by P. J. Lozito
More gunshots still echoed around the cellar. Bowstrings were plucked and there was a grunt and a sickening thud. As Lee’s vision cleared, U.N.D.E.R. agents burst into the room. They knew to ignore Lee and proceeded to open fire with automatic weapons on bands of hapless resistance, the archers and knife wielders.
Coming into focus for Lee was a figure in a black overcoat pierced by arrows. It was the Silver Manticore. But Lee could see that the man in the mask yet lived. He scooped him up, very carefully, and carried him outside half a block to the Liberty Cab a Brent Allred, Jr. waited in.
“Jesus,” yelled young Allred. Even the two tours of duty in Viet Nam with the Marines had not prepared him for this. He reached for the first aid kit automatically. But Lee’s voice cut through the dense confusion.
“You need not hurry, Brent. The Silver Manticore breathed his last as I reached this car.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE NEW SILVER MANTICORE
“I can’t believe we lost Bako and Harris both in the same night,” sobbed a red-eyed Brent Allred, Jr. “There’s no Silver Manticore. Hanoi Tsin has won. It’s too much.”
He had rushed Lee Ying Shang and the body of Harris Vincey to the Norpen Lumber Co. in his Liberty Cab, where he now sat. The whole crew had been alerted. Everyone there now knew of the plight of Lee Ying Shang. He sat outside in a Liberty Cab, contemplating his uncertain future.
They must now make arrangements for the next Silver Manticore to be ready when needed. The elder Brent Allred nervously puffed a cigarette. For once he was not just smoking for show. Daniel Colt, hair was gone almost all gray, sat across from him.
Chuck, his own hair thinning, was on hand. Longjohns and Jericho were notified but told not to come. Their old wounds, suffered in the relentless fight against crime, kept them out of action. But come they did. Levvy couldn’t be located. Trixie Allred, Nola Charalambides and Lenore’s mother, Louise Scott, had insisted on coming, as well.
Colin Furioli sat in the back, unlit cigar resting in his mouth. A trench coat covered the black leather “trouble” suit. British U.N.D.E.R. operative Emma Knight had talked him into having in expectation of action.
“Harris Vincey had no living relatives,” stated Chuck Charalambides in the practiced tones of a lawyer. “Precious little was in his will. The question is: what do we do with his body?”
“Your son will say he was in U.N.D.E.R., killed in the line of duty,” said the elder Brent. “And that he witnessed it. No one will be able to dispute it. Furioli will go along with that.”
The U.N.D.E.R. leader silently nodded. His temples were now touched with white. For once, he had no flip comment. He had seen enough death in his long life.
“I think it’s a good solution. We recovered the mask, ring and side arms. An ambulance is on its way here for him,” added Allred, Sr.
“So, what do we do now?” asked Colt.
“We’re the Templars, Danny. We carry on the holy work,” replied Allred, Sr. “You know.”
“I know, I know, unite all races against evil: Jew and Gentile, Moslem, Hindu and Buddhist, black, white, red, yellow and brown. Man and woman,” panic rose in Colt’s voice: “but whom with?”
***
U.N.D.E.R. had found no trace of Hanoi Tsin at the Allen St. headquarters. They sealed off the streets in a quarter mile radius. Now, they were merely mopping up. Nick Charter would like to have been at the big powwow his father and the Silver Manticore people were having but this investigation took precedence. Going through the devil doctor’s effects couldn’t be left to just anyone.
One thing was certain: Hanoi Tsin would no longer be a threat. His valuable equipment for preparing the Elixir Vitae and arum potible had been smashed in this raid. The idea of drinking liquid gold was certainly ghastly, Charter thought with a shudder. Surely it would do to your insides what it did to that dead gold girl he had found in Miami back in ’59, wouldn’t it? Jill Masterson, he later learned, was her name.
Hanoi Tsin had been coming into the home stretch, needing another dosage in the upcoming years. That wouldn’t happen now. He simply wouldn’t have the time to start assembling ingredients and equipment anew. One day soon they would find a very old, very tall, green-eyed Chinese with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, dressed in yellow and he would be very dead.
Charter was nudged from his thoughts when his communicator urgently beeped. An observer for U.N.D.E.R. spotted what looked like a wooden Rosenwach water tank ignite and shoot skyward from the roof of one of the buildings being raided. Nervously, Natasha Kuryakin had thumbed her radio, calling Charter inside.
