Enemies & Allies (20 page)

“But the Soviet premier was in Metropolis at the time. He would have died in the blast. He couldn’t have known anything about it.”

“Unless he knew there was no real threat after all. Can we be sure the entire event wasn’t some put-up job staged by Superman, or maybe one of his alien comrades? Think about it!
How do we know there were even warheads on those missiles at all?
He could be a Communist agent, living among us in plain sight. Maybe the Soviet Union is breeding ‘supermen’ of their own.”

McCarthy gasped at the idea.

Luthor continued. “Even worse, maybe Superman has his own plans and means to pit us against the Russians. After we’ve nearly annihilated each other, then he and his alien conquerors can simply come in to pick up the pieces. What if there’s an entire invasion coming?” He pushed aside his plate and leaned close. The other man now appeared very concerned by these new and deeply disturbing ideas. With his paranoid nature, McCarthy seemed to believe that everything made perfect sense.

“Senator, you’ve seen Superman’s powers yourself. What if he decides to turn
against
us? Then where will we be?” He sat back and started to eat his salad. “I promise you, when the aliens do come—and I’m convinced they will—we’d better be ready for them.”

Luthor measured his satisfaction by the level of alarm that showed on Joseph McCarthy’s ashen face.

P
RESIDENT EISENHOWER HAD ENTRUSTED HIM WITH THE
protection of America, and Kal-El took his job seriously. He needed to do more. Clark Kent asked for a few days off from the
Daily Planet,
ostensibly to visit his mother in Kansas. But he had other plans.

Stopping in Smallville before he got down to his real work, he handed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Martha Kent for safekeeping. She had tears in her eyes. “I wish your father could have been alive to see this. Oh, I was so proud when I watched you on TV, though the reception was a little spotty. What was the president like in person?”

Martha had baked a cherry pie this time, her best ever, and he chatted with her as he tucked away a second piece along with a tall glass of milk. “I’m going to need the energy, Ma, since I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.”

Then—as Kal-El instead of Clark Kent—he sprang into the sky, became part of the wind, and soared above the Earth to undertake a thorough surveillance behind the Iron Curtain. He flew across Europe to East Germany, then continued north and east toward Leningrad, passing over restricted Soviet airspace. He crisscrossed the sky, not caring who saw his red and blue blur. In fact, he
wanted
to let the Communists know he was keeping an eye on them with his super-vision.

He studied the activities of the Soviet military, noting the movement of their troops, flying over the missile silos, all prominently marked with red stars. With Sputnik circling Earth, Kal-El was certain their scientists were already working on a much more sophisticated satellite that would carry high-resolution cameras to photograph secret installations like Area 51. Fortunately, the U.S. also had new jet aircraft in development, including high-altitude spy planes. But no camera—no matter how sophisticated—could match Kal-El’s vision. It was his duty to keep an eye on whatever mischief the enemy might be planning.

As he raced over a Soviet industrial city adjacent to a military base, he saw the open scars of mines, smelters, smokestacks belching black clouds into the sky. A squadron of MiG-19 fighters chased after him, their engines hurling the aircraft forward at incredible speeds, breaking the sound barrier, pursuing him at Mach 1.2. But he was too fast for them. Kal-El laughed as he streaked ahead across the steppes, leaving them far behind.

Finally, when he reached the Siberian wilderness, he discovered one isolated complex that worried him greatly. Hundreds of acres of thick forest had been blown down, knocked flat as though a titanic shock wave had spread out in a circle like ripples in a pond. The only thing he could imagine capable of unleashing so much destruction was a hydrogen bomb.

Naturally, the Soviets would test their most powerful nuclear weapons in isolated Siberia, while the U.S. detonated their bombs in the empty Nevada desert or on vacant South Pacific atolls.

Focusing his vision, he saw a large circular crater surrounded by fences, barracks buildings, a camp, even the containment building and cooling tower of a small nuclear reactor. People were tiny moving dots, and he discerned armed guards watching groups of enslaved workers. One of the infamous Soviet gulags! The labor crews had turned the crater into some kind of quarry, removing residue from the explosion or impact, excavating…what? A large metal dome covered the bottom of the quarry, its thick plates reflecting the hazy sunlight, hiding the real secret from prying eyes.

Suspecting sinister activities, Kal-El squinted his eyes to use his penetrating X-ray vision, but his glance reflected back. He could not see through the metal, no matter how hard he pushed.
The entire dome must be lined with lead,
he thought.
Radiation shielding?
For the Soviets to go to such great lengths to hide their activities, he had no doubt that the dome must contain something threatening.

He needed to find out what it was.

