Triple

So it was a woman. Pierre Borg was shocked, amazed, mystified, intrigued and deeply worried. Dickstein never had women. Borg sat on a park bench under an umbrella. He had been unable to think in the Embassy, with phones ringing and people asking him questions all the time, so he had come out here, despite the weather. The rain blew across the empty park in sheets, and every now and then a drop would land on the tip of his cigar and he would have to relight it. It was the tension in Dickstein that made the man so fierce. The last thing Borg wanted was for him to learn how to relax. The pavement artists had followed Dickstein to a small apartment house in Chelsea where he had met a woman. "Irs a sexual relationship," one of them had said. "I heard her orgasm." The caretaker of the building had been interviewed, but he knew nothing about the woman except,that she was a close friend of the people who owned the apartment. Th obvious conclusion was that Dickstein owned the flat (and had bribed the caretaker to lie); that he used it as a rendezvous; that he met someone from the opposition, a woman; that they made love and he told her secrets. Borg might have bought that idea if he had found out about the woman some other way. But if Dickstein had suddenly become a traitor he would not have allowed Borg to become suspicious. He was too clever. He would have covered his tracks. He wduld not have led thepavement artists straight to the flat without once looking over his shoulder. His behavior had innocence written all over it He had met with Borg, looldng like the cat that got at the cream, either not knowing or not caring that his mood was all over his face. When Borg asked what was going on, Dickstein made jokes. Borg was bound to have him tailed. Hours later Dickstein was screwing some girl who liked it so much you could hear her out in the fucking street. The whole thing was so damn nalve it had to be true. AJI right, then. Some woman had found a way to get past Dickstein!s defenses and seduce him. Dickstein was reacting like a teenager because he never had a teenage. The important question was, who was she? The Russians had Illes, too, and they ought to have assumed, like Borg, that Dickstein was invulnerable to a sexual approach. But maybe they thought it was worth a try. And maybe they were right. Once again, Borg's instinct was to pull Dickstein out immediately. And once again, he hesitated. If it had been any project other than this one, any agent other than Dickstein, he would have known what to do. But Dickstein was the only man who could solve this problem. Borg had no option but to stick to his original scheme: wait until Dickstein had fully conceived his plan, then pull him out. He could at least have the Loondon Station investigate the woman and find out all they could about her. meanwhile he would just have to hope that if she were an agent Dickstein would have the sense not to tell her anything It would be a dangerous time, but there was no more Borg could do. His cigar went out, but he hardly noticed. The park was completely deserted now. Borg sat on his bench, his body uncharacteristically still, holding the umbrella over his head, looking ble a statue, worrying himself to death!

The fun was over, Dickstein told himself: it was time to get back to work. Entering his hotel room at ten o'clock in the morning, he realized that-incredibly-he had left no telitales. For the first time in twenty years as an agent, he had simply forgotten to take elementary precautions. He stood in the doorway, looking around, thinking about the shattering effect that she had had on him Leaving her and going back to work was like climbing into a familiar car which has been garaged for a year: be had to let the old habits, the old instincts, the old paranoia seep back into his mind. He went into the bathroom and ran a tub. He now had a kind of emotional breathing-space. Suza was going back to work today. She was with BOAC, and this tour of duty would take her all the way around the world. She expected to be back in twenty-one days, but it might be longer. He had no idea where he might be in three weeks' time; which meant he did not know when he would see her again. But see her again he would, if he lived. Everything looked different now, past and future. The last twenty years of his life seemed dull, despite the fact that he had shot people and been shot at, traveled all over the world, disguised himself and deceived people and pulled off outrageous, clandestine coups. It all seemed trivial. Sitting in the tub he wondered what he would do with the rest of his life. He had decided he would not be a spy anymore-but what would he be? It seemed an possibilities were open to him. He could stand for election to the Knesset, or start his own business, or simply stay on the kibbutz and make the best wine in Israel. Would he marry Suza? If he did, would they five in Israel? He found the uncertainty delicious, like wondering what you would be given for your birthday. If I live, he thought Suddenly there was even more at stake. He was afraid to die. Until now death had been something to avoid with all skill only because it constituted, so to speak, a losing move in the game. Now he wanted desperately to live: to sleep with Suza again, to make a home with her, to learn all about her, her idiosyncracies and her habits and her secrets, the books she liked and what she thought about Beethoven and whether she snored. It would be terrible to lose his life so soon after she had saved it. He got out of the bath, rubbed himself dry and dressed. The way to keep his life was to win this fight. His next move was a phone call. He considered the hotel phone, decided to start being extra careful here and now, and went out to find a call box. The weather had changed. Yesterday had emptied the sky of rain, and now it was pleasantly sunny and warm. He passed the phone booth nearest to the hotel and went on to the next one: extra careful. He looked up Lloy&s of London in the directory and dialed their number. "Lloyd's, good morning." 'I need some information about a ship." "rhaes Lloyd's of London Press,-I'll put you through." While he waited Dickstein looked out the windows of the phone booth at the London traffic, and wondered whether Lloyd's would give him what he wanted. He hoped so-he could not think where else to go for the information. He tapped his foot nervously. "Lloyd's of London Press." "Good morning, I'd like some information about a ship." "What sort of informatio'nr, the voice said, with-Dickstein thought-a trace of suspicion. "I want to know whether she was built as part of a series; and if so, the names of her sister ships, who owns them, and their present locations. Plus plans, if possible." 'I'm afraid I can't help you there." Dickstein's heart sank. "Why not?" "We don't keep plans, that's Lloyd's Register, and they only give them out to owners." "But the other information? The sister ships?" "Can't help you there either." Dickstein wanted to get the man by the throat. "'Men who can?" "We're the only people who have such information." "And you keep it secretr' "We don't give it out over the phone." "Wait a minute, you mean you can!t help me over the phone." "Tbaes right.- "But you can if I write or call personally." "Um. . . . yes, this inquiry shouldn't take too long, so you could call personally." "Give me the address." He wrote it down. "And you could get these details while I wait?"

"I think so." "All right. IM give you the name of the ship now, and you should have a the information ready by the time I get there. Her name is CopareM." He spelled it "And your namer' "Ed Rodgers." 6611ie company?" "Science InternWianal." "Will you want us to bill the company?" "No, I'll pay by personal check." "So long as you have some identification." "Of course. I'll be there in an hour. Goodbye." Dickstein hung up and left the phone booth, thinking: Thank God for that. He crossed the road to a cafe and ordered coffee and a sandwich. He had lied to Borg, of course- he knew exactly how he would hijack the Coparelli. He would buy one of the sister ships-if there were such-and take his team on to meet the Coparell! at sea~ After the hijack, instead of the dicey business of transferring the cargo from one ship to another offshore, he would sink his own ship and transfer its papers to the Coparellt. He would also paint out the Coparelli's name and over it put the name of the sunken sister ship. And then he would sail what would appear to be his own ship into Haifa. This was good, but it was still only the rudiments of a plan. What would he do about the crew of the Coparelli? How would the apparent loss of the Coparelli be explained? How would he avoid an international inquiry into the loss at sea of tons of uranium ore? The more he thought about it, the bigger this last problem seemed. There would be a major search for any large ship which was thought to have sunk. With uranium aboard, the search would attract publicity and consequently be even more thorough. And what if the searchers found not the Coparelli but the sister ship which was supposed to belong to Dickstein? He chewed over the problem for a while without coming up with any answers. There were still too many unknowns in the equation. Either the sandwich or the problem had stuck in his stomach: he took an indigestion tablet. He turned his mind to evading the opposition. Had he covered his tracks well enough? Only Borg could know of his plans. Even if his hotel room were bugged-even N the phone booth nearest the hotel were bugged-still nobody else could know of his interest in the Copareffl. He had been extra careful. He sipped his coffee, then another customer, on his way out of the caM, jogged Dickstein's elbow and made him spill coffee all down the front of his clean shirt.

"Copareffl," said David Rostov excitedly. "Where have I heard of a ship called the Coparelh?" Yasif Haman said, "It's familiar to me, too." "Let me see that computer printout" They were in the back of a listening van parked near the Yacobean Hotel. The van, which belonged to the KGB, was dark blue, without markings, and very dirty. Powerful radio equipment occupied most of the space inside, but there was a small compartment behind the front seats where Rostov and Hassan could squeeze in. Pyotr Tyrin was at the wheel. Large speakers above their heads were giving out an undertone of distant conversation and the occasional clink of crockery. A moment ago there had been an incomprehensible exchange, with someone apologizing for something and Dickstein saying it was all right, it had been an accident. Nothing distinct had been said since then. Rostov's pleasure at being able to listen to Dickstein's conversation was marred only by the fact that Hassan was listening too. Hassan had become self-confident since his triumph in discovering that Dickstein was in England: now he thought he was a professional spy like everyone else. He had insisted on being In on every detail of the London operation, threatening to complain to Cairo if he were excluded. Rostov had considered calling his bluff, but that would have meant another head-on collision with Feliks Vorontsov, and Rostov did not want to go over Feliks's head to Andropov again so soon after,the last time. So he had settled on an alternative: he would allow Hassan to come along, and caution him against reporting anything to Cairo. Hassan, who had been reading the printout, passed it across to Rostov. While the Russian was looking through the sheet.% the sound from the speakers changed to street noises for a minute or two, followed by more dialogue. Where to, guv? Dickstein's voice: Lime Street. Rostov looked up and spoke to Tyrin. 'ThaVII be Uoyd!s, the address he was given over the phone. I.,efs go them" Tyrin started the van and moved off, heading east toward the City districL Rostov returned to the printout Hassan said pessimistically, "Lloyd's will probably give him awritten reporLso Tyrin said, "Me bug is working very well ... so far." He was driving with one hand and biting the fingernails of the other. Rostov found what he was looking for. "Here it ist" he mid. 'The Coparelli. Good, good, goodl" He thumped his knee In enthusiasm. Hassan said, "Show me." Rostov hesitated momentarily, realized there was no way he could get out of it, and smiled at Hassan as he pointed to the last page. "Under Nom-NucLEAR. Two hundred tons of yellowcake to go from Antwerp to Genoa aboard the motor vessel Coparelll." 'That's It, then," said Hassan. 'That's Dickstein's target" "But if you report this to Cairo, Dickstein will probably switch to a different target. Hassan-" HassWs color deepened with anger. "You!ve said all that once," he said coldly. "Okay," Rostov said. He thought: Damn it, you have to be a diplomat too. He said, "Now we know what he's going to steal, and who he's going to steal it from. I can that some progress." "We don't know when, where.'or how," Hassan said. Rostov nodded. "All this business about sister ships must have something to do with it." He pulled his nose. "But I don!t we how." Two and sixpence, please, guv. Keep the change. "Find somewhere to park, Tyft" said Rostov. "Mars not so easy around here," Tyrin complained. "If you can't find a space, just stop. Nobody cares if you get a parking ticket,- Rostov said impatiently.

Good morning. My name's Ed Rodgers. A h, yes. Just a moment, please ... Your report has just been typed, Mr. Rodgers. And here's the bill. You're very efficient. Hassan said, "It is a written report." Thank you very much. Goodbye, Mr. Rodgers. "He's not very chatty, is her, said Tyrin. Rostov said, "Good agents never are. You might bear that in mind. Yes, sir." Hassan said, "Damn. Now we won't know the answers to his questions." "Makes no difference," Rostov told him. "Ifs just occurred to me." He smiled. "We know the questions. All we have to do is ask the same questions ourselves and we get the answers he got. Listen, he's on the street again. Go around the block, Tyrin, let's try to spot him." The van moved off, but before it had completed a circuit of the block the street noises faded agam Can I help you, sir? "He's gone into a shop," Hassan said. Rostov looked at Hassan. When he forgot about his pride, the Arab was as thrilled as a schoolboy ab ut all thi"e van, the bugs, the tailing. Maybe he would Teep his mouth shut, if only so that he could continue to play spies with the Russians. I need a new shirt. "Oh, nol" said Tyrin. I can see that, sir. What is it? Coffee. It should have been sponged right away, sir. It will be very difficult to get the stain out now. Did you want a similar shirt? Yes PWn white nylon, button cuffs, collar size fourteen and a halt. Here we are. This one is thirty-two and sixpence. Thafs fine. Tyrin said, "III bet he charges it to expenses." Thank you. Would you like to put it on now, perhaps? Yes, please. The fitting room is fust through here.

Footsteps, then a brief silence. Would you like a bag tor the old one, sir? Perhaps you'd throw It away for nze. That button cost two thousand rublesl" Tyrin said. Certainly, x1r. 'Mat's it," Hassan said. "We won't get any more nm" 'Two thousand rublest" Tyrin said again. Rostov said, "I think we got our money's worth." "Where are we heading?" Tyrin asked. "Back to the Embassy," Rostov told him- "I want to stretch my legs. I can't feel the left one at all. Damn, but weve done a good morning's work." As Tyrin drove west, Hassan said thoughtfully, 'Ve need to find out where the Coparelli is right now." IpMe squirrels can do that," Rostov said. s6squirreiarg "Desk workers in Moscow Center. They sit on their behinds all day, never doing anything more risky than crossing Granovsky Street in the rush hour, and get paid more than agents in the field." Rostov decided to use the opportunity to further Hassan's education. "Remember, an agent should never spend time . acquiring information that is public knowledge. Anything in books, reports and files can be found by the squirrels. Since a squirrel is cheaper to run than an agent-not because of salaries but because of support work-the Committee always prefers a squirrel to do a given job of work if he can. Always use the squirrels. Nobody win think yoWre being lazy." Hassan smiled nonchalantly, an echo of his old, languid self. "Dickstein doeset work that way." "Me Israelis have a completely different approach. Beside% I suspect Dickstein isn!t a team man." "How long will the squirrels take to get us the Coparelws locationr' "Maybe a day. ru put in the inquiry as soon as we get to the Embassy." Tyrm spoke over his shoulder. "Can you put through a fast requisition at the same time?" "What do you need?" "Six more shirt buttons." 64six?*0 "If theyre like the last lot, five wOn!t work."

Hassan laughed. "Is this Communist efficiency?" "There's nothing wrong with Communist efficiency," Ros. tov told him. "It's Russian efficiency we suffer from." The van entered Embassy Row and was waved on by the duty policeman. Hassan asked, "What do we do when we've located the Cpparelli?" "Obviously," said Rostov, "we put a man aboard."

Chapter Nine

The don had bad a bad day. It had started at breakfast with the news that some of his People had been busted in the night. The police had stopped and searched a truck containing two thousand five hundred pairs of fur-Uned bedroom slippers and five kilos of adulterated heroin. The load, on its way from Canada to New York City, had been hit at Albany. The smack was confiscated and the driver and co-driver jailed. The stuff did not belong to the don. However, the team that did the run paid dues to him, and In return expected Protection. They would want him to get the men out of jail and get the heroin back. It was close to impossible. He might have been able to do it if the bust had Involved only the state police; but if only the state police had been involved, the bust would not have happened. And that was just the start. His eldest son had wired from Harvard for more money, having gambled away the whole of his next semester's allowance weeks before classes started. He bad spent the morning finding out why his chain of restaurants was losing money, and the afternoon explaining to his mistress why he could not take her to Europe this year. Finally his doctor told him he had gonorrhea, i n* He looked In the dressing-room mirror, adjusting his bow tie, and said to himself, "What a shitty day." It had turned out that the New York City police had been behind the bust: they had passed the tip to the state police in order to avoid trouble with the city Mafia. The city police could have Ignored the tip, of course: the fact that they did not was a sign that the tip had originated with someone important, perhaps the Drug Enforcement Agency of the Treasury Department. The don had assigned lawyers to the jailed drivers, sent people to visit their families and opened negotiations to buy back the heroin from the police. He put on his Jacket. He liked to change for dinner; he alWays had. He did not know what to do about his son Johnny. Why wasn't he home for the summer? College boys were supposed to come home for the summer. The don had thought of sending somebody to see Johnny; but then the boy would think his father was only worried about the money. It looked like he would have to go himself. Ile phone rang, and the don picked it up. "Yes." "Gate here, sir. I got an Englishman asking for you, won't give his name." "So send him away," said the don, still thinking about Johnny. "He said to tell you hes a friend from Oxford University." "I don't know anybody ... wait a minute. What's he look Me?" "Little guy with glasses, looks like a bum." "'No kiddingl" The don's face broke into a smile. "Bring him in-and put out the red carpetl-

It had been a year for seeing old friends and observing how they had changed; but Al Cortones appearance was the most startling yet The increase in weight which had just begun when he returned from Frankfurt seemed to have continued steadily through the years, and now he weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds. There was a look of sensuality about his puffy face that bad been only hinted at in 1947 and totally absent during the war. And he was completely balcL Dickstein thought this was unusual among Italians. Dickstein could remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday, the "occasion when he had put Cortone under an obligation. In those days he had been learning about the psychology of a cornered animal. When there is no longer any possibility of running away, you realize how fiercely you can fight. Landed in a strange country, separated from his unit, advancing across unknown terrain with his rifle in his hand, Dickstein had drawn on reserves of patience, cunning and ruthlessness he did not know he had. He had lain for half an hour in that thicket, watching the abandoned tank which he knew-without understanding how-was the bait in a trap. He had spotted the one sniper and was looking for another ISO TrUPLE

when the Americans came roaring up. That made it safe for Dickstein to shoot-if there were another sniper, he would fire at the obvious target, the Americans, rather than search the bushes for the source of the shot. So, with no thought for anything but his own survival, Dickstein had saved Al Cortone's life. Cortone had been even more new to the war than Dickstein, and learning just as fast. Thev were both streetwise kids applying old principles to new terrain. For a while they fought together, and cursed and laughed and talked about women together. When the island was taken, they had sneaked off during the buildup for the next push and visited Cortones Sicilian cousins. Those cousins were the focus of Dickstein's interest now. They had helped him once before, in 1948. There had been profit for them in that deal, so Dickstein had gone straight to them with the plan. This project was different: he wanted a favor and he could offer no percentage. Conw quently he had to go to Al and call in the twenty-four-yearold debt. He was not at all sure it would work. Cortone was rich now. The house was large--in England it would have been called a mansion-with beautiful grounds inside a high wall and guards at the gate. There were three cars in the RTavel drive, and Dickstein had lost count of the servants. A rich and comfortable middle-aged American might not be in a hurry to get involved in Mediterranean political shenanigans, even for the sake of a man who had saved his life. Cortone seemed very pleased to see him, which was a good start. They slapped each other on the back, just as they had on that November Sunday in 1947, and kept saying, "How the hell, are you?" to each other. Cortone looked Dickstein up and down. "You're the samel I lost all my hair and gained a hundred pounds, and you haven't even turned gray. What have you been up to?" "I went to Israel. rm. sort of a farmer. You?" "Doing business you know? Come on, let's eat and talk." The meal was a strange affair. Mrs. Cortone sat at the foot of the table without speaking or being spoken to throughout. Two ill-mannered boys wolfed their food and left early with a roar of sports-car exhaust. Cortone ate large quantities of the heavy Italian food and drank several glasses of California red wine. But the most intriguing character was a Welldressed, shark-faced man who behaved sometimes like a friend, sometimes like an adviser and sometimes like a servant: once Cortone called him a counselor. No business was talked about during dinner Instead they told war ston Cortone told most of them. He also told the story of Dickstein!s 1948 coup against the Arabs: he had heard it from his cousins and had been as delighted as they. ne tale had become embroidered in the retelling. Dickstein decided that Cortone was genuinely glad to see him. Maybe the man was bored. He should be, if he ate dinner every night with a silent wife, two surly boys and a shark-faced counselor. Dickstein did all he could to keep the bonhomie going: he wanted Cortone in a good mood when he asked his favor . Afterward Cortone and Dickstein sat in leather armchairs in a den and a butler brought brandy and cigars. Dickstein refused both. "You used to be a hell of a drinker," Cortone said. "It was a hell of a war," Dickstein replied. The butler left the room. Dickstein watched CDrtone sip brandy and pull on the cigar, and thought that the man ate, drank and smoked joylessly, as though he thought that if he did these things long enough he would eventually acquire the taste. Recalling the sheer fun the two of them had had with the Sicilian cousins, Dickstein wondered whether there were any real people left in Cortone?s life. Suddenly Cortone laughed out loud. "I remember every minute of that day in Oxford. Hey, did you ever make it with that professoes wife, the Ay-rab?" "No." Dickstein barely smiled. "She's dead, now." "I'M sorry. to "A strange thing happened. I went back there, to that house by the river, and met her daughter ... She looks just like Efla used to.,, "No kidding. And . . ." Cortone leered. "And you made ft with the daughter-I don't believe itl" Dickstein nodded. "We made it in more ways than one. I want to marry her. I plan to ask her next time I see her." 'Will she say yes?"

