Triple

They flew first class. Cortone always did. After the meal Suza left him to go to the toilet. She looked through the curtain into economy, hoping against hope, but she was disappointed: there was Hassan's wary brown face staring at her over the rows of headrests. She looked into the galley and spoke to the chief steward in a confiding voice. She had a problem, she said. She needed to contact her boyfriend but she couldn't get away from her Italian father, who wanted her to wear iron knickers until she was twenty-one. Would he phone the Israeli consulate in Rome and leave a message for a Nathaniel Dickstein? Just say, Hassan has told me everything, and he and I are coming to you. She gave him money for the phone call, far too much, it was a way of tipping him. He wrote the message down and promised. She went back to Cortone. Bad news, she said. One of the Arabs was back there in economy. He must be following us. Cortone cursed, then told her never mind, the man would just have to be taken care of later. Suza thought: Oh, God, what have I done?

From the big house on the clifftop Dickstein went down a long zigzag flight of steps cut into the rock to the beach. He splashed through the shallows to a waiting motorboat, jumped in and nodded to the man at the wheel. The engine roared and the boat surged through the waves out to sea. The sun had just set. In the last faint light the clouds were massing above, obscuring the stars as soon as they appeared. Dickstein was deep in thought, racking his brains for things he had not done, precautions he might yet take, loopholes he still had time to close. He went over his plan again and again in his mind, like a man who has learned by heart an important speech he must make but still wishes it were better. The high shadow of the Stromberg loomed ahead, and the boatman brought the little vessel around in a foamy arc to stop alongside, where a rope ladder dangled in the water. Dickstein scrambled up the ladder and on to the decL IMe ship's master shook his hand and introduced himself. Like all the officers aboard the Stromberg, he was borrowed from the Israeli Navy. They took a turn around the deck. Dickstein said, "Any problems, captain?" "She's not a good ship," the captain said. "Shes slow, clumsy and old. But weve got her in good shape." From what Dickstein could see in the twilight the Stromherg was in better condition than her sister ship the Coparellt had been in Antwerp. She was clean, and everything on deck looked squared away, shipshape. They went up to the bridge, looked over the powerful equipment in the radio room, then went down to the mess, where the crew were finishing dinner. Unlike the officers, the ordinary seamen were all Mossad agents, most with a little experience of the sea. Dickstein had worked with some of them before. They were all, he observed, at least ten years younger than he. They were all bright-eyed, well-built, dressed in a peculiar assortment of denims and homemade sweaters; all tough, humorous, well-trained men. Dickstein took a cup of coffee and sat at one of the tables. He outranked all these men by a long way, but there was not much bull in the Israeli armed forces, and even less in the Mossad. The four men at thi table nodded and said hello. Ish, a gloomy Palestine-born Israeli with a dark complexion, said, "ne weather's changing." "Don't say that. I was planning to get a tan on this cruise." The speaker was a lanky ash-blond New Yorker named Fein-* berg, a deceptively pretty-faced man with eyelashes women envied. Calling this assignment a "cruise" was already a standing joke. In his briefing earlier in the day Dickstein had said the Coparellt would be almost deserted when they hijacked it. "Soon after she passes through the Strait of Gibraltar," he had told them, "her engines will break down. The damage willbe such that it can!t be. repaired at sea. The captain cables the owners to that effect-and we are now the owners. By an apparently lucky coincidence, another of our ships will be close by. She's the Gil Hamilton, now moored across the bay here. She will go to the Coparellf and take off the whole crew except for the engineer. Then shes out of the picture: shell go to her next port of call, where the crew of the Copparelli will be let off and given their train fares home.'~ They had had the day to think about the briefing, and Dickstein was expecting questions. Now Levi Abbas, a short, solid man-"built like a tank and about as handsome," Feinberg had said-asked Dickstein, "You didn't tell us how come you're so sure the Coparelli will break down when you want her to." "Ah." Dickstein sipped his coffee. "Do you know Dieter Koch, in naval intelligence?" Feinberg knew him. 'Hes the Coparelli's engineer." Abbas nodded. "Which is also how come we know well be able to repair the Coparelli. We know what!s going to go wrong. " "Rtight." Abbas went on. "We paint out the name Coparelli, rename her Stromberg, switch log books, scuttle the old Stromberg and sail the Coparelli, now called the Stromberg, to Haifa with the cargo. But why not transfer the cargo from one ship to the other at sea? We have cranes." "That was my original idea," Dickstein said. "It was too risky. I couldn!t guarantee it would be possible, especially in bad weather." "We could still do it if the good weather holds." "Yes, but now that we have identical sister ships it will be easier to switch names than cargoes." Ish said lugubriously, "Anyway, the good weather won't hold." The fourth man at the table was Porush, a crewcut youngster with a chest Me a barrel of ale, who happened to be married to Abbas's sister. He said, "If it's going to be so easy, what are all of us tough guys doing herer' Dickstein said, "I've been running around the world for the past six months setting up this thing. Once or twice rve bumped into people from the other side-inevitably. I don't think they know what we're about to do ... but if they do, we may find out just how tough we are." One of the officers came in with a piece of paper and apProached Dickstein. "Signal from Tel Aviv, sir. The Coparefli Just passed Gibraltar.- "Thaes it," said Dickstein, standing up. "We sail in the Morning."

Suza Ashford and Al Cortene changed planes in Rome and arrived in Sicily early in the morning. Two of Cortone's cousins were at the airport to meet him. There was a long argument between them; not acrimonious, but nevertheless loudly excitable. Suza could not follow the rapid dialect properly, but she gathered the cousins wanted to accompany Cortone and he was insisting that this was something he had to do alone because it was a debt of honor. Cortone seemed to win the argument. They left the airport, without the cousins, in a big white Fiat. Suza drove, Cortone directed her on to the coast road. For the hundredth time she played over in her mind the reunion scene with Nathaniel: she saw his slight, angular body; he looked up; he recognized her and his face split in a smile of joy; she ran to him; they threw their arms around each other-, be squeezed her so hard it hurt; she said, "Oh, I love you," and kissed his cheek, his nose, his mouth ... But she was guilty and frightened too, and there was another scene she played less often in which be stared at her stony-faced and said, 'Vhat the hell do you think you're doing here?" It was a little like the time she bad behaved badly on Christmas Eve, and her mother got angry and told her Santa Claus would put stones in her Christmas stocking instead of toys and candy. She had not known whether to believe this or not, and she had fain awake, alternately wishing for and dreading the morning. She glanced across at Cortone in the seat beside her. The transatlantic journey tired him. Suza found it difficult to think of him as being the same age as Nat, he was so fat and bald and . . . well, he had an air of weary depravity that might have been amusing but in fact was merely elderly. The island was pretty when the sun came out. Suza looked at the scenery, trying to distract herself so that the time would pass more quickly. The road twisted along the edge of the sea from town to town, and on her right-hand side there were views of rocky beaches and the sparkling Mediterranean. Cortone lit a cigar. "I used to do this kind of thing a lot when I was young," he said. "Get on a plane, go somewhere with a pretty girl, drive around, see places. Not anymore. I've been stuck in Buffalo for years, it seems like. Tbat's the thing with business-you get rich, but there's always something to worry about. So you never go places, you have people come to you, bring you stuff. You get too lazy to have fun." "You chose it," Suza said. She felt more sympathy for Cortone than she showed: he was a man who had worked hard for all the wrong things. "I chose it," Cortone admitted. "Young people have no mercy." He gave a rare half smile and puffed on his cigar. For the third time Suza saw the same blue car in her rearview mirror. "We're being followed," she said, trying to keep her voice calm and normal. "The Arab?" "Must be." She could not see the face behind the windshield. "What will we do? You said you'd handle it." "I Will." He was silent. Pxpecting him to say more, Suza glanced across at him. He was loading a pistol with ugly brown-black bullets. She gasped: she had never seen a real-life gun. Cortone looked up at her, then ahead. "Christ, watch the goddsimn roadt" She looked ahead, and braked hard for a sharp bend. "Where did you get that thing?" she said. "From my cousin." Suza felt more and more as if she were in a nightmare. She had not slept in a bed for four days. From the moment when she had heard her father talking so calmly about killing Nathaniel she had been running: fleeing from the awful truth about Hassan and her father, to the safety of Dickstein's wiry arms; and, as in a nightmare, the destination seemed to recede as fast as she ran. "Why don't you tell me where were going?" she asked Cortone. "I guess I can, now. Nat asked me for the loan of a house with a mooring and protection from snooping police. We're going to that house." Suza's heart beat faster. "How far?" "Couple of miles." A minute later Cortone said, "We'll get there, don't rush, we don't want to the on the way." She realized she had unconsciously put her foot down. She eased off the accelerator but she could not slow her thoughts. Any minute now, to see him and touch his face, to kiss him hello, to feel his hands on her shoulders- "rum in there, on the right." She drove through an open gateway and along a short gravel drive overgrown with weeds to a large ruined villa of white stone, When she pulled up in front of the pillared portico she expected Nathaniel to come running out to greet her. There were no signs of life on this side of the house. They got out of the car and climbed the broken stone staircase to the front entrance. The great wooden door was closed but not locked. Suza opened it and they went in. There was a great hall with a floor of smashed marble. The ceiling sagged and the walls were blotched with damp. In the center of the hall was a great fallen chandelier sprawled on the floor like a dead eagle. Cortone called out, "Hello, anybody here?" There was no reply. Suza thought: It's a big place, he must be here, it's just that he can't bear, maybe hesout in the garden. They crossed the hall, skirting the chandelier. They entered a cavernous bare drawing room, their footsteps echoing loudly, and went out through the glassless french doors at the back of the building. A short garden ran down to the edge of the cliff. They walked that far and saw a long stairway cut into the rock zigzaggingdown to the sea. There was no one in sight. He's not here, Suza thought; this time, Santa really did leave me stones. "Look." Cortone was pointing out to sea with one fat hand. Suza looked, and saw two vessels: a ship and a motorboat. The motorboat was coming toward them fast, jumping the waves and slicing the water with its sharp prow; there was one man in it The ship was sailing out of the bay, leaving a broad wake. "Looks like we just missed them," Cortone said. Suza ran down the steps, shouting and waving insanely, trying to attract the attention of the people on the ship, knowing it was impossible, they were too far away. She slipped on the stones and fell heavily on her bottom. She began to cry. Cortone ran down after her, his heavy body jerking on the steps. "It's no good," he said. He pulled her to her feet "The motorboat," she said desperately. "Maybe we can take the motorboat and catch up with the ship--~' "No way. By the time the boat gets here the ship Will be too far away, much too far, and going faster than the boat can." He led her back to the steps. She had run a long way down, and the climb back taxed him heavily. Suza hardly noticed: she was full of misery. Her mind was blank as they walked up the slope of the garden and back into the house. "Have to sit down," Cortone said as they crossed the drawing room. Suza looked at him. He was breathing hard, and his face was gray and covered with perspiration. Suddenly she realized it had all been too much for his overweight body. For a moment she forgot her own awful disappointment. "The stairs,' she said. They went into the rained hall. She led Cortone.to the wide cmving staircase and sat him on the second step. He went down heavily. He closed his eyes and rested his head on the wall beside him. "Listen," he said, "You can call ships ... or send them a wire ... we can still reach him . . ." "Sit quietly for a minute," she said. "Don't talk." "Ask my cousins-who's there?" Suza spun around. There bad been a clink of chandelier shards, and now she saw what had caused it. Yasif Hassan walked toward them across the ball. Suddenly, with a massive effort, Cortone stood up. Hassan stopped. Cortones breath was coming in ragged gulps. He fumbled in his pocket Suza said, Cortone pulled out the gun. Hassan was rooted to the spot, frozen. Suza screamed. Cortone staggered, the gun in his hand weaving about in the air. C,ortone pulled the trigger. The gun went off twice, with a huge, deafening double bang. The shots went wild. Cortone sunk to the ground, his face as dark as death. The gun fen from his fingers and hit the cracked marble floor. Yasif Hassan threw up. Sm knelt beside Cortone, He opened his eyes. "Listen," he said hoarsely. Hassan said "Leave him, let's go." Suza turned her head to face him. At the top of her voice she shout "just fuck off." Then she turned back to Cortone. Tve killed a lot of men' " Cortone said. Suza bent closer to hear. "Eleven men, I killed myself ... I fornicated with a lot of women . . ." His voice trailed off, his eyes closed, and then he made a huge effort to speak again. "All my godd life I been a thief and a bully. But I died for my friend, right? Ibis counts for something, it has to, doesn't it?" "Yes," she said. IM really counts for something." "Okay," he said. Then he died. Suza had never seen a man die. It was awful. Suddenly there was nothing there, nothing but a body; the person had vanished. She thought: No wonder death makes us cry. She realized her own face was streaked with tears. I didn't even like him, she thought, until just now. Hassan said, "You did very well, now let's get out of here." Suza did not understand. r did well? she thought. And then she understood. Hassan did not know she had told Cortone an Arab had been following them. As far as Hassan was concerned she had done just what he wanted her to: she bad led him here. Now she must try to keep up the pretense that she was on his side until she could find a way to contact Nat. I can't He and cheat anymore, I can% ies too much, I'm tired, she thought. 7ben: You can phone a ship, or at least send a cable, Cortone said.

She could still warn Nat. Oh, God, when can I sleep? She stood up. "What are we waiting for?" They went out through the high derelict entrance. "Well take my car," Hassan told her. She thought of trying to run away from him then, but it was a foolish idea. He would let her go soon. She had done what he'd asked, hadn't she? Now he would send her home. She got into the car. 'Wait," Hassan said. He ran to Cortone's car, took out the keys, and threw them into the bushes. He got into his own car. "So the man in the motorboat can't follow," he explained. As they drove off he said, "rm disappointed in your attitude, That man was helping our enemies. You should rejoice, not weep, when an enemy dies." She covered her eyes with her hand. "He was helping his friend." Hassan patted her knee. "You've done well, I shouldn't criticize you. You got the information I wanted." She looked at him. "Did W' "Sure. That big ship we saw leaving the bay-that was the Stmmberg. I know her time of departure and her maximum speed, so now I can figure out the earliest possible moment at which she could meet up with the Coparelli. And I can have my men there a day earlier." He patted her knee again, this time letting his hand rest on her thigh. "Don't touch me," she said. He took his hand away. She closed her eyes and tried to think. She had achieved the worst possible outcome by what she had done: she had led Hassan to Sicily but shed failed to warn Nat. She must find out how to send a telegram'to a ship, and do it as soon as she and Hassan parted company. There was only one other chance-the airplane steward who had promised to call the Israeli consulate in Rome. She said, "Oh, God, I'll be glad to get back to Oxford." "Oxford?" Hassan laughed. "Not yet. You'll have to stay with me until the operation is over." She thought: Dear God, I can't stand it. "But I'm so tired," she said. "We'll rest soon. I couldn't let you go. Security, you know. Anyway, you wouldnI want to miss seeing the dead body of Nat Dickstein."

