by André Caroff
Beffort swallowed the rest of his beer and stood up from his stool. “Okay, doctor. You take care of that with the Boss. Yosho and I are going to San Francisco—that’s where the warship is docked.”
The captain of the Maine was Ernest Forrest. He was a tall, thin bachelor, who did not talk much and joked even less. The business with the yacht made his mood even darker and he welcomed Beffort and Akamatsu without pleasantries.
“What’s this all about?” he grumbled. “You think navy men are crazy?”
“Have you recently had an operation, captain?” Beffort countered.
Forrest scowled. “If you’re playing psychic,” he said dryly, “you lose! Anybody could have found out that I was hospitalized and had three months medical leave for a fractured right clavicle. Is that what’s ruffling your feathers?”
Smith Beffort put his hat on the table. He felt tired, saddened by the death of May Maxwell and was not in the mood to be pushed around. But he spoke politely, “Captain, don’t think that my colleague and I came here to wake you up at 3 in the morning only to admire your collarbone. On the telephone I told you very succinctly what I was expecting from you—maybe you didn’t understand?”
Captain Forrest clenched his fists. He was really furious. “Brain transplants,” he spit out, “don’t have access to the navy! Your investigation is ludicrous, mister…”
“Beffort. Special agent sent by the director of the FBI. And this is Mr. Akamatsu. Now, would you like to take a look at our cards and see that you are not the only master on board.”
“I forbid you…”
“You can’t forbid or allow anything,” the G-man cut him off fiercely. “For the moment I’m only asking you to listen to me. You sent a boat belonging to Madame Atomos to the bottom of the sea. In retaliation she is going to sink your ship today at noon.”
Forrest stiffened. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. We happen to have very good reasons to believe that one or more of your men are prepared to sabotage the Maine!”
Forrest dropped his jaw and Beffort pressed on. “And let me add that the saboteur will have absolutely no responsibility. To understand this contradiction, you have to read this report, captain.”
He unfolded the paper signed by the coroner and the electrical engineer from Pescadero. Forrest took it, read it quickly and understood. He asked skeptically, “This isn’t serious, is it?”
“It’s the truth, captain. My colleague has seen how this electronic brain works.”
Forrest sat down and loosened his tie. He sat for a minute without moving and even though Beffort thought he was too stunned to think straight, he said the most sensible thing that Beffort and Akamatsu had heard in the last few hours:
“Let’s say that all this is true, that Madame Atomos has decided to sink my ship to get her revenge. In short, let’s say whatever you want, except for this—before the Maine opened fire on her yacht, Madame Atomos could not have guessed that it would be precisely my ship that would cause the loss of her boat. Okay?”
Troubled now, Beffort and Akamatsu had a feeling about where Forrest was going and nodded.
The officer almost gloated. “Well, why would she have operated on one of my crew members in anticipation of a totally unpredictable event?” Since the two men kept silent, he continued in the same vein. “If I had a potential saboteur on board, Madame Atomos could not have operated on him in such a short time. There remains, then, the possibility of introducing a stranger onto my boat. Now, since the yacht was sunk no one has been authorized to get on or off the Maine. Except for you, sirs!”
“The wounded from the yacht?”
“Children and a young lady. A rowboat transported them to land where ambulances were waiting and none of my boys got off the rowboat. I can assure you that no one could have set foot on this ship!”
“You’re certainly right, captain,” Beffort admitted. “The Maine is a warship and it’s clear that you can’t just slip onto it. Nevertheless, we can’t neglect anything. Madame Atomos said that she would sink the Maine. So far, the she-devil has almost never failed to accomplish her criminal plans. When we seemed to have the upper hand, it’s only because she has momentarily left the game. Still, we beat her recently and she can’t use her famous paralyzing ray. So, Madame Atomos is vulnerable, but you have to be more imaginative than her.”
He lit a cigarette after passing his pack around and continued, “Captain, how would you go about destroying this ship?”
