“The President believes in free trade,” Nelson said. “Within limits, of course.” He ignored the No Smoking sign and lit a cigarette. The faint yellow cast of the tan cigarette contrasted subtly with the faded rose tan of his lips.
“Well, never mind,” Kowalski said. “It’s none of our business what anyone does about drugs. We’re here to do something about this contract. I must say, Nelson, I’ve had my doubts about a few of the details.”
“Set your mind at rest,” Nelson said. “This is one of the best and most constructive contracts the U.S. government has ever entered into with a company from the private sector. What makes it even nicer is that several of our foreign allies will also profit from the contract and give this move a lot of good publicity.”
A copy of the contract was taken out and passed around. The Joint Chiefs peered at it and passed it around. “Well, gee,” Kowalski said. “I’m still unsure.”
“Let me reassure you,” Nelson said. “The President himself wants this bill to be signed into law.”
“Then why doesn’t he tell us so?” Kowalski asked. “Gentlemen, that is just what he is going to do. The President is coming here to witness your signatures and congratulate you on doing your patriotic duty.”
“The President? Coming here?” said Chuck Rohort. “You got it, Chuck,” Fenton said.
“Then let me waste no further time,” Nelson said. “Gentlemen, the President!”
He nodded to the yeoman. The yeoman gulped and opened the door. In walked Marshall Seldon, the tall, stooped, gray-haired man with the lopsided grin known in every home around America.
The Joint Chiefs rose so as to crowd around the President. Nelson made them stay back.
The President held up a hand. Soon they heard his familiar tweedy tenor.
“Gentlemen, I have many important matters to attend to. Please sign the treaty, and let us get on with the business of confounding our enemies and comforting our friends.”
The Joint Chiefs crowded around, each pushing to be first. They were interrupted by a clear baritone voice as the door opened again, this time without any assistance from the yeoman.
“Before you sign that piece of paper, gentlemen, I’d like a word with you.”
They all fell silent. Even important men like generals and admirals were likely to give Batman a chance to speak.
Nelson was an exception to that rule, by virtue of his unique position. It was his duty not to be seduced by other men’s words. He knew that Batman did not belong there. He pretended to listen, but all the time his right hand was snaking toward his belt, where a two-shot derringer, disguised as a Hickok belt buckle, awaited his touch.
Batman had had no insurmountable difficulties scaling the Gaudi at first. He hadn’t been able to use the means that had gotten him over the ARDC fence. In that instance he had employed a whiz-bang, a simple enough contraption designed to make brilliant flashes of light and strange, unsettling noises, and to do so long enough to allow an attack to be launched from another quarter. The attacker had been Batman himself, climbing up and over the fence, protected from the electrical current by his insulated gloves and boots. For a moment he had blotted out the stars as he came over the fence and down the other side. During that brief time, Billy-Joe and Steve were blinking into the flash of the whiz-bang, blinded and deafened for critical moments necessary for Batman to land safely and secretly on the other side.
No such diversion could be used here. No distraction could be counted on to rivet the attention for the long minutes that would be needed to scale the Gaudi, and nothing in Batman’s bag of tricks could propel him to the fortieth floor.
Luckily, there was a brilliant gibbous moon that night. It bathed one face of the building in its cold white light, but left the other faces in darkness. Using spring-driven crampons of his own devising that permitted him to get footholds on granite, the Masked Man swarmed up the dark side of the building. When he reached the fifth floor, where there was a row of gargoyles, an expedient presented itself. The next level of gargoyles was on the tenth floor, and each five floors after that. The Batarang presented a feasible opportunity, tied to a light line on the end of a coiled line. Batman was an expert at throwing the curiously shaped Batarang, similar to a boomerang but infinitely more useful in terms of angles that it could be projected along.
Batman’s first cast was a few feet high. He retrieved the Batarang and threw again, cautioning himself not to overdo it—precision was called for, not brute strength.
