Batman 5 - Batman Begins (24 page)

“I didn’t have time to observe the highway code, Alfred.”

“You’re getting lost in this . . . creation of yours.”

“I’m using my
creation
to help people. Like my father did.”

“For Thomas Wayne, helping others was never about proving anything to anyone. Including himself.”

“It’s
Rachel,
Alfred.”

“Miss Dawes?”

“She was dying. She’s in the cave, sedated. I need you to take her home.”

Alfred nodded and went to the hidden door. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, and at the reflection of Bruce standing behind him. “We both care about Rachel, sir. But what you’re doing is beyond that. This thing . . . it can’t be personal. Or you’re just a vigilante.”

Maybe he’s right. No! I can’t afford to entertain doubts . . . not at this point.

“Look, Alfred, we can discuss this later and we will, for as long as you feel is necessary. But now, we’ve got to send the partiers away.”

“Those are Bruce Wayne’s guests out there. You have a name to maintain.”

“I don’t
care
about my name.”

“It’s not just your name. It’s also your father’s. And it’s all that’s left of him. Don’t destroy it.”

Alfred went through the mirror door and Bruce left the library. He allowed himself to slouch and let the corners of his mouth became slightly slack and his gait became loose and a bit awkward. He completed the disguise by turning those slack lips upward, into a smile that did not reach his eyes, and ambled into the big hall.

“There’s the birthday boy himself,” someone cried over the sound of the music. There was a smattering of applause. Bruce moved through the throng, shaking hands and grinning his vacant grin. The band abandoned the chorus of “Begin the Beguine” it had been playing and struck up “Happy Birthday.”

Bruce stopped in front of William Earle, who wished him a happy birthday.

“Thank you, Mr. Earle. I hope your birthday is happy too, when you have it. There was something I wanted to ask you . . . what was it? Oh, I know. How well did the stock offering go again?”

“Very well. The price soared.”

“Who bought?”

“A variety of funds and brokerages . . . it’s all a bit technical. The key thing is, our company’s future is secure.”

“Hey, that’s
great.”
Bruce said. “You have a good time, Mr. Earle.”

Bruce shambled on, grinning, shaking hands, trading pleasantries, until he reached where Lucius Fox was leaning against a wall, watching the festivities with the slight smile of a man bored, but amiable.

“Thank you for that . . . special present,” Bruce said.

“I’m sure you’ll find a use for it.”

“I already have. How long would it take to manufacture on a large scale?”

“Weeks. Why?”

“I’m pretty sure someone’s planning to disperse its . . . opposite. They plan to use the water supply.”

Bruce laughed, and Fox laughed with him. To the partiers, it looked as though they were enjoying a joke.

Fox said, “The water supply isn’t going to help you disperse an inhalant, unless . . .”

“What?”

Fox guffawed as though Bruce had just told him a really good one. “Unless you have access to a microwave transmitter powerful enough to vaporize the water in the mains. The kind of transmitter Wayne Enterprises has recently misplaced.”

“
Misplaced?”

“Earle just fired me for asking too many questions about it.”

“I need you to go back to Wayne Enterprises and start making more of the antidote. I think the police are going to need as much as they can get their hands on.”

“My security access has been revoked.”

“That wouldn’t stop a man like you, would it?”

This time, Fox’s smile was genuine. “No, it probably wouldn’t.”

Fox moved himself away from the wall and toward the nearest door. Bruce returned to his shambling and hand-shaking until an elderly woman in a strapless organdy gown and a lot of makeup grabbed his arm.

“Bruce,” she gushed. “There’s somebody here you simply
must
meet.”

“Not just now, Mrs. Delane—”

Mrs. Delane ignored Bruce’s protest. She grabbed his shoulders and turned him to face a man whose shaved head was turned away from Bruce.

