The Hamlet Warning (13 page)

“The
Duarte’s
radar is probably superior to that on the tanker,” the admiral pointed out. “She could keep watch on the tanker’s movements without revealing her presence, if so desired.”

Loomis considered the suggestion. “I would prefer visual contact, as long as we’re not too obvious with it,” he said. “I think we should guard against any rendezvous with a small boat, or possibly a cargo drop by raft, along our northeast or east coast.”

“And if that occurs?” 

“Then they can intervene, under the assumption that illegal contraband is being handled. We’ll play it by ear.”

Loomis moved to the next item on his list. “Señor Galíndez, I realize that the Policía Nacional has many problems at the moment. But we have no other facilities to conduct a massive manhunt. And this search will be complicated by the fact that we don’t know who we’re looking for. We only know that he exists.”

“The man who will construct the bomb?”

“Yes. With the ship due, there’s a good chance he’ll be arriving within the next day or so. Or, if he’s in the country now, he may move toward a rendezvous. I suggest, Señor Galíndez, that we monitor every passenger that arrives by ship or air and every motorist who crosses the island.”

“The airports and ports of entry would not be too difficult,” Galíndez said. “But checking out all motorists would be a tremendous undertaking.”

“You can borrow what personnel you need from the military,” Loomis told him. “I suggest we arrange a well-publicized jailbreak in Santiago or one of the northern cities. Roadblocks on all major highways would then be considered natural. Since we don’t know who we’re hunting, arrests are unlikely. But a license number, a name, a brief notation on all foreigners and of the time and circumstances might be a good thing to have. Our bomb maker probably will be on that list. And his name might set bells to ringing on Octopus.”

Galíndez again fixed Loomis with his sleepy, blank stare. “Señor Loomis, with your permission. I must say I do not understand all of this. Why go to all this elaborate subterfuge? Why not simply seize the ship under any pretext, find the nuclear materials, and arrest and question the crew?”

The room fell silent. Loomis felt all eyes on him. Galíndez at last had put the opposition into words. Loomis hesitated, knowing that most of the Dominicans in the room were allied with Galíndez. Loomis felt their strong resistance, and he
had
to have their cooperation.

“Señor Galíndez, you have gone to the core of the matter,” Loomis said. “I wish it were that simple. I
also
like direct action. My first impulse is to seize the ship. I also hate subterfuge. As some of you may know, I once was a member of the CIA.” Loomis saw glances exchanged around the room. He had confirmed some rumors. “I left the agency thoroughly disgusted with the clandestine practices. But in certain instances, I am forced to acknowledge the necessity of their use, and I think this is one such instance. The seizure of the ship without some due legal process would be international piracy per se. It would be condemned throughout the world. If the materials are
not
aboard, if the Hamlet people have tricked us, then we would have alerted them to our search, and they would take appropriate measures.”

Loomis paused. The faces were thoughtful, absorbed. He was reaching them.

“Yet it goes deeper than that,” he added. “These are clandestine, covert people we are dealing with. We have to fight them with their own weapons. Of course, this is nothing new. Intrigue is as old as politics. But now the stakes are higher, and the methods are more sophisticated. I sincerely believe this is the first confrontation of a new era — a dangerous time of free-lance nuclear threats. If the Hamlet people fail, someone else will try. For the first time, a small group of people has the means to challenge entire governments, whole nations. As long as nuclear materials are available, someone, somewhere, will make the effort. They know our techniques, so they simply circumvent them. We must learn
their
techniques, if we are to survive.”

The room was silent. Loomis knew that he had convinced them. 

He glanced at his watch. Noon. Countdown had started on the last forty-eight hours.

“Anyone have further questions, suggestions, or comment?” he asked.

There were none.

“We’ll stand adjourned for the moment, then,” he said. “We’ll meet back here at six tonight to map final details.”

Chapter 14

Minus
6
Days
,
22
:
00
Hours

In mid-afternoon, reports of heavy fighting in the Cibao were confirmed. Government forces were definitely losing ground in both Santiago and San Francisco.

In the capital, sniping became so prevalent that by late afternoon all stores and offices were closed. The streets were deserted.

“My back is to the wall,” El Jefe complained to Loomis. “The tourists are gone. Commerce has stopped. The sugar mills are closing down.”

