Enemies & Allies: A Novel Read online

  If possible, that evening had been even more surreal.

  As the appointed hour approached, Lois grew more and more nervous in spite of herself. She spent the entire afternoon deciding what to wear, though she didn’t normally waste valuable time making herself gorgeous to impress a man (even though this particular one had saved her life). Was he expecting to have dinner with her? Should she light candles, open a bottle of wine or champagne? Did he even drink wine or champagne? Who could know the answer to that? She would…and in just a short time. She watched the door, watched the clock.

  “I’m here, Miss Lane.” He stood on her open balcony, startling her. Of course—a man like him wouldn’t use the front door!

  She regained her composure, surprised that her voice sounded so normal. “Do you often peep in on single women like myself?”

  “That wouldn’t be proper.”

  She smiled. “Exactly what I expected you to say.” She indicated the davenport. He declined both wine and champagne (no surprise) and got right down to business. He remained standing in her living room, his red cape moving in the slight breeze from the open balcony door. Lois urged him, “Please have a seat.”

  Moving with a flash of endearing awkwardness, as if he didn’t know how to be casual, he walked to the davenport, adjusted his cape, and sat down. Lois took a seat on the cushion next to him, as close as she dared, and picked up her notepad and pencil, crossing one shapely leg over the other. She was pleased to see from a slight widening of his blue eyes that he noticed.

  She cleared her throat, pretending to be all business. “First things first. What do we call you?”

  Lois thought it was a straightforward question, but his brow furrowed. “You mean like a stage name? I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “You have many amazing abilities, and you certainly seem like a real hero. Someone super…Superman! I like that, unless you’d prefer something else?”

  “No, I like it, too, Miss Lane.” She was surprised at how pleased his approval made her feel, and she moved a little closer to him, trying to be nonchalant. He didn’t notice…or maybe he did.

  “What’s the significance of the symbol on your chest and cape? Is that the letter s?”

  He touched his chest. “It’s a symbol with its own meanings. But yes, it could be seen as the letter s.”

  She sighed, trying to disarm him with charm. “Is this how it’s going to be, then? Evasive answers to direct questions?”

  His eyes sparkled. “It depends on the questions.”

  “What’s your telephone number?”

  “It’s unlisted.”

  “I figured as much.” As Lois scribbled a note to herself, she continued her questioning. “One other thing. Why do you wear your red trunks on the outside of your pants? Isn’t that a little backward?” Her lips quirked in a smile.

  “Oh, now, Miss Lane,” he said, blushing. “I thought this would be a serious interview.”

  “Just trying to break the ice. All right, I’ll be serious. Tell me more about these powers of yours. What, exactly, can you do?”

  Superman explained that he could fly (obviously), that he had super-strength, that he possessed certain other powers, many of which were just emerging. He seemed a bit mystified about them himself.

  Lois was fascinated, even forgetting to take notes. “And how did you come by these powers? A radiation accident? A scientific experiment? Vitamins?”

  He laced his fingers together, holding his hands in his lap as if the answer was a difficult one for him. “No, you see, I…I don’t exactly come from Earth. I’m from another planet, a place called Krypton.”

  Lois stared at him incredulously. “An alien, you mean?”

  “Do I look like an alien?”

  Lois recalled the rubber monsters she’d seen in the movies. If he was telling the truth, she had her hands on the story of the century. The hard part would be deciding which headline to use. No, she thought, the hard part would be convincing people of his claims. “Do you realize how preposterous this is going to sound to my readers?”

  “Preposterous?” Superman crossed his muscular arms. “You mean like a man who can fly? A man with heat rays that lance out of his eyes or X-ray vision?” She couldn’t argue with that.

  “X-ray vision? Does that mean you could see right through my dress if you wanted to?” The question had sounded coy and demure in her mind, but when she said it aloud, it sounded stupid. She blushed furiously, kicking herself for letting her guard down.

  “Again, Miss Lane, that would be an improper use of my powers. I was raised better than that.”

