by Joseph Silva
“It wasn’t really a quake.”
“Meaning?” asked his editor, hesitating at the topmost point of his penultimate push-up.
“Well, Lou, the events in Kitambaa bear a striking resemblance to those which occurred in Santa Pulga, Brazil, two weeks back.” Jake tapped the page in his notebook. “And a little over two weeks prior to that there was a similar thing happening in Norway.” The curly-haired reporter leaned forward. “None of these locales has any previous history as a quake area.”
“There are a hell of a lot of imponderables with quakes, Jake. One seismologist has one theory, some other guy another.” His push-ups finally completed, Mixx squatted on his thick carpet to catch his breath. “Nobody can explain quakes.”
“A fella name of Dr. Gregory Crandell can,” said Jake. “At least I’m betting he can explain this series of imitation quakes.”
“Who’s he?” Stretching out on his broad back, the managing editor commenced grunting through a series of sit-ups.
“Dr. Gregory Crandell was working in some very advanced areas of applied sonics.” Jake shut his notebook and returned it to his hip pocket. “The government was very interested in the experiments Crandell was conducting at the New Haven neosonics labs.”
“Why are you using the past tense? Did the old boy kick off?”
“He vanished,” replied Jake. “Five months ago. That’s before these so-called quakes started.”
“Crandell could make earthquakes?”
“He was working on some kind of huge sonic gun.” Jake rose and went to the window to watch the smog thicken in the afternoon outside. “A weapon capable of causing buildings to shake, rattle, and roll.”
“They can invent stuff like that, yet nobody comes up with a diet that really works,” said Mixx, straining to reach his expensively shod toes with his pudgy fingertips. “You think Crandell is behind this business?”
Jake shook his head. “He has a damn good reputation, he’s no madman. My guess is, somebody snatched the guy.”
Mixx remained in a sitting position, his sweating face thoughtful. “Make a terrific story, wouldn’t it? Mad scientist goes bonkers, topples entire cities. Conspiracy suspected, CIA cover-up. Newsmag gives you the exclusive facts.”
“So I can go to New Haven?”
“Go,” said the Newsmag managing editor. “And take Amanda along.”
Jake scowled. “Amanda Twain?”
“How many Amandas do I have on the staff?”
“Well, there’s one down in subscriptions and I think—”
“Amanda Twain. She’s a damn fine investigative reporter. Plus which, Jake, she has a knack for keeping you under control.”
“She hates me.”
“Which may well be the secret of her power over you.”
“Amanda Twain,” said Jake slowly and sadly. “Okay. It’s a hell of a price to pay, but I’ll do it.”
“Try not to annoy any more people than necessary. Our publisher’s still ticked off about what you did in Buenos Aires.”
Jake smiled a bleak smile. “Call you soon as we have something.” He edged toward the door.
“Any idea how many of these nitwit sit-ups I’ve done so far?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Damn. Six too many.”
Jake departed.
Four
The motor launch roared across the twilight waters of the East River.
Captain America sat in the stern as the foam splashed over him and the two guns pointed at his head. Despite his seemingly dire situation, Cap was inwardly pleased. He was being taken, at high speed, to the one man in the Manhattan area he wanted to see.
Up ahead in the dusk loomed a garbage scow. It was loaded with a highly pungent cargo, and gulls were wheeling through the failing daylight and making forays at the stuff.
The launch cut its speed, then killed its motor altogether and swung alongside the drab scow.
“End of the line, pretty boy,” announced the heavy with the .45. “No funny stuff, else you’ll end up decorating that mound of crap yonder.”
The star-spangled crusader leaped agilely from the bobbing launch to the deck of the scow. His armed escorts, less gracefully, followed him aboard.
“Use the red door,” ordered the one with the .38.
Cap obliged and made his way down a worn wooden stairway. There stood another door. After opening it, he found himself entering a lavishly furnished cabin.
There were three men standing in the surprisingly opulent room. A fourth, a huge fat man, was sitting on a thronelike carved chair in the center of a lush Oriental carpet.
