The Shadow (12 page)

Tam had gone right to work on analyzing the coin. It was clear that the metallurgist had his suspicions about its composition, but he had thus far kept those to himself. Just now the coin lay in a petri dish, in an alkaline solution, to which Tam was adding drops of another solution, muttering to himself that he might have to conduct a spectrum analysis of the results. Cranston was standing alongside him, his coat over one arm.

Tam hadn’t added four drops to the base when the liquid in the glass dish began to fizzle and grow dangerously agitated. Seconds later the dish shattered, and the metallurgist leapt back from the countertop in a mix of awe and dismay.

“It’s simply too fantastic,” he said, more to himself.

What was fantastic to Tam was probably going to end up a peril to everyone else, Cranston thought.

The Shadow’s agents had begun to run backgrounds on Shiwan Khan, and a few facts had already come to light. Using various front companies, Khan had been procuring arms and munitions and shipping them to his headquarters in Sinkiang Province in western China. Sinkiang lay between the Tibetan Plateau and the Gobi Desert of Mongolia—between the lands where mind and brute strength respectively reigned. Whether Shang-Tu—Xanadu—was an actual place or a product of a madman’s imagination had yet to be ascertained. But Khan’s goal of global domination was something that had to be taken seriously.

Cranston’s own research had revealed that the notorious progenitor of the Khan line had been a man of unusual self-control. After succeeding to a position of command, Genghis Khan never again rode at the front of his troops, and was seldom far from his imperial guard of archers and swordsmen. A network of riders, known as the
yam,
kept him apprised of news in conquered lands. He hadn’t so much developed new techniques of warfare as perfected the methods of his predecessors. It was from the Chinese, for example, that he had learned the use of siege machines, like catapults, battering rams, kedges, and naphtha-barrel throwers. More, he was obsessed with immorality and had spent a good part of his life in search of the alchemical “philosopher’s stone.”

“Bronzium,” Tam was saying, marveling at the dull yellow coin. “That’s what the ancient Chinese called it, at any rate. They believed it to be the very stuff from which the universe was formed.” He looked hard at Cranston. “How did you come by this?”

Cranston stroked his chin. He had first taken the coin for a talisman or a ritual object of the sort that was left on the tongues of the dead to assure entrance to the Mongol’s version of heaven. “I believe it was brought here from Sinkiang or Mongolia,” he told Tam.

Tam nodded. He had the coin in the grip of tweezers and was hurrying it over to a microscope. “That would certainly be consistent with the legends about bronzium. Sinkiang was considered to be the navel of the world.”

“Could bronzium be used as an explosive?”

Tam was hunkered over the scope’s eyepiece. “Theoretically. You see, it’s a naturally occurring isotope of uranium, extremely unstable at the atomic level.” He straightened in what seemed like sudden realization. “In fact, we’ve probably dosed ourselves some by handling it.” He got up from the stool and went to consult a textbook, flipping through the pages while he spoke. “The isotopes’s explosive potential can be released only by dividing the mass into separate parts and then bringing those parts into contact once more, resulting in a kind of nuclear fission.”

“Could the explosive potential be released by a charge of dynamite or nitroglycerin?”

Tam returned to the stool with the book in hand. “Not according to the latest research. Those who’ve been experimenting with fission suggest that the effect could only be achieved by
implosion
—an inwardly directed burst of raw power.”

“Just how powerful would the resulting explosion be?”

Tam gave his head an ominous shake. “No one can say.” He went to one of the lab’s chalkboards, cleaned an area with an eraser, and began chalking calculations. “Once implosion was achieved, the breakdown would spread rapidly to all levels of the atomic structure. Fashioned into a implosive/explosive submolecular device, the destructive potential would be nothing less than catastrophic.”

“An atom bomb,” Cranston mused.

“Hey, that’s catchy,” Tam said. Then it was back to business. “But one would first need some sort of initiator, something to get the chain reaction going. The latest thinking is that beryllium could fit the bill. Bombarded with polonium, for example, beryllium readily surrenders neutrons, with very little of the gamma radiation one finds in bombardment by radium.”

“The free neutrons would initiate bronzium’s fission explosion,” Cranston said.

