The Shadow
Authors: James Luceno
Who knows what evil lurks
in the hearts of men . . . ?
Perhaps only a man on intimate terms with evil himself. Such a man is Lamont Cranston, cold-blooded czar of a criminal empire—until a powerful Far Eastern mystic makes the ganglord his prisoner, and his disciiple in the occult arts that will change his life forever.
Armed with the uncanny powers of cloak himself in darkness and control the minds of others, Lamont Cranston makes the crime-scourged streets of 1930's New York the battleground in a war against the dark forces he once embraced. The battle will unite Cranston with his extraordinary soul mate, Margo Lane. And it will pit him against the unspeakable Shiwan Khan—a brilliant madman fiulled with his ancient ancestor's lust for conquest, and appetite for annihilation . . .
LOOK INTO THE SHADOW . . .
Long before Batman, Superman, and other crime-fighting superheroes, The Shadow materialized in 1930 as an eerie radio announcer on “Street and Smith’s Detective Story Hour.” Though The Shadow introduced stories about conventional detectives, in the end it was this mysterious, bodiless voice that stole the show. Listeners became riveted. And soon, The Shadow appeared in his own magazine.
To meet an ever-growing public demand, Walter B. Gibson, a magician turned writer, was hired to write the first Shadow novel in 1931—eventually authoring two hundred eighty-three Shadow novels under the pseudonym “Maxwell Grant.”
In 1937 The Shadow was immortalized by Orson Welles, in the part of Lamont Cranston/The Shadow, in his own radio series. The radio show, which aired until 1954, and the seventy-five million copies of The Shadow magazine, novels, and comic books have thrilled countless Shadow fans around the world.
And now, The Shadow casts himself on the silver screen . . .
By James Luceno
Published by Del Rey Books:
THE YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES, BOOK ONE: The Mata Hari Affair
A FEARFUL SYMMETRY
ILLEGAL ALIEN
THE BIG EMPTY
Published by Ivy Books:
RIO PASIÓN
RAINCHASER
ROCK BOTTOM
Ivy Books
Published by Ballantine Books
Text and cover art © 1994 Universal City Studios, Inc., and Bergman/Baer Productions
The Shadow © Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. The Shadow and associated symbols and word marks are trademarks of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. Used under license.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-96088
ISBN: 0-8041-1296-7
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: July 1994
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
11: Steak Knives And Crossbows
12: Sciaphobia: Fear Of Shadows
For Jim Steranko—artist, author,
acrobat, magician, raconteur—for
keeping me on track.
And for the late Walter Gibson
(aka Maxwell Grant), author extraordinaire,
who could turn out a
Shadow
novel
of this size in five days, on a
Smith-Corona portable.
Most of these words belong to David Koepp, though I’ve also borrowed a phrase here and there from some of the almost three hundred
Shadow
novels written by Walter Gibson throughout the thirties and forties. I’ve tried to be faithful to both visions.
First and foremost, thanks to my editor, Susan Randol. We were both under the gun, and we made it happen.
And a tip of the slouch hat to those at Bregman/Baer Productions and Universal Studios, who helped me get a sense of what the movie will look like, including Dee Dee, Myron, and David, for showing me the gowns and suits; John Zemansky, for letting me heft the magnums; and Joe Nemec, for the notes and drawings, and for the tour of
Shadow
locations on the back lot.
None of it could have happened without the help of Leona Nevler, of Ivy Books; John Polwrek, of Universal Studios; and Charles O. Glenn, of Bregman/Baer Productions, who opened many a door. And special thanks to Lee Herschman, who went way out of her way.
I am also indebted to Michael Riccardelli, for providing me with
Shadow
comics galore; to Guy Guden, whose
Who Knows What Evil
has recently been published by Graven Images; and to Brian Daley, Karen-Ann, Carmen, Carlos, and Jake, for their unfailing support.