Cap’s escorts remained outside, shutting him in with this new group. Each of the standing men held a gun.
The immense man in the chair was in his forties. He wore a expensive gray suit, and a zodiac medallion hung from his thick neck. Most of his fat stubby fingers were decorated with jeweled rings. “What’s your birth date?” was his first question.
Cap merely grinned at him. “I didn’t come here for small talk, Jupiter.”
“This isn’t small talk, my red, white, and blue friend,” wheezed fat Jupiter. “We’re all of us ruled by the stars and planets. I myself am a Capricorn, and I knew today was going to be a very fortunate day for me. Hence, I instructed certain of my minions to escort you here.”
“Saved me a lot of time.” Captain walked nearer to the enthroned fat man.
The standing men shifted, keeping their guns aimed at him.
Jupiter gave a wheezy chuckle. “Am I correct in assuming you’ve been anxious to chat with me?”
“That I have,” acknowledged Cap. His eyes narrowed slightly as he studied the enormous crook. “I’m looking for Dr. Gregory Crandell.”
Jupiter’s laugh was deeper and louder as he winked at his nearest henchman. “He’s going to need a doctor before we get through with him.”
The three associate hoodlums laughed.
Cap said, “You know Crandell isn’t an M.D., Jupiter.”
“Do I?”
“You’re involved in some way with his disappearance,” continued Captain America. “I want him.”
“Never heard of the man, I assure you.” Jupiter stroked his zodiac medallion with his squat fingers. “You’ve been causing a good deal of trouble for me, sir, laboring under this delusion that I had something to do with kidnapping the good doctor.”
“I see you know he was kidnapped,” said Cap.
“It pays me to keep up with a wide range of events,” said the fat man. “That does not in any way indicate that I’m directly involved.”
“You’re not in this alone,” Cap told him. “The kind of cheap rackets you indulge in have no use for a man of Dr. Crandell’s intellect. Since you’ve made no try for ransom either, it follows that you must have grabbed him to turn him over to others. You’re going to tell me who.”
Another rumbling laugh shook Jupiter’s immense frame. Grunting, he pushed himself off his throne. “You’re not very perceptive, sir. I am the one who gives the orders hereabouts. You don’t tell me what to do.”
“Sooner or later, Jupiter, I’ll find him.”
With one fat hand the criminal indicated his armed colleagues. “Haven’t you realized, sir, that you won’t leave my little floating hideaway alive?”
Cap met Jupiter’s gaze. “Let’s skip the threats. Just tell me where you took Crandell.”
“You’re an annoyingly persistent chap. I find—”
Captain America was all at once in motion. He dodged to the right, at the same time sending his shield spinning at the nearest gunman.
“Yow!” remarked that gentleman. He dropped his Luger and began hopping backward in pain.
Two shots, one from each of the two remaining gunmen, converged on the place where Cap had been an instant before.
But he was no longer there. He’d dived and somersaulted over the desk, managing to grab up a small object that had caught his eye several moments before. Then he snatched up
the wooden throne, and tossed it through the air.
“Unk!” observed the hood who was hit. His head gave off an impressively hollow thud, his eyes hazed, his pistol fell from his limp fingers. Folding up, he fell over onto the rich carpet.
Captain America, moving almost too rapidly to be seen, had retrieved his shield. He threw it while ducking a shot from the gun of the last standing gunman.
The red, white, and blue shield sizzled into the man’s middle. Then Cap, after executing another impressive somersault, planted his red-booted feet against the man’s chest.
The gunman exhaled loudly, let go of his automatic and toppled to one knee.
Cap dealt him a choppy blow to the neck that laid him out cleanly atop another of his fallen associates.
Pivoting, Captain America picked up his shield in time to ward off the slug from the small .32 revolver Jupiter had produced.
Grinning, Cap charged at the fat man.
He never reached him.
Jupiter had whirled around and jabbed at a button set in the wall.
