Brave and the Bold #204

Twenty Years, #4: Between the Darkness and the Light, Part 1

"It was the dawn of the Second Age of Heroes, a few years after the Allies-Axis War. The Brave & the Bold was a dream given form. Their goal: to prevent more evil by creating places where humans would not be afraid of metahumans. It's a way of life, stopping evil and creating homes away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers: humans and metahumans, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, this new, metahuman-ridden Earth, but it's our last, best hope for peace. This is the story of the those times and those peoples. The years are 1948-1966. The name of the book, and the people in them, is The Brave And The Bold."

Rated PG for language.

The phone call, when it came, was wholly unexpected, but in retrospect it came to be seen, both by the recipient and his friends, as inevitable, an act of the gods that they were foolish not to anticipate.

"Yes, this is he."

"...what?..."

"...I'm sorry, I can't understand you. You must speak more clearly."

"...whu-what? Bring back the.....ooohhhh....."

click

The black man with the star on his forehead absently hung up the phone, his mind on fire with the words he'd just been told. He walked to the window of his room and looked out into the night sky. He stood, regal and handsome and seemingly ageless, and contemplated the stars and the city below him. Its formerly lively streets were almost deserted, the many people who had filled its byways huddling in their houses and apartments and shacks or imprisoned in the camps to the north. What had replaced their life and verve on the streets of the capital was fear, fear of their hated occupiers and their guns. The man with the star on his forehead vowed, not for the first time, that the white men would be defeated and expelled from his adopted country, that his adopted people would finally know freedom. Now, though, with this new idea, he might actually have a way to make his vow a reality.

He snapped his fingers, and a teenager, one of the runners he used to carry his messages to his allies in the West? and North?, entered the room. "Yes, Master?"

"Go to He Who Never Dies. Tell him we must meet tomorrow night at the forests of Mount Kenya. And send my apprentice in. Her training continues now."

As the runner nodded reluctantly--none of the runners liked dealing with He Who Never Dies--and fled, the man, his forehead glowing, rubbed his hands together. Perhaps, after all these months, victory might be achieved....

April 13th, 1954. In a run-down office in a brownstone in a declining section of Manhattan two unusual figures read the morning papers over their breakfast, occasionally grunting or scribbling a note as they discovered something interesting or out of the ordinary.

 "They're finally publishing The Rebel in English. You won't have to read it in French any more."

His companion grunted.

"`From Here to Eternity' is playing at the Essex. We could go this afternoon?"

His friend grunted again.

"Hey, Mr. Terrific just announced a patent on a microscopic tv camera. Says he's gonna use it to analyze blood counts and bacterial cultures. Good for Terry!"

His friend said nothing.

The speaker looked up from his paper. "Well, shit, Bobo, what's wrong with you this morning? Wild human hair up your butt?"

"Ook."

"Don't pull that on me, Bobo. I know full well you can talk."

Bobo, otherwise known as the Detective Chimp, shrugged, a purely human move that on him looked unnatural. "It works for the Librarian, Rex."

 His companion, Rex the Wonder Dog, looked at him, ears folded back. Bobo growled, "I'm still hung over from last night. And coffee's up to 74 1/4 cents a pound, which means we can kiss the dime cup of coffee goodbye. God damn it, my head hurts, and now they're telling me I'm going to have to pay more for my morning joe? Humanshit."

Bobo turned the pages of the Times and grunted again. Rex's ears twitched backwards; in his years of partnership with Bobo, he'd come to recognise Bobo's different grunts. There was the "Go away, I'm irritable, I haven't had a good grooming in a long time," grunt, the "Bugger off, I'm irritated, I'm hung over," grunt, the "Go screw yourself, I'm irked 'cause  I have to live in a world of smelly hairless apes" grunt, and several  others. This one was different, and seldom heard. This was the "Huh.  That's interesting" grunt, and judging from what Rex could smell  of the sudden change of Bobo's body chemistry, something had thoroughly caught Bobo's attention. Rex said, "What?"

