by Joseph Silva
Seven
He was winning.
Muscle-laden arms windmilling, legs slicing at the scummy East River water, Captain America was fighting free of the deadly pull of the propellers.
He struggled, succeeded, knew he was heading away from the slashing knife-edged blades. Frog-kicking, Cap went swimming free of the scow.
His powerful lungs craved air, but the star-spangled crusader remained under water. He was determined to put more distance between himself and that deadly garbage scow.
Pain was flowing through him, his broad chest ached. He must have air, very soon.
Cap forced himself to keep swimming.
Finally, he allowed himself to rise. He felt as though he were climbing upward in a very slow elevator, as though he’d never reach the surface.
Then he passed from one kind of blackness into another. He opened his mouth, sucked in a lungful of night air.
Then he became aware of lights, the bobbing lights of the river craft and the steady lights on the near shore. After another deep and satisfying inhalation, he set off for land.
Jupiter’s scow was a good distance behind and there was no attempt to pursue him.
The chubby man in the barber jacket reached up to the sign dangling from the shade on the barbershop door. He turned it around so that it read CLOSED.
A few seconds later a tall broad-shouldered man in a tan trench coat and soft-brim hat approached the door and knocked.
Shrugging, the barber pointed to the sign. Behind him his manicurist, a pretty, dark-haired girl, was jiggling into a coat with an imitation fur collar. She glanced at the man outside, then said something to the plump barber. They both laughed.
The man in the trench coat repeated his knock.
The barber came closer to the locked door, gesturing at the CLOSED sign.
The man outside made a gesture involving three fingers.
Unlocking the door, the barber opened it a few inches. “Just closing up, mac.”
“Look, I’ve got an important meeting tonight. I really have to have a haircut.”
“Give the guy a break, Tony,” urged the manicurist.
Tony opened the door wider. “Okay, it’s been a slow day, I can use a few extra bucks.” He let the man into a small shop, then pulled the door shade all the way down and relocked the door.
The barber glanced down at the black and white linoleum. “Looks like you’re dripping, mac.”
The man glanced down at his booted feet. “I just came out of the East River.”
“That’s a lousy place to go swimming,” said the pretty manicurist. “Especially with your clothes on, hon.”
“It was a sudden impulse,” said Captain America.
“You better dry off in the back room,” suggested Tony as he moved to the barbershop’s street window. “Nobody followed you, Cap.”
“Only a mermaid could have used the route I took,” he said.
The spurious barber escorted him across the checkerboard floor. He pushed aside a curtain that hung over a doorway on the inner wall. “Nick’s been anxious about you.”
Captain America shrugged himself out of the trench coat, and doffed his hat. “Is he turning into a mother hen in his declining years?” he asked, laughing. “Doesn’t sound like the Nick Fury I know.”
“Nick thinks you take a lot of unnecessary risks.”
“Nick and I are both very fond of this country of ours,” Captain America said. “Sometimes, though, he and I disagree about how best to serve her. I suppose my methods are more direct than his.”
“You do like to walk right into things. That’s for sure.” The barber crossed the small back room, approached a full-length mirror, and touched the face of it at a certain spot. The mirror slid aside, revealing a dimly lit corridor that slanted downward.
“Through the looking glass,” murmured Cap as he entered the corridor.
“You ought to sit in a sauna for a while, after a dip in that polluted river,” advised Tony. The secret panel was sliding shut.
At the lower end of the corridor Captain America was met by a young black man who was sitting on a high red stool, a submachine gun resting across his knees.
“You got Captain America’s suit on,” he said. “And you look pretty much like him.”
“Banana oil,” said Cap.
The young guard nodded. “Yep, that’s today’s password,” he said. “Meaning you got to be the one and only star-spangled champion of justice, opponent of tyranny, and all around brave and fearless—”
“You’ve been around Nick too long, Ellis,” said Captain America. “You’re growing cynical.”
“Naw, I’ve had some shots against that, Cap.” He reached back, flipped a toggle on the wall.
A section of wall slid open to show a longer and more shadowy slanting ramp.
