“Who’s Croesus?” her boyfriend asked.
At eleven-thirty that night, Bruce thumbed the off button on the remote and the television screen he and Alfred had been watching went dark.
“Your fellow Gothamites seem remarkably unperturbed by your reappearance among them,” Alfred said.
“They do seem to be containing their excitement. One has to admire their self-control.”
“I take it that all has gone as you wish.”
“The old ‘hide in plain sight’ ploy. Still one of the great ones.”
Bruce, wearing the climbing harness and belt that Fox had sent to Wayne Manor, hung thirty feet above the cave floor, hammering a bracket into the stone. A line of industrial lamps hung from the bracket and an electric wire ran from the lamps to a generator below.
“Okay,” Bruce shouted. “Give it a try.”
Alfred threw a switch and the lamps flickered on, dimly lighting the length of one wall and hundreds of bats hanging from the ceiling.
“At least you’ll have company,” Alfred said, staring up at a throng of bats.
Bruce rappeled down, unhooked his rope, moved to a wrought-iron spiral staircase at one end of the cavern, and shook it.
“This was grandfather’s?” he asked.
“Great-grandfather’s. During the Civil War he was involved with the underground railroad. He secretly helped transport escaped slaves. I suspect these caverns came in handy.”
Bruce shone a flashlight beam on the small river and then on the place where the water disappeared under rocks. He stepped over the rocks and continued following the river around a bend until he stopped and stared at what his flashlight beam was revealing: a beautiful curtain of water.
“Alfred, come here,” Bruce shouted, and his words echoed throughout the cavern. He hopped over slick, glistening rocks and reached out to touch the waterfall.
The following day, Bruce was back at work in the cave. He brought a few items down with him: tools, lumber, some apples, and the sooty, bloody ninja suit he’d brought from Kathmandu—his first trophy. He had fashioned a rough worktable by putting a board between two sawhorses and laid on it two bronze gauntlets, the ones he had salvaged from Rā’s al Ghūl’s monastery. He picked up a battery-powered paint sprayer and gave them a matte-black finish. Next, he lay the combat suit he had gotten from Lucius Fox on his makeshift trestle and sprayed that black.
“Ohhh-kay,” he murmured.
Alfred descended the spiral staircase carrying an armful of rolled papers. He spread them onto the table and said, “I believe I have our problems solved.”
“Tell me,” Bruce said.
Alfred pointed to a diagram. “If we order the main point of this . . . cowl? If we order that from Singapore—”
“Via a shell corporation.”
“Indeed. Then, quite separately, place an order through a Chinese manufacturer for these—”
He pointed to a drawing of what looked like a pair of horns.
Bruce nodded. “Put it together ourselves.”
“Precisely. Of course, they’ll have to be large orders to avoid suspicion.”
“How large?”
“Say, ten thousand.”
“At least we’ll have spares.” As Bruce was refolding the schematics, he said, “The cave still needs a lot of work to be what I want it to be.”
“And what exactly is that, Master Bruce?”
Bruce hesitated, gazing up into the darkness at the top of the cavern. “A workshop, of course. A laboratory. A place to store things. A garage and . . . a place to be who I’m becoming. A place fit for a bat man to live. And some other stuff . . . TV cameras to scan all the roads in the area so I don’t get surprised coming or going. And I think we should have a second way in and out in case something blocks the pantry. We’ll need carpentry, masonry, electronics, maybe hydraulics . . . a lot of skills we don’t have.”
“Perhaps not yet. But the world is brimming with information and we have access to most of it.”
“So you’re saying we can do the work ourselves?”
“We managed the lights, didn’t we?”
“That we did, Alfred. That we did.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was a few minutes after ten and already Falcone’s club was filled to capacity. The air was dense with smoke and liquor fumes and occasionally the hoot of a ship’s horn could be heard from outside, over the sound of the three-piece jazz combo that was mostly ignored by the clubbers.