  Of course you were. “Who raised you? Where do you come from?”

  “I had good parents, a wholesome childhood, in an average but beautiful town, the real heartland of America.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “It’s better if I’m not. I have to keep some of my secrets, Miss Lane.” He just gave her a mysterious smile. “And now I think I should be going. It’s a big city. Somebody always needs rescuing.” He had such sincerity in his voice that she didn’t doubt him for a minute.

  He had already started for the balcony by the time she jumped to her feet in alarm. “Wait—how do I get in touch with you again?”

  “I’ll know when you need me, don’t worry.” Waving good-bye from the edge of the balcony as Lois followed him out into the open night air, he added cryptically, “And say hello to Clark Kent for me. I’m sure he’d love to hear your advice as a reporter.”

  “I—wait…Clark?” She had struggled to think of a compelling last line, something that would make him remember her, something that would make Lois Lane sound like a person he’d want to know better. She certainly felt giddy and smitten—and embarrassed by it!—but he had rescued her from death, holding her firmly in his muscular arms, so she had good reason to have intense feelings about him.

  But what did Clark Kent have to do with anything?

  “Promise me I’ll see you again!” she called.

  “That’s a promise,” he said with a smile, and then added teasingly, “unless you stop getting yourself in trouble.”

  “I won’t!” She waved as he silently sprang from the balcony. Instead of falling, he shot up into the air, waved good-bye, and vanished into the night.

  Lois stared after him, reeling, swept off her feet twice in one day.

  Afterward, it had taken an unheard-of three hours for her to compile her notes and draft a story. The story of the century: “Superman: A New Hero for Metropolis.”

  Lois Lane had always been a reporter to watch; after publication of the Superman article, she was the reporter every other newspaper envied. Suddenly every paper wanted to feature Superman, but he never stopped to talk with reporters after his heroic deeds. Lois hoped she hadn’t disappointed Superman with her article, but she hadn’t had the opportunity to talk with him again (though she did make a habit of leaving her patio doors open in the evening, just in case he decided to drop by).

  In retrospect, she should have won the Pulitzer for that article, but mocking skeptics had laughed at her “absurd and undocumented claims” that Superman was a “strange visitor” from a planet called Krypton.

  Now, as she thought about it, Lois remembered Perry’s cautions about following up the Lex Luthor exposé. The notoriety she had gained from her Superman interview suddenly put her in a different league, made her work even harder as a reporter, though it hadn’t yet earned her a raise.

  This story would be different. Superman was clearly a hero, but Luthor came from a different mold entirely—she would have to approach her story with a certain amount of healthy trepidation. She could do it, though. After all, how could a story about Lex Luthor be any more problematic than getting the scoop on the greatest hero in the world?

  CHAPTER 7

  SIBERIA ARIGUSKA GULAG

  IN THE WAN SIBERIAN DAYLIGHT, THE STAIR-STEP LEDGES OF the quarry excavation emphasized the crater made by the Ariguska meteor
strike in 1938. Joseph Stalin had kept the Soviet Union under such a tight cloak of secrecy that very few Westerners knew about the devastating impact.

  Lex Luthor was one of those few.

  At around the same period, two decades ago, several large meteors had peppered Earth and astronomers were baffled as to what had caused the sudden spate of high-velocity space rubble. Here at Ariguska, where the Soviets had established a large gulag for political prisoners, General Ceridov had found fascinating and unusual mineral fragments that could only be attributed to the massive meteorite itself.

  When the Ariguska object had hit, the dense pine forests had been flattened outward for miles, like ripples in a pond when a rock is thrown into it. In the two decades since, the regrowth had come in stunted and twisted, as though the soil itself was tainted. Fish caught in the forest lakes were often horrifically mutated and always poisonous. Crops did not grow. Even the small garden plots planted outside the gulag fences yielded only inedible horrors.