There was no guard at the end of this one. Captain America tugged off his scarlet right-hand gauntlet, pressed his palm against the seemingly solid brick wall.
From within the wall came a click. The scanning plate his hand was resting on had recognized his fingerprints. A door-sized section of brick wall swung inward.
Cap strolled into a well-lit circular room. The walls were metallic, dotted with television monitor screens, computer terminals, and various other gadgetry. Several technicians were busy in the large domed room.
Standing wide-legged in the room’s exact center was a large man in a dark jumpsuit. Over his left eye was a black eyepatch, and clenched between his teeth was a fuming cigar. “Hey, kiddies!” he bellowed when he saw Cap. “Everybody salute. Here comes the flag.”
Eight
Trailing smoke, Nick Fury went striding across the room. “C’mon, Cap,” he invited. “I wanna talk to ya.”
Captain America followed the SHIELD leader through another doorway and into a small cluttered office.
From this underground facility, Fury ran the operations of the Supreme Headquarters, Intelligence Espionage Law-enforcement Division.
Behind his metal desk, his single eye narrowed, his cigar spouting acrid smoke, the dark-haired Fury said, “I hear ya went for a swim.”
“It was Jupiter’s idea.” Cap settled into a metal chair facing his feisty friend and cohort.
Fury removed the cigar from between his teeth. “So ya found Jupiter, huh?”
“He found me, Nick,” Cap replied. “I had a hunch he’d look me up if I put enough pressure on his hoods and their activities.”
Fury snorted. “Ya take too many chances, old buddy,” he accused. “Just because ya go around wrapped up in the red, white, and blue don’t mean you’re immune. Guys like Jupiter don’t care if they spit on the flag. Why don’t ya take advantage of all the scientific junk we got? Instead of barging around like a bear with a bumblebee up its—”
“Nick, we’ve had this debate before. I don’t have the patience to operate the way SHIELD does,” said Captain America. “We want to locate Dr. Crandell, and we suspect Jupiter was involved in the abduction.”
Fury inserted his cigar between his teeth. “Okay, so ya went banging into this bozo’s lair,” he said, smoke billowing out his nose. “What’d ya get for yer trouble, old buddy?”
Reaching into his belt, Cap produced a soggy wad of paper. “This,” he said.
“A lottery ticket?”
“Once a matchbook, Nick,” he said. “Issued by a place in Vermont. Ski lodge known as Snow Hills, a very exclusive place.”
“So? Next time I’m hobnobbing with my jet-set pals, I’ll mention the joint to ’em.”
“Odd thing for Jupiter to have.” Captain America tossed the lump of paper onto the desk top. “Odd thing to have on his desk in an East River scow, Nick.”
“Upward mobility,” suggested Fury. “Anyway, I seen bums who got matches from the Plaza.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“Ya got a theory?”
“I think maybe Jupiter or one of his henchmen was up in Vermont recently. In the town
of Mottsville, where the Snow Hills lodge is located.”
“Meaning what? That they stashed the doc up in ski country?”
“Seems a possibility.”
“Aw,” commented Fury, grinding out his cigar in a metal ashtray.
“Well, I’m going to head up there, Nick. Unless SHIELD wants to take over the—”
“Naw, you handle it.” Fury frowned. “We ain’t been able to come up with anything else, ya know. It’s like Doc Crandell and that knockout daughter of his just vanished. We came up with that one lead on Jupiter and that’s all.” He made a fist and shook it at his friend. “Listen, now we know where that bozo is, I’ll grab him. We got ways to make him spill the beans.”
“Wait awhile, Nick.”
“Wait? Cripes, Cap, the longer we wait, the more cities go blooey. Wanna see some pix of what it looks like in Kitambaa now?”
Captain America shook his head. “I know what Crandell’s sonic weapon is capable of,” he said. “Which is why I want to find him. But I think this is a real lead. If you lean on Jupiter too hard, it might make them move Crandell and the girl.”
Fury yanked open a desk drawer and took out a fresh stogie. “Okay, I’ll give ya another day, Cap,” he growled. “The proverbial twenty-four hours ta find Doc Crandell. After that, SHIELD really gets into the act. Got me?”