“Now am I pronouncing it right,” Mrs. Delane asked as the man slowly turned around. As Bruce’s gaze fell on a blue poppy in the Asian man’s buttonhole, she completed the question, “Mr. All Gool?”

The slackness left Bruce’s mouth and his eyes were no longer vacant. “You’re not Rā’s al Ghūl. I watched him die.”

“But is Rā’s al Ghūl immortal?” someone whispered in Bruce’s ear and even before Bruce turned he knew who the whisperer was.

Ducard, dressed in a black tuxedo and leaning on a polished ebony cane, beamed at Bruce. “Are his methods
supernatural
?”

Bruce replied, “Or are they cheap parlor tricks to conceal your true identity . . .
Rā’s.”

Outside, Alfred was holding the limp form of Rachel Dawes in one arm and, with the other hand, opening the rear door of his Bentley. He shoved a set of golf clubs aside and lowered Rachel onto the seat. A caterer, who had been taking a smoke break, asked if everything was okay.

Alfred smiled at him. “Lady’s a little the worse for wear, I’m afraid.”

“That’ll happen,” the caterer said.

J
im Gordon could not remember ever having been so weary, not even overseas, in the Army, when he had fought a war, sometimes for days on end. He desperately wanted to go home and crawl into bed next to Barbara, who would be sleeping, and take comfort from her warmth and closeness. But he could not, not yet. There was one more task he had to perform before he could tell himself what he always
had
to tell himself—that he had done everything possible.

He unlocked the cell door, went in, and sat across from Dr. Jonathan Crane, who was handcuffed to a chair.

“What was the plan, Crane?” Gordon asked. “How were you going to put your toxin in the air?”

Crane apparently did not hear the question. He was staring at a spot on the wall behind Gordon’s shoulder and murmuring, “Scarecrow . . . scarecrow . . . scarecrow . . .”

Gordon leaned forward. “Who are you working for?”

Crane ignored Gordon. He sat still, only his lips moving, repeating his “scarecrow” litany.

Gordon was aware that Crane might be faking, but he did not think so. He’d seen a few psychos in his day and he’d be happy to bet his next paycheck that Crane was among their number. He rose and moved to the door.

Suddenly Crane said, “It’s too late, you know. You can’t stop it.”

Gordon stared hard at the handcuffed man. Oh, Crane was still a psycho, but Gordon was sure that he was now a psycho who was telling the truth.

Only a few seconds had passed since Bruce had called Ducard by his real name. Nothing had changed: the music was still playing, the partiers were still dancing and eating and drinking.

Rā’s bowed his head in acknowledgment of Bruce’s conclusion. “Surely, a man who spends his nights scrambling over the rooftops of Gotham City wouldn’t begrudge me dual identities?”

“I saved you from the fire.”

“And I warned you about compassion, did I not?”

Bruce scanned the room and silently berated himself for not noticing them earlier—these grim men from the League of Shadows who hovered at the edge of the crowd, obviously out of place: hard, dangerous men, some of whom Bruce recognized from the monastery. Bruce looked at his guests: laughing, chattering, some of them tipsy.

“Your quarrel is with me,” he said. “Let these people go.”

“You’re welcome to explain the situation to them,” Rā’s replied.

Bruce tried to read Rā’s’s expression. Amusement? Certainly. But something else, too. Contempt? Resolve? Hostility?

He grabbed a drink from a passing waiter and shouted loudly enough to be heard over the music: “Everyone.
Everyone!
”

He raised his glass and swayed a bit. His words were slightly slurred. “I just want to thank you all for . . . drinking my booze.”

There was a brief burst of laughter.

“No, seriously,” Bruce continued. “The thing about being a Wayne is you’re never short of a few freeloaders to fill up your mansion . . . So here’s to
you
people.”

Bruce downed his drink and slammed the empty glass down on a table near Joe Fredericks, his father’s old friend and colleague. Fredericks rose and clasped Bruce’s elbow. “That’s enough, Bruce.”