Judge Faden sat between two young women who wore satiny cocktail dresses; he had a drink in one hand and a green cigar in the other. Carmine Falcone stopped next to the judge and put a friendly hand on his shoulder, then moved away.
“Carmine,” the judge shouted. “Where are you going?”
Falcone looked back over his shoulder. “Duty calls. You have yourself a good time, Judge.”
The judge assured Falcone that he would, finished his drink, and whispered something to one of the young women. He and the woman rose and threaded their way to the front of the club, went up the flight of steps and across the neon-lit sidewalk to a waiting limousine. Faden opened the door, bowed ceremoniously, and guided the woman into the car. A stooped man, obviously a street person, scurried from where a fire burned in an oil barrel nearby, leaving a companion who was wearing a fawn-colored, cashmere overcoat to continue warming himself at the flames. He went to the limo’s rear door and, with a foot, prevented Judge Faden from pulling it shut.
“Help a guy out?” he asked the judge.
“Get away,” the judge said, and the woman giggled.
The homeless person seemed to slip and fall halfway into the car. He was muttering an apology when the uniformed driver grabbed the back of his collar and yanked. The driver flung him to the sidewalk and kicked him.
The second man by the fire shouted, “Leave him alone. Let him be.”
The limo sped off, bumping on the rough pavement toward a beltway that led out of the city. The man who had been kicked smiled and straightened and looked at a tiny video receiver he was holding waist-high. On it, in grainy black-and-white, were the images of Judge Faden and his companion sitting in the backseat of the limo.
“The picture’s not great,” Bruce said. “But it will do. It will certainly do.”
Detective Flass entered Falcone’s club by a side door and sat across from the mob boss.
“I need you at the docks tomorrow night,” Falcone said.
“Problem?”
“Insurance. I don’t want any problems with this last shipment.”
“Sure,” Flass said. “Word on the street is you got a beef with someone in the D.A.’s office.”
“Is that right?”
“And that you’ve offered a price on doing something about it.”
“What’s your point, Flass?”
“You’ve seen this girl? Cute little assistant D.A. That’s a lot of heat to bring down, even in this town. Even for you, Carmine.”
“Never underestimate Gotham. Besides, people get mugged on the way home from work every day.”
Across the street, Bruce Wayne stood in a doorway, adjusting a directional microphone hooked under his ear and hearing the end of Falcone’s conversation with Flass. “Sometimes,” Falcone was saying, “it goes bad.”
Bruce switched off the microphone and got into his car parked nearby. He was wearing the black bodysuit and gauntlets. He drove three miles uptown and parked in an alley across from Gotham’s Central Police Headquarters and pulled on a ski mask. He climbed a windowless wall, using the spikes on the gauntlets to pull himself up, topped the balustrade, and ran silently over tar paper until he reached the front parapet. Then he waited. A few minutes later he saw James Gordon park a police sedan in front of the headquarters and enter the building.
Gordon walked past the desk sergeant and up a flight of rickety stairs to the detectives’ area on the second floor and into his office. He slammed the door behind him and slumped into a chair, his
back to the single dusty window. He removed his glasses, wiped them on his tie, switched on the desk lamp, and pulled a stack of reports from an in-box.
Suddenly the light went out and someone very close behind him said, “Don’t turn around.”
Something was suddenly pressing against the back of his neck—something that felt like a gun.
“What do you want?” Gordon asked, his voice level, conversational.
“You’re a good cop. One of the few.”
Gordon narrowed his eyes, puzzled. If this were a hit, he would be dead by now. So what kind of caper was it?
The person behind him continued. “Carmine Falcone brings in shipments of drugs every week. Nobody takes him clown. Why?”
“He’s paid up with the right people.”
“What would it take to bring him down?”
Should he answer? Why not? He was not saying anything that every beat cop in the city did not know. “Leverage on Judge Faden . . . And a D.A. brave enough to prosecute.”
“Rachel Dawes in the D.A.’s office.” It was not a question.
“Who are you?”