Nodding, Captain America said, “We’re not just dealing with organized crime here.”
“That I know, old buddy,” said Fury. “In fact, at the risk of sounding paranoid, I got to say I think we’re up against our old nemesis.”
“Yes, the Red Skull,” said Cap.
“That’s who I mean.”
“The wanton destruction, the senseless killing, it all follows his pattern.”
“We shoulda kept a better watch on Doc Crandell,” said Fury while unwrapping the new cigar. “Hell, I didn’t find out what kind of work the old coot was doing until after he got glommed. A typical bureaucratic flub.”
“We try to cover as many bases as we can, Nick. Once in a while we slip.”
Fury’s fist came down, smacking his desk. “I don’t like ta slip up. It riles me.”
“We’ve still got a chance to stop this.” Cap stood up. “Okay, I’ll be on my way to Vermont.”
“Bundle up, Cap,” advised Fury. “Better buy yaself a star-spangled overcoat.”
Captain America grinned and left the room.
Fury sat with his unlit cigar balanced on his thumb and forefinger. I shouldn’t razz him so much, he thought. He’s a terrific guy, even if he is sort of gung ho.
He clipped the cigar, popped it into his mouth and lit it. Smoke swirled around his grizzled temples.
Known the guy for years, since back during World War Deuce, reflected Fury, leaning back in his chair. And he ain’t no older-looking now than he was back then. ’Course I know why. Yeah, I know all about Captain America and how he got that way . . .
Nine
. . . 1941. That was a hell of a long time ago.
A completely different world than the one we’ve got now.
Supposed to be a better world these days. Cleaner, safer, more humane.
Sure, maybe so. But back then in those months before Pearl Harbor, while everybody was waiting for Hitler to drop the other shoe, there’d been some damn good times.
Take dancing. Nick Fury had been good at it then, two good eyes and not quite as thick around the middle, with no touch of gray in his hair, and his face without that knocked-around look. Why, on most any given weekend around Manhattan you could catch Benny Goodman or Duke Ellington or maybe Artie Shaw. If you were more in the mood for sitting and listening you’d find Art Tatum at the Café Society.
Lots of other kinds of music poured out of your radio, or the jukeboxes, around town. Some of it was sort of nutty—stuff like “Six Lessons from Madame LaZonga” and “The Hut-Sut Song.” ’Course what you really got out of the radio was comedy—Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Charlie McCarthy. You got good old FDR, too, and a fireside chat right from the White House. You could hear the fights, listen to Joe Louis knock out the latest stumblebum who was taking a crack at the heavyweight crown. Or that Detroit Tigers-New York Yankees game where Hank Greenberg got his last two homers before going into the army.
Lots of guys going into the service then. The draft had started, sure, but there were volunteers, too. You could tell a war was coming and America was sure to be in it. In those long ago days, there was nothing wrong with volunteering.
Steve Rogers was a kid then, barely out of his teens. Not much to look at. He wasn’t ugly or anything, just sort of scrawny. Tall gangling guy who looked like he hadn’t quite grown all the way up or maybe hadn’t sent away for as many Charles Atlas lessons as he should have. Yeah, Steve Rogers was the kind of kid that bullies would pick on at the beach.
Well, that was before he volunteered for an experiment. One of the strangest experiments anybody’d ever come up with, especially back in ’41 when nuclear bombs and rayguns and spaceships were found only in pulp magazines and those new comic books.
One spring morning Steve Rogers had decided to enlist in the army. He didn’t have much in the way of family ties or responsibilities. Even then he’d had a strong faith in his country, and he believed he had to do what he could to protect it. He’d grown up hearing Hitler rant and rave over the radio, he’d seen the Führer and his pal Mussolini strutting around in the newsreels. He’d seen footage showing the refugees, too, and the German planes strafing them. He went down to the induction center.
There was a snag. They wouldn’t take him. Turned him down flat. Nick Fury had once, in a moment of excessive curiosity, dug out the records of that long ago physical exam Steve Rogers had taken. And he’d shaken his head when he read it over. That well-meaning Rogers kid had been in lousy shape. Underweight, anemic, with a weak heart, respiratory problems, allergies . . . and a whole stewpot of other problems.
