The Further Adventures of The Joker (36 page)

“But where are you going?”

“Eagle’s Lair!” The Joker said, naming the Führer’s mountain retreat in Bavaria. “The Führer is throwing the party of the century there.”

“Jawohl!”
the tower replied.

The Joker pushed the throttles forward and the plane began to creep out onto the takeoff area. Then there was a crackle of static. The tower was calling.

“Just a moment, General! There is something which is not in order.”

“Oh? What’s that?” the Joker asked.

“The guards from the depot have come. It seems that when you signed for the treasure, you signed yourself Herr General Joker.”

“Just my little joke,” the Joker said, keeping the plane going toward the takeoff area.

“We would like you to sign again,” the voice on the other end insisted.

“Fool! You know I cannot keep the Führer waiting!” The Joker ran the engines up, released the brakes, and started to rumble down the field. There was a noise of confusion mixed with static. Then a voice said, “Ah well, good luck, General!”

Then he was in the air.

The Joker peeled off his mask. Grinning now, he came back to see how his troops were doing. “Everybody all right?” he asked.

“Yes, Herr Joker!” They chorused.

“I hope you packed plenty of sandwiches,” the Joker said.

The men grinned. “Yes, we have packed sandwiches and beer, much beer!”

“Good,” the Joker said. “Enjoy yourselves. The hard part of this is over.”

But in that, he was very mistaken.

The Joker’s flight plan called for him to fly due south. He wanted to get out of the war zone as soon as he could. It would be ridiculous to be shot down now. He flew over Switzerland, not bothering to respond to questions radioed to him from stations along the way. He continued south along the Tyrhennian Sea, with the mass of Italy on his left. When Sicily came into view, he made a right turn to fly west across the Mediterranean and then out into the Atlantic.

It was at this point that a single-seater fighter appeared out of the clouds and quickly closed in on them.

“Who the hell is that?” the Joker said. “Dietrich, can you make out any markings on his wings?’

Dietrich looked long and steadily through binoculars at the pursuing craft. “Well, Herr Joker, it seems to have some sort of symbol on the wing but I can’t make it out.”

“Italian Air Force?” the Joker asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Dietrich said. “It has none of their characteristic markings.”

There was another crackle of static. Then a loud voice enquired in Italian, “What plane is that?”

“German military transport,” the Joker replied, “on a special mission.”

“Is that so?” said the fighter pilot. He came closer still and at last the Joker could make out the markings on the wing. The symbol was like nothing he had ever seen before. The insignia on the wingtips and side of the plane showed a heart with a dagger through it, lying atop a coiled noose.

“What the hell is that?” the Joker asked Dietrich. “Must be some country I’ve never heard of before.”

Dietrich cursed. “Ah! Herr Joker, it is the marking of the mafia!”

“Since when have they got their own airforce?” the Joker asked.

“The mafia always has what they need,” Dietrich said. “Especially in Sicily.”

The Joker got back on the radio. “Stay out of my way! I’m on special orders from the Führer himself!”

The fighter plane spun in and circled around them at close range. They could see a dark unshaven face staring at them. The Italian pilot said, “Aha! It is the Joker! Land your ship, Joker! You have what belongs to Italy and to us.”

The Joker said to Dietrich, “Tell the men to man the machine guns.”

The fighter plane circled them again, staying out of range. They could hear radio conversation in a Sicilian dialect, which none of them understood. Two more planes appeared out of the clouds and came toward them. When they were within range, the Joker said, “Open fire.”

The three planes wove a pattern of death around the slow-flying transport. Machine guns chattered and were met by answering fire from the nose and tail gunners aboard the transport. Machine gun slugs ripped through the transport’s light covering.

“Shoot them down!” the Joker screamed at his gunners.

“But we can’t see them, sir! They’re diving out of the sun!”

“Then shoot down the sun!” the Joker shouted.

Meanwhile he was turning acrobatics in the plane, dodging and twisting, taking advantage of every vestige of cloud cover. One of the men scored a hit. One of the three fighters spun into the ocean in a plume of black smoke, crashing at last into the bright sea. The remaining two redoubled their efforts. Smoke began to pour from one of the transport’s port outboard engine. The Joker feathered the prop and shut down the engine. The Dornier flew on steadily. They gained more cloud cover. The fighters found them and bored in again. Then the Joker performed an unorthodox maneuver. He turned the plane on one wing, sweeping around like a scythe. He caught one of the mafia planes off-guard and shot it down, watched it explode in a trail of smoke and sparks. That left one airplane. It came at them this time head on. From the radio the Joker could hear Scuzzi’s voice, “I will catch you, Joker; I will kill you!” And then the plane dissolved into a fireball and plunged into the sea. The Joker resumed his course, west and south. “Hang on, boys,” he said, “We’re going to Rio!”

Two of his own men had been killed. The Joker told the others to throw their bodies out through the hatchway. “It’ll be just that much more treasure for the rest of us to divide,” he told them. Soon they were eating smoked bratwurst sausages and drinking beer as if nothing had happened.

The plane flew on through the rest of the day. Night saw them well out into the Atlantic. They left the Azores behind them and finally made their turn to go due west across the shortest part of the South Atlantic. Rio lay dead ahead and about a thousand miles away.

Morning found them still making good time. But a second engine was beginning to miss. More seriously, the plane had begun gradually to lose altitude. Checking, they found that the machine bullets had cut through one of the gas tanks. Hasty calculations showed they were not going to have enough fuel to make it all the way in.

The Joker fought with the big plane, taking advantage of stray bits of wind and thermal updrafts, edging for altitude. But he could see it was not going to be enough.