The floor opened, sending Cap plummeting down into the murky waters of the East River.
Down and down he went before he began using his powerful arms and legs to push himself toward the surface.
Suddenly he found himself being pulled off his desired course.
This was no ordinary scow, Jupiter’s floating headquarters. The craft was powered by a mighty engine, and its propellers had started to spin. They were thrashing away at the dark water.
The suction began tugging at Cap, pulling him away from the air he sought and toward the deadly chopping blades.
Five
It was like a snowing globe. The tiny stars flickered down endlessly outside, flecking the window with thousands of splotches of white. The lights of the chalet tinted some of the snowflakes a pale yellow as they fell.
The girl pressed her fingers against the thick glass of the leaded pane. The cold of the night flowed into her fingertips, but she kept her hand there. “You didn’t have to,” she said, her warm breath misting the chill rectangle of glass.
“I had to.” The older man was slouched in an armchair near the small stone fireplace. Its crackling flames changed his gaunt face into a series of orange hollow-eyed masks.
“Because of me?” asked Caroline Crandell.
Her father continued to stare at the fire. “You haven’t met him,” he said finally. “You haven’t talked to him, heard his—”
“I’d like to.” She turned abruptly, her long blond hair brushing at her slim shoulders. “I’d tell him what I—”
“Carrie, you don’t realize the kind of man he is.”
“The kind of man who’s been able,” she said forlornly, “to frighten you.”
Dr. Gregory Crandell nodded. “Yes, he is frightening. That mask . . . if it is a mask . . . staring at you, the eyes expressionless, the mouth always frozen in a macabre grin. The grin of death itself.” His thin hands gripped the arms of his chair and he suddenly shuddered. “There’s nothing he won’t do, Carrie. Believe me, I’ve seen him . . .”
She moved closer to her father. “They’ve used your sonic guns, haven’t they?”
“From what I can gather, yes.”
“Dad, don’t you understand what that means? He’s used them on . . . on real cities. To destroy human beings, old people, little kids, everyone. We’re talking about the death of countless thousands of completely innocent—”
“I’ve told myself all this already,” cut in her father. “But I also know there’s one life more important to me than all the others. Your life.”
“My god, dad, you can’t—”
“Yes, I can.” He stood up, a tall frail man in a rumpled tweed suit. “You have no idea at all what this man might do to you unless I comply. Kill you, yes, but before you were dead, he’d . . . I can’t allow anything like that to happen.”
“So you’ve given him the secret of your sonic weapon, let this madman kill, destroy—”
“Carrie, we’re trapped,” said Crandell. “I’ve been trying to stall him. But even now I realize . . . eventually . . . I must capitulate.”
“What more does he want from you?”
Her father shook his head. “Something I’d rather not talk about . . . not yet, Carrie.”
“We have to stand up to him,” she insisted, catching hold of his frail arm. “Fight back.”
“How? This man was able to pluck me out of my everyday life in New Haven and . . .” He nodded at the dark window and the heavily falling snow. “. . . and bring me here. I don’t even have any memory of exactly how it happened. One minute I was parking my car behind the neosonic labs, the next I was here. Wherever the devil here is—New England, the Alps. And then you. Three weeks after I was brought here and forced to work for him they caught you. He’d promised me you wouldn’t be touched if I . . . cooperated with him and his technicians.”
“You see? He lied. He’s lying now, dad,” she said. “He’ll force exactly what he wants out of you, then kill us both. Okay then, that’s a very unpleasant thing to face. But let’s accept it and act like people with a little bit of courage. Let’s defy him.”
Dr. Crandell tore his arm away from her grasp. “Forgive me, Carrie,” he said slowly. “I don’t think anyone has the strength to defy the Red Skull.”
Six
They met in public, at the open-air restaurant in the vast many-tiered lobby of Houston’s Sheridan-Showcase Hotel. They sat at a circular table with a crisp white cloth on it. They ate and drank out of crystal and silver dishes. Just another dinner meeting of two businessmen, nothing too unusual about that.
