The Shadow (11 page)

“Who are you?” Cranston said, betraying little more than a hint of surprise.

“How unsociable of me. Shiwan Khan,” he said, with a slight bow. “Most recent descendant of the Kha Khans, Chingiz and Qubilai. You are, naturally, deeply honored.”

Shiwan Khan continued down the stairs and stepped into the sanctum’s secondary room. Content for the moment to allow Khan to reveal his purpose in infiltrating The Shadow’s headquarters—no mean feat in itself—Cranston followed, laying his coat, hat, and gloves on a chaise longue. He had on a gray-checked Norfolk jacket with an action back, and a striped burgundy-and-white necktie.

“Under no circumstances feel obligated to introduce yourself,” Khan went on. “I already know who you are.” His eyes roamed over Cranston, and he made a gesture of dismissal. “Not this temporary version of yourself. I mean that I know who you really are—Ying Ko.” He bowed his head, almost reverently. “I am a great admirer of yours.”

The couch and an armchair in matching black leather sat on either side of a small fireplace, which was itself flanked by bookcases. On the wall above the mantel hung a impressionistic painting of a skyscraper. Near the couch was a mahogany sideboard, crowned with a Remington bust of George Armstrong Custer.

Cranston had adopted a casual pose by the chaise longue, one hand thrust into the pocket of his high-waisted trousers. The look he aimed back at Khan was innocuous. “I’m afraid somebody sold you a bill of goods, friend.”

“Please,” Khan said peevishly. “It is no more difficult for me to infiltrate your mind than it was this room.” He motioned to the chair. “May I?”

Cranston gestured courteously.

“You disappoint me, Ying Ko. I would have thought you’d enjoy meeting a kindred soul—someone else possessed of the ability to cloud the minds of inferiors.”

Shiwan Khan employed the Tibetan phrase Marpa Tulku had used. “You were a student of the
tulku
,” Cranston said after a moment, dropping all pretense.

“Tulku?
What an honor you pay him. But yes, I was. Selected as you were—to be redeemed from a nefarious past. He spoke of you constantly, right to the last. But I’m afraid he wasn’t able to turn me quite as easily as he did you.” Khan paused. “You wouldn’t happen to have any American bourbon, would you? I’ve developed a bit of a taste for it, you see.” His right hand went to the sash of his silk tunic. “I’d be happy to pay.”

Cranston went to the sideboard and took out two glasses and a bottle. “If I recall, your ancestors had a fondness for drink, among other things.” He glanced over his shoulder at Khan before he poured the bourbon. “Do you want to talk about your visit to the Museum of Art and Antiquity last night?” He carried the glasses across the room, handing one to Khan, who stood to accept it.

“Wonderful collection of Tibetan tapestries.”

They clinked glasses and sipped their drinks.

“Ah, Ying Ko,” Khan said, “grown men still shiver at the mere mention of your name. Your raid on the village of Barga?—a master stroke. Swift, vicious, preemptive. I made a keen study of it. You are, I must confess, my idol.” Khan appraised Cranston’s expression, pleased to see a glimmer of pride. “Ah, so you remember it.”

“It . . . rings a bell.”

“A bell?” Khan said in exaggerated disbelief. “To be sure, a
Neban
bell from the Temple of the Cobras.” He set the glass down on a pedestal that supported a Greco-Roman bronze, and walked into the control room.

Again, Cranston followed. “So tell me, what brings you to the Big Apple—aside from an elaborate coffin, I mean.”

Khan smiled faintly. “Why, destiny, of course. Temüjin conquered half the known world in his lifetime. His descendant Qubilai Khan went on to conquer most of China, including Tibet. I intend to finish the job.”

Cranston considered it. “Yes, but if I’m not mistaken, your ancestors were backed by armies of one hundred thousand Mongol horsemen and an infantry of Chinese bowmen. How do
you
plan to do it?”

Khan’s ambiguous smile held. By now he had circled through the stairwell arches and was back in the sitting room. “If I told you, Ying Ko, it wouldn’t be a surprise. But know this much: I traveled from Asia in the holy crypt of Kha Khan in order to absorb his power. In three days, on the day of the Chinese New Year and on the anniversary of his birth in the Year of the Swine, the entire world will hear my roar and willingly fall subject to the hidden empire of Shang-tu—what you in the West call Xanadu.”

He paused for a moment, peering intently at Cranston. “That’s a lovely tie, by the way. May I ask where you acquired it?”

