Night of the Heroes

by Adrian Cole

  Mears nodded. “But, we must do something to ensure that the room survives. It looks to be in perfect condition. The wood is fine, although I’ve no idea what’s behind it. We need to undo it, panel by panel, brick by brick. Label it all, then reconstruct it. And that ceiling! It can be done you know. A room like this can be moved so that you wouldn’t know it.”

  “Well, I’d know it, Mr. Mears. And if there are ghosts, they’d know it, too. But I appreciate your point. It’s a compromise and no doubt the best that can be managed.”

  Mears suddenly frowned. “God, but it will add a fair bit to the budget. Never mind, there are grants we can bid for. European money, too.”

  The archivist smiled to himself and as the young man began ticking off a catalogue of potential plans, he went to a small ante-room where he lit the gas on an old cooker and boiled water for the tea. He took this from a quantity of neatly stacked packages in a cupboard, which he kept carefully locked. A few minutes later he rejoined Mears, setting a silver tray down on the table and pouring out two small cups. “I think you’ll find this to your taste. Mr. Mears.”

  Mears looked in vain for milk, but decided to humour the old man.

  The archivist handed the ornate cup and saucer over carefully. Mears lifted the china cup, which he guessed to be quite valuable, and sipped. He was pleasantly surprised.

  “Now, Mr. Mears, is that not the finest cup of tea you’ve ever had?”

  Mears smiled, nodding. “Absolutely.”

  “Green tea. Precisely what our friends would have been drinking at this hour. Well then, to business. I am in your hands, I believe.”

  “Umm. Yes, I have the dubious pleasure of seeing to all the arrangements. As you know, the new building is almost complete. Have you seen it, by the way?”

  “I confess not. But I can imagine what it must be like.”

  “It’s not beautiful, but it is practical. At least the architects took certain things into consideration. The books will be properly protected from light, damp and so on. Security is excellent. There’s all the technology anyone could want for copying, storing and retrieving and so on. And there will be room. But somehow, this room has to be included. Has no one seen it? I should have been told —”

  “No, Mr. Mears. Various officials have visited us, as you know. But I never let them see this room.”

  “But, why ever not?”

  “Why? Because none of them would have cared.”

  “I don’t know about that —”

  “Oh, yes they seemed reasonable enough people. But not one of them showed any inkling of interest in the collection. Had I shown them manuscripts by Defors, sketches by Haskell Junior — in fact, I think I have some original finished art by him —”

  “Wait a minute!” Mears gasped. “You have art by Haskell? What for?”

  The archivist smiled, setting down his tea. “Darkwing, of course. Nothing but the best, Mr. Mears. And the Defors manuscript is one of the first drafts for The Borgia Skull. You know the novel?”

  “Yes. But — Darkwing. It must be worth —” He stopped himself with a low chuckle. “I keep saying that. But it’s just that Darkwing was a favourite of mine.”

  “Well, I must show you the Haskell art before you go. No more than a few panels, but interesting nevertheless. Though, as I said, probably not to the officials. Comic book art! No, I fear that their tastes were very conservative. They were far more concerned with the practicalities of moving the collection to its new home. If the truth be known, I suspect, if they understood what we have here, they would order a great deal of it to be sold off so they could utilise the profits to fund the move.”

  Mears wanted to argue, but in his mind’s eye he could envisage a boardroom scenario precisely as the archivist had hinted at. “They don’t have to know,” he murmured. “It’s down to me. I’m to arrange for everything to be packed and moved. Except for this room. But it’s the one thing they would want preserved above all others. Are you sure no one knows about it? Historically it must be recorded, celebrated. There are people on the Libraries Board who would know about it, respect it. I’m by no means the only one who would rave about it —”

  “Believe me, Mr. Mears, its existence has been, shall we say, screened, for a long time. The last time anyone from outside saw it, was in 1938. As far as the records show, it was destroyed during the Blitz. You can easily check it up.”

  “But, why? I don’t understand.”

  “You will, Mr. Mears.”

