The Hamlet Warning

by Leonard Sanders

  “We can’t do anything but wait,” Arnheiter said. “No use sweating it. You want a beer?”

  “No,” Zaloudek said. “I will be needing steady hands, if the goods come.”

  Arnheiter shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. He went into the back room, where Zaloudek earlier had seen a small kitchenette.

  Zaloudek still wasn’t used to Arnheiter’s brusque ways, despite their two days together. He knew little about him. In odd moments, Arnheiter had mentioned service with the French Foreign Legion in Algeria. He also seemed familiar with Uruguay, Honduras, Chile, and other hot spots. The man appeared completely devoid of humor and imagination. Zaloudek was by nature impatient with delay, and thus far there had been nothing but delays. Arnheiter had been six hours late at the rendezvous — a bar near the Duarte Bridge. And now, the truck with the goods was more than twenty-four hours overdue. A cryptic message had arrived: the material was safe and on its way. Zaloudek liked to keep his mind occupied. Waiting rankled him greatly.

  Arnheiter had arranged a room for Zaloudek a block away. But Zaloudek said he would prefer a cot in the shop, explaining that he expected to be working day and night, with only a few hours of sleep, until the project was completed. In one of his few concessions, Arnheiter had agreed.

  The shop was on Duarte Avenue just off El Conde. Ostensibly a new firm not yet open for business, the shop was kept locked. A sign out front informed the curious that “El Mickey” Air-Conditioning Repair would soon have a grand opening. The building itself was small, no more than thirty feet across the front and perhaps sixty feet in length. Large, overhead double doors at the front were connected to a high-speed chain lift that opened and closed the entrance within seconds. Inside, the concrete floor was clean and uncluttered. Zaloudek had assumed that his working conditions would be much worse.

  Arnheiter returned with his beer. He pulled two cane-bottom chairs up to a small drafting table. “We better get our shit together,” he said. “There may not be time, later.”

  He explained that there were three options for their escape route after the blast. A small boat was waiting in Boca Chica. With any luck, they could head east by car, put out to sea, and there await word whether to sail for Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or possibly a mid-ocean rendezvous.

  “This fucking revolution may queer that,” Arnheiter said. “If fighting breaks out around the Duarte Bridge at the wrong time, we’re screwed.”

  “The roads in that direction are not good,” Zaloudek said.

  “There’s that, too,” Arnheiter agreed. “I’m not too keen on the boat. Even after we get to sea, we’re still a long way from home.”

  Zaloudek nodded agreement.

  The second option, Arnheiter explained, involved a backroad trip to the Haitian border, where arrangements had been made for seclusion in Petionville. The third plan called for flight by small plane to Port-au-Prince for connection with a commercial flight to Jamaica.

  “I don’t like the idea of the small plane,” Arnheiter said. “If one of those Dominican Mirage jets sees us, we’ll never make the border.”

  Zaloudek felt the same way. He didn’t like to fly, especially in small planes. But he also disliked mountain roads. “Is the highway through the mountains dangerous?” he asked.

  “Highway, hell,” Arnheiter said. “It’s no more than a cowpath. And it’s all mountain. Real rough country. But there’re no soldiers up there. And once we’re over the Haitian border, we’re safe. We can spend two months or more holed up, drinking and screwing.”

  Zaloudek didn’t like any of the plans. He couldn’t imagine putting to sea in a small boat, vulnerable to pursuit by both sea and air. He was terrified of small boats. And big ones, too. He would feel naked and exposed on the open sea.

  The idea for escape by small plane was even worse. He was certain that with the blast, American jets would soon be monitoring the area. Even if Dominican jets failed to find them, the American planes with their better equipment were certain to notice a private plane scooting for the Haitian border. And the thought of a desperate trip by car over mountain roads left him nauseated.

  Spreading a map on the table, they debated the plans throughout the afternoon.

  Eventually they decided on the dash by car to the border. Arnheiter’s preference for the plan seemed closely linked to the probability of two months in seclusion. Zaloudek also found the prospect held appeal.

