by André Caroff
Soblen cleaned his glasses and then grabbed a police officer. “Do you know where they took…”
The cop shoved him back with the back of his hand without letting him finish his sentence. “Get out of here!” he barked. “Get on your bike and get out of here!”
As he went off, Soblen tripped him up and the cop sprawled across the door. “Listen to me,” Soblen said. The cop got up and started rocking his huge fists. Soblen scared him stiff by sticking his FBI badge under his nose and saying, “Calm down and use your noodle. Do you know where they took little Shirley Timber?”
The cop’s jaw dropped. “Shirley Timber?”
He clearly did not know. Soblen poked him in the stomach. “Remember,” he said. “It happened in the clearing. All the journalists were talking about it. Don’t tell me you’re the only one who’s not up-to-date!”
A flash of enlightenment sparkled in the policeman’s eye. He opened his mouth to answer, but at that very second the electricity came back on. A loud roar rose from the streets; rumbling motors and honking horns added to the din. A troop of officers burst out of the station, pushing Soblen and his partner onto the sidewalk. In the hullabaloo, Soblen lost his glasses. He got on his hands and knees and found them in one piece, but the crowd whirled around him and the cop had disappeared.
Soblen fought his way back to where he had left his bicycle and was astonished to find that no one had borrowed it to leave the city. For a moment he contemplated the maddening street. He knew that he would never be able to question anyone in the frenzied crowd.
But Soblen absolutely had to find out where Shirley Timber was, even though it was not really her but her cradle that he wanted to examine. Suddenly he remembered that he had an infallible way of persuasion. He pulled out of his pocket the automatic that Beffort had given him and sat in ambush on the porch. He chose his victim carefully. It was skinny man who looked like a weasel. He was literally dying of fear, running away as fast as his legs could carry him.
When Soblen pointed his gun at the man, he stopped so fast that his rubber heels screeched on the cement. “Come over here!” the doctor ordered.
The man turned pale and sobbed, “What do you want. I don’t have any money…”
“Come here!” Soblen repeated. The man looked in horror at the pistol and his eyes turned toward the crowd. No one was paying any attention to what was happening. He was sure that the frightening character with glasses could have killed him without raising an alarm.
Soblen pushed him rudely into the hallway and said, “I only have one question for you and then you can be on your way. Do you know who Shirley Timber is?”
The man’s teeth stopped chattering. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “My brother-in-law is the one who found her in the clearing!”
Providence had put one of the relatives of Seamus Holley, the park ranger, in front of him.
“Perfect,” the doctor sighed. “In that case you surely know where the little girl is.”
“Yes.” the man answered, feeling better. “Her grandparents came to get her. They have custody while waiting for…”
Soblen cut him off with a quick movement of his gun. “It doesn’t matter. I’m looking for the cradle she was found in.” He noticed that the automatic was terrorizing his subject so he slipped it into his pocket and resumed more calmly. “I know that you think I’m crazy, but this cradle is vitally important to me. It’s obviously thanks to the cradle that little Shirley didn’t become mad. If I can find it, the United States will have a means of defense against the rays of Madame Atomos. Can you tell me where they put it?”
The man had gotten a hold of himself. “Listen,” he said. “When my brother-in-law found the little girl, he took her in his arms straight away. The cradle stayed in the clearing and I guess the police impounded it with the cars and all the stuff of the Timbers and Turners.”
Soblen knitted his brow. “Now that’s probable,” he admitted. “Where is the impound?”
The man pointed down the road and said, “Behind the police station, which…”
Soblen ran to the station, went around the corner and burst into the courtyard, which was surrounded by a wall spiked with broken glass. A sergeant was filling up the tank of a big motorcycle. When he heard the footsteps he turned to Soblen and stared at him with no sympathy in his face, grunting, “What do you want? I hope you didn’t come to pick up your car because in that case…”
He cut himself off when he saw the FBI badge. Soblen said, “I just want to see a cradle.”