  “I’ll have to go back to my superiors and report what I’ve seen. They’ll have to be told. We’ll need to act quickly to save it.”

  “All in good time —”

  “I know that you don’t care much for time, but —”

  But the archivist simply poured more of the excellent tea and smiled. “So, you are a fan of Darkwing. What do you know about him?”

  “The series ran from October, 1974 as a monthly until January 1976. Art by Vaughan Haskell Junior, script by Garrett Zeite. I was eight years old when it came out. Sixteen glorious issues. I used to lie awake half the night when it got towards the date of the next release. Then, out of the blue, it ceased publication. No one was ever told why. Some said Zeite had died. Others that it was a dispute over pay or syndication rights. It was one of the mysteries of the comic book world. There’ve been plans to re-launch it several times. It sold well enough.”

  “A tragic loss.”

  “Yes, I suppose it was. Even now it seems a shame, especially when you look at some of the poor imitations. I always thought that Darkwing would have rivaled Batman and Superman if he’d not been cut.”

  “I think you’re absolutely right. Can I show you something?”

  Mears sipped more tea. In spite of the odd situation, he felt extremely comfortable, about as relaxed as he’d been for months. Here in this room, secreted away from the world and the thunderous storm outside, it was easy to see why the archivist had come to ignore the passage of time. He could simply open one of the infinite books or magazines and shift into a separate time altogether, a time that was frozen.

  The old man left him for a moment, returning several minutes later from the library with a number of items. He sat down and slid one slowly across the table. Mears picked it up gingerly, eyes widening.

  “The last issue. I still have mine, though not as well preserved as this.” The cover of Darkwing 16 showed a city skyline, almost blotted out by the sweeping curve of a wing, the masked face of the night warrior partially hidden in shadow. Haskell’s art gave the picture an almost 3-D effect, and for a moment it was as though the dramatic figure would swoop out into the room.

  “How about these?” said the archivist. He slid a paperback across the table. It, too, had a vivid cover, that of a muscle-bound barbarian warrior, clad only in a loin clothe, swinging an axe to deadly effect, the ground about him heaped high with slain enemies, ubiquitous reptile men.

  “I’ve never read this, though I have read most of the original Conan yarns that this is a pastiche of. Is the cover a Frazetta? Oh, no, it’s a clone. But it’s a good one.”

  “And this?”

  Mears took the graphic novel. “Cyberwolf: the Blooding. I think this was a one-off.”

  “It was. As was this.” The archivist handed Mears a battered old pulp magazine. The cover depicted what appeared to be a mound of slime, vaguely human shaped, carrying a partially clothed and mercifully unconscious girl through a mangrove swamp. Vivid red letters proclaimed “Birth of the Mire-Beast.”

  Mears nodded enthusiastically. “Ah, this is the original. Book of Super Shocks. Only ran for a few issues. I read the reprint in an anthology. Another one-off, wasn’t it? I never found a second story.”

  “Correct.” The archivist pushed the last item to him, a hardback book, the dust jacket long since lost, the blue cover fading. Embossed faintly on the spine was the title, Complete Adventures of Palgrave Reverence. Mears opened it, studying the frontispiece, a superb black and white p
ainting in the style of Sidney Paget, who had done much of the illustrations for Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.

  “Five heroes,” said the archivist. “All cut short in their prime. All potentially destined to be major successes. More so than many of the other heroes who have had similarly curtailed careers. Strange, isn’t it?”

  Mears looked at him. He was in deadly earnest, as though what he had said was of enormous importance. Perhaps he was a little mad, after all. Mears knew more than a few fanatics who lived hardly more than a step away from the worlds of their heroes. He would not have thought of himself as a fanatic: indeed, he had not picked up a comic or a pulp magazine for years, even if he could never bring himself to part with the boxed materials in the attic of his flat.

  “Why don’t you amuse yourself for a while?” said the old man, rising. “I’ll wash up and then I’ve got to tidy a few papers. Then we can finalise whatever programme you have in mind for the transfer. I’m in no hurry. I’ve got all night.”