Kal-El swooped down to land on top of the dome that covered the bottom of the pit. The gulag guards spied him immediately, and shots rang out from their AK-47s. Several shots struck Kal-El in the back and shoulder, but he brushed them aside as though they were gnats. Bullets ricocheted, leaving silver impact stars on the metallic dome. He knifed his hand into the hemispherical shell, broke the seam of the metal plates, ripped the sheeting, and cracked open the dome like an Easter egg to expose what was inside.

Suddenly an emerald glow bathed his face, a sickly luminescence that seeped upward like a plague. Excavated and exposed at the base of the crater lay a jagged boulder of green mineral half-buried in the dirt. A strange form of radiation streamed upward.

Back at Luthor’s mansion, a much smaller fragment of this green rock had been enough to bring him to his knees. What lay beneath him now was thousands of times larger and more powerful.

Kal-El tried to cling to the edge of the dome, but his muscles had turned to water. His vision swam before him, then went black. With limp hands, he tried to keep his balance, tried to crawl away, but he slipped into the gap that he himself had made in the lead-lined dome. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

Totally drained, he slid down through the hole.

The Soviet guards continued to shoot, but he no longer cared. Unconscious, Kal-El fell to the bottom of the meteorite quarry, but he felt nothing when he struck the ground.

W
HILE CLARK KENT WAS AWAY IN KANSAS, LOIS WENT TO
Gotham City to interview Bruce Wayne. One question was foremost in her mind: Would Bruce help her dig up dirt on Lex Luthor, or was the playboy millionaire just as corrupt and narcissistic as his fellow industrialist? She intended to hit him with some tough questions.

Bruce received her graciously in the imposing manor house. He offered her a choice of beverages, suggesting trendy new cocktails, the names of which he must surely have made up himself; he was already sipping a martini-like drink he called a Vesper.

When she merely asked for coffee, the attendant butler seemed at first surprised, then pleased. “As you wish, Miss Lane.” Before long, he returned carrying a heavy silver coffee service that wafted a rich aroma. The coffee was so full-bodied she could almost believe Alfred had rushed down to Colombia himself, picked the beans, roasted them, and hurried back in time to make her this pot. It was the sort of thing Bruce Wayne was expected to do for his guests.

In the meantime, the millionaire suavely entertained her, not the least embarrassed when she rebuffed his charm and asked to get down to business. Lois wasn’t impressed by wealth or the airs of the rich and powerful. This man might fancy himself to be like James Bond from those books he read, but she could tell it was all an act. He wasn’t a real hero, like Superman.

“Mr. Wayne, I have been researching a story on LuthorCorp and its CEO, and I’m convinced something shifty is going on. Lex Luthor’s got a lot of disgruntled employees and a lot of questionable business dealings.”

He raised his dark eyebrows at her candor. “Disgruntled employees aren’t the most reliable of sources, Miss Lane.”

“My source was murdered shortly after she spoke with me. That tells me that Luthor must not have wanted her talking.”

“Wouldn’t it have made more sense if he’d silenced her
before
she spilled the beans?” He took another sip of his drink. “You’ll need solid proof if you’re going to accuse Lex Luthor.”

“That’s where you can help me.” She took a long sip of coffee, which tasted as delicious as it smelled.

“Believe me, since Lex Luthor is my primary rival, if dirt were to be found, I would already have it.”

“And would you give it to me for my story?”

He just looked at her.

She pressed on. “In recent years, Luthor secured far more than his share of lucrative defense contracts. But you just turned the tables on him, didn’t you? Luthor can’t be terribly pleased with Wayne Enterprises these days.”

“The contract-bidding business is a competition among giants of industry. Surely you don’t mean to imply that Wayne Enterprises was underhanded in getting those contracts?” He displayed a hint of a wry smile, and for that she liked him a little better.

“I think it’s more likely that LuthorCorp used dirty tricks to win the earlier bids. It’s Luthor I’m interested in, Mr. Wayne, but let’s look at your own company. You appear to be taking much more personal responsibility recently for the day-to-day affairs of Wayne Enterprises. What’s changed?”

“My father built this company from the ground up. When I discovered that some of my directors didn’t quite share the same vision as he had, it was necessary to make a few changes to the organizational chart.” He casually drained his martini glass, got up, and poured himself a second drink from a silver shaker.

“That’s a quite a lot of housecleaning. Those men were en-rusted to run Wayne Enterprises for years while you were out sowing your wild oats.”

Pacing, he gave her another mysterious smile, which raised all sorts of questions in Lois’s mind. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what this dashing young man had been up to during the years he’d been gone from Gotham City.

She continued, holding up her reporter’s notepad and scribbling shorthand with her metal pen. Now to get to the meat of the story. “Four of your former board members have been found dead, and the other five men have disappeared. Rather suspicious, wouldn’t you say? The readers of the
Daily Planet
want to know your thoughts on this. Any comment?”

