The Phantom (10 page)

Without preface, Farley replied, “Well, you were right. They know far too much.”

“How much?”

“More than you’d like.”

“Spell it out,” Drax snapped impatiently.

For the next ten minutes, Drax listened to Farley with a swelling sense of doom and rage. He asked several questions and each time he heard the commissioner’s replies, his body tensed.

“Anything else, Mr. Drax?” Farley asked when Drax didn’t say anything.

Drax barely heard him. He was staring straight ahead, deep in concentration as he formed his plans.

Drax moved across his expansive office, his feet sinking into a carpeting so thick that it was like walking on an immense sponge.

The office was a glass cave high above the city. Everything Drax needed was here or a phone call away. He stopped at the window and stared out over the New York skyline, admiring the skyscrapers.

His power here was already enormous.
But just wait,
he thought.
Just wait. They ain’t seen nothing.
He laughed to himself, then turned away as the phone rang. He strolled over to his desk.

“Drax here.”

“It’s Ray Zephro. Our little tootsie is boarding the plane right now. Just say the word and I’ll have her dragged off by her hair.”

“Hello, Ray. How is your little brother, Charlie, doing?”

“He’s doing just fine, Xander. Just fine. We’re a little short on time here. What do you say? I need to know now.”

Sitting back in his comfortable leather chair, Drax absentmindedly played with a specially designed binocular microscope. When he adjusted the focus, a pair of razorlike spikes popped out from the dual eyepieces. Drax touched the tip of his index finger to one of the spikes and smiled.
Painful and quite lethal,
he thought.

“Xander, you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Thanks just the same, Ray, but I have another way of dealing with this. After all, I do have friends in that part of the world.” The girl’s disappearance in the jungle would cause far less commotion than a public kidnapping in her hometown. “I’ve got to go. Dr. Fleming is here.”

“Who?”

“The librarian.”

Drax hung up the phone, set the microscope down, then touched the intercom. “Alice, send in Dr. Fleming, please.”

A moment later, the door opened and a tall man with an aristocratic bearing moved confidently into the room. Self-assured, even smug, he didn’t seem a bit intimidated by Drax’s urgent request for a meeting. If Drax’s power and reputation worried him, he didn’t show it.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Dr. Fleming.”

Fleming took a seat in a comfortable chair, crossed his legs, and folded his hands together. “I don’t mind. It’s a nice day for a walk. How can I help you?”

Drax leaned forward and ran a finger down the length of the microscope. He studied Fleming a moment before he spoke. “You can assure me that the research I’ve been doing at the city library is strictly confidential.”

“Of course it is.”

Drax nodded thoughtfully. “Are you sure? Because Dave Palmer has been poking his nose into my business of late.” He paused, allowing his words to impact Fleming, and scrutinized him without appearing to do so. “I’m sure you know Mr. Palmer is the publisher of the
Tribune
.”

Fleming adjusted his position in the chair.
Slightly nervous now,
Drax thought.

“Of course I know that. And you have nothing to worry about, Mr. Drax. Your privacy is protected. All requests for access to special collections come directly to me. I’m the only one who sees them.”

“Thanks. I feel a lot better now. You see, I would be very upset if my activities were being discussed. I just hate gossip, you know.”

“Oh, I understand. Nothing to worry about,” Fleming assured him.

“One more thing, if you don’t mind. I’d like your professional opinion on something under this microscope.” Drax pushed it across the desk. “Here. Let me hold your glasses.”

Fleming looked mildly surprised by the request. “I’m no expert on the microscopic world, you know.” Nonetheless, he moved over to the microscope. He removed his glasses and peered through the dual eyepieces. “What is it I’m supposed to be looking at? I don’t see anything.”

“Turn the focus knob.”

Drax knew that the word
LIAR
would be coming into focus, then Fleming would have one second before the spring was triggered. Fittingly, it would be the last thing Fleming ever saw.

“Perhaps I should do it with my glasses on,” Fleming murmured, and reached for his glasses.

Drax pushed them aside before he touched them. “You’ll be able to see better without them. Just adjust the focus knob.”