They turned him down, told him he’d get a card in the mail to carry around in his wallet. The card would tell the world that Steve Rogers was 4-F. Little old ladies in wheelchairs would probably be inducted into the U.S. Army before this kid would.
“But you’ve got to take me,” Rogers pleaded with the final army doc he saw. “Listen, I hate war, hate what the Nazis stand for. I don’t want to stay behind while others are doing the fighting.”
No dice. The doc was sympathetic, but there was no way he could pass a wreck like Steve Rogers. He advised him to put his clothes back on and go home. Maybe he could find a civilian job, someplace in defense or in Washington, so he’d feel he was doing his part.
Forlorn, his narrow shoulders hunched over more than usual, the kid went trudging out of the induction center. He’d covered about a quarter of a block when fate caught up with him and suddenly changed his life forever.
Fate was a husky guy in the uniform of an American army colonel. He was gray-haired, with a clipped military moustache. “My boy,” he said, “I couldn’t help overhearing what you were saying back there. All about how you want to serve your country. I admire a lad with spirit.”
“Can you maybe fix it, sir, so I can get into some branch of—”
“What I have in mind is something else, something rather dangerous, Rogers.” He put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Would you be willing to volunteer for an experiment?”
“What kind of experiment? What’s this about danger?”
“Frankly, Rogers, you’ll be risking your life,” the colonel told him. “However, if the experiment’s a success, which most of us are confident it will be, the United States will benefit greatly.”
“Can you tell me any more about it?”
“I’d rather have Dr. Erskine himself tell you. That is, if you agree to help.”
“You don’t mean Dr. Jonah Erskine?” The kid blinked. “I was reading about him in Life a few weeks ago. He’s one of the most brilliant biochemists in the world.”
“Yes, and he’s now devoting
himself full time to the defense of America,” said the colonel. “Our need for a volunteer is rather urgent. Can you come with me right now and meet Erskine?”
Steve held out his hand. “You bet I will,” he said.
They took Steve Rogers, in a zigzagging roundabout way, to what looked like a dingy antique shop over on Third Avenue. Drove the kid there in a very sturdy limo. Besides the brass hat, there were two three-piece-suit guys in the car. Obviously Secret Service. And the guy driving had a bulge under his left arm that could only have been a holster.
The antique store smelled of dust, mildew, old perfume, and lost time. A sweet-faced old lady with a shawl over her shoulders broke out in smiles when she saw the group enter her shop. They exchanged a little phony gab about the furniture in case anybody was watching, then the old dame led them into a back room and up a creaky staircase.
“I’ll stay out here on guard.” Suddenly the woman’s voice got a lot younger, and a very impressive Colt revolver materialized from under her apron.
The colonel and the Secret Service boys hustled Rogers through a doorway, along a hallway, then through another door.
The kid did a double-take—he found himself in an enormous scientific lab. There were all sorts of massive machines and complicated gizmos, the whole setup reminded him of a Universal horror flick. Except it was all real, and standing there in a white lab smock was the renowned Dr. Jonah Erskine himself.
He shook Steve Rogers’s hand, and then explained things to him. “I’ve developed a new serum, young man. It will, so I believe, be able to transform a frail young fellow such as yourself into a muscular, sturdy fighting man. In addition to the physical changes, the serum will cause psychological ones. You will become mentally stronger, fearless.”
“How does it—?”
“The actual formula,” said Erskine, smiling at the kid, “is a secret. At this point even the United States government, which has financed my researches, doesn’t know it.” He tapped the side of his gray head. “In fact, the Erskine Formula recipe is known only here. Suffice it to say, young man, that it will work on the cells of your body in such a way that their growth will accelerate. You will, in a matter of minutes, be functioning at the maximum of your capacity. You will become, so we hope, a superior human being. Not exactly a super human, but close to it. You can understand, I’m certain, how valuable such a discovery is to America. To a country on the brink of a possibly devastating war such a process would be a real boon. It would mean that every one of our fighting men could become a superior being—strong, courageous.”
