The Hamlet Warning (23 page)

“Listen, you son of a bitch,” he said. “I know you put out the contract on me tonight. I’d just as soon blow your head off as look at you.” 

The Professor licked his lips, stared at Loomis through his thick glasses, and said nothing.

“There’s only one reason you’re still alive,” Loomis told him. “You may be worth more to me alive than dead. I need to talk to Ramón. You know how to reach him.” Loomis picked up the phone and tossed it into the Professor’s lap. “Call him,” he said.

The Professor slowly shook his head. “I don’t know where he is,” he said. “Ramón moves constantly …”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Loomis warned. “Don’t take me for an idiot. You’re Ramón’s top man in the capital. You’re bound to know how to track him down if you want to. And you damned sure better want to. I have a proposition for him. You might find it interesting. He has a hostage — the girl, María Elena de la Torre. I’ll swap you for her. Fair trade.”

The Professor looked at the phone but made no move. “I can give you Ramón’s answer now,” he said. “He will not trade. I’m not that important to the movement. The girl has considerable propaganda value …”

“There are other things that won’t wait,” Loomis said. “The war has to be halted. It’s a matter of life or death to the entire city of Santo Domingo. If the war isn’t stopped, there’s a good chance neither you nor Ramón will be alive this time tomorrow night.”

The Professor looked up. “The girl has told a crazy story,” he said. “Ramón doesn’t believe her.”

“Maybe he’ll believe me,” Loomis said. “I can give him names, places, dates.”

“Then there
is
a nuclear bomb in Santo Domingo?”

“You better believe it.”

“Who is behind it?”

“If we knew that, we might be halfway to finding it. All we know for certain is that it’s international. Men have died in Europe, maybe elsewhere, to put it here. This man is from the CIA. He’ll confirm what I say.” The Professor frowned at the phone for a full minute. Johnson tossed him a towel to wipe his ear and beard. He then lifted the receiver and dialed so rapidly Loomis couldn’t ascertain the number. But he knew the clicks could be determined on the monitoring tape, if need be.

The Professor asked to speak to Ramón. An underling apparently gave him some difficulty, but within two minutes he had Ramón on the line.

“The
norteamericano
, Loomis, wishes to speak with you,” the Professor said. “I don’t know what he is going to say, but don’t let my safety be a consideration in your decision. The movement is too important. And I think you should be aware that this conversation is probably being recorded and your location traced. Have care. I wouldn’t put you in this potential danger, except that Loomis has partially convinced me that the girl is telling the truth.”

He handed the receiver to Loomis.

Ramón’s voice was cool, distant. “Loomis, I’m trying to decide whether you are incredibly good, fantastically lucky, or just plain stupid. Which is it?”

“You tell me,” Loomis said.

“If it’s any satisfaction to you, eight of my best staff officers are dead. But I think it’s going to work against you. My men are terribly angry.”

“I got what I went after,” Loomis said. “He’s right here. You can have him back. All I want is the girl in exchange.”

The line was silent for a moment. “I’m reluctant to let her go, Loomis. Aside from the publicity value, she has a lively, entertaining imagination.”

“Her story isn’t original. I first heard it from the CIA.”

“And you believe them?”

“I believe the story. You better believe it, too. I can’t do my job, track down that bomb, with your fucking war going on. Let’s call a cease-fire long enough to find it. Then you people can fight for the next thirty years, for all I care.”

Ramón snorted into the phone. “I’ve spent two years building this revolution. I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets by telling you that the next twenty-four hours, maybe the next twelve hours, will be decisive. My men are ready, psychologically. If I hesitate now, I’ll never get back to this point. How do I know this isn’t a clever ruse to stall my whole revolution right at this critical time?”

“You don’t,” Loomis said.

“I’m supposed to trust you?”

“Trust your instincts. You’re bound to know that something unusual has been going on. Surely you’ve had reports.”

“All of your unusual activities could have been staged for my benefit.”

Loomis sighed. “Ramón, I’m tired. I’ve had a rough night. I’m going to tell you once more, and if you don’t believe me, you can go fuck yourself. A good portion of Santo Domingo will be vaporized at one o’clock this afternoon. I don’t know what part. The bomb may be on your side of the lines, it may be over here. We need a house-to-house search to find it. There’s no way to do that with a war going on. And you’re the only man who can call a cease-fire.”

Loomis listened to the faint hum of the open line while Ramón wrestled with his decision.

“I’ll return the girl,” Ramón said. “In exchange for the Professor, of course. He’s much too modest. I do need him.”

“And the cease-fire?”

“That will depend on you and on El Jefe. The girl will bring you a proposal. I’m not inflexible.”

“A proposal for a cease-fire?”

“Perhaps. A compromise. It’s rather complicated. I would prefer to allow María Elena to describe it. Actually, she first suggested the plan. We have been negotiating for two days.”