Preoccupied with the Hamlet affair, Loomis hadn’t realized that Ramón had made such inroads. For the first time, he wondered if perhaps Ramón might be moving too fast. If his revolution became overextended, overcommitted, it might be difficult to sustain. However, there was no denying the pressure he was applying on the government.

“In another two or three days, there will be complete chaos in the streets,” El Jefe said. “The people will become hungry, desperate. I’ve got to do something. But anything I can do is wrong. Colonel Escortia wants to issue new identification cards and to place strong checkpoints all through the
distrito
. Like in Trujillo’s worst days. I can’t bring myself to do that.”

Loomis suggested placing troops on the rooftops downtown to discourage sniping. El Jefe said he would pass the suggestion along to Escortia.

“Are you prepared for the arrival of the tanker?” El Jefe asked.

“With any luck, we will be,” Loomis said.

“I keep wondering about this Hamlet thing,” El Jefe said. “There is a thought that bothers me. If the Hamlet people are intelligent enough to acquire the materials, and to arrange for the bomb’s assembly, why would they make it so easy for us to catch them?”

“That’s the thought that keeps bothering me,” Loomis admitted.

“I fear this ship may be a diversion,” El Jefe said.

“I agree, that’s a strong possibility,” Loomis said. “But the fact remains, the ship is all we have to work with.”

Loomis went to his room, showered, sprawled across his bed naked, and slept for the first time in thirty-six hours. When he awoke, María Elena was beside him, cradling his head in her arms.

They lay for a time without moving, listening to the occasional faint, far-off chatter of automatic weapons.

Then, without a word, Loomis pulled her under him. A frantic desperation drove them through steadily building momentum toward a climax that left them both breathless and shattered.

They rolled apart and lay for a time in the darkness without talking.

María Elena at last broke the silence. “Loomis, I knew something was wrong the other night when you didn’t come back. Why didn’t you tell me about the atomic bomb?”

Loomis reached to turn on a lamp beside the bed. “Who told you?” he asked. 

“El Jefe.”

Loomis was unable to keep his irritation from showing. “He shouldn’t have worried you with it,” he said.

María Elena’s tone turned defensive, defiant. “Well thanks a lot, Loomis, you male chauvinist pig. As it so happened, my uncle thought I might have enough intelligence to have some idea of who is behind Hamlet.”

Loomis rolled onto one elbow, facing her. “Do you?”

“What do you care?” she said with an elaborate shrug. “I’m nothing. My opinions aren’t worth anything.”

“All right,” he said. “I stand corrected. Tell me. I really want to know. I’m humbly begging.”

She laughed. “That’s better.” She put a hand on Loomis’s chest and let it roam while she talked. “I don’t think Hamlet is a terrorist group, anyone fighting for causes,” she said. “I feel they’re completely without principle. They’re driven by greed. Their demands will probably be to put them in a position of power.”

Loomis reached to take her hand. “That takes in most of the human race,” he said.

“Oh Loomis! How can you say that? Sure, the world’s full of shitty people. But I can’t keep from admiring all those fighting for causes — even the wrong causes.”

“If you scratch them, you’ll usually find that the cause is number one,” he told her.

She looked at him, concerned. “I can’t believe you really think that. What about all the grand causes of the past — your American Revolution?”

“A good case in point,” he agreed. “In the English version, all our heroes come out traitors. It’s all in the viewpoint. Most people alive then had a vested interest, one way or another, that turned them loyalist or revolutionary.”

She made a helpless gesture with her hand, then bit her lip in thought. “O.K. I suppose this would be the supreme test for a Texan,” she said. “What about the Alamo?”

“Another example,” he told her. “When I was a kid I was taught that the men in the Alamo died fighting for Texas independence. No one questioned it. More rose-colored glasses. At the time of the Alamo, Texas independence hadn’t even been declared. They died fighting for restoration of the Mexican Constitution of 1824, under which they had land grants.”

“All of them?”

“Well, maybe some of them just didn’t like Mexicans,” he admitted.

María Elena seemed disturbed. She lay silent for a moment. “If you feel that way, I don’t understand how you can fight other people’s wars for them.”

“Everybody likes to do what he’s good at,” Loomis said. “I happen to be good at it. It’s an honorable profession — maybe the oldest.”

“Then you
are
a cynic,” she said. “But if you don’t trust people, how can you form deep relationships?”

The question jarred Loomis more than he wanted to admit. He thought his answer out carefully.