Cranston fingered the Windsor knot. “Brooks Brothers.”

“Is that Midtown?”

“Forty-fifth and Madison,” Cranston said in a rush; then: “You—” gesturing with a forefinger “—are a barbarian.”

“Thank you,” Khan returned, sounding as if he meant it. “We both are.” He closed on Cranston. “I know that inside you lies a lake of darkness. You dip into it every time you put on the hat and cloak of your alter ego. Veiling your mouth, encircling your ring finger, moving in anonymity . . . Just as you were instructed to do to ward off possession by
evil.”

Without warning, he took hold of Cranston’s wrist, holding on to him while he continued, hissing rapid words, low and urgent.

“Join me, Ying Ko, despoiler of Barga, butcher of Lhasa. You, and only you, deserve to rule by my side.”

Cranston broke free, even while deliberately allowing himself to be backed against the wall where the sitting room and control room met.

“Together, we’ll pit armies against one another, as in a game of chess,” Khan was saying. “We’ll collect our due of pain; we’ll bathe our hands in blood. Your mouth still waters at the prospect of
real
power. I’m offering you a chance to recapture your past. Become my partner, Ying Ko!”

Cranston’s back was to the wall now. “I don’t answer to that name any longer.”

“What’s in a name,
Lamont Cranston
?” Khan motioned broadly to the control room. “Would you deny that this, all this, your entire mechanism for fighting crime, was financed by opium? Would you deny that you had a hand in creating the addiction for heroin that has settled as a plague on your precious America?”

In one rapid motion, Cranston kicked an area of the block wall at knee level, exposing a secret compartment whose door was hinged along the bottom edge. Reaching down, his left hand took hold of a nickel-plated, nacre-handled automatic—his never-before-flourished ace in the hole for just such an occasion.

But Khan seemed to have second-guessed him. He was standing by one of the shaft’s arches, his hand at the sash of his tunic. “For the bourbon,” he said, flinging something in Cranston’s direction.

Reflexively, Cranston’s right hand caught the object in midflight. And in the same moment, Shiwan Khan was gone.

“We’ll speak again, Ying Ko,” came a distant voice, seconds before the sound of the clockwork door mechanism rumbled through the room.

Cranston glanced down at the object in his hand—a coin of dull, yellow metal with a square hole in the center, larger than a silver dollar and engraved with what might have been Uighur script.

Shiwan Khan had spared no expense in appointing his throne room, a spacious surround of elegance, one-hundred feet in diameter, whose soaring ceiling was supported by a ring of columns as thick as oaks. The columns stood on plush, deep-blue carpeting, and their capitals met the ceiling in rainbow starbursts. Decorated with spirals and mandalalike mosaics, the central area of the floor was a sunken circle, four broad steps below the columned ring.

The throne itself was wide and high-backed and had two slender arms. Facing south, it sat beneath a halfcircle canopy meant to symbolize Tengri, the One God, the Eternal Heaven, who was worshipped at the tops of sacred mountains in Mongolia. On either side of the throne stood gilded torchieres that resembled papyrus columns, and behind it was a tapestry that had hung in the court of the Kha Khan. On tables rested other priceless objects transported from Mongolia and Sinkiang: golden effigies, ritual knives, and the
Altan Debter,
the Golden Book, in which was written—in Chinese characters to represent Mongolian phonetics—the most secret history of the Mongols.

The room had been financed by liquidating a small portion of Khan’s treasure trove, which included what had been bequeathed to him by his ancestors and what he had acquired on his own in half a lifetime of evildoing.

With Shiwan Khan were the twelve members of his inner guard, Mongols whose faces were highcheekboned and more dark-complected and roundeyed than the Chinese of other provinces.

Genghis’s guard had clothed themselves in fur hats with earflaps, felt boots, and fur coats that reached below the knee; in battle they had worn metal helmets and armor made from strips of strong but supple buffalo leather, several layers thick. But different times and different climes called for different uniforms.

Shiwan Khan’s dozen wore tunics of patterned maroon silk with embroidered hems, baggy silk trousers, and knee-high black boots. The sleeves of the tunics covered their hands in a simulation of hooves, for—lessers of the Khan—they were nothing more than beasts of burden. Their breast and biceps plates were shingled with hundreds of ancient coins and two-inch-long rectangles of sharpened metal, and over their middles they wore a hubcap-size shield. Some carried folding crossbows over their shoulders—the
nou
of old; others, long, curving sabres that dangled from their red waist sashes.

