The Hamlet Warning (9 page)

He paused, and directed his attention to María Elena. “It has occurred to me that I haven’t asked the opinion of the one person present who is an authority on the subject. As some of you may know, María Elena wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Rastafarian terrorists — lived with them, went along on missions with them.”

A murmur of surprise swept the table. Loomis wondered how María Elena’s affiliation with the Rastafarians had been kept so secret. Although there was considerable information in his files — including a terrific picture of her in jungle fatigues and crossed bandoliers — her career in terrorism hadn’t been discovered by the press. 

El Jefe seemed to enjoy the reaction. “Perhaps you could tell me, María Elena. What is in the terrorist’s mind?”

María Elena considered her answer carefully. “I think the most difficult thing to understand is that the terrorist is a person driven to the most extreme desperation by what he considers oppression, political, spiritual, poverty, or whatever. His setting becomes a world unto itself — a world that feeds on itself to the point that all logic is lost. The illogical becomes logical. He and his group become convinced — convince themselves — that if enough innocent people are endangered, killed, the government will accede to their demands and that the general population will applaud the result. The terrorist may be crazy, to our way of thinking, but he has his own logic.”

El Jefe nodded slowly, thinking. He seemed genuinely impressed with María Elena’s answer.

“If you were in my place,” he said, “how would you deal with him?”

María Elena didn’t hesitate. She spoke with an intensity that went beyond the best of her screen roles. “I would disarm him by removing his oppression. I would restore constitutional guarantees. I would hold free elections. I would improve his wages so that each year he could see that he is better off than the year before.”

“A very heavy order,” El Jefe said.

“You promised those things when you took office,” María Elena pointed out. “And you haven’t delivered them. That fact is what sends your terrorist into the streets.”

A tenseness had settled over the table. The food was forgotten. The moment hung on El Jefe’s reaction.

He slowly shook his head. “María Elena, you are so young. There are so many things that are not in your books. In my youth, there was not the slightest feeling of national unity in this country. Now, at least, we have that. We
have
made progress. But
which
constitution would you restore? There have been thirty-nine — an unholy mess from the standpoint of attempting to establish traditional law. And how can you conduct elections when fifty percent of the population is illiterate? When there are more than seventy political parties and splinter factions?”

He paused. “No, I haven’t called free elections. There would be chaos. You are looking at the only stability this country has at the moment, and I must recognize that fact. I
must
take strong measures. I have no choice.”

There was a gentleness, almost a pleading quality, in El Jefe’s tone. But María Elena was not swayed by his argument.

“Don’t you see?” she demanded. “Those repressions were the very thing
you
opposed when you made your revolution. The issues remain. If you continue to use Trujillo’s methods, then to the terrorist in the streets, your government is identical with Trujillo’s.”

“María Elena!” De la Torre said.

El Jefe waved a hand. “It’s all right, Manuel. María Elena has a valid point, and the courage to make it.” He turned back to María Elena. “
Vida
, I hated Trujillo with my every breath. I can never forgive him his excesses. My friends died, many of torture, in La Cuaranta. I apologize to my dinner guests for bringing up this topic. But I must admit, María Elena, I understand Trujillo better every day.”

“He knew how to govern,” María Elena said, repeating the popular street joke.

El Jefe refused to be baited. “Yes, Trujillo knew how to govern. He was very, very good at what he wanted to do. But he was not benevolent. And that is my problem. How
can
one be benevolent? How would you hold elections with ignorant, illiterate voters who haven’t the slightest inkling of the issues?”

“You could set up literacy programs.” 

“And how are you going to educate a man who earns less than a peso a day in the cane fields — and who needs that peso to live?”

“You could set up adult schools, and rotate the workers.”

“If one-fourth of the workers are in school, the Gross National Product, already one of the lowest in this hemisphere, would drop by twenty-five percent.”

“Night classes, then.”

“How is a man going to study after spending fourteen hours in the cane fields or in a factory?”

“He could be inspired into doing it.”

“Now you have come to the core of the matter,” El Jefe said. “How can you give a man hope, when there is no hope for him in this life?”

“That’s just my point,” María Elena said. “You’ve underestimated people. Haven’t you realized that this man who spent fourteen hours in the cane field, or in the factory, is your sniper, your terrorist with his explosive? That’s why your men can’t find Ramón’s army. It’s all around you. Your men pass his soldiers on the street every day, think of them as workers, and never recognize them as the enemy. That’s why Ramón is winning. He offers them hope.”

