Empire of Fu Manchu

West of Tokyo, Japan
Pan-Asian Empire
Saturday, May 18th, 1940



Death, in the form of a maddened riding horse, had suddenly and swiftly struck Emperor Pu Yi, from now on to be known to history by his temple name Kangde, and all of Pan-Asia was in mourning. Or at least all of Pan-Asia pretended to be in mourning; In reality, the people of Japan reserved their loyalty and devotion only for their own Heavenly Sovereign, Hirohito, and as for the people of China, there were precious few who held the deceased Son of Heaven in any high regard. The followers of the former Kuomintang (now joined to a panoply of Japanese right-wing parties and restyled the Party of Imperial Greatness and Dignity) viewed him for the most part as the embodiment of the betrayal of their Republican ideals by the top echelons of the party. And the ordinary Chinese would never forget that he had sided with the Japanese enemy against his former subjects. Within a day it was announced that Emperor Kangde would be succeeded by the Prime Minister Dr Fu Manchu who, while undoubtedly a Mandarin of the Imperial Manchu family with a rank corresponding to a European Baron, was also notoriously rumoured to be the leader of the Si-Fan. But this was less to his disadvantage in China that could have been expected, since the secret societies were not seen chiefly as criminal gangs, but clandestine political groups. And the pan-Asian, anti-colonialist stance of the Si-Fan was far from unpopular.

Emperor Kangde had died while riding in the countryside near Tokyo, and on the next day, the Government announced that the body would be brought by train to Hiroshima, where it would embark for the Manchu Imperial Mausoleums in Manchuria. As sign of respect, Emperor Hirohito sent the Empress and the two Princes to accompany the body of his co-regent on his last voyage, at least as far as Hiroshima, where they would bid it farewell in the name of the people of Japan. Whatever they might have thought of the deceased Emperor, most Pan-Asian citizens found it a moving gesture.


‘This is madness!’ Doctor Henry “Indiana” Jones muttered to himself, as he cowered in a cramped hole in the ground. ‘I’m an archaeologist, not some kind of secret agent!’

His hiding place was located near a water- and coaling station on the Tokyo-Nagoya railway, a few kilometres west of Tokyo. The roof was made up of a piece of cardboard fake track ballast, held in place by a detachable section of sleeper. It was light and easy to push away and allowed air to enter almost unhindered, but it did little to keep out the deafening noise of trains careening by just overhead. Since one of Fah Lo Suee’s henchmen had shown him here in the middle of the night, more than a dozen passenger and freight trains had rumbled by, making Indy reminisce of Great War artillery barrages endured in trenches or foxholes.

Again, he checked his wristwatch in the tenuous light that filtered through cracks in the cover. Madness or not, it was almost time. Backing out was not an option; Fah Lo Suee had kept Professor Falken as insurance against Indy going back on his word. The German Professor’s life now depended on him carrying out Fah Lo Suee’s orders to the letter. If he did, he had been promised he and Falken would be set free. She had also assured Indy that he would be doing his beleaguered country a great service by this mad stunt, although she hadn’t elaborated on that and Indy reserved a healthy dose of scepticism on that account. Still, trying to stave of the cold-blooded assassination off an innocent woman and her children was not something he could in good conscience refuse to do.

Then it was the indicated time, and again, the rumble of an approaching train made the ground shake and dust and dirt detach from the sides of the hole. But this time, instead of increasing to an unbearable crescendo, the vibrations began to subside, and although the noise continued to increase in volume, it descended in pitch. The approaching train was coming to a stop, presumably to take in coal and water for the voyage.

When the blotting out of daylight and the cessation of noise indicated that the train had come to a full stop, the archaeologist quickly detached the lid of his hole. He was watching the underside of a rail car, but he couldn’t tell if it was the one he was supposed to look for or not – he hoped it was. Frantic, he climbed up onto the sleepers and painfully began to crawl between the tracks, looking for the special box which would hide him until the time of action was near and also allow him entry into the train from below. Fah Lo Suee had assured him that when the engine was parked to receive coal and water, the hole would be right below the car of the Imperial family; but what if any cars had been added or removed? He would have just a few minutes to search.

