The Hamlet Warning (10 page)

“I’ll cooperate,” Loomis said. “But on my terms.” 

Johnson grimaced. “And what are those?”

“We’ll be far too busy here to deal with sixteen agencies in Washington. They can feed us their information. We’ll keep them advised, but we’ll initiate all procedures here.”

“Just between us, I agree,” Johnson said. “I’ll pass it on with my recommendation that under the pressure of time, we accede to your unreasonable demands. For the record, consider that I have protested vigorously.”

“And another thing. We don’t want a planeload of Washington people coming in here every hour on the hour. We’ll ask for specific help. In other words, they don’t call us, we’ll call them.”

“Again, you’re right, of course,” Johnson said. “But frankly, I doubt they’ll agree.”

“If they give you any trouble, just ask them one question,” Loomis said. “What the fuck they been doing for four days?”

“I hope you don’t mind if I quote you verbatim.”

“I hope you do.”

“Actually, they
have
been working on it,” Johnson said. “But all leads ran out.”

“We could have used that time,” Loomis fumed. “Now, we may not be able to do all we should.”

“You have any ideas?”

Loomis nodded. “Possibly. Let me check on it, talk to El Jefe. I’ll get back with you in the morning.”

“I can’t emphasize enough,” Johnson said. “We’ve got to keep that ship under wraps.”

“I assume you’d also like to keep this thing out of the General Assembly of the United Nations,” Loomis said. “Which is where it’d wind up if we simply clamp the crew in irons.”

“For whatever it’s worth, the Russians are cooperating one hundred percent on this,” Johnson said. “They’re as worried as we are. All our defenses — all their defenses — are based on retaliation. Mutual wipeout. But a mobile, free-lance nuclear power, no matter how small, upsets things tremendously. If we don’t know who they are, where they are, there’s no way to retaliate.”

“How heavy is this gear we’re hunting?” Loomis asked.

“The nuclear materials, possibly a few hundred pounds, packing and all. Probably not much more than that. We suspect that the hardware, the mechanical parts, may be coming in by more conventional means. Also, of course, there will be some personnel coming in. How many, and from where, we don’t know. But there’s the possibility that if we set up a computer scan on all incoming people, Octopus might turn up something.”

Octopus, Loomis knew, was one of the company’s many elaborate computer systems. It contained complete information on dissident people throughout the world. Thousands upon thousands of complete dossiers, available for instant readout.

“How big a blast do your experts figure?” Loomis asked.

“Depends almost entirely on the bomb maker. If he really knows his stuff — and we have to assume he does — there is the definite possibility of something in the well into the kiloton range, about five times the size of Hiroshima. That’s at the outside, they say. If he’s a rank amateur, he may not be able to do much better than Hiroshima, a hundred thousand dead, maybe. Our people say blast effects are hard to figure because of wind direction, amount of fallout, other intangible factors. If the wind is blowing toward the Cibao and the heavily populated country to the north, and it’s an especially dirty bomb, it could mess up the whole interior, too.”

Loomis sat for a moment, fighting back his emotions, making his mind block out all personal feelings, forcing his attention to the problem at hand. It was a mental trick he’d learned long ago, and it saved him much anguish through the years. 

“What’s the target date?” he asked.

“That we don’t know. We’re working on it.”

“And who are these Hamlet people? Come on! Level. You’ve got some leads, some suspicions.”

“Only theories, at this point,” Johnson said. “An international oil cartel connected with the Middle East situation is suspected. The international Mafia has been suggested. Dope traffic may be involved. It might be some nutty terrorist group that has acquired money, or some other group of a dozen or so rag-tag dissidents. And, I don’t know whether you know it or not, but there’s been a highly placed group at work in the United States attempting to seize permanent political power so they can control the economy. There’s even a theory this already has been accomplished. Certainly, they’ve made inroads. This may be their next step. And if you tell anyone I’ve told you all this, I’ll renew your contract, personally.”

“While we’re talking off the record, let’s clear the air on something else,” Loomis said. “I assume that the only reason the United States didn’t blow that tanker out of the water, and all the nuclear gear along with it, was because they lost all other leads to Hamlet, and to the other bomb.”

“You’re a fairly perceptive fellow,” Johnson said. “Otherwise, I have no comment on that.”

“They planned to destroy the tanker, then decided they couldn’t afford to eliminate their one known link to the Hamlet people.
That
was the reason for the delay — while the decision was debated.”

“Take the long view,” Johnson said. “You’ve got to admit it makes sense. We’ll seize the ship, grab the goods, and someone on board surely knows something.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to report in to Langley. You have any word to pass on to them?”

Loomis considered for a moment. His plan was only half-formed, but there wouldn’t be much time. 

“Tell them to get some extra men into Lisbon,” Loomis said. “We may need help from the Lisbon station.”

“You’ll contact me in the morning?”

Loomis nodded. “We’ll set up a safehouse first thing. I’ll call in my people and we’ll get to work.”

After Johnson left, Loomis sat for a while at the table, sipping Jack Daniel’s, thinking.

He then returned to the
palacio
and over the protests of the domestic staff awoke El Jefe from a sound sleep.

Chapter 11

Minus
7
Days
,
06
:
18
Hours

Once each day, shortly before noon, Otto Zaloudek left his rooms in the Garden Suites and waddled down through the coconut trees to the porous rock overlooking the sea. For an hour he stood on the edge of the golf course, watching the waves break on the cliffs. Twice each day he walked laboriously through the arched passageways to the dining room, where for breakfast he usually ordered mangu, and for dinner lobster tails sautéed in anisette sauce. Only once did he come down to the Bar Piscina. He ordered one drink, a
cocoloco
, and sat for a time at the half-moon mahogany bar under a thick thatch of palm, watching the swimmers in the salt water pool. But his mind remained on other things. After a few minutes, he again returned to his room, leaving his drink untouched.