  “All right,” Arnheiter said. “I’ll send the word that we’ll take that route. But of course if anything happens, the other options are still open.”

  After a light supper brought in by one of Arnheiter’s men, Zaloudek napped on his cot in the corner of the shop. He was awakened shortly after midnight by the arrival of the truck.

  Arnheiter opened the big front doors and the two-ton Ford stake-bed backed into the shop. The doors were hurriedly closed and locked.

  Zaloudek laced his shoes, walked to the back end of the truck, and watched as Arnheiter and his three men lowered the power loader, exposing the cargo. Seven green fifty-five-gallon oil drums were stacked neatly in front, a light chain snaked through the tops to hold them in place.

  A chill of anticipation went up Zaloudek’s spine.

  A nuclear engineer for more than twenty years, he’d never before worked with weapons-grade uranium. He knew all about it in theory. He’d seen parts of designs for many nuclear weapons. But he’d never seen the raw materials.

  “What’ll we do with the stuff?” Arnheiter asked.

  “How about putting it over there?” Zaloudek said, pointing to the far corner of the room. “You might have them put the barrels a few feet apart.”

  “Why?”

  “A simple precaution,” Zaloudek explained. “If uranium beyond a certain amount is brought together, the mass turns critical. That’s why it is shipped this way, in small bottles, suspended in barrels. In the trade, they’re called birdcages.”

  Arnheiter looked at the barrels with renewed interest. “You mean that shit might go off?”

  “Conceivably,” Zaloudek said. “I’m speaking in terms of an accident — barrels knocked over, bottles broken open. Of course the result would be a fizzle yield, a sort of messy dud. But forty-nine kilos of uranium would make a considerable disturbance, even with inefficient detonation.”

  “You hear that, you fuckers?” Arnheiter yelled. “Take it easy with those things!”

  Zaloudek waited patiently while the men unloaded the trucks. With a counter, he then carefully checked each birdcage for leakage.

  The material apparently was still in the original Crescent, Oklahoma, conversion plant packing. He could find no damage. Each barrel contained a ten-liter bottle placed in a length of five-inch pipe, which was centered by welded braces. Each ten-liter bottle contained seven kilograms of uranium.

  Each barrel weighed less than a hundred pounds, easily handled by one man.

  “How big a bomb can you build with this stuff?” Arnheiter asked.

  Zaloudek eased one barrel out into the center of the floor, well away from the others.

  “The question isn’t how big, but how efficient,” he explained. “The Hiroshima bomb had sixty kilograms of uranium. We’ve got forty-nine here. But the Hiroshima bomb was very, very crude. Terribly inefficient. A stupid bomb, really. I’ve seen figures estimating less than one percent of its fuel was utilized. I’ll be very disappointed if we fail to achieve a ten percent yield.”

  “Then it will be bigger than Hiroshima?”

  “Somewhere in that range,” Zaloudek said, taking refuge in evasive nuclear weapons terminology.

  “How much bigger?”

  Zaloudek spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “Who knows? Again, there are so many factors to consider. Much of the efficiency also is contained in the situation. We don’t have a B-29 or B-52 handy, and our device will be impractical for a private plane. So an air burst is out. That means we’ll lose some efficiency to shadow effects. On the other hand, a grou
nd burst will kick up more dust and debris — all full of deadly radiation. Chunks of concrete and steel will fly out like artillery shells for miles. It’s difficult to predict exactly what will happen.”

  “Where’d you learn all this stuff? Working for the government?”

  “No. Not all. You or anybody can find the essential material if you know where to look. The Los Alamos Primer has all the basics. It was declassified ten years or more ago. You can get it from the government for a couple of bucks. There is a book called Manhattan District History that explains all the technical problems they ran into with the Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki shots. It was Top Secret when written, but then declassified in the sixties. There are others.”

  “Is that where you got all these charts and figures?” Arnheiter asked, pointing to the drafting table.