"I'm not sure. I think so. I'm older than she is." "Age doesn't matter. You could put on a little weight, though. A woman likes to have something to get hold of." The conversation was annoying Dickstein, and now he re. alized why: Cortone was set on keeping it trivial. It might have been the habit of years of being close-mouthed; it might have been that so much of his "family business" was criminal business and he did not want Dickstein to know it (but Dickstein had already guessed); or there migbt have been some. thing else he was afraid of revealing, some secret disappointment he could not share: anyhow, the open, garrulous, excitable young man had long since disappeared inside this fat man. Dickstein longed to say, Tell me what gives you joy, and who you love, and how your life runs on. Instead he said, "Do you remember what you said to me in oxfordr, "Sure. I told you I owe you a debt, you saved my life." Cortone inhaled on his cigar. At least that had not changed. "Im here to ask for your to help. "Go ahead and ask." "Mind if I put the radio on?" Cortone smiled. "Mis place is swept for bugs about once a week." "Good," said Dickstein but he put the radio on all the same. "Cards on the table, Al. I work for Israeli Intelligence. Cortones eyes widened. "I should have guessed." "I'm running an operation in the Mediterranean in November. It's . . ." Dickstein wondered how much he needed to tell, and decided very little. "Ifs something that could mean the end of the wars in the Middle East." He paused, remembering a phrase Cortone had used habitually. "And I aWt to shittin! YOU. Cortone laughed. "If you were going to shit me, I figure you would have been here sooner than twenty years." "It's important that the operation should not be traceable back to Israel. I need a base from which to work. I need a big house on the coast with a landing for small boats and an anchorage not too far offshore for a big ship. While Im there-a couple of weeks, maybe mom-I need to be protected from inquiring police and other nosy officials. I can think of only one place where I could get all that, and only one person could get it for me." Cortone nodded. "I know a place--a derelict house in Sicily. Ifs not exactly plush, kid ... no heat, no phone-but it could fill the bill." Dickstein smiled broadly. nlat!s terrific," he said. "Thats what I came to ask for." "You!re kidding," said Cortone. "That's all?"

To: Head of Mossad FRom: Head of London Station DATE: 29 July 1968 Suza Ashford is almost certainly an agent of an Arab intelligence service. She was born in Oxford~ England, 17 June 1944, the only child of Mr. (now Professor) Stephen Ashford (born Guildford, England, 1908) and Eila Zuabi (born Tripoli, Lebanon, 1925). The mother, who died in 1954, was a full-blooded Arab. The father is what is known in England as an "Arabist"; he spent most of the first forty years of his life in the Middle East and was an explorer, entrepreneur and linguist. He now teaches Semitic Languages at Oxford University, where he is well known for his moderately pro-Arab views. Therefore, although Suza Ashford is strictly speaking a U.K national, her loyalties may be assumed to lie with the Arab cause. She works as an air hostess for BOAC on intercontinental routes, traveling frequently to Tehran, Singapore and Zurich, among other places. Consequently, she has numerous opportunities to make clandestine contacts with Arab diplomatic staff. She is a strikingly beautiful young woman (see attached photograph-which, however, does not do her justice, according to the field agent on this case). She is promiscuous, but not unusually so by the standards of her profession nor by those of her generation in London. To be specific: for her to have sexual relations with a man for the purpose of obtaining information might be an unpleasant experience but not a traumatic one.

Finally-and this is the clincher-Yasif Hassan, the agent who spotted Dickstein in Luxembourg, studied under her father, Professor Ashford, at the same time as Dickstein, and has remained in occasional contact with Ashford in the intervening years. He may have visited Ashford--a man answering his description certainly did visit-about the time Dickstein's affair with Suza Ashford began. I recommend that surveillance be continued. (Signed) Robert Jakes

fo: Head of London Station FRom: Head of Mossad DATE: 30 July 1968 With all that against her, I cannot understand why you do not recommend we kill her. (Signed) Pierre Borg

To: Head of Mossad FROM: Head of London Station DATE: 31 July 1968 1 do not recommend eliminating Suza Ashford for the following reasons: 1. The evidence against her is strong but circumstantial. 2. From what I know of Dickstein, I doubt very much that he has given her any information, even if he is romantically involved. 3. If we eliminate her the other side wM begin looking for another way to get at Dickstein. Better the devil we know. 4. We may be able to use her to feed false information to the other side. S. I do not like to kill on the basis of circumstantial evidence. We are not barbarians. We are Jews. 6. If we kill a woman Dickstein loves, I think he will kill you, me and everyone else involved. (Signed) Robert Jakes

To: Head of LDndon Station FRom: Head of Mossad DATE: I August 1968 Do it your way. (Signed) Pierre Borg PosrscupT (marked Persond): Your point 5 is very noble and touching, but remarks like that wont get you promoted in this maWs army.P.B.

She was a small, old, ugly, dirty, cantankerous hitch. Rust bloomed like a skin rash in great orange blotches all over her hull. If there had ever been any paint on her upperworks it had long ago been peeled away and blasted off and dissolved by the wind and the rain and the sea. Her starboard gunwale had been badly buckled W aft of the prow in an old collision, and nobody had ever bothered to straighten it out. Her funnel bore a layer of grime ten years thick. Her deck was scored and dented and stained; and although it was swabbed often, it was never swabbed thoroughly, so that them were traces of past cargoe*--grains of corn, splinters of timber, bits of rotting vegetation and fragments of sackinghidden behind lifeboats and under coils of rope and inside cracks and joints and holes. On a warm day she smelled foul. I She was some Z500 tons, 200 feet long and a little over 30 feet broad. Ilere was a tall radio mast in her blunt prow. Most of her deck was taken up by two large hatches opening Into the main cargo holds. IMere were three cranes on deck: one forward of the hatches, one aft and one in between. Ibe wheelhouse, officere cabins, galley and crew's quarters were in the stem, clustered around the funnel. She had a single screw driven by a six-cylinder diesel engine theoretically capable of developing 2,450 b.hp. and maintaining a service speed of thirteen knots. FWly loaded, she would pitch badly. In ballast she would yaw like the very devil. Either way she would roll through seventy degrees of arc at the slightest provocation. Ile quarters were cramped and poorly ventilated, the galley was often flooded and the engine room had been designed by Hleronymous Bosch.

She was crewed by thirty-one officers and men, not one of whom had a good word to say for her. The only passengers were a colony of cockroaches in the galley, a few mice and several hundred rats. Nobody loved her, and her name was Coparelli.

Chapter Ten

Nat Dickstein went to New York to become a shipping tycoon. It took him all morning. He looked in the Manhattan phone book and selected a lawyer with an address on the lower East Side. Instead of calling on the phone he went there personally, and was satisfied when he saw that the lawyer's office was one room over a Chinese restaurant. The lawyer's name was Mr. Chung. Dickstein and Chung took a cab to the Park Avenue offices of Liberian Corporation Services, Inc., a company set up to assist people who wanted to register a Liberian corporation but bad no intention of ever going within three thousand miles of Liberia. Dickstein was not asked for references, and he did not have to establish that he was honest or solvent or sane. For a. fee of five hundred dollars-which Dickstein paid in cash-they registered the Savile Shipping Corporation of Liberia. The fact that at this stage Dickstein did not own so much as a rowboat was of no interest to anyone. The company's headquarters was listed as No. 80 Broad Street, Monrovia, Liberia; and its directors were P. Satia, EX Nugba and J.D. Boyd, all residents of Liberia. This was also the headquarters address of most Liberian corporations, and the address of the Liberian Trust Company. Satia, Nugba and Boyd were founding directors of many such corporations; indeed this was the way they made their living. They were also employees of the Liberian Trust Company. Mr. Chung asked for fifty dollars and cab fare. Dickstein paid him in cash and told him to take the bus. So, without so much as giving an address, Dickstein had created a fully legitimate shipping company which could not be traced back either to him or to the Mossad. Satia, Nugba and Boyd resigned twenty-four hours later, as was the - custom; and that same day the notary public of Montserrado County, Liberia, stamped an affidavit which said lee that total control of the Savile Shipping Corporation now lay in the hands of one Andre Papagopolous. By that time Dickstein was riding the bus from Zurich airport into town, an his way to meet Papagopolous, for lunch. When he had time to reflect on it, even be was shaken by the compleidty of his plan, the number of pieces that had to be made to fit into the jigsaw puzzle, the number of people who had to be persuaded, bribed or coerced into performing their parts. He had been successful so far, first with Stiffcollar and then with Al Cortone, not to mention Uoyd!s of London and Iberian Corporation Services, Inc., but how long could it go on? Papagopolous was in some ways the greatest challenge: a man as elusive, as powerful, and as free of weakness as Dickstein himself. He had been born in 1912 in a village that during his boy hood was variously Turkish, Bulgarian and Greek. His father was a fisherman. In his teenage he graduated from fishing to other kinds of maritime work, mostly smuggling. After World War 11 he turned up In Ethiopia, buying for knock-down prices the piles of surplus military suppliea which had sud denly become worthless when the war ended. He bought rifles, handgans machin e guns, antitank guns and ammuni tion for all of these. He then contacted the Jewish Agency in Cairo and sold the arms at an enormous profit to the under ground Israeli Army. He arranged shipping-and here his smuggling background was invaluable--and delivered the goods to Palestine. Then he asked if they wanted more. This was how he had met Nat Dickstein. He soon moved on, to Farours Cairo and then to Switzerland. His Israeli deals had marked a transition from totally illegal business to dealings which were at worst shady and at best pristine. Now he called himself a ship broker, and that was most, though by no means all, of his business. He had no address. He could be reached via half a dozen telephone numbers all over the world, but he was never there-always, somebody took a message and Papagopolous called you back. Many people knew him and trusted him. especially in the shipping business, for he never let anyone down; but this trust was based on reputation, not personal contact. He lived well but quietly, and Nat Dickstein was one of the few people in the world who knew of his single vice, which was that he liked to go to bed with lots of girls-but lots.- like, ten or twelve. He had no sense of humor. Dickstein got off the bus at the railway station, where Papagopolous was waiting for him on the pavement. He was a big man, olive-skinned with thin dark hair combed over a growing bald patch. On it bright summer day in Zurich he wore a navy blue suit, pale blue shirt and dark blue striped tie. He had small dark eyes. They shook hands. Dickstein said., "How's business?" "Up and down." Papagopolous smiled. "Mostly UP. Iley walked through the clean, tidy streets, looking like a managing director and his accountant. Dickstein inhaled the cold air, "I like this town," he said. "rve booked a table at the Veltliner Keller in the old city," Papagopolous said. "I know you don!t care about food, but 1 do. Dickstein said, "You've been to the Pelikanstrasse?" "Yes." "Good." Ile Zurich offize of Liberian Corporation Services, Inc., was in the Pelikanstrasse. Dickstein had asked Papagopolous to go there to register himself as president and chief executive of Savile Shipping. For this he would receive ten thousand U.S. dollars, paid out of Mossad's account in a Swiss bank to Papagopolous's account in the same branch of the same bank-a transaction very difficult for anyone to Uncover. Papagopolous said, "But I didn't promise to do anything else. You may have wasted your money." "rm sure, I didn!t" They reached the restaurant. Dickstein had expected that Papagopolous would be known there, but there was no sign of recognition from the headwaiter, and Dickstein thought: Of course, he's not known anywhere. They ordered food and wine. Dickstein noted with regret that the domestic Swiss white wine was still better than the Israeli. While they att, Dickstein explained Papagopolous's duties as president of Savile Shipping. "One: buy a small, fast ship, a thousand or fifteen hundred tons, small crew. Register her in Liberia." This would involve another visit to Pelikanstrasse and a fee of about a dollar per ton. "For the purchase, take your percentage as a broker. Do some business with the ship, and take your broker's percentage on that I don't care what the ship does so long as she completes a voyage by docking in Haifa on or before October 7. Dismiss the crew at Haifa. Do you want to take notesr Papagopolous smiled. "I think not." The implication was not lost on Dickstein. Papagopolous was listening, but he had not yet agreed to do the job. Dickstein continued. 'Irwo: buy any one of the ships on this list" He handed over a single sheet of paper bearing the names of the four sister ships of the Copare it with their owners and last known locations-the information he had gotten from Uoyd!s. "Offer whatever price is necessary: I must have one of them, Take your brokeespercentage. Deliver her to Haifa by October 7. Dismiss the crew~" Papagopolous was eating chocolate mousse, his smooth face imperturbable. He put down his spoon and put on goldrimmed glasses to read the list He folded the sheet of paper in half and set it on the table without comment Dickstein handed him another sheet of paper. 'IMree: buy this ship-the Copares?l But you must buy her at exactly the right time. She sails from Antwerp on Sunday, November 17. We must buy her alter she sails birt belore she passes through the Strait of Chbraltar." Papagopolous, looked dubious. kWell . . 'Vait, la me give you the rest of it Four: early in 1969 you sell ship No. 1, the little one, and ship No. 3, the Coparellt. You get from me a certificate showing that ship No. 2 has been sold for scrap. You send that certificate to Lloyd& You wind up Savile, Shipping." Dickstein smiled and sipped his coffee. "What you want to do is make a ship disappear without a trace." Dickstein nodded. Papagopolous was as sharp as a knife. "As you must realize," Papagopolous went on, "all this is .straightforward except for the purchase of the Coparelft while &he is at sea. The normal procedure for the sale of a ship is as follows: negotiations take place, a price is agreed, and the documents are drawn up. The ship goes into dry dock for inspection. When she has been pronounced satisfactory the documents are signed, the money is paid and the new owner takes her out of dry, dock. Buying a ship while she is sailing is most irregular." "But not impossible "No, not impossible." Dickstein watched him, He became thoughtful, his gaze distant: he was grappling with the problem. It was a good sign. Papagopolous said, "We would have to open negotiations, agree on the price and have the inspection arranged for a date after her November voyage. Then, when she has sailed, we say that the purchaser needs to spend the money immediately, perhaps for tax reasons. The buyer would then take out insurance against any major repairs which might prove necessary after the inspection . . . but this is not the seller's concern. He is concerned about his reputation as a shipper. He Will want cast-iron guarantees that his cargo will be delivered by the new owner of the Coparelli." "Would he accept a guarantee based on your personal reputation?" "Of course. But why would I give such a guarantee?" Dickstein looked him in the eye. "I can promise you that the owner of the cargo will not complain." PapagDpolous made an open-handed gesture. "it is obvious that you are perpetrating some kind of a swindle here. You need me as a respectable front. That I can do. But you also want me to lay my reputation on the line and take your word that it will not suffer?" "Yes. Listen. Let me ask you one thing. You trusted the Israelis once before, remember?" "Of course." "Did you ever regret it?" Papagopolous smiled, remembering the old days. "It was the beat decision I ever made." "So, will you trust us againr' Dickstein held his breath. "I had less to lose in those days. I was ... thirty-five. We used to have a lot of fun. This is the most intriguing offer Irve had in twenty years. What the bell, Ill do it." Dickstein extended his hand across the restaurant tabl& Papagopolous shook it. A waitrem brought a little bowl of Swiss chocolates for them to eat with their coffee. Papagopolous took one, Dickstein refused.

"Details," Dickstein said. "Open an account for Savile Shipping at your bank here. The Embassy will put funds in as they are required. You report to me simply by leaving a written message at the bank. The note will be picked up by someone from the Embassy. If we need to meet and talk, we use the usual phone numbers." "Agreed.,' "I'm glad we're doing business together again." Papagopolous was thoughtful. "Ship No. 2 is a sister ship of the Coparelk" he mused. "I think I can guess what you're up to. Theres one thing I'd like to know, although I'm sure you wont tell me. What the hell kind of cargo will the Coparelli be carrying-uranium?"