“Dietrich,” he said, “we’re going to have to throw out the statuary. Order the men to do it. Then tear out the seats, anything extra you can find. We must lighten the ship. There’s no way to turn back. Between here and the landing field at Rio there’s nothing but water.”

Priceless Michelangelo marbles went tumbling out of the aircraft and into the sea. Equipment followed. It was helping, but it was still not enough. The Joker put the ship on autopilot and went back into the main cabin. He said to his men, “Well, you’ve all been really good and you’ve been a great help. I hate to do this but I’m really afraid that I have to. You, you, and you. Throw out life rafts and continue after them.”

They protested. “Surely you are not serious, Herr Joker? We would stand little chance of survival, even with the life rafts.”

“You will stand no chance at all,” the Joker said, “if you stay here. All there is for you here is a bullet in the head.”

With submachine gun at the ready he herded them toward the open hatchway. One of them tried to jump him. The Joker shot him. Then at gunpoint he made the others jump out one by one. He watched as their parachutes opened.

He was left now only with the lightest of the treasures. He was prepared to die before throwing anymore of it overboard. Only he and the remaining treasures were left in the plane. And Dietrich.

He became aware of Dietrich as the man opened fire on him from the cockpit. The Joker, with his special sixth sense for danger, had been waiting for this and clung to the open hatch high over the steel-gray sea moving below to escape the barrage of bullets from Dietrich’s gun. In fact it helped him solve a problem. He was fond of Dietrich, who had done well by him. But the man weighed at least two hundred pounds. That would be weight well saved.

Bullets crashed around him. The Joker fired once, and caught Dietrich square in the forehead. The man went down and stayed down. The Joker pulled his body to the hatch and threw it overboard. And then he was alone on the plane, just him and the treasure, on a wounded German transport that was still losing altitude, though slower than before.

But even though it was slower, it was enough. He was no more than fifty feet above the wavetops now, and the plane was bucking hard. It had taken so many hits, both from the attack by the mafia planes and the combat that had gone on inside, that the plane was threatening to come apart.

At last the Joker could see, far ahead, a dim dark line on the horizon. Brazil! He was almost there!

The plane rushed on, its engines misfiring. He was skimming the wavetops, but the land was coming up strongly. He saw a stretch of beach and, behind it, green jungle. Quickly he checked his position. Yes, there it was! There was the landing field built out to the water’s edge, just to his left. But he didn’t know if he was going to make it. He was almost in the water now; water was splashing up through the bullet holes. If he’d had his landing gear down he would have been dragging his wheels in the water. Now the landing field was dead ahead. He could see people standing in a little crowd, waving at him. One of them was a blonde. He looked more closely. Yes, it was Petra! She had come! She was waiting for him! How sad it would be, the Joker thought, to have come this far and die just before reaching Rio.

By sheer strength of will he forced the nose up. The plane’s tail was already starting to touch down in the water as he swept across the beach and finally brought the plane down belly first on the edge of the tarmac.

He stood up, unbuckled himself from the seat. He had made it! It was all his! He’d done it! The greatest caper of the century, maybe of all time! And he was safe. And Petra was down there waiting for him.

He ran down the bullet-pocked aisle, pushed open the door. As he began to step out there was a blinding flash of light. White light bathed him and suddenly, for a moment, he lost his orientation and had to close his eyes to keep from being blinded.

When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on a cot that was being wheeled by men in white clothes. “Is this Rio?” he asked. And then remembered that he didn’t speak Portuguese. But he needn’t have worried because the man grinned at him and said, “Rio? I guess you’ve had a pretty nice dream, huh, Joker?”

“Dream?” the Joker said. “Where am I?”

“This is the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane,” the man said. “You just had your shock treatment.”

“I’m in Arkham Asylum? How did I get here?”

“This is where Batman put you, Joker,” the attendant said. “After your last caper.”

“What about the war?”

“Which war?”

“The war with the Germans.”

“You must have had a really good dream,” the attendant said. “That war was over decades ago.”

The Joker understood. And he began to laugh. It was a horrifying laugh, an insane laugh, and it echoed through the darkened corridors of the asylum. He was still laughing when they locked him up again in his cell.

The Joker Is Mild

Edward D. Hoch

T
here was a time when the Joker went away from Gotham City and all was at peace. It began quite unexpectedly on a summer’s evening while Police Commissioner Gordon and the other good citizens of the city were watching the local newscasts. It was a quiet news day with nothing more exciting than a new baby lion at the zoo, when suddenly the picture faded into a field of static and snow. That was replaced almost immediately by an image of the grinning Joker, the mad genius with the white face and red lips, who had thrown the city into a panic so many times before.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of Gotham City,” he began, leaning forward toward the camera. “Tonight I have a most important message for you all, a message that I believe will please you. I have decided that my life of crime should come to an end. I have to leave Gotham City forever and begin a new life far away. I want to live like other men, enjoying a life of travel and art. This is my last farewell to you, and I say it with a heavy heart.” As if on cue, a tear appeared at the corner of one eye and ran slowly down his face “Good-bye, Gotham City. You have been good to me. I will never forget you.”

The picture faded and suddenly the news returned. It had been so brief a message, and so startling, that some viewers rubbed their eyes, wondering if they had really seen it at all. One of those was Commissioner Gordon himself, who sat and stared at the television set for a full minute before getting to his feet to phone Headquarters.

“Did I see correctly?” he asked the captain of detectives. “Did the Joker just announce his retirement from a life of crime?”

“That’s what it looked like to me.”

“Are we supposed to believe that?”