Bobo grunted and shook his head. "Just a sec." He read the article again and ran his tongue around his teeth, obviously thinking. He padded over to his desk and from underneath a pile of papers-Bobo was not a good housekeeper and often kept stacks of papers around him on his desk for no other reason than he liked the cocooned feel-pulled the Sunday Times. He quickly flipped to the "Foreign Affairs" section and began skimming the articles, muttering, "Where is it...I know I read something about the Lake Rudolph...it was...here....shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Rex, did we throw out last week's papers?"

"Yeah, why?"

Bobo loped around the office and over the furniture, something he occasionally did when he was deep in thought. Bobo hated that he was so quick to revert to his primal habits when he was distracted or mulling something over, but it was hard to ignore the call of the blood. He finally came to rest back in his desk chair. "We gotta go to the library, Rex. Today."

Rex leapt to his four feet, tail and tongue wagging. Unlike Bobo, he didn't regret for a moment acting like a dog. He was one; he knew it and accepted it and was happy to be so. "Now?" He enjoyed the trip to the library; New York City contained a world of interesting smells, and riding the subway exposed him to many of them.

Bobo shook his head. "Naw, I got my ten o'clock coming."

The door to the office opened and three women entered. They wore trench coats, but the length of exposed leg and bare collarbone exposed from gaps in the trench coats hinted at the lack of clothes underneath the coats. The women's faces brightened in pleased smiles when they saw Bobo and when they said, "Hi, Bobo!" it was with barely suppressed giggles.

Bobo smiled and jumped up and down twice. "hello, ladies." He gestured with one long, hairy arm, and followed the women into his office, which doubled as his bedroom.

Rex grinned in the way that only dogs can grin. Bobo didn't like to talk about it, and when he did he was half surly and half amused, but Rex found what Bobo did amusing and understandable. Once, when Bobo had been particularly deep in his cups, and Rex had been drinking with him--a relatively rare occurrence for Rex, who didn't like to drink--Bobo had described it.

"Y'know what it's like? I'm a...a chimp. Grooming isswhat we do. It's a social thing, we gotta do it every day or we go nuts. Isslike...isslike having a..a nitch that you can't scratch...and then someone comes along  an' scratchessit for you. I got lotsa hair that I can't get to, and showering ain't the same. And there ain't no chimps around here that'll do it for me. So I gotta pay someone to do it for me. Whasswrong with that? I never asssed to be made like this. I'd be happier back home hunting bush pig. Wuhwhy shouldn' I use my money to make things better for me?"

Rex laid his head on his front paws and closed his eyes. He didn't really mind that a good hunk of the money that he and Bobo earned went towards paying the prostitutes to groom Bobo every day. It kept Bobo happy and sane, and Rex was all in favor of that.

When the pair walked up the marble steps of the New York Public Library and entered through the main doors, they got the looks of pop-eyed surprise and pointed fingers and quiet, furtive whispers that they were expecting. The sight of an upright chimpanzee, wearing a deerstalker hat, a belt pouch, and nothing else, accompanied by an oversized German shepherd, entering the library through the front door was quite out of the ordinary for 1954, even for New York City. But Bobo and Rex didn't expect their presence to cause shock in the librarians and guards; the pair were regulars at the library, visiting at least twice a week, and everyone on the staff at the library knew them or at least of them. (Bobo had done a divorce case for the Library Director and had leaned on a dangerous ex-boyfriend for the Head of Reference, and those had considerably helped smooth the way for the pair at the library.)

Bobo muttered out of the side of his mouth, "Uh-oh. They changed the staff on us. Shit."

Before Rex could respond, two guards ran towards the pair, night sticks drawn. Behind them a circulation librarian pointed at them with a trembling hand and a white face, occasionally emitting shrieks. Bobo's hair puffed up, his lips pulled back, and his shoulders hunched up in the typical reflexive response of a chimpanzee in danger, but with a moment's effort he quelled his lethal impulse and raised his hands in a peacemaking gesture. Tiredly, for he'd long since grown weary of having to explain himself to paranoid humans who ignored the signs of sentience and civilisation and saw only the beast, Bobo said, "Easy, boys. They know me here. Talk to Susan-Dr. Foster. She'll vouch for me." Then, with careful slowness, he reached into his pouch and brought out his driver's license (it had taken some doing, but he'd finally convinced the state of New York to let him take the test, although he'd had to do a "favor" for the Mayor's office first) and his letter of citizenship (signed by Truman himself after Bobo had helped them with the Sorrow Hill incident) and proffered them to the guards, who took them with obvious dubiousness, carefully read them, then handed them back. One of the guards said, "Well...okay. But what about the dog? We don't allow them in here."