Pyotr Tyrin looked gloomily at the CoparelY and said, "She's a grubby old ship." Rostov did not reply. Thev were sitting in a rented Ford on a quay at Cardiff docks. The squirrels at Moscow Center had informed them that the Coparelli would make port there today, and they were now watching her tie up. She was to unload a cargo of Swedish timber and take on a mixture of small machinery and cotton goods: it would take her some days. "At least the mess decks aren't in the fo'c'sle," Tyrin muttered, more or less to himself. "She's not that old," Rostov said. Tyrin was surprised Rostov knew what he was talking about. Rostov continually' surprised him with odd bits of knowledge. From the rear seat of the car Nik Bunin said, "Is that the front or the back of the boat?" Rostov and Tyrin looked at one another and grinned at Nik's ignorance. "Me back," Tyrin said. "We call it the stem" It was raining. The Welsh rain was even more persistent and monotonous than the English, and colder. Pyotr Tyrin was unhappy. It so happened that he had done two years in the Soviet Navy. Tbat, plus the fact that he was the radio and electronics expert, made him the obvious choice as the man to be planted aboard the Copareffl. He did not want to go back to sea. In truth, the main reason he had applied to Join the KOB was to get out of the navy. He hated the damp and the cold and the food and the discipline. Besides, he had a warm comfortable wife in an apartment in Moscow, and he missed her. Of course, there was no question of his saying no to Rostov. "WeT get you on as radio operator, but you must take your own equipment as a fallback," Rostov said. Tyrin wondered how this was to be managed. His approach would have been to find the shio radio man, kriock him on the head, throw him in the water, and board the ship to say, "I hear you need a new radio operator." No doubt Rostov would be able to come up with something a little more subtle: that was why he was a colonel. The activity on deck had died down, and the Coparelli's engines wen quiet Five or six sailors came across the gangplank in a bunch, laughing and shouting, and headed for the town. Rostov said, "See which pub they go to, Nik." Bunin got out of the car and foHowed the sailors. Tyrin watched him go. He was depressed by the scene: the figures crossing the wet concrete quay with their ramcoat collars turned up; the sounds of tap hooting and men shouting nautical instructions and chains winding and unwinding; the stacks of pallets; the bare cranes Like sentries; the smell of engine oil and the ship's ropes and salt spray. It all made him think of the Moscow flat, the chair in front of the paraffin beater, salt fish and black bread, beer and vodka in the refrigerator, and an evening of television. He was unable to share RostoVs impressible cheerfulness about the way the operation was going. Once again they had no idea where Dickstein was--even though they had not exactly lost him, they had deliberately let,him go. It had been Rostov's decision: he was afraid of getting too close to Dickstein, of - scaring the man off. "WeT follow the Copareffl, and Dickstein will come to us," Rostov had said. Yasif Hassan had argued with him, but Rostov had won. Tyrh who had no contribution to make to such strategic discussions, thought Rostov was correct, but also thought he had no reason to be so confident. "Your first job is to befriend the crew," Rostov said, interrupting Tyrin's thoughts. "Yoxtre a radio operator. You suffered a minor accident aboard your last ship, the Chr&mw Rose-you broke your arm-and you were discharged here in Cardiff to convalesce. You got an excellent compensation payment from the owners. You are spending the money and having a good time while it lasts. You say vaguely that youll look for another job when your money runs out. You must discover two things: the identity of the radio man, and the anticipated date and time of departure of the ship." "Fine," said Tyrin, though it was far from fine. Just how was he to "befriend" these people? He was not much of an actor, in his view. Would he, have to play the part of a hearty hail-fellow-well-met? Suppose the crew of this ship thought him a bore, a lonely man trying to attach himself to a jolly group? What if they just plain did not like him? Unconsciously he squared his broad shoulders. Either he would do it, or there would be some reason why it could not be done. All he could promise was to try his best. Bunin came back across the quay. Rostov said, "Get in the back, let Nik drive." Tyrin got out and held the door for Nik. The young man's face was streaming with rain. He started the car. Tyrin got in. As the car pulled away Rostov turned around to speak to Tyrin in the back seat. "Here's a hundred pounds," he said, and handed over a roll of banknotes. "Don't spend it too carefully. Bunin stopped the car opposite a small dockland pub on a comer. A sign outside, flapping gently in the wind, read, "Brains Beers." A smoky yellow light glowed behind the frosted-glass windows. There were worse places to be on a day like this, Tyrin thought. "What nationality are the crew?" he said suddenly. "Swedish," Bunin said. Tyrin's false papers made him out to be Austrian. "What language should I use with them?" "All Swedes speak English," Rostov told him. There was a moment of silence. Rostov said, "Any more questions? I want to back to Hassan before he gets up to any mischief." "No more questions." Tyrin opened the car door. Rostov said, "Speak to me when you get back to the hotel tonight-no matter how late." "Sure." "Good luck." Tyrin slammed the car door and crossed the road to the Pub. As he reached the entrance someone came out, and the warm smell of beer and tobacco engulfed Tyrin for a moment. He went mside. It was a poky little place, with hard wooden benches around the walls and plastic tables nailed to the floor. Four of the sailors were playing darts in the comer and a fifth was" at the bar calling out encouragement to them. The barman nodded to Tyrin. "Good morning," Tyrin said. "A pint of lager, a large whiskey and a ham sandwich." The sailor at the bar turned around and nodded pleasantly. Tyrin smiled. "Have you just made portT' "Ye& The Coparefll," the sailor replied. "Christmar Rose," Tyrin said. "She left me behind." "You're lucky." "I broke my arm." "So?" said the Swedish sailor with a grin. "You can drink with the other one." "I like that," Tyrin said. "Let-me buy you a drink. What will it be?"

Two days later they were still drinking. There were changes in the composition of the group as some sailors went on duty and others came ashore; and there was a short period between four A.m. and opening time when there was nowhere in the city, legal or illegal, where one could buy a drink; but otherwise life was one long pub crawl. Tyrin had forgotten how sailors could drink. He was dreading the hangover. He was glad, however, that he had not got into a situation where be felt obliged to go with prostitutes: the Swedes were Interested in women, but not In whores. Tyrin would never have been able to convince his wife that he had caught venereal disease in the service of Mother Russia. The Swedes! other vice was gambling. Tyrin had lost about fifty pounds of KGB money at poker. He was so well in with the crew of the CopoW11 that the previous night he had been invited aboard at two A.M. He had fallen asleep on the mess deck and they had left him there until eight bells. Tonight would not be like that. The Coparellf was to sail on the morning tide, and all officers and men had to be aboard by midnight. It was now ten past eleven. The landlord of the pub was moving about the room collecting glasses and emptying ashtrays. Tyrin was playing dominoes with Lars, the radio operator. They had abandoned the proper game and were now competing to see who could stand the most blocks in a line without knocking the lot down. Lars was very drunk, but Tyrin was pretending. He was also very frightened about what he had to do in a few minutes' time. The landlord called out, "Time, gentlemen, pleasel Thank you very mucti." Tyrin knocked his dominoes down, and laughed. Lars said, "You see-I am smaller alcoholic than you." The other crew were leaving. Tyrin and Lars stood up. Tyrin put his arm around Lars's shoulders and together they staggered out into the. street The night air was cool and damp. Tyrin shivered. From now on he had to stay very close to Lars. I hope Nik gets his timing right, he thought. I hope the car doesn!t break down. And then: I hope to Christ Lars doeset get killed. He began talking, asking questions about Lars's home and family. He kept the two of them a few yards behind the main group of sailors. They passed a blonde woman in a microskirt. She touched her left breast. "Hello, boys, fancy a cuddle?" Not tonight, sweetheart Tyrin thought, and kept walking. He must not let Lars stop and chat. Timing, it was the timing. Nik, where are you? There. They approached a dark blue Ford Capri 2000 parked at the roadside with its lights out. As the interior light Bashed on and off Tyrin glimpsed the face of the man at the, wheel: it was Nik Bunin. Tyrin took a flat white cap from his pocket and put it on, the signal that Bunin was to go ahead. When the sailors had passed on the car started up and moved away in the opposite direction. Not long now. Lars said, "I have a flance." Oh, no, don't start that. Lan giggled. "She has ... hot pants." "Are you going to marry herT' Tyrin was peering ahead intently, listening, talking only to keep Lars close. Lars leered. "What for?' "Is she faithful?" "Better be or I slit her throat." "I. thought Swedish people believed in free love." Tyrin was saying anything that came into his head. "Free love, yes. But she better be faithful." see~" "I can explain Come on, Nik. Get It over with... One of the aflozz In the group stopped to urinate In the gutter The othm stood around making ribald remarks and laughing. Tyrin wished the man would hurry up-the thnin& the thning-but he seemed as If he would go on forever. At last he finhhed, and they all walked on. Tyrin heard a car. He tensed. Lan odd, -Whars matter?- "Nothing." Tyrin saw the headlight of the car was moving steadily toward them in the middle of the road. The sailors moved on to the sidewalk to get out of its way. it wasn't right, It shoWdn!t be like this, it wouldn't work this wayl Suddenly Tynn was confused and panic-stricken-then he saw eof the car more clearly as it passed beneath a stred lIsK and he realized it was not the one he was waiting for, it was a patrolling police car. It went harmlessly by. The end of the street opened Into a wide, empty square, badly paved. Ilere was no traffic about. The sailors headed straight across the middle of the squam NOW. Come on. They were halfway across. come on/ A car came tearing around a comer and into the square, headlights bhizing. Tyrin tightened his grip on IA&s shoulder. The car was veering wildly, "Drunk driver," Lars said thickly. It was a Ford Capri. It swung toward the bunch of sailors In front They stopped laughing and scattered out of its way, shouting curses. The car turned away, then screeched around and accelerated straight for TyAn and Lam 17,ook outrl Tyrin Yelled. Whert the car was almost on top of them he pulled rAn to one side, Jerking the man off balance, and threw himself sideways. 71ere was a stomach-turning thud, followed by a scream and crash of breaking glass. 7be car went by. It's done, Tyrin thought He scrambled to his feet and looked for Lam 7be milor lay on the road a few feet away. Blood glistened In the lamplight. Lan groaned. Hes alive, Tyrin thought; Thank (W. The car braked. One of its headlights had gone out--tbe one that bd hit Lam he presumed. It coasted, as if the driver wwe hesitating. Then it gathered speed and, one-eyed, it disappeared Into the night. . Tyrin bent over Lan. The other sailors gathered around, speaking Swedish. Tyrin touched Laws leg. He yelled out in pahL "I think his leg Is broken," Tyrin said. Thank God thaes aft. Lights were going on In some of the buildings around the ujuare. One of the officers said something, and a rating ran off toward a house presumably to call for an ambulance. Ilan was more rapid dialogue and another went off in the direction of the dock. Lan was bleeding, but not too heavily. The officer bent over him He would not allow anyone to touch bis leg. T~e ambulance arrived within minutes, but it seemed for ever to Tyrin: he had never killed a man, and he did not want to. They put Lars on a stretcher. Ile officer got into the ambulance, and turned to speak to Tynn. "You had better com&" "Yee "You saved his life, I think!' `Oh." He got into the ambulance with the officer. They sped through the wet streets, the flashing blue light on the roof casting an unpleasant glow over the buildings. Tyrin sat In the back, unable to look at Lan or the officer, unwilling to look out of the windows like a tourist not knowIng where to direct Ins eyes. He had done many unkind things in the service of his country and Colonel Rostov-he had taped the conversations of lovers for blackmail, he had shown terrorists how to make bombs, he had helped capture people who would later be tortured-but he had never been forced to ride in the ambulance with his victim. He did not like it They arrived at the hospital. 'Me ambulance men carried the stretcher inside. Tyrin and the officer were shown where to wait. And, suddenly, the rush was over. They had nothing to do but worry. Tyrin was astonished to look at the plain electric clock on the hospital wall and see that it was not yet midnight. It seemed hours since they had left the pub. After a Ions wait a doctor came out. "He's broken his leg and lost some blood," he said. He seemed very tired. "He's got a lot of alcohol in him, which doesn!t help. But he's young, strong and healthy. His leg will mend and he should be fit again in a few weeks." Relief flooded Tyrin. He realized he was shaking. The officer said, "Our ship sails in the morning." "He won't be on it~ll the doctor said. "Is your captain on his way hereT' "I sent for him." "Fine." The doctor turned and left. The captain arrived at the same time as the police. He spoke to the officer in Swedish while a young sergeant took down Tyrin's vague description of the car. Afterward the captain approached Tyrin. "I believe you saved Lars from a much worse accident." Tyrin wished people would stop saying that. "I tried to pull him out of the way, but he fell. He was very drunk." "Horst here says you are between ships." "Yes, sir." "You are a fully qualifted radio operatorr' "Yes, sir." "I need a replacement for poor Lars. Would you like to sail with in in the morning!'

PieiTe Borg said, "I'm pulling you out." Dickstein whitened. He stared at his boss. Borg said, "I want you to come back to Tel Aviv and ran the operation from the office." Dickstein said, "You go and fuck yourself." They stood beside the lake at Zurich. It was crowded with boats, their multicolored sails flapping prettily in the Swiss sunshine. Borg said, "No arguments, Nat" "No arguments, Pierre. I won't be puffed out. Finish." "I'm ordering you." "And I'm telling you to fuck yourself." "Look." Borg took a deep breath. "Your plan Is complete. The only flaw in it is that you've been compromised: the opposition knows yoifre working, and they're trying to find you and screw up whatever it is you!re doing. You can still run the project-all you have to do is bide your face." "No,10 Dickstein said. "This isn't the kind of project where you can sit in an office and push all the buttons to make it go. I'Va too complex, there are too many variables. I have to be in the. field myself to make instant decisions." Dickstein stopped himself talking and began to think: Why do I want to do it myself? Am I really the only man in Israel who can pull This off? Is it just that I want the glory? Borg voiced his thoughts. -Don!t try to be a hero, Nat. You're too smart for that. YoWre a professional: you followorders." Dickstein shook his head. "You should know better than to take that line with me. Remember how Jews feel about people who always follow orders?" "All right, so you were in a concentration camp-that doesn't give you the right to do whatever the hell you like for the -rest of your lifel" Dickstein made a deprecatory gesture. "You can stop me. You can withdraw support. But you also won't get your uranium, because I'm not going to tell anyone. else how it can be done." Borg stared at him. "You bastard, you mean it." Dickstein watched Borg's expression. He had once had the embarrassing experience of seeing Borg have a row with his teenage son Dan. The boys had stood there, sullenly confident, while Borg tried to explain that going on peace marches was disloyal to father, mother, country and God, until Borg had strangled himself with his own inarticulate rage. Dan, like Dickstein, had learned how to refuse to be bullied, and Borg would never quite know how to handle people who could not be bullied. The script now called for Borg to go red in the face and begin to yell. Suddenly Dickstein realized that this was not going to happen. Borg was remainIng ealm. Borg smiled slyly and said, "I believe you!re fucking one of the other side!s agents." Dickstein stopped breathing. He had felt as if he had been hit from behind with a sledgehammer. This was the last thing he had been expecting. He was filled with irrational guilt, like a boy caught masturbating: shame, embarrassment, and the sense of something spoiled. Suza was private, in a compartment separate from the rest of his life, and now Borg was dragging her out and holding her up to public view: Just look at what Nat was doingl "No," Dickstein said tonelessly. "I'll give you the headlines," Borg said, "Shes Arab, her father's politics are pro-Arab, she travels all over the world in her cover job to have opportunity for contacts, and the agent Yasif Hassan, who spotted you in Luxembourg, is a friend of the family." Dickstein tamed to face Borg, standing too close, gazing fiercely into Borg's eyes, his guilt turning to resentment. 'Mat's all?" "All? What the fuck do you mean, all? You'd shoot people on that much evidencel" "Not people I know." "Has she gotten any information out of you?" Dickstein shouted, "Nol" "You're getting angry because you know you've fiiade a mistake." Dickstein turned away and looked across the lake, struggling to make himself calm: rage was Borg's act not his. After a long pause he said, "Yes, I'm angry because I've made a mistake. I should have told you about her; not the other way around. I understand how it must seem to you---~' "Seem? You mean you don't believe she's an agentT' "Have you chocked through Cairo?" Borg gave a false little laugh. "You talk as if Cairo was my intelligence service. I can't just call and ask them to look her up in their files while I hold the line." "But you've got a very good double agent in Egyptian Intelligence." "How can he be good? Everybody seems to know about him." "Stop playing games. Since the Six-Day War even the newspapers say you have good doubles in Egypt. The point is, you haven!t checked her." Borg held up both hands, palms outward, in a gesture of appeasement. "Okay, I'm going to check her with Cairo. It will take a little time. Meanwhile, you're going to write a report giving all details of your scheme and I'm going to put other agents on the job." Dickstein thought of Al Cortone and Andre Papagopolous: neither of them would do what he had agreed to do for any one other than Dickstein. "It won't work, Pierre," he said quietly. "Yoteve got to have the uranium, and I'm the only one who can get it for you." "And if Cairo confirms her to be an agent?" "rin confident the answer will be negative." "But if it's notT' "YoWll kill her, I suppose." "Oh, no." Borg pointed a finger at Dickstein's nose, and when he spoke there was real, deep-down malice in his voice. "Oh, no, I won% Dickstein. If shes an agent, you will kill her." With deliberate slowness, Dickstein took hold of Borg's wrist and removed the pointing finger from in front of his face. There was only the faintest perceptible tremor in his voice as he said, "Yes, Pierre, I will kill her."

Chapter Eleven

In the bar at Heathrow Airport David Rostov ordered another round of drinks and decided to take a gamble on Yasif Hassan. Ile problem, still, was how to stop Hassan telling all he knew to an Israeli double agent in Cairo. Rostov and Hassan were both going back for interim debriefing so a decision had to be made now. Rostov was going to let Hassan know everything, then appeal to his professionalism---such as it was. Tbe alternative was to provoke him, and just now he needed him as an ally, not a suspicious antagonist. "Look at this," Rostov said, and he showed Hassan a decoded message.

To: Colonel David Rostov via London Residency FRom: Moscow Center DATE: 3 September 1968 Comrade Colonel: We refer to your signal g/35-21a, requesting further information concerning each offour ships named in our signal r/35-21. The motor vessel Stromberg, 2500 tons, Dutch ownership and registration, has recently changed hands. She was purchased for DM 1,500,000 by one Andre Papagopolous, a ship broker, on behalf of the Savile Shipping Corporation of Liberia. Savile Shipping was incorporated on 6 August this year at the New York office of Liberian Corporation Services, Inc., with a share capital of five hundred dollars. The shareholders are Mr. Lee Chung, a New York lawyer, and a Mr. Robert Roberts, whose address is care of Mr. Chung's office. The three directors were provided in the usual way by Liberian Corporation Services, and they resigned the day after the company was set up, again in the usual way. The aforementioned Papagopolous took over as president and chief executive. Savile Shipping has also bought,the motor vessel Gil Hamffton, 1500 tons, for ze 80,000. Our people in New York have interviewed Chung. He says that "Mr. Roberte' came into his office from the street, gave no address'and paid his fee in cash. He appeared to be an Englishman. The detailed description is on file here, but it is not very helpful. Papagopolous is known to us. He is a wealthy international businessman of indeterminate nationality. Shipbroking is his principal activity. He is believed to operate close to the fringes of the law. We have no address for him. There is considerable material in his Ille, but much of it is speculative. He is believed to have done business with Israeli Intelligence in 1948. Nevertheless, he has no known political affiliation. We continue to gather information on all the ships in the list. -Moscow Center.