This time the Batarang flew true and coiled around the neck of a stone devil.
To climb forty stories up a rope is, in its quiet way, a greater feat than many others the world deems more spectacular. Luckily, Batman had along a Bat-Hoist to assist him on vertical assents by rope. The little device, powered by a miniature atomic motor, and operating through a cunning set of gears, was able to pull a man’s weight up a rope at a steady four miles an hour.
When Batman gained the fortieth floor, he used a handheld punch to take out the exterior window fasteners and let himself in. He took care not the drop the window, and refastened the fasteners again from the inside, reversing the hand-held punch and tapping the rivets in with great delicacy. After that, it was easy enough to skulk down the hall and find the main conference room where the Joint Chiefs were meeting.
“What is the meaning of this?” Admiral Fenton said. “I’ve heard of you, of course, Batman. It is said that you serve some good causes. But if you think your reputation is going to intimidate me, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“I had no such thought,” Batman said. “I merely wanted to present a few facts about the ARDC weapons systems with which you are proposing to arm our forces.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” Fenton said, “trying to teach us our business. We’ve checked out those weapons to the hundredth decimal point. They’re the best I’ve ever seen.”
“Perhaps,” Batman said. “But have you also checked out their computer-supported operating systems?”
“It’s a new system,” General Rohort said. “Supposed to be the best the mind of man has come up with.”
“I’d advise that you look again,” Batman said. “I have some documents I think you’ll find interesting.”
“What are you getting at, Batman?” Fenton said. “You don’t expect to stop us, do you?”
The Masked Man did not answer.
“This place is filled with our men,” Fenton went on. “You can’t hope to delay us from signing for long. And to think you’d try something like this with the President here.”
President Marshall Seldon had been standing at the far end of the room throughout this exchange. Now, smiling slightly, he said, “Let him show us his documents. This will be amusing.”
Batman pulled his cloak close to him, and, from a pocket deep in its fold, he extracted a wad of computer printouts. They showed complex circuitry and were filled with tiny numbers and Greek letters.
“Gentlemen,” Batman said, “please take a look at these.”
Kowalski was the first to reach for one. “What are these?”
“Schematics for the main computer circuitry for the ARDC weapons.”
Kowalski looked through them, his curly blond hair tumbling boyishly over his forehead. “Yes . . . yes, it all looks all right so far . . . Yes, that’s a standard Sliger circuit—But what’s this, it’s tied into a resonator with a provision for switchable mirror reflectivity—Hell, I see what you mean!”
“What is it?” the other chiefs asked, not being as adept at computer schematics as was the tall, young Air Force general.
Kowalski looked up and his face was grim. “You tell them, Batman.”
Batman said, “I believe you’ve all heard of computer viruses.”
“Of course,” Fenton said. “They are those specially designed programs that some madmen or malcontents devise to feed into computers and so render them inoperative, sometimes for long periods of time, until a killer program
can be devised and introduced to get rid of them again. Sometimes the computer virus program is so deeply ingrained that even the metals of the affected computers must be changed due to imprinting error. But nobody is going to introduce any viruses into these programs, Batman. This is a whole new generation of program and it is virus-resistant except to an as yet undevised new generation of computer viruses.”
“That is true,” Batman said. “But you miss the point.”
“Which is?”
“The software for the ARDC programs is designed to generate its own virus which will first pervert its functioning, then destroy it.”
“Create its own viruses?” General Rohort said. “Like tadpoles hatching out of mud?”
Kowalski nodded grimly. “It’s there in the specs, general. We just overlooked it—as we were intended to do.” Rohort turned to Kowalski. “You understand these matters, Flying Phil. But I can hardly believe it. Can what the masked man is saying be true?”
“It’s true, all right.” Kowalski said, a note of iron underlying the lightness of his voice. “That’s exactly what it is.”
“Gentlemen!” It was the voice of President Seldon, and it brought every man in the room to attention—and the yeoman, too.