“Nothing is forever,” he told her. “The good times are few and far between. You just hang onto the good times as long as you can and try your damnedest to live through the bad. That’s all you can hope for in this old world.”

María Elena lay for a time, staring at the ceiling, absorbing the thought. “Well, I guess I’ve discovered the flaw in the big rough diamond,” she said. “Maybe it’s up to me to fix it. I guess I’ll just have to prove to you that there are good things — lasting things.”

She moved over to him and they began again. He soon had her in good humor, laughing. He thought her small, firm breasts the most perfect creations he’d ever seen, and told her so.

“Oh Loomis! Don’t tell me you’re another tit man,” she said.

He pulled her to him, nuzzling. “A tit man, an ass man, a bottom man.” He moved over her, holding her head in his hands. “And,” he added, “a great admirer of feminine intellect.”

“Oh goody gumdrops,” she said, putting her arms around him. “A Renaissance lover!”

They made love with a strange, unhurried leisure. Afterward, she snuggled against him. “Hold me, Loomis,” she said. “That’s what I really need.”

They lay entwined throughout the night, listening to the sounds of the growing revolution.

Chapter 15

Minus
5
Days
,
23
:
50
Hours

Mike Elliott spent the afternoon sailing on Oslo Fjord with the tall Norwegian blonde from Scandinavian Airlines. Elliott normally liked small women, but he liked variety even more. The blonde almost matched his six-foot-two, but she was well proportioned and kept him laughing with her terrific sense of humor. They capped the sail with four rounds of beer at the open-air Pernille. There they made plans to go dancing that evening at the Rosekjelleren, one of Elliott’s favorite places. The sunken dance floor, the suggestive decor, and the nude floorshow were always a turn-on. And Elliott had learned that the blonde lived alone in her own apartment near Holmenkollen, liked American men, and had an open mind about sex. Elliott was looking forward to a terrific night.

Then he returned to his room at the Continental and found the cable waiting.

The first surprise was that the whole cable was a message. Usually, Langley risked only cryptic notes tucked away in long blocks of text. These notes in turn were encoded into five-letter groupings to be decoded against Langley’s twenty-seven-column square, a device tradition claimed had never been broken. The key to the square was hidden in the third of a sequence of numbers buried in the text. The key to the location of the message was indicated by variations in the signature.

Elliott looked at the signature on the cable. Andrew L. Latham. The full meaning didn’t hit him for several seconds.

ALL?

It was a long cable.

Making certain the door to his room was latched and bolted, Elliott set to work. He unscrewed the back of his watch, lifted out the special bit of glass designed to masquerade as a jewel in the movement, and carefully placed it on the desk. Searching in his bag, he found the penlight — a common tool among world travelers for reading street maps in dim light and counting unfamiliar money in ancient taxis. After screwing the fake jewel into the penlight tip, Elliott projected the twenty-seven-column square onto the wall. Then, with pad and pen, he began the long chore of ferreting out the message.

Elliott had never been adept at code. The five-letter groupings, designed to prevent educated guesses by outsiders, further confused him. Once he had the full text decoded, he had to study it for several minutes before finding the meaning:

PROCE EDLIS BONSO ONEST AVAIL ABLEC ARRIE RASSU MEGRO UNDHO GCONT ACTBR OADSW ORDEF BAHID TOEST ABLIS HREND EZVOU SSAFE HOUSE RUAJO SEVIA NAFUT MOSTC AUTIO NADVI SEDDA NGERI MMINE NT.

By dividing the words, he came to the message:

PROCEED LISBON SOONEST AVAILABLE CARRIER. ASSUME GROUNDHOG. CONTACT BROADSWORD EFBAHID TO ESTABLISH RENDEZVOUS SAFEHOUSE RUA JOSE VIANA F. UTMOST CAUTION ADVISED. DANGER IMMINENT. 

The “groundhog” gave him pause until a vague memory stirred that the name was his own deep cover. He’d never used it, and he’d almost forgotten it. The “EFBAHID” was a puzzler, until he recalled that numbers often were given simple letter count — A= 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. This translated into a phone number, 562-1894. Similarly, the “F” after Rua Jose Viana translated into house number 6.

The “danger imminent” advisory aroused all of Elliott’s latent paranoia. He’d always assumed there were certain risks involved in his line of work. Caution was standard operating procedure, deemed too obvious for comment. He’d never seen, or heard of, a similar warning encoded with instructions. Did Langley know something? Was the blonde involved?