H4ssan. gave the sheet of pape~ back to Rostov. "How do they get hold of all this stuff?" Rostov began tearing the signal into shreds. "It's all on file somewhere or other. The sale of the Stromherg would have been notified to Lloyd's of London. Someone from our consulate in Liberia would have gotten the details on Savile Shipping from public records in Monrovia. Our New York people got Chung's address out of the phone book, and Papagopolous was on file in Moscow. None of it is secret, except the Papagopolous file. The trick is knowing where to go to ask the questions. The squirrels specialize in that trick. Ifs all they do!' Rostov put the shreds of paper into a large glass ashtray and set fire to them. "Your people should have squirrels," he added. "I expect we're working on it." "Suggest it yourself. It won't do you any harm. You might even get the job of setting it up. That could help your career." Hassan nodded. "Perhaps I will." Fresh drinks arrived: vodka for Rostov, gin for Hassan.

Rostov was pleased that Hassan was responding well to his friendly overtures. He examined the cinders in the ashtray to make sure. the signal had burned completely. Hassan said, "You're assuming Dickstein is behind the SavHe Shipping Corporation." "Yes." "So what will we do about the &romberg?" "Well . . ." Rostov emptied his glass and set it on the table. "My guess is he wants the Stromberg so he can get an exact layout of the sister ship CopareUl." "It will be an expensive blueprint" "He can sell the ship again. However, he may also use the Stromberg in the hijack of the Coparellt-l doift quite see how, just yet. "Will you put a man aboard the Stromberg, like Tyria on the Coparelft?" "No point Dickstein is sure to get rid of the old crew and fill the ship with Israeli saflom FU have to think of something else." "Do we know where the Stromberg is now?" "I've asked the squirrels. They'll have an answer by the time I get to MOSCOW." I Hassan's ffight was called. He stood up. "We meet in Luxembourgr' "I'm not sure. Ill let you know. Listen, theres, something I've got to say. Sit down again." Hassan sat down. "When we started to work together on Dickstein I was very hostile to you. I regret that now, I'm apologizing; but I must tell you there was a reason for it You see, Cairo isn't secure. lirs certain there are double agents in the Egyptian Intelligence apparatus. What I was concerned about-and still am-is that everything you report to your superiors will get back, via a double agent, to Tel Aviv; and then Dickstein will know how close we are and will take evasive action." "I appreciate your frankness.I Appreciate, Rostov thought: He loves it "However, you are now completely in the picture, and what we must discuss is haw to prevent the information you have in your possession getting back to Tel Aviv." Hassan nodded. "What do you suggest?" "Well. Youll have to tell what weve found out, of course, but I want you to be as vague as possible about the details. Don't give names, times, places. When you!re pushed, complain about me, say Ive refused to let you share all the information. Doift talk to anyone except the people you're obliged to report to. In particular, tell nobody about Savile Shipping, the Stromberg, or the Copareft As for Pyotr Tyrin being aboard the Copareffl-try to forget it." Hassan looked worried. -Whaes left to tell?" "Plenty. Dickstein, Euratom, uranium, the meeting with Pierre Borg ... youll be a hero in Cairo if you tell half the litory. Hassan was not convinced. "Ill be as frank as you. If I do this your way, my report will not be as impressive as yours." Rostov gave a wry smile. "Is that unfair?" "No," Hassan conceded, "you deserve most of the credit." "Besides, nobody but the two of us will know how different the reports are. And you!re going to get all the credit you need in the end." "All right," Hassan said. "I'll be vague." "Good." Rostov waved his hand for a waiter. "You've got a little time, have a quick one before you go." He settled back in his chair and crossed his legs. He was satisfied: Hassan would do as he had been told. "Im looking forward to getting home." "Any plans?" "IT try to take a few days on the coast with Mariya and the boys. Weve a dacha in the Riga Bay." "Sounds nice.' "It's pleasant ~here--but not as warm as where you're going, of course. Where will you head for-Alexandria?" The last call for Hassan!s flight came over the public address system, and the Arab stood up. "No such luck," he said. "I expect to spend the whole time stuck in filthy Cairo." And Rostov had the peculiar feeling that Yasif Hassan was lying.

Franz Albrecht Pedler's life was ruined when Germany lost the war. At the age of fifty, a career officer in the Wehrmacht, he was suddenly homeless, penniless and unemployed. And, like millions of other Germans, he started again. He became a salesman for a French dye manufacturer: small commission, no salary., In 1946 there were few customers, but by 1951 German Industry was rebuilding and when at last things began to look up Pedler was in a good position to take advantage of the new opportunities. He opened an office in Wiesbaden, a rail Junction on the right bank of the Rhine that promised to develop into an Industrial center. Ms product list grew, and so did his tally of customers: soon he was selling soaps as well as dyes, and he gained entry to the U.S. bases, which at the time administered that part of occupied Germany. He had learned, during the hard years, to be an oppontunist: if a U.S. Army procurement officer wanted disinfectant in pint bottles, - Peddler would buy disinfectant in ten-gallon drums, pour the stuff from the drums into secondhand bottles in a rented barn, put on a label saying "R A. Pedler's Special Disinfectant" and resell at a fat proft From buying in bulk and repackaging it was not a very big step to buying ingredients and manufacturing. The first barrel of F. A. Pedler's Special Industrial Cleanser-never called simply "soapt-was mixed in the same rented barn and sold to the U.S. Air Force for use by aircraft maintenance engineers. The company never looked back. In the late Fiffies Pedler read a book about chemical warfare and went on to win a big defense contract to supply a range of solutions designed to neutralize various kinds of chemical weapons. F. A. Pedler had become a military supplier, small but secure and profitable. The rented barn had grown into a small complex of single-story buildings. Franz married again-his first wife had been killed in the 1944 bombing-and fathered a child But he was still an opportunist at heart, and when he heard ;i;;;t a small mountain of urannun ore going cheap, he smelled a profit. The uranium belonged to a Belgian company called Socidt6 G&drale de la Chimie. Chimie was one of the corporations which ran Belgium!s African colony, the Belgian Congo, a country rich in minerals. After the 1960 pullout Chimie stayed on; but, knowing that those who did not walk out would eventually be thrown out, the company expended all its efforts to ship home as much raw material as it could before the gates slammed shut. Between 1960 and 1965 it accumulated a large stockpile of yelloweake at its refinery near the Dutch border. Sadly for Chimie, a nuclear test ban treaty was ratified in the meantime, and when Chimie was finally thrown out of the Congo there were few buyers for uranium. The yellowcake sat in a silo, tying up scarce capital. F. A. Pedler did not actually use very much uranium in the manufacture of their dyes. However, Franz loved a gamble of this sort: the price was low, he could make, a little money by having the stuff refined, and ff the uranium market improved-as it was likely to sooner or later-he would make a big capital profit. So he bought some. Nat Dickstein liked Pedler right away. The German was a sprightly seventy-three-year-old who still had all his hair and the twinkle in his eye.. They met on a Saturday. Pedler wore a loud sports jacket and fawn trousers, spoke good English with an American accent and gave Dickstein a glass of Sekt, the local champagne. They were wary of each other at first. After all, they had fought on opposite sides in a war which had been cruel to them both. But Dickstein had always believed that the enemy was not Germany but Fascism, and he was nervous only that Pedler might be uneasy. It seemed the same was true of Pedler. Dickstein had called from his hotel in Wiesbaden to make an appointment. His call had been awaited eagerly. The local Israeli consul had alerted Pedler that Mr. Dickstein, a senior' army procurement officer with a large shopping list, was on his way. Pedler had suggested a short tour of the factory on Saturday morning, when it would be empty, followed by lunch at his home. if Dickstein had been genuine he would have been put off by the tour: the factory was no gleaming model of German efficiency, but a straggling collection of old huts and cluttered yards with a pervasive bad smell. After sitting up half the night with a textbook on chemical engineering Dickstein was ready with a handful of intelligent questions about agitators and baffies, materials-handling and quality-control and packaging. He relied upon the language problem to camouflage any errors. It seemed to be working. The situation was peculiar. Dickstein had to Play the role of a buyer and be dubious and noncommittal while the seller wooed him, whereas in reality he was hoping to seduce Pedler into a relationship the German would be unable or unwilling to sever. It was Pedlees uranium he wanted, but he was not going to ask for it, now or ever. Instead he would try to maneuver Pedler into a position where he was dependent upon Dickstein for his livelihood. After the factory tour Pedler drove him in a new Mercedes from the works to a wide chalet-style house on a hillside. They sat in front of a big window and sipped their Sekt while Frau Pedler--a pretty, cheerful woman in her forties-busied herself in the kitchen. Bringing a potential customer home to lunch on the weekend was a somewhat Jewish way of doing business, Dickstein mused, and he wondered if Pedler had thought of that Ilia window overlooked the valley Down below the river was wide and slow, with a narrow road running alongside it Small gray houses with white shutters clustered in small groups along the banks, and the vineyards sloped upward to the Pedlers! house and beyond it to the treeline. If I were going to live in a cold country, Dickstein thought~ this would do nicely. "Well, what do you think?" said Pedler. "About the view, or the factory?" Pedler smiled and shrugged. "Both." 'The view is magnificent. The factory is smaller than I expected. Pedler lit a cigarette. He was a heavy smoker-he was lucky to have lived so long. "Small?" Perhaps I should explain what rin looking for.- "Please." Dickstein launched into his story. "Right now the Army buys cleaning materials from a variety of suppliers: detergents from one, ordinary soap from another, solvents for machinery from someone else and so on. Were tying to cut costs, and perhaps we can do this by taking our entire business in this area to one manufacturer." Pedlees eyes widened. "That, is . He fumbled for a phrase '~ . . a tall order." "I'm afraid it may be too tall for you," Dickstein said, thinking: Don't say yesl "Not nece&urily. Ile only reason we haven!t got that kind of bulk manufacturing capacity is simply that we've never had this scale of business. We certainly have the managerial and technical know-how, and with a large firm order we could get finance to expand it all depends on the figures, really.- Dickstem pkJwd up his briefcase from beside his chair and opened it "Here are the specifications for,the,products," he said, handing Pedler a list. "Plus the quantities required and the time scAle, You'll want time to consult with your directon and do your sums---~' "rm the boss," Pedler said with a smile. "I don't have to consult anybody. Give me tomorrow to work on the figures, and Monday to we the bank. On Tuesday 1% call and give you prices." "I was told you were a good man to work with," Dickstein said. "There are some advantages to being a small company." Frau Pedler came in from the kitchen and said, "Lunch is ready.

My darling Sum I have never written a love letter before. I don't think I ever called anyone darling until now. I must tell you, it feels very good. I am alone in a strange town on a cold Sunday afternoon. The town is quite pretty, with lots of parks, in. fact I'm sitting in one of them now, writing to you with a leaky ballpoint pen and some vile green stationery, the only kind I could got My bench is beneath a curious kind of pagoda with a circular dome and Greek columns all around in a circle-like a folly, or the kind of summer house you might find In an English country, garden designed by'a Victorian eccentric. In front of,me is a fiat lawn dotted with poplar trees, and in the distance I can hear a brass band playing something by Edward Elgar. The park is fall of people with children and footballs and dogs. I dotft know why I'm telling you all this. What I really want to say is I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I knew that a couple of days after we met I hesitated to tell you, not because I wasn!t sure, but Well, if you want to know the truth, I thought it might ware you off. I know you love me, but I also know that you are twenty-five, that loves comes easily to you (I'm the opposite way), and that love which comes easily may go easily. So I thought: Softly, Softly, give her a chance to get to like you before you ask her to say "Forever." Now that weve been apart for so many weeks I'm no longer capable of such deviousness. I just have to tell you how it is with me. Forever is what I want, and you might as well know it now. I'm a changed man. I know that sounds trite, but when it happens to you it isn't trite at all, it's just the opposite. Life looks different to me now, in several ways-some of which you know about, others IT tell you one day. Even this is different, this being alone In a strange place with nothing to do until Monday. Not that I mind it, particularly. But before, I wouldn't even have thought of it as something I might like or dislike. Before, there was nothing I'd prefer to do. Now there is always something Id rather do, and you're the person I'd rather do it to. I mean with, not to. Well, either, or both. I'm going to have to get off that subject, it's making me fidget. I'll be gone from here in a couple of days, don't know where I'm going next, don't know-and this is the worst part-don't even know when I'll see You again. But when I do, believe me, Im not going to let you out of my sight for ten or fifteen years. None of this sounds how it's supposed to sound. I want to tell you how I feel, and I can't put it into words. I want you to know what ies like for me to picture your face many times every day, to see a slender girl with black hair and hope, against all reason, that somehow she might be you, to imagine all the time what You n-dght say about a view, a newspaper article, a small man with a large dog, a pretty dress; I want you to know how, when I get into bed alone, I just ache with the need to touch you. I love you so much. N.

Franz Pedler's secretary phoned Nat Dickstein at his hotel on Tuesday morning and made a date for lunch. They went to a modest restaurant in the Wilhelmstrasse and ordered beer instead of wine: this was to be a working session. Dickstein controlled his impat ience-Pedler, not he, was supposed to do the wooing. Pedler said, "Well, I Chink we can accommodate you." Dickstein wanted to shout "Hoorayl" but he kept his face impassive. Pedier continued: "The, prices, which IM give you in a moment are conditional. We need a five-year contz-act. We will guarantee prices for the first twelve months; after that they may be varied in accordance with an index of world Prim of certain mw matenals. And there!s a cancellaton Penalty amounting to ten percent of the value of one Yeaes Supply." Dickstein wanted to say, "Donel" and shake hands on the deal, but he reminded himself to continue to play his part. $wren per-cent is stiff.99 "It's not,excessive," Pedler argued. "It certainly would not recompense us for our losses if you did cancel. But it must be large enough to deter you fmm canceling except under very compelling circumstances." "I see that. But we may suggest a smaller percentage." Pedler shrugged. "Everything is negotiable. Here are the prices." Dickstein studied the list then said, 'This is close to what we're looking for." "Does that mean we have a deal?" Dickstein thought: Yes, yes! But. he said, "No, it means that I think we can do business." Pedler beamed. "In that case," he said, "let's have a real drink. Waiterl" When the drinks came Pedler raised his glass in a toast. "'To many years of business together." "1711 drink to that," Dickstein said. As he raised his glass he was thinking: How about that-I did it againI

Life at sea was uncomfortable, but it was not as bad as Pyotr Tyrin had expected. In the Soviet Navy, ships had been run on the principles of unremitting hard work, harsh discipline and bad food. The Coparelli was very different. Tte captain, Eriksen, asked only for safety and good seamanship, and even there his standards were not remarkably high. The deck was swabbed occasionally, but nothing was ever polished or painted. The food was quite good, and Tyrin had the advantage of sharing a cabin with the cook. In theory Tyrin could be called upon at any hour of the day or night to send radio signals, but in practice all the traffic occurred during the normal working day so he even got his eight hours sleep every night. It was a comfortable regimen, and Pyotr Tyrin was concerned about comfort. Sadly, the ship was the opposite of comfortable. She was a bitch. As soon as they rounded Cape Wrath and left The Minch and the North Sea she began to pitch and roll like a toy yacht in a gale. Tyrin felt terribly seasick, and had to conceal it, since he was supposed to be a sailor. Fortunately this occurred while the cook was busy in the galley and Tyrin was not needed in the radio room, so be was able to lie flat on his back in his bunk until the worst was over. The quarters were poorly ventilated and inadequately heated, so immediately it got a little damp above, the mess decks were full of wet clothing hanging up to dry and making the atmosphere worse. Tyrin's radio gear was in his sea-bag, well protected by polythene and canvas and some sweaters. However, he could not set it up and operate it in his cabin, where the cook or anyone else might walk in. He had already made routine radio contact with Moscow on the ship~s radio, during a quiet-but nonetheless tense--mornent when nobody was listening; but he needed something safer and more reliable. -Tyrin was a nest-building man. Whereas Rostov would move from embassy to hotel room to safe house without noticing his environment, Tyrin liked to have a base, a place where he could feel comfortable and familiar and secure. On static surveillance, the kind of assignment he preferred, he would always find a large easy chair to place in front of the window, and would sit at the telescope for hours, perfectly content with his bag of sandwiches, his bottle of soda and his thoughts. Here on the Copareffl, he had found a place to nest. Exploring the ship in daylight, he had discovered a little labyrinth of stores up in the bow beyond the for'ard hatch. The naval architect had put them there merely to fill a space between the hold and the prow. The main store was entered by a semiconcealed door down a flight of steps. It contained some tools, several drums of grease for the cranes and-inexplicably-a rusty old lawn mower. Several smaller rooms opened off the main one: some containing ropes, bits of machinery and decaying cardboard boxes of nuts and bolts; others empty but for msects. Tynn had never seen anyone enter the area-stuff that was used was stored aft, where it was needed. He chose a moment when darkness was failing and most of the crew and officers were at supper. He went to his cabin, picked up his sea-bag and climbed the companionway to the deck. He took a flashlight from a locker below the bridge but did not yet switch it on. The almanac said there was a moon, but it did not show through the thick clouds. Tyrin made his way stealthily foeard holding on to the gunwale, where his silhouette would be less likely to show against the off-white deek. There was some light from the bridge and the wheelhouse, but the duty officers would be watching the surrounding sea, not the deck. Cold $Pray fell on him, and as the Copareni executed her notorious roll he had to grab the rail with both hands to avoid being swept overboard. At tunes she shipped waternot much, but enough to soak into Tyrin's sea boots and frem his feet. He hoped fervently that he would never find out what she was like in a real gale. He was miserably wet and shivering when he reached the bow and entered the litdc disused store. He closed the door behind him, switched on his flashlight and made his way through the assorted junk to one of the small rooms off the main store. He closed that door behind him too. He took off his oilskin, rubbed his hand on his sweater to dry and warm them some, then opened his bag. He put the transmitter in a corner, lashed it to the bulkhead with a wire tied through rings in the deck, and wedged it with a cardboard box. He was Wearing rubber soles, but he put on rubber gloves as an additional precaution for the next task. The cables to the ship's radio mast ran through a pipe along the deckhead above him. With a small hacksaw pilfered from the engine room TYrin cut away a six-inch section of the pipe, exposing tht cables. He took a tap from the power cable to the power input of the transmitter, then connected the aerial socket of Ins radio with the signal wire from the mast He switched on the radio and called Moscow. His Outgoing sigrials would not interfere with the shies radio because he was the radio operator and it was unlikely that an)rone else would attempt to send on the ship!s equipment. However, while he was using his own radio, incon-dng signals would not reach the ship's radio room; and he would not hear them either since his set would be tuned to another frequency. He could have wired everything so that both radios would receive at the same time, but then Moscows replies to him would be received by the ship's radio, and somebody might notice ... Well, there was nothing very suspicious about a small ship taking a few minutes to pick up signals. Tyrin would take care to use his radio only at times when no traffic was expected for the ship. When he reached Moscow he made: Checking secondary transmitter. They acknowledged, then made: Stand by for signal from Rostov. All this was in a standard KGB code. Tyrin made: Standing by, but hurry. The message came: Keep your head down until something happens. Rostov. Tyrin made: Understood. Over and out. Without waiting for their sign-off he disconnected his wires and restored the ship's cables to normal. The business of twisting and untwisting bare wires, even with insulated pliers, was time-consuming and not very safe. He had some quick-release connectors among his equipment in the ship's radio room: he would pocket a few and bring them. here next time to speed up the process. He was well satisfied with his evening's work. He had made his nest, he had opened his lines of communication, and he had remained undiscovered. All he had to do now was sit tight; and sitting tight was what he liked to do. He decided to drag in another cardboard box to put in front of the radio and conceal it from a casual glance. He opened the door and shined his flashlight into the main store--and got a shock. He had company. The overhead light was on, casting restless shadows with its yellow glow. In the center of the storeroom, sitting against a grease drum with his legs stretched out before him, was a young sailor. He looked up, just as startled as Tyrin andTyrin realized from his face-just as guilty. Tyrin recognized him. His name was Ravlo. He was about nineteen years old, with pale blond hair and a thin white face. He had not joined in the pub-crawls in Cardiff, yet he often looked bung over, with dark discs under his eyes and a distracted air. Tyrin said, 'Vbat are you doing hereT' And then be saw. Ravlo had rolled up his left sleeve past the elbow. On the deck between his legs was a phial, a watch-glass and a small waterproof bag. In his right hand was a hypodermic syringe,' with which he was about to inject himself. Tyrin frowned. "Are you diabetic?" Ravlo's face twisted andhe gave a dry, humorless laugh. "An addict," Tyrin said, understanding. He did not know much about drugs, but he knew that what Ravlo was doing could get him discharged at the next port of call. He began to relax a little. This could be handled. Ravlo was looking past him, into the smaller store. Tyrin looked back and saw that the radio was clearly visible. The two men stared at one another, each understanding that the other was doing something he needed to hide. Tyrin said, "I will keep your secret, and you will keep Inine. Ravlo gave the twisted smile and the dry, humorless laugh again; then he looked away from Tyrin, down at his arm, and be stuck the needle into his flesh.