Tam drew three concentric circles on the chalkboard and pointed to the innermost one. “You begin with the beryllium-polonium initiator. Around that you place your bronzium core, which you’ve packed inside an array of shaped charges to provide the necessary implosion. You contain the whole package in a shell—it could be beryllium as well, to enhance the blast potential—and there you have it: Your atom bomb.”

Tam stopped to regard his drawing, then set the chalk down and snorted a laugh. “But we’re dealing with theories, none of which have been proven. And we’re talking about devices that haven’t even been designed, let alone constructed and tested.”

As a student of Marpa Tulku, Shiwan Khan had been taught the importance of constructing a sanctum. He was in that sanctum now, a small chamber off the throne room, whose entrance was concealed by golden curtains. But where the sanctum of the
tulku
’s pet student was filled with gadgetry, Shiwan Khan’s was decidedly low technology: a small shrine to the Protector of Tents; a few candles, incense pots, brocaded pillows; a rug and meditation platform; and, on the wall, a Tibetan scroll—a
thangka.

Atypical of the hand-painted, traditional depictions of Buddha, the scroll dominating the wall in the meditation chamber was a large rectangle of scarlet, emblazoned with an arabesque of interlocking geometries. Together, the overlapping circles and squares formed a bird’s-eye view of an intricate maze of narrow passageways. Secondary colors and shading created an illusion of depth and movement, which forced the eyes to shift from one focal point to the next.

The
thangka
had belonged to Qubilai Khan, self-proclaimed Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, who had ruled over China and Tibet, then known as Tubo. Shiwan Khan had acquired the tapestry from a
ngagspa,
a Bon sorcerer who had been assimilated into Tibet’s official clergy. The sorcerer had worn an apron whose rigid superstructure was composed of human bones.

Prior to meditating, Khan always removed all jewelry and drew the golden curtains, even if the throne room was unoccupied. Solitude and silence were important to concentration, especially when the goal was to send messages on the wind. It was essential that the adept enter a trance of one-pointedness and empty the mind of all cogitation.

Chiefly he had to free his mind from concerns about Ying Ko. Knowing Ying Ko, his reluctance to take part in Khan’s plan was based on nothing more than wanting a full share rather than a fifty-fifty split of the world. But world domination was never easy. Chingez had faced his challenges; so had Qubilai. And so, too, would Shiwan Khan. It was all a game really, one he hoped he had set in motion by penetrating Ying Ko’s
gentleman’s
sanctum and leaving behind the coin. Was Ying Ko clever enough to pursue the lead? Time would tell. Meanwhile, phase two had to be initiated—piecing together the team that would make good on his promise to roar loud enough for all the world to hear.

Facing the
thangka,
he kneeled on the mediation platform and brought his ringless hands together in a resounding clap. Over his shoulders he wore a robe of black silk, trimmed with goat hair and heavy with gilded beading. The robe’s patterns matched the floor, along which the garment spilled in a train four feet long.

He let go of all thought and fixed his eyes on the scroll’s complex patterns, while his hands moved like those of a Balinese dancer, summoning the power. He pressed his fingertips to his shoulders, clapped once more, then touched his hands together before letting them resume their wavering dance in the chamber’s incense-laden air.

The squares and circles seemed to lift from the
thangka’s
surface and embrace him in the maze. His dancer’s hands pushed the power into his forehead, making him one with the labyrinth. He paused to cross his arms in front of his chest; then he began anew, fashioning a passageway for himself through the nonordinary world his mind had brought into being. And when he was confident that he had untethered himself from the physical, laws that governed the mundane dimension, he flew through the city’s forest of sky-scraping towers to the man who was to become his servant in ushering in the cataclysm . . .

Pencil in hand, Reinhardt Lane was working through supper again. But what was time but a construct—relative, ultimately inconsequential. On the desk sat the object that had come to tyrannize his life: the blue orb, whose descendants he hoped would provide clean energy for the world’s hundreds of millions. But just now he was stumped and fatigued from the effort of rooting out errors in his calculations.