Forrest furrowed his brow. “There’s only two ways. On the inside I would place a damn bomb near the ammunition hold. From the outside I would use a torpedo or a mine.”
“It’s 4 a.m.,” Beffort said. “Before 9 o’clock this ship has to be searched from top to bottom, its hull examined and the crew should all be X-rayed. Moreover, we’ll check out the San Francisco Bay. We have to be certain that no submarine is hiding in it. At 9 a.m., whatever the results, the Maine will be completely evacuated. What do you think, captain?”
Forrest straightened out his tie. “I agree on every point, except the last. I will stay on my ship no matter what happens!”
It was tradition and Beffort made no objection.
By dawn the navy had made a clean sweep of the San Francisco Bay, but no one could swear that a submarine was not hiding in some nook or cranny of the huge bay. They isolated the Maine and surrounded it with a protective belt that was pretty much impassable. Likewise, the ship was searched and the crew X-rayed. The two examinations came out negative. At 9 o’clock the Maine was evacuated by the officers of Captain Forrest, who, with death in his soul, obeyed a direct order from the White House.
At 10 a.m. a message from Madame Atomos arrived at different news agencies, which quickly broadcast it across the entire country. The text was short and clear: From my headquarters in San Francisco I have enjoyed following the ridiculous precautions that the navy has taken. I challenge the United States government to stop me from destroying the Maine! Let me add that I will sink the ship myself!
Countless patrols searched San Francisco street by street, house by house, but Madame Atomos was nowhere to be found. At the same time, the warning sent by Soblen was widely received among the population. 2,800 people who had recently undergone a brain operation were examined. It was another failure because they did not discover the control brain in any of the patients.
At 11 a.m. the entire world knew about the strange duel pitting Madame Atomos against the United States. At 11:30 the Maine was pictured on every television screen on the five continents and an extraordinary suspense commenced.
The “Atomos Zone” became an operational zone and a no-fly zone. The army seized the airfields; the trains were stopped; and all traffic was suspended.
As the minutes ticked off, the silence became heavier and covered the petrified city like a leaden blanket. Everyone was holding their breath. Even though the menace was invisible, it seemed to stretch its dark wings over the San Francisco Bay, which, however, brightened under a clear, cloudless sky. At 11:50 Smith Beffort looked at the Maine through his binoculars for the twentieth time. It was a magnificent modern ship, but Beffort was not much interested in it since the crew was no longer at risk. If he was watching it, it was to better understand Madame Atomos. She had said, “Let me add that I will sink the ship myself!” How did the sinister Japanese woman figure on doing it?
“Don’t rack your brain, Smith,” Akamatsu advised. “No one can sink the ship. Everything’s been seen to and I’ll bet that Madame Atomos already knows that she’ll fail.”
“I’m not so sure, Yosho. We know she’s hiding in the city and we haven’t been able to find her lair. In this game, she has already won the first round. Plus, the fate of the Maine doesn’t really matter to me.”
“I know. You want the hide of Madame Atomos and everything else is in the background. Tell me, Smith, have you been checked out?”
Beffort turned toward his colleague. “No. I suppose you’re talking
about my brain?”
“Exactly,” the Japanese said calmly.
“What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing in particular. It’s just an idea that crossed my mind. You, me and Soblen, the Boss, the president of the United States and the admiral in command of this fleet have all forgone this formality. I think it’s a serious mistake. Moreover, this building we’re in, on the pretext that it belongs to the army, has not been searched by the patrols. If I were Madame Atomos, I would put a control brain in the head of a high, unsuspected individual and I would hide in this building.” His voice was slightly ironic because he did not really believe it. As he had said, “it’s just an idea that crossed my mind!”
At any other time, Smith Beffort would probably have tried to analyze the thought and Akamatsu would have recalled that the simplest ideas are often the best. But it was no time for thinking—it was time for action.
Over the last few hours they had done as much as possible. Beffort, Akamatsu, Captain Forrest and many others had looked into the problem. The expert group had ended up feeling confident in its members’ unquestionable skills and each one told himself that if he did not see everything clearly, the others would catch what he missed.