The exchange between the Coparellf and Moscow was picked up and recorded by a U.S. Naval Intelligence listening station. Since it was in standard KGB code, they were able to decipher it. But all it told them was that someone aboard a ship-they did not know which ship-was checking his secondary transmitter, and somebody called Rostov-the name was not on any of their files-wanted him to keep his head down. Nobody could make any sense of it, so they opened a file titled "Rostov" and put the signal in the Me and forgot about it.

Chapter Twelve

When he had finished his interim debriefing in Cairo, Hassan asked permission to go to Syria to visit his parents in the refugee camp. He was given, four days. He took a plane to Damascus and a taxi to the camp. He did not visit his parents. He made certain inquiries at the camp, and one of the refugees took him, by means of a series of buns, to Dara, across the Jordanian border, and all the way to Amman. From there another man took him on another bus to the Jordan River. On the night of the second day he crossed the river, guided by two men who carried submachine guns. By now Hassan was wearing Amb robes and a headdress like them, but he did not ask for a gun. They were young men, their soft adolescent faces just taking on lines of weariness and cruelty, like recruits in a new army. They moved across the Jordan valley in confident silence, directing Hassan with a touch or a whisper: they seemed to have made the journey many times. At one point all thm of them lay flat behind a stand of cactus while lights and soldiers! voices passed a quarter of a mile away. Hassan felt helpless-and something more. At first he thought that the feeling was due to his being so completely in the hands of these boys, his life dependent on their knowledge and coumge. But later, when they had left him and he was alone on a country road trying to get a lift, he realized that this. journey was a kind of regression. For years now he had been a European banker, living in Luxembourg with his car and his refrigerator and his television set. Now, suddenly, he was walking in sandals along the dusty PalestIft roads of his youth: no car, no jet; an Arab again, a peasant, a second-class citizen in the country of his birth. None of his reflexes would work here-it was not possible to solve a problem by picking up a phone or pulling out a credit card or calling a cab. He felt like a child, a pauper and a fugitive all at the same time. He walked five miles without seeing a vehicle, then a fruit truck passed him, its engine coughing unhealthily and pouring smoke, and pulled up a few yards ahead. Hassan ran after it. "ro Nablus?" he shouted. "imp iet The driver was a heavy man whose forearms bulged with muscle as he heaved the truck around bends at top speed. He smoked 0 the time. He must have been certain there would not be anoffier vehicle in the way all night, driving as he did on the crown of the road and never using the brake. Hassan could have used some sleep, but the driver wanted to talk. He told Hassan that the Jews were good rulers, business had prospered since they occupied Jordan, but of course the land must be free one day. Half of what he said was insincere, no doubt; but Hassan could not tell which half. They entered Nablus in the cool Samaritan dawn, with a red sim rising behind the hillside and the town still asleep. The track roared into the market square and stopped. Hassan said goodbye to the driver. He walked slowly through the empty streets as the sun began to take away the chill of the night. He savored the clean air and the low white buildings, enjoying every detail, basking in the glow of nostalgia for his boyhood: he was in Palestine, he was home. He had precise directions to a house with no number in a street with no name. It was in a poor quarter, where the little stone houses were crowded too close together and nobody swept the streets. A goat was tethered outside, and he wondered briefly what it ate, for there was no grass. The door was unlocked. He hesitated a moment outside, fighting down the excitement in his belly. He had been away too long-now he was back in the Land. He had waited too many years for this opportunity to strike a blow in revenge for what they had done to his father. He had suffered exile, he had endured with patience, he bad nursed his hatred enough, perhaps too much. He went in.

There were four or five people asleep on the floor. One of them, a woman, opened her eyes, saw him and sat up instantly, her hand under the pillow reaching for what might have been a gun. "What do you want?" Hassan spoke the name of the man who commanded the Fedayeen.

Mahmoud had lived not far from Yasif Hassan when they were both boys in the late Thirties, but they had never met, or if they had neither remembered it. After the European war, when Yasif went to England to, study, Mahmoud tended sheep with his brothers, his father, his uncles and his grandfather. Their lives would have continued to go in quite different directions but for the 1948 war. Mahmoud's father, like Yasif's, made the decision to pack up and flee. The two sons--Yasif was a few years older than Mahmoud-met at the refugee camp. Mahmoud's reaction to the ceasefire was even stronger than Yasif's, which was paradoxical, for Yasif had lost more. But Mahmoud was possessed by a great rage that would allow him to do nothing other than fight for the liberation of his homeland. Until then he had been oblivious of politics, thinking it had nothing to do with shepherds; now he set out to understand it. Before be could do that, he had to teach himself to read. They met again in the Fifties, in Gaza. By then Mahmoud bad blossomed, if that was the right word for something so fierce, He had read Clausewitz on war and Plato's Republic, Das Kaphal and Mein Kwnpf, Keynes and Mao and Galbraith and Gandhi, history and biography, classical novels and modem plays. He spoke good English and bad Russian and a smattering of Cantonese. He was directing a small cadre of terrorists on forays into Israel, bombing and shooting and stealing and then returning to disappear into the Gaza camps like rats into a garbage dump. The terrorists were getting money, weapons and intelligence from Cairo: Hassan was, briefly, part of the intelligence backup, and when they met again Yasif told Mahmoud where his ultimate loyalty lay~not with Cairo, not even with the pan-Arab cause, but with Palestine. Yasif had been ready to abandon everything there and then-his job at the bank, his home in Luxembourg, his role in Egyptian Intelligence--and join the freedom fighters. But Mahmoud had said no, and the habit of command was already fitting him like a tailored coat In a few years, he said-for he took a long view-they would have all the guerrillas they wanted, but they would still need friends in high PlacM European connections, and secret intelligence. They had met once more, in Cairo, and set up lines of communication which bypassed the Egyptians. With the Intelligence Establishment Hamm had cultivated a deceptive image: he pretended to be a little less perceptive than he was. At first Yasif sent over much the same kind of stuff he was giving to Cairo, Principally the names of loyal Arabs who were stashing away fortunes in Europe and could therefore be touched for fundL Recently he had been of more immediate practical value as the Palestinian movement began to operate in Europe. He had booked hotels and flights, rented cars and houses, stockpiled weapons and transferred funds. He was not the kind of man to use a gun. He knew this and was faintly ashamed of it, so he was all the more proud to be so useful in other, nonviolent but nonetheless practical, ways. , The results of his work had begun to explode in Rome that year. Yasif believed in Mahmoud's program of European terrorism He was convinced that the Arab armies, even with Russian support, could never defeat the Jews, for this allowed the Yews to think of themselves as a beleaguered people defending their homes against foreign soldiers, and that gave them strength. The truth was, in Yasifs view, that the Palestine Arabs were defending their home against invading Zionists. There were still more Arab Palestinians than Jewish Israelis, counting the exiles in the camps; and it was they, not a rabble of soldiers from Cairo and Damascus, who would liberate the homeland. But first they had to believe in the Fedayeen. Acts such as the Rome airport affair would convince them that the Fedayeen had international resources. And when the people believed in the Fedayeen, the people would be the Fedayeen, and then they would be unstoppable. The Rome airport affair was trivial, a peccadillo, by comparison with what Hassan had in mind. It 'Was an outrageous, mind-boggling scheme that would put the Fedayeen on the front pages of the world's newspapers for weeks and prove that they were a powerful international force, not a bunch of ragged refugees. Hassan hoped desperately that Malimoud would accept it. Yasif Hassan had come to propose that the Fedayeen should hijack a holocaust

They embraced like brothers, kissing cheeks, then stood back to look at one another. 'Tou smell like a whore," said Mahmoud. "You smell like a goatherd," said Hassan. They laughed and embraced again. Mahmoud was a big man, a fraction taller than Hassan and much broader; and he looked big, the way he held his head and walked and spoke. He did smell, too: a sour familiar smell that came from living very close to many people in a place that lacked the modern inventions of hot baths and sanitation and garbage disposal. It was three days since Hassan had used after-shave and talcum powder, but he still smelled like a scented woman to Mahmoud. The house had two rooms: the one Hassan had entered, and behind that another, where Mahrfioud slept on the floor with two other men. There was no upper story. Cooking was done in a yard at the back, and the nearest water supply was one hundred yards away. The woman lit a fire and began to make a porridge of crushed beans. While they waited for it, Hassan told Mahmoud his story. "Mee months ago in Luxembourg r met a man I bad known at Oxford, a Jew called Dickstein. It turns out he is a big Mossad operative. Since then I have been watching him, with the help of the Russians, in particular a KGB man named Rostov. We have discovered that Dickstein plans to steal a shipload of uranium so the Zionists will be able to make atom bombs." At first Mahmoud refused to believe this. He cross-questioned Hassan: how good was the information, what exactly was the evidence, who might be lying, what mistakes might have been made? Then, as Hassan's answers made more and more sense, the truth began to sink in, and Mahmoud became very grave- "This is not only a threat to the Palestinian cause. These bombs could ravage the whole of the Middle East." It was like him, Hassan thought, to see the big picture.

"What do you and this Russian propose to dor' Mabmoud asked. "Ihe plan is to stop Dickstein and expose the Israeli plot, showing the Zionists to be lawless adventurers. We haven't worked out the details yet But I have an alternative proposal." He paused, trying to form the right phrases, then blurted it out. "I think the Fedayeen should hijack the ship before Dickstein gets there." Mahmoud stared blankly at him for a long moment. Hassan thought: Say something, for God's sake! Mahmoud began to shake his head from side to side slowly, then his mouth widened in a smile, and at last he began to laugh, beginning with a small chuckle and finishing up giving a huge, body-shaking bellow that brought the rest of the household around to see what was happening. Hassan ventured, "But what do you think?" Mahmoud sighed. "It's wonderful," he said. "I don't see how we can do it, but it's a wonderful idea." Ilen he started asking questions. He asked questions all through breakfast and for most of the morning: the quantity of uranium, the names of the ships involved, how the yellowcake was converted into nuclear explosive, places and dates and people. They talked in the back room, just the two of them for most of the time, but occasionally Mahmoud would call someone in and tell him to listen while Hassan repeated some particular point. About midday he summoned two men who seemed to be his lieutenants. With them listening, he again went over the points he thought crucial. "rhe Coparelli is an ordinary merchant ship with a regular crew? "Yes." "She will be sailing through the Mediterranean to Genoa." "Yes." "What does this yellowcake weigh?" "Two hundred tons." "And it is packed in drums." "Five hundred sixty of them." "Its market pricer' 'Two million American dollars." "And it is used to make nuclear bombs." "Yes. Well, it is the raw material."

"Is the conversion to the explosive form an expensive or difficult process?" "Not if you've got a nuclear reactor. Otherwise, yes." Mahmpud nodded to the two lieutenants. "Go and tell this to the others."

In the afternoon, when the sun was past its zenith and it was cool enough to go out, Mahmoud and Yasif walked over the hills outside the town. Yasif was desperate to know what Mahmoud really thought of his plan, but Mahmoud refused to talk about uranium. So Yasif spoke about David Rostov and said that he admired the Russian's professionalism despite the difficulties he had made for him. "It is well to admire the Russians," Mahmoud said, "so long as we do not trust them. Their heart is not in our cause. There are three reasons why they take our side. ne least important is that we cause trouble for the West, and anything that is bad for the West is good for the Russians. Then there is their image. The underdeveloped nations identify with us rather than with the Zionists, so by supporting us the Russians gain credit with the Third World-and remember, in the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union the Third World has all the floating voters. But the most important reason-the only really important reason-is oil. The Arabs have oil." They passed a boy tending a small flock of bony sheep. The boy was playing a flute. Yasif remembered that Mahmoud had once been a shepherd boy who could neither read nor write, "Do you understand how important oil is?" Mahmoud said. "Hitler lost the European war because of off.

"Listen. The Russians defeated Hitler. They were bound to. Hitler knew this: he knew about Napoleon, he knew nobody could conquer Russia. So why did he try? He was running out of oil. There is oil in Georgia, in the Caucasian oilfields. Hitler had to have the Caucasus. But you cannot hold the Caucasus secure unless you have Volgograd, which was then called Stalingrad, the place where the tide turned against Hitler. Oil. That's what our struggle is about, whether we like it or not, do you realize that? If it were not for oil, nobody but us would care about a few Arabs and lews fighting over a dusty little country like ours." MArnoud was magnetic when he talked. lEs strong, clear voice rolled out short phrases, simple explanations, statements that sounded like devastating basic truths: Hassan suspected he said these same things often to his troops. In the back of his mind he remembered the sophisticated ways in which politics were discussed in places like Luxembourg and Oxford, and it seemed to him now that for all their mountains of information those people knew less than Mahmoud. He knew, too, that international politics were complicated: that there was more than oil behind these things, yet at bottom he believed Mahmoud was right. They sat in the shade of a fig tree. The smooth, duncolored landscape stretched all around them, empty. The sky glared hot and blue, cloudless from one horizon to the other. Mahmoud uncorked a water bottle and gave it to Hassan, who drank the tepid liquid and handed it back. Then he asked Mahmoud whether he wanted to rule Palestine after the Zionists wen beaten back. "I have killed many people," Mahmoud said. "At first I did it with my own hands, with a knife or a gun or a bomb. Now I kill by devising plan's and giving orders, but I kill them still. We know this is a sin, but I cannot repent. I have no remorse, Yasif. Even ff we make a mistake, and we kill children and Arabs in#ead of soldiers and Zionists, still I think only, This is bad for our reputation,' not, 'Mis is bad for my soul.' There Is blood on my hands, and I win not wash it off. I will not try. There is a story called The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is about a man who leads an evil and debilitating life, the kind of life that should make him look old, give him fines on his face and bags under his eyes, a destroyed liver and venereal disease. Still, he does not suffer Indeed, as the years go by he seems to stay young, as if he had found the elixir of life. But in a locked room In his house there is a painting of him, and it is the picture that ages, and takea on the ravages of evil living and terrible disease. Do you know the story? It is English." "I saw the movie," said Yasif. "I read it when I was in Moscow. I would like to see that film. Do you remember how it ended?" "Oh, yes. Dorian Gray destroyed the painting, and then all the disease and damage fell on him in an instant, and he died." "Yes." Mahmoud put the stopper back in thebottle, and looked out over the brown hillsides with unseeing eyes. Then he said, "When Palestine is free, my picture will be destroyed. After that they sat in silence for a while. Eventually, without speaking, they stood up and began to walk back to the town.

Several men came to the little house in Nablus that evening at dusk, just before curfew. Hassan did not know who they were exactly; they might have been the local leaders of the movement, or an assorted group of people whose judgment Mahmoud respected, or a permanent council of war that stayed close to Mahmoud but did not actually live with him. Hassan could see the logic in the last alternative, for if they all lived together, they could all be destroyed together. The woman gave them bread and fish and watery wine, and Mahmoud told them of Hassan's scheme. Mahmoud had thought it through more thoroughly than Hassan. He proposed that they hijack the Coparelli before Dickstein got there, then ambush the Israelis as they came aboard. Expecting only an ordinary crew and halfhearted resistance, Dickstein's group would be wiped out. Then the Fedayeen would take the Coparelli to a North African port and invite the world to come aboard and see the bodies of the Zionist criminals. The cargo would be offered to its owners for a ransom of half its market price one million U.S. dollars. There was a long debate. Clearly a faction of the movement was already nervous about Mahmoud's policy of taking the war into Europe, and saw the proposed hijack as a further extension of the same strategy. They suggested that the Fedayeen could achieve most of what they wanted simply by calling a press conference in Beirut or Damascus and revealing the Israeli plot to the international press. Hassan was convinced that was not enough: accusations were cheap, and it was not the lawlessness of Israel that had to be demonstrated, it was the power-of the Fedayeen. They spoke as equals, and Mahmoud seemed to listen to each with the same attention. Hassan sat quietly, hearing the low, calm voices of these people who looked like peasants and spoke Me senators. He was at once hopeful and fearful that they would adopt his plan: hopeful because it would be the fulfillment of twenty years of vengeful dreams; fearful because it would mean he would have to do things more difficult, violent and risky than the work he had been involved in so far. In the end he could not stand it any longer and he went outside and squatted in the mean yard, smelling the night and the dying fire. A little later there was a chorus of quiet voices from inside, like voting. Mahmoud came out and sat beside Hassan. "I have sent for a car." "Oh?" "We must go to Damascus. Tonight. There is a lot to do. It will be our biggest operation. We must start work immediately. "It is decided, then." "Yes. The Fedayeen will hijack the ship and steal the uranium.$# "So be it," said Yasif Hassan.