“Yes, Mr. President?” said Admiral Fenton.
“First of all, I want to thank Batman,” the President said, “for having brought this matter to our attention. As a matter of fact we have already corrected the design flaw, Batman, and now there is nothing standing in the way of the Joint Chiefs signing it.”
“That document must not be signed,” Batman said. “And these men must no longer take their orders from you.”
“Why do you say that?” the President asked. “Stop this senseless charade now, Batman, and I think we can arrange a medal for you. How would you like an official position in my cabinet? Presidential Advisor on Superheroes. How does that sound to you?”
“It’s fine, Mr. President,” Batman said. “Except for one thing.” He stepped forward suddenly, walking directly toward the President. Even Nelson of the CIA was caught off guard for a moment. He drew his sidearm quickly, not the beltbuckle derringer but a heavy Browning automatic that he reserved for dire emergencies. But by then Batman had stepped up to the President . . .
And then, in another step, he had walked through the President.
And the President continued smiling.
The Joint Chiefs stared at Batman, slack-jawed. Nelson stood with the gun at his side, momentarily frozen.
“The trouble is,” Batman said, “I don’t see how you can do anything, Mr. President. Because you’re not the President at all.”
“What in God’s name is it?” Fenton asked, long-suppressed superstition bringing his voice to a reedy tenor. “A ghost?”
“Not exactly,” Batman said. “It’s a hologram.”
Fenton was trying to understand. “How did you know?”
“Because the same people who produce this,” Batman said, jerking a gloved thumb at the still smiling hologram of President Selden, “have also been throwing holograms at other people.”
“Who are these people?” Kowalski asked.
“I think,” Batman said, “that Deputy Director James Nelson here has the answer to that one.”
Nelson looked at him with pure hate.
The image of the President winked out abruptly.
Deputy Director Nelson had come into prominence about six months before, when James Tolliver, respected head of the CIA, had fallen ill to an as yet unidentified virus that even the best specialists had been unable to cure. The disease had taken a great toll on Tolliver’s strength and vitality. Bedridden, kept alive on support systems, Tolliver had been forced to turn over the day-to-day running of the agency to his assistant, Nelson.
Nelson was known as an extremely capable man with a grandiose personality. He had a reputation for ruthlessness, and more recently, and almost paranoid self-assurance. He had been known to take the law into his own hands when he thought he knew what to do better than his superiors. This, Tolliver would not tolerate.
There had been rumors that Tolliver had been planning to fire Nelson, or force him into early retirement. But now Tolliver was able to do nothing but lie in an oxygen tent and fight for his life.
Some in Washington circles considered Nelson more than a little dangerous, and more than a little crazy.
Like many another crazy and dangerous man, he had gathered a small circle of CIA operatives around him, whom he had seduced to his view. They were fanatical in their devotion to him. They would follow his every order.
These were the men who came into the meeting room now, moving slowly and alertly, hands near their concealed weapons.
“That contract is going to be signed,” Nelson said. “You must be mad,” Admiral Fenton said. “You can’t expect us to sign it after all this.”
“I can, and you shall. But you needn’t bother doing it in person, gentlemen, I have expert forgers who can do a better job on your signatures than you can do yourselves.”
“What are you going to do with us?” Rohort asked. “You will be given heroes’ burials,” Nelson said. “We have already established that Batman has been having hallucinations. His misadventures with Ilona and others in the New Era Hotel are on film. The public will believe it when we tell them that he massacred all of you before we could get here and kill him. We will release our news shortly before Super Bowl time, when no one will pay it any attention anyhow.”
“And what about me?” Batman asked.
Nelson gave a short, unhappy laugh. “I tried my best to keep you out of this, Batman. I decided to work on you. With the aid of my organization I discovered your true identity. You are Charlie Morrison!”
The tall hooded figure stirred slightly. A smile appeared on the masked man’s grim lips.