A click.

The spikes shot through the eyepieces, piercing Fleming’s pupils. He screamed, ripped the microscope away from his head, and covered his eyes with his hands. Blood poured through his fingers and he stumbled back, reeling in pain.

“You won’t be needing these any longer.” Standing up, Drax snapped Fleming’s glasses in two pieces, then touched the intercom. “Alice, send the boys in, will you please? We have a little problem here.”

The door opened and two beefy men in black suits and hats rushed into the room and took Fleming by the arms. He swung his head from side to side and kept shrieking, “Help me! Help me!”

A third man of similar proportions to the other two hurried into the room and quickly wrapped a bandage around Fleming’s head, covering his eyes. Then he stuffed a gag into his mouth.

“Good work,” Drax said. “Take care of him. You know what to do.”

No one would see Fleming again. His disappearance would probably be a much discussed mystery in the
Tribune,
Drax thought, and smiled as he sat back down. He looked at the bloody spikes sticking through the top of the eyepieces. Maybe one day he’d tell Palmer what happened to him, before Palmer did his own disappearing act.

TWELVE

The Sea of Bangalla

T
he flight from New York was long and tedious and was now stretching into its third day. Diana Palmer had switched planes twice and had stopped four times. Or was it five? She could no longer remember. It didn’t matter. She was almost to her destination now; another hour or so to go.

In the early years of her travels, it had taken her days to recover from a trip of this duration. She had yearned for hot showers, a hot meal, a soft bed, creature comforts. But then she’d started traveling with Uncle Dave and such comforts had come to seem frivolous, beside the point. Now all she needed was a short nap to revive herself before they landed.

She shifted to face the window and closed her eyes. She’d slept off and on, but never for more than three hours at a time.

She was hoping that she would be able to deal quickly with her uncle’s business. She’d find out whatever she could about the spider-web symbol and try to discover exactly what Drax was up to.

Uncle Dave had cautioned her not to get directly involved, but to simply gather information and get out as soon as possible. The more that they knew, the better Drax’s plans could be combated.

Diana agreed, but she also wanted to take advantage of another opportunity that presented itself. She would be able to get close to some of the Bangalla tribes, which had never been subjugated by foreign colonists.

Some of the mysterious tribes had gained considerable notoriety for their pirateering activities, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In fact, the English had adapted the name Bangallamen, so that it no longer referred to native people as much as to creatures in the night that every child feared. She herself had grown up fearing the Bangallamen, having no idea of the source of the name.

But she’d also heard that the Bangallans’ reputation was not exactly all that the history books described. They were known to attack foreign ships entering their territory and supposedly possessed unusual navigational skills. But that alone didn’t mean they were responsible for all of the vicious attacks through which they’d gained their notoriety. Diana hoped to learn the legends and the true history of the tribes before returning to the States.

The plane suddenly jerked, nearly tossing her out of her seat. The wing outside her window dipped down, lifted, dipped again. What was going on? A chorus of startled shouts rose from the passengers.

She peered out the window into the darkness and saw stars and the moon. As far as she knew, there had been no adverse weather conditions expected for the rest of the flight.

Then she glimpsed lights just above the aircraft and saw the outline of a fighter plane with pontoons. What was it doing so close to the plane? Her stomach lurched, she pressed her hands to the back of the seat in front of her and the plane’s nose suddenly plunged downward. The craft dropped hundreds of feet in a matter of seconds.

Diana gasped for air, trying to catch her breath. Passengers cried out, someone shouted for help, a stewardess fell in the aisle. She managed to look out the window again, and this time she saw fighter planes sweep in formation past the Clipper.

“We are experiencing some difficulties in our flight path,” the pilot said over the intercom. “Please make sure your seat belts are fastened properly and bear with us. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

The fighter planes repeated their aggressive maneuvers, dipping down toward the plane, darting dangerously close to it as the Clipper continued to descend. There was no doubt in Diana’s mind that they were being forced to land. But she was fairly certain there was no airport, nor land of any kind, below them.