Bobo said, with no facial expression a human could read, "He's my seeing eye dog."

Rex said, "Arf. Woof."

The guard stared at him, opened and shut his mouth twice, then walked away shaking his head. Stephen Cooke, the reference librarian they usually dealt with, appeared from around a corner and walked forward, grimacing apologetically. He tapped the circulation librarian on the shoulder; she was still frozen in shock, staring at Bobo, and Cooke had to repeat his "Jen, why don't you go back to the Circ. Desk now" twice before she heard him and backed away. He then shook Bobo's hand, scratched behind Rex's ears, and said, "Sorry about that, Bobo. We had to hire new staff and we haven't had the time to brief them on our unusual clients yet."

He led the pair to the nearest elevator and told the elevator operator, "Bryan, take us to the periodicals room."

Bobo scratched his lower back-usually the girls were more thorough with their grooming, , but he'd had to rush things, and so they'd missed a few parts-and said, "How'd you know where we want to go, Steve?"

Cooke scratched Rex's belly and watched with pleasure as Rex's right hind leg jerked in ecstasy. "Call it librarian's intuition, Bobo."

Bobo muttered, "Ook."

In the periodical room Rex went for a leisurely sniff-some of the women were wearing a particularly tangy and acrid kind of perfume and Rex was curious and wanted a closer inhale-and Bobo leapt on to one of he tables and said, "Steve, I need the last week's...no, make that two weeks' worth of the Times. And the last two issues of the Economist, please." Cooke smiled and nodded and left; fetching the magazines was usually the work of pages and clerks, not the Head of Reference, but Cooke enjoyed helping Bobo. Anyone who had dealt with the JSA and the Federal Men and had solved the Spirit King/Faceless case with Mr. Terrific had some good stories to tell, and Cooke, a confirmed superhero junkie, had heard a few of them and wouldn't be content until he'd heard them all.

Rex came back, satisfied with what he'd smelled, at the same time that Cooke returned with the papers and magazines. Bobo said, "Thanks, Steve. I'll talk to you later, okay?" Cooke smiled and nodded; he was willing to wait if that was what it took to hear another story as good as the one about the Shade and Oscar Wilde. Rex jumped up on the table next to Bobo, ignoring the outraged looks of some of the other patrons (the regulars shrugged and turned the pages of their newspapers and magazines) and the pair spread the newspapers out on the table in front of them.

Rex said, "What are we looking for?"

"Any massacre or killings in Kenya over the last ten days. By the Mau Mau, I mean."

Rex quietly yelped. "That's a lotta murders, Bobo."

"Indulge me, Rex. I gotta bad hunch on this one. Something smells like unwashed baby."

An hour later they'd found reports of thirteen different massacres committed in Kenya in the ten days previous. The articles had been pulled from the papers and set in a separate pile. Rex said, "Now what?"

Bobo said, "Okay, you've got them memorized and set in your mind?"

"Yep." Bobo knew he didn't have to ask; Rex's mind was advanced not just by dog but by human standards, and he was quite capable of memorizing much more than just the information on a dozen massacres. But Bobo was used to dealing with slack-jawed humans, and so he'd fallen into the habit of treating everyone as if they were morons.

"Now visualize them-project each location on to a map of Kenya."

 Several seconds passed, then, "Uh-oh. Upside down pentacle."

 "Yeah."

 Rex's mouth turned down and his ears flattened. "We gotta tell someone about this, Bobo."

 "Who? The JSA're scattered, the Seven Soldiers dead, Ghu only knows where the Freedom Fighters are. You and me could probably find most of major singletons, but how long would that take? What happened yesterday was the thirteenth, and that number has to mean something. We gotta get over to Kenya, and soon."

Rex put his head on his paws and looked mournfully at his friend. "Bobo, whoever's doing this, they've got some serious mojo on their side. We're not up to this."