The sergeant nodded, “The one from the Timber family?”
“Exactly,” Soblen sighed in relief. “Can you show it to me?”
The sergeant wiped his hands on a rag, carefully put the cap back on his motorcycle’s tank and said, “I have to warn you that you can’t take it away. I’m going to lock up in five minutes and nothing can leave until things get back to normal around here.”
Soblen controlled his impatience. “I only want to see what material it’s made of.”
“Good,” the sergeant said. “Follow me.”
He led the doctor to a shed cluttered with all kinds of objects and furnished with shelves from floor to ceiling. He leafed through the log and laid his finger on a number. “1345,” he said. “A plastic cradle… There you go, that’s the one you want. Now we only have to find it in all this bric-a-brac!”
He found it faster than he led to believe and put it on a long table. Soblen asked for more light and saw right away that the object was made of molded fiberglass and he sat there stunned.
“You’re sure that this is Shirley Timber’s?” he asked warily.
The sergeant shook the tag attached to the cradle. “Look for yourself! Maybe it’s not a museum here, but there is some order.”
Soblen checked. No doubt about it. He thanked the sergeant and left with lots of worries, but he decided to go as far as he could. If the fiberglass had protected Shirley Timber from the dangerous radiation, there was no reason why it could not do the same under other circumstances.
When Soblen left the San Jose city limits, he was carrying four plates of polyester, seven feet long and two feet thick, on his back. With the wind and the bike it was like a high wire act.
Chapter VIII
Smith Beffort, Akamatsu and Dick Slatt felt like they were searching for a grain of salt in a sack of powdered sugar. They inspected the clearing and part of the hillside between the spring and the summit, but found nothing. Now they were a stone’s throw from the last aid station. The three men were sweating and their exhaustion was starting to get the better of their determination. They were forging through an ocean of greenery blocked by huge tree trunks, thick shrubbery and impassable granite masses. Every portion of land was different from the last when they crossed it, but instantly blended into a desolate uniformity.
“We’re going around in circles,” Dick Slatt grumbled.
“No,” Beffort reassured him in the same tone. “Look. We can see the Lick Observatory.”
Akamatsu, who was in the lead, entered the aid station where Seamus Holley and his colleague Dillon had taken a break between their two rounds. It was remarkably located—from its windows you could see a vast expanse. The park ranger Dillon had equipped it with a cot, a camp stove with a bottle of compressed gas and a tank of drinking water. In the pantry, which was made with two planks and a thin screen, were a dozen cans.
Akamatsu took a long drink of water and then picked up the telephone (which had no dial because it was a direct line to the San Jose police station) to check for a dial tone.
“Does it work?” Beffort asked, framed in the doorway.
“Haï,” Akamatsu said, his eyes riveted on a big, open book and his tongue casually reverting back to his native language. “Oh, e daï, Smith!”6
Beffort leaned over the page that the Japanese was pointing at. The book was a large register where Dillon’s hand had marked, in compact handwriting, all the insignificant daily events or import
ant occurrences during his shift.
The page began on Sunday, September 13. A calm day spotlighted with a blank line. The 14th was the discovery of the Anton family. The 15th was the Timbers and Turners.
“What’s getting you so excited?” Beffort asked. “We already know all this.”
Akamatsu pointed at a note, the last one. “I nearly missed this one. There’s no date for it, seems to be after the accident on the 15th. Look for yourself.”
Yesterday evening the team bringing the supplies to the Lick Observatory did not come back down like they do every week. Thinking they’d gone missing, I kept an eye on the hillside this morning. I didn’t see anyone. It’s weird. Seamus isn’t waiting me. I’ll go home right after going up here.
Beffort furrowed his brow. The note finished too abruptly to his liking and there was nothing to indicate when it was written.
“Probably the 16th,” Akamatsu seemed to answer the question that Beffort was only thinking. “But why didn’t this Seamus mention that he came by.”