David Rostov had always liked his family in small doses, and as he got older the doses got smaller. The first day of his holiday was fine. He made breakfast, they walked along the beach, and in the afternoon Vladimir, the young genius, played chess against Rostov, Mariya, and Yuri simultaneously, and won all three games. They took hours over supper, catching up on all the news and drinking a little wine. The second day was similar, but they enjoyed it less; and by the third day the novelty of each other's company had worn off. Vladimir remembered he was supposed to be a prodigy and stuck his nose back into his books; Yuri began to play degenerate Western music on the record player and argued with his father about dissident poets; and Mariya fled into the kitchen of the dacha and stopped putting make-up on her face. So when the message came to say that Nili Bunin was back from Rotterdam and had successfully bugged the Stromberg, Rostov used that as an excuse to return to Moscow. Nik reported that the Stromberg had been in dry dock for the usual inspection prior to completion of the sale to Savile Shipping. A number of small repairs were in progress, and without difficulty Nik had gotten on board, posing as an eleotrician, and planted a powerful radio beacon in the prow of the ship. On leaving he bad been questioned by the dock foreman, who did not have any electrical work on his schedule for that day; and Nil had pointed out that if the work had not been requested, no doubt it would not have to be paid for. From that moment, whenever the ship's power was onwhich was all the time she was at sea and most of the time she was in dock-the beacon would send out a signal every thirty minutes until the ship sank or was broken up for scrap. For the rest of her life, wherever in the world she was, Moscow would be able to locate her within an hour. Rostov listened to Nik, then sent him home. He had plans for the evening. It was a long time since he had seen Olga, and he was impatient to see what she would do with the battery-operated vibrator he had brought her as a present from London.

In Israeli Naval Intelligence there was a young captain named Dieter Koch who had trained as a ship's engineer. When the Coparelli sailed from Antwerp with her cargo of yellowcake Koch had to be aboard. Nat Dickstein reached Antwerp with only the vaguest idea of how this was to be achieved. From his hotel room he phoned the local representative of the company that owned the Copareffl. When I die, he thought as he waited for the connection, they will bury me from a hotel room. A girl answered the phone. Dickstein said briskly, 'This is Pierre Beaudaire, give me the director." "Hold on, please." A man's voice, "Yes?" "Good morning, this is Pierre Beaudaire from the Beaudaire Crew List." Dickstein was making it- up as he went along. "Never heard of you." 'rhat's why I'm calling you. You see, we're contemplating Opening an office in Antwerp, and I'm wondering whether you would be willing to try us." "I doubt it, but you can write to me and-" "Are you completely satisfied with your present crew agency?"

"They could be worse. Look here-" "One more question and I won't trouble you further. May I ask whom you use at the momentr, "Cohen's. Now, I haven't any more time--~" "I understand. Thank you for your patience. Goodbye." Cohen's! That was a piece of luck. Perhaps I will be able to do this bit without brutality, Dickstein thought as he put down the phone. Cohenl It was unexpected--docks and shipping were not typical Jewish business. Wen, sometimes you gotlucky. , He looked up Cohen's crew agency in the phone book, memorized the address, put on his coat, left the hotel and hailed a cab. Cohen had a little two-room office above a sailor's bar in the red-right district of the city. It was not yet midday, and the night people were stiff asleep-the whores and thieves, musicians and strippers and waiters and bouncers, the people who made the place come to life in the evening. Now it might have been any run-down business district, gray and cold in the morning, and none too clean. Dickstein went up a staircase to a first-floor door, knocked and went in. A middle-aged secretary presided over a small reception room furnished with filing cabinets and orange plastic chairs. "I'd like to see Mr. Cohen," Dickstein told her. She looked him over and seemed to think he did not appear to be a sailor. "Are you wanting a ship?" she said doubtfully. "No," he said. "I'm from Israel." "Oh." She hesitated. She had dark hair and deep-set, shadowed eyes, and she wore a wedding ring. Dickstein wondered if she might be Mrs. Cohen. She got up and went through a door behind her desk into the inner office. She was wearing a pants suit, and from behind she looked her age. A minute later she reappeared and ushered him into Cohen's office. Cohen stood up, shook hands and said without preamble, "I give to the cause every year. In the war I gave twenty thousand guilders, I can show you the check. This is some new appeal? There is another war?" I'm not here to raise money, Mr. Cohen," Dickstein said with a smile. Mrs. Cohen had left the door open: Dickstein closed it. "Can I sit down?"

"If you don't want money, sit down, have some coffee, stay all day," said Cohen, and he laughed. Dickstein sat. Cohen was a short man in spectacles, bald and clean-shaven, and looked to be about fifty years ol(L He wore a brown check suit that was not very new. He had a good little business here, Dickstein guessed, but, he was no millionaire, Dickstein said, "Were you here in World War ur, Cohen nodded. "I was a young man. I went into the country and worked on a farm where nobody knew me, nobody knew I was Jewish. I was lucky." "Do you think it will happen againr' "Yes. It's happened all through history, why should it stop now? It will happen again-but not in my lifetime. It's all right here. I don't want to go to Israel." "Okay. I work for the government of Israel. We would like you to do something for us." Cohen shrugged. "So?- "In a few weeks' time, one of your clients will call you with an urgent request. They will want an engineer officer for a ship called Coparefli. We would like you to send them a man supplied by us. His name is Koch, and he is an Israeli, but he will be using a different name and false papers. However, he is a ships engineer-your clients *Will not be dissatisfied." Dickstein waited for Cohen to say something. You're a nice man, he thought; a decent Jewish businessman, smart and hardworking and a little frayed at the edges; don't make me get tough with you. Cohen said, "You*re not going to tell me why the government of Israel wants this man Koch aboard the Coparelli?~ "No." There was a silence. "You carry any identification?"

The secretary came in without knocking and gave them coffee. Dickstein got hostile vibrations from her. Cohen used the interruption to gather his thoughts. When she had gone out he said, "I would have to be meshugah to do this." G#Wh3q* "You come in off the street saying you represent the government of Israel, yet you have no identification, you don't even tell me your name. You ask me to take part in something that is obviously underhanded and probably criminal; you will not tell me what it is that you're trying to do. Even if I believe your story, I doet know that I would approve of the Israelis doing what yop want to do." Dickstein sighed, thinking of the alternatives:, blackmail him, kidnap his wife., take over his office on the crucial day ... He said, "Is there anything I can do to convince you?" "I would need a personal request from the Prime Minister of Israel before I would do this thing." Dickstein stood up to leave, then he thought: Why not? Why the hell not? It was a wild idea, they would think he was crazy ... but it would work, it would serve the purpose ... He grinned as he thought it through. Pierre Borg would have apoplexy. He said to Cohen, "All right." "What do you mean, 'all right?" "Put on your coat. Well go to Jerusalem." "Now?" "Are you busy?" "Are you serious?" "I told you it's important." Dickstein pointed to the phone on the desk, "Call your wife." "She's just outside." Dickstein went to the door and opened it. "Mrs. Cohen?" "Yes." "Would you come in here, please?" She hurried in, looking worried. 'That is it, Josef?" she asked her husband. '1This man want me to go to Jerusalem with him." 'Vhen?#9 "Now." "You mean this week?" Dickstein said, "I mean this morning, Mrs. Cohen. I must tell you that all this is highly confidential. I've asked your husband to do something for the Israeli governmen Naturally he wants to be certain that it is the government that is asking this favor and not some criminal. So I'm going to take him there to convince him." She said, "Don't get involved, Josef---w" Cohen shrugged. "I'm Jewish, I'm involved already. Mind the shop."

"You don't know anything about this mant" "So I'm going to find out." "I don't like it." "There's no danger," Cohen told her. "Well take a scheduled flight, we'll go to Jerusalem, IT see the Prime Minister and well come back." "The Prime Ministerl" Dickstein realized how proud she would be if her husband met the Prime Minister of Israel. He said, '11iis has to be secret, Mrs. Cohen. Please tell people your husband has gone to Rotterdam on business. He will be back tomorrow." She stared at the two of them. "My Josef meets the Prime Minister, and I can't tell Rachel Rothstein'r' Then Dickstein knew it was going to be all right. Cohen took his coat from a book and put it on. Mrs. Cohen kissed him, then put her arms around him. "It's all right," be told her. "This is very sudden and strange, but it's all right.- She nodded dumbly and let him go.

They took a cab to the airport. Dickstein's sense of delight grew as they traveled. The scheme had an air of mischief about it, he felt a bit like a schoolboy, this was a terrible prank. He kept grinning, and had. to turn his face away so that Cohen would not see. Pierre Borg would go through the root. Dickstein bought two round-trip tickets to Tel Aviv, paying with his credit card. They had to take a connecting flight to Paris. Before they took off he called the embassy in Paris and arranged for someone to meet them in the transit lounge. In Paris he gave the man from the embassy a message to send to Borg, explaining what was required. The diplomat was a Mossad man, and treated Dickstein with deference. Coben was allowed to listen to the conversation, and when the man had gone back to the embassy he said, "We could go back, I'm convinced already.- "Oh, no," Dickstein said. 'Now that weve come this far I want to be sure of you." On the plane Cohen said, "You must be an important man in ISMCL" "No. But what Im doing is important." Cohen wanted to know how to behave, how to address the Prime Minister. Dickstein told him, "I don't know, I've never met him. Shake hands and call him by his name." Cohen smiled. He was beginning to share Dickstein!s feeling of mischievousness. Pierre Borg met them at Lod Airport with a car to take them to Jerusalem. He smiled and shook hands with Cohen, but he was seething underneath. As they walked to the car he muttered to Dickstein, "You better have a fucking good reason for all this." "I have." They were with Cohen all the while, so Borg did not have an opportunity to cross-examine Dickstein. They went straight to the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem. Dickstein and Cohen waited in an anteroom while Borg explained to the Prime Minister what was required and why. A couple of minutes later they were admitted. "This is Nat Dickstein, sir," Borg said. They shook hands, and the Prime Minister said, "We haven't met before, but I've heard of you, Mr. Dickstein." Borg said, "And this is Mr. Josef Cohen of Antwerp." "Mr. Cohen." IMe Prime Minister smiled. "You're a very cautious man. You should be a politician. Well, now . . . please do this thing for us. It is very important, and you will come to no harm from it." Cohen was bedazzled. "Yes, sir, of course I Will do this, Ilm sorry to have caused so much trouble . . ." "Not at all. You did the right thing." He shook Cohen!s hand again. 'Thank you for coming. Goodbye." Borg was less polite on the way back to the airport. He sat fient in the front seat of the car, smoking a cigar and fidgeting. At the airport he managed to get Dickstein alone for a minute. "If you ever pull a stunt like this again . . ." "It was necessary," Dickstein said. "It took less than a minute. Why not?- "Why not, is because half my fucking department has been working all day to fix that minute. Why didn't you just point a gun at the man's head or something?" "Because were not barbarians," Dickstein said. "So people keep telling me." 'They do? Tliat!s a bad sign."

"Because you shouldn!t need to be told."

Then their fight was called. Boarding the plane with Cohen, Dickstein reflected that his relationship with Borg was in ruins. They had always talked like this, with bantering insults, but until now there had been an undertone of . . . perhaps not affection, but at least respect. Now that had vanished. Borg was genuinely hostile. Dickstein's refusal to be pulled out was a piece of basic defiance which could not be tolerated. If Dickstein had wanted to continue in the Mossad, he would have had to fight Borg for the job of director-there was no longer sufficient room for both men in the organization. But there would be no contest now, for Dickstein was going to resign. Flying back to Europe through the night, Cohen drank some gin and went to sleep. Dickstein ran over in his mind the work he had done in the past five months. Back in May he had started out with no real idea of how he was going to steal the uranium Israel needed. He had taken the problems as they came up, and found a solution to each one: how to locate uranium, which uranium to steal, how to hijack a ship, how to camouflage the Israeli involvement in the theft, how to prevent the disappearance of the uranium being reported to the authorities, how to placate the owners of the stuff. If he had sat down at the beginning and tried to dream up the whole. scheme he could never have foreseen all the complications. He had had some good luck and some bad. The fact that the owners of the Coparelli used a Jewish crew agency in Antwerp was a piece of luck; so was the existence of a consignment of uranium for non-nuclear purposes, and one going by sea. The bad luck mainly consisted of the accidental meeting with Yasif Hassan. Hassan, the fly in the ointment. Dickstein was reasonably certain he had shaken off the opposition when he flew to Buffalo to see Cortone, and that they had not picked up his trail again since. But that did not mean they had dropped the case. It would be useful to know how much they had found out before they lost him. Dickstein could not see Suza again until the whole affair was over, and Hassan was to blame for that too. If he were to go to Oxford, Hassan was sure to pick up the trail somehow.

The plane began its descent. Dickstein fastened big seat belt. It was all done now, the scheme in place, the preparations made. Ile cards had been dealt. He knew what was in his hand, and he knew some of his opponents' cards, and they knew some of his. All that remained was to play out the game, and no one could foretell the outcome. He wished he could see the future more clearly, 'he wished big plan were less complicated, he wished he did not have to risk his life once mom, and he wished the game would start so that he could stop wishing and start doing things. Cohen was awake. "Did I dream all that?" he said. "No." Dickstein smiled. There was one more unpleasant duty he had to perform: he had to scare Cohen half to death. 'I told you this was important, and secret." "Of course, I understand." "You don't understand. If you talk about this to anyone other than your wife, we will take drastic action." "Is that a threat? What are you saying?" "I'm saying, if you don't keep your mouth shut, we will kill your wife." Cohen stared, and went pale. After a moment he turned away and looked out of the window at the airport coming up to meet them.

Chapter Thirteen

Moscow's Hotel Rossiya was the largest hotel in Europe. It had 5,738 beds, ten miles of corridors, and no air-conditioning. Yasif Hassan slept very badly there. It was simple to say, "The Fedayeen should hijack the ship before Dickstein gets there," but the more he thought about it, the more terrified he was. The Palestine Liberation Organization in 1968 was not the tightly-knit political entity it pretended to be. It was not even a loose federation of individual groups working together. It was more like a club for people with a common interest: it represented its members, but it did not control them. The individual guerrilla groups could speak with one voice through the PLO, but they did not and could not act as one. So when Mahmoud said the Fedayeen would do something, he spoke only for his own group. Furthermore, in this case it would be unwise even to ask for PLO cooperation. The organization was given money, facilities and a home by the Egyptians, but it had also been infiltrated by them: if you wanted to keep something secret from the Arab establishment, you had to keep it secret from the PLO. Of course, after the coup, when the world's press came to look over the captured ship with its atomic cargo, the Egyptians would know and would probably suspect that the Fedayeen had deliberately thwarted them, but Mahmoud would play innocent and the Egyptians would be obliged to join in the general acclamation of the Fedayeen for frustrating an Israeli act of aggression. Anyway, Mahmoud believed he did not need the help of the others. His group had the best connections outside Palestine, the best European set-up, and plenty of money. He was now in Benghazi arranging to boxTow a ship while his international team was gathered up from various parts of the world. But the most crucial task devolved on Hassan: if the Fedayeen were to get to the Coparelli before the Israelis, he would have to establish exactly when and where Dickstein!s hijack was to take place. For that, he needed the KGB. He felt terribly uneasy around Rostov now. Until his visit to Mahmoud he had been able to tell himself he was working for two organizations with a common objective. Now he was indisputably a double agent, merely pretending to work with the Egyptians and the KGB while he sabotaged their plans. He felt different-he felt a traitor, in a way-and he was afraid that Rostov would observe the difference in him. When Hassan bad flown in to Moscow Rostov himself had been uneasy. He had said there was not enough room in his apartment for Hassan to stay, although Hassan knew the rest of the family were away on holiday. It seemed Rostov was hiding something. Hassan suspected he was seeing some woman and did not want his colleague getting in the way. After his restless night at the Hotel Rossiya, Hassan met Rostov at the KGB building on the Moscow ring road, in the officeof Rostov's boss, Feliks Vorontsov. There were undercurrents there too. The two men were having an argument when Hassan entered the room, and although they broke it off immediately the air was stiff with unspoken hostility. Hassan, however, was too busy with his own clandestine moves to pay much attention to theirs. He -sat down. "Have there been any developments?" Rostov and Vorontsov looked at one another. Rostov shrugged. Vorontsov said, "The Stramberg has been fitted with a very powerful radio beacon. She's out of dry dock now and heading south across the Bay of Biscay. The assumption would be that she is going to Haifa to take on a crew of Mossad agents. I think we can all be quite satisfied with our intelligence~-gathering work. The project now falls into the sphere of positive action. Our task becomes prescriptive rather than descriptive, as it were." "They all talk like this in Moscow Center," Rostov said irreverently. Vorontsov glared at him. Hassan said, "What action?" "Rostov here is going to Odessa to board a Polish merchant ship called the Karla," V6rontsov said. "Shes an ordinary cargo vessel superficially, but shes very fast and has certain extra equipment-we use her quite often." Rostov was staring up at the ceiling, an expression of mild distaste on his face. Hassan guessed that Rostov wanted to keep some of these details from the Egyptians: perhaps that was what he and Vorontsov had been arguing abouL Vorontsov went on, IrYour job Is to get an Egyptian vessel and make contact with the Karla in the Mediterranean." "And then?" Hassan said. 'We wait for T`yft aboard the Copawift, to tell us when the Israeli hijack takes place. He will also tell us whether the uranium is traiisferred from the Coparelli to the Stroynberg, or simply left aboard the Coparell! to be taken to Haifa and unloaded." "And then?" Hassan persisted. Vorontsov began to speak, but Rostov forestalled him. "I want you to tell Cairo a cover story," he said to Hassan. "I want your people to think that we don!t know about the Coparelft, we Just know the Israelis an planning something in the Mediterranean and we are still tying to discover what." Hassan nodded, keeping his face impassive. He had to know what the plan was, and Rostov did not want to tell binif He said, 'Tee, Ill tell them that-if you tell me the aotual plan.- Rostov looked at Voronstov and shrugged. Vorontsov said, "After the hijack the Karla will set a course for Dickstein!s ship, whichever one carnes, the uranium, The Karla Will coIlide with that ship."