 Bobo shrugged and began folding the newspapers together. "I remember hearing about a couple of super-types in the jungle when I was still there. Maybe we can get in touch with them once we're there. But I've got a bad feeling in my gut that we need to get there sooner rather than later."

 Rex whined. "We've got some clients who won't be happy about that."

 "Too bad. They can wait, Rex. This can't."

 Even transferring in London hadn't been a major problem. The British authorities had been called ahead of time by Mr. X, and although there'd been a few raised eyebrows and quiet sniggers when the Brits thought he couldn't see or hear them, nothing was said to them, and most of the British passengers were too polite to say anything directly.

 Things only got interesting in Cairo. Egypt had suffered through several anti-British riots over the past couple of years and the country was full of a general anti-Westerner sentiment. When the ground crew found out that the incoming plane was British they'd turned sullen and obstructionist, forcing the plane to circle the Aerodrome for over an hour before landing. Before the passengers could leave the plane it had been boarded by the Cairo police and two sinister-looking officers from the Machimoi, the Egyptian government corps of metahumans. Things had gotten...complicated...from there; the Egyptians had heard, somehow, about Bobo's presence on the plane and were certain that he was an American spy. His letter from Truman didn't improve matters, and they were on the verge of trying to force him out of the plane and into a waiting Machimoi van-a move they would have regretted, for Bobo, his stomach upset from the 12-hour-long flight, was glad to have targets on whom to take out his bad mood (Rex had rarely if ever seen him as angry, his hair standing up straight on every inch of his body and his extended canines showing in what could only be called a carnivorous smile). Luckily for everyone concerned a high-ranking lieutenant with the British metahuman corps had appeared and sorted things out, sending the Egyptians on their way and apologetically smiling at Rex. The Egyptians muttered threats in Egyptian, threats that Rex didn't need to translate for Bobo to get the gist of. Bobo knew the threats were empty; even though the Egyptians had their Machimoi warriors, the British had the Shining Knight, and no one wanted to tangle with him.

 The British lieutenant had personally escorted them to their next airplane and had watched them off from the tarmac. The other passengers in the plane had somehow heard about what had happened and were resolutely looking the other way or praying. When Bobo and Rex took their seats near the front of the plane no one said a word to them. Rex listened with a combination of amusement and fear as the pilot began his pre-flight prayers.

 It was only after they were in the air that Rex had said, "Why was the looie so solicitious?"

 Bobo had grunted, one of the "I'd rather not talk about it" variety. "I did MI6 a favor once."

 Rex's face had grown quizzical. "I don't think you told me about that."

 "It was in the Gold Coast. I don't like to talk about it."

 "How'd they know you were here, then? You didn't call ahead without telling me, did you?"

 "Nah. I figger Mr. X must'a done it."

 "What's in it for him, then?"

 Bobo lowered his voice to a whisper that only Rex could hear. "I've been thinkin' about that. I think that X and the Brit looie think I'm going to Nairobi to help them with the Mau Mau."

 "Why would they think that?"

 "It was that thing in the Gold Coast. I don't wanna talk about it." There was something in his tone that Rex had learned to obey; it was best not to press Bobo when he got like this. Rex had twitched his head, the dog equivalent of a shrug, and had put his head back down on his paws.

 He'd stayed like that for most of the flight, despite the horrendous turbulence and the constant prayer of the other passengers, who had no more confidence in their landing in Nairobi in less than three flaming and bloody pieces than Rex did. He hated flying; it did horrible things to his stomach, and the smell of the air in planes was antiseptic and metallic and bad. It was only with great difficulty that he kept himself from vomiting throughout the twelve hours of the flight.

 Bobo wasn't much happier; the plane didn't serve any food, and he quickly ran out of the bark and leaves and fruit that he'd packed for the trip. Too, he hadn't been groomed for over twenty-four hours, and he was growing twitchy.