Beffort looked toward the Observatory. A nerve twitched in his cheek and his jaws were clenched.
“The author of his note obviously went to see what had become of the supply team,” Akamatsu resumed. If I understand it correctly, the people in the Observatory have showed no sign of life for more than eight days.”
At this instant Dick Slatt, who had stopped to answer the call of nature, came in. His hat was cockeyed and his clothes dusty. With his submachine and shotgun he looked like a guerilla fighter. The first thing he saw was the water. “Goddamn!” he shouted, “but it’s organized here!”
“Speak more softly, Dick,” Beffort whispered. “I think we’re getting close to reaching our goal.”
The journalist tensed up. “Did you find something?”
“It could be that Madame Atomos has set up her headquarters in the Lick Observatory,” Akamatsu informed him. “We’re around two miles from it. But let me remind you that its 5:15!”
Smith Beffort looked at the hard road that led to the Observatory. It was winding and covered a lot of land to keep at a reasonable angle. From the observation post at the summit a lookout could clearly see every curve.
“We only have 45 minutes to act,” the G-man said. “We can’t take the road. Using the paths we’ll shorten the distance but increase the difficulties. We just need to know if we can get up there before Madame Atomos restarts her emitters.”
Dick Slatt swallowed a glass of water and looked balefully toward the lab. “Your deductions are perfect, Smith, but I have the feeling that we have no choice. We don’t have time to leave the danger zone and if we stay here, we’re cooked. The only solution is to climb to the summit as fast as possible.”
Beffort nodded in agreement. “Since that’s the only solution and we all agree, let’s go. Not a word unless it’s absolutely necessary and both of you do your best to stay close. Dick, you walk right behind me. Yosho, watch our backs. When we go out the door, head straight for the woods. Got it?”
Akamatsu and the journalist nodded and Beffort crossed the threshold. Followed by his friends he immediately got to the shelter of trees, headed east and turned onto the first path he saw. Silently the three men started the ascent. The ground was good, packed down by thousands of hikers who went there regularly and they made nice progress during the first 15 minutes. Then the path veered off sharply into another direction and they had to abandon it. They walked considerably slower through the woods. Still, they reached the summit at the end of another 15 minutes and could see the round, white Observatory through the branches, around 300 feet away.
The building looked deserted and the silence surrounding it was monumental. The central dome sparkled in the sunlight, a blinding reflection. The road ended there at a cement platform where a van and three cars were parked. A wire fence encircled the building and other facilities. The platform was bordered by clumps of flowers and two rows of fir trees whose shade looked inviting. Farther on there was a lawn, more flowers and a round fountain without any water. Finally there was the face of the building, pierced by a dozen hermetically sealed windows and three doors—the main door was accessible by a winding stairway.
The sight was imposing, almost solemn. The heavy silence that lay over the mountain created a really unbearable tension. The three men were sweating, giving off a sharp odor from their bodies. The tall grass stung them and the steel of the weapons heated up in their slippery hands.
“It’s 5:48,” Akamatsu whispered.
Beffort lowered his head and crawled toward him. “We’re in time, but from here on in, we’ll have to work fast… Dick?”
The journalist was lying in the grass, a few feet in front of them. Only the top of his hat was visible. He was just lying there, not moving, not answering Beffort’s call.
“Dick?” the G-man repeated a little louder.
“He doesn’t hear,” the Japanese whispered. “Let’s get closer.”
They were starting to crawl forward when something vibrated in the still air. It would not have attracted the attention of someone who was not wary, but Akamatsu and Beffort, who had heard the sound before, were petrified. They sunk into the ground while the vibration increased, slowly transforming into a hum. It was like a huge fly was buzzing above the trees before landing on a rotting corpse.