“You think Ramón is winning?”

“Please read my dissertation, Uncle. Today’s guerrillas are far more dangerous than the full-time fighters of your day. They strike and melt back into their environment. Perhaps not even their own families suspect. They subsist on your economy. The longer Ramón can survive, forcing you to repressive measures, the greater his strength.”

El Jefe glanced at Loomis, who shrugged elaborately. María Elena turned to look at Loomis, puzzled.

“You sound exactly like my friend Loomis,” El Jefe explained. “He has been upsetting my generals by telling them they are losing. That is his argument.” 

María Elena looked at Loomis. “Well, he’s smarter than I thought,” she said.

After dinner, the other guests followed El Jefe into the theater for the screening of a new Italian film. María Elena seemed upset, so Loomis proposed a drink on the terrace. She accepted.

They sat in the moonlight and talked until long after the film was over, the guests had left, and the other
palacio
residents had gone up to bed. Under María Elena’s persistent questioning, Loomis revealed a bare outline of his life. She seemed intrigued. “Talk about an odyssey!” she said. “What are you hunting for?”

“If I knew, maybe I would find it,” he said.

“Maybe you ought to sit still for a while and see if you can figure it out,” she said. “And I thought I’d racked up some mileage! You make all my knocking around sound like nothing.”

“What are
you
searching for?” Loomis asked.

“You ought to know,” she said. “You have my files.”

“They only have facts,” he explained. “They don’t tell why.”

“Then your files are worthless,” she said. “The ‘why’ is the important part.”

When they at last went to their rooms, María Elena hesitated at the door. “I’ve enjoyed it, Loomis,” she said. “I haven’t talked like that in a long time.”

“I thought I did all the talking,” he said. “I still know almost nothing about you.”

“Maybe there’s not much to know.”

“That
would
surprise me,” he said.

She laughed and looked up at him. “Well, let’s not rush it, Loomis. Things are complicated enough as it is.” She squeezed his hand and went in, leaving him with a vague sense of a promise unfulfilled.

Loomis lay awake for a time, torn between logic and his emotions. He had made his decision years ago: no more entanglements. He now wondered if he would be able to live up to that decision. 

María Elena’s files were accurate in one respect: she was an excellent tennis player. Loomis had a big advantage with his reach, yet he lost the first two sets before rallying on the third. María Elena’s small build gave her a quickness Loomis couldn’t match. They quit after an hour because of the heat.

María Elena watched Loomis towel off.

“My God, Loomis, you’re big as a house,” she said. “How much do you weigh?”

“Too much,” he said.

“Well, you get it around all right,” she said. “Maybe it’s not all blubber.”

That evening, El Jefe served a new Alsace white wine that was a resounding success and lent a special glow to dinner. When the guests went in to view the film, Loomis and María Elena again headed for the terrace. Almost without his prompting, she began telling about her life.

“I don’t think anyone who hasn’t been through it could realize what it’s like,” she said. “You have to want, to need, success terribly to do all that’s required to achieve it. Long hours of voice lessons, dance lessons, diction, dramatics. There isn’t any harder work in the world. The discipline has to be unbelievable.

“Then when you start, you have to take shit off so many people, the little people that stand in the way. You work and drill. You hunt for the part that’s got one good line, one good song that might make somebody, somewhere, sometime, remember you at the right moment.

“And you think that when you move up, things will be better. They’re not. The further you go, the more false the world becomes around you, the more you have to depend on others. That’s what happens to the real talent — the Marlon Brandos, the Montgomery Clifts, the James Deans. You have to battle every step of the way to hang onto what’s you, and only those that put up a good fight survive. Most don’t. I once heard a psychiatrist say that with most people, he could peel away the outer personalities like the layers of an onion, until he reached the core, the real personality, shorn of all superficialities. But he said that with actors you just peel away all the facade, all the layers, and you find nothing at the center. That’s what happens to your Marilyn Monroes, your Judy Garlands, your Diana Barrymores. They are overwhelmed by the superficialities of their lives to the point they no longer know themselves, or what they’re supposed to be. Some, Shirley MacLaine, Jane Fonda, Marlon Brando, me, start hunting for causes, something real, to find our way out of the falseness.