There it was; A sheet steel box as long and broad as a man was screwed on to the bottom of the Imperial car, with a locked lid, opening sideways. It was placed just beside the waste tube from the car’s lavatory. Indy used the key Fah Lo Suee had given him to open the lid and crawl in. The inside was cramped enough to cause claustrophobia, and that was before he closed the door and bolted the lock. It felt like laying in a coffin, and just like a coffin, the the roof of the pitch-black compartment was another lid, opening into the floor of the car lavatory. But to avoid being discovered prematurely, he would not open it and enter the car until minutes before the train reached the rail bridge over the river Fuji. He had brought a small flashlight to be able to check his watch until the right moment. Then he would have to make his move, and make it right; failure meant death, for the Empress and her sons, for Klaus Falken, and last but not least, for himself.


Inside the luxurious Imperial rail car, furbished with silken sitting pillows, lacquered tea tables and costly rugs as if it was an annex to the imperial palace itself, Major Ishikawa, Captain of the Imperial Guards and personal body guard to Empress, tore his eyes from the snow-peaked summit of the Mountain Fuji. Sitting at the window, he had been transfixed by the beauty of the celestial peak, and had been trying to piece together a Haiku to capture the moment, but suddenly Prince Yoshi, aged four (“And a half!” as the young Prince would always insist on reminding) bolted out of the bath room, screaming and spoiling the mood. The Major sighed, but did not interfere when the Empress scooped up the terrified boy, wondering what was the matter. Separated from her at the age of three to be raised by private tutors, young Yoshi relished this temporary reunion with his mother, and truth to be told, so did the Empress.

‘There’s a monster striking the floor of the bathroom!’ wailed the kid. Crown Prince Tsugu, aged six, sighed and rolled his eyes, doing his best to look grown up and blasé, but Major Ishikawa did not. What if the young Prince was not making this up? Exchanging a worried look with the Empress, he loosened his katana in it’s scabbard and moved cautiously towards the door of the bathroom.


When he realised that the lid leading into the carriage had become stuck and wouldn’t budge, even though he had unlocked it and pushed, Indy had a momentary lapse of panic, which was understandable, since the Fuji railway bridge and the bomb that would tear the train apart was only a few minutes away, and there was no other way out of the box that, if he could not escape it, would, very briefly serve as his coffin. He began pounding it with all his might, but it didn't budge. Then, through the infernal din from the wheels rolling on the track less than a meter away, he heard what sounded like a child screaming in fright and whatever had prevented the steel sheet lid from pivoting upwards came loose. He pushed it open and sat up in his box like a vampire waking from his death sleep, squinting into the sudden light. He immediately realised that the door to the lavatory had been ajar, and being placed over the lid had prevented it from opening. But then somebody had been frightened by his hammering, and fled, closing the door behind him and removing the obstruction.

Now, however, the door was opening again, and Indy suspected that whatever guards were guarding the Imperial family were coming to investigate the strange sounds he was responsible for creating. He struggled to jump out of the box, but his muscles, cramping from prolonged inactivity did not react with their usual speed. Suddenly he was face to face with a wild-eyed officer brandishing a wickedly sharp Japanese longsword of the kind known as katana. Without a moments hesitation, the Japanese swung his sword back for a decapitating blow. Indy also did not hesitate, but sprung forward, managing to grip the guardsman’s wrists before he could strike. They wrestled a few seconds for the weapon, half falling out of the bathroom against the opposite wall of the car. The Empress screamed, and the Princes clung in fright to her skirts.

Shifting mental gears from swordplay to close combat, Ishikawa managed to pull back his head in time to avoid a headbutt from what he supposed was an american assassin. The two combatants became locked as one strove to disconnect to get room for his sword and the other fought to prevent just that. Then Ishikawa let go of Indy with his left hand and instead closed it with the apparent strength of a steel claw around the American’s windpipe.

‘Listen!’ the archaeologist croaked in Japanese. ‘The Fuji bridge… there’s a bomb… I’ve come to… save the Empress and the boys!’