“Watch for my sign.”
“You’re just one man?”
“Now we are two.”
“We?”
Gordon felt the pressure on his neck ease and waited for a reply. Finally, he turned around; the room was empty. He ran to the open window and looked down at the street, empty except for parked cars. He looked up and glimpsed a figure silhouetted against the night sky vanishing onto the roof.
He moved, racing across the floor to the stairwell, drawing his pistol as he went. Two uniformed patrolmen saw him and followed, reaching for their holsters.
Gordon, with the two cops only a few steps behind, ran onto the roof and saw someone dressed in black near the parapet. He knew the space between police headquarters and the parking garage next door was too far to jump. He aimed his pistol and yelled, “Freeze!”
The figure sprinted forward and jumped.
Gordon reached the parapet in time to see the man—he guessed it was a man—hit the side of the garage a few feet beneath the roof edge and fall and grab a fire-escape balcony below, then somehow melt into the shadows.
Gordon lowered his weapon.
One of the patrolmen asked, “What the hell was that?”
“Just some nut.”
Yeah, Gordon thought, some nut . . .
It was not yet eight o’clock the next morning when Bruce Wayne, wearing an expensive, tailored suit, entered Wayne Tower and smiled at everyone he passed. He took the elevator to the basement and entered the Applied Sciences Department. Lucius Fox was already behind his desk.
Fox smiled. “What’s it today? More spalunking?”
“Spee-lunking,” Bruce said. “And no, today it’s base-jumping.”
“Base-jumping? What, like parachuting?”
“Kind of. Do you have any lightweight fabrics?”
Fox looked at Bruce over his glasses. “Oh, yeah. Wait here.”
Fox went behind a stack of crates and, a minute later, emerged holding a sheet of black cloth. He gave it to Bruce and asked, “Notice anything?”
Bruce ran the cloth through his fingers and shook his head.
Fox put on a thick canvas glove. “Memory fabric. Flexible, ordinarily, but put an electric current through it—”
Fox pressed a button on the glove and there was a faint buzz. The fabric instantly changed shape and became a small tent.
“The molecules align and become rigid,” Fox concluded.
Bruce pressed his fingers on the fabric tent. It did not bend. “What kind of shapes can you make?”
Fox again touched the tent with the electrified glove and the tent reverted to being a square of black cloth. “It could be tailored to any structure based on a rigid skeleton.”
“Too expensive for the army?”
“Yeah. Guess they never thought about marketing to the billionaire base-jumping, spelunking market.”
“Look, Mr. Fox, if you’re uncomfortable . . .”
“Mr. Wayne, if you don’t tell me what you’re really doing, then when I get asked, I don’t have to lie. But don’t treat me like an idiot.”
“Fair enough. Anything else a billionaire, base-jumping, spelunking wastrel might want to see?”
Fox gestured to something covered by a tarpaulin. “I could show you the Tumbler . . . but nah, you wouldn’t be interested . . .”
“Show me.”
They had the Tumbler loaded onto a flatbed truck and followed it in Fox’s car to a test track near a small airfield, where the Tumbler was downloaded. Fox, with a bow and a flourish, swept away the canvas cover to reveal the strangest vehicle Bruce had ever seen.
“It looks like a cross between a Lamborghini Countach and a Humvee,” he said to Fox.
Bruce and Fox climbed into the Tumbler and Fox began explaining the controls. When he was finished, he said, “She was built as a bridging vehicle. You hit that button—”
Bruce put his forefinger out and Fox shouted, “Not now!”
Bruce jerked his finger back.
“It boosts her into a rampless jump,” Fox continued. “In combat, two of them jump a river towing cables, then you run a bailey bridge across. Damn bridge never worked, but this baby works just fine.”
Bruce settled into the driver’s seat and tested his reach to the various buttons and levers. The fit was perfect; it was as though the Tumbler had been built for him.
“Would you like to take her for a spin?” Fox asked.