Zaloudek knew he posed an enigma to the hotel staff. Most of the guests who endured the seventy miles of dirt and washboard roads from Santo Domingo came for the famous Pete Dye golf course, swimming, and the Sadie Thompson atmosphere of Hotel La Romana. He was aware of the curiosity he created among the other guests. 

But he had no patience with the small talk he heard in the dining room or at the bar as they discussed the cloying sweetness from the sugar refinery across the road, planned their boat trips to Río Chavon, or stared through binoculars across the water to the flat profile of Isla Catalina.

All of each day, and most of the nights, he spent with his diagrams and pocket calculator, rechecking his figures, making certain that his design was the best possible under the circumstances.

He would have preferred to use plutonium. They had given him his choice, and plutonium presented the biggest challenge. But there would be obstacles in working with plutonium in the less than optimum conditions. Neither plutonium nor uranium presented significant radiation hazards. But plutonium was far more poisonous. One air-borne particle, lodged in a lung, could be fatal. Uranium contained no such dangers.

And there were certain design considerations. A plutonium device normally is detonated by a shield-shaped charge that turns the radiation back on itself to the point where the mass goes supercritical instantaneously. If the bomb is to achieve maximum yield, the shape of the charge must be perfect and the detonation uniform. Hours upon hours of delicate work would be required to assure uniform depth of the plastic explosive. Moreover, the pre-ignition balance in a homemade device would be hazardous — just below the edge of criticality. A solar flare, cosmic rays, radiation from any unexpected source such as radar, conceivably might push the balance over the margin to ignition. A slight miscalculation on the part of the designer might accomplish the same result.

At times, Zaloudek found himself wishing he had chosen plutonium. There would be greater yield — a larger fireball — with less material. He would be working with a mass the size of a baseball, instead of something on the order of a grapefruit. The machinery would be more complex, more sophisticated. Every artist likes to show his skill to the fullest, and Zaloudek was no exception. But each time he imagined himself painstakingly shaping the C4 charge over an aluminum shield, carefully inserting wire to measure the uniform depth, only inches away from the mass of Pu239 hovering just below criticality, he broke into a cold sweat.

And logic told him there wasn’t that much difference. Uranium could be brought to criticality by a device ridiculously simple by comparison. While there might be far less personal satisfaction in tinkering with such Model-T mechanics, there were the compensations of far more safety and dependability. He knew for certain that the device would work and that it would be more than adequate for its purpose. His design was far more advanced, and several times more effective, than that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. If he only achieved a fraction of the design’s potential — a “fizzle yield,” as it was termed in the trade — the blast still would be well into the kiloton range.

The trick was to attain maximum yield, to bring the mass to supercriticality uniformly and at the same instant. He was confident he had the best possible means under the circumstances, incorporating some of the best features of Hamlet. Yet, he continued to check and recheck his figures, to make certain he had not made a mistake at any point in design.

Zaloudek by nature was cautious, plodding, painstaking. That was his overriding talent: he was methodical. Besides, there was nothing else to do to keep his mind occupied while he waited.

He had feared for a time that the project might be delayed by the revolution breaking out in the country. Although there was little evidence of the revolution at the Hotel La Romana, Zaloudek heard much excited talk among the other guests, and there were cancellations as some fled. But on the day after the outbreak of fighting, word was sent that despite possible complications, the project would be carried out. Zaloudek was to continue to wait.

There remained a few details that disturbed Zaloudek.

The first was the fact that no one, at any time, had asked for an estimate of effects. Zaloudek was clear in his own mind. Little Boy of Hiroshima produced a yield of thirteen kilotons and killed a hundred thousand people. He was certain that his own device would produce eight times that: a little more than one hundred thousand tons of TNT.

He had studied — and witnessed — nuclear weapons effects. There was one rule of thumb he had remembered: a nuclear explosion can vaporize its yield in mass. Zaloudek figured most of a square block in downtown Santo Domingo would simply vanish.

From that point, the effects became complicated. Gamma rays would spread death throughout the vicinity of ground zero; the exact distance would depend on the shadow effects of buildings. The visible light and heat would cook an even wider area. Neutrons would follow, dealing more destruction. Air shock waves, carrying lethal missiles, concrete blocks the size of automobiles traveling at the speed of a rifle bullet, would batter down all structures for more than a mile in each direction. Smaller shrapnel would reach for miles. The fallout, perhaps the most devastating of all, would rain radiation far inland. All these factors were very difficult to assess exactly, but Zaloudek could conceive of half a million dead, especially if the prevailing winds succeeded in carrying the fallout into the thickly populated Cibao to the north.

Yet, no one had asked for Zaloudek’s estimate. The only request was for a fireball — and the bigger the better, they said.

Zaloudek couldn’t understand their lack of interest in the carnage. 

His Santo Domingo atomic bomb would be the greatest man-made disaster in all human history.

He had no inkling of what was in the minds of the Hamlet people. He suspected, but he didn’t know.

But it didn’t matter, for he was using them for his own purpose — which was more important, and would be more far-reaching.

Zaloudek had waited at the Hotel La Romana almost two weeks. On Saturday morning, just after dawn, the message at last arrived: a car would pick him up at noon Sunday for the next phase of the operation.

His wait was ended.