“I wish them luck. For me that was no answer. For a time, 1 thought it was. Join the Robin Hoods. Rob from the rich and give to the poor. What a crock of shit it all was. The guerrillas claim to be fighting for the rights of individuals, then tromp on everyone’s lives. They rob, kidnap, kill, and call their crimes justified because they’re done for the poor, the downtrodden. Well, I’ve seen the poor, and most of them aren’t worth the effort. Move them into a mansion and you’ll have a slum tomorrow. They don’t know any better and are incapable of learning. They’re lazy — maybe not physically lazy, but lazy in imagination, in planning, foresight. They’ll trade their future for a bottle of wine and a good screw. I’m sorry for them, and I believe in making things available to them. But you can’t force-feed them.

“Hollywood. Nothing can convey the falseness. There’s no friendship you can trust, no contract that can’t be broken. Egos. Greed. Backbiting. Maliciousness. I had to get out.

“And the academic world isn’t much better. Totally out of contact with reality. They have their theories. That’s all they can talk about, theories. But if they had to put them into practice they’d starve. They’re wrapped up in their own little insular world, involved in their own petty politics. Who has the biggest office, the biggest desk? Who has first choice of graduate assistants? Who caught the dean’s ear at what committee meeting? If the sun came up in the west some morning, most of the academic world wouldn’t notice.

“I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’ve spent twenty of that hunting the real world, the real me. Maybe I found a certain reality in the beginning, in the sweat of hard work. But it got lost in all the falseness. And for the first time, I really became scared. I felt that what was me was being scattered to the four winds. And I know that when you lose yourself, you lose everything. I’ve seen it happen to too many people.”

Loomis yielded to his long-harbored impulse and put his arms around her. The warmth of her response was unexpected. They remained more than two hours on the terrace, exploring with kisses the depth of their mutual involvement, confirming with touch and word their mutual need.

At last, Loomis led her to his room. He put an album on the tape deck, and they made love to the light of distant magnesium flares being lofted near the Duarte Bridge, where the army was searching for a sniper.

Chapter 10

Minus
7
Days
,
11
:
00
Hours

At 2:00 A.M., the phone rang. Loomis reached across María Elena and picked up the receiver. A phone call at that hour couldn’t be ignored.

Johnson was on the line. “Loomis, I’ve got to see you. Now. Tonight.” Loomis sensed desperation in Johnson’s voice. He felt a twinge of alarm. Johnson wasn’t prone to panic.

Loomis rolled over and lowered his feet to the floor. “This won’t keep till morning?”

“Loomis, I’ll level. This thing is four days overdue now. It’s big. We’ve got to get on it.”

“All right,” Loomis said. “Give me thirty minutes.”

“Where?”

Loomis didn’t want to bring Johnson to the
palacio
. And Johnson obviously didn’t want to meet in his room. Loomis tried to think of some place that would be open at 2:00 A.M. He could think of only one that was suitable. “Club Carioca,” he said.

“That sounds like a nightclub,” Johnson protested. “We need a quiet place.”

“We’ll find a quiet table,” Loomis said. He promised to send a car; Johnson would need an escort through the streets.

“And Johnson …” he said.

“Yes?”

“This better be worth the trip.”

“It will be,” Johnson said. “That I can guarantee you.”

*

Loomis borrowed El Jefe’s Mercedes from the
palacio
stables and drove through the quiet, almost deserted streets to Club Carioca. He parked half a block away from the high wooden door, monitored the street for several minutes, then left the car, taking his Heckler MP5 with him.

Tony was behind the bar, his sleepy eyes monitoring, missing nothing. He watched Loomis approach without changing expression.

A quick survey told Loomis that this was not one of the Club Carioca’s livelier nights. A dozen girls loafed by the bar. They glanced at Loomis, then away. He knew them all.

He walked to the bar and nodded to Tony. “I’ll need a fifth of Jack Daniel’s,” he said. “A
norteamericano
is coming to see me. We need a quiet place to talk.”

Tony grunted almost imperceptibly. He spoke quietly to a Chinese waiter. Loomis turned and crossed the heavy tile floor to a round table in the corner. He placed his Heckler against the wall behind him and sat, facing the bar so he could see its full length, the patio that extended out into the open air, and the walkways to the cribs that surrounded the patio on the other three sides.

Loomis had seen all of them worth seeing: the Grand Shima in Yokasuka, Paris’s Pigalle, London’s Soho, and the boys’ towns along the United States-Mexico border. The Club Carioca was not without charms, as such places went. In the Trujillo era, the Generalissimo himself saw to it that the place was well supplied with fresh talent, it was said. Young girls, twelve to fourteen. At sixteen, they were veterans. By eighteen, they were ready to move to the lesser clubs, the streets, or to marry some young
hijo
who appreciated their talent and capabilities.