"Your ship will witness the collision, report it, and observe that the crew of the vessel are Israelis and their cargo is uranium. You will report these facts too. There will be an international inquiry into the collision. The presence of both ls~ raefis and stolen uranhun. on the ship will be established beyond doubt. Meanwhile the uranium will be returned to its rightful owners and the Israelis will be covered with opprobrim." 'Me Israelis will fight," Hassan said. Rostov said, "So much the better, with your ship there to see them. attackus and help us beat them off." "It's a good plan," said Vorontsov. "It's simple. All they have to do is crash-the rest follows automatically."

'Theirs a good plan," Hassan said. It fitted in perfectly with the Fedayeen plan. Unlike Dickstein, Hassan knew that Tyrin was aboard the Coparelli. After the Fedayeen had hijacked the Coparelli and ambushed the Israelis, they could throw Tyrin and his radio into the sea, then Rostov would have no way of locating them. But Hassan needed to know when and where Dickstein intended to carry out his hijack so that the Fedayeen could be sure of getting there first. Vorontsov's office was hot. Hassan went to the window and looked down at the traffic on the Moscow ring road. "We need to know exactly when and where Dickstein will hijack the Coparelli," he said. 'Vhy?" Rostov asked, making a gesture with both arms spread, Palms upward. "We have Tyrin aboard the Coparelli and a beacon on the Stromberg. We know where both of them are at all times. We need only to stay close and move in when the time comes." "My ship has to be in the right area at the crucial time~" 'Men follow the Stromberg, staying just over the horiZon-You can pick up her radio signal. Or keep in touch with me on the KaAm Or both." "Suppose the beacon fails, or Tyrin is discoveredr, Rostov said, "Me risk of that must be weighed against the danger Of tipping our hand if we start following Dickstein around apin-&ssuming we could find him." "He b~fts a Point, though," Vorontsov said. It was Rostovs turn to glare. Hassan unbuttoned his collar. "May I open a windowr 'They don't open," said Vorontsov. "Haven't you people heard of air-conditioningr, "InMoscow?" Hassan United and spoke to Rostov. 'Think about it. I want to be Perfectly sure we nail these people." "I've thought about it," Rostov said. 'Vere as sure as we can be. Go back to Cairo, organize that ship and stay in touch with me." You patronizing bastard, Hassan thought. He turned to Vorontsov. "I cannot, in all honesty, tell my people I'm happy with the plan unless we can eliminate that remaining uncertainty." Vorontsov. said, "I agree with Hassan."

"Well, I don't," said Rostov. "And the plan as it stands has already been approved by Andropov." Until now Hassan had thought he was going to have his way, since Vorontsov was on his side and Vorontsov was Rostov's boss. But the mention of the Chairman of the KGB seemed to constitute a winning move in this game: Vorontsov was almost cowed by it, and once again Hassan had to conceal his desperation. Vorontsov said, "The plan can be changed." "'Only with Andropov's approval," Rostov said. "And you won't get my support for the change." Vorontsov's lips were compressed into a thin line. He hates Rostov, thought Hassan; and so do I. Vorontsov said, "Very well, then." In all his time in the intelligence business Hassan bad been part of a professional team-Egyptian Intelligence, the KGB, even the Fedayeen. Ilere had been other people, experienced and decisive people, to give him orders and guidance and to take ultimate responsibility. Now, as he left the KGB building to return to his hotel, he realized he was on his own. Alone, he had to find a remarkably elusive and clever man and discover his most closely guarded secret. For several days he was in a panic. He returned to Cairo, told them Rostov's cover story, and organized the Egyptian ship Rostov had requested. The problem stayed in the front of his mind like a sheer cliff he could not begin to climb until he saw at least part of the mute to the top. Unconsciously he searched back in his personal history for attitudes and approaches which would enable him to tackle such a task, to act independently. He had to go a long way back. Once upon a time Yasif Hassan had been a different kind of man. He had been a wealthy, almost aristocratic young Arab with the world at his feet. He had gone about with the attitude that he could do more or less anything-and thinking had made it so. He bad gone to study in England, an alien country, without a qualm; and he had entered its society without caring or even wondering what people thought of him. There had been times, even then, when he had to learn; but he did that easily too. Once a fellow undergraduate, a Viscount something-or-other, had invited him down to the country to play polo. Hassan had never played polo. He had asked the rules and watched the others play for a while, noticing how they held the mallets, how they hit the ball, how they passed it and why; then he had joined in. He was clumsy with the mallet but he could ride like the wind: he played passably well, he thoroughly enjoyed the game, and his team won. Now, in 1968, he said to himself: I can do anything, but whom shall I emulate? The answer, of course was David Rostov. Rostov was independent, confident, capable, brilliant. He could find Dickstein, even when it seemed he was stumped, clueless, up a blind alley. He had done it twice. Hassan recalled: Question.- What is Dickstein in Luxembourg? Well, what do we know about Luxembourg? What is there here? There is the stock exchange, the banks, the Council of Europe, Euratorn- Euratoml Question: Dickstein has disappeared-where might he have gone? Don't know. But who do we know that he knows? Only Professor Ashford in Oxford- Oxfordl Rostov's approach was to search out bits of informationany information, no matter bow trivial-in order to get on the target. "Me trouble was, they seemed to have used all the bits of information they had. So IT get some more, Hassan thought; I can do anything. He racked his brains for all that he could remember frordi the time they had been at Oxford together. Dickstein had been in the war, he played chess, his clothes were shabby- He had a mother. But she had died. Hassan had never met any brothers or sisters, no relatives of any sort. It was all such a long time ago, and they had not been very close even then. There was, however, someone else who might know a little more about Dickstein: Professor Ashford.

So, in desperation, Yasif Hassan went back to Oxford. All the way-in the plane from Cairo, the taxi from, London airport to Paddington station, the train to Oxford and the taxi to the little green-and-white house by the river-he wondered about Ashford. The truth was, he despised the professor. In his youth perhaps he had been an adventurer, but ,he had become a weak old man, a political dilettante, an academic who could not even hold his wife. One could not respect an old cuckold-and the fact that the English did not think like that only increased Hassan's contempt. He worried that Ashford's weakness, together with some kind of loyalty to Dickstein as one who had been a friend and a student, might make him balk at getting involved. He wondered whether to play up to the fact that Dickstein was Jewish. He knew from his time at Oxford that the most enduring antiSemitism in England was that of the upper classes: the London clubs that still blackballed Jews were in the West End, not the East End. But Ashford was an exception there. He loved the Middle East, and his pro-Arab stance was ethical, not racial, in motivation. No: that approach would be a mistake. In the end he decided to play it straight; to tell Ashford why he wanted to find Dickstein, and hope that Ashford would agree to help for the same reasons.

When they had shaken hands and poured sherry, they sat down in the garden and Ashford said, "What brings you back to England so soon?" Hassan told the truth. -rm chasing Nat Dickstein." They were sitting by the river in the little comer of the garden that was cut off by the hedge, where Hassan had kissed the beautiful Eila so many years ago. Ile comer was sheltered from the October wind, and there was a little autumn sunshine to warm them. Ashford was guarded, wary, his face expressionless. "I think you'd better tell me what's going on." Hassan observed that during the summer' the professor had actually yielded a little to fashion. He had cultivated sidewhiskers and allowed his monkish fringe of hair to grow long, and was wearing denim jeans with a wide leather belt beneath his old tweed jacket. -ru tell you," Hassan said, with an awful feeling that Rostov would have been more subtle than this, "but I must have your word that it will go no farther." 6 .'Agreed. "Dickstein is an Israeli spy.9' Ashford's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. Hassan plunged on. "The Zionists are planning to make nuclear bombs but they have no plutonium. They need a secret supply of uranium to feed to their reactor to make plutonium. Dickstein's job is to steal that uranium---and my job is to find him and stop him. I want you to help me." Ashford stared into his sherry, then drained the glass at a gulp. 'There are two questions at issue here," he said, and Hassan realized that Ashford was going to treat this as an intellectual problem, the characteristic defense of the frightened academic. "One is whether or not I can help; the other, whether or not I should.. The latter is prior, I think; morally, anyway. Hassan thought: I'd like to pick you up by the scruff of the neck and shake you. Maybe I can do that, at least figuratively. He said, "Of course you should. You believe in our cause! It's not so simple. I'm asked to interfere in a contest between two people, both of whom are my friends." "But only one of them is in the right." "So I should help the one who is in the right-and betray the one who is in the wrong?" "Of course." "Tbere isn't any 'of course' about it ... What will you do, if and when you find Dickstein?" "I'm with Egyptian Intelligence, professor. But my loyalty-and, I believe, yours-lies with Palestine." Ashford refused to take the bait. "Go on," he said noncommittally. "I have to find out exactly when and where Dickstein plans to steal this uranium." Hassan hesitated. 'Ttie Fedayeen will get there before Dickstein and steal it for themselves." Ashford's eyes glittered. "My God," he said. "How marvelous." He's almost there, Hassan thought. He's frightened, but he's excited too. "It's easy for you to be loyal to Palestine, here in Oxford, giving lectures, going to meetings. Things are a little more difficult for those of us who are out there fight. ing for the country. I'm here to ask you to do something concrete about your politics, to decide whether your ideals mean anything or not. This is where you and I find out whether the Arab cause is anything more to you than a romantic concept. This is the test, professor." Ashford said, "Perhaps you're right." And Hassan thought: rve got you.

Suza had decided to tell her father that she was in love with Nat Dickstein. At first she had not been sure of it herself, not really. The few days they had spent together in London had been wild and happy and loving, but afterward she had realized that those feelings could be transient. She had resolved to make no resolutions. She would carry on normally and see how things turned out. Something had happened in Singapore to change her mind. Two of the cabin stewards on the trip were py, and used only one of the two hotel rooms allotted to them; so the crew could use the other room for a party. At the party the pilot .had made a pass at Suza. He was a quiet, smiling blond an with delicate bones and a delightfully wacky sense of humor. The stewardesses all agreed he was a piece of ass. Normally Suza would have got into bed with him Without thinking twice. But she had said no, astonishing the whole crew. Thinking about it later, she decided that she no longer wanted to get laid. She bad just gone off the whole idea. All she wanted was Nathaniel. It was like . . . it was a bit like five years ago when the second Beatles album came out, and she had gone through her pile of records by Elvis and Roy Orbison and the Evefly Brothers and realized that she did not want to play them, they held no more enchantment for her, the old familiar tunes had been heard once too often, and now she wanted music of a higher order. Well, it was a bit like that, but more so. Dickstein's letter bad been the clincher. It had been written God knew where and poited at Orly Airport, Paris. In his small neat handwriting with its incongruously curly loops on the g and y be had poured out his heart in a manner that was all the more devastating because it came from a normally taciturn man. She had cried over that letter.

She wished she could think of a way to explain all that to her father. She knew that he disapproved of Israelis. Dickstein was an old student, and her father had been genuinely pleased to see him and prepared to overlook the fact that the old student was on the enemy side. But now she planned to make Dickstein a permanent p.~rt of her life, a member of the family. His letter said "Forever is what I want," and Suza could hardly wait to tell him, "Oh, yes; me, too." She, thought both sides were in the wrong in the Middle But The plight of the refugees was unjust and pitiful, but she thought they ought to set about making themselves new homes-it was not easy, but it was easier than war, and she despised the theatrical heroics which so many Arab men found irresistible. On the other hand, it was clear that the whole damn mess was originally the fault of the Zionists, who had taken over a country that belonged to other people. Such a cynical view had no appeal for her father, who saw Right on one side and Wrong on the other, and the beautiful ghost of his wife on the side of Right It would be hard for him. She had long ago scotched his dreams of walking up the aisle with his daughter beside him in a white wedding dress; but he still talked occasionally of her setding down and giving him a granddaughter. The idea that this grandchild might be Israeli would come as a terrible blow. SO, that was the price of being a parent, Suza thought as she entered the house. She called, "Daddy, I'm home," as she took off her coat and put down her airline bag. There was no reply, but his briefcase was in the hall: he must be in the garden. She,put the kettle on and walked out of the kitchen and down toward the river, still searching in her mind for the right words with which to tell him her news. Maybe she should begin by talking about her trip, and gradually work around- She heard voices as she approached the hedge. "And what will you do with him?" It was her father's voice. Suza stopped, wondering whether she ought to interrupt or not. "Just follow him," said another voice, a strange one. "Dickstein must not be killed until afterwards, of course."

She put her band over her mouth to stifle a gasp of horror. Then, terrified, she turned around and ran, soft-footed, back to the house.

"Well, now," said Professor Ashford, "following what we might call the Rostov Method, let us recall everything we know about Nat Dickstein." Do it any way you want, Hassan thought, but for Gods sake come up with something. Ashford went on: "He was born in the East End of London. His father died when he was a boy. What about the motherr "Shies dead, too, according to our files." "Ah. Well, he went into the army midway through the war-1943, I think it was. Anyway he was in time to be part of the attack on Sicily. He was taken prisoner soon afterward, about halfway up the leg of Italy, I can't remember the place. It was rumored-you'll remember this, I'm sure-that he had a particularly bad time in the concentration camps, being Jewish. After the war he came here. He-~ "Sicily," Hassan interrupted. "Yes?" "Sicily is mentiobed in his file. He is supposed to have been involved in the theft of a boatload of guns. Our people had bought the guns from a gang of criminals in Sicily." "If we are to believe what we read in the newspapers," said Ashford, "there is only one gang of criminals in Sicily." Hassan added, "Our people suspected that the hijackers had bribed the Sicilians for a tip-off." "Wasn"t it Sicily where he saved that man's life?" Hassan wondered what Ashford was talking about He controlled his impatience, thinking: Let him ranible-thaes the whole idea. "He saved someone's life?" "The American. Don't you remember? Ive never forgotten it Dickstein brought the man here. A rather brutish G.I. He told me the whole story, right here at this house. Now were getting somewhere. You must have met the man, you were here that day, don't you remember?" "I can't say I do," Hassan muttered. He was embarrassed . he had probably been in the kitchen feeling Eila up. "It was . . . unsettling," Ashford said. He stared at the slowly moving water as his mind went back twenty years, and his face was shadowed by sadness for a moment, as if he were remembering his wife. Then he said, "Here we all were, a gathering of academics and students, probably discussing atonal music or eidstentialism while we sipped our sherry, when in came a big soldier and started talking about snipers and tanks and blood and death. it cast a real chill: thafs why I recall it so clearly. He said his family originated in Sicily, And his cousins had fated Dickstein after the life-saving incident Did you say a Sicilian gang had tipped off Dickstein, about the boatland of guns?" "It's possible, that's all." "Perhaps he didn't have to bribe them." Hassan shook his head. This was information, the kind of trivial information Rostov always seemed to make something of-but how was he going to use it? "I don't see what use all this is going to be to us," he said. "How could Dickstein's ancient hijack be connected with the Mafia?" "The Mafia," said Ashford. "Mat's the word I was looking for. And the mazes name wag Cortone-Tony Cortone-no, Al Cortone, from Buffalo. I told you, I remember every detail." "But the connectionT' Hassan said impatiently. Ashford shrugged. "Simply this. Once before , Dickstein used his connection with Cortone to call on the Sicilian Mafia for help with an act of piracy in'the Mediterranean. People repeat their youth, you know: he may do the same thing again." Hassan began to see: and, as enlightenment dawned, so did hope. It was a long shot, a guess, but it made sense, the chance was real, maybe he could catch up with Dickstein again. Ashford looked pleased with himself "It's a nice piece of speculative reasoning- wish I could publish it, -with footnotes.", "I wonder," said Hassan longingly. "I wonder." "It's getting cool, let's go into the house." As they walked up the garden Hassan thought fleetingly that he had not learned to be Me Rostov; he had merely found in Ashford a substitute. Perhaps his former proud independence had gone forever. There was something unmanly ,about it. He wondered if the other Fedayeen felt the same way, and if that was why they were so bloodthirsty.

Ashford said, 'The trouble is, I don't suppose Cortone will tell you anything, whatever he knows." .Would he tell you?" "Why should he? HaT hardly remember me. Now, if Eila were alive, she could have gone to see him and told him somestory... Vell . . .- Hassan wished Eila would stay out of the conversation. ITU haveto try myself." They entered the house. Stepping into the kitchen, they saw Suza; and then they looked at each other and know they had found the answer.

By the time the two men came into the house Suza had almost convinced herself that she had been mistaken when, in the garden, she thought she heard them talk about killing Nat Dickstein. It was simply unreal: the garden, the river, the autumn sunshine, a professor and his guest ... murder had no place there, the whole idea was fantastic, like a polar bear in the Sahara Desert. Besides, there was a very good psycbological explanation for her mistake: she had been planning to tell her father that she loved Dickstein, and she had been afraid of his reaction-Freud could probably have predicted that at that point she might well imagine her father plotting to kill herlover. Because she nearly believed this reasoning, she was able to smile brightly at them and say, "Who wants coffee? rve just made some." Her father kissed bw cheek. "I didn't realize you were back, my dear." "I just arrived, I was thinking of coming out to look for you." Why am I telling these lies? "You don't know Yasif Hassan-he was one of my students when you were very small." Hassan kissed her hand and stared at her the way people always did when they had known Eila. "Yotere every bit as beautiful as your mother," he said, and his voice was not flirtatious at all, not even Battering: it sounded amazed. Her father said, "Yasif was here a few months ago, shortly after a contemporary of his visited us-Nat Dickstein. You met Dickstein, I think, but you were away by the time Yasif came."