1A Long Way from
Shangri-La
I
n the fertile river valleys and terraced hillsides that lie in the shadow of Mount Kailasa in western Tibet, the dry season ends in April. By then the wrinkled landscape has taken on a thirsty look, and clearing for spring planting has already commenced. For weeks, axes and machetes have been brought to bear on the thick forest growth above the shrunken rivers, and hundreds of felled trees, dry as kindling, lie about like outsize match sticks. On one auspicious morning, a small army of torch-wielding young men will scurry down the hillsides, setting fire to the trees, leaving in their wake an avalanche of flames that will climb hundreds of feet into the air. Within hours, smoke covers the land, hanging in the valleys like mist and obscuring the sun. But when the smoke clears, the burned fields are blanketed with a fine layer of nurturing ash that has secured the soil’s moisture deep within the fire-hardened ground.
Most villages will plant rice or scatter the seeds of other grains, like millet or
gingke.
But a few will court a far more lucrative cash crop:
papaver somnifera,
the delicate opium poppy, which withers and dies in strongly acidic soil and thrives where the substratum is porous and malleable, such as it is in the vicinity of Kailasa, known in Tibet as Kang Rimpoche, “the great ice jewel.”
The hillside palace of the drug lord who reigned over Kailasa gave ample evidence of the benefit that came from opting for the opium poppy. What with its lofty ramparts, precipitous stone walls, and low-pitched roofs of tile and native slate, it soared more than sprawled, dominating the valley whose terraces of white, red, and purple flowers had paid several times over for the embellishments that had come to it: hardwood furniture fashioned in Europe and Japan; carpets from Morocco and Turkestan; fine porcelains from China; silk brocades from southeast Asia; even a gasoline-powered generator transported by airplane from the United States.
Just now those terraces were dotted with harvesters conscripted from several of the local villages. Most wore the sashed tunics or simple blouses and trousers typical of the highland peasantry. The skin of their high-cheekboned faces had a leathery look, and their callused hands held the dull knives used for scraping the gummy black sap from the incised bulbs of the poppy plants. The women wore heavy coral and turquoise necklaces, from which dangled small amulet boxes known as
kaus.
The men kept their hair trimmed short in front and long and braided behind.
Armed with antique breech-loading muskets or with Lee-Enfield rifles that had found their way to Asia from the trenched and shell-cratered post-war landscape of Europe, mounted guards in yak-hide coats and turbanlike headclothes moved menacingly among the workers.
Incongruously, a car horn blared in the heat-shimmered air, and one of the horses reared as a Packard convertible motored into view around a bend in the deeply rutted dirt road that wound up the valley toward the palace. The guard reined in his startled beast and gazed at the late-model automobile with expectant curiosity. Some of the workers stopped to look as well, but any whispered exchanges were immediately silenced. The guard recognized the driver and the figure seated in the rear of the auto, but the man in the passenger seat was unfamiliar. Even so, the man’s quilted, cranberry-colored coat and spiked, bronze helmet marked him as a local warload—perhaps from the region of Lake Manasarovar or Parang—and a competitor in the opium trade.
The Packard continued on, its straight-eight power plant sputtering some as the auto gained altitude on the jarring road. The auto crossed a narrow saddle and skidded to a halt in front of the castellated palace, whose principal entrance was flanked by rough-hewn stone sculptures of Fu-dogs, seated forbiddingly on their haunches atop low pedestals.
The driver was a burly Tibetan with a shaved head, flaring eyebrows, and a Fu-Manchu mustache and beard. First out of the Packard, he walked around to the passenger side and threw open the door. “Out,” he commanded his helmeted passenger, reaching inside to take hold of him.
“Take your hands from me,” Li Peng protested. “Outcast! You dare to touch me?” He was a short but solidly built Chinese, whose left eye had already sustained damage from obviously powerful blows.
Li Peng succeeded in shrugging off the larger man and had a fist cocked when the Tibetan in the rear seat—a long-haired man with a high forehead—drew a foot-long knife from the waistband of his trousers and pressed it to Li Peng’s throat.
Momentarily subdued, Li Peng allowed himself to be led away from the car toward the palace’s towering front doors, which were painted a garish red-orange and decorated with large bronze strap hinges and knockers.