a few minutes later. He was winded from the walk down from the twelfth floor and anxious to avoid a second encounter with The Shadow. The tommy gun shook in his hands. “You’re planning to give him what for with a
flashlight
?”

The helmeted Mongol glanced at him in angry incomprehension and continued to play his light across the walls, ceiling, and floor of the carpeted hallway. Ornate sconces threw just enough light to see by Ahead of them the corridor ended in a T-intersection, with the baroque hotel lobby off to the right, down a center-banistered staircase—a study in Modernist Parisian excess, with arching columns, gaudy cornices, and balustraded balconies. Hoang Shu, his curved saber raised in front of him, had the point position.

Still eyeing the flashlight when they arrived at the landing, Claymore smiled in sudden realization. “Now I see. You’re going to try to catch him in the beam.” He laughed nervously and wagged a finger. “Very, very clever. Though wait till I tell you about how I trapped him at Mari-Tech—”

A laugh—a macabre phrase of shuddering ridicule—floated up from somewhere in the lobby. The three Mongols traded looks of sudden apprehension. Claymore wrenched the flashlight away from the bowman.

“You men check the lobby,” he said, already hurrying off in the opposite direction.

Easily commanded, even by someone as spineless as Farley Claymore, the guards obeyed, though reluctantly. The Shadow’s jeering laugh came at intervals, beckoning them down into the hotel’s vast kitchen, and beyond that into a fully stocked wine cellar.

With bracing intakes of breath, the trio edged into the dark room, curved blades and hair-trigger crossbows at the ready. Hoang Shu clicked instructions, and they spread out to search the several aisles, stopping occasionally to exchange updates in that same tongue-clicking code.

The Shadow’s slow cackle, echoing through the cool cellar, was at once chilling and challenging.

Misgiving wrinkling his glabrous scalp, Hoang Shu crept between rows of tall, wooden racks; at a junction of two narrow aisles, he stopped to peer carefully around the corner, his blade in hand. Darkness met his gaze, and into it he began to move—only to hear the snap of The Shadow’s cloak and to feel the force of his gloved and ringed fist. Hoang’s hands flew involuntarily to his flattened nose, but even they were no safeguard against the power of The Shadow’s second and third blows. With each, the broken nasal bones were driven further into the Mongol’s skull. Hoang’s tongue clicked once, as if in farewell, and he crumpled to the floor.

Elsewhere in the cellar, the muffled sounds of Hoang’s pummeling were not lost on the other two Mongols, who were crawling down separate aisles a couple of rows apart, trembling, leather-fletched bolts nocked in their crossbows. Reaching the ends of their respective aisles at the same moment, each stopped to listen, completely unaware of the other’s presence.

Just then, however, an ink-black slithering seemed to debouch from the aisle that separated them, dislodging two wine bottles in its swift passing. The bottles hit the floor and shattered, bringing each bowman around, firing blindly toward the sound, their short-shafted quarrels traversing the short distance in a split-second, straight into each other’s chests.

Waving the flashlight about, Claymore came rushing through double doors into an immense, empty space. High above him, strewn with chandeliers, arched an expanse of wooden ceiling, covered end to end with recessed squares of decoratively trimmed panels. The ballroom, he told himself, taking a moment to catch his breath. He leaned over, putting his hands on his knees, the machine gun wedged under his right arm.

He knew, from an earlier reconnaissance of the building, that the double doors on the far side of the room opened on a corridor whose windows overlooked the lobby, and that off the corridor was a stairway that led down to the hotel’s secondary entrance, on Houston Street. And that was where he wanted to be—outside. Far from The Shadow, from Shiwan Khan, from a city that was about to be atomized.

He had the flashlight trained on the exit doors and was hurrying toward them when they suddenly slammed shut. He knew better to believe the wind was responsible, howling though it was outside the ballroom’s wall of heavily draped windows.

The Shadow’s laugh filled the room.

A scream of mortal terror tore itself from Claymore’s throat, and he gyrated through several circles, aiming the light this way and that to no effect. He was considering racing back the way he had come when those doors, too, slammed shut.