“I’m glad I came over, Harry,” Bane added. “I really am.”
“So am I.” A pause. “I didn’t mean to make you a backboard for my miseries but there aren’t many people left I can spill my guts to.”
“What are friends for?”
A smile crossed the Bat’s lips. His eyes scanned the perimeter of men who had become soldiers again for the day.
“It wasn’t really so bad over there, was it, Josh?”
“It was hell, Harry, but it wasn’t so bad.”
“Let’s have a drink soon … for old time’s sake.”
“There is no old time’s sake, but we’ll have a drink anyway.”
Chapter Two
“What took you so long, Josh?” Jake Del Gennio asked nervously. “I’ve been waiting by the phone for hours.”
Bane’s grip tightened around the receiver in the first pay phone he saw after leaving the rally.
“It’s been a busy day.”
“Well, I’ve been sweating bullets. You don’t know what hell I’ve been through, Josh, you don’t!”
“Easy, Jake, easy. You haven’t even said hello to me yet.”
“I’ll save it till we talk in person. I’ve got to see you.”
“What’s up?”
“I can’t discuss it over the phone. The world’s going crazy and no one wants to listen.”
“Okay, but why me? It’s been a long time.”
“Because I’m desperate, Josh. I need someone who can get answers.”
“Jake—”
“How soon can we meet?”
Bane checked his watch, found it was pushing four-thirty. He had planned on going straight to the King’s for a workout but that could be put off till evening. Fewer kids around the gym anyway.
“Six o’clock,” he said. “Dinner at La Maison on East Fifty-eighth.”
“I’ll be there,” promised Del Gennio.
Del Gennio was waiting in La Maison at a corner table in clear view of the entrance. They shook hands, Bane detecting a slight tremble in the Swan’s grip. Then he noticed the half-empty wine carafe.
“I never knew the Swan to be a drinker,” he said, sitting down.
“Well, this is the first time the Swan has been too scared to sleep,” Del Gennio retorted abruptly. “And that includes Nam, Josh. At least then you knew what was going on.”
“And now?”
Del Gennio leaned forward. “You figure it’s safe to talk here?”
“It’s clean,” Bane assured him. “New York branch of the CIA even has a charge here.”
Del Gennio tried to smile and failed. “I need you, Josh. The whole world’s gone whacko and you’re the only one I know who can set it straight again … It’s deep, Josh, real deep.”
“What’s deep?”
Del Gennio ran his hands over his face. “It started two days ago. I … lost a plane.”
“A crash? Oh God … But I haven’t heard anything on the news.”
“Because it didn’t crash. I just … lost it. One second it was there and then …” Del Gennio went on to relate the events of two days before when Flight 22 appeared to vanish into thin air.
“And what do your superiors say?” Bane asked when he had finished.
“That’s just it. They don’t say anything. I go to them with my story and all they do is put me off, a first-rate stall.”
“But you guys make tapes of everything. They should back you up.”
Del Gennio’s lips quivered. “I heard the tape for the first time yesterday morning. My voice is the only one on it. Nothing from the cockpit.”
“Could be equipment malfunction.”
“No way. I checked my terminal inside and out.”
“You tell your superiors that?”
“Sure and they kept insisting that I imagined the whole thing. They said Flight 22 came in ninety minutes late due to equipment malfunction and has been dry-docked for repairs.”
“You check the hangar?”
Del Gennio nodded. “The 727 in question was present and accounted for. But that doesn’t mean shit because I know it disappeared for a while, from visual and from the board. A sophisticated radar board, Josh. But it’s not the machine that’s got me losing sleep, it’s these.” Del Gennio pointed at his eyes. “These never lied to me before. Something happened to that plane and somebody’s covering it up. Somebody wants to keep a tight lid on this. They erased the cockpit side of the tape but they can’t erase me.”
“You call the airline?”
“A dozen times. All unreturned. Nobody wants to talk about it there either.”
“Somebody must, Jake. That plane must’ve been carrying one hundred fifty people….”
“It was undersold. Just sixty-seven passengers.”
“All the same, if something happened to the jet, don’t you think they would have complained? It’d be all over the papers by this time.”
“Now we’re on the same wavelength, Josh. I figured I’d check out the passengers on my own, except no one will give me a copy of the manifest. They’ve stuck me on desk duty and next month I’m up for reevaluation. They’re gonna try to can me, Josh, I just know they are. They think I’ve cracked, gone schizo or something.” Del Gennio’s voice was frantic, panicked. He seemed short of breath. “It happened, Josh, I know it did. You’re the only one I know who can get the real answers, dig them up before somebody buries them altogether.”
Bane looked at the fear in his friend’s eyes and patted his arm. “You flew into muddy hell to pick my ass up more times than anyone should have asked you to and never once with all the bullets and bombs did I ever see your hand waver on the joystick. You aren’t the kind of man to lose your nerve easily or your marbles at all. So when you tell me that something strange happened at Kennedy two days ago, I believe you. Something happened, but let’s face it, Jake, jets don’t disappear.”
“This one did.”
It was eight-thirty by the time Bane dropped Del Gennio off at his apartment and drove off toward the King’s gym in Harlem. He didn’t know exactly what to make of the Swan’s story but neither did he pass it off. Men like Del Gennio didn’t crack under pressure. He agreed to meet the Swan at Kennedy the following morning to obtain more details with which to begin his investigation.
The sky was totally black now, and Bane felt the shadows of the long-gone years creeping up again.
Bane had gone into the army only because he was drafted. He saw no sense in the war and even less in protesting it. He accepted his induction and subsequent assignment to boot camp impassively without enthusiasm or fear, found he enjoyed the rigors of training and excelled in them far above the other recruits. He started noticing men watching him — some in uniforms bearing lines of medals, others in civilian suits. Two weeks later, Bane was transferred to a secret base along with a dozen others from similar boot camps.
They were told simply they had displayed … something … that warranted a more specialized training. This training went on eighteen hours a day every day, both mental and physical — all torturous. The number of recruits fell quickly until Bane alone was left. He learned all aspects of violence, learned to embrace, even cherish it. He learned to love the physical tests his instructors put him through. Survival training. Subversion. Infiltration. Guerrilla fighting. Killing.