‘Lier!’ The major feinted a knee to the groin, and as Indy instinctively crouched and raised a leg to protect that which is most vital to any man, the Japanese hit him to the face with an elbow. Fortunately for Indy the blow didn’t connect cleanly, and instead of breaking every bone in his face, he was simply stunned. In the next instant he found himself reeling back into the lavatory, with the Japanese, wild-eyed and screaming bloody murder, bearing down on him, katana extended in front of him for a killer lunge.

Already holding on to the edge of the door for balance, Indy began to slam it shut so that it’s edge hit the approaching blade, knocking it sideways and causing it to miss. Then, as the Major pushed against it order to force his way in after Indy, the American let go, and as his opponent stumbled forward, he caught him by the wrist and swung him head first into the open box in the floor. Immediately Indy kicked the lid closed and jammed it with the bathroom door. It was a death sentence for the Guard’s officer, but he had no time to dwell on that. He drew his revolver and stumbled, still half-dazed and bleeding from the corner of his mouth out into the stately car compartment.

Empress Nagako saw him come, saw the revolver in his hand, and pushed the frightened children behind her.

‘If you have any honour, foreigner, kill me if you must, but leave the children alone!’ she said in her most regal voice.

Indy shook his head. ‘I come to save you, Imperial Highness, not kill you. There’s a bomb set in the Fuji bridge. When the engine reaches the other end of the bridge, it will go off. There’s only one way we can get off the train before that happens; the moment we’re out over the river, we must jump off the train into the water!’

The Empress paled. ‘I- I don’t believe you!’

Indy swore and holstered his gun. ‘Highness, there’s no time to discuss this! I’m jumping with the boys, weather you like it or not. You can come or stay as you like, but the young Princes will need their mummy!’

The archaeologist ran forward, and picked up Tsugu, clasping him to his chest despite the boys terrified protests. The boy wriggled and fought, forcing Indy to devote all his strength to holding him as he ran for the door of the railway car.

‘Highness, if you want Prince Yoshi to live, you’ll pick him up and follow me NOW! I can’t take both!’ he cried desperately, as he opened the door, letting the howling speed draught in. Something about the westerner’s eyes finally convinced Nagako. She picked up Yoshi and ran to stand next to Indy in the door, shaking with terror. The railway engine, belching thick white vapour, was already beginning to cross the bridge over the quick-running Fuji river. Suddenly they were over water, and Indy half-pushed, half threw the Empress and her young son well clear of the bridge railing, which appeared blurred from speed, before taking the big jump himself, clutching the screaming Crown Prince Tsugu tightly. He narrowly missed one of the structural support struts.

In the next moment, the engine reached the far end of the bridge, setting of the mechanism that Si-Fan dacoits had placed there the same morning. The mechanism in turn set of a colossal explosive charge set under the apex of the bridge, blowing it, the train and all it’s occupants including the coffin and body of Emperor Kangde, sky high. An enormous cloud of fire and black smoke rolled out over the water, mercifully covering like a shroud the smoking remains of bridge and train as they collapsed into the river below.​

Las Vegas, Nevada
United States of America
Thursday May 23rd, 1940



The lights had gone out on Freemont Street, and the facades of the Northern Club and Apache Hotel were dark and dead, standing corpses in a dying city. As cities went, Las Vegas hadn’t been much even before the war, but it’s pride and joy had been the plentiful electric lights of the main street, which had been going through an incipient gambling boom since 1931. And now those lights, deprived of the power generated by the Hoover dam, had gone out.

Two days back, the assault divisions of Army Detachment Yamashita had shattered the thin US lines west of Las Vegas and taken the city. These former Imperial Army divisions had marched straight through the city for the Arizona border and the Hoover dam, which was why the lights were out; the power lines had been cut by the retreating US Army forces. Yamashita hadn’t paused long enough for many atrocities, just a few would-be heroes of freedom who took pot-shots at the marching regiments were quickly and ruthlessly transformed into martyrs for the same cause by the indiscriminate use of heavy automatic and light artillery fire. A few houses were blown up, a few dozen civilians killed; all in all, minor incidents. The capture of the strategic junction of Interstates 18 and 95, in the deep right flank of the US forces defending the gap between the Rockies and the Mexican border was far to significant to allow any delays, and General Yamashita ruthlessly pushed his men and machines on.