And then, in the end, it was only a matter of protecting a ship, which did not present any real difficulties…
At 11:55 the radio that Beffort had left on started crackling. There was a weird shift in volume and then a voice came out the speaker. “Madame Atomos here. Mr. Beffort, I hope that you can hear me… I’m sure you can and believe me, I’m very glad because it is especially to you that I am speaking. Mr. Beffort, you have committed an inexcusable error! The worm is already in the fruit! In five minutes the Maine will explode…”
Livid, Beffort went up to the radio.
Chapter XV
“…and you can do nothing about it!” Madame Atomos continued. “Just as you have no idea where I’m speaking from. I took precautions. So, the United States is going to be a laughing stock in the eyes of the world and it’s your fault! Oh, Mr. Beffort, you disappoint me. After such a blunder, I hope the FBI director will fire you…”
Akamatsu turned up the radio, but Madame Atomos’ voice did not change in volume. Then Akamatsu switched off the broadcast and to Beffort’s amazement the Japanese woman continued in the same tone…
“First of all, you caught me and then I made you let me go. You put up with the insult stoically, escaped the bomb I left for you in the Buick and then found out about the death of May Maxwell and a number of the children. There, Mr. Beffort, you should have reacted and asked yourself the following question: why would a warship like the Maine have fired on a boat that was slower than it, was unarmed and, moreover, was only a few hundred yards away?”
Akamatsu took advantage of the short pause in the woman’s spouting to say, “The radio has been tampered with. Look at the wire. Madame Atomos is speaking in front of a microphone that is somewhere nearby.”
“Very simply because I ordered the captain to do so, Mr. Beffort!” she continued. “How is it that you weren’t surprised by a leave of three months for a simple broken collarbone? Ernest Forrest was a real find! A bachelor, the captain of the Maine, with a room that you are in right now. I could not pass up the assistance of a man so well placed. So, I had Forrest operated on by my specialist and… Oh, you found the wire!”
Akamatsu and Beffort froze.
“Pity,” Madame Atomos bemoaned. “I am going to have to leave you. But I think that you have understood that it’s Forrest who is sabotaging the Maine? His cot, which nobody dared inspect, is stuffed with explosives. Hold on, Mr. Beffort, do you hear that…”
A huge explosion shook the building. Beffort ran to the window and saw the Maine almost cut in half by the violence of the blast. It was starting to sink.
“What do you say to that?” the voice of Madame Atomos asked. Then she added reproachfully, “Go on, answer me. I’m in the next room with the corpse of the poor captain who is no longer any use to me. If you don’t hurry, Mr. Beffort, you’re going to find two corpses in… this…”
There was a dull thud. Beffort and Akamatsu ran and almost broke down the door, though they only had to turn the knob, and burst into the sparsely decorated den.
Captain Forrest was dead, but Madame Atomos, stretched out on the carpet, had enough strength left to smile. Beffort leaned over her. “Why did you do this?” he asked.
“I can’t leave the city, Mr. Beffort,” the Japanese woman answered feebly. “I had too much confidence in myself… The loss of my yacht… was not anticipated…”
Green froth flowed between her lips and her eyes rolled up. For a second she fought against death. Then the spasm passed and she opened her mouth, breathed in and her lungs hissed violently.
“I poisoned myself,” she whispered. “But nothing is over, Mr. Beffort. I have prepared for the future in case of this. Catherine Lomakine will become Miss Atomos… do you remember, Mr. Beffort?”
He remembered. Catherine Lomakine was the daughter of a naturalized Polish-American couple. Madame Atomos had kidnapped her more than a year earlier in order to make them obey her7. So, the house of Lomakine, located on Lake Whitney, had lately been one of the last refuges of the sinister Japanese woman.
“When you are dead,” Beffort growled, “Catherine will be free!”
Madame Atomos giggled. “Brainwashed, Beffort! The girl is my daughter in mind. She is smarter, more terrifying and more ambitious than I… I wanted to bring down the United States… Miss Atomos wants the world!”
