In his walking days, Harry “the Bat” Bannister stood a shade over six feet and carried 200 evenly layered pounds of muscle on his frame. The exact derivation of his nickname had been lost long before to myth, though the best information put it in 1969 near the Mekong Delta. His platoon had been ambushed and slaughtered by a troop of Vietcong. Harry rolled free of the initial fire burst and lurched to his feet with rifle blasting. When his clip was exhausted, Harry considered running only long enough to reject it. He had long been an expert on knife throwing, so he used the occasion to rocket six razor-sharp blades into the unsuspecting throats or chests of the enemy. And when his knives were gone, he charged the enemy, swinging his rifle like a Louisville Slugger. Maybe the Vietcong were too shocked to respond. Maybe Harry’s bat was too fast. Either way, he held them off for an additional thirty seconds which proved long enough for help to respond. Harry spent two months in an army hospital, recovering from wounds he’d never felt being inflicted. He came out with a promotion and a nickname: the Bat.
The Bat saw Joshua Bane for the first time when Bane stared down at him as he lay in his hospital bed. Something impressed Harry immediately, something about his eyes.
“The name’s Bane, Captain.”
Harry noted his civilian clothes. “You from the USO or something?”
“Something.”
Harry was going to smile but he thought better of it. He had placed Bane’s eyes, the cold, deep-set stare and the blinks that came with astonishing deliberateness. They were the eyes of a man who walked away from every battle without a scratch, a man you always hesitated to call your friend and feared almost as much as the enemy.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Bane?”
“I’d like you to join my unit.”
“Green Berets?”
“Not exactly.”
“What then?”
“I had you figured for the kind of man who left asking for later.”
“Count me in,” Harry said.
Harry stayed in through Nam and longer, when Clandestine Operations found places for both of them in its network. And now Bane looked down at the Bat’s withered frame and felt his flesh crawl with guilt. It was his fault Harry was in this chair, and that had kept him from making contact after they’d left the Game.
“So how are things with the Winter Man these days?” the Bat asked. “What have you been up to?”
“Lots of travel. It’s different as a tourist, you know. You actually get to see the country. No late night escapades, no frantic border crossings, no dark men with guns lurking behind corners.” Bane stopped, realizing his words had sounded rehearsed because, in fact, they had been. “Things are quiet, Harry,” he said, softer now. “I’ve grown to like it that way.”
“Come off it, Josh, this is the Bat you’re talking to,” Harry snapped, running his hand through his damp hair as if to hold back the emerging gray. “The Winter Man’s no fucking tourist.”
“The Winter Man died a long time ago.”
The Bat regarded Bane knowingly. “You can bullshit the others, Josh, but you can’t bullshit old Harry. Your eyes haven’t changed and neither has the way you move. The best stays on top.”
Bane shook his head. “I was the best because people thought I was the best. Only it was just a matter of time before they realized they were seeing shadows. I got out just in time. The shadows were everywhere.”
“And what about Trench and Scalia? Is that the way they’ve managed their lives too?”
Bane flinched. Trench and Scalia were generally regarded as the greatest killers operating in the East or West, now that the Winter Man had taken himself out of the Game. Their allegiances fluctuated from year to year or month to month depending on who was paying the most. These days that usually meant the Arabs.
“Trench and Scalia are probably dead,” Bane offered softly.
“Not unless the Winter Man killed them.” The Bat glanced down at his useless legs. “Trench put me in this damn chair. I still owe him for that.”
“It should have been my assignment. You went in my place. I fucked up and you covered my ass.”
“It was Trench who blew my spine apart. A debt’s a debt. I’ll get him all right.”
“Give it up, Harry. It’s over. You had your run and it was a damn good one. In the Game you’re only better than the man you’ve got centered in your cross hairs. Everything’s relative. Nobody stays on top for long.”
“You did, Josh.”
“I didn’t let it get to me. I got out in time.”
The Bat looked at him grimly. “Did you? Did either of us? I lost my legs so they put me behind a computer keyboard. You lost your nerve and your family”—Bane squirmed at that—“so you quit, except you’re still held to them by that check you pick up at the Center every other week. We haven’t escaped the Game, not by a longshot. We’re still playing it, but on their terms instead of our own.”
A scuffle broke out just in front of the podium. A leftover sixties radical had gotten too close and said too much. He was being unceremoniously removed. Some of his friends rushed to his rescue. The scuffle grew, closing on Bane and the Bat. Josh watched Harry’s eyes come to life as he drew the zipper of his green fatigue jacket down. Clearly, the possibility of violence had charged him.
“I’ve got four of the goddamn sharpest throwing knives in the world in here,” he whispered to Bane, never taking his eyes off the approaching mayhem. “Lord fuck a duck, I’d like nothing better than to hurl a blade at one of those bastards. You carrying, Josh?”
“No.”
The Bat’s eyes dipped to the fingers Bane held tautly by his sides, coiled springs ready to leap out.
“Then again,” he said, “you’re always carrying — those damn hands of yours. I’ve seen what they can do. If my legs weren’t dead, I’d’ve fucked these knives long ago and taken lessons from that bastard friend Conglon of yours. How is the King these days?”
“Never better,” Bane said, not bothering to add that he worked out at the King’s gym two hours a day on the average. The workouts added discipline to his life, a place to go at a given time, regularly. Without them, Bane often feared one day would swirl unnoticeably into the next. He was pushing forty, just one year down the road now. He had to work the muscles harder and harder just to maintain their present level. The sweat and pain, meanwhile, made the world he had turned his back on seem real and up close again, almost as though it was tapping him on the shoulder.
“Give the King my regards next time you see him. Toughest son of a bitch I’ve ever met. If we’d had him in Nam, they would’ve had to let us win the damn war.”
“He speaks well of you too, Harry. Always had a lot of respect for what you could do with a knife.”
“Yeah, but hands are better. They’re always there and they never let you down. If I had it to do all over again, I’d specialize in hands. Lord fuck a duck, legs sure as hell haven’t done me much good.”
“I came to the rally today because I knew you’d be here,” Bane admitted suddenly.
Harry’s face brightened.
“And there was something else. Jake Del Gennio left a message with my service this morning.”
“The Swan!” Harry beamed. “No shit! You call him back?”
“Not yet.”
“But you’re gonna, right? I mean, he probably just wants to go over old times.”
“Sure,” Bane said, but somehow he knew otherwise. Del Gennio, the Swan, was a helicopter pilot who had spent more time behind enemy lines in Nam than anyone else with wings, always stopping just long enough to pick Bane up or drop him off. As the personal chauffeur of the Winter Man, he had to get out of more scrapes and jams than any dozen of his fellows. They hadn’t spoken in years, and Del Gennio wasn’t the type who liked to sit over a six-pack and rehash the past. He had called because something was up.