He remembered how readily she’d agreed to a date.

Had he been set up?

He forced himself to quit thinking of such vague possibilities. That was the route to insanity.

Instead, he immediately phoned the airport and put himself on standby for the first flight to Lisbon. To make certain a seat would become available, he switched to his role of travel agent and phoned four of his clients, informing them that they’d been bumped from their overnight flight to Lisbon. The clients — two women schoolteachers from Ohio and an elderly farm couple from Nebraska — were not surprised. Most American tourists are aware of the airline practice of overbooking flights. They also know that American tourists are the first to be bumped. Elliott’s CIA self had no qualms over the trick, but his travel agent’s conscience bothered him. He phoned the airport and booked them for a later flight.

He then called the blonde and cancelled the date, explaining that his home office in New York had scheduled three flights of important conventioneers into Paris, the Paris manager was down with the flu, and they’d called on him to take up the slack. From the tone of her voice, Elliott judged that she didn’t buy the story. But he was too disturbed to be concerned. Let her think he had found a bigger, better blonde.

He packed carefully but rapidly, wishing he could carry more in the way of weapons. Electronic surveillance at airports posed a problem for clandestine warriors. His .38 pen would set off alarms, but at least it seemed innocent to outward appearances. He could carry it in his hand going through the gate. But his 7.65 autoloading cigarette lighter was too much of a curiosity to risk taking along.

On the night flight to Lisbon, he had trouble sleeping. The “utmost caution, danger imminent” phrase kept ringing in his mind. His seatmate was a German auto parts specialist. Or at least the man said that’s what he was; he did seem to know a great deal about the anatomy of Volkswagens. Across the aisle were two American schoolteachers, almost exact replicas of the two Elliott had bumped from the flight. They had spent the day in Frogner Park and were discussing the wonders of the Vigeland statuary. Or at least they said they had spent the day in Frogner Park.

The flight arrived on time. Elliott managed his way through customs in less than forty minutes, switched a hundred kroner into escudos, and found a public telephone. Inserting a coin, he held the receiver to his ear while he monitored the lobby. Then he dialed Broadsword’s number, hoping he could remember the crazy doubletalk they had taught him at Langley.

He let the phone ring twice, hung up, waited a moment, then dialed again. Someone at the other end picked up the receiver.

“Hello. Is this 562-1894?” Elliott asked.

“It is,” a flat voice answered. “With whom do you wish to speak?” (“The meeting is on; give me the right response, and I’ll tell you when.”) 

“Arthur, please.” (King Arthur handled a mean broadsword, let us both remember.)

“Arthur isn’t here, right at the moment. But you might try reaching him at 562-0030.” (“Be here at 0030 — thirty minutes after midnight.”)

“Thank you, I will,” Elliott said. He hung up the phone and glanced at his watch. He had less than two hours; he was thankful that he knew Lisbon well from many visits while serving out of the Madrid station.

With another coin he dialed the Infante Santo. All four of his bumped clients had been booked into the colorful old hotel down by the Tagus. Rooms in Lisbon were at a premium in season, and with four reservations lapsing, Elliott figured the Infante Santo would be his best bet. He was right. A room was available. He asked them to hold it for him. He knew that the place was noisy from nearby rail and highway traffic, but he was in no position to choose.

He went to the hotel by taxi, carefully watching his back trail. As far as he could determine he was alone, but he wanted to make certain before heading to the safehouse.

After a quick shower and change of clothes, he asked the hotel doorman to summon a taxi — a minor precaution to make certain a special taxi wasn’t waiting for him. He gave the driver the address of A’Cave on Avenida Antonio de Aquilar.

On arrival, he quickly walked down into the noisy cellar and moved through the crowd to the bar. A teen-aged prostitute joined him, and he ordered drinks, keeping a careful watch on the entry. While the girl whispered into his ear the delights she had readily available, Elliott concentrated on the doorway so intently that he almost overlooked the fat German at the far end of the bar. Elliott couldn’t put a name to the face, but he knew he’d seen that round moon countenance before, either in the company files, or in a briefing somewhere. Langley had taught Elliott an elaborate system of identification, but he had devised his own, based on movie stars. And he had the man pegged. Sydney Greenstreet.

Elliott put his drink on the bar. “Let’s go,” he said to the girl.

He rushed her through the crowd, up the stairs, and into a taxi waiting at the curb. As they pulled away, bound for the girl’s flat, Elliott turned to watch the German emerge from the club.