“Where will we make the exchange? And when?”

“How about an hour from now at the northeast corner of Parque Independencia? You can bring the Professor out from your barricades there. María Elena will be escorted from our lines. The exchange can be made in the middle of the street, under both rebel and government guns.”

“All right,” Loomis said. “An hour from now.”

*

The exchange was made without incident. Loomis walked Professor Salamanca out from behind the barricades toward the center of the street, well lit by battery lanterns. A uniformed rebel captain brought María Elena out. Her hair was disheveled, and Loomis could see lines of fatigue under her eyes. She seemed completely dazed and exhausted. He put an arm around her and walked her to El Jefe’s Cadillac. She clung to him desperately but didn’t talk until they were in the car, driving the few short blocks to the
palacio
. He felt a shudder pass through her body. “Being away from you was the worst part, Loomis,” she whispered. “Hold me. Please hold me.”

In the
palacio
driveway, she regained her composure. “Ramón has agreed to a coalition government,” she said. “But on these terms: he will accept my father as President, with the provision that he be named First Secretary. He will accept the government generals in the coalition, provided they are matched in number and position by his own generals.”

“And El Jefe?”

“He must leave the country before there can be a cease-fire.”

“Then that’s no compromise,” Loomis said. “El Jefe might step down, accept some honorary title for the good of the country. But Ramón is asking too much.” 

“That’s what I told him,” María Elena said. “We argued for two days.”

“And he still doesn’t believe the bomb exists?”

“He’s not thoroughly convinced. But he
is
concerned. You see, he’s hedging his bets. He thinks that if the atomic bomb exists, El Jefe will resign. If the story isn’t true, then he has lost nothing in making the offer.”

Loomis was impressed with Ramón’s shrewdness. But when the proposal was explained to El Jefe, the old revolutionary didn’t see the maneuver in that light. He believed that Ramón had heard rumors of the United States Navy force leaving Guantánamo Bay and assumed that Ramón hoped to effect a partial victory before the landing of U.S. Marines.

Despite María Elena’s exhaustion, El Jefe led her repeatedly through her arguments with Ramón, hunting some clue to Ramón’s thought processes. Loomis put a stop to the interrogation by summoning the
palacio
physician, who declared María Elena near collapse. He gave her a sedative and ordered her to bed. “Come to me when you can,” she whispered to Loomis. “I need you.”

El Jefe and Loomis went to work planning the defense of the
palacio
. El Jefe vetoed Loomis’s plan for a tank assault downriver to sever rebel lines of supply. The tanks would be needed to support a final line of defense, he insisted.

Ramón’s proposal plagued El Jefe.

“He must know something we don’t,” El Jefe reasoned. “What does your CIA friend say about the possibility of intervention?”

“He doesn’t know, of course. But he’s doubtful.”

El Jefe frowned, thinking. “Ramón must have good information that the U.S. Marines are en route here. The United States must be seriously considering intervention. They know Ramón is a leftist. Perhaps they don’t want another Cuba. What do you think?” 

“I’m more concerned over the bomb, at the moment,” Loomis said. “I think we should give it precedence.” He checked the time. Two minutes after 2:00 A.M. Less than eleven hours remained. “But even if the Marines landed at sunup, they probably couldn’t secure the downtown section by one o’clock. I think our only hope of finding that bomb is to accept Ramón’s offer.”

“I’ll see him in hell first,” El Jefe said.

“That may be sooner than we think,” Loomis said.

El Jefe looked up, surprised by the impertinence. But his mind seemed to be occupied with another thought.

“We must make the effort,” he said.

He picked up a telephone and summoned an aide.

“I am making a formal request for U.S. intervention,” he said.

Chapter 26

Minus
09
:
15
Hours

Even in the dead waste of the night, the White House press corps was not without resources. Within minutes of the first arrivals at the White House, most of the veteran reporters were alerted to the unusual gathering of national leaders. By the time the reporters themselves arrived in the predawn darkness, enough of a roster had been assembled to ascertain that the National Security Council was meeting in emergency session.

Speculation ranged widely among the press. Those with early deadlines fished desperately for solid information. The wire services sent queries to correspondents throughout the world, seeking clues.

Rumors of a new crisis in the Middle East persisted. Reports confirmed that most of the Sixth Fleet was at sea in the Mediterranean, which could mean anything. But the tell-tale activities of auxiliary ships — oilers, tenders, and such — seemed routine. Longtime observers in that part of the world discounted any extraordinary developments.

A few believed a new crisis had surfaced in the Far East. But again, no movements of the Seventh Fleet in Pacific waters or of the Strategic Air Command offered confirmation. Key Military Air Transport commands across the continental United States provided no clues.