“What’s it doing?” he demanded incredulously.
“An impressive swan dive into Hudson River, N-2,” reported Agent Kuryakin with a slight Russian accent. “Wait, has sprouted parachute, dahlink.”
Charter was sure he knew who was in that disguised rocket.
“Get every tub you can into the water after that thing. It’s Hanoi Tsin’s emergency escape pod.”
But Hanoi Tsin was not aboard the rocket. Rather, he was calmly heading down a passage way of his headquarters. True, he had launched the rocket; it was supposed to draw the attention of anyone invading his home. It had succeeded admirably at that function. He was, instead, preparing to head across the East River, to a temporary residence among the warehouses of Williamsburg.
In a bunker, known only to him, the doctor had changed to American garb. A wig covered his shaven head. It looked false to him, so he added a hat. He quickly applied a mustache. Foster Grants hid distinctive green eyes. White gloves covered lacquered nails.
Stairs brought him to the street. Emerging from a door marked “Authorized personnel only,” Hanoi Tsin, now unrecognizable as one of the world’s most wanted men, scanned the street for an appropriate car.
Expert thieves in Hanoi Tsin’s employ had explained the fine points of breaking into and “hotwiring” cars. Being prepared and careful planning had saved him many times in the past. Never did Hanoi Tsin imagine, in his Wyliest, opium-fueled dreams that his son, flesh of his flesh, would be the one to betray him, however.
Hanoi Tsin rehearsed the Pidgin English he would speak in if he was stopped. Pidgin, that reminded him of his loyal Fi-San operator Sing. Hanoi Tsin recalled how, in 1929, he had dispatched Sing to be part of an expedition near Borneo as a Pidgin English-speaking cook. He was to observe and report back the findings of an American geneticist named Professor Maxon.
Maxon had attempted to create life—human life. The experiments were a failure, but Sing had managed to secure Maxon’s notes. These had proven invaluable, the research providing Hanoi Tsin with the final piece of the puzzle to his long-sought search for creating life.
Further, Hanoi Tsin had succeeded where Maxon had failed. He had grown a human from a single cell, taken from his own body. The word hadn’t existed at the time of his birth, but today Lee Ying Shang would be called a “clone.” Unknown to Lee, his ultimate fate would have been to provide perfectly matched organs for his father. Even the elixir had its limits.
Calmly now, Hanoi Tsin headed for the “Amphicar,” kept secreted at the Tunnel Garage at the corner of Broome and Thompson Streets further uptown. This car, with concealed props and a sealed engine was waiting for him, parked in a twenty-four hour garage. Hanoi Tsin would merely switch cars and drive to the river and continue on into it.
The public had rejected such a vehicle as both a poor boat and a bad automobile. But it was the perfect means of escape for Hanoi Tsin. As a boat it was capable of running on the hydrogen in water itself, drawing breathable oxygen from the river. It worked on the pioneering principles of both Francisco Pacheco and Edward Estevel, coupled with the carburetor of Charles Pogue. These modifications were thanks to Dakkar’s expert tinkering.
Soon, the Nepturne would rendezvous with Hanoi Tsin at the city’s unused Mill Rock Island. He considered it a loss that the fringes of finger piers encircling the tip of Manhattan Island since th
e Civil War were no longer there. He could have made excellent use of them.
Fantomal would have to give up his fresh batch of the elixir, Hanoi Tsin reasoned calmly. So kind of U.N.D.E.R. agent McKay to tell us President Roosevelt’s untouched elixir was now in deep freeze, Hanoi Tsin smirked. He needed only to locate that, thaw it and give it to Fantomal as his regular dose. Hanoi Tsin hoped very much that frozen elixir would work on Fantomal, for that worthy would be needed in Lee Ying Shang’s murder. And if not, he would at least know frozen elixir was worthless.
***
Lenore Scott dutifully attempted to dispel the gloom by serving refreshments from the headquarters’ well-stocked kitchen.
“Take Preem with your tea, Uncle Brent?”
“Yes, Scottie, thank you. But you’ll have to get out of the habit of calling me that.”
“Oh, my goodness, you’re right. It’s ‘Mr. Allred’ from now on. Mr. Charalambides, can’t I get you something?”
“You got a Gablinger’s?”