At the Alitalia desk in the airport three men approached Yasif Hassan. Two of them were young and thuggish, the third was a tall sharp-faced man in his fifties. The older man said to Hassan, "You damn fool, you deserve to be shot." Hassan looked up at him, and Suza saw naked fear in his eyes as he said, "RostovI" Suza thought: Oh God, what now? Rostov took hold of Hassan's arm. It seemed for a moment that Hassan would resist, and jerk his arm away. The two young thugs moved closer. Suza and Hassan were enclosed. Rostov led Hassan away from the ticket desk. One of the thugs took Suza's arm and they followed. They went into a quiet corner. Rostov was obviously blazing with fury but kept his voice low. "You might have blown the whole thing if you hadn't been a few minutes late." "I don't know what you mean," Hassan said desperately. "You think I don't know you've been running around the world looking for Dickstein? You think I can't have you followed just like any other bloody imbecile? I've been getting hourly reports on your movements ever since you left Cairo. And what made you think you could trust her?" He jerked a thumb at Suza. "She led me here." "Yes, but you didn't know that then." Suza stood still, silent and frightened. She was hopelessly confused. The multiple shocks of the morning-missing Nat, watching Cortone die, now this-had paralyzed her ability to think. Keeping the lies straight had been difficult enough when she had been deceiving Hassan and telling Cortone a truth that Hassan thought was a lie. Now there was this Rostov, to whom Hassan was lying, and she could not even begin to think about whether what she said to Rostov should be the truth or another, different lie. Hassan was saying, "How did you get here?" "On the Karla, of course. We were only forty or fifty miles off Sicily when I got the report that you had landed here. r also obtained permission from Cairo to order you to return there immediately and directly."

"I still think I did the right thing," said Hassan. "Get out of my sight" Hassan walked away. Suza began to follow him but Rostov said, "Not you." He took her arm and began to walk. She went with him, thinking: What do I do now? "'I know you've proved your loyalty to us, , Miss Ashford, but in the middle of a project like this we can't allow newly recruited people simply to go home. On the other hand I have no people here in Sicily other than those I need with me on the ship, so I can't have you escorted somewhere else. I'm afraid yotere going to have to come aboard the Karla with me until this business is over. I hope you don't mind. Do you know, you look exactly like your mother." They had walked out of the airport to a waiting car. Rostov opened the door for her. Now was the time she should ran: after this it might be too late. She hesitated. One of the thugs stood beside her. His jacket fell open slightly and she saw the butt of his gun. She remembered the awful bang Cortones gun had made in the ruined villa, and how she had scremed; and suddenly she was afraid to die, to become a lump of clay Me poor fat Cortone; she was terrified of that gun and that bang and the bullet entering her body, and she began to shake. "V&a is it?" Rostov said. "Al Cortone died." "We know," Rostov said. "Get in the car." Suza got in the car.

Pierre Borg drove out of Athens and parked his car at one end of a stretch of beach where occasional lovers strolled. He got out and walked along the shoreline until he met Kawash coming the other way. They stood side by side, looking out to sea, wavelets lapping sleepily at their feet. Borg could see the handsome face of the tall Arab double agent by starlight. Kawash was not his usual confident self. 'Thank you for coming," Kawash said. Borg did not know why he was being thanked. If anyone should say thank you, it was he. And then he realized that Kawash had been making precisely that point. The man did everything with subtlety, including insults. 'Me Russians suspect there is a leak out of Cairo," Kawash said. "They are playing their cards very close to their collective Communist chest, so to speak." Kawash smiled thinly. Borg did not see the joke. "Even when Yasif Hassan came back to Cairo for debriefing we didn't learn much-and I didn't get all the information Hassan gave." Borg belched loudly: he had eaten a big Greek dinner. "Don't waste time with excuses, please. Just tell me what you do know." "All right," Kawash said mildly. "Iley know that Dickstein is to steal some uranium." "You told me that last time." "I don't think they know any of the details. Their intention is to let it happen, then expose it afterward. Tbey've put a couple of ships into the Mediterranean, but they don't know where to send them." A plastic bottle floated in on the tide and landed at Borg's feet. He kicked it back into the water. "What about Suza Ashford?" "Definitely working for the Arab side. Listen. There was an argument between Rostov and Hassan. Hassan wanted to find out exactly where Dickstein was, and Rostov thought it was unnecessary." "Bad news. Go on." "Afterward Hassan went out on a limb. He got the Ashford girl to help him look for Dickstein. They went to a place called Buffalo, in the U.S., and met a gangster called Cortone who took them to Sicily. They missed Dickstein, but only just: they saw the Stromberg leave. Hassan is in considerable trouble over this. He has been ordered back to Cairo but he hasn't turned up yet." "But the girl led them to where Dickstein had been?" stftactly.vs "Jesus Christ, this is bad." Borg thought of the message that had arrived in the Rome consulate for Nat Dickstein from his "girlfriend." He told Kawash about it. "Hassan has told me everything and he and I are coming to see you." What the hell did it mean? Was it intended to warn Dickstein, or to delay him, or to confuse him? Or was it a double bluff--an attempt to make him think she was being coerced into'leading Hassan to him? "A double bluff, I should say," Kawash said. "She knew her role in this would eventually be exposed, so she tried for a Ionger lease on Dickstein's trust You won't pass the message on ... "of course not." Borg's mind turned to another tack. "If they went to Sicily they know about the Stromberg. What conclusions can they draw from that? That the Stromberg will be used in the uranium theft?" "Exactly. Now, if I were Rostov, I'd follow the Stromberg, let the hijack take place, then attack. Damn, damn, damn. I think this will have to be called off." He dug the toe of his shoe into the soft sand. "What's the situation at Qattara?" "I was saving the worse news until last. Ali tests have been completed satisfactorily. The Russians are supplying uranium. The reactor goes on stream three weeks from today." Borg stared out to sea, and he was more wretched, pessimistic and depressed than he had ever been in the whole of his unhappy life. "You know what this fucking means don't you? It means we can't call it off. It means I can't stop Dickstein. It means that Dickstein is Israers last chance." Kawash was silent. After a moment Borg looked at him. The Arab's eyes were closed. "What are you doing?" Borg said. The silence went on for a few moments. Finally Kawash opened his eyes, looked at Borg, and gave his polite little half smile. "Praying," he said.

TEL AVIV TO MV STROMBERG PERSONAL BORG TO DICKSTEIN EYES ONLY MUST BE DECODED BY THE ADDRESSEE BEGINS SUZA ASHFORD CONFIRMED ARAB AGENT STOP SHE PERSUADED CORTONE TO TAKE HER AND HASSAN TO SICILY STOP THEY ARRIVED AFTER YOU LEFT` STOP CORTONE NOW DEAD STOP THIS AND OTHER DATA INDICATES STRONG POSSIBILITY YOU WILL BE ATTACKED AT SEA STOP NO FURTHER ACMON WE CAN TAKE AT THIS END STOP YOU FUCKED IT UP ALL ON YOUR OWN NOW GET OUT OF IT ALONE ENDS

The clouds which had been massing over the western Mediterranean for the previous few days finally burst that night, drenching the Stromberg with rain. A brisk wind blew up, and the shortcomings of the ship's design became apparent as she began to roll and yaw in the burgeoning waves. Nat Dickstein did not notice the weather. He sat alone in his little cabin, at the table which was screwed to the bulkhead, a pencil in hand and a pad, a codebook and a signal in front of him, transcribing Borg's message word by crucifying word. He read it over and over again, and finally sat staring at the blank steel wall in front of him. It was pointless to speculate about why she might have done this, to invent farfetched hypotheses that Hassan had coerced or blackmailed her, to imagine that she had acted from mistaken beliefs or confused motives: Borg had said she was a spy, and he had been right. She had been a spy all along. That was why she had made love to him. She had a big future in the intelligence business, that girl. Dickstein put his face in his hands and pressed his eyeballs with his fIngertips, but still he could see her, naked except for her high-heeled shoes, leaning against the cupboard in the kitchen of that little flat, reading the morning paper while she waited for a kettle to boil. The worst of it was, he loved her still. Before he met her he had been a cripple, an emotional amputee with an empty sleeve hanging where he should have had love; and she had performed a miracle, making him whole again. Now she had betrayed him, taking away what she had given, and he would be more handicapped than ever. He had written her a love letter. Dear God, he thought, what did she do when she read that letter? Did she laugh? Did she show it to Yasif Hassan and say, "See how rve got him hooked?" If you took a blind man, and gave him back his sight, and then, after a day made him blind again during the night while he was sleeping, this was how he would feel when he woke up. He had told Borg he would kill Suza if she were an agent, but now he knew that he had been lying. He could never hurt her, no matter what she did. It was late. Most of the crew were asleep except for those taking watches. He left the cabin and went up on deck without seeing anyone. Walking from the batch to the gunwale he got soaked to the skin, but be did not notice. He stood at the rail, looking into the darkness, unable to see where the black sea ended and the black sky began, letting the rain stream across his face like tears. He would never kill Suza, but Yasif Hassan was a different matter. If ever a man had an enemy, he had one in Hassan. He had loved Eila, only to see her in a sensual embrace with Hassan. Now he had fallen in love with Suza, only to find that she had already been seduced by the same old rival. And Hassan had also used Suza in his campaign to take away Dickstein!s homeland. Ob, yes, he would kill Yasif Hassan, and he would do it with his bare hands if he could. And the others. The thought brought him up out of the depths of despair in a fury: he wanted to hear bones snap, he wanted to see bodies crumple, he wanted the smell of fear and gunfire, he wanted death all around him. Borg thought they would be attacked at sea. Dickstein stood gripping the rail as the ship sawed through the unquiet sea; the wind rose momentarily and lashed his face with cold, hard rain; and he thought, So be it; and then he opened his mouth and shouted into the wind: "Let them come-let the bastards comet"

Chapter Fifteen

Hassan did not go back to Cairo, then or ever. Exultation fdled him as his plane took off from Palermo. It had been close, but he had outwitted Rostov againl He could hardly believe it when Rostov had said, "Get out Of MY sight." He had felt sure he would be forced to board the Karla and consequently miss the hijack of the Fedayeen. But Rostov completely believed that Hassan was merely over-enthusiastio, impulsive, and inexperienced. It had never occurred to him that Hassan might be a traitor. But then, why should it? Hassan was the representative of Egyptian Intelligence on the team and he was an Arab. If Rostov had toyed with suspicions about his loyalty, he might have considered whether he was working for the Israelis, for they were the opposition-the Palestinians, if they entered the picture at all, could be assumed to be on the Arab side. It was wonderful. Clever, arrogant, patronizing Colonel Rostov and the might of the notorious KGB had been fooled by a lousy Palestinian refugee, a man they thought was a nobody. But it was not over yet. He still had to join forces with the Fdayeen. The flight from Palermo took him to Rome, where he tried to get a plane to Annaba or Constantine, both near the Algerian coast. The nearest the airlines could offer was Algiers or Tunis. He went to Tunis. There he found a young taxi driver with a newish Renault and thrust in front of the man's face more money in American dollars than he normally earned in a year. The taxi took him across the hundred-mile breadth of Tunisia, over the border into Algeria, and dropped him off at a fishing village with a small natural harbor. One of the Fedayeen was waiting for him. Hassan found him on the beach, sitting under a propped-up dinghy, sheltering from the rain and playing backgammon with a fisherman. The three men got into the fisherman's boat and cast off. The sea was rough as they headed out in the last of the day. Hassan, no seaman, worried that the little motorboat would capsize, but the fisherman grinned cheerfully through it all. The trip took them less than a half hour. As they approached the looming hulk of the ship, Hassan felt again the rising sense of triumph. A ship ... they had a ship. He clambered up on to the deck while the man who had met him paid off the fisherman. Mahmoud was waiting for him on deck. They embraced, and Hassan said, "We should weigh anchor immediately-things are moving very fast now. "Come to the bridge with me." Hassan followed Mahmoud forward. The ship was a small coaster of about one thousand tons, quite new and in good condition. She was sleek, with most of her accommodations below deck. There was a hatch for one hold. She had been designed to carry small loads quickly and to maneuver in local North African ports. They stood on the foredeck for a moment, looking about. "She's just what we iieed," Hassan said joyfully. "I have renamed her the Nablus," Mahmoud told him. "She is the first ship of the Palestine Navy." Hamm felt tears start to his eyes. They climbed the ladder. Mahmoud said, "I got her from a Libyan businessman who wanted to save his soul." The bridge was compact and tidy. There was only one serious lack: radar. Many of these small coastal vessels still managed without it, and there had been no time to buy the equipment and fit it. Mahmoud introduced the captain, also a Libyan---the businessman had provided a crew as well as a ship, none of the Fedayeen were sailors. The captain gave orders to weigh anchor and start engines. The three men bent over a chart as Hassan told what he had learned in Sicily. "The Stromberg left the south coast of Sicily at midday today. The Coparelli was due to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar late last night, heading for Genoa. They are sister ships, with the same top speed, so the earliest they can meet is twelve hours east of the midpoint between Sicily and Gibraltar." The captain made some calculations and looked at another charL "Ibey will meet southeast of the island of Minorca." "We should intercept the Coparelli no less than eight hom earlier." The captain ran his finger back along the trade route. "That would put her just south of the island of Ibiza at dusk tomorrow. "Can we make-it?" "Yes, with a little time to spare, unless there is a storm." "Will there be a storm?" "Sometime in the next few days, yes. But not tomorrow, I think." "Good. Where is the radio operatorr "Here. This is Yaacov." Hassan turned to see a small, smiling man with tobaccostained teeth and told him, "There is a Russian aboard the Coparellf, a man called Tyrin, who will be sending signals to a Polish ship, the Karl& You must listen on this wavelength." He wrote it down. "Also, there is a radio beacon on the Stromberg that sends a simple thirty-second tone every half hour. If we listen for that every time we will be sure the Stromberg is not outrunning us." The captain was giving a course. Down on the deck the first officer had the hands making ready. Mahmoud was speaking to one of the Fedayeen about an arms inspection. The radio operator began to question Hassan about the Stromberes beacon. Hassan was not really listenin& He was thinking: Whatever happens, it will be glorious. The ship's engines roared, the deck tilted, the prow broke water and they were on their way.