A few seconds passed, then the center of the hum seemed to crystallize right above Dick Slatt. He reacted then. He pulled himself up with the horrible slowness of a badly tuned automaton and started walking, even though his hat slid off his skull and dropped like a leaf around his abandoned weapons. With that awful, mechanical step, the journalist walked away and the humming went with him.
Beffort and Akamatsu looked at each other and understood each other without saying a word: Slatt had just been atomized after breaching the zone defended by the atoms controlled by Madame Atomos. Struck down now, the journalist was nothing but a walking corpse that the hideous ray guided to the Observatory.
Beffort consulted his watch and saw that it was 5:50. When he looked up. Slatt was stepping onto the platform and the central dome opened slowly like a yawning oyster. Soon after that, a long device was stuck through the opening and moved down in the direction of San Francisco like a cannon pointing at a distant target.
Beffort knew it was a lost cause. In front of him was the impassable barricade of atoms; behind were the forest and the paralyzing rays that would flood it in a few seconds—the rays that only affected white people. The G-man swiveled on his elbow, met the dark eye of his Japanese colleague and said, “I hope that you can conquer Madame Atomos, Yosho! I’ll say goodbye now in case I don’t make it out of here…”
“What are you going to do, Smith?”
Beffort did not answer. He slipped some explosive cartridges into his pocket, loaded his submachine gun and jumped up.
“Good God!” the hoarse voice of Akamatsu rang out. “You’re crazy!”
“In ten minutes,” Beffort replied, “I’ll be sleeping, paralyzed or crazy, even if I hide in a gopher hole. But I still have the ability to choose my death. Goodbye, Yosho…”
“Smith!”
Beffort smiled and ran toward the Observatory.
The old De Soto was not fast enough to catch up with the red and blue bus from the Baxter & Strong company, as hard as May Maxwell pushed it, but she still closed the distance between the two vehicles.
After the shock that Veronica McConnell experienced when the bus left her, she calmed down in the presence of May who was astonishingly coolheaded.
At 5 p.m. the bus entered Pescadero and disappeared from the sight of the passengers in the De Soto. May Maxwell passed a line of overloaded cars and crossed the little town honking the horn so she could rejoin Highway 1, which was straight and flat for several miles. She could see a long way, but the red roof of the bus no longer stuck out from the gray stream of vehicles fleeing toward different meeting points. May quickly slipped the De Soto into a side road and said, “You
’re from around here, tell me if the bus could have turned off toward the east!”
The teacher bit her lip until it bled. Now that the bus was no longer in sight, she had to fight against panic. It was the first time that she was in such a situation; the first time that she was not able to watch over the children in her care.
“Answer me,” May said. “I understand what you’re feeling, but we’re wasting precious time.”
Veronica shook her brown hair. “I don’t know,” she said coldly. “I don’t know any more than you do.”
May grabbed her hard by the arm and lashed out, “You have to know more than I do! Since the bus didn’t keep going straight, it could only have turned off to the east or west. Do you know a road out of this town that goes to Mount Hamilton?”
“No. Well, not directly.”
“Is it possible?”
“Of course! But you have to make a bunch of detours and today I think it would be hard. All the country roads are crowded. It would take hours to get to Mount Hamilton!”
May saw that she could not rejoin Akamatsu before 6 p.m. and her mission, such as she had foreseen it, was seriously compromised. Plus, she had had no opportunity to call New York like Akamatsu wanted and her actions up until now were absolutely for naught.
But there was the Asian bus driver. May was thoroughly convinced that the man worked for Madame Atomos and that he was a link in the terrorist chain laid out around the United States by the diabolical Japanese woman. Of course, not a single piece of evidence could support this quasi-certainty, except for the kidnapping of the children, but May Maxwell knew that her intuition rarely failed her. This kind of sixth sense had come to her after the tragic death of her family. It was like an inner voice that told her what to do before her brain had time to analyze the situation. So, May also experienced the strange sensation of being remote-controlled by an unknown power that she had to have blind faith in.
