The Hamlet Warning

by Leonard Sanders

  The Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company had provided the complete plans for the ship down to the last rivet and plate. And from various sources throughout the world the CIA had assembled information on the ship and crew. All the material, gathered in Washington and flown by jet to Santo Domingo, was now spread on the hotel tables. Loomis had spent hours digesting the information. Yet he had the uncomfortable feeling that somewhere something had been overlooked.

  He spread out the blueprints once more. The tanker was typical, no different from hundreds turned out in the years before the oil-shipping industry learned the economics of supertankers. In its early days the tanker had been considered a giant itself: 887 feet long and sixty-five thousand tons deadweight. But the tanker was now twenty-three years old. Most modern tankers were twice its size.

  The layout of the ship also was conventional. Ten huge center tanks occupied most of the space amidship. Each center tank had wing tanks on both port and starboard, totaling thirty bulk cargo spaces. The fittings were old style, with high-suction lines to within a few feet of the bottom on each tank. Separate, low-suction stripping lines were attached to the bottom of each tank to drain sludge. And each tank was equipped with heating coils to facilitate cold-weather pumping.

  The search teams had been divided into four groups. Each was assigned to a specific area of the ship. The teams were now receiving final briefing in separate rooms.

  “A” Team would search the tanker’s bow: a maze of dry cargo spaces, pump rooms, deep tanks, boatswain’s stores, and the chain locker. “B” Team, responsible for the midship tanks, had received spur-of-the-moment training to handle the special equipment required. “C” Team would search the engine spaces and boiler rooms housed in the stern section along with more pump rooms and the ship’s fuel tanks. “D” Team would search the main deck and ship’s superstructure: the crew’s quarters, galley and cargo spaces aft, and the three-deck bridge superstructure slightly forward of midship.

  And every space would have to be combed inch by inch.

  Yet Loomis had the persistent feeling that he was walking into a trap. And long ago he had learned to trust his instincts. He studied the blueprints, analyzing what clues he could dredge up from his subconscious.

  The more Loomis thought, the more all the unknowns narrowed to one question: Who were the Hamlet people?

  The Lisbon incident as described by Johnson still disturbed him. He felt that if he knew where to look, the Lisbon operation might provide some indication.

  “Who was the man who got wasted?” Loomis asked.

  Johnson placed the binoculars on the windowsill and rubbed his eyes. “Mike Elliott,” he said. “I don’t think you knew him. He came in later. I worked with him, a time or two.”

  “Good man?”

  “In his own way. But shy on discipline. He had a weakness for women.”

  “Imagine that,” Loomis said.

  “We think they used a girl to suck him in. She was a known prostitute. But we haven’t been able to learn why he went from the airport directly to a nightclub. He was seen there alone, then later leaving with the girl.”

  “Maybe he knew her,” Loomis said. “Maybe the opposition had her staked out, hoping he’d show.”

  Johnson considered the theory. “Possible,” he said.

  “Probable,” Loomis said. “And that may mean they’re ahead of us, anticipating.”

  “You have a sneaky mind,” Johnson observed.

  “It’s the company I keep,” Loomis said.

  *

  The tanker refused to obey or acknowledge signals from the Duarte. Ordered to slow to five knots, she maintained a steady fifteen, steering straight toward harbor. The Duarte repeated the order and issued coordinates for mandatory anchorage. The tanker refused to reply. Two miles from shore, the Duarte sent a five-inch shell across the tanker’s bow. The shell splashed less than two hundred yards off the tanker’s starboard bow, raising an instant column of water fifty feet high. Perceptibly, the tanker slowed. The Duarte moved in closer and repeated the coordinates for anchorage.

  Loomis and Johnson watched the action through binoculars, standing in the bow of a fifty-foot motor launch. The thirty Dominican marines with them would serve as the boarding party. As they watched, the dull boom of the Duarte’s five-incher came to them across the distance, a full fifteen seconds after the shell splash had disappeared.