Single tail?

He had no way of knowing.

“You not like me?” the girl asked, puzzled over his distraction.

Aware that she had moved her hand into provocative territory, Elliott really looked at her for the first time. A Latin Lolita, not more than fourteen or fifteen. Thin, waiflike, and strangely appealing. Back home, her delights would bring a ten-year stretch in the slammer. Here, she was available and a veteran.

“I like fine,” Elliott said, patting her thigh affectionately. “But tonight, I want you to entertain a friend. It’s his birthday.”

“Pardon?”

Elliott reached into his pocket and gave her thirty escudos. “When we turn the next corner, I’ll jump out,” he said. “You go on to your flat, and wait in the doorway, hidden. My friend is in the Fiat behind us. When he walks up to your door, tell him you are my birthday gift to him.”

The girl didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered. Elliott didn’t give her time to decide. As they turned the corner, he gave the driver a handful of escudos and instructions. When the taxi slowed, he jumped to the pavement and sprinted for a doorway as the taxi roared away. He reached the shadows just before the Fiat rounded the corner. He watched it disappear after the taxi.

Elliott waited in the doorway five minutes, but nothing stirred. He walked two blocks to a main thoroughfare and hailed a passing cab. He reached the safehouse on time.

“I was tailed,” he told Broadsword.

“At this point, I’d be surprised if you weren’t,” Broadsword said. “This has turned into one hell of a hot operation.”

Elliott appreciated the fact that Broadsword didn’t bother to ask if he’d lost the tail. Broadsword wasn’t a worrier. He trusted his men to carry out their assignments as true professionals.

Elliott had known Broadsword at Langley by the name of Brad Jordan. Always stocky, Jordan had gained weight but still seemed solid. And the new patches of gray at his temples added a look of maturity.

“We’re all here,” Broadsword said. “Come join the party.”

He led Elliott into a large, dimly lit room, lined with shelves and workbenches that gleamed curiously white. As they moved nearer, Elliott saw the reason. The shelves were filled with row upon row of false teeth, hundreds, perhaps thousands. The safehouse was a dental laboratory. Elliott forced his eyes away from the macabre array. Six men were waiting at a long table.

“This is Groundhog, surfaced at last,” Broadsword said. “If today were February second, we’d have six more weeks of winter. Groundhog saw his shadow on the way here.”

Broadsword introduced the group. Elliott knew three of them. One was the pseudo junkie operative assigned to monitor the youth-drug culture around Torremolinos on the Costa Brava. He was known as Peter Rabbit. Dr. Thomas Segal was a bona fide medical doctor attached at various times to various embassies and who doubled in brass as a company man. The third, Ralph Webb, dated back to the early years of the CIA. As a cover he’d launched an import-export business that soon, even without his help, doubled and tripled his company salary. Webb ostensibly resigned. But he remained available for special assignments. He was known as Tycoon.

The other three were introduced as Archer, Bowman, and Shield. Elliott didn’t know them. He shook hands, and sat down facing them.

Broadsword glanced at his watch. “We’re on a tight schedule,” he said. “Please pay attention.”

He paused to light a cigarette. “Briefly, here’s the situation: the company needs to search a tanker somewhere in the Caribbean. Where, and for what, I don’t know. But to make the search feasible, we will plant in a Lisbon hospital, within twenty-four hours, an authentic case of bubonic plague. This case will provide the
raison
d’état
for seizure and search.”

“Far out, man,” Peter Rabbit said.

Elliott was aware of the intensified interest around the table. Company operatives for the most part lead relatively dull lives. They dote on challenge. Elliott knew this assignment might become a part of company legend. Every company man had his repertoire of wild assignments. Elliott once flew to Rio to take a leak. As he stood before the designated urinal in Rio, he was jostled, and a deft hand planted a small packet in his coat pocket. He zipped up and flew back to Oslo, stopping only briefly for another leak at Heathrow. He’d tossed the packet into a designated dustbin without ever knowing what it contained. He’d had other unusual assignments. But as far as he knew, no one had ever been ordered to hunt up a case of plague.

“We have found a case,” Broadsword said. “A black male, forty-two years of age, at a Protestant mission in Zaire, Africa. Our job is to transport the patient discreetly into Lisbon and into a hospital. The mission is complicated by the fact that efforts are being made to monitor, and presumably to stop, our every move.”