Inevitably, speculation returned to the situation in the Dominican Republic. Correspondents on the scene from the
New
York
Times
, the
Washington
Post
, and the
Chicago
Tribune
reported a rapid deterioration of the government forces in Santo Domingo. Yet no one seriously believed that the Administration might be considering intervention. El Jefe certainly was not a favorite of the State Department; he had blocked too many United States programs and had spoken out too often on United States interference in Dominican affairs. The Latin America experts among the press corps said intervention was inconceivable. They pointed out that Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 occupation was now universally deplored by political authorities and historians.

A few persisted in believing that the Dominican Republic was involved. Reporters with high sources in the Navy Department learned that the aircraft carriers
Enterprise
and
Ranger
, along with escort destroyers, had left Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on such short notice that liberty parties flown to Kingston and San Juan were left ashore. These sources admitted that marines from Little Creek, Parris Island, and the barracks at Guantánamo had been rushed aboard to augment fleet marines.

By 5:00 A.M., the speculation stories had jelled into a consistent summation: something extraordinary was afoot at the White House, leading the President to call the National Security Council into emergency session in the middle of the night. All evidence pointed to some action by the United States in regard to the deteriorating situation in the Dominican Republic.

This was the gist of stories prepared by television networks and the wire services to lead the morning news budget.

*

Inside the White House, in the Situation Room near the National Security Adviser’s basement office, the President after a full night of work sat quietly smoking a cigar and sipping his bedtime brandy, listening to the stormy debate raging around him.

Although he was deeply disturbed by the anger and hostility flaring in the small conference room, he didn’t take part. He wanted all factions to express their views freely, with no hint of influence from their President.

Afterward, he would make the decision. Until then, he intended to keep an open mind, unaffected by emotion.

President Robertson was aware of the speculation in the Press Room. He received constant feedback from his press secretary, and on the table before him lay two bulletin leads from the wire services. He knew that these stories of conjecture, if allowed to continue, could be damaging. But he also knew that most of the nation was still asleep. Within an hour he would take action generating bulletins that would supplant all the random speculation with solid news.

Draining his brandy, Robertson listened to the firm, unhurried Oklahoma drawl of the Vice-President, chairing the council. Vice-President Threadgill was raising his voice to quell the uproar.

“All right, all right, let’s just stop right here and sum up this situation,” the Vice-President said. He referred to notes he had been making on a scratch pad. “Let’s take a look at what we know. One, we’re piss-positive the bomb is there. Two, without adequate search, the bomb probably won’t be found. Not in time, anyway. Three, unless this war is halted down there, either one side wins or the other, or we get us a cease-fire, there won’t be adequate search. Four, there doesn’t seem to be any way the war can be halted unless we intervene. Five, if the bomb isn’t found and disarmed before one o’clock today, Dominican time, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people will die. Six, that disaster will throw the door wide open for the United States to be extorted, literally held for ransom, by whoever is behind this, if the other bomb isn’t found. Now, does anybody have any quarrel with that assessment?”

“I think it is an excellent analysis,” the Defense Secretary said in his clipped Boston accent.

“What we’ve got to decide here is if we can stop that chain of events, and where,” the Vice-President said. “As I understand it, our people screwed up good early in the game, wasted a lot of time trying to bring this fellow Loomis up here and all, playing cops and robbers all over Europe and Africa. No use crying over spilt milk. That’s all under the bridge. But as I see it, these mistakes have brought us down to our point four — intervention. We’ve got to decide whether to try and stop things at that point — and if it’s worth the risk. All these other things, recriminations, backbiting, and conflicts of personality, are out of order here today. Does everybody agree with that?”

President Robertson never ceased to marvel at Vice-President Threadgill’s rambling prose, devastating logic, and uncanny influence on other men. Easterners often were surprised to learn that the lanky Vice-President, with his relaxed, rough ways, was a Rhodes scholar, an authority on Renaissance art. They seemed to find inconsistency in these facets of his personality. Born a millionaire, he’d never doubted his position in the world or seen any need to be other than himself. By contrast, the Secretary of Defense spoke in restrained, formal terms but had come up the hard way, never completing high school, building a small factory into a corporate giant through three decades of relentless effort. He remained in constant fear that all he had built would someday collapse. He forever faced the world tense, on guard. President Robertson tended to like the Vice-President better. He never quite trusted the Defense Secretary or his motives. Yet, the Defense Secretary held a position that gave him a unique view of the world. His opinions would have to be considered carefully. Robertson closed his eyes, massaged the deep furrows on his brow, and listened to the man’s argument.

“We
must
intervene,” the Defense Secretary said. “We simply have no choice.”

“Let’s look at it from every angle,” the Vice-President said. “What’s the earliest time you could put Marines on the ground?”

“Nine A.M., Dominican time,” the Secretary said promptly. “That’s lifting them in by helicopter from a hundred miles out. They would have air cover, including helicopter gunships, but no firepower from the sea until near noon. Our experience in 1965 was that we can expect minimal opposition. The imbalance of power is obvious.”