  “I think that did it,” Johnson said, studying the ship. “He seems to be altering course, moving out of the channel.”

  Their launch was tossed by deep swells. Loomis had difficulty keeping his binoculars trained on the ship, but he could see a half-dozen men moving toward the bow. “They’ve called away the anchoring detail,” he said. “They’re going to drop the hook. We might as well go on out there.”

  He turned and motioned to the coxswain of the launch, who nodded and rang his bells for more power. The launch turned sharply to starboard as the coxswain steered for the opening in the breakwater.

  As they came abreast of the ancient cannon at the mouth of the muddy Ozama, the tanker dropped anchor. The roar of the anchor chain playing out through the hawse pipes sent seabirds along the breakwater scurrying into the air. The Duarte didn’t anchor but stood by less than five hundred yards off the tanker’s beam.

  Loomis could see that the Duarte’s quad-forty mounts amidships were manned and ready.

  They rounded the breakwater jetty. The coxswain turned the launch sharply to port to meet the first full swells from the open sea and steered straight for the ship.

  “Bigger bastard than I thought,” Johnson said.

  From their vantage point, low on the water, the high sides of the tanker loomed like cliffs. The coxswain maneuvered the launch around to the starboard side. Loomis couldn’t see anyone on deck or in the ship’s superstructure. But as the coxswain slowed, turning the boat in a circle toward the ship’s side, a head appeared at the railing. As Loomis watched, the man raised a loud-hailer.

  “What the hell is this?” the amplified voice boomed in English. “What the fuck you cocksuckers want?”

  “Well, they sure sound like our kind of people,” Johnson said.

  Loomis motioned, and a crewman brought him a hailer. He put it to his mouth and pulled the trigger. “Lower a ladder,” he yelled at the man. “We’re coming aboard.”

  The head disappeared. For a full minute, Loomis thought his demand might be ignored. Then three crewmen went to work, swinging out a small boat boom. When it was secured, a thirty-foot Jacob’s ladder tumbled out and dangled from the boom to the surface of the sea.

  “Christ, are we going to climb that?” Johnson asked.

  “We might try going up the anchor chain,” Loomis said. “But I think the ladder would be easier.”

  “I’ll sure say one thing for them,” Johnson said. “They don’t believe in making anything easy for anybody.”

  The tanker rode high in the water, the Plimsoll well above the surface. As the coxswain brought the boat in under the boom, Loomis studied the huge, raw red patches of lead paint protecting the metal from rust. Little of the original color — black — remained. Various exhaust lines along the ship’s side spewed sewage, bilge pumpings, and deck drainings into the sea, raising a strange mixture of smells. Even in the context of most tramp freighters, this one was filthy.

  A boathandler moved past Loomis, carefully walking the gunnels, and snared a dangling boom line with his boathook. As the coxswain killed the engine, the boat-handlers pulled in slack on the lines and held the launch in place under the swaying Jacob’s ladder. With the swells running four and five feet, the bottom of the ladder couldn’t be anchored. Loomis slung his Heckler MP5, grabbed the ladder, and went up first. There was a trick to it. The ladder was stiffer when approached from the side. Otherwise, one’s feet tended to shoot skyward.

  Oddly, there were no curious faces at the rails. Loomis climbed rapidly up to the boom. As he pulled himself up onto the hardwood, catc
hing his breath with short gasps, he could see three officers and a group of seamen waiting on deck. No one moved to help him. Sweating heavily from the exertion, Loomis waited until his breathing returned nearer to normal. He then inched his way across the boom to the steel deck. As he walked toward the group, he singled out the officer wearing a cap with a tarnished scrambled-egg insignia.

  “Captain Larson?” Loomis asked. “I’m Clay Loomis of …”

  “I don’t give a fuck what your name is,” Larson interrupted. “What you mean, firing that fucking gun? What do you want?”

