"Then what?"
"I'll keep looking for these Connection transactions and hope I get lucky, hope I find something floating in the Black Sea."
Wayne hammered a lengthy keystroke command and the phosphorescent green army began marching up the screen again. He hunched forward, the glaze formed on his eyes agian.
Alfred found his butler's voice. "Forgive me for saying this, sir---but it seems to me that if you're looking for this Bessarabia, you're not going to find it in a computer. You'd do better looking in a book. Have you considered going upstairs and using the library?"
Bruce Wayne hadn't. He lowered his hands to the keyboard, stopping the data march, while his fatigued mind summoned all the reasons books were inferior to sophisticated data-processing techniques---provided, of course, that the data existed in processible form. And in the matter of Bessarabia, it did not. Muttering under his breath about the fallacies of communism, Bruce Wayne prepared to disentangle himself from his ergonomic seat. His knees were numb, his ankles unresponsive; he lurched forward, catching his balance for a moment with his knuckles and spreading such handwritten notes as he'd made in the last five days across the console table.
"Harry Matheson?" Alfred inquired, spotting the words in bold isolation on an otherwise blank sheet. "Where did his name come from?"
Scowling, Batman collected the papers in a neat pile. Harry's name disappeared. "His name popped out in the early going, before I got the search parameters refined."
"You were looking for the Connection and Harry's name popped up?"
Bruce raked his wilted hair off his forehead. He evaded Alfred's raised eyebrows and took a stride toward the stairs.
"Did it?"
"I was asking the wrong questions. My own name popped up, too, as President of the Wayne Foundation. I didn't write it down."
"But you wrote down Harry's name."
With a weary, irritated sigh, Wayne confronted the only man alive who could challenge him this way. "Harry Matheson was one of my father's closest friends. They served together overseas, and after the war they helped each other out. He sits on the board of the Wayne Foundation, for heaven's sake. We don't see eye to eye on many things, but I've known him my whole life. I might as well suspect myself as Harry."
Blessed with a butler's logic and a recent night's sleep, Alfred was tempted to say that Bruce Wayne, who led a double life as Batman, was indeed a perfect suspect---and so was Harry. He resisted the temptation, however, since his goal was to get Bruce moving toward his bedroom and that goal had almost been accomplished. After he slept, Bruce would find the error in his logic without any assistance, and he would be refreshed enough to make good use of it.
But things did not go Alfred's way. Bruce paused partway up the stairs. He cocked his head, and from his place beside the console, the butler could fairly see the fog lifting from his friend's shoulders and logic falling heavily into place. He drew an imperceptible breath and hoped Bruce would continue up the stairs.
"You're right, Alfred. I would suspect myself. To acquire what Batman needs, I've had to cast a web of international and financial confusion. I've got the contacts. I've got the computers, the money, the network of holding companies---all so no one could do what I do and connect me with Batman. The motive is different---entirely different---but I could be the Connection."
Alfred combined the items on the two silver trays and prepared to follow Bruce up the stairs. "Might I remind you," he said almost reluctantly, "that the Mattheson fortune grew out of Blue Star Shipping Lines?"
"He shut that down." Wayne's voice wandered.
"Maybe he just gave the Blue Star ships a new coat of marine paint... ."
The steel railing vibrated from the intensity of Batman's grip. "Harry. But why? Why---?" He looked across the cave chamber at the bank of digital clocks on the back wall. It was just after one A.M. "Alfred---I'm going to my club."
"But, sir..."
"I look like death---I know. Bruce Wayne hasn't gone to his club in weeks. Showing up like I do right now---or a little worse---will feed everyone's suspicions. Harry Mattheson has never failed to call me out to lunch for a fatherly lecture whenever he thinks I'm letting the Wayne foundation---and my father's memory---down. Well, I'm more than ready to do lunch with Uncle Harry."
"You have no idea if he's even in town. Please, sir, there must be a better way." Generations of understairs expertise shaped the butler's inflection; Queen Victoria herself would have reconsidered.
But not Batman.
"I'll make an entrance that he's sure to hear about. Bruce Wayne: the debaucher debauched; scoundrel and squanderer. Maybe I'll even make the papers, Alfred. It's been a while since Bruce Wayne has tromped across the gossip pages." He released the railing and charged up the stairs two at a time.
Alfred started up the stairs at a more reasoned pace. "I'll await you in the car, sir."
There was always a chance that Bruce would see his reflection in the mirror and realize this was no time for playacting, but it was a slim chance and Alfred wasted no time getting down to the garage. He guided the limousine out of its stall, parking it conveniently close to the door and coincidentally blocking the sports car. Bruce Wayne stood in the doorway. He surveyed Alfred's careful arrangement and accepted it without comment.
If he had not known the precise condition of every garment in Bruce's wardrobe, Alfred might have believed that he'd found his tuxedo rolled up in a ball behind a door somewhere. It was criminally wrinkled. The cummerbund and tie were both slightly askew and there was a reddish smear on the starched white shirt that could pass for wine, lipstick, or blood---depending on the prejudice of the observer. He landed on the leather seat with a thud that shook the car's suspension.
"Drive on, my good man," Bruce said jocosely. "To the club."
Alfred knew better than to say anything. The real Bruce Wayne---to the extent that there was a real Bruce Wayne---was gone, replaced by a sotted, irresponsible playboy. He pushed the button to replace by a sotted, irresponsible partition, and a second button to turn the heat on. Perhaps a forty-five-minute ride in the back of a stuffy limousine would accomplish what reason could not, but, no---several customized lights on the dashboard flickered to life. Bruce had activated the remote computer and was recalibrating his data searches at a furious rate.
The electronic gate swung open to let the limo out of the estate, then swung and locked shut behind them. Alfred guided the car down the dark, deserted rural road toward the always-visible amber dome of Gotham-by-night. Less than an hour later he jockeyed the lumbering vehicle into line outside a seemingly deserted office tower.
Bruce Wayne's club was at the top of the tower---a quietly expensive amalgam of antique and modern that made the statement: the best of everything never clashes with itself. The same could be said for the men who sat in air-conditioned comfort before a roaring hardwood fire. Once you were a member here, you were beyond the rules.
Then Bruce strode in, his face made florid through biofeedback exercises, his voice much too loud, his words slightly slurred.
"And how the hell have you been?" he said coarsely to the nearest body, clapping it between the shoulders and sending a rare, single-malt Scotch spraying across the equally rare Persian rug.
The victim, a silver-haired executive whose companies rolled steel on five of the seven continents, was a paragon of manners and self-control. His expression was as cold as the interstellar void. "I'm busy, Bruce. Go play your little games elsewhere, if you please."