  Won’t do any harm, Mears thought. “Yes, okay,” he said, already leafing through the first pages of the last Darkwing episode. Funny, he thought, how much of the detail I’ve forgotten. I never thought I would, and yet —

  CHAPTER TWO

  Darkwing

  Midnight. Stark City.

  A shadow among shadows, lost in the flicker of an eye, the manta-like shape swooped down through the upper reaches of the city canyons, swallowed by the night that gathered about the soaring Paragon Building. From the hidden recesses of its upper darkness, the figure studied the broken terrain of the rooftop and of those lower ones that surrounded it, thrust up defiantly from the metropolis. Neon glare washed them all, pulsing, imbuing the monstrous towers with bizarre life. Among their walls and buttresses, the pursued shielded themselves.

  Darkwing moved in a blur across the Paragon’s roofscape, blending perfectly with the night, moulded from it, elusive as thought. Crouched down behind the low wall of the parapet, he studied the roof space opposite. The mask he wore was fitted with oval lenses, through which he could see around him as clearly as if it were noon. Nothing, not even the minutest movement, escaped his eager watch.

  There were three of them. Black-clad assassins. They had split up, sectioning off the roof area, widening the target they made, squeezing themselves into what they took to be safe crannies, covering each other.

  Darkwing listened, cocking an ear like a jungle predator. There would be a helicopter, for sure. But above the muted roar of the city far below, he could hear only the distant rumble of thunder, like a tide turning, rolling forward to Stark City this night. Storm coming, he sensed, smelling it on the wind, its forerunner. Under the tight mask he grinned. Let it break soon. It would serve him, not his prey.

  Patient as stone, he waited. Across the chasm between him and their retreat, the men in hiding had become like gargoyles, motionless, only the fleeting gleam of neon on a gun barrel hinting at their presence. With his own weapon, Darkwing could have picked any one of them off, but the others would have scuttled for cover below and he might lose them. When the helicopter arrived, he would take them all.

  Thunder cracked closer, moving in as if to cloak the drama. Clouds boiled, lowering threateningly as if they would smother the upper reaches of the city. Darkwing ignored them. They would not hamper him. A flicker of lightning lit up the roofs, mocking the pallid neon glow, applauded by another blast of thunder.

  As the avenger waited, his mind ran back over the events of the last hour. Three blocks away, in another soaring building, Randolph Harling, politician and self-styled anti-narcotics champion, had been addressing a prestigious assembly of city dignitaries, outlining his bold plan for the gutting of certain ghetto areas, the sweeping away of numerous dens of vice. Part of a rolling programme of redevelopment and clean-up. Harling was loud and brash, but there was no doubt that he had spearheaded a movement that got results. Stark City was at war and Randolph Harling’s crusade had the edge. Whole chunks of the city had been torn down, razed and pegged out for new housing, park area and business construction.

  The drug barons had been stung to respond. Not too many months ago, Stark City had been a warren where the hoods squabbled like kids over every block of their personal territory. Sonny the Knife, Kane, Raoul Fortunesco: private armies, wars of attrition. But their inability to work with each other was the strongest weapon the Feds had. Until Randolph Harding had started his clean-up with a vengeance.

  Someone bigger was pulling the strings now. There had been a number of bloody shoot-outs and it turned out that hit men from all three gangs were teaming up. The gangs knew it was the only way to survive. Fortunesco was dragged in as the likeliest one to squeal and they left him to think things over in a dingy cell three floors underground. He admitted that there was a new boss, running the whole show, but he didn’t have a name. They would have gotten more out of him, but whoever it was, he got to Fortunesco first. Word was, it was snakebite. But when the venom was analysed, no one could identify it. They gave it to Darkwing’s masters, G Section. If anyone could crack it, they could. Nix. The closest they got was that it came from the Orient. No surprises there.

  Harling had launched into his speech. Darkwing had been high up on a balcony, listening to the impassioned words, the reasoned arguments. He’d met the politician in more private circumstances and had decided the man was more credible than most of his kind. Just as power-hungry, but with a genuine hatred of the narcotics mobs. He had good reason: he had lost his eldest son to heroin, and his wife had never recovered from the shock, shut off from the world in a private home.