Of course, one of them was somewhat odd in appearance. He was completely hairless; he didn’t even have a trace of eyebrow. He wore a monocle in the manner of the long-forgotten Erich Von Stroheim, and his right arm was made of metal.
Baron Graff picked up his highly polished wineglass with his highly polished metal hand. He was saying, “Exactly my point, Mr. Klise.”
Klise was in his early forties, dark-haired and trim, his face browned with a deep outdoor tan. He had a soft Texas drawl. “You are absolutely right, baron,” he said, pausing to light his very costly cigar. “I am, I have to admit, one of the richest men in a state noted for its rich men. Yet, suh, I haven’t been able to acquire enough of the one thing I most want.”
“Power,” said the baron in a rasping whisper, smiling across the rim of his wineglass. “Power, Herr Klise, is what you crave, what you lust after. You live, however, in a foolish society where it is very difficult to achieve the sort of absolute power you dream of.”
“That is for sure, suh,” agreed Klise as he puffed on his cigar. “Now, Texas isn’t as bad as some of those states back East. Like New York, where they let the Jews run everything and let the coloreds live off welfare. Thing is, suh, I don’t think, the way things are going, it’s ever going to get better. Right here at home, if a man tries to put a Mexican in his place, those liberal Jews in the media come down here and put you on TV.” He shook his head, breathing out swirls of smoke. “Thought back when we got rid of Kennedy, things might improve. But they sure didn’t.”
“America will never act sensibly about its inferior races,” Baron Graff told him. “Never apply the logical solution, which worked so well in my own country. Not unless . . . ah, but here’s our dessert.”
They paused in their conversation while a Mexican waiter placed a wedge of apple pie in front of the baron and a piece of cheesecake before Klise.
“Boy, what is this?” asked Klise.
“Cheesecake, sir.”
“I distinctly recall, and you ought to as well, boy, ordering the cheesecake with strawberry sauce. Do you recall that at all, boy?”
“I’m sorry, sir.” The young waiter reached for the plate. “I’ll return this and see—”
“Yes, you do just that,” said Klise. “Or you have my word you won’t be working at this high-class restaurant any longer, boy.�
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Smiling, tapping his dessert fork against the edge of his dish, Baron Graff waited until the young Mexican had hurried away across the crowded room. “You see, they can never learn.”
“Like to run them all back across the border where they belong.”
“When,” said the baron in a low voice, “our New Order is established, Herr Klise, you’ll be able to do exactly that. All of this great state will be yours, to rule, to do with as you wish.”
“Like to stick all the coloreds in pens,” said Klise, running his tongue over his upper lip. “Wish that greaser would hurry up with my cheesecake. I am truly fond, suh, of ending a meal with a sweet.”
“Here he is, Herr Klise.”
“Sorry, sir.” The waiter placed a piece of cheesecake liberally covered with strawberry sauce before the suntanned businessman.
“That’s better,” said Klise. “Not great, but a damn sight better, boy.”
After the waiter departed, the baron took a bite of his apple pie. “May I tell my superior you will cooperate, Herr Klise?”
“You darn well can, suh.” Klise was hurrying forkfuls of red-smeared cheesecake into his mouth, swallowing the bites whole. “I’m one hundred percent behind you, baron. I can arrange everything that needs to be arranged.”
“Initially, we must have access to a shuttle,” said the baron. “Probably within the week. That depends on . . . certain details that have yet to be worked out.”
“I can fix that,” promised Klise. “You already know, suh, how powerful Texon Telecom Industries is in this state. I have some very good connections as a result, and what you want can be arranged with no one in the government being any wiser. Until, that is, it’s much too late.”
“Fine,” said the baron. “Once certain equipment is set up in the satellite, then we’ll be ready to move.”
Excitement showed in Klise’s eyes. Wiping at his lips with his crisp white napkin, he said, “We’re that close, are we?”
“Yes, Herr Klise,” answered Baron Graff. “The birth of the Fourth Reich is very near.”