Dieter Koch, the new engineer officer of the Caparelli, lay In his bunk in the middle of the night thinking: but what do I say if somebody sees me? What he had to do now was simple. He had to get up, go to the aft engineering store, take out the spare oil pump and got rid of it. It was almost certain he could do this without being seen, for his cabin was close to the store, most of the crew were asleep, and those that were awake were on the bridge and in the engine room and likely to stay there. But "almost certain" was not enough in an operation of this importance. If anyone should suspect, now or later, what he was really up to ... He put on a sweater, trousers, sea boots and an oilskin. The thing had to be done, and it had to be done now. He pocketed the key to the store, opened his cabin door and went out. As he made his way along the gangway he thought: I'll say I couldn't sleep so I'm checking the stores. He unlocked the door to the store, turned on the light, went in and closed it behind him. Engineering spares were racked and shelved all around him-gaskets, valves, plugs, cable, bolts, filters . . . given a cylinder block, you could build a whole engine out of these parts. He found the spare oil pump in a box on a high shelf. He lifted it down-it was not bulky but it was heavy-and then spent five minutes double-checking that there was not a seoond spare oil pump. Now for the difficult part. I couldn't sleep, sir, so I was checking the spares. Very good, everything in order? Yes, sir. And what's that you've got under your arm? A bottle of whiskey, sir. A cake my mother sent me, The spare oil pump, sir, I'm going to throw it overboard ... He opened the storeroom door and looked out. Nobody. He killed the light, went out, closed the door behind him and locked it. He walked along the gangway and out on deck. Nobody. It was still raining. He could see only a few yards, which was good, because it meant others could see only that far. He crossed the deck to the gunwale, leaned over the rail, dropped the oil pump into the sea, turned, and bumped into someone. A cake my mother sent me, it was so dry ... 'Who's that?' a voice said in accented English. "Engineer. You?" As Koch spoke, the other man turned so that his profile was visible in the deck light, and Koch recognized the rotund figure and big-nosed face of the radio operator. "I couldn't sleep," the radio operator said. "I wasget ting some air." He's as embarrassed as I am, Koch thought. I wonder why? "Lousy night," Koch said. "Im going in." "Goodnight." Koch went inside and made his way to his cabin. Strange fellow, that radio operator. He was not one of the regular crew. He had been taken on in Cardiff after the original radioman broke his leg. Like Koch, he was something of an outsider here. A good thing he bad bumped into him rather than one of the others. Inside his cabin he took off his wet outer clothes and lay on his bunk. He knew he would not sleep. His plan for tomorrow was all worked out, there was no point in going over it again, so he tried to think of other things: of his mother, who made the best potato kugel in the world; of his fiance, who gave the best head in the world; of his mad father now in an institution in Tel Aviv; of the magnificent tapedeck he would buy with his back pay after his assignment; of his fine apartment in Haifa; of the children he would have, and how they would grow up in an Israel safe from war. . He got up two hours later. He went aft to the galley for some coffee. The cook's apprentice was there, standing in a couple of inches of water, frying bacon for the crew. "Lousy weather," Koch said. "It will get worse." Koch drank his coffee, then refilled the mug and a second one and took - them up to the bridge. The first officer was there. "Good morning," Koch said. "Not really," said the first officer, looking out into a curtain of rain. "Coffee?" "Good of you. Thank you." Koch handed him the mug. 'Where are we?" "Here." The officer showed him their position on a charL "Dead on schedule, in spite of the weather." Koch nodded. That meant be had to stop the ship in fifteen minutes. "See you later," he said. He left the bridge and went below to the engine room. His number two was there, looking quite fresh, as if he had taken a good long nap during his nighfs duty. "Hows the oil pressureT'Koch asked him. "Steady."

"It was going up and down a bit yesterday." "Well, there was no sign of trouble in the night," the number two said. He was a little too firm about it, as if he was afraid of being accused of sleeping while the gauge oscillated. "Good," Koch said. "Perhaps it's repaired itself." He put his mug down on a level cowling, then picked it up quickly as the ship rolled. "Wake Larsen on your way to bed." "Right." "Sleep well." The number two left, and Koch drank down his coffee and went to work. The oil pressure gauge was located in a bank of dials aft of the engine.'Tbe dials were set into a thin metal casing, painted matt black and secured by four self-tapping screws. Using a large screwdriver, Koch removed the four screws and pulled the casing away. Behind it was a mass of many. colored wires leading to the different gauges. Koch swapped his large screwdriver for a small electrical one with an insulated handle. With a few turns be disconnected one of the wires to the oil pressure gauge. He wrapped a couple of inches of insulating tape around the bare end of the wire, thm taped it to the back of the dial so that only a close inspection would reveal it was not connected to the terminal. Then he replaced the casing and secured it with the four Screws. Wben Larsen came in be was topping up the transmission fluid. "Can I do that, sir?" Larsen said. He was a Donkeyman Greaser, and lubrication was his province. I "I've done it now," Koch said. He replaced the filler cap and stowed the can in a locker. Larsen rubbed his eyes and lit a cigarette. He looked over the dials, did a double take and said. "Sirl Oil pressure zerol" ozeror, "Yes!" "Stop enginest" "Aye, aye, sir." Without oil, friction between the engines metal parts would cause a very rapid build-up of heat until the metal melted, the parts fused and the engines stopped, never to go again. So dangerous was the sudden absence of oil pressure that Larsen might well have stopped the engines on his own initiative, without asking Koch. Everyone on the ship heard the engine die and felt the COparelli lose way; even those dayworkers who were still asleep in their bunks heard it through their dreams and woke up. Before the engine was completely still the first officer's voice came down the pipe. "Bridgel What's going on below?" Koch spoke into the , voice-pipe. "Sudden loss of oil pressure. "Any idea whyr "Not yet." "Keep me posted." "Aye, aye, sir." Koch turned to Larsen. "We're going to drop the sump," he said. Larsen picked up a toolbox and followed Koch down a half deck to where they could get at the engine from underneath. Koch told him, "If the main bearings or the big end bearings were wom the drop in oil pressure would have been gradual. A sudden drop means a failure in the oil supply. There's plenty of oil in the system-I checked earlier-and there are no signs of leaks. So there's probably a blockage." Koch released the sump with a power spanner and the two of them lowered it to the deck. They checked the sump strainer, the fall How filter, the filter relief valve and the ai relief valve without finding any obstructions. "If there's no blockage, the fault must be in the pump," Koch said. "Break out the spare oil pump." 'That will be in the store on the main deck," Larsen said. Koch handed him the key, and Larsen went above. Now Koch had to work very quickly. He took the casing off the oil pump, exposing two broad-toothed meshing gear wheels. He took the spanner off the power drill and fitted a bit, then attacked the cogs of the gear wheels with the drill, chipping and breaking them until they were all but useless. He put down the drill, picked up a crowbar and a hammer, and forced the bar in between the two wheels, prising them apart until he heard something give with a loud, dull crack. Finally he took out of his pocket a small nut made of toughened steel, battered and chipped. He had brought it with him when he had boarded the ship. He dropped the nut into the sump. Done.

Larsen came back. Koch realized he had not taken the bit off the power drill: when Larsen left there had been a spanner attachment on the tool. Don!t look at the drill! he thought Larsen said, "The pump isn't there, sir." Koch fished the nut out of the sump. "Look at this," he said, distracting Larsen's eye from the incriminating power drill. "This is the cause of the trouble." He showed Larsen the rained gear wheels of the oil pump. "The nut must have been dropped in the last time the filters were changed. It got into the pump and it's been going round and round in those gear wheels ever since. I'm surprised we didn't hear the noise, even over the sound of the engine. Anyway, the oil pump is beyond repair, so you'll have to find that spare. Get a few bands to help you look for it." Larsen went out. Koch took the bit off the power drill and put back the spanner attachment. He ran up the steps to the main engine room to remove the other piece of incriminating evidence. Working at top speed in case someone else should come in, he removed the casing an the gauges and reconnected the oil pressure gauge. Now it would genuinely read zero. He replaced the casing and threw away the insulating tape. It was finished. Now to pull the wool over the captain's eyes. As soon as the search party admitted defeat Koch went up to the bridge. He told the captain, "A mechanic must have dropped a nut into the oil sump last time the engine was serviced, sir." He showed the captain the nut. "At some pointmaybe while the ship was pitching so steeply-the nut got into the oil pump. After that it was just a matter of time. The nut went around in the gear wheels until it had totally ruined them. I'm afraid we can't make gear wheels like that on board. The ship should carry a spare oil pump, but it doesn't." Ile captain was furious. "There will be hell to pay when I find out who's responsible for this." "It's 'the engineees job to check the spares, but as you know, sir, I came on board at the last minute." "That means it's Sarne's fault." 'Tbere may be an explanation----w" "Indeed. Such as he spent too much time chasing Belgian whores to look after his engine. Can we limp along?

"Absolutely not, sir. We wouldn't move half a cable before she seized." "Damnation. Where~s the radio operatorr' The first officer said, "I'll find him, sir," and went out. "You're certain you can't put something together?" the captain asked Koch. "I'm afraid you can't make an oil pump out of spare parts and string. That's why we have to carry a spare pump." The first officer came back with the radio operator. The captain said, "Where the devil have you been?" The radio operator was the rotund, big-nosed man Koch had bumped into on the deck during the night. He looked hurt. "I was helping to search the fofard store for the oil pump, sir, then I went to wash my hands," He glanced at Koch, but there was no hint of suspicion in his look: Koch was not sure how much he had seen during that little confrontation on the deck, but if he had made any connection between a missing spare and a package thrown overboard by the engineer, he wasn't saying. "Aft right," the captain said. "Make a signal to the owners: Report engine breakdown at ... What's our exact position, number one?" The first officer gave the radio operator the position. The captain continued: "Require new oil pump or tow to port. Please instruct." Koch's shoulders slumped a little. He had done it Eventually the reply came from the owners:

COPARELLI SOLD TO SAVILE SHIPPING OF ZURICH. YOUR MESSAGE PASSED TO NEW OWNERS. STAND BY FOR THEIR INSTRUCTIONS.

Almost immediately afterward there was a signal from Savile Shipping:

OUR VESSEL GIL HAMILTON IN YOUR WATERS. SHE WILL COME ALONGSIDE AT APPROXIMATELY NOON. PREPARE TO DISEMBARK ALL CREW EXCEPT ENGINEER. GIL HAMILTON WILL TAKE CREW TO MARSEILLES. ENGINEER WILL AWAIT NEW OIL PUMP. The exchange of signals was heard sixty miles away by Solly Weinberg, the master of the Gil Hamilton and a commander in the Israeli Navy. He muttered, "Right on schedule. Well done, Koch." He set a course for the Coparelli and ordered full speed ahead.

. It was not heard by Yasif Hassan and Mahmoud aboard the Nablus 150 miles away. They were in the captain's cabin, bent over a sketch plan Hassan had drawn of the Coparelli, and they were deciding exactly how they would board her and take over. Hassan had instructed the Nablus's radio operator to listen out on two wavelengths: the one on which the Strombe?gls radio beacon~ broadcast and the one Tyrin was using for his clandestine signals from the Coparelli to Rostov aboard the Karla. Ilecause the messages were sent on the CopareIll's regular wavelength, the Nablus did not pick them up. It would be some time before the Fedayeen realized they were hijacking an almost abandoned ship.

The exchange was heard 200 miles away on the bridge of the Stromberg. When the Caparelli acknowledged the signal from Papagopolous, the officers on the' bridge cheered and clapped. Nat Dickstein, leaning against a bulkhead with a mug of black coffee in his hand~ staring ahead at the rain and the heaving sea, did not cheer. His body was hunched and tense, his face stiff, his brown eyes slitted behind the plastic spectacles. One of the others noticed his silence and made a remark about getting over the first big hurdle. Dickstein's muttered reply was uncharacteristically peppered with the strongest of obscenities. The cheerful officer tamed away, and later in the mess observed that Dickstein looked like the kind Of man who would stick a knife in you if you stepped on his toe.

And it was heard by David Rostov and Suza Ashford 300 miles away aboard the Karla. Suza had been in a daze as she walked across the gangplank from the Sicilian quayside on to the Polish vessel. She had hardly noticed what was happening as Rostov showed her to her cabin-an officer's room with its own head-and said he hoped she would be comfortable. She sat on the bed. She was still there, in the same position, an hour later when a sailor brought some cold food on a tray and set it down on her table without speaking. She did not eat it. When it got dark she began to shiver, so she got into the bed and lay there with her eyes wide open, staring at nothing, stiff shivering. Eventually she had slept-fitfully at first, with strange meaningless nightmares, but in the end deeply. Dawn woke her. She lay still, feeling the motion of the ship and looking blankly at the cabin around her; and then she realized where she was. It was like waking up and remembering the blind terror of a nightmare, except that instead of thinking: Oh, thank God it was a dream, she realized it was all true and it was still going on. She felt horribly guilty. She had been fooling herself, she could see that now. She had convinced herself that she had to find Nat to warn him, no matter the risk; but the truth was she would have reached for any excuse to go and see him. The disastrous consequences of what she had done followed naturally from the confusion of her motives. It was true that Nat had been in danger; but he was in worse danger now, and it was Suza's fault. She thought of that, and she thought of how she was at sea in a Polish ship commanded by Nats enemies and surrounded by Russian thugs; and she closed her eyes tightly and pushed her head under the pillow and fought the hysteria that bubbled up in her throat. And then she began to feel angry, and thatwas what saved her sanity. She thought of her father, and how he wanted to use her to further his political ideas, and she felt angry with him. She thought of Hassan, manipulating her father, putting his hand on her knee, and she wished she had slapped his face while she had the chance. Finally she thought of Rostov, with his hard, intelligent face and his cold smile, and how he intended to ram Nat's ship and kill him, and she got mad as bell. Dickstein was her man. He was funny, and he was strong, and he was oddly vulnerable, and he wrote love letters and stole ships, and he was the only man she had ever loved like this; and she was not going to lose him. She was in the enemy camp, a prisoner, but only from her point of view. They thought she was on their side; they trusted her. Perhaps she would have a chance to throw a wrench in their works. She must look for it. She would move about the ship, concealing her fear, talking to her enemies, consolidating her position in their confidence, pretending -to 'Share their ambitions and concerns, until she saw her opportunity. The thought made her tremble. Then she told herself: If I don't do this, I lose him; and if I lose him I don't want to live. She got out of bed. She took off the clothes she had slept i% -washed and put on clean sweater and pants from her suitcase. She sat at the small nailed-down table and ate some of the sausage and cheese that had been left there the day before. She brushed her hair and, just to boost her morale a little, put on a trace of make-up. She tried her cabin door. It was not locked. She went out. She walked along a gangway and followed the smell of food to the galley. She went in and looked swiftly about. Rostov sat alone, eating eggs slowly with a fork. He looked up and saw her. Suddenly his face seemed icily evil, his narrow mouth hard, his eyes without emotion. Suza hesitated, then forced herself to walk toward him. Reaching his table, she leaned briefly on a chair, for her legs felt weak. Rostov said, "Sit down." She dropped into the chair. "How did you sleep?" She was breathing too quickly, as if she had been walking very fast. "Fine," she said. Her voice shook. His sharp, skeptical eyes seemed to bore into her brain. "You seem upset." He spoke evenly, without sympathy or hostility. "I . . ." Words seemed to stick in her tbroat, choking her. "Yesterday ... was confusing." It was true, anyway- it was easy to say this. "I never saw someone die." "Ah." At last a hint of human feeling showed in Rostov's expression: perhaps he remembered the first time he watched a man die. He reached for a coffee pot and poured her a cup. "You!re very young," he said. "You can't be much older than my first son." Suza sipped at the hot coffee gratefully, hoping be would go on talking in this fashion-it would help her to calm down. "Your sonT' she said.