  Loomis measured him for a moment. Larson stood six-feet-three or four. He would weigh close to three hundred pounds, with more muscle than fat. And he was one of the ugliest specimens of humanity Loomis had ever seen. A long scar gave the left side of his face a ribald leer. His nose was flat, and his pale blue eyes and blond hair seemed strangely obscene and out of place in company with the swarthy, pockmarked face.

  Loomis kept his voice level and unemotional. He didn’t bother to unsling his Heckler.

  “I’m aboard this ship as the personal representative of the President of the Dominican Republic,” he said. “Anything you say to me will be considered said to him.”

  Larson remained silent, waiting. The ring of misfits around him looked as if they’d been salvaged from Devil’s Island. Loomis kept his eyes on Larson. He could hear Johnson and the boarding party coming up behind him.

  “A man aboard this ship was exposed in Lisbon to bubonic plague,” Loomis said. “You and the ship are in quarantine under International Sanitary Regulations of the World Health Organization, third annotated edition, and the International Health Regulations, as adopted by the twenty-second World Health Assembly in 1969. You and your men will be taken ashore for thorough physical examinations.”

  “I’ll be goddamned if we will,” Larson said. “I’m not leaving this ship. I’m captain. Nobody tells me what to do.”

  “That’s your privilege,” Loomis told him. “But you’ll be going against explicit orders from your owners. And you can’t go in to dock and off-load here until you comply. If you put to sea, you’ll have the same problem anywhere you go, with any country or port in the civilized world.”

  Larson looked past Loomis to Johnson and his men. “Who are all these people?” he asked.

  “World Health Organization and a half-dozen other agencies, all working with Dominican Republic Health Service,” Loomis said. “As you may know, the plague is transmitted by a rat-flea chain. These professionals and their crews will fumigate the entire ship. A medical team is waiting ashore for you and your men. The whole thing will take less than forty-eight hours. It’s been cleared with your owners.”

  Larson stared at the boarding party. His mouth worked several times before he could form words. Loomis had a strong feeling that Larson was reacting more in fear than from surprise and anger.

  “Impossible,” Larson said. “I’ve got dock space in Houston Friday. And there’s a load waiting in Aruba.”

  “You know maritime law as well as I do,” Loomis said. “Houston would put you in quarantine.”

  “Which one of my crew is supposed to be sick?”

  “Not sick. Exposed. An able by the name of Stanislaus Boleslaw.”

  Larson laughed as if he had found the solution to his whole problem. “Shit, Boleslaw’s dead,” he said.

  Johnson walked up beside Loomis. His face showed no surprise at the news. “Not from vomiting, diarrhea, and high fever, I hope.”

  “Naw. Fell over the side. Third day out. No loss. A boozer. Never did a lick of work.”

  “Just for the record, did anyone see him fall?” Johnson asked.

  “Shit, nobody there to see. He wasn’t missed until he didn’t show for morning watch. We held an official inquiry. It’s all in the log. You’ll find I keep good books.”

  “We’ll take a look, if you don’t mind,” Johnson said. Larson led the way forward to his sea cabin. The ship was incredibly dirty. Lead-based paint, oil smudges, rusted plates, and welding slag covered the decks. Below, the clutter was even worse. Tools and equipment lay scattered and rusting wherever someone had tossed them the last time they were used. The passageways showed no evidence of having been cleaned since the ship was built. And the tanker was permeated with the smells of crude oil, engine fumes, stack gas, stale urine, and cooking grease. Larson seemed right at home amidst the mess. He showed them into a small wardroom.

  From a shelf over a writing desk Larson took down a heavy journal. He was right in one respect. He kept good books. Their neatness was dramatically out of context with the rest of the ship.

  The Captain’s Inquiry into the Death of Able Seaman Stanislaus Boleslaw was typed into an impressive document bearing the signatures of all ship’s officers. Included was extensive testimony from those who last saw Boleslaw alive and from those familiar with his habits.