Now, the girls were mostly in their late teens; Trujillo’s penchant wasn’t a national affliction.

When Johnson entered, he seemed confused and uncertain. He stopped at the door. Loomis waved and Johnson came toward the table, looking back at the bar, still puzzled.

“What is this? A whorehouse?”

“That must be a prime factor in America’s resounding success in world politics,” Loomis said. “The perception of its intelligence officers.”

“Come on, Loomis, knock off the shit,” Johnson said. He turned to look at the stucco walls, the cane-bottom chairs, the bare wooden tables. “Is this place clean?”

“If you mean electronically, I’m certain it is,” Loomis said. “If you’re worried about the clap, I wouldn’t guarantee anything.”

“Look, Loomis, don’t be a smart-ass. Frankly, you look pretty flabby to me, I think I could take you now. But there’s a lot of stuff I have to unload on you, and it’s serious. I can’t emphasize how serious. Just bear with me. O.K.?”

“O.K.,” Loomis said.

“If it’s any satisfaction to you, your stupidity and bullheadedness have impressed everyone concerned. Your invitation to Washington for briefing has been canceled. I have been authorized to fill you in on the whole mess.”

Johnson studied the bar and courtyard for a moment, then lowered his voice. “What I’m about to tell you is known to not more than two dozen people in Washington. My people had to go right to the top to get clearance for this talk. Do you understand what I’m saying? Right to the top.” 

Loomis nodded, feeling a tremor of apprehension. With all the events of the last few days, he’d almost managed to push from his mind a vague sense of foreboding over Johnson’s earlier visit. Now, he knew that concern had been justified.

“Do you happen to know the story of Theodore B. Taylor?” Johnson asked.

Loomis shuffled through his mental file. “Never heard of him,” he said.

“Few people have, outside the world of physics,” Johnson said. “For some reason, Werner von Braun and a few others have received all the publicity. But Ted Taylor is a theoretical physicist who has been behind just about every major nuclear development during the last twenty years. Nuclear-powered space ships, if we ever have them, probably will be based on his designs. The nuclear warheads in our missiles, from the thirty-megaton jobs right down to cannon shells, are mostly his designs.”

Johnson poured himself another shot of Jack Daniel’s and sipped. Loomis waited.

“Ted Taylor is a remarkable fellow,” Johnson said. “During the last several years, he has literally scared the shit out of a few strategic people in Washington by pointing out a dangerous situation. An atomic bomb, or practically any nuclear weapon, is surprisingly easy to construct, if you’re not especially concerned with maximum efficiency. Now, I don’t mean that your average graduate student could go right into the business. But during the last ten years or so, enough information has been declassified that it’s available for those interested enough to track it down.”

Loomis felt a chill start at the base of his spine and move upward. He sensed what was coming.

“Your plain, garden-variety atomic bomb is rather simple,” Johnson said. “It conceivably could be constructed by one man, working alone. There are many men in the world who probably could do it. Hundreds, perhaps thousands. There’s no list. If there were, it probably wouldn’t be complete. There’s always your fifteen-year-old scientific genius to consider. Now, I don’t mean a kid adept with Tinker Toys could do it. But you take an unusually bright one, he probably could.”

“Since everyone else seems to know, you might tell me,” Loomis said. “What exactly is involved?”

“A shaped charge. Three pounds of plastic explosive could serve as the trigger. Or an old navy gun. Up to now, the main problem has been the fission material, Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239, produced in expensive, complicated processes at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington. But we’ve been turning out the stuff like crazy for forty years. We’ve built atomic bombs, scrapped them, built atomic missiles and warheads of all descriptions, scrapped them for newer gadgets, then replaced those with thermonuclear devices. We’ve even lost a few of the damned things, as you may remember. And, with breeder nuclear power plants going into operation all over the world, making more of the stuff, there’s plenty of nuclear material loose. It’s not all weapons grade, but Ted Taylor says any physics student worth his salt could turn most of it into weapons-grade stuff with readily available materials. There’s now enough uranium and plutonium in private hands to make several thousand atomic bombs. To put it bluntly, we no longer have control of the situation. Am I boring you?”

“I’m sweating the punch line,” Loomis said.

“The punch line is that we know that someone has been buying up nuclear materials, presumably has devised the means of assembly, and the makings for one atomic device are on the way here to Santo Domingo.”