 So neither Rex nor Bobo was in a good mood by the time they landed in Nairobi. The awful clinging heat of the city didn't improve their dispositions, either. When the customs inspector had approached them Bobo had snarled-actually snarled-and loped past him. Rex gave the poor man an apologetic look-he'd probably never seen a live chimp before, much less an infuriated one-and followed Bobo. When three British colonial policemen had tried to flag them down Bobo had irritatedly waved them away; when they'd tried to follow, Bobo began a display, jumping up and down and waving his arms. The older of the three British, who had spent time in the jungle chasing the Mau Mau, knew what it meant when a chimp began displaying like that and called off his men; this "Detective Chimp" may have come town to help chase down the jungle wogs, but he'd be damned if he'd risk two of his men against an angry chimp.

After they left the airport Rex paused now and again to take a long inhalation; there were so many interesting smells here, ones that Rex had never caught whiff of. He felt like he could spend hours just drinking in the odors of this new country. You wouldn't think that humans could display such a range of interesting smells, and yet there they were. The Luba, the Kongo, the Mongo, the Rwandans, the Azande, the Bangi and Ngale-they all had their own scents, and there were those from the coast or from the lakes or from the jungles, and they, too, each smelled differently, and so interestingly. And then there were the spices, and the vegetables, and the foods, and the plants-everything from plantain to cassava to palm oil--and from far away the panoply of odors that was the jungle. It was a cornucopia of smells, and Rex wanted time to drink them all in.  Bobo, unfortunately, was in a hurry, and wasn't giving Rex time to enjoy himself. Business first, Rex sighed to himself, and hurried after Bobo.

 There was no question of them hailing a taxi; in New York City or Gotham or Metropolis the cabbies were used to unusual and exotic fares and rarely blinked an eye, but in Kenya the taxi drivers were not accustomed to anything but ordinary humans signaling them. Besides, Rex's French and Swahili were rusty, and Bobo didn't like to give away how many languages he could speak unless he absolutely had to. So they walked.

 It was not a happy stroll, and very quickly Bobo and Rex began picking up the pace. Nairobi was no longer somewhere that one wanted to spend much time in. Those Kenyans on the streets of the city hurried along, looking nervously about them, most with haggard and hunted expressions; when they saw whites they visibly became jittery. About half of the whites in the city seemed to share those feelings, shying away from the native Africans in an almost panicky fashion. The other half of the whites sauntered about Nairobi in what could only be called a smug way, smirking at the Africans and occasionally pushing them off the sidewalk into the street. The reason for those whites' attitude quickly became evident; nearly every intersection had members of either the anti-Mau Mau Kikuyu Guard or British colonial police or British Special Air Services, all with revolvers and automatic weapons held ready in their hands and all scanning the crowds with suspicious, hostile, and contemptuous expressions. The soldiers and armed men glared at Rex and Bobo, but either sensed Bobo's mood or were used to animals walking through Nairobi as if they belonged there, for the pair were never stopped.

 After a half hour, as they passed through what might have been the business district, attracting curious, amazed, and often alarmed stares from both the Kenyans and the British passers-by, Rex said, "You know where we're going?"

 "Yeah."

 "Mind sharing it with me?"

 Bobo looked around him, making sure that no one was in hearing range-a pointless act, since everyone, British and Kenyan, were giving them a wide berth-and said, "Y'know Clarke's, right?"

 "Of course." Clarke's, in New York City, was the premier bar for super-types; it was where anybody with powers or a costume went to after-hours. It wasn't genteel or swank; you got a lot of the powered bad guys there, too, but everyone knew and obeyed the rules of the bar-no fighting inside on pain of expulsion. That sometimes led to some tense situations; when the Injustice Society was playing quarters and saw the JSA and started making loud cracks about just what Starman and Black Canary and Arn Munro and Phantom Lady were up to, or if it was true about Sandman and Sandy, both sides would be ready to go at it, but nobody wanted to get permanently thrown out of Clarke's, and so cooler heads would win out, and drinks would end up being bought for both sides, and inevitably the Wizard and Hourman would get into a drinking match, and the Harlequin would be pawing the Green Lantern, and the Huntress would end up going home with Dr. Mid-Nite.