  The Inquiry found that Boleslaw spent most of his off-watch time back on the fantail smoking his pipe. The Inquiry even noted that the smoking area on open deck was restricted to a small portion of the fantail. According to the testimony, Boleslaw was feeling his way aft in the dark. The cook’s helper had just dumped a load of garbage over the fantail and had gone back to the galley for another, leaving the safety chain down in front of the garbage chute. Boleslaw went aft, feeling for the chain in the darkness, and walked right over the side. Attached to the Inquiry was a list of Boleslaw’s personal effects. Among them, Loomis noticed a detailed description of a half-dozen pipes.

  Johnson read the Inquiry, impatiently tapping a pencil on the metal desk. “Well, it certainly seems to be in order,” he said. “But Boleslaw’s death really complicates matters. May take a week to clear this up.”

  “I can’t wait a week,” Larson said. “My owners don’t pay me to fuck around.”

  “I assure you that you in no way can be held responsible,” Johnson said. “A full report of the circumstances will be filed with your owners. Thus far, they have been most cooperative.”

  Larson now definitely seemed unsure of himself. He was worried. Loomis was certain of that. Larson was good at hiding his fear, but he now had all the appearances of a man trapped, hunting desperately for a way out.

  “If Boleslaw’s dead, what’s the problem?” Larson asked.

  Johnson shrugged. “For all we know, Boleslaw was out of his head with fever, went to the rail to vomit, and fell over the side from vertigo — all caused by the first symptoms of the plague. And if that happened, then every member of your crew has been exposed.”

  “I can’t leave the ship untended,” Larson insisted.

  “Your owners have suggested that you sign responsibility for the ship over to the Dominican Republic until the matter is cleared up. The ship is safely at anchor. We will have plenty of experienced shiphandlers aboard. If any weather should develop, we can have you back aboard in twenty minutes.”

  “What outfit you with, anyway?” Larson asked belatedly.

  “World Health Organization,” Johnson said without blinking an eye.

  Larson sat lost in thought, idly tracing the long scar across his face. Loomis could understand a certain amount of concern. The delay would rearrange his schedule of docking for loading and unloading. The time lost might be even more valuable than the cargo involved. Time had been the owners’ chief concern. But Loomis sensed that Larson had on his mind some other, far more important problem.

  For the first time, Loomis began to have hope that he had been wrong, that the nuclear materials were on board.

  “I’ll have to talk to the owners,” Larson said.

  He spent almost thirty minutes in the radio shack. He emerged a defeated man.

  “All right,” he said to Loomis. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

  Loomis and Larson signed the papers that had been prepared. The ship’s crew was mustered on the main deck and transferred to motor launches for the trip to shore.

  As Larson left the deck he
hesitated at the rail for a moment, looking back, visually searching the ship.

  It could have been the natural reaction of a captain leaving his command, ascertaining that all was in order before going over the side.

  But Loomis felt there was something more in the gesture.

  Larson went over the side with the demeanor of a man heading toward the gallows.

  *

  Loomis and Johnson stood at the rail, watching the motor launches heading toward the opening at the end of the breakwater. The launches were to return immediately with the remainder of the search teams and the sophisticated electronics equipment flown in from Washington.

  “Think Larson knows what we’re after?” Loomis asked.

  “I’m not certain,” Johnson said. “But if he doesn’t, there are plenty of people aboard who do.”

  Loomis watched the seagulls sailing around the stem, searching for garbage. “How you figure that?” he asked.

  “Larson told me. You see, I knew Boleslaw.” Johnson sat down on a bollard, leaned back on the life lines, and stretched out his legs. “In his own way, Boleslaw was a strange one. I worked with him. He had a Polish background of some sort but was reared in Hungary. Something to do with the war, I suppose. He was one of the teen-aged heroes in the Hungarian revolt during the fifties. He had to flee the country and made his way to America. He joined the U.S. Army. With his background, he shot up through the ranks, received a good education on the GI Bill after a hitch in Vietnam, returned to duty, and was a captain in G2 when he transferred over to the company. He was a linguist, specializing in Slavic languages.”

  “All very interesting. But what the hell does that have to do with this?”