"Yuri Davidovitch, he's twenty." "What does he dor' Rostov's smile was not as chilly as before. "Unfortunately he spends most of his time listening to decadent music. He doesn't study as hard as he should. Not like his brother." Suza's breathing was slowing to normal, and her hand no longer shook when she picked up her cup. She knew that this man was no less dangerous just because he had a family; but he seemed less frightening when he talked like this. "And your other sonT' shq asked. 'The younger one?" Rostov nodded. "Vladimir." Now he was not frightening at all: he was staring over Suza's shoulder with a fond, indulgent expression on his face. "He's very gifted. He will be a great mathematician if he gets the right schooling." "That shouldn't be a problem," she said, watching him. "Soviet education is the best in the world." It seemed like a safe thing to say, but must have had some special significance for him, because the faraway look disappeared and his face turned hard and cold again. "No," he said. "It shouldn't be a problem." He continued eating his eggs. Suza thought urgently: He was becoming friendly, I mustn't lose him now. She cast about desperately for something to say. What did they have in common, what could they talk about? Then she was inspired. "I wish I could remember you from when you were at Oxford." "You were very small." He poured himself some coffee. "Everyone remembers your mother. She was easily the most beautiful woman around. And you're exactly like her." That's better, Suza thought. She asked him, "What did you study?" G.Economics." "Not an exact science in those days, I imagine. "And not much better today." Suza put on a faintly solemn expression. "We speak of bourReois economics, of course." "Of course." Rostov looked at her as if he could not tell whether she were serious or not. He seemed to decide she was. An officer came into the galley and svoke to him in Russian. Rostov looked at Suza regretfully. "I must go up to the bridge."

She had to go with him. She forced herself to speak calmly. "May I come?" He hesitated. Suza thought: He should let me. Hes enjoyed talking to me, he believes I'm on his side, and if I learn any secrets how could he imagine I could use them, stuck here on a KOB ship? Rostov said: "Why not?" He walked away. Suza followed. Up in the radio room Rostov smiled as he read through the messages and translated them for Suza's benefit. He seemed delighted with Dickstein's ingenuity. "The man is smart as hell," he said. "What's Savile Shipping?" Suza asked. "A front for Israeli Intelligence. Dickstein is eliminating all the people who have reason to be interested in what happens to the uranium. The shipping company isn't interested because they no longer own the ship. Now he's taking off the captain and crew. No doubt he has some kind of hold over the people who actually own the uranium. TVs a beautiful scheme." This was what Suza wanted. Rostov was talking to her like a colleague, she was at the center of events; she must be- able to find a way to foul things up for him. She said, "I suppose the breakdown was rigged?" "Yes. Now Dickstein can take over the ship without firing a shot." Suza thought fast When she "betrayed" Dickstein she had proved her loyalty to the Arab side. Now the Arab side had split into two camps: in one were Rostov, the KGB and Egyptian Intelligence; in the other Hassan and the Fedayeen. Now Suza could prove her loyalty to Rostov's side by betraying Hassan. She said, as casually as she possibly could, "And so can Yasif Hassan, of course." "'What?" "Hassan can also take over the Coparelli without firing a shot. Rostov stared at her. The blood seemed to drain from his thin face. Suza was shocked to see him suddenly lose all his poise and confidence. He said, "Hassan intends to hijack the Coparelli?"

Suza pretended to be shocked. "Are you telling me that you didn!t know?" "But who? Not the Egyptians, surelyl" "Me Fedayeen. Hassan said this was your plan." Rostov banged the bulkhead with his fist, looking very uncool and Russian for a moment. "Hassan is a liar and a traitor!" This was Suza's chance, she knew. She thought: Give me strength. She said: "Maybe we can stop him . . Rostov looked at her. "What's his planr "To hijack the Coparelli before Dickstein gets there, then ambush the Israeli team, and sail to ... he didn't tell me exactly, somewhere in North Africa. What was your plan?" "fo ram the ship after Dickstein had stolen the

"Can't we still do that?" "No. We're too far away, we'd never catch them." Suza knew that if she did not do the next bit exactly right, both she and Dickstein would die. She crossed her arms to stop the shaking. She said, "nen there is only one thing we can do." Rostov looked up at her. "There isr "We must warn Dickstein of the Fedayeen ambush so that he can take back the Coparelli." There. She had said it. She watched Rostov's face. He must swallow it, it was logical, it was the right thing for him to dot Rostov was thinking hard. He said, "Warn Dickstein so that be can take the Coparelli back from the Fedayeen. T'hen he can proceed according to his plan and we can proceed according to ours." "Yesl" said Suza. "Thafs the only waylIsn't it? Isn't it?"

FROM: SAVILE SHIPPING, ZURICH TO: ANGELUZZI E BIANCO, GENOA YOUR YELLOWCAKE CONSIGNMENT FROM F.A. PEDLER INDEFINITELY DELAYED DUE TO ENGINE TROUBLE AT SEA. WILL ADVISE SOONEST OF NEW DELIVERY DATES. PAPAGO' POLOUS.

As the Gil Hamflton came into view, Pyotr Tyrin cornered Ravlo, the addict, in the 'tweendecks of the Coparelli. Tyrin

acted with a confidence he did not feel. He adopted a bully~ ing manner and grabbed hold of Ravlo's sweater. Tyrin was a bulky man, and Ravlo was somewhat wasted. Tyrin said, "Listen, you're going to do something for me." "Sure, anything you say." Tyrin hesitated. It would be risky. Still, there was no alternative. "I need to stay on board ship when the rest of you go on the Gil Hamilton. if I'm missed, you will say that you have seen me go over." ~"Right, okay, sure." "If I'm discovered, and I have to board the Gil Hamilton, you can be sure III tell them your secret." "I'll do everything I can." "Yowd better." Tyrin let him go. He was not reassured: a man like that would promise you anything, but when it came to the crunch he might fall to pieces. Ali hands we're summoned on deck for the changeover. Mie sea was too rough for the Gil Hamilton to come alongside, so she sent a launch. Everyone had to wear lifebelts for the crossing. Tlie officers and crew of the Coparelli stood quietly in the pouring rain while they were counted, then the first sailor went over the side and down the ladder, jumped into the well of the launch. The boat would be too small to take the whole crew-they would have to go over in two or three detachments, Tyrin realized. While everyones attention was on the first men to go over the rail, Tyrin whispered to Ravlo, "Try and be last to go. 99 "All right." The two of them edged out to the back of the crowd on deck. ne officers were peering over the side at the launch. The men were standing, waiting, facing toward the Gil Hamilton. Tyrin slipped back behind a bulkhead. He was two steps from a lifeboat whose cover he had loosened earlier. The stem of the boat could be seen from the deck amidships, where the sailors were standing, but the stem could not. Tyrin moved to the stem, lifted the cover, got in and from inside put the cover back in place. He thought: If I'm discovered now Ive had it. He was a big man, and the life jacket made him bigger.

With some difficulty he crawled the length of the boat to a position from which he could see the deck through an eyelet in the tarpaulin. Now it was up to Ravlo. He watched as a second detachment of men went down the ladder to the launch, then heard the first officer say, "Where's that radio operator?" Tyrin looked for Ravlo and located him. Speak, damn you I Ravlo hesitated. "He went over with the first lot, sir." Good boyl "Are you sure?" "Yes, sir, I saw him." The officer nodded and said something about not being able to tell one from another in this filthy rain. The captain called to Koch, and the two men stood talking In the lee of a bulkhead, close to Tyrin's hiding place. The captain said, "rve never heard of Savile Shipping, have you?" "No, sir." "This is all wrong, selling a ship while she's at sea, then leaving the engineer in charge of her and taking the captain Off." "Yes, sir. I imagine they're not seafaring people, these new owners." "They're surely not, or they'd know better. Probably accountants." There was a pause. "You could refuse to stay alone, of course, then I would have to stay with you. I'd back you up afterward." "rm afraid I'd lose my ticket." "Right, I shouldn't have suggested it. Well, good luck." "Thank you, sir.' The third group of seamen had boarded the launch. The first officer was at the top of the ladder waiting for the captain, who was still muttering about accountants as he turned around, crossed the deck and followed the first officer over the side. Tyrin turned his attention to Koch, who now thought he was the only man aboard the Coparelli. The engineer watched the launch go across to the Gil Hamilton, then climbed the ladder to the bridge. Tyrin cursed aloud. He wanted Koch to go below so that he could get to the fbeard store and radio to the Karla. He watched the bridge, and saw Koch's face appear from time to time behind the glass. If Koch stayed there, Tyrin would have to wait until dark before he could contact Rostov and reporL It looked very much as if Koch planned to remain on the bridge all day. Tyrin settled down for a long wait.

When the Nablus reached thee point south of Ibiza where Hassan expected to encounter the Coparelli, there was not a single ship in sight. They circled the point in a widening spiral while H san scanned the desolate horizon through binoculars. Mahmoud said, "You have made a mistake." "Not necessarily." Hassan was determined he would not appear panicked. .'This was just the earliest point at which we could meet her. She doesn't have to travel at top speed. "Why should she be delayed?" Hassan shrugged, seeming less worried than he was. "Perhaps the engine isn't running well. Perhaps they've had worse weather than we have. A lot of reasons." "What do you suggest, then?" Mahmoud was also very uneasy, Hassan realized. On this ship he was not in control, only Hassan could make the decisions. "We travel southwest, backing along the CoparelICS route. We must meet her sooner or later." "Give the order to the captain," Mahmoud said, and went below to his troops, leaving Hassan on the bridge with the captain. Mahmoud burned with the irrational anger of tension. So did his troops, Hassan had observed. They had been expecting a fight at midday, and now they had to wait, dawdling about in the crew quarters and the galley, cleaning weapons, playing cards, and bragging about past battles. They were hyped up for combat, and inclined to play dangerous knifetbrowing games to prove their courage to each other and to themselves. One of them had quarreled with two seamen over an imaginary insult, and had cut them both about the face with a broken glass before the fight was broken up. Now the crew were staying well away from the Fedayeen. Hassan wondered how he would handle them if he were Mahmoud. He had thought along these lines a lot recently. Mahmoud was still the commander, but be was the one who had done all the important work: discovered Dickstein, brought the news of his plan, conceived the counter-bijacx and established the Stromberes whereabouts. He was beginning to wonder on what would be his position in the movement when all this was over. Clearly, Mahmoud was wondering the same thing. Well. If there was to be a power struggle between the two of them, it would have to wait. First they had to hijack the Coparellf and ambush Dickstein. Hassan felt a little nauseous when he thought about that. It was all very well for the battle-hardened men below to convince themselves they looked forward to a fight, but Hassan bad never been in war, never even had a gun pointed at him except by Cortone in the ruined villa. He was afraid, and he was even more afraid of disgracing himself by showing his fear, by turning and running away, by throwing up as he had done in the villa. But he also felt excited, for if they won-if they.wonf There was a false alarm at four-thirty in the afternoon when they sighted another ship coming toward them, but after examining her through binoculars Hassan announced she was not the Copareffl, and as she passed they were able to read the name on her side: Gil Hamilton. As daylight began to fade Hassan became worried. In this weather, even with navigation lights, two ships could pass withinhalf a mile of one another at night without seeing each other. And there had been not a sound out of the Coparelli's secret radio all afternoon, although Yaacov had reported that Rostov was trying to raise Tyrin. To be certain that the COparelli did not pass the Nablus in the night they would have to go about and spend the night traveling toward Genoa at the Coparelli's speed, then resume searching in the morning. But by that time the Stromberg would be close by and the Fedayeen might lose the chance of springing a trap on Dickstein. Hassan was about to explain this to Mahmoud-who had Jim returned to the bridge-when a single light winked on in the distance. "She's at anchor," said the captain. "How can you tell?" Mahmoud asked. 'naes what a single white light means." Hassan said, "That would explain why she wasn't off Thiza when we expected her. If that's the Coparelli, you should prepare to board."

'!I agree," said Mahmoud, and went off to tell his men. "Turn out your navigation lights," Hassan told the captain. As the Nablus closed with the other ship, night fen. "I'm almost certain that's the Coparelli," Hassan said. The captain lowered his binoculars. "She has three cranes on deck, and all her upperworks are aft of the hatches." "Your eyesight is better than mine," Hassan said. I'Shes the Coparellf." He went below to the galley, where Malurfoud was addressing his troops. Mahmoud looked at him as he stepped inside. Hassan nodded. "This is it." I Mahmoud turned back to his men. "We do not expect much resistance. The ship is crewed by ordinary seamen, and there is no reason for them to be armed. We go in two boats, one to attack the port side and one the starboard. On board our first task is to take the bridge and prevent the crew from using the radio. Next we round up the crew on deck." He paused and turned to Hassan. "Tell the captain to get as close ible to the Caparelli and then stop engines." as posst Hassan turned. Suddenly he was errand boy again: Mahmoud was demonstrating that he was still the battle leader. Hassan felt the humiliation bring a rush of blood to his cheeks. "Yasif." He turned back. "Your weapon." Mahmoud threw him a gun. Hassan caught it. It was a small pistol, almost a toy, the kind of gun a woman might carry in her handbag. The Fedayeen roared with laughter. Hassan thought: I can play these games too. He found what looked like the safety catch and released it. He pointed the gun at the floor and pulled the trigger. The report was very loud. He emptied the gun into the deck. There was a silence. Hassan said, "I thought I saw a mouse." He threw the gun back to Mahmoud. The Fedayeen laughed even louder. Hassan went out. He went back to the bridge, passed the message to the captain, and returned to the deck. It was very dark now. For a time all that could be seen of the Coparelli was its light Then, as he strained his eyes, a silhouette of solid black became distinguishable against the wash of dark gray- The Fedayeen, quiet now, had emerged from the galley and stood on deck with the crew. The NabWa engines (Red The crew lowered the boats. Hassan and his Fedayeen went ever the side. Hassan was in the same boat as Mahmoud. The little launch bobbed on the waves, which now seemed immense. They approached the sheer side of the Coparelli. There was no sip of activity on the ship. Surely, Hassan thought, the officer on watch must bear the sound of two engines approaching? But no alarms sounded, no lights flooded the deck, no one shouted orders or came to the rail. Mahmoud was first up the ladder. By the time Hassan reached the Coparelli's deck the other team was swarming over the starboard gunwale. Men poured down the companionways and up the ladders. Still there was no sign of the Coparegirs crew. Hassan bad a dreadful premonition that something had gone terribly wrong. He followed Mahmoud up to the bridge. Two of the men were already there. Hassan asked, "Did they have time to use the radior, "%Fho?" Mahmoud said. They went back down to the deck. Slowly the men were emerging from the bowels of the boat, looking puzzled, their cold gum in their hands. Mahmoud said: "Ibe wreck of the Marie Celeste." Two men came across the deck -with a frightened looking sailor between them. Hassan, spoke to the sailor in English. 'Vhaes happened here?" The sailor replied in some other language. Hassan had a sudden terrifying thought. "Let's check the bold," he said to Mahmoud. They found a companionway leading below and went down into the hold. Hassan found a light switch and turned it on. The hold was full of large oil drums, sealed and secured with wooden wedges. The drums had the word PLumBAT stenciled on their sides. "nat's it," said Hassan. '11at's the uranium."

They looked at the drums then at each other. For a moment all rivalry was forgotten. "We did it," said Haman. "By Ood, we did it."