The Vice-President nodded. “What’s the latest assessment of the military situation down there?”

A naval aide quickly pinned a map of Santo Domingo to the wall. The Secretary rose and picked up a pointer. “From all we can learn — and we have worked closely with Langley on this — the rebels hold seventy or eighty square blocks of the Old Town, roughly from here to here, and they control the eastern approaches to the river. They are within a few blocks of the national palace, here, and it is virtually certain that they will take the seat of government this morning, if we don’t intervene.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” the Vice-President asked.

“By landing our marines here, in the Polo Grounds, and in the Botanical Gardens, here. With light tanks, armored personnel carriers, and so forth, they would move rapidly up Bolívar Avenue here, cutting the rebels off from the palace, then push them back to the river along a front, here.”

The Secretary of State lit a cigarette and reached for an ashtray. “Suppose we intervene, as you propose, but fail to find the bomb, and it goes off. Won’t
we
be blamed?”

“Let us look at it another way,” the Defense Secretary shot back. “Suppose we
don’t
intervene, and the bomb goes. Most of the world knows by now that the National Security Council is meeting in emergency session — an extraordinary night meeting. The press is not completely stupid. They will know, with any reflection, that an ordinary decision to intervene in the Dominican Republic probably would have been made after a telephone conference of the President with his most trusted advisers.
After
the bomb blows today, there will be demands for an accounting from this meeting. The facts will be plain. We knew of the bomb beforehand but failed to act.”

The table fell silent. Then the Vice-President chuckled.

“I think you just grabbed the issue by the nuts, Charlie,” he said. “We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. Let’s examine the alternatives. What about our spook group down there, and this bad boy Loomis? Is there any chance they’ll produce?”

“We’ve been expecting too much out of Loomis,” the Secretary of State said. “His government is collapsing, the whole organizational structure of the country has broken down. There’s fighting in the streets. Early last night an attempt was made to assassinate him. He’s got his hands full. We can’t risk acknowledging that Johnson and his men are down there. They must keep a low profile. Their hands are tied. I don’t think we can expect them to perform miracles in that situation.”

“Then we
have
to intervene,” the Defense Secretary said.

“Not necessarily,” State countered. “The Vice-President has listed a number of steps, a progression of events. I believe we are too late to stop those events at point four — intervention. I believe we must realistically acknowledge that we are helpless in the present situation. Our only option is to devote all our energies to finding Hamlet and the other bomb.”

“I
don’t
think you
are
looking at this realistically,” the Defense Secretary said. “When this nuclear extortionist group — whoever they are — makes public its demands, with fifty to a hundred thousand or more dead in Santo Domingo, we will be faced in this country with unprecedented panic. We’ve
got
to find that bomb.”

An aide entered from the Communications Room and handed a sheet of paper to the President’s National Security Adviser, who glanced at the note, then handed it to President Robertson.

He stubbed out his cigar while he read the message. He felt all eyes on him.

“Well, this is a new development,” he said. “One that El Jefe didn’t bother to mention in his dramatic plea for intervention. I don’t know that it clarifies the situation. First, the De la Torre girl is safe. It seems Loomis and Johnson grabbed a hostage of enough importance that Ramón agreed to an exchange. Secondly, Ramón has proposed a coalition government, with himself as First Secretary and El Jefe’s brother as President, if El Jefe will leave the country. El Jefe has refused.”

A murmur of surprise swept the table. The Vice-President chuckled. “He’s banking on intervention, Mr. President.”

“You’re probably right,” Robertson said. He reread the message. There was one aspect of it that bothered him. “What I can’t understand is Ramón. Why did he make the offer, right when he’s on the edge of a clear-cut victory?”

“The bomb,” the Vice-President said. “Ol’ Ramón doesn’t quite believe the bomb exists, but then on the other hand he doesn’t quite disbelieve, either. This way, he hands El Jefe the option.”

President Robertson nodded his understanding. He always tended to trust the lanky Okie’s logic. 

“I think we have defined all the issues,” Robertson said, pointedly ending the discussion.

He knew that the time had come to act.

He had analyzed, assessed, judged until he was dizzy with thinking. And there were no good solutions. There were only good men to study. One could only derive what knowledge he could from their experiences, their mistakes. He never ceased to be amazed at the varieties of idealism that drove men. Loomis, continually seeking justice in a world without justice. El Jefe, striving through benevolence to gain public acceptance in a thankless position — the wrong job in the wrong country. Ramón, honestly seeking human dignity in the most dangerous corner of the political spectrum, following the deceptive lights that had led so many good men astray. The Vice-President, seeking a deeper meaning to life in public service. The Defense Secretary, seeking security in power …

There were so many lessons to be learned.