“Is that why you showed those holograms to Charlie Morrison in the New Era Hotel?” Batman asked.
“I was trying to convince you to stay out of this.”
“Your sense of psychology,” Batman said, “is as flawed as your sense of strategy. How could Batman resist a challenge like that? You set up your own defeat, Nelson.”
“But Nelson, why are you doing this?” General Kowalski asked. “Why do you want us to sign the contract? The ARDC weapons system is obviously flawed. And it is vulnerable to infiltration by enemy computers. As soon as our enemies get wind of this, they can attack our weapons system with impunity. When we try to fight back, our own weapons will be programmed to act against us.”
“That’s what Tolliver said when I showed him the plan,” Nelson said. “He couldn’t see that its weakness was only the outer layer of a deeper scheme. Yes, our enemies will certainly learn about the deficiencies in our plans and try to make a profit from our weakness. But we also have another program, this one really secret, which turns our enemy’s apparent gain into our advantage. It’s a built-in computer-killing program that is initiated when they try to crack our codes. When our enemies try to stab us in the back by reprogramming our weapons systems, they’ll find they’ve introduced the seeds of destruction into their own systems.”
“Interesting,” Batman said. “Ilona was a plant, I suppose?”
“Of course,” Nelson said. “We faked her death.”
The Joint Chiefs looked at each other in astonishment. Finally, Fenton said, “Nelson, this whole thing’s crazy! Your plan is crazy! What if our enemies also discover the scavenger program?”
“We have other secrets!” Nelson cried. His eyes were quite mad. “You don’t know how many secrets we have! Only my followers and I are aware of the power we can wield and the influence we can have upon events!” Batman said, “What I do know is, you and your little clique stand to make a lot of money out of this contract. You are the secret shareholder behind the buyout of ARDC. Isn’t that so?”
Nelson shrugged. “It doesn’t matter that you know that now. There’s nothing you can do about it. This contract is going through.�
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“Oh, I don’t think so,” Batman said.
James Nelson looked at the hooded figure and laughed. “Are you going to stop us? According to the standard biographical material, you are vulnerable to human weapons, unlike your hardshelled friend Superman.”
“I puncture as easily as other men,” Batman said. “But first you have to hit me.”
Nelson raised his gun. Batman opened his hand. A flock of tiny motes flew out of the capsule at the end of his little finger which he had managed to puncture while Nelson was ranting. The motes flew toward the light sources. The lights flashed crazily, dimmed, and went black.
“Chinese light-suckers!” Nelson exclaimed. “You are clever, Batman. But it will do you no good. Shoot, men!” The CIA men swung into action. Shots crashed through the room, ricocheting off filing cabinets, screaming off the hardened plastic walls like a swarm of enraged hornets. But Batman was already moving, an inky shadow in the darkened room. The Joint Chiefs, too, had dived under tables and were answering the CIA fire with their own sidearms.
The outcome was never really in doubt, but perhaps it was just as well that James Gordon at the head of platoon of New Gotham’s finest burst through the door just then. The hard-bitten boys in blue made short work of the seer-suckered government operatives.
“Gordon!” Batman said. “What are you doing here?”
“After you called me, I figured you might need a little backup,” Gordon said. “So I brought a platoon of my Gotham City boys for a tour of Washington.”
“Don’t kill Nelson!” Batman said.
“The rat deserves it,” Gordon said, but held his fire. “I know he does,” Batman said. “But he has to take us to wherever he’s hidden the President.”
Nelson, in handcuffs, led them to a small storage room in the basement. There, haggard and unshaven, they found President Marshall Seldon.
“Batman,” Seldon said. “I might have guessed it’d be you.”
“I thought I had taken care of you, Batman,” Nelson said. “I seem to have been mistaken.” The tan man bit down hard and grimaced, then slumped to the floor. The acrid odor of bitter almonds filled the room.
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