Bruce pulled his arm away. “I’m not finished.” He got another glass from the table and raised it. “To you false friends . . . and pathetic suck-ups who smile through your teeth at me . . . You had your fill, now leave me in peace. Get out. Everybody.
Out!”

Bruce was surprised to realize that much of what he had said, he believed.

Most of the partiers were already moving toward the doors, snaking their way around tables and chairs, being careful not to look back at Bruce. The vast room was silent except for the sound of their movements. Bruce could hear automobile engines starting in the driveway outside.

Joe Fredericks planted himself in front of Bruce. “The apple has fallen very far from the tree, Mr. Wayne.”

“Sorry you think so, Joe. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t mean you.”

“Like hell!” Fredericks turned on his heel and stalked away.

The musicians finished packing their instruments and sheet music and left.

The room was empty except for a dozen men who stood with their arms hanging loosely at their sides, weight centered in their bellies, and Bruce and Rā’s al Ghūl, who faced each other.

“Quite a performance,” Rā’s said. “Amusing but pointless. None of these people have long to live—your antics at the asylum have forced my hand.”

“Crane was working for you?”

“His toxin is derived from the organic compound in our blue poppies. He was able to weaponize it.”

“He’s a member of the League of Shadows?”

“Of course not. He thought our plan was to hold the city for ransom.”

“But you’re really going to unleash Crane’s poison on the entire population.”

“Then watch Gotham tear itself apart through fear.”

“You’re going to destroy millions of lives.”

“Only a fool would call what these people have ‘lives,’ Bruce.”

Rā’s walked to the door and motioned for Bruce to join him. The dozen League of Shadows members started to follow, then stopped when Rā’s held up a flat hand.

Rā’s and Bruce left the big hall and were in a long, dimly lit corridor lined on one side with books and portraits of Bruce’s ancestors, and on the other with windows, through which could be seen the silhouettes of hills against the glow of a sky lit by Gotham City’s lights. There was no carpeting here and Rā’s’s cane tapped on the hardwood floor.

Rā’s gestured toward the distant city. “The League of Shadows has been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked Rome. Loaded trade ships with plague rats. Burned London to the ground. Every time a civilization reaches the pinnacle of its decadence, we return to restore the balance.”

“Gotham isn’t beyond saving. There are good people here—”

“You’re defending a city so corrupt we infiltrated every level of its infrastructure. Effortlessly.”

Bruce looked at Rā’s’s profile, limned against the window, and saw what a disguise the Ducard persona had been. Rā’s had not changed his clothing or altered any particular thing about his appearance, yet he was a different man—taller, straighter, with eyes that gleamed from beneath a ledge of brow, and an enormous dignity. His words were those of a fanatic, but his manner was not at all fanatical. He seemed grave, and sad.

Is this something I learned from him without knowing it?
Bruce asked himself.
This way of altering appearances?
The answer had to be yes.

“You have no illusions about the world, Bruce,” Rā’s said. “When I found you in that jail you were lost. But I believed in you. I took away your fear and showed you a path. You were my greatest student . . . it should be
you
standing at my side, saving the world.”

“The world?”

“Of course. Gotham City is only a necessary beginning. The worst parts of us Homo sapiens are now dominant, destroying both what is good in the race itself and the planet that sustains it. For the sake of what can be noble in humanity, the many must be destroyed so that the few can survive to evolve and grow, to fulfill our potential.”

“And slaughtering millions . . . no
billions
—that doesn’t bother you?”

“Do I look as though it does not bother me?”

He did not. He looked like a man maintaining his bearing under a tremendous weight.

“Stand with me?” he whispered.

“I’m standing right where I belong—between you and the people of Gotham.”

“No one can save Gotham. When a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is natural, and inevitable. Tomorrow the world will watch in horror as one of its great cities destroys itself. The movement back to harmony will be unstoppable this time.”

“You’ve tried to attack Gotham before?”