“Oh shit,” Loomis said. “Ramón?”

“We’re not certain. But we don’t think he’s involved. We only know it’s en route to this country. A Liberian tanker left Lisbon six days ago, bound for the docks here. The nuclear material was loaded from a fishing boat downstream from Lisbon on the Tagus, after the ship cleared the harbor channel. Nighttime operation.”

“And all your people, with all your facilities, couldn’t stop it?”

Johnson shrugged. “There were suggestions that the ship might simply disappear to become another tantalizing mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. But I assume there was too much risk of an international incident. Besides, we have a man aboard.”

“What’s the ETA?”

“Day after tomorrow, about noon, we believe. It’s now a little more than four hundred miles out from your east coast. We have it under constant high-altitude surveillance.”

“Mid-ocean rendezvous?”

“No way. Surveillance is around the clock.”

“All right,” Loomis said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Impound the ship and cargo. Find the goods. Rescue our man.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that. We’ve made inquiries. You’ve got the clout.”

Loomis thought ahead to the problems. “Assuming I’m able to impound another nation’s ship, what’ll I be looking for?”

“A half-dozen oil drums, probably. They’ll look like a thousand other oil drums on board. We understand there’s a hold somewhere on board for container cargo, and that they’ll be there. We’re hoping they’ll be marked in some way. We’re also hoping our man will have them located by the time the ship arrives.”

“Will a Geiger counter help?”

“We’re told that’s not positive. If the people know what they’re doing — and we’ll have to assume that they do — there’ll be virtually no radiation.” 

“Just enough material for one bomb?”

“That’s the word we have. Our best information is that forty-nine kilos are aboard the tanker — intended for one large bomb.”

Loomis sighed. “Johnson, I think you better level with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t work with you people until I know as much about this as you do. And I have the strong feeling you know much, much more than you’re telling.”

“Not a great deal more. We first got wind of it in Greece. An anonymous tip. I’ll spare you all the double-talk details of the trade — the ‘an analysis based upon events substantiated by a thorough investigation indicated that the information probably was valid’ sort of thing. The information was that an international cartel is involved. They call themselves the Hamlet Group. We managed to infiltrate a man into the second or third level on the organizational chart. He ascertained that the information was accurate. But something happened. As far as we know, he no longer exists.”

“What kind of an international cartel? If your man infiltrated, surely he came up with some names.”

“He did. Two of the people he worked with are dead. The others have disappeared. Maybe they’re dead, too. All trails have run out.”

“Why Santo Domingo?”

“We don’t know. Our information simply is that one device will be detonated in Santo Domingo. You heard me. Detonated. Frankly, and I hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings, the consensus at Langley is that they don’t give a shit about Santo Domingo, one way or another. It will just serve as a horrible example. Like the old bad joke about the farmer who hit his mule over the head with a club, just to get his attention. This group only wants to get our attention. At least one other bomb will be secreted in a major city in the United States.
After
the bomb is detonated here, certain demands will be made upon the United States.”

“What demands?”

“We don’t know. We have no idea who these Hamlet people are. So we have no idea what they want.”

“But I still don’t understand why they picked Santo Domingo.”

“Oh, come on! You’ve got to admire the psychology of it. If an American city were hit first — San Francisco or New Orleans destroyed, for instance — the nation would react like a wounded animal, more in anger than in panic. Santo Domingo is physically close, well within our sphere of influence, yet emotionally remote. Reaction will be horror, panic, exactly what the Hamlet people want.”

“Hamlet. Does that have any covert meaning?”

“Possibly. They may be trying to tell us something. Hamlet is the code name for the most efficient atomic bomb ever made. They may be indicating to us that they know the secret of Hamlet.”

“God almighty,” Loomis said.

“Precisely. I’m glad I’ve managed to impress you,” Johnson said wryly. “May I inform my people you’ll cooperate?”

Loomis sat for a moment, thinking. He had spent time as a merchant seaman; there were a million places on board a ship to hide contraband. The holds might have to be emptied. A tanker would pose special problems. The tanks could have false bottoms. Cutting torches couldn’t be used until all fumes were removed. And that was a complicated procedure. Obviously, anyone with enough know-how to make an atomic bomb should be able to do a fair job of hiding the materials. With a small, Mickey Mouse security force, he was faced with an international organization undoubtedly far more sophisticated. He would need all the help he could get.