Bruce pushed the ignition button, eased the stick into first gear, and toed the gas pedal. The Tumbler shot forward. To Bruce it seemed like the first bend in the track was in his windshield immediately. He tapped the brake pedal and the Tumbler skidded to a halt.
“I forgot to tell you,” Fox said. “She’s kinda peppy. What do you think?”
Bruce inched the Tumbler forward and smiled. “Does it come in black?”
Three days later Bruce and Alfred were in the cave below the mansion, bent over a workbench they had installed, examining what looked like a batter’s helmet. As Bruce watched, Alfred picked up a baseball bat and slammed the helmet-thing, breaking it in two.
“Problems with the graphite mixture,” Alfred said. “The next ten thousand will be up to specifications.”
“At least they gave us a discount,” Bruce said.
“Quite. In the meantime, might I suggest you try to avoid landing on your head?”
“Good idea.” Bruce moved to where the utility belt and grappling gun were hung on a mannequin. “Time to begin testing.”
He removed the utility belt, now freed of the harness, from the mannequin and strapped it on, shaking the gun to be certain that it was firmly nestled in its buckle holster. He went back to the bench and put on a pair of gloves, one with electric contacts in the fingers and a tiny but powerful battery on the underside of the wrist. Each glove had scallops like those on the gauntlets he had worn at Rā’s al Ghūl’s monastery.
“Devilishly handsome, if I may say so, Master Bruce,” Alfred commented.
“Emphasis on the ‘devilish,’ I assume.”
Bruce lifted a curved metal object from the bench, hefted it, and threw it at a stalactite. It whistled across the cave and bit deep into the stone.
“Your boomerang did not come back,” Alfred said.
“It’s not supposed to, unless it misses what I’m aiming at. By the way, Alfred, I’m thinking of calling these things ‘Batarangs.’ What do you think?”
“Devilishly clever,” Alfred said.
The following morning there was a small item buried in the local gossip column of the Gotham Times. It told the world that Bruce Wayne, newly returned to the city, was leaving again for a brief vacation in northern California. He planned to see the sights in and around San Francisco and was considering a few days’ hang gliding at Mount Tamalpais.
Reading the snippet on a westbound plane, Bruce thought it a mi
stake to have leaked the part about hang gliding because it might call attention to abilities he wanted to remain hidden.
He was living and learning.
He returned from Mount Tamalpais a week later by commercial carrier. He told the perky young woman behind the airline’s ticket counter that his wallet with his credit cards and ID had been stolen but, fortunately, he always carried emergency cash in his sock and would five hundred be enough for passage to Gotham? It was highly irregular and the perky ticket seller had to confer with her supervisor, but finally Bruce was allowed to board the plane.
He arrived at Gotham International at four in the morning, his only concern that he might run into someone he knew in the terminal. He did not want anyone to know he was back yet because his alter ego was about to reappear and he was afraid that someone—that smart cop Gordon, for example—might connect Bruce Wayne’s return with the mystery man. Sooner or later, he would make a big, clumsy deal of the wastrel’s homecoming—do something stupid, maybe.
He need not have worried. No one was in the terminal except a few indifferent maintenance workers, and the following night no one saw him enter several of Carmine Falcone’s habitats and vehicles and install tiny microphones.
At his last stop, an apartment Falcone owned near the theater district, Bruce placed his bug and went up the fire escape to the roof. He waited, a small receiver in his ear, until the sky began to lighten.
Time to pack it in . . .
Through his earpiece, he heard the sound of a door opening, the clink of glass against glass, and two voices. He recognized Falcone’s: “Tomorrow night, pier fourteen. Tell your guys.”
A second voice: “Don’t worry, Mr. F. They’ll be there.”
Tomorrow night. Pier fourteen. It’s a date . . .
An icy wind was blowing off the bay. Already, the dock area was chilled; soon, the wind would chill the entire city. A wispy mist blurred the streetlamps and softened the edges of the large cargo container, one of dozens of similar containers.
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