As darkness fell Tyrin had watched the engineer go forward to switch on the white fight. Coming back, he had not gone UP to the bridge but had walked farther aft and entered the galley. He was going to get something to eat. Tyrin was hungry too. He would give his arm for a plate of salted herring and a loaf of brown bread. Sitting cramped in his lifeboat all afternoon, waiting for Koch to move, he had had nothing to think about but his hunger, and be had tortured himself with thoughts of caviar, smoked salmon, marinated mushrooms and most of all brown bread. Not yet, Pyotr, he told himself. As soon as Koch had disappeared from sight, Tyrin got out of the lifeboat, his mu cles protesting as he stretched, and hurried along the deck to the foeard store. He had shifted the boxes and junk in the main store so that they concealed the entrance to his small radio room. Now he had to get down on hands and knees, pun away one box, and crawl through a little tunnel to get in. Ile, set was repeating a short two-letter signal. Tyrin checked the code book and found it meant he was to switch to another wavelength before acknowledging. He set the radio to transmit and followed his instructions. Rostov immediately replied. CHANGE OF PLAN. HASSAN WILL ATTACK COPARELL. Tyrin frowned in puzzlement, and made: REPEAT PLEASE. RASSAN IS A TRAITOR. FEDAYEEN WILL ATTACK COPARELLI. Tyrin said aloud: "Jesus, what's going on?" The Coparelli was here, he was on it ... Why would Hassan for the uranium, of course. Rostov was SO signaling. HASSAN PLANS TO AMBUSH DICKSTEIN. FOR OUR PLAN TO PROCEED WE MUST WARN DICKSTEIN OF THE AMBUSH. Tyrin frowned as he decoded tb* then his face cleared as he understood. "Men we'll be back to square one," he said to himself. 'Ibat's clever. But what do I dor, He made: How? YOU WILL CALL STROMBERG ON COPARELLIS REGULAR WAVELENGTH AND SEND POLLOWINO MESSAGE PRECISELY REPEAT PRECISELY. QUOTE COPARELLI TO STROMBERO I AM BOARDED ARABS I THINK. WATCH UNQUOTE. Tyrin nodded. Dickstein would think that Koch had time to get a few words off before the Arabs killed him. Forewarned, Dickstein should be able to take the Coparelli. Then Rostov's Karla could collide with Dickstein's ship as planned. Tyrin thought: But what about me? He made: UNDERSTOOD. He heard a distant bump, as if something had hit the ship's hull. At first he ignored it, then he remembered there was nobody aboard but him and Koch. He went to the door of the for'ard store and looked out. The Fedayeen had arrived. He closed the door and hurried back to his transmitter. He made: HASSAN is HERE. . Rostov replied, SIGNAL DICKSTEIN NOW. WHAT DO I DO THEN? MDE. Thanks very much, Tyrin thought. He signed off and tuned to the regular wavelength to signal the Stromberg. The morbid thought occurred to him that he might never eat salted herring again.

"I've heard of being armed to the teeth, but this is ridiculous," said Nat Dickstein, and they all laughed. The message from the Coparelli had altered his mood. At first he had been shocked. How had the opposition managed to learn so much of his plan that they had been able to hijack the Coparelli first? Somewhere he must have made terrible errors of judgment. Suza ... ? But there was no point now in castigating himself. There was a fight ahead. His black depression vanished. The tension was still there, coiled tight inside him like a steel spring, but now he could ride it and use it, now he had something to do with it. The twelve men in the mess room of the Stromberg sensed the change in Dickstein and they caught his eagerness for the battle, although they knew some of them would die soon. Armed to the teeth they were. Each had an Uzi 9-mm submachine gun, a reliable, compact firearm weighing nine pounds when loaded with the 25-round magazine and only an inch over two feet long with its metal stock extended. They had three spare magazines each. Each man had a 9-mm Luger in a belt holster-the pistol would take the same cartridges as the machine gun-and a clip of four grenades on the opposite side of his belt. Almost certainly, they all had extra, weapons of their own choice: knives, blackjacks, bayonets, knuckle-dusters and others more exotic, carried superstitiously, more like lucky charms than fighting implements. Dickstein knew their mood, knew they had caught it from him. He had felt it before with men before a fight. They were afraid, and-paradoxically-the fear made them eager to get started, for the waiting was the worst part, the battle itself was anesthetic, and afterward you had either survived or you were dead and did not care anymore. Dickstein had figured his battle plan in detail and briefed them. 'Me Coparelli was designed like a miniature tanker, with holds forward and amidships, the main superstructure on the afterdeck, and a secondary superstructure in the stern. The, main superstructure contained the bridge, the officers' quarters and the mess; below it were crew's quarters. The stern superstructure contained the galley, below that stores, and below these the engine room. The two superstructures were separate above deck, but below deck they were connected by gangways. They were to go over in three teams. Abbas's would attack the bows. The other two, led by Bader and Gibli, would go up the port and starboard ladders at the stern. The two stem teams were detailed to go below and work forward, Bushing out the enemy amidships where they could be mown down by Abbas and his men from the prow. The strategy was likely to leave a pocket of resistance at the bridge, so Dickstein planned to take the bridge himself. The attack would be by night; otherwise they would never get aboard-they would be picked off as they came over the rails. That left the problem of how to avoid shooting at one another as well as the enemy. For this he provided a recognition signal, the word Aliyah, and the attack plan was designed so that they were not expected to confront one another until the very end. Now they were waiting. They sat in a loose circle in the galley of the Stromberg, identical to the galley of the Coparelli where they would soon be fighting and dying. Dickstein was speaking to Abbas: "From the bows you'll control the foredeck, an open field of fire. Deploy your men behind cover and stay

there. When the enemy on deck reveal their positions, pick them off. Your main problem is going to be hailing fire from the bridge." - Slumped in his chair, Abbas looked even more like a tank than usual. Dickstein was glad Abbas was on his side. "And we hold our fire at first." Dickstein nodded. "Yes. You've a good chance of getting aboard unseen. No point in shooting until you know the rest of us have arrived." Abbas nodded. "I see Porush is on my team. You know he's my brother-in-law." "Yes. I also know he's -the only married man here. I thought you might want to take care of him." "Thanks. Feinberg looked up from the knife he was cieaning. 'Me lanky New Yorker was not grinning for once. "How do you figure these ArabsT' Dickstein shook his head. 'They could be regular army or Fedayeen." Feinberg grinned. "Let's- hope they're regular army-we make faces, they surrender." It was a lousy joke, but they all laughed anyway. Ish, always pessimistic, sitting with his feet on a table and his eyes closed, said, "Going over the rail will be the worst part. We'll be naked as babes." Dickstein said, "Remember that they believe we're expecting to take over a deserted boat. Their ambush is supposed to be a big surprise for 'us. They're looking for an easy victory-but we're prepared. And it will be dark---- The door opened and the captain came in. "We've sighted the Coparelli." Dickstein stood up. "Let's go. Good luck, and don't take any prisoners."

Chapter Sixteen

The three boats pulled away from -the Stramberg in the last few minutes before dawn. Within seconds the ship behind them was invisible. She had no navigation lights, and deck lights and cabin lamps had been extinguished, even below the waterline, to ensure that no light escaped to warn the Coparelft. The weather had worsened during the night. The captain of the Stromberg said it was still not bad enough to be called a storm, but the rain was torrential, the wind strong enough to blow a steel bucket clattering along the deck, the waves so high that now Dickstein was obliged to cling tightly to his bench seat in the well of the-motorboat. For a while they were in limbo, with nothing visible ahead or behind. Dickstein could not even see the faces of the four men in the boat with him. Feinberg broke the silence: "I still say we should have postponed this fishing trip until tomor row. - Whistling past the graveyard. Dickstein was as superstitious as the rest: underneath his oilskin and his life jacket he wore his father's old striped waistcoat with a smashed fob watch in the pocket over his heart. The watch had once stopped a German bullet. Dickstein was thinking logically, but in a way he knew he had gone a little crazy. His affair with Suza, and her betrayal, had turned him upside down: his old values and motivations had been jolted, and the new ones he had acquired with her had turned to dust in his hands. He still cared for some things: he wanted to win this battle, he wanted Israel to have the uranium, and he wanted to kill Yasif Hassan; the one thing he did not care about was himself. He had no fear, suddenly, of bullets and pain and death. Suza had betrayed him, and he had no burning desire to live a long life with that in his past. So long as Israel got its bomb, Esther would die peacefully, Mottie would finish Treasure Island, and Yigael would look after the grapes. He gripped the barrel of the machine gun beneath his oilskin. They crested a wave and suddenly, there in the next trough, was the Coparelli.

Switching from forward to reverse several times in rapid succession Levi Abbas edged his boat closer to the bows of the Copareli. The white fight above them enabled him to see quite clearly, while the outward-curving hull shielded his boat from the sight of anyone on deck or on the bridge. When the boat was close enough to the ladder Abbas took a rope and tied it around his waist under the oilskin. He hesitated a moment then shucked off the oilskin, unwrapped his gun and slung-the gun over his neck. He stood with one foot in the boat and one on the gunwale, waited for his moment, and jumped. He hit the ladder with both feet and both hands. He untied the rope around his waist and secured it to a rung of the ladder. He went up the ladder almost to the top, then stopped. They should go over the rail as close together as possible. He looked back down. Sharrett and Sapir were already on the ladder below him. As he looked, Porush made his jump, landed awkwardly and missed his grip, and for a moment Abbas's breath caught in his throat; but Porush slipped down only one rung before he managed to hook an arm around the side of the ladder and arrest his descent. Abbas waited for Porush to come up close behind Sapir, then he went over the rail. He landed softly on all fours and crouched low beside the gunwale. The others followed swiftly: one, two, three. The white light was above them and they were very exposed. . . Abbas looked about. Sharrett was the smallest and he could wriggle like a snake. Abbas touched his shoulder and pointed across the deck. "Take cover on the port side." Sharrett bellied across two yards of open deck, then he was partly concealed by the raised edge of the foeard hatch. He inched forward. Abbas looked up and down the deck. At any moment they could be spotted; they would know nothing until a hail of bullets tore into them. Quick, quickl Up in the stem was the winding gear for the anchor, with a large pile of slack chain. 'Sapir." Abbas pointed, and Sapir crawled along the deck to the position. "I like the crane," Porush said. Abbas looked at the derrick towering over them, dominating the whole of the foredeck. The control cabin was some ten feet above deck level. It would be a dangerous position, but it made good tactical sense. "Go," he said. Porush crawled forward, following Sharrett's route. Watching, Abbas thought: He's got a fat ass--my sister feeds him too well. Porush gained the foot of the crane and began to climb the ladder. Abbas held his breath-if one of the enemy should happen to look this way now, while Porush was on the ladder--Then he reached the cabin. Behind Abbas, in the prow, was a companion head over a short flight of steps leading down to a door. The area was not big enough to be called a wesle, and there was almost certainly no. proper accommodation in there-it was simply a for'ard store. He crawled to it, crouched at the foot of the steps in the little well,- and gently cracked the door. It was dark inside. He closed the door and tamed around, resting his gun on the head of the steps, satisfied that he was alone.

There was very little light at the stem end, and Dickstein!s boat had to get very close to the Coparelli's starboard ladder. Gibli, the team leader, found it difficult to keep the boat in position. Dickstein found a boat hook in the well of the launch and used it to hold the boat steady, pulling toward the Copareftl when the sea tried to part them and pushing away when the boat and the ship threatened to collide broadside. Gibli, who was ex-army, insisted on adhering to the Israeli tradition that the officers lead their men from in front, not from behind: he had to go first. He always wore a hat to conceal his receding hairline, and now he sported a beret. He crouched at the edge of the boat while it slid down a wave; then, in the trough when boat and ship moved closer together, he jumped. He landed well and moved upward. On the edge, waiting for his moment, Feinberg said, "Now, then-I count to three, then open my parachute, rightr, Then he jumped.

Katzen went next, then Raoul Dovrat Dickstein dropped the boat hook and followed. On the ladder, he leaned back and looked up through the streaming rain to see Gibli reach the level of the gunwale then swing one leg over the rail. Dickstein looked back over his shoulder and saw a faint band of lighter gray in the distant sky, the first sign of dawn. Then there was a sudden shocking burst of machine-gun fire and a shout. Dickstein looked up again to see Gibli falling slowly backward off the top of the ladder. His beret came off and was whipped away by the wind, disappearing into the darknes& Gibli fell down, down past Dickstein and into the sea. Dickstein shouted, "Go, go, got" Feinberg flew over the rail. He would hit the deck rolling, Dickstein knew, then-yes, there was the sound of his gun as he gave covering fire for the other&-- And Katzen was over and there were four, five, many gum crackling, and Dickstein was scampering up the ladder and pulling the pin from a grenade with his teeth and hurling it up and over the rail some thirty yards forward, where it would cause a diversion without injuring any of his men already on deck, and then Dovrat was over the rail and Dickstein saw him hit the deck rolling, gain his feet, dive for cover behind the stern superstructure and Dickstein yelled, "Here I come you fuckers" and went over in a high-jumper's roll, landed on hands and knees, bent double under a sheet of covering fire and scampered to the stem. "Where are they?" he yelled. Feinberg stopped shooting to answer him. "In the galley," be said, jerking a thumb toward the bulkhead beside them. "In the lifeboats, and in the doorways amidships." "All right." Dickstein got to his feet. "We hold this position until Badees group makes the deck. When you hear them open fire, move. Dovrat and Katzen, hit the galley door and head below. Feinberg, cover them, then work'your way forward along this edge of the deck. I'll make for the first lifeboat. Meantime give them something to distract their attention from the port stem ladder and Badees team. Fire at will.

Hassan and Mabmoud were interrogating the sailor when the shooting started. They were in the chartroom, aft of the bridge. Ile sailor would speak only German, but Hassan spoke German. His story was that the Coparell! had broken down and the crew had been taken off, leaving him to wait in the ship until a spare part arrived. He knew nothing of uranium or hijacks or Dickstein. Hassan did not believe him, for-as he pointed out to Mahmoud-if Dickstein could arrange for the ship to break down, he could surely arrange for one of his own men to be left aboard it. The sailor was tied to a chair, and now Mahmoud was cutting off his fingers one by one in an attempt to make him tell a different story. They heard one quick burst of firing, then a silence, then a second burst followed by a barrage. Mahmoud sheathed his knife and went down the stairs which led from the chartroom. to the officers! quarters. Hassan tried to assess the situation. The Fedayeen were grouped in three places--the lifeboats, the galley and the main amidships superstructure. From where he was Hassan could see both port and starboard sides of the dock. and if he went forward from the chartroom to the bridge he could see the foredeck. Most of the Israelis seemed to have boarded the ship at the stern. The Fedayeen, both those immediately below Hassan and those in the lifeboats at either side, were firing toward the stern. There was no firing from the galley, which must mean the Israelis had taken it. They must have gone below, but they had left two men on deck, one on either side, to guard their rear. Mahmoud's ambush had failed, then. The Israelis were supposed to be mown down as they came over the rail. In fact they had succeeded in reaching cover, and now the battle was even. The fighting on deck was stalemated, with both sides shooting at each other from good cover. That was the Israelis! intention, Hassan assumed: to keep the opposition busy on deck while they made their progress below. They would attack the Fedayeen stronghold, the amidships superstructure, from below, after making their way the length of the 'tweendecks gangways. Where was the best place to be? Right where he was, HasSan decided. To reach him the Israelis had to fight their way along the 'tweendecks, then up through the officers' quarters, then up again to the bridge and chartroorn. It was a tough position to take.

'Mere was a huge explosion from the bridge. The heavy door separating bridge and chartroorn rattled, sagged on its hinges and fen slowly inward. Hassan looked through. A grenade had landed in the bridge. The bodies of three Fedayeen were spread across the bulkheads. Ali the glass of the bridge was smashed. The grenade must have come from the foredeck, which meant that there was another group of Israelis in the prow. As if to confirm his supposition, a burst of gunfire came from the foeard crane. Hassan picked up a submachine gun from the floor, rested ft on the window frame, and began to shoot back.