“You’re lying!”
The dying woman stared at him insolently. “Poor Mr. Beffort, You’ll miss me. In two or three months when I’m rotting in the ground, Miss Atomos will attack humanity… Her ways will be 100 times stronger than mine, but less direct… Fear will reign on this planet that will be invaded by monsters. Babies will be born blind, deformed… It will be agonizing, Mr. Beffort… Agonizing! The bacteria, the germs, the…”
“Be quiet!” Beffort yelled.
“Calm down,” Akamatsu warned. “She’s delirious.”
Madame Atomos closed her eyes and said again, “I am completely lucid, Mr. Beffort. Your friend is wrong if he thinks I’m babbling. The poison I took leaves me little time… What do you want to know?”
“How did you blow up the Maine?”
“The detonator was in Captain Forrest’s cabin. It could be controlled remotely from this office. Child’s play…”
“Where is Catherine Lomakine now?”
A silent laugh shook through Madame Atomos. “In the Pacific. Atomos City is a huge floating island that can disappear under the waves in case of an emergency. You… you don’t have the slightest chance of finding it.”
A painful grin deformed her face. In one final effort she raised herself up, grabbed Beffort’s lapels and said, “I’m about to die, Mr. Beffort… You can be sure that in what I just said, there are as many lies as there are truths! Catherine Lomakine is dead. Atomos City doesn’t exist. And… I was only following orders!”
She let out a gruesome laugh, fell back and went stiff.
“Madame Atomos is dead,” Akamatsu said. “Unless this, too, was a ploy?”
Smith Beffort nodded. “I was thinking the same thing, Yosho. Don’t let her out of your sight while I go alert Max Ritter.”
He went into the next room, picked up the telephone and asked Ritter curtly to send an ambulance, a doctor and to come himself with a team of sharpshooters.
“Damn!” Ritter shouted, still traumatized by the destruction of the Maine, “did you capture Mrs. What’s-her-name?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” the G-man replied coldly. “Get over here fast!” He hung up the phone without waiting for Ritter’s reaction and rushed back to the den. The body of Madame Atomos was lying in the same place and Akamatsu was leaning over her.
“What are you doing?” Beffort inquired.
The Tokkoka man parted
the Japanese woman’s hair and whistled softly. “Come here and see, Smith,” he said. “She was telling the truth when she claimed to be following orders!”
Beffort hunched down and saw a little, pale scar etched into Madame Atomos’ skull. Earlier Beffort had seen the exact same scar on the heads of Captain Osuma, his second-in-command Yamaguchi and the three sailors. “That’s incredible! So, the diabolical woman was only a robot obeying orders from a superior. I can hardly believe it, Yosho…”
Akamatsu stood up and lit a Shinsei cigarette with a trembling hand. “The autopsy will tell us if Madame Atomos is, as we believe, equipped with a control brain. If so, we’ve only just begun, Smith! Atomos City probably exists and the world will have to join forces to destroy it. We are on the verge of the most formidable battle that humanity has ever known! I wonder how many other Madame Atomoses we will have to face?”
Aghast, the two men started at each other for a long time. The terrible woman was dead and the United States was going to cry out in joy. Did Beffort and Akamatsu have the right to reveal their awful secret prematurely?
“If we talk, no one will believe us,” Beffort mumbled. “Besides, what’s the point? Modern weapons are useless against an invisible enemy. Believe me, Yosho, we should fight this one alone.”
It was Akamatsu’s turn to nod. “Smith, I’m ready to devote my life to this fight. I’ll do whatever you say…”
“Where is she?” Max Ritter asked.
Beffort looked at the weapon he was gripping. With an indefinable smile on his face he said, “Back off, Ritter. Madame Atomos is dead. Let the stretchers through…”
Later Akamatsu and Beffort watched the ambulance drive away. The news had already spread through the city like wildfire. Soon America and the world would know that the sinister Japanese woman was out for the count.
