The Shadow (3 page)

The Tibetan riders dismounted. One of them helped Ying Ko down. He was still regarding the hut with a look of bemusement when the Tibetan nearest him shook his head and said, “No. There.”

Ying Ko followed the man’s finger to the sheer wall, astonished to see a lamasery shimmer into visibility. Modeled on Lhasa’s Potola, its manifold roofs were four-hipped and its towering white walls were dimpled with scores of narrow windows. Though unlike the Potola, the main entrance lay deep within the open mouth of an immense cobra, whose hood alone had to be fifty feet wide.

Ying Ko’s own mouth had fallen open. He cut his eyes to the Tibetans.

“The clouded mind sees nothing,” one of the men answered through his scarf.

Roughly, they escorted him to the mouth’s sculpted tongue, where they stripped him of the goat’s hair cape and flung him toward a pair of Brobdingnagian doors, which rose between snarling bronze lions. Eighteen feet high, the doors were studded with plate-sized gold lozenges, and their outsize vertical handles appeared to have been carved from the thigh bones of a brontosaurus. From behind them came the slow, almost funereal beat of kettle drums.

Pulled by unseen hands, the door opened inward, revealing a long room that ended in a canopied, golden altar, surmounted by effulgent golden curtains. Two rows of painted columns supported the room’s central nave, from the ceiling of which hung short, square-cut crimson and gold banners. Paralleling the colonnades stood two lines of monks, each man wearing a drum at chest height and holding a wooden beater. The lamas wore saffron and crimson robes and ceremonial headdresses topped by tall Mohawks of mustard-colored napping. Several bare-headed acolytes faced Ying Ko from the foot of the altar, some holding silver bells, two with their mouths pressed to eight-foot-long
ragdong
trumpets, whose sound boxes rested on the gilded floor. None of them acknowledged Ying Ko as he approached the altar, but when he was within a few feet of it, the plangent drumming ceased on a double strike, the bells sounded, and the lamas turned without word and disappeared behind the columns.

Ying Ko regarded the altar with stifled awe. Golden cobras spiraled around the canopy’s forward support posts, and on the floor were several small, golden tables, replete with ritual objects. But Ying Ko’s attention was fixed on the translucent curtain that hung over the three-foot-high altar, rippling in a breeze he couldn’t feel. Behind it, a large golden disk could be distinguished, and emerging from that disk—as if levitated above the altar—was the form of a human figure seated in a lotus position.

The seated figure was a young boy, clothed in robes that blended impeccably with the sumptuousness of his surroundings. He had narrow eyes, a wide nose, and full lips. Small bumps along the forehead were all that marred a cleanly shaved skull. Ying Ko’s dream from the previous night returned with unsettling swiftness as the youth seemed to float toward him.

“Who are you?” Ying Ko demanded in Tibetan, only to be answered in English.

“I am Marpa Tulku,” the boy said. “You recognize me.”

It wasn’t a question, but Ying Ko denied the assertion. “I’ve never seen you before.” He brushed strands of hair from his face.

The boy’s face betrayed nothing. “You have seen me—as pictures in your mind. I am your teacher.”

Ying Ko gaped at him in amused disbelief. “My what?”

“Your teacher. You have been chosen.”

“Chosen for what?”

“You will see.”

Ying Ko sneered. “Like I told your pals, you’ve made a serious mistake.”

“There is no mistake.”

Ying Ko’s hands brushed at the dusty thighs and knees of his loose trousers. “Do you have any
idea
who you’ve kidnapped?”

“Cranston,” the boy said.

Ying Ko froze. Cranston wasn’t his real name, though it was the name he had arrived in Tibet wearing. When he looked up, the
tulku
was standing directly in front of him.

“Lamont Cranston,” the boy said.

Ying Ko forced a fearless grin and touched his hirsute chest. “So you know my real moniker.”

“I also know that for as long as you can remember you’ve struggled against your own black heart, and that you have always lost the battle.” The boy was circling him now, gazing at him—through him, it seemed. “You’ve watched your spirit, your very face change when the beast claws its way from inside you. You are in great pain, aren’t you?”

Cranston bristled. “I’ll show you pain—”

He made a sudden lunge for the youth but found only thin air. In startled amazement, he lurched off balance toward the altar.