 "A couple of years ago, before I'd come to the States, I was doing some work here for the Company" (Rex's ears twitched at Bobo's words; his partner and friend had a more checkered background than he wanted to admit to or discuss, and getting any stories out of him about his past before he left Africa for the US was a rare thing indeed) "and I had to track...let's just call him Mr. S...into Nairobi. I sniffed around the city a bit and discovered a bar like Clarke's. I didn't know about Clarke's at the time, o'course. I hadn't ever heard of anything such thing. It came as a shock to me, seein' Tor and Merlin and Blue Streak tossin' a few back with Felix Faust and Loki.

 "That's why Clarke's wasn't that big of a surprise to me. I'd been somewhere like it before."

 Rex whined softly. "So what's this place called?"

 "Now it's called 'Rick's Café Americaine.' Ever since `Casablanca' came out everyone around here wants to be Bogie and to run their own joint."

 "What, twelve years later? Still?"

 "Yeah, still. Things take longer to filter over here, Rex."

 Rex said nothing, instead continuing to look around. His hackles were beginning to rise the longer he and Bobo walked through Nairobi. There was something wrong here, and even if he couldn't see it or smell it he could still sense it.

 They finally arrived at Rick's, a ramshackle-looking group of buildings which seemed to have been connected by a giant hand smooshing them together. Rex cast a dubious eye at the corrugated roof and the broken windows and the moldy wooden door and said, "This is the place?" His tone reflected disbelief and the sense that he wouldn't even bother to mark this place, let alone enter it.

 Bobo snorted quiet amusement. "Yeah, this is the place. Trust me, it may not look much on the outside, but inside it's a whole different ballgame." He pushed the door open and entered.

 Rex twitched his head in a "Whatever" gesture and followed him, slipping inside before the door closed.

 Once inside both stood still. Rex looked at the dumbfounded Bobo and said, "Oh, yeah. This is just like Clarke's. "

 The bar was deserted, most of the lights flickering or out. The bar counter was empty and the lights over the mirror behind the counter were out. There was dust on some of the tables and what looked like the month-old remnants of a party on several of the other tables. Over everything lay the impression of long disuse. To Rex's nose the room was full of the odors of stale sweat, stale beer, and stale food, but most of all dust.

 Bobo, clearly nonplused, said, "I...I don't get it. When I was here before, it was always crowded! This was the most popular place on the continent for mystery men. It-"

 "That was before the bloody Colonial P'lice passed their Community Order laws, Bob." The voice was thick with phlegm and spoke with a distinctive Boer accent. Its owner emerged from the darkness in the corner of the bar. He was a short white man, unshaved and unwashed, and his clothes were soiled with a variety of stains, all of which looked unpalatable. He held a stained handkerchief over his mouth and coughed wetly before spitting on the floor and shuffling forward to shake Bobo's hand.

 Rex muttered, "`Bob'?"

 Bobo said, "Shaddup." He shook the man's hand and said, "What happened here, Jan? Where's...where's everyone?"

 Jan shrugged and tucked his handkerchief away. "The British closed me down when they shipped all the Kikuyu out, Bob. They imposed a curfew, and I can't stay open at night any more. And no one wants to come here during the day. Not now."

 Rex went for a sniff around the bar; he decided he wanted to know a little bit more about the place while he listened. Bobo scratched his sides in a preoccupied way and said, "I haven't been keeping up, Jan. Curfew? They shipped the Kikuyu out? Why?"

 Jan limped behind the bar and pulled out three glass bottles of beer. He poured one into a bowl and left it on the ground, and Rex eagerly trotted forward and began lapping it up. He offered one to Bobo, who took it with a pant-hoot of thanks, and began drinking from the third one.

 Jan said, "How much d'you know about the Rebellion?"

 "About what anyone in the States knows, Jan. Group of Kikuyu fightin' against the British. They want independence, and the Brits don't wanna give it to them."

 Jan grunted and spat, a greenish-yellow glob that spattered on the wood floor at his feet. "That's what they'd want you to think, over there. It's not that simple. The Kikuyu've been deprived for decades, the British playing favorites and taking away their land. The Kikuyu tried playin' it the Western way, and the British cracked down on them. So they formed a secret society-they've got dozens of them, always have had-and started the fight.

 "Both sides have been murderin' each other for two years now, and things have just gotten worse. A couple of weeks back the Brits finally decided they'd had enough and deported 100,000 Kikuyu from the city. That's when they started in with their Community Order laws." He spat again, and Rex got a sniff of something like consumption from him.