  “No, those are mine. I made them up from the Los Alamos Critical Mass Summaries. They cost a few dollars, and you can get them from the National Technical Information Service. Not everything is in there. But all heavy metals are very similar. You can get some idea of the critical mass, the shaping of the metal, reflectors, and so forth. I think I could manage if I’d never seen a bomb design. But I have seen the essential details of Hamlet, a very good design. I have incorporated some of Hamlet’s best features into my own device.”

  Arnheiter seemed to be growing nervous. He looked at the barrels with mounting concern. “How do you know the damned thing won’t go off before we get our asses far enough away?”

  “I don’t,” Zaloudek said. “But I can assure you I’ll do my best.” He reached for his white coveralls. “I might as well get to work,” he said. “Let’s move a cage over by the workbench.”

  With the barrel in place, Zaloudek lifted out the bottle, opened it, and poured out into his open palm some dull brown grains resembling instant coffee.

  He could hardly believe his eyes.

  “This is uranium oxide!” he shouted.

  Arnheiter eased over to look, keeping a respectful distance. He seemed confused by Zaloudek’s distress.

  “They said it was weapons-grade stuff,” he said.

  “It may be,” Zaloudek said. “But it’s uranium oxide. I told them I wanted metal — what we call broken buttons.”

  Arnheiter seemed on the verge of panic. His voice trembled. “They probably didn’t know the difference. I didn’t. I thought uranium was uranium. Can’t you use this?”

  “I could,” Zaloudek said. He tried to explain the problem. “You see, efficiency is a matter of mass, of compactness. Uranium oxide is loose — too much wasted space. It would work. But it’d be far, far less efficient. I would have to redesign everything, completely. I couldn’t obtain anywhere near the yield I want.”

  “Maybe that’s just one barrel,” Arnheiter offered. “Maybe the rest of the stuff is all right.”

  One by one, they opened the other birdcages.

  All contained uranium oxide.

  Zaloudek knew of no way to convey to Arnheiter his terrible disappointment. He could use the uranium oxide. Criticality could be achieved. He could find ways of surmounting the inherent problems. Several ideas came to mind immediately — various methods of using explosives to bring the uranium oxide into a more compact mass at the crucial instant.

  Yet, the results would be bush league — equal to no more than a few hundred tons of TNT.

  Zaloudek wanted more.

  He wanted much more, for he had a purpose of his own that required the awakening of the world’s scientific community.

  And that would not be accomplished by a fizzle yield in some remote tropical setting.

  Zaloudek stood for a long time, rolling a thimbleful of the brown grains around in his palm with an index finger, thinking.

  Vaguely, he recalled a lengthy process of conversion.

  In the commercial world, the method was complex and time consuming. Yet …

  He walked to the drafting table and jotted down some formulas. For more than an hour, he pitted figures against formula, remembering, hoping.

  At last, he turned to Arnheiter.

  “I have an idea that might work,” he said. “It’ll take a lot of effort. But I may be able to turn this oxide into the form I want.”

  “How?”

  “A chemical process. I’m not certain I can do it with our limited facilities. You’ll have to buy some laboratory equipment, chemist’s-shop material. Or steal it. Everything I need should be available somewhere in Santo Domingo.”

  “O.K.,” Arnheiter said impatiently. “What do you need?”

  “I’ll make you a list. First, and most important, a lab furnace. A small one, the kind used in schools, would do. It won’t cost more than a hundred dollars or so, probably. You can say it’s for classroom use. Or for firing ceramic pottery, maybe. I’ll also need a vibrating tray, but I can make that from the machinery here. I’ll use the motor from the drill press. I’ll need some graphite crucibles — might as well get a dozen or so. They’re only a few dollars each. Hydrofluoric acid — several quarts. And some powdered magnesium. That ought to do it.”

  “How much money, all told?”

  “No more than three hundred dollars, probably.”

  “But it’ll take hours,” Arnheiter fumed. “And we’re already behind schedule.”

  “While you find the equipment, I’ll be working on the trigger mechanism,” Zaloudek said. “The only time we will lose will be that converting the uranium. And it has to be done.”

