Dodge kept looking at Hurley. He had always more or less known that Falcon was based on a real individual, but something about the demeanor of the two men told him that this estimation was woefully inadequate.
Hurley shook his head sadly. “You did such a good job with my stories that I didn’t see any harm in letting you embellish the facts.”
“Then it’s all real? Baron Von Heissel? Jocasta Palmer? The Skull Brigade? Dr. Ragnarok?”
“Yes. Well, not the Skull Brigade; you made that one up.”
Dodge settled back in his chair then stood up just as abruptly. “Where is he?”
“Falcon?”
“Yes. If this fellow wants to fight America’s greatest hero, maybe we should let him. We’ve already discovered that he’s not as invincible as he believes. With a little help” — He nodded to the speechless Newcombe — “Captain Falcon ought to be able to save the day one more time.”
This prompted another round of unspoken communication between the general and Falcon’s former sidekick. “Captain Falcon may not be… ah, enthusiastic about returning to duty.”
“It’s the one story I never wrote,” confessed Hurley. “He got tired of it all. I’ve no idea where he’s gone off to.”
Vaughn shook his head as if clearing his thoughts. “No. This battle will not… cannot be fought by one man alone. America is greater than any one man; greater than Falcon, greater even than the President. If he falls, another takes his place. In the meantime, we have all the resources of the government at our disposal to unmask this fiend and bring him to justice.”
Hurricane seemed not to have heard him. “The Padre might know.”
“Father Hobbs?” Somehow Dodge was surprised to learn that this character, with whom he was intimately familiar in his stories, was also real. “Where’s he?”
“Last I heard he was runnin’ a mission in the Congo. If Falcon was going to tell anyone his whereabouts, it’d be the Padre.” Hurley turned to Vaughn. “If you can get us to the Congo, we’ll find Falcon and get him back here.”
“You and him?” Vaughn nodded in Dodge’s direction.
Dodge was about to protest his sudden inclusion in the adventure, but he caught himself when he saw a crafty gleam in the general’s eye. The old warhorse was actually considering Hurricane’s seemingly ludicrous request, and Dodge immediately saw the method behind his mad scheme; if Dodge and Hurley were shuffled off to the dark continent, it would mean the removal of a major thorn in the general’s side.
Vaughn stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I’ve got two Martin B-10 bombers on their way from Wright Field in Dayton. They should be here in about an hour. I was going to send them after that boatplane, but if it’s the plane I think it is, they’ll never be able to run her down. Now, it’s now exactly first-class accommodations, but I’ll wager they can put you on the ground in the Belgian Congo inside of thirty hours.”
Hurley brightened visibly at the idea. For his own part, Dodge wasn’t sure he liked being a pawn in the general’s game, but then he remembered that feeling of exhilaration he had experienced after the escapade on the river.
“Africa,” he murmured. “Well, it might be kind of fun.”
One hundred and thirty miles away, a hooded figure appeared to be studying his reflection in a metal mirror. A closer examination however would have revealed that the image in the mirror was not the likeness of the man holding it, but something altogether more complex.
The apparatus was similar in some respects the electric television invented by Vladimir Zworykin, but like the other devices in the hooded man’s collection, this was, as Dr. Findlay Newcombe might say, generations beyond state of the art. It did not show images on a cathode like the device developed for RCA by the Russian émigré, but rather formed three-dimensional relief images from the metal surface images that moved and, if one listened carefully, spoke. The hooded man was listening very carefully.
He listened very carefully to what the big man, Hurley had to say. He knew this one had been with Falcon in his heyday, one of the champion’s most trusted minions. It was no coincidence that he chosen to capture the American leader on this day, when Hurley was scheduled to appear at the Presidential residence.
The fate of the leader was of no great concern to him. All that mattered was the man called Falcon; the only person that could threaten his ascension to godhood. He expected the Americans to do the very thing he had instructed them not to do: break faith, by attempting to rescue their leader or muster an armed response. That also did not greatly concern him; they would react exactly the way an animal reacts to a threat, instinctively. But Hurley… he would rise to the challenge and find his old comrade, and when he did this new god would be waiting.
“The Padre might know.”
Ah, yes. The Padre. Father Nathan Hobbs, the priest who forsook his vows to fight evil in every form. He had looked for that one as well, but to no avail. These one-time heroes had truly gone to ground following the Great War where their reputations had been forged.
“Last I heard he was runnin’ a mission in the Congo.”
The Congo! The god lowered the device and immediately the flat surface compressed into a small sphere on the end of his scepter. He then moved forward to the cockpit where the pilots were still getting familiar with the control systems of the stolen plane.
“We have a new destination.”
In the theater of the White House, unnoticed by anyone, the silvery halves of the film can began to shrink. In a matter of seconds, they were each no larger than the head of a pin, almost invisible to the naked eye.
It would be several hours before anyone would think to look for the container that had brought the startling demands of the President’s abductor. A Secret Service agent, intent on checking for fingerprints asked the projectionist to turn over the film can and only then was its absence noted. No one was too concerned. It was unlikely that the villains would have left incriminating evidence anyway. They had the film itself, and that was a much better lead.
Besides, what harm could come of a missing film can?
CHAPTER 5
THE MISSION
Technically speaking, Dodge’s passage aboard the US Army Air Corps torpedo bomber was not his first time aloft, but as his virgin experience aboard an airplane, it was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Unlike the lavish appointments which made a ride aboard one of Pan American’s small fleet of clippers into something like a luxury cruise, the darkened bomb bay of the B-10 was strictly no frills. An engineer at the airfield had rigged up some web belts for the passengers to hold onto during take off, landing and the occasional patch of mid-air turbulence, but that was the extent of creature comforts. He, Hurricane and the relief flight crew sat on their luggage amidst the empty bomb racks. Early on in the voyage, Dodge had accepted the invitation to sit in the forward gunnery turret, but once aloft and away from recognizable landmarks, the novelty faded and the only change in the scenery was a darkening sky.
Their route was chosen by the availability of refueling outposts. From Baltimore, they flew south to Florida, then Havana, Maiquetia in Venezuela, French Guiana and finally Rio de Janeiro. Brazil was the jumping off point for a long journey over water, where any mechanical problems could easily spell the end not only of their trip, but their lives as well. The only interruption in the trans-Atlantic voyage was a stop at Wideawake Field on Ascension Island, a remote outpost run by the Eastern Telegraph Company. Their flight mechanic gave the plane a thorough check up before pronouncing it fit to fly the remaining sixteen hundred miles to Leopoldville.