“You know what evil lurks in the hearts of men, because you’ve glimpsed that evil in your own heart. That makes you a powerful man, Lamont Cranston. But I intend to make you more powerful still.”

The
tulku’s
voice came from somewhere behind Cranston. He turned, spied the boy standing near one of the columns, and made another leap for him, this one carrying him clear into a side room, with nothing to show for it but abraded elbows from landing face first on the hard floor.

“Some holy man,” Cranston said, getting up. “You’re nothing but a
naljorpa
—a sorcerer.”

“I am an insect fluttering in the dung,” came the youth’s disembodied voice. “I roll in the dung like a pig. I digest it and fashion it into gold dust, into a brook of pure water, into stars. To fashion stars out of dog dung, is that not great work?”

“What’ve I got to do with stars?” Cranston asked, circling warily, trying to close on the voice.

The boy laughed. “Nothing. But you have much in common with dog dung.”

Seeing him reappear near the column, Cranston threw himself through the air, tumbling down into the main room once more.

“Your redemption could require a year, perhaps longer. But I will teach you to use your black shadow to battle evil in place of fomenting it. Every one pays a price for redemption.”

The
tulku
materialized right next to Cranston and just as quickly faded from view.

“—this is yours.”

Shivering with fear, Cranston backed away on his hands and feet. “I’m not looking for redemption.”

A chilling laugh filled the room.

“ ‘The ocean does not resent too much water, nor does the treasury resent too much treasure. The people do not resent too much wealth, and the wise do not resent too much knowledge.’ ” The boy paused. “You have no choice. You
will
be redeemed.”

A shadow thrown by an invisible figure crawled across the floor toward Cranston, rising above him on the resplendently curtained wall above the altar.

By now, he had effectively backed himself into a corner. But alongside him on a low table, resting horizontally atop two triangular bases, lay a
phurba
—an elongated ritual dagger used by magicians, with pointed blades that spread into a triangle up to the hilt.

The
tulku
divined his intent. “I wouldn’t do that. That dagger has been the property of many powerful men over the centuries, and in it resides their combined strengths.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Cranston said, grinning and taking hold of the bayonet-like dagger. He scampered to his feet and began to stalk his invisible prey.

The knob of the knife’s handle was an exquisitely carved head wearing a crown. The face centered in the head was Asiatic and somewhat barbaric-looking, though the carving’s real power lay in its lifelike quality. In fact, the more Cranston stared at it, the more lifelike it seemed to become. Worse, the thing was suddenly vibrating in his grip, as if unhappy with its situation. When it started to spin in his hand, Cranston glanced down at it in time to see the now snarling face sink teeth into the fleshy base of his thumb.

He yelped and let go of the handle, nursing his hand while he watched the dagger hit the floor on its tip and skitter to the center of the room. He made a quick dive for it, but it scurried away and launched itself into the air. There it executed a series of spins and rotations, and dove for him, embedding itself an inch deep into the top of his left thigh.

Screaming in pain, Cranston collapsed on his rear and yanked the knife from his raggedly torn flesh. Only the strength of both hands prevented the knife from striking him in the groin. Instead, it hit the floor point first, then bounded up out of his grip, hovered for a moment, and flew toward his face.

A veteran of numerous dogfights with
Boche
pilots in the skies over France during the Great War, Cranston had never come up against anything like the
phurba.

Just in time, he jerked his head to one side. The dagger glanced off a column and went swooping through the room, ricocheting off columns and crashing into one of the incense stands below the altar. Cranston was flattened against the room’s rear wall when the blade got him in its sights again. Then it plummeted, only to stop inches from his face and hover there for a moment to glare at him. Finally it rocketed forward, darting about his face like the trained bullwhip of a circus performer, striking the wall left, right, and above his head. Reversing course, it doubled up in a right angle to show a vicious snarl before streaking toward him, spinning end over end.

The triangular blade grazed Cranston’s cheek, opening a razorlike wound, then soared behind his head and shot for the altar, into the waiting grip of the suddenly remanifested
tulku.

The hilt face returned to bronze as Cranston slid weakly to the floor, clutching his bleeding thigh.

