The Smuggled Atom Bomb

The bureau head was silent for a long time. Finally he said, “See here, Hig. If this operation is real, maybe several million people might get killed all of a sudden. Good Americans. Risking the life of one or two or even a family isn’t important. If it’s not real — which is my opinion— there’s no risk.”

Higgins gestured as if to protect that logic. Then he said, “Yeah.”

McIntosh consulted his watch again. “You go back to the hospital. Tell Bogan that we did have a watch on the place ever since he started bringing tales to us. Tell him no stranger or anybody else was even near the hammock trees that night. Tell him we’re calling off our men. Let him feel we’re sick and tired of a lot of to-do that pans out as nothing. Give him the notion that his accident, and his ‘theory’ that it was something different, is the last straw.

He’s already sore at us for apparently doing little. If you say we did a job of watching he knew nothing about, and are quitting now because this time we know he was mistaken — well, it’ll leave him high and dry.”

“Sure will,” Higgins said. “And I hate to do it to him. He’s a nice guy, Mac. Got brains. Sense of humor. Guts.”

“Can you think of a better way to handle it?” McIntosh rose and set his Panama carefully on his head. “If I hurry, I can just about hit the middle of the sermon. My wife’ll be annoyed.” He put his arm over Higgins’ shoulder and propelled him toward the single elevator in service on that Sunday morning. “You haven’t really got this thing focused yet, Hig. Remember what I said. If it’s all a pipe dream, no harm done. If it’s not, we have to run the risk of one man being in danger in order to have any chance at all, ourselves, of stopping something”—as the elevator came, he hesitated—“that we’d gladly sacrifice every man in the bureau to stop.”

Higgins, with whose words, felt the full impact of his chief’s fear. He walked around the building and got in his car and started toward the hospital again. He could tell Bogan that a man under great strain often mistranslates what he sees and hears, and Duff Bogan had certainly been under strain.

Thinking about it alone in bed, after Higgins had gone, Duff agreed that Higgins might be right. After all, they had watched the house. They had acted, when he’d assumed they were ignoring his story. It could have been a lily box, bright insect eggs, a falling branch. Or could it? In his mind’s eye, going over and over the scene, he could see the slots in the screw heads. Insect eggs didn’t have slots. He could tell them that. But they wouldn’t believe it. He could hardly believe it himself. Maybe it wasn’t true. The FBI didn’t believe it, and the FBI wasn’t dumb, so why should he?

With the last shreds of consciousness — of consciousness free of head-splitting pain — Duff answered himself: It was real and awful and growing worse because nobody would do anything about it. So he would have to do what he could, as soon as he was able to leave the hospital. He’d have to work alone.

It was only afterward, long afterward, that Duff could collate and define the moods and incidents that followed. At the time they seemed unrelated and inexplicable.

His head mended rapidly. The doctors were pleased. Duff explained to them with simulated hauteur that physicists had tough brains. He missed Thanksgiving at the Yates home, but not the meal, as Eleanor borrowed from a restaurant a portable foodwarmer and brought turkey with trimmings to the hospital. Three days later he was released, bandaged, but whole again.

Immediately upon his return he noticed a difference in the temper of the household.

Mrs. Yates seemed nervous and worried. The two younger children were cross and strained.

And Harry Ellings had been suffering from what he described as “attacks”; he stayed away from work twice. Eleanor showed the change most sharply if more subtly.

She was, if anything, lovelier than ever and seemed more aware of her attractiveness.

Miami’s best beauty parlors had vied for a chance to give her wavy, tawny hair its prettiest cut; they had taught her new uses of make-up. Stores in Miami and Miami Beach had supplied her, for the first time in her life, with a luxurious wardrobe. These gifts were, of course, donated for publicity — the traditional due of a Bowl Queen.

She was edgy, Duff thought. No doubt she was overtired. The mere fact that he had lain for a week in the hospital had meant a large addition to her work. And now that Charley Yates spent every afternoon carrying newspapers, she was short another helper. Her own job, the demands made on a Queen-elect and the burden of housework were more than enough for any girl. But, in addition to that, she had arranged several dates with other young men than Scotty: Avalanche Billings, the fullback, for one; and Tony Bradley, a Miami businessman, for another.