  Zaloudek examined the remainder of the gear. Everything he had requested was neatly packed in six heavy crates. The metal work had been done to his exact specifications. The quality of the material and workmanship far exceeded his expectations. Laying out all his equipment, he set to work.

  By the time daylight arrived, he had succeeded in honing the old three-inch navy gun to his specific needs. Much of the preliminary work had been done. His only remaining concern was the precise fitting. While he experimented with the firing mechanism, making certain all was in order, Arnheiter left with the truck and two men to hunt the laboratory equipment.

  When he was confident that the navy gun conformed perfectly with his designs, Zaloudek went to work shaping other parts for his device, carefully taking the measurements from his drawings, checking and rechecking the figures against the prepared equipment.

  Arnheiter returned in late afternoon, signaling his success with a broad grin. The laboratory furnace was rented from the university, ostensibly for use in a ceramic art gallery. Arnheiter had given the name of an existing art gallery but forged the signatures. The crucibles and hydrofluoric acid were easily located, and bought without arousing suspicion, at a wholesale pharmacy. But the powdered magnesium had required considerable search. Posing as a manufacturer of signal flares, Arnheiter had at last located a supply in a pharmaceutical warehouse. Arnheiter had hinted the flares were for use in the revolution.

  “Good work,” Zaloudek said. “Let’s see what we can do with it.”

  Working intently, with Arnheiter helping, Zaloudek jury-rigged a vibrator tray and fitted it inside the furnace.

  After pouring four and a half kilograms of uranium oxide onto the tray, he turned on the vibration mechanism.

  Over a Bunsen burner, he heated hydrofluoric acid in a flask fitted with stopper and tube. The resulting hydrogen-fluoride gas he fed into the furnace, which he allowed to heat to five hundred degrees centigrade. As they watched, the consistency of the uranium began to change.

  “What the hell’s happening?” Arnheiter asked.

  “The hydrogen fluoride gas and the uranium oxide are forming water and uranium tetrafluoride,” Zaloudek explained. “We’re going to have some fun with that.”

  He cooled the uranium tetrafluoride and mixed the residue with metallic magnesium powder in a six-to-one ratio. He then added some potassium chlorate and poured the material into a graphite crucible. With an electric coil he’d contrived, he heated the crucible to six hundred degrees centigra
de. At that point the magnesium ignited.

  “Jeez!” Arnheiter yelled, jumping away from the harmless shower of sparks.

  Zaloudek laughed, taking care to hold the crucible steady while the spectacular fire consumed the last of the magnesium.

  “I think it worked,” he said. “With any luck, we have magnesium fluoride on top and uranium metal on the bottom. In foundry jargon, this is called a derby.”

  Cooling the crucible in a soft spray of water, he knocked the unwanted material away to reveal four and a half kilograms of bright new uranium metal.

  “That ought to work,” he said. “Most of the success of a nuclear shot lies in the shape of the mass. I should be able to reshape this exactly the way I want it.”

  The relief of knowing that his conversion process would work left Zaloudek drained of energy. He had not slept in more than thirty hours. He went to his cot, napped for four hours, then began a routine that varied little during the next three days. He worked stretches of nine to ten hours, with alternate three-to four-hour intervals of rest.

  He painstakingly converted the remainder of the uranium oxide to metal. Taking great care always to keep the pieces of subcritical uranium separated, he shaped each, using precision calipers to ensure a perfect fit. Together, the components of uranium would form an interlocking cylinder, one fitting inside the other as a sort of plug. When fired from the navy gun, the plug would penetrate with tremendous pressure to form one supercritical mass — instantaneously.

  The result, he was certain, would surpass the devastation of the device at Hiroshima.

  Zaloudek then went back to work on the various parts of the firing mechanism, the foundation, the frame, and the cover. He patiently joined the parts. He fitted the neutron shield. He installed the navy gun. He checked and rechecked alignments. And he tested and retested the ignition gear.

  When he was satisfied with the results, he carefully disassembled the device, packed all the components in the wooden crates, and reported to Arnheiter.

  “We’re ready,” he said.