Levi Abbas watched Porush's grenade sail through the air and into the bridge, then saw the explosion shatter what remained of the glass. The guns from that quarter were briefly silenced, and then a new one started up. For a minute Abbas could not figure out what the new gun was shooting at, for none of the bullets landed near him. He looked at either side. Sapir and Sharreft were both shooting at the bridge, and neither seemed to be under fire. Abbas looked up at the crane. Porush-it was Porush who was under fire. There was a burst from the cabin of the crane as Porush fired back. The shooting from the bridge was amateurish, wild and inaocurate-the man was just spraying bullets. But he had a good position. He was high, and well protected by the walls of the bridge. He would hit something sooner or later. Abbas took out a. grenade and lobbed it, but it fell short. Only Porush was close enough to throw into the bridge, and he had used all his grenades--only the fourth had landed on target. Abbas fired again, then looked up at the control cabin of the crane. As he looked, he saw Porush come toppling backward out of the control cabin, turn over in the air, and fail like a dead weight to the deck. Abbas thought: And how will I tell my sister? The guriman in the bridge stopped firing, then resumed with a burst in Sharrett's direction. Unlike Abbas and Sapir, Sharrett had very little cover: he was squeezed between a capstan and the gunwale. Abbas and Sapir both shot at the bridge. The unseen sniper was improving: bullets stitched a searn in the deck toward Sharrett's capstan; then Sharrett screamed, jumped sideways, and jerked as if electrocuted while more bullets thudded into his body, until at last he lay still and the screaming stopped. The situation was bad. Abbas's team was supposed to command the foredeck, but at the moment the man on the bridge was doing that. Abbas had to take him out. He threw another grenade. It landed short of the bridge and exploded; the flash might dazzle the sniper for a second or two. When the bang came Abbas was on his feet and running for the crane, the crash of sapies covering fire in his ears. He made the foot of the ladder and started firing before the sniper on the bridge saw him. Tlien bullets were clanging on the girders all around him. It seemed to take him an age to climb each step. Some lunatic part of his mind began to count the steps: seven-eight-nine-ten- He was hit by.a ricochet. The bullet entered his thigh just below the hip bone. It did not kill him, but the shock of it seemed to paralyze the muscles in the lower half of his body. His feet slipped from the rungs of the ladder. He had a moment of confused panic as he discovered that his legs would not work. Instinctively he grabbed for the ladder with his hands, but he missed and fell. He turned partly over and landed awkwardly, breaking his neck; and he died. The door to the foeard store opened slightly and a wideeyed, frightened Russian face looked out; but nobody saw it, and it went back inside; and the door closed.

As Katzen and Dovrat rushed the galley, Dickstein took advantage of Feinberg's covering fire to move forward. He ran, bent double, past the point at which they had boarded the ship and past the galley door, to throw himself behind the first of the lifeboats, one that had already been grenaded. From there, in the faint but increasing light, he could make out the lines of the amidships superstructure, shaped like a flight of three steps rising forward. At the main deck level was the officers' mess, the officers' dayroom, the sick bay and a passenger cabin used as a dry store. On the next level up were officers' cabins, heads, and the captain's quarters. On the top deck was the bridge with adjoining chartroom. and radio booth. Most of the enemy would now be at deck level in the mess and the dayroom. He could bypass them by climbing a ladder alongside the funnel to the walkway around the second deck, but the only way to the bridge was through the second deck. He would have to take out -any soldiers in the cabins on his Own. He looked back. Feinberg had retreated behind the galley, perhaps to reload. He waited until Feinberg started shooting again, then got to his feet. Firing wildly from the hip, he broke from behind the lifeboat and dashed across the afterdeck to the ladder. Without breaking stride, he jumped on to the fourth rung and scrambled up, conscious that for a few seconds he made an easy target, hearing a clutch of bullets rattle on the funnel beside him, until he reached the level of the upper deck and flung himself across the walkway to fetch up, breathing hard and shaking with effort, lying against the door to the officers' quarters. "Stone the bloody crows," he muttered. He reloaded his gun. He put his back to the door and slowly slid upright to a porthole in the door at eye level. He risked a look. He saw a passage with three doors on either side and, at the far end, ladders going down to the mess and up to the chartroom. He knew that the bridge could be reached by either of two outside ladders leading up from the main deck as well as by way of the chartroom. However, the Arabs still controlled that part of the deck and could cover the outside ladders; therefore the only way to the bridge was this way. He opened the door and stepped in. He crept along the passage to the first cabin door, opened it, and threw in a grenade. He saw one of the enemy begin to turn around, and closed the door. He heard the grenade explode in the small space. He ran to the next door on the same side, opened it, and threw in another grenade. It exploded into empty space. There was one more door on this side, and he had no more grenades. He ran to the door, threw it open, and went in Bring. There was one man here. He had been firing through the porthole, but now he was easing his gun out of the hole and turning around. Dickstein's burst of bullets sliced him in half- Dickstein turned and faced the open door, waiting. The door of the opposite cabin flew open and Dickstein shot down the man behind it. Dickstein stepped into the gangway, firing blind. There were two more cabins to account for. The door of the nearer one opened as Dickstein was spraying it, and a body fell out One to go. Dickstein waited. The door opened a crack, then closed again. Dickstein ran down the gangway, and lacked open the door, sprayed the cabm. There was no return fire. He stepped inside: the occupant had been hit by a ricochet and lay bleeding on the bunk. Dickstein was seized with a kind of mad exultation: he had taken the entire dock on his own. Next, the bridge. He ran forward along the gangway. At the far end the companionway led up to the chartroom and down to the officere mess. He stepped on to the ladder, looked up, and threw himself down and away as the snout of a gun poked down at him and began to fire. His grenades were gone. The man in the chartroom was impregnable to gunfire. He could stay behind the edge of the companionhead and fire blind down the ladder. Dickstein had to get on the ladder, for he wanted to go up. He went into one of the forward -cabins to overlook the deck and try to assess the situation. He was appalled when he saw what had happened on the foredeck: only one of the four men of Abbas!s team was still Bring, and Dickstein could just make out three bodies. Two or three guns seemed to be firing from the bridge at the remaining Israeli, trapping him behind a stack of anchor chain. - Dickstein looked to the side. Feinberg was still well afthe had not managed to progress forward. And there was still no sign of the men who had gone below. The Fedayeen were well entrenched in the mess below him. From their superior position they were able to keep at, bay the men on deck and the men in the 'tweendeeks below them. The only way to take the mess would be to attack it from all sides at once-including from above. But that meant taking the bridge first. And the bridge was impregnable. , Dickstein ran back along the gangway and out of the aft door. It was still pouring rain, but there was a dim cold light in the sky. He could make out Feinberg on one side and Dovrat on the other. He called out their names until he caught their attention, then pointed at the galley. He jumped from the walkway to the afterdeck, raced across it, and dove into the galley.

They had got his meaning. A moment later they followed him in. Dickstein said, "We have to take the mess." "I don't see how," said Feinberg. "Shut up and I'll tell you. We rush it from all sides at once: port, starboard, below and above. First we have to take the bridge. I'm going to do that. When I get there ru sound the foghorn. That will be the signal. I want you both to go below and tell the men there." "How will you reach the bridge?" Feinberg said. Dickstein said, "Over the roof."

On the bridge, Yasif Hassan had been joined by Mahmoud and two more of his Fedayeen, who took up firing positions while the leaders sat on the floor and conferred. 'They can't win," Mahmoud said. "From here we control too much deck. They can!t attack the mess from below, because the companionway is easy to dominate from above. They can't attack from the sides or the front because we can fire down on them from here. They can't attack from above because we control the down companion. We just keep shooting until they surrender." Hassan said, "One of them tried to take this companion a few minutes ago. I stopped him." "You were on your own up herer "Yes." He put his hands on Hassan's shoulders. "You are now one of the Fedayeen," he said. Hassan voiced the thought that was on both their minds. "After thisr' Mahmoud nodded. "Equal partners." They clasped hands. - Hassan repeated, "Equal partners." Mahmoud said, "And now, I think they will try for that companionway again-its their only hope." "IT cover it from the chartroom," Hassan said. They both stood up; then a stray bullet from the foredeck came in through the glassless windows and entered Mahmoud's brain, and he died instantly. And Hassan was the leader of the Fedayeen.

Lying on his belly, arms and legs spread wide for traction, Dickstein inched his way across the roof. It was curved, and totally without handholds, and it was slick with rain. As the CoparelU heaved and shifted in the waves, the roof tilted forward, backward, and from side to side. All Dickstein could do was press himself to themetal and try to slow his slide. At the forward end of the roof was a navigation light. When he reached that he would be safe, for he could hold on to it. His progress toward it was painfully slow. He got within a foot of it, then the ship rolled to port and he slid away. It was a long roll, and it took him all the way to the edge of the roof. For a moment he hung with one arm and a leg over a thirty-foot drop to the deck. The ship rolled a little more, the rest of his leg went over, and he tried to dig the fingernails of his right hand into the painted metal of the roof. There was an agonizing pause. The Coparelli rolled back. Dickstein let himself go with the roll, sliding faster and faster toward the navigation light. But the ship pitched up, the roof tilted backward, and he slid in a long curve, missing the light by a yard. Once again he pressed his hands and feet into the metal, trying to slow himself down; once again he went all the way to the edge; once again he hung over the drop to the deck; but this time it was his right arm, which dangled over the edge, and his machine gun slipped off his right shoulder and fell into a lifeboat. She- rolled back and pitched forward, and Dickstein found himself sliding with increasing speed toward the navigation light. ibis time he reached it. He grabbed with both hands. The light was about a foot from the forward edge of the roof. Immediately below the edge were the front windows of the bridge, their glass smashed out long ago, and two gun barrels poking out through them. Dickstein held on to the light, but he could not stop his slide. His body swung about in a wide sweep, heading for the edge. He saw that the front of the roof, unlike the sides, had a narrow steel gutter to take away the rain from the glass below. As his body swung over the edge he released his grip on the navigation light, let himself slide forward with the pitch of the ship, grabbed the steel gutter with his fingertips, and swung his legs down and in. He came flying through the broken windows feet first to land in the middle of the bridge. He bent his knees to take the shock of landing, then straightened up. His submaebine gun bad been lost and he bad no time to draw his pistol or his knife. There were two Arabs on the bridge, one on either side of him,, both holding machine guns and firing down on to the deck. As Dickstein straightened up they began to turn toward him their faces a Picture of amazement. Dickstein was fractionally nearer the one on the port side. He lashed out with a kick which, more by luck than by judgment, landed on the point of the man's elbow, momentarily paralyzing his gun arm. Then Dickstein jumped for the other man. His machine gun was swinging toward Dickstein just a split second too late: Dickstein got inside its swing. He brought up his right hand in the most vicious two-stroke blow he knew: the heel of his hand hit the point of the Arab's chin, snapping his head back for the second stroke as Dickstein's band, fingers stiffened for a karate chop, came down hard into the exposed flesh of the soft throat Before the man could fall Dickstein grabbed him by the jacket and swung him around between himself and the other Arab. The other man was bringing up his gun. Dickstein lifted the dead man and burled him across the bridge as the machine gun opened up 'Me dead body took the bullets and crashed into the other Arab, who lost his balance, went backward out through the open doorway and fell to the deck below. There was a third man in the chartroom, guarding the companionway leading down. In the three seconds during which Dickstein had been on the bridge the man had stood up and turned around; and now Dickstein recognized Yasif Hassan. Dickstein dropped to a crouch, stuck out a leg, kicked at the broken door which lay on the floor between himself and Hassan. The door slid along the deck, striking Hassan!s feet. It was only enough to throw him off balance, but as he spread his arms to recover his equilibrium Dickstein moved. Until this moment Dickstein had been like a machine, reacting reflexively to everything that confronted him, letting his nervous system plan every move without conscious thought, allowing training and instinct to guide him; but now it was more than that. Now, faced with the enemy of all he had ever loved, he was possessed by blind hatred and mad rage-

It gave him added speed. and power. He took hold of Hassan's gun arm by the wrist and shoulder, and with a downward pull broke the arm over his kneeHassan screamed and the gun dropped from his useless hand. Turning slightly, Dickstein brought his elbow back in a blow which caught Hassan just under the ear. Hassan turned away, falling. Dickstein grabbed his bair from behind, pulling the head backward; and as Hassan sagged away from him be lifted his foot high and kicked. His heel struck the back of Hassan's neck at the moment he jerked the bead. There was a snap as all the tension went out of the man's muscles and his head lolled, unsupported, on his shoulders. Dickstein let go and the body crumpled. He stared at the harmless body with exultation ringing in his ears. Then he saw Koch. The engineer was tied to a chair, slumped over, pale as death but conscious. There was blood on his clothes. Dickstein drew his knife and cut the ropes that bound Koch. Then he saw the man's hands. He said, "Christ." "I'll live," Koch muttered. He did not get up from the chair. Dickstein picked up Hassan's machine gun and checked the magazine. It was almost full. He moved out on to the bridge and located the foghorn. "Koch," he said, "can you get out of that chair?" Koch got up, swaying unsteadily until Dickstein stepped across and supported him, leading him through to the bridge. "See this button? I want you to count slowly to ten then lean on it. Koch shook his head to clear it. "I think I can handle it." "Start. Now." "One," Koch said. 'Two." Dickstein went down the companionway and came out on the second deck, the one he had cleared himself. It was still empty. He went on down, and stopped just before the ladder emerged into the mess. He figured all the remaining Fedayeen must be here, lined against the walls, shooting out through portholes and doorways; one or two perhaps watching the companionway. There was no safe, careful way to take such a strong defensive position.

Come on, Kocht Dickstein had intended to spend a second or two hiding in the companionway. At any moment one of the Arabs might look up it to check. If Koch had collapsed he would have to go back up there and- Ile foghorn sounded. Dickstein jumped. He was firing before he landed. There were two men close to the foot of the ladder. He shot them first. The firing from outside went into a crescendo. Dickstein turned in a rapid half circle, dropped to one knee to make a smaller target, and sprayed the Fedayeen along the walls. Suddenly there was another gun as Ish came up from below; then Feinberg was at one door, shooting; and Dovrat, wounded, came in through another door. And then, as if by signal, they all stopped shooting, and the silence was like thunder. All the Fedayeen were dead. Dickstein, still kneeling, bowed his head in exhaustion. After a moment he stood up and looked at his men. "Where are the others?" he said. Feinberg gave him a peculiar look. "Iberes someone on the foredeck, Sapir I think." "And the rest?" "That's it," Feinberg said. "All the others are dead." Dickstein slumped against a bulkhead. "What a price," he said quietly. Looking out through the smashed porthole he saw that it was day.