Her first concern was her immediate survival. But other questions lingered in the back of her mind. Why, she wondered, were they being forced down, and could it somehow be related to her own mission? Did Drax have that kind of power? Would he take such a large risk?

She had the feeling the answer was yes.

The Phantom had been looking all over Skull Cave for Guran when he finally found him in the Radio Room. He wore a headset and was sitting in front of a vast array of radio equipment that was notched into the cave’s rock walls. Unaware that the Phantom had entered the room, Guran adjusted a couple of dials and hastily cranked the handle on the generator.

“Guran?”

The Phantom raised his voice above the buzzing and crackling of tubes and transistors, but Guran didn’t respond. Beside him, Zak, the native kid who the Phantom had saved from the track, looked around in awe at all the complicated equipment.

The Phantom reached out and removed the headset. Startled, Guran spun around. “Oh, you!”

“Who did you expect?”

“You startled me.”

“Sorry. Zak and I are leaving. He says the men who stole the skull came from a ship docked in a hidden cove on the other side of the jungle. He thinks he can find it. It’s worth a shot.” He held up the headset. “What are you listening to, ‘Junior G-Men’?”

“I wish it was,” Guran said. “This is real. Go ahead, listen.”

The Phantom put the headset to his ears and heard the sound of urgent voices. “I repeat: This is the Pan Am Clipper. We are under attack . . . under attack by three fighter planes. We are down about five miles off the Bangalla coast. We are taking on water.”

Static disrupted the transmission and the Phantom lowered the headset. “The Pan Am Clipper has been forced down over the ocean.” He was quiet a moment, then turned to Zak. “Wait here with Guran. I’ll be back in a little while.”

The Phantom moved out into the main chamber of the cave and sat down on the majestic Skull Throne. Raised above the floor and decorated with skull designs, the high-backed throne was hundreds of years old. It had been a gift to the Phantom from an Arab prince, but the story of what the Phantom had done to deserve the gift had been forgotten long ago. It was a part of his heritage that had never been recorded.

He mounted the throne and relaxed. Closing his eyes, he willed himself to the site of the downed plane. Then he focused his attention on his breath and released his thoughts.

Slowly he became more and more relaxed, until he was drifting on the border of sleep. Then his uncanny navigational skills, which he’d learned from his father, took effect. He didn’t know how he found his way to places with his mind, but the radio contact was all he needed to locate the Pan Am Clipper.

The landscape below him blurred as he moved at lightning speed toward his objective. Then the jungle was gone and the ocean glistened in the moonlight below him. Ships came into view and vanished, and then he saw the airplane bobbing on the waves. A small fighter plane on pontoons was approaching the Clipper, water shooting out from behind it in a fine, moonlit spray.

Inside the plane, stewardesses tried to calm the frightened passengers, but they were on the verge of panic themselves. The Phantom wished he could do something to help them, but he was powerless to act.

Inside the fighter plane were three men dressed in coverall flight suits with parachutes strapped to their backs. They wore goggles and caps. One of them was armed with a machine gun, and another was talking on the radio to the captain of the Clipper. His message was clear: they were coming aboard, and if there was any resistance, the plane would be shot apart and sunk by the two other fighters still in the air. The captain of the Clipper replied that he was sorry, but the door was jammed. They couldn’t get it open.

For an instant, the man looked up, frowning. Then he spoke to the captain again. “We’re coming aboard right now. Open that door or we’ll blow it off.”

The Phantom blinked open his eyes. He felt the throne beneath him and looked around the skull chamber. He took in a deep breath, exhaled, and leaped down from the throne.

Was there time? Could he make it to the Clipper before it was blown to smithereens? Maybe.

He bolted out of the cave, Zak hurrying to catch up.

The fighter plane was nestled right under the wing outside Diana’s window. It was linked to the Clipper by a rope, and now in the murky darkness, a raft was crossing the short span between the two planes.

She pressed closer to the window, trying to see the occupants of the raft. She could only make out vague forms, but it was enough to leave her with a distinct sense of foreboding.