Those unfortunate citizens of Las Vegas which hadn’t already run away before the occupation (most had) soon discovered, that the strategy of Kharash was still very much in place. Shortly after the combat divisions had passed through, as the city waited in a state of dazed anticlimax for the inevitable occupation, rear echelon troops arrived. They were made up of older and uneducated draftees, with obsolete equipment, minimal training and was soon apparent, even less discipline. First, they set up roadblocks on the roads leading from Vegas into already occupied territory west of the city; no one would be allowed to escape into the areas held by Pan-Asia. ; Then trucks began to disgorge soldiers at the main road junctions and outside the most important buildings, where they began to establish themselves, ruthlessly wiping out those inhabitants of the nearby buildings that hadn’t had the sense to flee. Once multiple bases of operation had been established in this fashion across the small city, the Pan-Asians moved out in all directions in patrols of platoon size, combing the city block by block, house by house. True to the commands of the Imperial Viceroy Siwan Khan, they killed every living thing in their path. Some of them killed viciously and slowly, relishing every scream and trashing, some of them killed quickly and painlessly, but that was the extent of the mercy being given to the citizens of Las Vegas. That, and the fact that the killing was so deliberate and thorough that there was ample time to get away for most. Others chose not to.


In civilian life, back in China, he had been a farmer; not dirt poor, but certainly not well-to-do, not with various warlords and armed factions looting his village with depressing regularity. During 1935 alone, three separate warlords, the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army and the Kuomintang had ransacked his farm. One of his children had been killed, just for looking the wrong way at a soldier. It had been a boy too – typical of his luck, since he had more daughters than any man should have to provide for. Another son had been drafted into the Kuomintang Army and killed in the long war against the Japanese Devils. His wife and daughters had been hard-pressed to manage the farm when he too was conscripted. They had not starved, but come very close.

But today, nobody was pointing a gun at Yang Chen. Today, he was the soldier, a sergeant of the Imperial Pan-Asian army commanding a whole squad of riflemen! HE was holding the gun, and he savoured it as a rare treat when the once proud White Devils grovelled at his feet, begging him for mercy, for their families or for themselves. But he was not moved by their pleas, for now HE was the mighty one, killing as pleased and sparing none!

In the Sergeant Yang ordered his men to stop in front of a decrepit two storey wooden building in the western outskirts of the now mostly depopulated town. The coat of green paint was flagging, some of the windows were broken and the door was ajar. Here and there various items of clothing littered the ground, as if the inhabitants of the house had ran out carrying whatever they could grab in their bare hands. It seemed abandoned, but it would have to be checked nonetheless.

‘Quickly, check the house!’ Yang shouted, nodding to two of his men. He intended to keep most of his men out on the street, so that once the house had been declared safe, he could go in an get a first pick of whatever loot was to be had. While officers frowned on looting, it was not vigorously persecuted, and small valuable objects that could be hidden in the pockets of a uniform were fair game.

After a few minutes and some banging and crashing as the two young troopers, peasants from Yang’s own Sichuan province rummaged through the apparently deserted house, the cry of ‘All clear!’ rang out through an open window. Yang smiled, nodded to one of his soldiers to follow him, a giant brute of a man who Yang had more or less turned into a private body-guard and goon by means of shameless favouritism. He then walked in to collect the choice picks, full of himself as if he was the Son of Heaven himself. He spat on the floor as he crossed the door. The looting proved somewhat disappointing, although he added some small silver objects to his hoard.

It was on the second floor that he saw the two scouts he had sent ahead. They were laying in the middle of a hallway, unconscious or dead, although he saw no blood. Still, Yang paled and whirled to run back the way he had come. He found himself looking into the barrel of a gun, and beyond that, a face or rather parts of a face because it was half-covered by a red scarf. What could be seen was horrible though; thick bushy eyebrows, a long beaklike nose that no yellow Asian could have sported, and a pair eyes burning with hatred and malice.

‘Drop your rifle and be silent!’ the masked stranger whispered in a harsh, brutal voice, and Yang, who had almost wet himself from pure fear was in no hurry to disobey him. He didn’t even think about the fact that the order had been given in perfect Mandarin. The bodyguard, too stupid to realise when the time was right for feats of strength and when it was not, grunted something unintelligible and lumbered forward, intending to rip the American limb from limb.