  The impacting meteorite had tunneled deep and shattered, spraying fragments of itself throughout the strata. Now, in an ever-expanding pit, the workers quarried out the dirt and discarded the bulk of the useless rock, sand, and soil, searching for the core meteorite mass.

  Luthor stared at the quarry operations, at the hundreds of sweating workers who were watched over by guards in olive-green woolen uniforms. Each guard carried a workhorse Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle. The sullen prisoners toiled with picks and shovels, filling rusty metal carts. As the diggers worked their way toward the main mass, they left a wide corkscrewing ramp. Debris was hauled away and dumped in ugly piles of naked rock in the tainted forest.

  “Impressive, is it not, comrade Luthor?” Ceridov made an expansive gesture.

  “This operation has been under way for…” Luthor calculated. “A year?”

  “Seventeen months. And in that time we have excavated a substantial amount of meteor mineral.” They walked to the edge of the open pit, and Luthor looked down at the pathetic wretches laboring in it.

  “How long do the slaves last?” Luthor asked.

  “They work until they die, then are replaced by others who also work until they die. We have a large enough pool of replacements. Look at how much they have dug out!”

  “Such a large open quarry is a bit obvious,” Luthor warned. “Some high-flying spy plane could easily photograph it.”

  “They will see nothing more than a large quarry. However, our workers are about to begin constructing a dome to cover the bottom of the quarry when we expose the main meteorite mass.”

  Luthor observed a commotion among the scrawny captives. Guards rushed to a man holding a jagged green lump that gave off a faint intrinsic glow.

  Ceridov signaled the guard. Red-faced from both excitement and exposure to the cold air, the man came puffing up and saluted smartly to the general as he extended a glowing emerald fragment about the size of a baseball.

  Ceridov held it in his hands. “Give that worker an extra cup of water tonight as a reward.” He offered the fragment to Luthor, who did not move to take it.

  “That glow…it could be a form of radiation.”

  “You are a cautious man.” As if to show his bravery, Ceridov squeezed the lump, holding it up. “Prolonged direct exposure to the meteorite emanations does have unpleasant effects on human physiology.” He shrugged. “Small exposures, though, are harmless…to the best of our knowledge.”

  “The best of your knowledge!” Luthor accepted the meteor fragment with lingering reluctance and prodded the rock suspiciously. “What sort of physiological effects?”

  Ceridov guided Luthor away from the quarry edge to a low bunker with extremely thick concrete walls, not far from the steaming coolant tower and containment dome for the camp’s power reactor. The bunker’s windows were reinforced with bars, its doors covered with two-inch-thick metal sheeting.

  “A fallout shelter?” Luthor asked. It looked as if it could withstand an A-bomb blast.

  “It is not to protect those inside, but to contain them. Listen. They are restless today.”

  Luthor could hear a roaring, thudding sound like a blacksmith hammering an anvil. But it wasn’t a blacksmith. Something pounded on the metal doors while growling loudly enough to be heard through the thick concrete walls.

  The KGB general explained, “When certain workers are heavily exposed, they change. Their bodies grow. They become much less human. They have extraordinary strength. Our geneticists are investigating the effects for our eugenics program. Some of the best Soviet minds have come to study them. You Americans have your Superman, comrade—the Soviet Union needs its own.”

  Luthor could hear clear evidence of amazing strength just by listening to the damage the former workers were doing to the reinforced bunker. His mind was racing with ideas about how to exploit the properties of the odd green meteorite: as a power source, a medical treatment, a means to transform workers into a superpowerful force of his own. He would have his LuthorCorp labs run a full analysis on the specimen. “And?”

  Ceridov seemed embarrassed. “Unfortunately, these mutants burn up a lifetime of strength within only a week or two, and then they die.” He added, as if it was an afterthought, “Our studies remain incomplete, since the beasts have also killed four of our best researchers.”

  “And what happens to the bodies after the mutants die?”

  “If we can remove the cadavers before the others tear them to shreds—not a trivial operation, I assure you—the specimens are dissected.”