“I saw one with a note: ‘Don’t drink-- Levvy’s,’ taped to it.”
“Bet every word is misspelled. Bring me that.”
“Father?”
“A No-Cal for me.”
Miss Scott turned to Furioli, “Colonel?”
“Thanks, hon. Gimme a Fresca,” Furioli finally set fire to the cigar with a lighter Agent Flintheart had given him. Eighty-two functions, he remembered. Eighty-three if you light a smoke with it.
That kid was too much. Furioli remembered how Flintheart had, during the war, performed an emergency appendectomy aboard the Seadragon, miles from anywhere. Derek woulda made a swell Silver Manticore. But he was no longer an active U.N.D.E.R. operator, finally realizing his dream of becoming a lay analyst with some very high level clients. Failing that, Furioli had another idea.
“O.K., folks, here’s the deal,” he began. “I’d like to recruit the new Silver Manticore to work for U.N.D.E.R. The people upstairs only care about results; they’re sure gonna like these. I think the arrangement will be mutually agreeable.”
“There’s only one candidate: my son,” concluded Brent Allred grimly.
“Dad, I don’t think I’m ready.”
“Why not? That’s why we had you driving Harris. On the job training. Circumstances have just pushed your time up. Learn best by doing.”
There was some discussion before the others all agreed it would be Brent Allred, Jr. under the Silver Manticore mask.
“Besides, you know the Templars rule: to be a knight you have to be a descendant of a knight on your father’s side,” smiled Scottie. “And that’s you.”
“Get those refreshments, Lenore,” admonished Colt. He hated when she showed off.
“Who’s the kid going to work with?” asked Chuck.
“It won’t be her, I assure you,” Colt answered.
“Lee Ying Shang,” declared Brent, Sr.
Colt, Jericho, Trixie, Nola, Lenore, Louise and Brent, Jr. all looked at their leader. Chuck looked Brent, Sr. right in the eye, “You’ve got this all figured out.”
“Lee’s one of us now. He hates Hanoi Tsin and he’s a living weapon. For God’s sake, how can we walk away from that? Besides, Lee has given his life to me in exchange for taking Bako’s.”
They seemed unconvinced.
“Look, the fact that’s he’s our enemy’s son is an advantage, not a drawback,” implored Brent Allred, Sr.
Finally, Colt brought up with what he had been holding back, “Why don’t we just make Lee Ying Shang the new Silver Manticore?”
“Maybe someday we will,” nodded the elder Allred.
Furioli cleared his throat; a sure sign he had something to say.
“We need a Silver Manticore now and sonny here will make the best one. Our hands are full with the Circle of Life. But, Hanoi Tsin is still out there somewhere. N-2 reports the whole place was busted up, including the works for makin’ more elixir. Hanoi Tsin may be lookin’ death in the puss, but I tend to think of him as a wounded tiger. ‘Cause in six years, alla his hunnert-twenty plus years a livin’ is gonna catch up with him, in a big way.”
He paused to let that take the desired effect.
“And, he’s gonna be gunnin’ for Lee in a desperate, last ditch effort for revenge. Mebbe the safest place for Lee is with us.”
The group studied the colonel.
“‘Sides we got some devices we need tested out and there’s no better way than having the new Silver Manticore team do it. They’ll be usin’ ‘em in what’s pretty close to field conditions U.N.D.E.R. agents operate in.
“Now, lookit, this crazy shack belongs to Doc Wylie’s son. Chuck has that in the will. Just so happens that Wylie’s son--Brent, junior-- is the perfect guy for the position. We’d like to turn the 79h floor of the E.S.B. into a branch U.N.D.E.R. office, headquarter ‘Prof’ Al Richards ‘n’ the U.N.D.E.R. Squad there.”
“Who?” Chuck called.
“Al Richards. He’s the biggest aviation bug since Bill Barnes,” commented Lenore, back with the refreshments. “And that gray at his temples makes him look so groovy, too.”
The group collectively swiveled towards her. Furioli nervously patted down his own lightened temples with hastily licked fingers.
“I don’t just serve drinks,” she pointed out. And, she thought, if I don’t get a chance to be the first female Silver Manticore I just might take the I.M.F. up on their kind offer of work. She was not aware that a great aunt of hers named Barbara Allred had already been the first female Silver Manticore in 1890.