‘Jericho!’ the Shadow said, and out of the open door to a nearby room stepped a black giant of a man dressed in jeans and a tight white t-shirt which showed off his rippling muscles to great effect. The bodyguard stopped suddenly.

‘Boss?’ Jericho asked.

‘Take care of that goon for me, Jericho!’ The Shadow said in English. ‘We can’t have any firing yet!’

The giant nodded and smiled evilly as he raised his hands in a wrestlers pose and advanced on Yang’s towering bodyguard. The Chinese snorted in contempt and copied the gesture. The two men met while The Shadow continued to hold Sergeant Yang at bay with a Colt to his head. After a few moments of getting to grips with each other, they each got a hold of the others throat and began to press and push. Both men grunted from effort, tensing their muscles into cords of living steel cable; but Jericho was the stronger man, and he gradually pressed his opponent down, down until he was on his knees, with bulging panicked eyes and arching backwards. Then bodyguard let go of Jericho Jones’s throat and grabbed the wrists of the black giant, trying to pry those Herculean hands away from his throat, but to no avail; Jericho kept pushing down, until the spine of his opponent snapped and he fell to the floor in limp heap, bent backwards at a repulsive and unnatural angle.

Yang watched the whole test of strength, almost fainting with fear. Again, looking into that seemingly colossal gun barrel aimed straight between his eyes, he felt that utter helplessness, that humiliating sense of impotence he had had endure so many times in the past, as soldiers took anything they wanted from his possessions.

‘All right, everybody, get ready!’ The Shadow ordered, and all along the corridor, doors opened to reveal men, men in civilian clothes sporting rifles, shotguns, revolvers.

‘Call your men!’ The Shadow ordered in a harsh voice. ‘Now!’

Yang complied, in a voice that to him sounded shrill and panicked. As the thundering steps of the soldiers approached in the stairs, The Shadow gestured to Yang to follow him and Jericho into one of the rooms, and again, Yang complied.

The battle that erupted seconds later was one-sided; the Americans were waiting in cover, and had placed a light Browning machine-gun in the storeroom at the end of the corridor, from which it could sweep it’s length with deadly effect. As soon as the last Pan-Asian soldier had come out of the staircase, they were moved down with as little pity as they had shown themselves. When the gunfire erupted, Yang did wet himself.

‘I… I surrender!’ he whimpered when the fire died out and a dreadful silence reigned outside the door. ‘I’m your prisoner!’

‘Your surrender is not accepted!’ the horrible, beak-nosed man hissed in his harsh, brutal voice. That was the last thing Sergeant Yang knew before his world exploded into white, then red and finally darkness eternal.

‘We can’t bring any prisoners’, the Shadow explained, standing over the still twitching body of the Pan-Asian sergeant, to the ragtag group of armed civilians that grouped about him. ‘We won’t be able to operate like the resistance groups in occupied Europe do against the Nazis, hiding among the populace, because we no longer have a populace to hide among! We’ll have to take to the hills and hide, like the Spanish guerrilla fighters of the Napoleonic wars.’

The men grunted their agreement, but the Shadow was not finished.

‘Siwan Khan, the Pan-Asian viceroy, thinks himself very clever. He thinks that by driving out the civilian population, the possibility of armed resistance, like the Nazis are experiencing in Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Holland, Norway and Poland goes away. But he’s quite wrong; as resistance fighters we’re better off than those of those unfortunate countries! Because if there is any act of resistance against them, do you know what the Nazis do?’

They shook their heads.

‘They hang ten civilians, sometimes even women or old people, for every one of their soldiers killed! Now, when we shoot one of Siwan Khan soldiers, who is he going to kill in revenge? Who do we fear to loose now? What do we have left to loose?!’

‘No one! NOTHING!’ they shouted, brandishing their weapons fiercely in the small, stuffy room.

‘That’s right!’ The Shadow concluded. ‘Now move out! Siwan Khan and his Pan-Asian armies might have driven freedom from these lands, but soon we will make him notice that while freedom might be gone, it’s Shadow still lingers!’​