Chapter Seventeen

A year earlier the BOAC jet in which Suza Ashford was serving dinner had abruptly begun to lose height for no apparent reason over the Atlantic Ocean. The pilot had switched on the seat-belt lights. Suza had walked up and down the aisle-, saying "Just a little turbulence," and helping people fasten their seat belts, all the time thinking: We're going to die, we're all going to die. She felt like that now. There had been a short message from Tyrin: Israelis atfacking-then silence. At this moment Nathaniel was being shot at. He might be wounded, he might have been captured, he might be dead; and while Suza seethed with nervous tension she had to give the radio operator the BOAC Big Smile and say, "It's quite a setup you've got here." The Karkes . radio operator was a big gray-haired man from Odessa. His name was Aleksandr, and he spoke passable English. "It cost one hundred thousand dollar," he said proudly. "You know about radioT' "A little . . . I used to be an air hostess." She had said "used to be" without forethought, and now she wondered whether that life really was gone. "I've seen the air crew using their radios. I know the basics." "Really, this is four radios," Aleksandr explained. "One picks up the Stromberg beacon. One listens to Tyrin on Coparelli. One listens to Coparelli's regular wavelength. And this one wanders. Look." He showed her a dial whose pointer moved around slowly. "It seeks a transmitter, stops when it finds one," Aleksan& sad. 'Thars incredible. Did you invent that?" "I am an operator, not inventor, sadly."

"And you can broadcast on any of the sets, just by switching to TRANsmrr?" "Yes, Morse code or speech. But of course, on this oper. ation nobody uses speech." "Did you have to go through long training to become a radio operator?" "Not long. Learning Morse is easy. But to be a shipla radionian you must know how to repair the sev, He lowered his voice. "And to be a KGB operator, you must go to spy schooL" He laughed, and Suza laughed with him, thinking: Come on, Tyrin; and then her wish was granted. The message began, Aleksandr started writing and at the Uwe time said to Suza, `fWn. Get Rostov, please." Suza left the bridge reluctantly; she wanted to know what was in the message. She hurried to the mess, expecting to find Rostov there drinking strong black coffee, but the room was empty. She went down another deck and made her way to his cabin. She knocked on the door. His voice in Russian said something which might have meant come in. . She opened the door. Rostov stood there in his short% washing in a bowl. 'Tyrin's coming through," Suza said. She tamed to leave. 'Suza. She turned back. 'What would you say if I surprised you in your underwear?" 'Td say piss off," she said. "Wait for me outside." She closed the door, thinking: Tbat's done it When he came out she said, "I'm sorry." He gave a tight smile. "I should not have been so unprofessional. Lets go." She followed him up to the radio room, which was Imme. diately below the bridge In what should have been the captain's cabin. Because of the mass of extra equipment, Aleksandr had explained, it was not possible to put the radio operator adjacent to the bridge, as was customary. Suza bad figured out for herself that this arrangement bad the additional advantage of segregating the radio from the crew when the ship carried a mixture of ordinary seamen and KGB agents.

Aleksandr had transcribed Tyrin!s signal. He banded it to Rostov, who read it in English. "Israelis have taken Coparelli. St?vmberg alongside. Dickstein alive." Suza went lunp with relief. She had to sit down. She slumped into a chair. No one noticed. Rostov was already composing his reply to Tyrin: "We will hit at Six A.M. tomorrow." The tide of relief went out for Suza and she thought: Oh, God, what do I do now?

Nat Dickstein stood in silence, wearing a borrowed seaman!s cap, as the captain of the Stromberg read the words of the service for the dead, raising his voice against the noise of wind, rain and sea. One by one the canvas-wrapped bodies were tipped over the rail into the black water: Abbas, Sharrett, Porush, Gibli, Rader, Reinez, and Jabotinsky. Seven of the twelve had died. Uranium was the most costly metal in the world. There had been another funeral earlier. Four Fedayeen had been left alive--three wounded, one who had lost his nerve find hidden-and after they had been disarmed Dickstein had allowed them to bury their dead. "Mein had been a bigger funeral-they had dropped twenty-five bodies into the sea. lbey had hurried through their ceremony under the watchful eyes,--and guns--of three surviving Israelis, who understood that this courtesy should be extended to the enemy but did not have to like it, Meanwhile, the Stromberg's captain had brought aboard all his shies papers. ne team of fitters and joiners, which had come along in case it was necessary to alter the Coparelli to match the Stromberg, was set to work repairing the battle damage. Dickstein told them to concentrate on what was visible from the deck: the rest would have to wait until they reached port. 'Mey set about filling holes, repairing furniture, and replacing panes of glass and metal fittings with spares Cannibalized from the doomed Stromberg. A painter went down a ladder to remove the name Coparelli from the bull and replace it with the stenciled letters s-T-R-o-m-B-E-R-o. When he had finished he set about painting over the repaired bulkheads and woodwork on deck. All the Copareffs life. boats, damaged beyond repair, were chopped up and thrown Over the side, and the Stromberg's boats were brought over to replace them. The new oil pump, which the Stromberg had carried on Koch's instructions, was installed in the Coparellirs engine. Work had stopped for the burial. Now, as soon as the captain had uttered the final words, it began again. Toward the end of the afternoon the engine rumbled to life. Dickstein stood on the bridge with the captain while the anchor was raised. The crew of the Strontherg quickly found their way around the new ship, which was identical to their old one. The captain set a oourse and ordered full speed ahead. It was almost over, Dickstein thought The Coparelli had disappeared: for all intents and purposes the ship in which he now sailed was the Stromberg, and the Stromberg was legally owned by Savile Shipping. Israel had her uranium, and nobody knew how she had got it. Everyone in the chain of operation was now taken care of-except Pedler, still the legal owner of the yellowcake. He was the one man who could ruin the whole scheme if he should become either curious or hostile. Papagopolous, would be handling him right now: Dickstein silently wished him luck. WeW clear," the captain said. The explosives expert in the chartroom pulled a lever on his radio detonator then everybody watched the empty Strontberg, now more than a mile away. There was a loud, dull thud, like thunder and the Stromberg seemed to sag in the middle. Her fuel tanks caught fire and the stormy evening was lit by a gout of flame reaching for the sky; Dickstein felt elation and faint anxiety at the sight of such great destruction. The Stromberg began to sink. slowly at first and then faster. Her stem went under; seconds later her bows followed; her funnel poked up above the water for a moment like the raised arm of a drowning man, and then she was gone. Dickstein smiled faintly and turned away. He beard a noise. The captain heard it too. They went to the side of the bridge and looked out, and then they understood. Down on the deck, the men were cheering.

Franz Albrecht Pedler sat in his office on the outskirts of Wiesbaden and scratched his snowy-white head. The telegram from Angeluzzi. e Bianco in Genoa, translated from the Italfan by Pedler's multilingual secretary, was perfectly plain and at the same time totally incomprehensible. It said: PLEASE ADVISE SOONEST OF NEW EXPECTED DELIVERY DATE OF YELLOWCAKE. As far as Pedler knew there was nothing wrong with the old expected delivery date, which was a couple of days away. Clearly Angeluzzi e Bianco knew something he did not. He had already wired the shippers: IS YELLOWCAKE DELAYED? He felt a little annoyed with them. Surely they should have informed him as well as the receiving company if there was a delay. But maybe the Italians had their wires crossed. Pedler had formed the opinion during the war that you could never trust Italians to do what they were told. He had thought they might be different nowadays, but perhaps they were the same. He stood at his window, watching the evening gather over his little cluster of factory buildings. He could almost wish he had not bought the uranium. The deal with the Israeli Army, all signed, sealed and delivered, would keep his company in profit for the rest of his life, and he no longer needed to speculate. . His secretary came in with the reply from the shippers, already translated: COPARELLI SOLD TO SAVILE SHIPPING OF ZURICH WHO NOW HAVE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR CARGO. WE ASSURE YOU OF COMPLETE RELIABILITY OF PURCHASERS. There followed the phone number of Savile Shipping and the words SPEAK TO PAPAGOPOLOUS. Pedler gave the telegram back to the secretary. "Would you can that number in Zurich and get this Papagopolous on the line please?" She came back a few minutes later. "PapagDpolous will call you back." Pedler looked at his watch. "I suppose I'd better wait for his call. I might as well get to the bottom of this now that I've started." Papagopolous came through ten minutes later. Pedler said to him, "Im told you are now responsible for my cargo on board the Coparelli. I've had a cable from the Italians asking for a new delivery date-is there some delay?"

"Yes, there is," Papagopolous said. "You should have been informed-I'm terribly sorry." The man spoke excellent German but it was stiff clear he was not a German. It was also clear he was not really terribly sorry. He went on, 'qbe Coparelli's oil pump broke down at sea and she is becalmed. We're making arrangements to have your cargo delivered as early as possible." "Well, what am I to say to Angeluzzi e Bianco?" "I have told them that I will let them know the new date just as soon as I know it myself," Papagopolous. said. "Please leave it to me. I will keep you both informed." "Very well. Goodbye." Odd, Pedler thought as he hung up the phone. Looking out of the window, he saw that all the workers had left. The staff car parking lot was empty. except for his Mercedes and his secretary's Volkswagen. What the hell, time to go home. He put on his coat The uranium was insured. If it was lost he would get his money back. He turned out the office lights and helped his secretary on with her coat, then he got into his car and drove home to his wife.

Stiza Ashford did not close her eyes all night Once again, Nat Dickstein's life was in danger. Once again, she was the only one who could warn him. And this time she could not deceive others into helping her. She had to do it alone. It was simple. She had to go to the Karld's radio room, get rid of Aleksandr, and call the Coparelli. ril never do it, she thought. The ship is full of KGB. Aleksandr is a big man. I want to go to sleep. Forever. It!8 impossible. I can't do it Oh, Nathaniel. At four A.M. she put on leans, a sweater, boots and an oilskin. The full bottle of vodka she had taken from the mess"to help me sleep'~-went in the inside pocket of the oilskhL She had to know the Karla!s position. She went up to the bridge. The first officer smiled at her. "Can't sleep?" he said in English, 'The suspense is too much," she told him. The BOAC Big Smile. Is your seat belt fastened, sir? Just a little turbulence, nothing to worry about. She asked the first officer, "Where are we?"

He showed her their position on the map, and the estimated position of the Copareffl. "What's that in numbersr, she said. He told her the coordinates, the course, and the speed of the Karla. She repeated the numbers once aloud and twice more in her head, trying to burn them into her brain. "It's fascinating," she said brightly. "Everyone on a ship has a special skill ... Will we reach the Coparell! on time, do you think?" "Oh, yes," he said. "Tben-boom." She looked outside. It was completely black-there were no stars and no ships' lights in sight. The weather was getting worse. "You're shivering," the lbst officer said. "Are you cold?" "Yes," she said, though it was not the weather making her shiver. "When is Colonel Rostov getting upr "He's to be called at 6." "I think I'll try to get another hour's sleep." She went down to the radio room. Aleksandr was there. "Couldn't you sleep, either?" she asked him. "No. I've sent my number two to bed." She looked over the radio equipment. "Aren't you listening to the Strvmberg anymorer, "rhe signal stopped. Either they found the beacon, or they sank the ship. We think they sank her." Suza sat down and took out the bottle of vodka. She unscrewed the cap. "Have a drink." She handed him the bottle. "Are you coldr, "A little." "Your hand is shaking." He took the bottle and put it to his lips, taking a long swallow. "Ah, thank you." He handed it back to her. Suza drank amouthful for courage. It was rough Russian vodka, and it burned her throat, but it had the desired effect. She screwed down the cap and waited for Aleksandr to turn his back to her. 'Tell me about life in England," he said conversationally. "Is it true that the poor starve while the rich get fat?" "Not ma y people starve," she said. Turn around, damn it, turn around. I can't do this facing you. "But there is great inequality." "Are there different laws for rich and poor?"

"There's a saying: 'the law forbids rich and poor alike to steal bread and sleep under bridges.' " Aleksandr laughed. "In the Soviet Union people are equal, but some have privileges. Will you live in Russia now?" 'I don't know." Suza opened the bottle and passed it to him again. He took a long swallow and gave it back. "In Russia you won't have such clothes." Ile time was passing too quickly, she had to do it now. She stood up to take the bottle. Her oilskin was open down the front. Standing before him, she tilted her head back to drink from the bottle, knowing he would stare at her breasts as they jutted out. She allowed him a good look, then shifted her grip on the bottle and brought it down as hard as she could on the top of his head. There was a sickening thud as it hit him. He stared at her dazedly. She thought: You're supposed to be knocked out! His eyes would not shut. What do I do? She hesitated, then she gritted her teeth and hit him again. His eyes closed and he slumped in the chair. Suza got hold of his feet and pulled. As he came off the chair his head hit the deck, making Suza wince, but then she thought: It's just as well, bell stay out longer. She dragged him to a cupboard. She was breathing fast, from fear as well as exertion. From her jeans pocket she took a long piece of baling twine she had picked up in the stem. She tied Aleksandr's feet, then turned him over and bound his hands behind his back. She had to get him into the cupboard. She glanced at the door. Oh, God, don't let anyone come in nowl She put his feet in, then straddled his unconscious body and tried to lift him. He was a heavy man. She got him half upright, but when she tried to shift him into the cupboard he slipped from her grasp. She got behind him to try again. She grasped him beneath the armpits and lifted. This way was better: she could lean his weight against her chest while she shifted her grip. She got him half upright again, then wrapped her arms around his chest and inched sideways. She had to go into the cupboard with him, let him go, then wriggle out from underneath him. He was in a sitting position now, his feet against one side of thecupboard, his knees bent, and his back against the opposite side. She checked his bonds: still tight. But he could still shoutl She looked about for something to stuff in his mouth to gag him. She could see nothing. She could not leave the room to search for something because he might come round in the meantime. The only thing that she could think of was her pantyhose. It seemed to take her forever to do it. She had to pull off her borrowed sea boots, take off her jeans, pull her pantyhose Off, put her jeans on, get into her boots, then crumple the nym Ion cloth into a ball and stuff it between his slack jaws. She could not close the cupboard door. "Oh, God!" she said out loud. It was Aleksandes elbow that was in the way. His bound hands rested on the floor of the cupboard, and because of his slumped position his arms were bent outward. No matter how she pushed and shoved at the door that elbow stopped it from closing. Finally she had to get back into the cupboard with him and turn, him slightly sideways so that he leaned into the comer. Now his elbow was out of the way. She looked at him a moment longer. How long did people stay knocked out? She had no idea. She knew she should hit him again, but she was afraid of killing him. She went and got the bottle, and even lifted it over her head; but at the last moment she lost her nerve, put the bottle down, and slammed the cupboard door. She looked at her wristwatch and gave a cry of dismay: it was ten minutes to live. The Coparelli would soon appear on the Karld's radar screen, and Rostov would be here, and she would have lost her chance. She sat down at the radio desk, switched the lever to TMNSMrr, selected the set that was already tuned to the Coparelli's wavelength and leaned over the microphone. "CAftg Coparelli, come in please." She waited. Nothing. "Calling Coparelli, come in please." Nothing. "Damn you to hell, Nat Dickstein, speak to me. Nathaniell"

Nat Dickstein stood in the amidships hold of the CopareHi, staring at the drums of sandy metallic ore that had cost so much. They looked nothing special-just large black oil drums with the word PLUMBAT stenciled on their sides. He would have liked to open one and feel the stuff, just to know what it was like, but the lids were heavily sealed. He felt suicidal. Instead of the elation of victory, he had only bereavement. He could not rejoice over the terrorists he had killed, he could only moum for his own dead. He went over the battle again, as he had been -doing throughout a sleepless night. If he had told Abbas to open fire as soon as he got aboard it might have distracted the Fedayeen long enough for Gibli to get over the rail without being shot. If he had gone with three men to take out the bridge with grenades at the very start of the fight the mess might have been taken earlier and lives would have been saved. If . . . but there were a hundred things he would have done differently if he bad been able to see into the future, or if he were just a wiser man. Well, Israel would now have atom bombs to protect her forever. Even that thought gave him no joy. A year ago it would have thrilled him. But a year ago he had not met Suza Ashford. He beard a noise and looked up. It sounded as if people were running around on deck. Some nautical crisis, no doubt. Suza had changed him. She had taught him to expect more out of life than victory in battle. When he had anticipated this day, when he had thought about what it would feel like to have pulled off this tremendous coup, she had always been in his daydream, waiting for him somewhere, ready to share his triumph. But she would not be there. Nobody else would do. And there was no joy in a solitary celebration. He had stared long enough. He climbed the ladder out of the hold, wondering what to do with the rest of his life. He emerged on deck. A rating peered at him. "Mr. Dicksteinr' "Yes. What do you wantT' "We've been searching the ship for you, sir . . . It's the radio, someone is calling the Coparelli. We haven't answered, sir, because we're not supposed to be the Coparelli, are we? But she says-~' "She?" "Yes, sir. She's coming over clear-speech, not Morse code. She sounds close. And she's upset. 'Speak to me, Nathaniel,' she says, stuff like that, sir."