So fatigued, in fact, that he actually experienced an auditory hallucination of someone calling his name. So lucid was the voice that Lane actually turned to look behind him, certain that someone had entered the lab through the balcony doors. Not that unobserved entries were anything novel; just the previous night, Margo had made it all the way to the desk before he became aware of her.

Hearing the voice a second time was a clear signal that he needed a break. He set the pencil down and lifted his glasses onto his deeply creased forehead to massage his eyes with the heels of his large hands. Deciding that a breath of fresh air might be in order, he got up and went to the balcony doors, covering the few feet like a sleepwalker.

All four corner offices on the Federal Building’s twenty-fifth floor backed up to balconies. A ten-by-twenty-foot space bordered on its outer edges by a low retaining wall, the lab’s balcony was representative of the lot of them. Tubular light fixtures were bracketed to the wall, and overhead was a shallow overhang that formed the lip of the Federal’s steeply pitched copper roof.

Lane moved distractedly to the balcony’s short wall, at the outside corner of the building, and gazed down on automobile traffic. It was only eight
P.M.
, and the streets were still busy. On the roof of the building across the street was a billboard for Llama cigarettes
—a blend of Peruvian and domestic tobaccos.
Llama was spelled out in bold letters, with the phrase, “I’d climb a mountain for a Llama,” below it. And centered in the advertisement was the face of a contented smoker, a cigarette in hand, from whose rictus of a mouth issued synthetic smoke rings at the rate of one every two seconds.

Lane regarded the billboard for a long moment; then he reached into his trousers pocket for a smoke and lit up, hardly taking his eyes from the sign. He had always had it in mind to discover just what fueled that billowing machine. But all at once something else was edging into his awareness. The smoker’s face had begun to shimmer and blur.

Lane averted his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. But when next he looked, the face indeed seemed to be reconfiguring into that of a long-haired Asiatic man, with a crescent-shaped scar low on his right cheek and black eyes that transfixed.

“Reinhardt Lane,”
a voice in Lane’s head intoned.

Lane regarded the sign mutely.

“Reinhardt Lane, you have been living a lie. You are not Reinhardt Lane at all, but Shan Juchi, from Sinkiang, a descendent of the vizier to the court of Chingez Khan, and presently the servant of the Kha Khan’s inheritor, Shiwan. Do you understand, Shan Juchi?”

Lane’s eyes had glazed over. His jaw was slackened and he swayed on his feet. “Yes, my Khan.”

“That’s good, Shan Juchi, because it is time to demonstrate your worthiness by using your creation to bolster Shiwan Khan’s promise to unify the world.”

Khan’s frightening visage wasn’t confined to the billboard any longer; it floated, large as a house, in front of Lane. “But the device isn’t ready yet,” Lane said.

“Then you can ready it in the presence of your master. Prepare the device for transport. An escort will be dispatched to assist you.”

“I understand,” Lane said, in the unsettling monotone of the hypnotized. “I will wait and go with them.”

C
ommissioner Barth was just finishing dinner in the Cobalt Club when Cranston slid into the chair opposite his.

“You know what puzzles me, Lamont?” Barth said, putting down his silverware. “How a man with absolutely nothing to do can be late for ever single engagement.”

“Practice, Uncle Wainwright,” Cranston said evenly.

Barth scowled and called to the waiter who delivered Cranston’s martinis, “More sour cream!” Then, to Cranston: “I take it you’ve eaten.”

Cranston stirred one of the martinis with his forefinger and tossed an olive into his mouth. “If olives count.”

Barth had a rebuke ready when he spied Margo Lane standing in the Cobalt’s winged archway. “It’s that damn Lane woman again,” he said under his breath.

Cranston swung around and saw Margo making a beeline for their table, dressed to kill in a green cut-velvet gown and a black fur. There was something angry in her stride.

“She’s been phoning my office all day,” Barth continued, just loud enough to be heard. “I practically had to resort to hiding under my—” Margo was on them suddenly, arms akimbo, and Barth segued into a cheery greeting. “Wonderful to see you again—”

She glowered at him. “You can drop the act, Commissioner. I want to know what you’ve done about my father.”

Barth patted his downturned mouth with a napkin. “As I’m sure my secretary told you, Miss Lane, there
is
nothing we can do unless—”