Many a bribe had been paid, many a string pulled to get them into the United States, but what was influence if it couldn’t be peddled.

Just now, the guards were lined up in two rows in front of the throne, and Khan was stepping down to review them, evaluating each as he meandered. Then, satisfied, he positioned himself at the foot of his throne and addressed them.

“The day of the Mongol warrior is once again at hand.”

Acquainted with the litany, the dozen responded with loud hissing sounds that increased in frequency and volume as their emperor continued.

“Soon, with wings outstretched—” he lifted his arms in a dramatic gesture “—we fly to our destiny!”

Those with swords drew them from their scabbards in salute, arranging their glinting weapons in such a way that they formed the Chinese character of conquest!

“G
ood Morning, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea!” the newscaster’s voice blared from the bread-box-size radio in the Tam kitchen. “Flash! New York City reels from yet another reported sighting of the elusive creature known as ‘The Shadow,’ object of police, press, and perhaps most of all, racketeer interest for almost five years now.”

Dr. Roy Tam looked up from the morning edition of
The Classic
to give the radio his full attention. He was seated at the head of the table, the kids to either side of him, working on homework they had postponed from the previous night.

“This most recent sighting took place on the Harlem River Bridge and comes to us courtesy of none other than one of the city’s most notorious hoodlums, Henry ‘Duke’ Rollins, who turned himself over to police custody after what must have been a soul-searching encounter with The Shadow.”

Tam’s apartment was a modest street-level affair at 359 P Street in Queens, though Tam was proud of the new two-hundred-dollar GE refrigerator that took up an entire corner of the kitchen. Mrs. Tam, a slender woman with lustrous black hair, stood by the sink preparing box lunches for the kids. The room’s window was almost directly under the granite staircase to the first-floor apartments, but just now it was admitting an oblique ray of sunlight.

“New York City remains divided as to who and what The Shadow is, and on just what side of the fence he sits. Is he the foe of mobbies, sharpsters, grifters, charlatans, and the rest of the city’s riffraff? Or is he simply one of them, nursing a dream of becoming a big boss himself? What do you think, radio land—friend or foe? Where do
you
stand?”

Roy Tam swallowed hard, thinking back to the night on the bridge.

“My teacher says they just made up The Shadow so we’d listen to the radio more,” Tam’s youngest commented, looking up from his schoolwork. “Is that true, Dad?”

Tam looked at him. “No, it’s not—that is, I’m sure that your teacher—well, I mean, it’s possible, of course. Not that I would have any personal knowledge, one way or another . . .” He allowed his voice to trail off and cut his eyes to his wife, who was eyeing him curiously.

“Is anything the matter?” she asked.

Tam had his mouth open to respond when a knock at the front door brought him to his feet. “I’ll see who it is,” he said, covering for his overreaction.

Trembling when he reached the hallway, he took a few calming breaths before opening the door a crack. There, in the sunken court, stood a tall, broad-shouldered man, wearing a black homburg and an expensive, black wool overcoat.

“Yes?” Tam said, not quite sure if he should open the door any further.

The man held up his left hand to display a ruby-red oval. “The sun is shining,” he said.

Tam gulped but managed to summon the correct response. “But the ice is slippery.” So much for waiting a lifetime to speak those words, he told himself. Scarcely thirty-six hours had elapsed since he’d been recruited.

The man nodded, and Tam stepped outside, pulling the door halfway closed behind him. “You’re an agent of The Shadow?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

The man scowled. “Who?”

Tam showed him a blank look, then said, “Oh, yeah, right.” He winked. “Gotcha.” His initial nervousness was beginning to wane; after all, there was something exciting about being in on a secret the size of
The Shadow.
“What do you need?”

“A metal analysis—” the man told him “—of this.” The way a magician might, he conjured what looked like a large coin from the palm of his hand.

Tam’s laboratory was in the basement. A wooden stairway led down into a fifteen-by-twenty-foot room whose every horizontal surface was packed with the tools of his trade: racks of glass-stoppered bottles of agents and reagents, mortars and pestles, hydrometers and vacuum jars, graduated cylinders, beam balances, the usual hodgepodge of books and cryptic jottings. But of all that, Cranston’s eye was initially drawn to the flyswatter hanging on the wall.