  “I would like to see one. Just how…extreme are the physical alterations?”

  “Quite extreme.” General Ceridov took him to a nearby building made of concrete blocks, and he shoved aside a metal door. The interior was dank and full of shadows, kept at a very cold temperature. Wisps of steam curled around two large misshapen bodies lying on slabs, waiting to be autopsied.

  Luthor stared. Extreme indeed. They no longer looked human at all. Seeing the horrific changes, he looked uneasily at the glowing green rock in his hand. “I would like a lead-lined box to contain this, please, for my journey home.”

  CHAPTER 8

  GOTHAM CITY

  THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE LARGE CORPORATION WAS A shining steel tower, a gleaming monument in the heart of Gotham City. Wayne Tower’s modern architectural design stood out amid the downtown’s lesser, yet still imposing, Gothic monstrosities.

  On Tuesdays, Bruce attended the main board of directors meeting in the glass-enclosed boardroom. Wayne Enterprises was so widespread, with so many divisions, investments, interests, and facilities, that no single discussion could cover all aspects. But once a week the ten directors were supposed to discuss the most important issues that concerned the company as a whole. Although the administrators expected little from him, Bruce insisted on sitting in nevertheless. Because he owned the controlling share of the company, they had to tolerate his presence.

  Bruce took care to pretend a certain lack of interest at each meeting. Outside of these Tuesday gatherings, though, he watched the men far more closely than they realized. They would have been very surprised to learn how much he already knew about them.

  “On today’s agenda, Mr. Wayne,” began Scott Thomson, vice president of administration and marketing, “is the redesign of the Wayne Enterprises logo. Our corporate logo is the face we show to the world. It symbolizes all we do, and we have received input from all the division heads. But now we very much need your input.” With his smooth, deep voice, he made the matter sound exceptionally important, to mollify Bruce.

  Sitting at the head of the long conference room table, Bruce could think of many matters that were more vital, but he simply smiled. “Show me the designs. I assume the marketing department has narrowed the field down to the best?”

  “Of course, Mr. Wayne,” said Larry Buchheim, vice president of the propulsion systems division, with a nod. Buchheim rarely had good news to report, always insisting that he needed a budget increas
e (though whenever Bruce secretly inspected the ledgers he found surplus funding).

  Thomson stepped over to four easels at the far end of the room, which his underlings in marketing had prepared. As though he had rehearsed it for a scene, he unveiled the potential logos one at a time.

  The first design was a complicated affair with ornate and virtually unreadable letters that spelled out the entire phrase “Wayne Enterprises—Hope for Gotham City and the World.” The next was a confusing amalgam of a missile, a medical caduceus, a sheaf of wheat, a lightning bolt, and a clockwork gear—which apparently symbolized the diversity of Wayne Enterprises. The other two designs were equally unimpressive and even less memorable.

  Bruce frowned. “Do we want people to stare in confusion whenever they pick up one of our products? Our company logo should be an icon, something streamlined and memorable that people instantly associate with Wayne Enterprises. The choices you’ve given me are all muddled.”

  “Simple, you say?” scoffed Paul Henning, the VP of manufacturing. “Would you prefer a big W perhaps?”

  Bruce shook his head. Though this was purportedly the most prominent item on the agenda, he knew they had most likely concocted it only for the purpose of making him feel “useful” during his weekly appearance.

  For the last several years, he had cultivated his public persona as a dashing playboy, the rich heir who loved cocktail parties, beautiful women, and the nightlife. Clark Kent’s recent profile in the Daily Planet had bolstered that perception. Bruce flaunted his riches, all the while being generous to the point of childlike innocence. Unfortunately, though the disguise successfully kept people from thinking of Bruce Wayne and Batman in the same sentence, it also gave him an air of incompetence. Though he was chairman of the board and the sole heir to his parents’ vast fortune, the ten directors had taken it upon themselves to “shelter” him from the day-to-day business.