 Bobo began scratching himself, a habit Rex had seen him indulge in when he was deep in thought and wasn't paying attention to he was doing. "I think I read about that. What'd they deport them for?"

 "That's where the Mau Maus were gettin' most of their support from. The Mau Maus've been hiding out in the forests to the north, and most of the food and money they've been getting has been coming from the urban Kikuyu. The bloody Brits thought they'd choke off their supply lines. It hasn't worked yet."

 Rex paused and raised his head from his beer. "Where did they send them?"

 Jan said, with no small amount of venom in his voice, "They're calling them `detention camps' now. Didn't bleedin' work on us back in '01 and it's not going to work on the Kikuyu."

 Jan drained his beer and replaced it with a bottle of whiskey. He began taking small sips from the bottle's mouth.  "They sent the Kikuyu away and closed me down. Said I was catering to the wrong crowd, that I was `a threat to peace and order.' And I haven't had any customers since."

He chuckled grimly. "Christ, I thought Elmoran would kill the Brits all by himself when he heard that."

 Bobo drained his beer and stood up. "Sorry to hear about that, Jan. Tell me, where are the mystery men meeting, then?"

 Jan paused in mid-drink. "Nowhere, Bob. The damn Brits have chased them out of Nairobi altogether. Why?"

 Bobo gestured with his head at the door, and Rex got to his feet and made his way to the door. "Sorry, Jan, can't tell you. Case I'm working on. If we crack it, you'll know about it."

 Jan saluted the pair with his whiskey bottle, and the pair nodded and opened the door to the bar and left.

 They were only a few steps from the bar when four figures stepped out of the alleys on either side of the bar, bracketing the them. One of the four was a muscular white man wearing a faded hunting outfit-an old, worn t-shirt under a hunting jacket and an aged pair of pants. Although he was only in his mid-30s, his face had the worn, creased look of someone twenty years older, and every inch of exposed skin was tanned to the color and texture of leather. The second man was of average height and weight; he was slim rather than bulky, and his clothes-white linen pants and jacket over a white silk shirt-were of obvious quality and cost. Bobo instantly noticed that despite his appearance, which was typical of the rich Western tourist looking for cheap thrills on a safari, the man's face had a peculiar knowing hardness to it, and his eyes seemed to hold many secrets.

 Rex caught wind of the second pair and whirled around, snarling a warning to Bobo, who turned and looked in response. The first one was a tall black man-a Maasai, by the look of him-wearing only a lion skin loincloth and a strange helmet. His body had the physique of an Olympic runner, but he was covered with scars and dust and animal dung, as if he'd run through every kind of bad environment that the veldt had to offer, just to get to Nairobi. His eyes could not be seen from behind his mask, but his mouth was drawn into an angry frown, and Rex smelled danger coming from him.

 The fourth figure set Bobo's hair on end-literally. It was a blond ape, big enough to make Bobo feel tiny, and it was walking upright. As Bobo hunched his shoulders together and bared his teeth and as Rex dug in his heels and prepared to leap at the man with the mask, both heard a deep, rich voice in their heads.

 "No sudden moves, please. We don't think you mean any harm, but we need to be sure."

 The man in the safari jacket drew a Webley revolver and held it loose, not pointing at anything or anyone in particular but obviously keeping it ready for use. Bobo and Rex tensed and made ready to attack, and the other two men hunched over and balled their fists, but before anyone could do anything, the voice said, "He's a friend, Bill. He's here for the same reason we are."

 The three humans facing Bobo and Rex visibly relaxed, and Rex could smell the relief from their bodies. The voice said, "Bobo, Rex, some introductions are in order. I'm Kong," and Bobo and Rex got a mental image of the blond ape, "and these are Bill, who you might have heard of as "Congo Bill;" Ronald Jones, who you, Bobo, dealt with once before, in another identity; and the Beast, who you might have heard of for his actions in the Belgian Congo. We're here for the same reason you are: to stop He Who Never Dies."

Author's Notes:

See the Notes for the final issue of this story.

Next Issue: Between the Darkness and the Light, Part 2