“That’s my girl,” offered Colt proudly, his irritation gone. “A lot like her mother.”
“We can staff the parking garage there with our people,” continued Furioli. “When it comes time to ride as the Silver Manticore, he’ll just drive into the garage and get in the flea run. Zip over here for your new Pegasus.”
“A new Pegasus?” queried young Brent. “The Liberty Cabs are just fine.”
“We do have some resources you ain’t got access to,” Furioli said, blowing smoke. “For one thing, we’re gonna build an exact duplicate of your new Chrysler Crown Imperial. But with some unusual extras, just like the new yellow cab Pegasus you’re gonna have. Call it the Black Pegasus.” He paused to puff the cigar, “I seen the blueprints: it’s a beauty.
“You’ll need all the space in here for practicing with this turbine-powered tank. It’s got smoked, bulletproof glass that’ll withstand a .30-caliber carbine, steel-bolstered tires, with the whole works bulletproof, too. Oh, yeah, you’ll be able to slide the smoked glass up or down from the inside. ”
“Probably guzzles a lot of gas,” tried out Brent Allred, Jr.
“Naw, runs on batt’ries, just like them all-electric Comuta cars. Flick of a switch turns off the phony engine sounds ‘n you’ll be a four-wheeled ghost. But when you need speed, you switch to the 440 cubic-inch turbine engine. Emergency air tanks for when you use that sleep gas.”
“Impressive,” allowed young Brent.
“Yeah, well, Mercedes has been makin’ ‘em for almost forty years. That’s not all; she’s got a flyin’ camera in it. It’s really a little blimp. You’ll be able to control with this retooled old watch ‘n chain Levvy contributed to the cause.
“Now, Joe Casey has provided us with the radio frequency police cruisers use. With the scanner we have for you, you can listen in on their radio dispatches.
“Longjohns and a former U.N.D.E.R. agent named Flintheart completed the work on what we like to call the Manticore Sting. It’s based on the pioneering work of John Ernst Worrell Keely,” continued Furioli.
“I’ve heard of him,” said Allred, Sr. “Sound as a tool, eh?”
“Yeah, basically an Ericksen’s Ray,” nodded Furioli.
“A ‘gun’ of pure, concentrated sound just like the one Luciferro’s robot carried,” commented Allred, Sr. “Whew!”
“Bein’ in the over twenty-thousand hertz range, it’s actually ultrasound,” clarifi
ed Furioli. “Only you don’t have to have muscles of steel to heft it like the old jumbo model. But, yup, it’s a direct descendant of Luciferro’s gizmo.”
This is a hard crowd, thought Furioli. He wished the rest of ‘em would say something to prove they were alive. Even abuse would be welcome at this point. His persuasiveness worked on his old outfit, Felix Leiter, Noah Bain, Gabe Jones, Bob Hogan, Lew Erskine, Lloyd Cramden and the rest of the Screamin’ Commandos into doing some crazy stunts in the Big One, but this was a tough bunch to get through to.
That reminded him: Furioli made a mental note to call back Cramden and see what it was about his Brooklyn ne’er-do-well nephew finally striking it rich in Florida.
“Now, we got a new mask for Manny. The special shatterproof lenses will give him ‘night vision.’”
Chuck shrugged, “Doc had that back in the 1930s.”
“Right, but them goggles and lamps were bulky. Image-intensification got better by the ‘50s. Well, today we got an unobtrusive version of a ultra-violet projector; he can hang it right on his belt,” answered Furioli. “We’ll put a similar projector onna car, by the headlights.
“Now, my pal, Lee Bayagan, director of NBC’s makeup department, put together this kit. Everything you could ever need for disguises will be in this yay big sixteen by six by eight inch metal box,” Furioli’s hands did a complicated dance. “We also got a new version of the gas gun. With its floro-carbons, it shoots like an aerosol, so no more risk of glass bullets to risk breakin’ and gassing yourself. And I think you’ll find this wind-up powered grapple gun’ll make getting up ‘n’ down walls pretty easy.”
“Impressive,” murmured Chuck. “What do you call that?”
“A ‘wirepoon’ and we’d like very much for the new Manticore to test this stuff. That’s my askin’ price fer playin’ undertaker to the late Mr. Vincey and swearing he was U.N.D.E.R. killed on a mission. We both get good deals. Now, what does anyone think? Am I right or am I right?”