“He who knows how could live comfortably in hell,” the boy told him.

“Is that where I am?” Cranston asked in a pained whisper. “In hell?”

The
tulku
smiled lightly. “Not yet.”

And the doors to the room slammed shut.

F
orcibly apprenticed to the
tulku,
time stood still for the man who answered to the names Ying Ko and Lamont Cranston, but time marched on for the rest of the world.

The stock market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression; Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany; the planet Pluto was discovered; talkies replaced silents, and American audiences saw their first musical Mickey Mouse cartoons; in New York City, the Empire State Building was dedicated; the Graf Zeppelin airship circled the globe in twenty days; the words neoprene, nylon, and neutron were introduced to the English language; the first aircraft carrier was launched; electronic television was developed; the U.S. Marines left Haiti; the first all-star game was played; Prohibition was ended; and Alcoholics Anonymous was organized.

But even after seven years of world-shaking events, some things remained constant: Coca-Cola was still the most popular soft drink and racketeers were still a force to be reckoned with in American life, especially in New York City, where Scarface Capone’s imprisonment for tax evasion had created a vacuum that had to be filled.

Duke Rollins figured he was just the one to fill Big Al’s shoes. He had a mind for the business, and he had an eye for the dames. What’s more, he was good with guns, and he wasn’t afraid to use them. Crossed, he responded in kind, no matter if the double-dealer was a copper or some mobbie stooge. Sometimes it was neither; just some mug who saw something he wasn’t supposed to see. But even then you did what you had to do. A rubout was a rubout, and had to be handled properly.

Tonight’s, for instance. Some guys might have been tempted to let the Chinese walk, even after what he’d seen. But Duke knew better than to leave himself wide open to face a murder rap. So he’d had the Chinese snatched and fitted for galoshes. But, hey, at least Duke would be seeing to the farewell in person. More than you could say about a lot of mugs.

Owing to the lateness of the hour, the rain, or maybe the thick fog, the Harlem River Bridge connecting the South Bronx to Manhattan was deserted. Not that Duke would have been troubled by a passing car or two, but you never looked a gift horse in the mouth. So he was smiling to himself when he pulled the Ford sedan to the curb on the Manhattan-bound lane of the bridge and stepped out to have a closer look at the cold waters of the Harlem River.

English Johnny climbed out from the rear seat to join him. Both men wore dark, woolen trenchcoats and snap-brimmed trilbys. The larger of the two, Duke had a humorless face, accented by a neatly trimmed mustache. Johnny’s face had been ravaged by the pox, and his chin was dimpled.

Duke blew into his hands to warm them as he peered into the fog beneath the bridge, trying to make out the water. If nothing else, he could tell the river was choppy, from the slapping sound of the water against the pylon piers.

“I hate bridges,” Johnny commented around a cigarette.

“So what? We won’t be here long.” Duke shoved the wooden end of a match stick into his mouth and gestured with his head to the black sedan. “Get the Chinee.”

The rear door on the driver’s side swung open as Johnny was approaching. Maxie, also sporting trench-coat and trilby, stepped out and hurried around to the opposite side of the car, throwing open the rear door.

“Out you go, Dr. Tam,” Maxie said, poking his head in. Johnny leaned in alongside of him to lend a hand.

“I didn’t see anything,” Tam yelled in a frightened, thinly accented voice. “I swear, I didn’t see anything.”

“Pipe down, mug,” Maxie told him. “This won’t hurt . . . much.”

Tam’s efforts to resist proved futile. The two mobbies dragged him headfirst from the rear seat and hauled him to his feet. Late thirties, Tam was clean-shaven and wearing a simple glen plaid single-breasted suit and bow tie. He wasn’t a large man, but he made for an unwieldy package that night.

“Is it dry?” Duke shouted from the railing.

Maxie produced a stiletto from the pocket of his trenchcoat, leaned down, and poked at the rectangular block of concrete that encased Tam’s feet to the ankles. “Perfect, Duke,” he called back.

“Then bring him over . . . and try not to ruin his new shoes.”

The two partners in crime grabbed the Asian under the arms and dragged him to the railing.

“I’ll never tell anyone,” Tam said in a panic. “I swear.”