  So now Harling had enemies, big time. And the new overlord had decided that it was time to take him out. He’d sent his assassins, accomplished as Ninjas, to finish the job. In the press of bodies that filled the huge Museum of Art and Culture, chosen by Harling as a symbol of what he represented, the killers would have an ideal opportunity to nail him. The F.B.I .had done their best to try to persuade Harling that there were other, more secure venues. But the politician was adamant. He publicly proclaimed he would not be cowed by the scum he opposed.

  The high balconies under the massive dome of the Museum were crawling with Fed marksmen. There were none more competent at their jobs and they were more than used to protecting their charges. But Darkwing had been assigned to the job as an extra precaution. And he’d been the one to uncover the enemy action.

  Silent and invisible, he had patrolled the entire upper area, where he was certain any assassination attempt would come from. And he’d been right. The assassins were like ghosts, ethereal as mist. Darkwing sensed rather than saw them. As a cat senses its prey, or a shark smells its victim from a distance, he knew they were here. He became one with the walls, the pillars, the stuff of shadows, no more than a breeze.

  And he found them. One was set for the kill, the others his cover, shielding his retreat, for this was no suicide mission. These assassins were the best, not cannon fodder, ruled by pride as much as anything. The hit man was wedged into an alcove behind a column that eventually curved up to the dome, along with a hundred others. No more than a few yards away, a skylight in the lower dome would be the exit. Darkwing had seen a silhouette up there, though normal eyes would not have. A third killer had already begun the work, silently felling an F.B.I. marksman and donning his gear.

  Darkwing singled him out, recognising him by the brief but regular half-glances he sent towards the hidden gunman. He was there to ensure that no one interfered with the hit man. Once the shot was taken, the two of them would be under the skylight, hauled up in seconds on an invisible nylon wire by the third. There were probably more of them on the roof.

  It was a precision exercise, which Darkwing appreciated. It called for similar precision if it were to be thwarted. He wanted one of them alive. Not that they’d talk, but it had to be tried. The priority, though, was to foil the kill.

  He could hear the crowd below, the pre-amble to Harling’s speech, sharp voices fro
m the speakers that had been rigged up around the huge hall. The tub-thumping and chest-beating began in earnest, the build-up to the arrival on stage, like the precursor to a big fight. Darkwing watched the assassin behind the pillar, saw the weapon lift. Through its telescopic sights the killer would have a perfect view of his target, the laser eye fixed at the last on Harling’s skull. One shot. A kill. Split-second timing.

  Darkwing slid from under his wing a weapon of his own. It might have been part of his arm, its gunmetal absorbed into his shadow. When the moment drew near, he coordinated his movements with those of the killer, raising his gun as the killer settled himself. Darkwing’s target was the barrel of the assassin’s gun. Through his own sights he lined it up, fifty feet away. No room for error.

  This was it. Harling had started his spiel. Something in the assassin’s tension transmitted itself to Darkwing. Any second now, the killer would fire.

  Darkwing fired first. Almost instantaneously the assassin’s gun barrel seemed to be snatched to one side, its own bullet zipping harmlessly up into the dome. It had been played out in near-silence. But now the assassin slung his weapon over his shoulder and darted from cover, intent on getting to safety. No second chance, he knew that.

  Something nicked stone from the pillar beside his shoulder as Darkwing pulled back into the deeper shadows behind it. The second intruder had picked out the flash of Darkwing’s shot, himself returning fire. Then he, too, had joined his companion. In seconds they were being hauled up to the skylight, one gun trained on the area below. Darkwing heard the cautious arrival of a number of F.B.I. men, but they were forced to take cover as the second assassin on the wire fired off a muted salvo of rounds.

  Darkwing had already identified another skylight, away from the immediate killing area and before the guards knew it, he had left them and made his silent way to it. He slipped the catches on the window and was through it, one with the night beyond. He dropped belly-down on the roof, waiting.