The Hamlet Warning Read Online Free Page B

emphatically. “Yes, sir. Not only possible, but even probable, we’re told. Our nuclear people say we’re overdue. They’ve long been expecting something like this.”
    “And this so-called Hamlet Group. You have no idea who they are? What they want?”
    Wallaby shifted in his seat and glanced at his Deputy before replying. “No, sir. Not at the moment. It’s all in the report there.”
    Robertson clamped his cigar in his teeth and fixed the Director with a gray-eyed stare that had become an anathema to the White House staff. He then whipped out the cigar and spoke with heat. “I don’t like this, Wallaby,” he said. “I don’t like this at all. Your agency has been a pain in the presidential ass for some time, a source of constant embarrassment. Yet you take on something of this scope without alerting me, or anyone. What in God’s name possessed you?”
    Wallaby glanced uncomfortably at his Deputy, who seemed to be enjoying the exchange. “As I said, Mr. President, we had so little information, initially …”
    “All the more reason we should have gotten right on it,” Robertson interrupted. “We’ve been wasting valuable time.”
    “There’s really not much we can do at this point, Mr. President,” Wallaby said. “Our hands are tied. Everything hinges on what happens in Santo Domingo.”
    “We have the alternative you mentioned,” Robertson pointed out. 
    “If the ship is destroyed, Mr. President, we will lose what few pieces of evidence we have.”
    “So you recommend that we depend on the Dominican Republic, and on this man, Clay Loomis?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I also infer, from your rather incomplete report of our deteriorating relationships there, that we do not enjoy the admiration of Loomis.”
    “No, sir.”
    “Why not?”
    Wallaby hesitated. “It’s a long story, Mr. President,” he said.
    Robertson glared at him. “We have time,” he said. “I have the feeling you’re holding out on me. There’s obviously something fishy about our situation with Loomis. I want the full story.”
    Deputy Ogden coughed, his device for interruption.
    “Perhaps I could help,” he said. He glanced apologetically at Wallaby. “I have known Loomis longer. Twenty years or more. But it’s all rather complicated. I would have to go back to how he came to us, how he came to leave …”
    “Please do,” Robertson said.
    Ogden shifted in his chair and frowned at the floor for a moment, reflecting. “First, let me say that he is a remarkable man,” he said. “Fantastic career, even in our trade. He enlisted in the Marine Corps when he was fifteen. A big, rawboned kid from West Texas. Made a name for himself in the Corps. Later, there was a captain who took an interest in him, helped him get his high-school equivalency certificate, talked him into going to college on the GI Bill. He earned his B.A. in romance languages, of all damned things, and accepted a commission. Afterward, he got shore duty, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Good duty, in those days, I’m told. Plenty of rum and beer, and whorehouse liberties up to Guantánamo City in the mountains.” 
    “I’ve been there,” Robertson said.
    He remembered how it had been, when he visited Guantánamo as a lieutenant commander on a battle-wagon, the liberty parties crossing the bay by launch to Caimanera and the railroad, then the two-hour jolting ride on wooden seats, naked children running alongside at every hamlet, fighting over coins tossed out the open windows by the sailors and marines. And he remembered Guantánamo City in Batista’s Cuba, dirty, poverty-stricken, baked in the sun, hopeless.
    “Somewhere along in there,” Ogden said, “Loomis made contact with some of Fidel Castro’s rebels and was recruited.”
    “He had leftist leanings?”
    “Idealistic, perhaps, but not left. If you remember, Mr. President, our own State Department also was fooled to some extent by Castro’s intentions. We couldn’t very well condemn Loomis for