Showing great consternation, Bruce took a seat in a club chair and set his martini glass aside, no longer interested in the drink. “All right, Miss Lane, I’ll give you a juicy story for your paper. As it turns out, I discovered that most of my board of directors had been bribed, blackmailed, or otherwise coerced—by Lex Luthor. Over the years, they’ve been conducting corporate espionage, providing LuthorCorp with unfair advantages on the technological front, slipping him details about contract bids we were about to submit.

“Once I caught them red-handed, I had to replace them with men I trusted.” He regarded her intently. “And as soon as Luthor no longer had his spies at Wayne Enterprises, he began losing contracts. We won because we’re a better company, Miss Lane, with better people. And we produce a better product. On a fair playing field, Wayne Enterprises not only competes, we win.”

Amazed that he’d revealed so much to her, Lois was writing as fast as she could. “Haven’t you just admitted a personal motive for murder? People could assume this was a revenge killing. And the five men still missing—”

“On the contrary; I had already taken care of the problem, and I am shocked and outraged by these deaths. When I transferred those men, my actions were entirely aboveboard, and I had them where I could prevent them from doing any further damage to my company. I had nothing further to gain by their deaths. I can only hope the missing ones are safe and unharmed. Maybe they’ve gone into hiding for their own safety?”

Bruce did not seem unduly alarmed. “I should point out that I’ve already turned over my evidence of their malfeasance to Captain James Gordon at the Gotham City Police Department. You are welcome to interview Captain Gordon as well. I have nothing to hide.”

Lois wasn’t sure she believed the glib statement. “I’ll check it out. Thank you.”

He looked closely at her. “You might ask yourself whether
Luthor
didn’t have more to gain by keeping those men silent. Extortion is a serious crime. Falling victim to it is not. If one of those men had pointed fingers back at LuthorCorp…”

The butler appeared so silently that he startled Lois. He made the quietest throat-clearing sound, a polite interruption, but Bruce reacted as though a fire alarm had gone off. “Yes, Alfred, what is it?”

“A rather dramatic story on the television set, Master Bruce.” The butler looked dutifully over to where a round-tubed set was built into the wood-paneled wall. He flicked a switch, turned a knob, and stepped back as the tubes began to hum and warm up. “Miss Lane will find it of interest as well.”

Bruce turned to the gray screen, and Lois waited impatiently for an image to appear out of the shadows of the cathode ray tubes. Of course, Bruce Wayne had one of the new color televisions—rich boys and their extravagances. She had seen a color TV only once before; considering how expensive they were, she doubted the gadget would ever catch on.

Finally the image sharpened, and she saw a gruff Russian spokesman wearing a fur-lined uniform. The picture was grainy and the color shifted as though the red, green, and blue hues were not adjusted properly. The man spoke in Russian, raising a fist. His face was red with anger.

The disembodied voice of a translator came over the track. “…for all the world to see the illegal activities of the United States of America. We have captured a blatant American spy. We have footage of this man as he flew over restricted Soviet airspace, as he made a threatening approach to Leningrad and then attempted to attack our defensive bases.”

Lois gasped when the camera shifted to show a battered dark-haired man being dragged forward. In spite of the TV set’s poorly adjusted color, there was no mistaking the blue uniform, the red cape, or the bold yellow
S
emblazoned on his chest.

“Now all the countries of the world can see the illegal aggression of the United States. This prisoner will be dealt with by Soviet justice. We have captured your Superman—and, frankly, we are not impressed.”

Superman could barely stand, shackled by wrist and ankle manacles. More lengths of thick chains were draped over his shoulders. The Man of Steel looked on the verge of collapse. His face was grayish, weary, completely defeated.

Lois was stunned and sickened to see him like that, and her heart began pounding. Her mind raced, and she was desperate to think of some way to help. Her knuckles were white as she clutched her notepad. It took her a moment to realize that Bruce Wayne was staring just as intently, just as full of disbelief.

A news commentator broke in, Edward R. Murrow himself. “The White House has issued an immediate statement. President Eisenhower denies that Superman was on any official mission for the U.S. government. Whether diplomatic efforts will free this greatest American hero, or whether he will be left in Communist clutches, remains to be seen. Stay tuned to this channel for breaking news.”

A test pattern briefly came onto the screen; then the original footage of a chained Superman being dragged before the cameras was repeated. Lois turned away, tears stinging her eyes.

Bruce said crisply, “That will do, Alfred. Turn it off.”

Looking extremely agitated, he couldn’t seem to get Lois out of Wayne Manor quickly enough. She was only too happy to oblige. “Thanks for the interview, Mr. Wayne. I…I have to be going, anyway.” She rushed out faster than Alfred could show her the door.