"Was there any oonnee-connectionr she asked, and silently cursed her voice for cracking on the last word. The two men looked at one another, and her father said, "Matter of fact, there was." And then she knew it was true, she had riot misheard, they really were going to kill the only man she had ever loved. She felt dangerously close to tears, and turned away from them to fiddle with cups and saucem "I want to ask You to -do something, my dear," said her father. "Something very important, for the sake of your mother's memory. Sit down." - No more, she thought; this ean!t get worse, please. She took a deep breath, turned around, and sat down fac. ing him. He said, "I want you to help Yasif here to find Nat Dickstein." From that moment she hated her father. She knew then suddenly, instantly, that his love for her was fraudulent, that he had never seen her as a person, that he used her as he had used her mother. Never again would she take care of him, serve him; never apm would she worry about how he felt, whether he was lonely, what he needed ... She realized, in the same flash of insight and hatred, that her mother had reached this same point with him, at some time; and that she would now do what Ma had done, and despise him. Ashford continued, 'Mere is a man in America who may know where Dickstein is. I want you to go there with Yasif and ask this man. She said nothing. Hassan took her blankness for incomPrehension, and began to explain. "You see, this Dickstein is an Israeli agent, working against our people. We must stop him. Cortone-the man in Buffalo-may be helping him, and if he is he will not help us. But he will remember your mother, and so he may cooperate with you. You could tell him that you and Dickstein are lovers." "Ha-hah!" Su2Ws laugh was faintly hysterical, and she hoped they would assume the wrong reasons for it. She controlled herself, and managed to become numb, to keep her body still and her face expressionless, while they told her about the yellowcake, and the man aboard the Coparelli, and the radio beacon on the Stromberg, and about Mahmoud and his hijack plan, and how much it would an mean for the Palestine liberation movement; and at the end she was numb, she no longer had to pretend. Finally her father said, "So, my dear will you help? Will you do it?" With an effort of self-control that astonished her, she gave them a bright air-hostess smile, got up from her stool, and said, "TVs a lot to take in in one go, isn't it? I'll think about it while rin in the bath." And she went out.

It all sank In, gradually, as she lay in the hot water with a locked door between her and them. So this was the thing that Nathaniel had to do before be could see her again: steal a ship. And then, he had said, he would not let her out of his sight for ten or fifteen years . Perhaps that meant he could give up this work.- But, of course, none of his plans was going to succeed, because his enemies knew all about them. This Russian planned to rain Nat's ship, and Hassan planned to steal the ship first and ambush Nat. Either way Dickstein was in danger; either way they wanted to destroy him. Suza could warn him. If only she knew where he was. How little those men downstairs knew about herl Hassan simply assumed, just like an Arab male chauvinist pig, that she would do as she was told. Her father assumed she would take the Palestinian side, because he did and he was the brains of the family. He had never known what was in his daughter's mind: for that matter, he had been the same with his wife. Eila had always been able to deceive him: he never suspected that she might not be what she seemed. When Suza realized what she had to do, she was terrified all over again. There was, after all, a way she might find Nathaniel and warn him. "Find Nat" was what they wanted her to do. She knew she could deceive them, for they already aisumed she was on their side, when she was not. So she could do what they wanted. She could find Natand then she could warn him. Would she be making things worse? To find him herself, she had to lead them to him.

But even if Hassan did not find him, Nat was in danger from the Russians. And if he was forewarned, he could escape both dangers. Perhaps, too, she could get rid of Hassan somehow, before she actually reached Nat What was the alternative? To wait, to go on as if nothing had happened, to hope for a phone call that might never come ... It was, she realized, partly her need to see Dickstein again that made her think like this, partly the thought that after the hijack he might be dead, that this might be her last chance But there were good reasons, too: by doing nothIng she might help frustrate Hassan's scheme, but that left the Russians and their scheme. Her decision was made. She would pretend to work with Hassan so that she could find Nathaniel. She was peculiarly happy. She was trapped, but she felt free; she was obeying her father, yet she felt that at last she was defying him; for better or worse, she was committed to Nathaniel. She was also very, very frightened. She got out of the bath, dried herself, dressed, and went downstairs to tell them the good news.

At four A.M. on November 16, 1968, the Caparelli hove to at Vlissingen, on the Dutch coast, and took an board a port pilot to guide her through the channel of the Westerscbelde to Antwerp. Four hours later, at the entrance to the harbor, she took on another pilot to negotiate her passage through the docks. From the main harbor she went through Royers Lock, along the Suez Canal, under the Siberia Bridge and into Kattendijk Dock, where she tied up at her berth. Nat Dickstein was watching. When he saw her sweep slowly in, and read the name Co. Parelli On her side, and thought of the drums of yelloweake that would soon fill her belly, he was overcome by a most Peculiar feeling, like the one he had when he looked at Suza's naked body... yes, almost like lust He looked away from berth No. 42 to the railway line, which ran almost to the edge of the quay. There was a train on the'line now, consisting of eleven cars and an engine. Ten of the cars carried fifty-one 200-liter drams with sealed lids and the word PLumBAT stenciled on the side; the eleventh car had only fifty drums. He was so close to those drums, to that uranium; he could Woll over and- touch the railway cars-he already had done this once, earlier in the morning, and had thought: Wouldn't it be terrific just to raid this place with choppers and a bunch of Israeli commandos and simply steal the stuff. The Coparellf was scheduled for a fast turnaround. The port authorities had been convinced that the yelloweake could be handled safely, but all the same they did not want the stuff hanging about their harbor one minute longer than necessary. Ilere was a crane standing by ready to load the drums on to the ship. Nevertheless, there were formalities to be completed before loading could begin. 'The fint person Dickstein saw boarding the ship was an official from the shipping company. He had to give the pilots their pourboire and secure from the captain a crew list for the harbor police. The second person aboard was Josef Cohen. He was here for the sake of customer relations: he would give the captain a bottle of whiskey and sit down for a drink with him and the shipping company official. He also had a wad of tickets for free entry and one drink at the best nightclub in town, which be would give to the captain for the officers. And he would discover the name of the ship's engineer. Dickstein had suggested he do this by asking to see the crew list, then counting out one ticket for each officer on the list. Whatever way he had decided to do it, he had been successful: ashe left the ship and crossed the quay to return to his office he passed Dickstein and muttered, "Me engineer's name is Same," without breaking stride. It was not until afternoon that the crane went into action and the dockers began loading the drums into the three holds of the Copareffl. IMe drums had to be moved one at a time, and inside the ship each drum had to be secured with wedges of wood. As expected, the loading was not completed that day. In the evening Dickstein went to the best nightclub in town. Sitting at the bar, close to the telephone, was a quite astonishing woman of about thirty, with black hair and a long, aristocratic face possessed of a faintly haughty expression. She wore an elegant black dress which made the most of her sensational legs and her high, round breasts. Dickstein gave her an almost imperceptible nod but did not speak to her. He sat in a comer, nursing a glass of beer, hoping the sailors would come. Surely they would. Did sailors ever refuse a free drink? Yes. The club began to fill up. The woman in the black dress was propositioned a couple of times but refused both men, thereby establishing that she was not a hooker. At nine o'clock Dickstein went out to the lobby and phoned Cohen. By previous arrangement, Cohen had called the captain of the Coparelli on a pretext. He now told Dickstein what he had discovered: that all but two of the officers were using their free tickets. Ile exceptions were the captain himself, who was busy with paperwork, and the radio operator-a new man they had taken on in Cardiff after Lars broke his leg-who had a head cold. Dickstein then dialed the number of the club he was in. He asked to speak to Mr. Same, who, he understood, would be found in the bar. While he waited he could hear a barman calling out Same's name: it came to him two ways, one directly from the bar, the other through several miles of telephone cable. Eventually be heard, over the phone, a voice say, "Yes? Hello? This is Same. Is anybody there? Hello?" Dickstein bung up and walked quickly back into the bar. He looked over to where the bar phone wa& The woman in the black dress was speaking to a tall, suntanned blond man in his thirties whom Dickstein had seen on the quay earlier that day. So this was Same. The woman smiled at Same. It was a nice smile, a smile to make any man look twice: it was warm and red-lipped, showing even, white teeth, and it was accompanied by a certain languid half-closing of the eyes, which was very sexy and looked not at all. as though it bad been rehearsed a thousand times in front of a mirror. Dickstein watched, spellbound. He had very little idea how this sort of thing worked, bow men picked up women and women picked up men, and be understood even less how a woman could pick up a man while letting the man believe he was doing the picking up. Same had his own charm, it seemed. He gave her his smile, a grin with something wickedly boyish in it that made him look ten years younger. He said something to her, and she smiled again. He hesitated, like a man who wants to talk some more but cannot think of anything to say; then, to Dickstein's horror, he turned away to go. Ile woman was equal to this: Dickstein need not have worried. She touched the sleeve of Same's blazer, and he turned back to her. A cigarette had suddenly appeared in her hand. Same slapped his pockets for matches. Apparently he did not smoke. Dickstein groaned inwardly. The woman took a lighter from the evening bag on the bar in front of her and handed it to him. He lit her cigarette. Dickstein could not go away, or watch from a distance; he would have a nervous breakdown. He had to listen. He pushed his way through the bar and stood behind Same, who was facing the woman. Dickstein ordered another beer. The woman's voice was warm and inviting, Dickstein knew already, but now she was really using it. Some women had bedroom eyes, she had a bedroom voice. Same was saying, '9rhis kind of thing is always happening to me." "Me phone call?" the woman said. Sarno nodded. "Woman trouble. I hate women. All my fife, women have caused me pain and suffering. I wish I were a homosexual." Dickstein was astonished. What was he saying? Did he mean it? Was he trying to give her the brush-off? She said, "Why don't you become one?" 'I don't fancy men." "Be a monk." "Well, you see, I have this other problem, this insatiable sexual appetite. I have to get laid, all the time, often several times a night. Ifs a great problem to me. Would you like a fresh drinkr' Ah. It was a line of chat. How did he think it up? Dickstein supposed that sailors did this sort of thing all the time, they had it down to a fine art. It went on that way. Dickstein had to admire the way the woman led Same by the nose while letting him think be was making the running. She told him she was stopping over in Antwerp just for the night, and let him know she had a room in a good hotel. Before long be said they should have champagne, but the champagne sold in the club was very poor stuff, not like they might be able to get somewhere else; at a hotel, say; her hotel, for example. They left when the floor show started. Dickstein was pleased: go far, so good. He watched a line of girls kicking their legs for ten minutes, then he went out. He took a cab to the hotel and went up to the room. He stood close to the communicating door which led through to the next room. He heard the woman giggle and Same say something in a low voice. Dickstein sat on the bed and checked the cylinder of gas. He turned tke tap on and off quickly, and got a sharp whiff of sweetness from the face mask. It had no effect on him. He wondered how much you had to breathe before it worked. He had not had time to try out the stuff properly. The noises from the next room became louder, and Dickstein began to feel embarrassed. He wondered how conscientious Sarne was. Would he want to go back to his ship as soon as he had finished with the woman?.That would be awkward. It would mean a fight in the hotel corridor-unprofessional, risky. Dickstein waited-tense, embarrassed, anxious. The woman was good at her trade. She knew Dickstein wanted Sarne to sleep afterward, and she was trying to tire him. It seemed to take forever. It was past two A.M. W.hen she knocked on the communicating door. The code was three slow knocks to say he was asleep, six fast knocks to say he was leaving. She knocked three times, slowly. Dickstein opened the door. Carrying the gas cylinder in one hand and the face mask in the other, he walked softly into the next room. Same lay flat on his back, naked, his blond hair mussed, his mouth wide open, his eyes closed. His body looked fit and strong. Dickstein went close and listened to his breathing. He breathed in, then all the way out-then, just as he began to inhale again, Dickstein turned on the tap and clapped the mask over the sleeping man's nose and mouth. Same's eyes opened wide. Dickstein held the mask on more firmly. Half a breath: incomprehension in Sarne's eyes. The breath turned into a gasp, and Same moved his head, failed to weaken Dickstein's grip, and began to thrash about. Dickstein leaned on the saffor's chest with an elbow, thinking: For God's sake, this is too slowl Sarno breathed out. The confusion in his eyes had turned to fear and panic. He gasped again, about to increase his struggles. Dickstein thought of calling the woman to help hold him down. But the second inhalation defeated its purpose; the struggles were perceptibly weaker; the eyelids fluttered, and closed; and by the time he exhaled the second -breath, he was asleep. It had taken about three seconds. Dickstein relaxed. Sarne would probably never remember it, He gave him a little more of the gas to make sure, then he stood up. He looked at the woman. She was wearing shoes, stockings, and garters; nothing else. She, looked ravishing. She caught his gaze, and opened her arms, , offering herself: at your service, sir. Dickstein shook his head with a regretful smile that was only partly disingenuous. He sat in the chair beside the bed and watched her dress: skimpy panties, soft -brassiere, jewelry, dress, coat, bag. She came to him, and he gave her eight thousand Dutch guilders. She kissed his cheek, then she kissed the banknotes. She went out without speaking. Dickstein went to the window~ A few minutes later he saw the headlights of her sports car as it went past the front of the hotel, heading back to Amsterdam. He sat down to wait, again. After a while he began to feel sleepy. He went into the next room and ordered coffee from room service. In the morning Cohen phoned to say the first officer of the Coparelli was searching the bars, brothels and flophouses of Antwerp for his engineer. At twelve-thirty Cohen phoned again. The captain had called him to say that all the cargo was now loaded and he was without an engineer officer. Cohen had said, "Captain, it's your lucky day." At two-thirty Cohen called to say he had seen Dieter Koch aboard the Coparelli with his kitbag over his shoulder. Dickstein gave Sarno a little more gas each time he showed signs of waking. He administered the last dose at Six A.M. the following day, then he paid the bill for the two rooms and left.

When Same finally woke up he found that the woman he had slept with had gone without saying goodbye. He also found he was massively, ravenously hungry. During the course of the morning he discovered that he had been asleep not for one night, as he had imagined, but for two nights and the day in between. He had an insistent feeling in the back of his mind that there was something remarkable he had forgotten, but he never found out what had happened to him during that lost twenty-four hours.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, November 17, 1968, the Coparelli had sailed.

Chapter Fourteen

What Suza should have done was phone any Israeli embassy and give them a message for Nat Dickstein. This thought occurred to her an hour after she had told her father that she would help Hassan. She was packing a case at the time, and she immediately picked up the phone in her bedroom to call Inquiries for the number. But her father came in and asked her whom she was calling. She said the airport, and he said be would take care of that. Thereafter she constantly looked for an opportunity to make a clandestine call, but there was none. Hassan was with her every minute. They drove to the airport, caught the plane, changed at Kennedy for a flight to Buffalo, and went straight to Cortone's house. During the journey she came to loathe Yasif Hassan. He made endless vague boasts about his work for the Fedayeen; he smiled oilily and put his hand on her knee; he hinted that he and Eila had been more than friends, and that he would like to be more than friends with Suza. She told him that Palestine would not be free until its women were free; and that Arab men had to learn the difference between being manly and being porcine. That shut him up. They had some trouble discovering Cortone's addressSuza half hoped they would fail-but in the end they found a taxi driver who knew the house. Suza was dropped off; Hassan would wait for her half a mile down the road. The house was large, surrounded by a high wall, with guards at'the gate. Suza said she wanted to see Cortone, that she was a friend of Nat Dickstein. She had given a lot of thought to what she should say to Cortone: should she tell him all or only part of the truth? Suppose he knew, or could find out, where Dickstein was: why should he tell her? She would say Dickstein was in danger, she had to find him and warn him. What reason did Cortone have to believe her? She would charm him-she knew how to do that with men his age-but he would still be suspicious. She wanted to explain to Cortone the complete picture: that she was looking for Nat to warn him, but she was also being used by his enemies to lead them to him, that Hassan was half a mile down the road in a taxi waiting for her. But then he would certainly never tell her anything. She found it very difficult to think clearly about all this. There were so many deceits and double deceits involved. And she wanted so badly to see Nathaniel's face and speak to him herself. She still had not decided what to say when the guard opened the gate for her, then led her up the gravel drive to the house. It was a beautiful place, but rather overripe, as if a decorator had famished it lavishly then the owners had added a lot of expensive junk of their own choosing. There seemed to be a lot of servants. One of them led Suza upstairs, telling her that Mr. Cortone was having late breakfast in his bedroom. When she walked in Cortone was sitting at a small table, digging into eggs over and homefries. He was a fat man, completely bald. Suza had no memory of him from the time he had visited Oxford, but he must have looked very different then. He glanced at her, then stood upright with a look of terror on his face and shouted: "You should be oldl" and then his breakfast went down the wrong way and he began to cough and sputter. The servant grabbed Suza from behind, pinning her arms in a painful grip; then let her go and went to pound Cortone on the back. "What did you do?" he yelled at her. 'Vhat did you do, for Christ's sake?" In a peculiar way this farce helped calm her a little, She could not be terrified of a man who had been so terrified of her. She rode the wave of confidence, sat down at his table and prepared herself coffee. When Cortone stopped coughing she gaid, "She was my mother." ,'My God," Cortone said. He gave a last cough, then waved the servant away and sat down again. "You're so Me her, bell, you scared me half to death." He screwed up his eyes, remembering. "Would you have been about four or five years old, back in, um, 1947?" "That's right" "Hell, I remember you, you had a ribbon in your hair. And now you and Nat are an item." She said, "So he has been here." Her heart leaped with joy. '!Maybe," Cortone said. His fxiendliness vanished. She realized he would not be easy to manipulate. She said, "I want to know where he is." "And I want to know who sent you hem" "Nobody sent me." Suza collected her thoughts, struggling to hide her tension. "I guessed he might have come to you for help with this ... project he's working on. The thing is, the Arabs know about it, and theyll kill him, and I have to warn him . Please, if you know where he is, please help me." She was suddenly close to tears, but Cortone was unmoved. "Helping you is easy," he said. "Trusting you is the hard part." He unwrapped a cigar and fit it, taking his time. Suza watched in an agony of impatience-- He looked away from her and spoke almost to himself. "You know, there was a time when I'd just see something I wanted and I'd grab it. It's not so simple anymore. Now I've got all these complications. I got to make choices, and none of them are what I really want I don't know whether it!s the way things are now or if it's me." He turned again and faced her. "I owe Dickstein my life. Now I have athance to save his, if you're telling the truth This is a debt of honor. I have to pay it myself, in person. go what do I do?" He paused. Suza held her breath. "Dickstein is in a wreck of a house somewhere on the Mediterranean. It's a ruin, hasn't been lived in for years, so theres no phone there. I could send a message, but I couldn't be sure it would get there, and Me I said, I have to do this myself, in person." He drew on the cigar. "I could tell you where to go look for him, but you just might pass the information on to the wrong people. I won't take that risk." "What, thenT'Suza said in a high-pitched voice. "We have to help him!

"I know that," Cortone said imperturbably. "So I'm going there myself." "Ohl" Suza was taken by surprise: it was a possibility she had never considered. "And what about you?" he went on. "I'm not going to tell you where I'm headed, but you could still have people follow me. I need to keep you real close from now on. Let's face it, you could be playing it both ways. So I'm taking you with me." She stared at him. Tension drained out of her in a flood, she slumped in her chair. "Oh, thank you," she said. Then, at last, she cried.