"I get all that, but why do they want to blow up Gotham?"
Barbara didn't answer immediately.
Perhaps she was thinking about that question too.
The red dot on the map of Gotham kept blinking, each pulse landing right over the city center.
Peter enlarged the cached route and checked when it had last been updated.
"This record is from six hours ago."
So that enclosed truck had left Safar long ago.
What they were looking at now were the footprints the nuclear bomb had left on its journey west.
As for the bomb itself, it might already be almost home.
Their home.
How polite.
Leaving Gotham, traveling halfway around the globe, then coming back to visit Gotham.
Was this the egg-ternal bond between Gothamites and the Gotham Egg?
Chen Mo stared at the map, trying to find some logic in that red dot.
He found none.
"I found something."
Barbara fed a new file into the shared channel.
"After the fifty million came through, the buyer sent the arms broker a receipt key. I followed that key to a synchronization node. It wasn't buried very deep. Almost deliberately shallow."
Batman looked up.
"Play it."
The screen lit up.
A man sat in front of a gray wall, his face hidden in shadow and his voice digitally altered. There was no flag behind him, no insignia, not even a table.
The setup was clean.
Yet his tone was very gentle when he spoke.
"Over the past century, humanity has tried negotiation, alliances, sanctions, and mutual deterrence."
"The results are plain for all to see."
The image changed.
War.
Cities.
Streets after a bombing.
And maps showing the distribution of nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia.
The man continued:
"War can never end, because those capable of starting wars