Dickstein grabbed the rating by his pea jacket. "Nathaniel?" he shouted. "Did she say Nathaniel?" "Yes, sir, I'm sorry, if--?' But Dickstein was heading for the bridge at a run.

The voice of Nat Dickstein came over the radio: "Who Is calling Copamfli?" Suddenly Suza was speechless. Hearing his voice, after all she had been through, made her feel weak and helpleSL Who is calling Coparefli?- She found her voice. "Oh, Nat, at last." "Suza? Is that Suzar "Yes, yes." "Whom are you?" She gathered her thoughts. "I'm with David Rostov on a Russian ship called the Kar7a. Make a note of this." She gave him the position, course and speed just as the first officer had told them to her. "Tbat was at four-ten this morning. Nat, this ship is going to ram yours at six Am!' "Ram? Why? Oh, I see..." "Nat, theyll catch me at the radio any minute, what are we going to do, quickly --- r "Can you create a diversion of some kind at precisely fivethirty?99 "Diversion?" "Start a fire, shout !man overboard,' anything to keep them all very busy for a few minutes." Well-I'll try----~' "Do your best. I want them all running around, nobody quite sure what's going on or what to do-are they all KOB?" "Yes." 440kay, now--.?$ The door of the radio room opened---Suza ffipped the switch to TRANsmrr and Dickstein's voice was silenced and David Rostov walked in. He said, "Where's Aleksandr?" Suza tried to smile. "He went for coffee. Im minding the shop." "Me damn fool . His curses switched into Russian as he stormed out. Suza moved the lever to REcEm.

Nat said, "I heard that You'd better make yourself scarce until five-thirty---~" "Wait," she shouted. "What are you going to do?" "Do?" he said. "I'm coming to get you." "Oh," she said. "Ob, thank you." "I love YOU." As she switched off, Morse began to come through on another set. Tyrin would have heard every word of her conversation, and now he would be trying to warn Rostov. She had forgotten to tell Nat about Tyrin. She could try to contact Nat again, but it would be very risky~ and Tyrin would get his message through to Rostov in the time it took Nat's men to search the Coparelli, locate Tyrin and destroy his equipment. And when Tyrin's message got to Rostov, he would know Nat was coming, and he would be prepared. She had to block that message. She also had to get away. She decided to wreck the radio. How? All the wiring must be behind the panels. She would have to take a panel off. She needed a screwdriver. Quickly, quickly before Rostov gives up looking for Aleksandrl She found Aleksandes tools inacornerand picked out a small screwdriver. She undid the screws on two, corners of the panel. Impatient, she pocketed the screwdriver and forced the panel out with her hands. Inside was a mass of wires like psychedelic spaghetti. She grabbed a fistful and pulled. Nothing happened: she had pulled too many at once. She selected one, and tugged: it came out. Furiously she pulled wires until fifteen or twenty were hanging loose. Still the Morse code chattered. She poured the remains of the vodka into the innards of the radio. The Morse stopped, and every light on the panel went out. There was a thump from inside the cupboard. Aleksandr must be coming round. Well, they would know everything as soon as they saw the radio now anyway. She went out, closing the door behind her. She went down the ladder and out on the deck, trying to figure out where she could hide and what kind of diversion she could create. No point now in shouting "man overboard'~--they certainly would not believe her after what she had done to their radio and their radio operator. Ut down the anchor? She would not know where to begin. What was Rostov likely to do now? He would look for Aleksandr in the galley, the mess, and his cabin. Not finding him, he would return to the radio room, and then would start a shipwide search for her. He was a methodical man. He would start at the prow and work backward along the main deck, then send one party to search the upperworks and another to sweep below, deck by deck, starting at the top and working down. What was the lowest part of the ship? The engine room. That would have to be her biding place. She went inside and found her way to a downward companionway. She had her foot on the top rung of the ladder when she saw Rostov. And he saw her. She had no idea where her next words came from. "Aleksandr's come back to the radio room, I'll be back in a moment.tv Rostov nodded grimly, and went off in the direction of the radio room. She headed straight down through two decks and emerged into the engine room. The second engineer was on duty at night. He stared at her as she came in and approached him. I "Ms is the only warm place on the ship," she said cheer. fully. "Mind if I keep you company?" He looked mystified, and said slowly, "I cannot ... speak English.. . please." "You don't speak English?" He shook his head. "rm cold," she said, and mimed a shiver. She held her hands out toward the throbbing engine. "Okay?" He was more than happy to have this beautiful girl for ConaPanY in his engine room. "Okay," he said, nodding vigorously. He continued to stare at her, with a pleased look on his face, until it occurred to him that he should perhaps show some hospitality. He looked about, then pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered her one. I don't usually, but I think I will," she said, and took a cigarette. It had a small cardboard tube for a filter. The engineer lit it for her. She looked up at the hatch, half expecting to see Rostov. She looked at her watch. It could not be five-twenty-five alreadyl She had no time to think. Diversion, start a diversion. Shout '~man overboard," drop the anchor, light a fire- Light a fire. With what? Petrol, there must be petrol, or diesel fuel, or something, right here in the engine room. She looked over the engine. Where did the petrol come in? The thing was a mass of tubes and pipes. Concentrate, concentrate! She wished she had learned more about the enginC Of -her Car. Were boat engines the same? No, sometimes they used truck fuel. Which kind was this? It was supposed to be a fast ship, so perhaps it used petrol, she remembered vaguely that petrol engines were more expensive to run but faster. If it was a petrol engine it would be simHar to the engine of her car. Were there cables leading to spark plugs? She had changed a spark plug once. She stared. Yes, it was like her car. There were six plugs, with leads from them to a round cap like a distributor. Somewhere there had to be a carburetor. The petrol went through the carburetor. It was a small thing that sometimes got blocked- The voice-pipe barked in Russian, and the engineer walked toward it to answer. His back was to Suza. She had to do it now. There was something about the size of a coffee tin with a lid held on by a central nut. It could be the carburetor. She stretched herself across the engine and tried to undo the nut with her fingers. It would not budge. A heavy plastic pipe led into it. She grabbed it and tugged. She could not pull it out She remembered she had put AleksandesscrewMver into her oilskin pocket. She took it out and jabbed at the pipe with the sharp end. Ile plastic was thick and tough. She stabbed the screwdriver into it with all her might. It made a small cut in the surface of the pipe. She stuck the point of the screwdriver into the cut and -worked it The engineer reached the voice-pipe and spoke into it in Russian. Suza felt the screwdriver break through the plastic. She tugged it out. A spray of clear liquid jetted out of the little hole, and the air was faled with the unmistakable smell of petrol. She dropped the screwdriver and ran toward the ladder.

She heard the engineer answer yes in Russian and nod his head to a question from the voice-pipe. An order followed. The voice was angry. As she reached the foot of the ladder she looked back. The engineer's smiling face had been transformed into a mask of malice. She went up the ladder as he ran across the engine room deck after her. At the top of the ladder she turned around. She saw a pbol of petrol spreading over the deck, and the engineer stepping on the bottom rung of the ladder. In her hand she still held the cigarette he had given her. She threw it toward the engine, aimmg at the place where the petrot was squirting out of the pipe. She did not wait to see it land. She carried on up the ladder. Her head and shoulders were emerging on to the next deck when there was a loud whooosh, a bright red light from below, and a wave of scorching heat. Suza screamed as her trousers caught fire and the skm of her legs burned. She jumped the last few inches of the ladder and rolled. She beat at her trousers, then struggled out of her oilskin and managed to wrap it around her legs. The fire was killed, but the pain got worm She wanted to collapse. She knew if she lay down she would pass out and the pain would go, but she had to get away from the fire, and she had to be somewhere where Nat could find her. She forced herself to stand up. Her legs felt as if they were still burning. She looked down to see bits like burned paper falling off, and she wondered if they were bits of trouser or bits of leg. She took a step. She could walk. She staggered along the gangway. The fire alarm began to sound all over the ship. She reached the end of the gangway and leaned on the ladder. Up, she had to go up. She raised one foot, placed it on the bottom rang, and bo. San the longest climb of her life.

Chapter Eighteen

For the second time in twenty-four hours Nat Dickstein was crossing huge seas in a small boat to board a ship held by the enemy. He was dressed as before, with life jacket, oilskin, and sea boots; and armed as before with submachine gun, pistol and grenades; but this time he was alone, and he was terrified. There had been an argument aboard the Coparelli about what to do after Suza's radio message. Her dialogue with Dickstein had been listened to by the captain, Feinberg, and Ish. They had seen the jubilation in Nat's face, and they had felt entitled to argue that his judgment was being distorted by personal involvement. "It's a trap," argued Feinberg. "They can't catch us, so they want us to turn and fight." "I know Rostov," Dickstein said hotly. 'qbis is exactly how his mind works: he waits for you to make a break, then he pounces. This ramming idea has his name written an over it. Feinberg got angry. 'This isn't a game, Dickstein." "Listen, Nat," Ish said more reasonably, "let's us Oarry on and be ready to fight if and when they catch us. What have we got to gain by sending a boarding party?" "I'm not suggesting a boarding party. I'm going alone." "Don't be a damn fool," Ish said. "If you go, so do weyou can't take a ship alone." "Look," Dickstein said, trying to pacify them. "If I make it, the Karla will never catch this ship. If I don't, the rest of you can still fight when the Karla gets to you. And if the Karla really can't catch you, and it's a trap, then I'm the only one who falls into it. It's the best way." "I don't think it's the best way," Feinberg said. "Nor do I," Ish said.

Dickstein smiled. 'Vell, I do, and it's my life, and besides, I'm the senior officer here and it's my decision, so to hell with all of YOU." So he had dressed and armed himself, and the captain had abown him how to operate the launcYs radio and how to maintain an interception course with the Karla, and they had lowered the launch, and he had climbed down into it and pulled away. And he was terrified. It was impossible for him to overcome a whole boatload of KGB all on his own. However, he was not planning that. He would not fight with any of them if he could help it. He would get aboard, hide himself until Suza!s diversion began, and then look for her; and when he had found her, he would get off the Karla with her and flee. He had a small magnetic mine with him that he would fix to the Karla's side before boarding. Then, whether he managed to escape or not, whether the whole thing was a trap or genuine, the Karla would have a -hole blown in her side big enough to keep her from catching the Coparelli. He was sure it was not a trap. He knew she was.there, he knew that somehow she had been in their power and had been forced to help them, he knew she had risked her life to save his. He knew that she loved him. And that was why he was terrified. Suddenly he wanted to live. The blood-lust was gone: he was no longer interested in killing his enemies, defeating Rostov, frustrating the schemes of the Fedayeen or outwitting Egyptian Intelligence. He wanted to find Suza, and take her home and spend the rest of his life with her. He was afraid to die. He concentrated on steering his boat. Finding the Karla at night was not easy. He could keep a steady course but he bad to-estimate and make allowance for how much the wind and the waves were carrying him sideways. After fifteen minutes he knew he should have reached her, but she was nowhere to be seen. He began to zigzag in a search pattern, wondering desperately how far off course he was. He was contemplating radioing the Coparelli for a new fix when suddenly the Karla appeared out of the night alongside him. She was moving fast, faster than his launch could go, and he had to reach the ladder at her bows before she was past, and at the same time avoid a collision. He gunned the launch forward, swerved away as the Karla rolled toward him, then turned back, homing in, while she rolled the other way. He had the rope tied around his waist ready. The ladder came within reach. He flipped the engine of his launch into idle, stepped on the gunwale, and jumped. The Karla began to pitch forward as he landed on the ladder. He clung on while her prow went down into the waves. The sea came up to his waist, up to his shoulders. He took a deep breath as his head went under. He seemed to be under water forever. The Karla just kept on going down. When he felt his lungs would burst she hesitated, and at last began to come up; and that seemed to take even longer. At last he broke surface and gulped lungfuls of air. He went up the ladder a few steps, untied the rope around his waist and made it fast to the ladder, securing the boat to the Karla for his escape. ne magnetic mine was hanging from a rope across his shoulders. He took it off and slapped it on to the Karlds hull. The uranium was safe. He shed his oilskin and climbed up the ladder. The sound of the launch engine was inaudible in the noise of the wind, the sea, and the Karld's own engines, but something must have attracted the attention of the man who looked over the rail just as Dickstein came up level with the deck. For a moment the man stared at Dickstein, his face registering amazement. Then Dickstein reached out his hand for a pull as he climbed over the rail. Autornatically, with a natural instinct to help someone trying to get aboard out of the raging sea, the other man grabbed his arm. Dickstein got one leg over the rail, used his other hand to grab the outstretched arm, and threw the other man overboard and into the sea. His cry was lost in the wind. Dickstein brought the other leg over the, rail and crouched down on the deck. It seemed nobody had wen the incident. The Karla was a small ship, much smaller than the Coparelli. There was only one superstructure, located amidships, two decks high. There were no cranes. The foredeck had a big hatch over the foeard hold, but there was no aft hold: the crew accommodations and the engine room must occupy all the below-deck space aft, Dickstein concluded.

He looked at his watch. It was five-twenty-five. - Suza!s diversion should begin any moment, if she could do it. He began to walk along the deck. There was some light from the ship's lamps, but one of the crew would have to look twice at him before being sure he was not one of them. He took his knife out of the sheath at his belt: he did not want to use his gun unless he had to, for the noise would start a hue and cry. As he drew level with the superstructure a door opened, throwing a wedge of yellow light on the rain-spattered deck. He dodged around the comer, flattening himself against the foeard bulkhead. He heard two voices speaking Russian. The door slammed, and the voices receded as the men walked aft in the rain. In the lee of the superstructure he crossed to the port side and continued toward the stem. He stopped at the corner and, looking cautiously around it, saw the two men cross the afterdeck and speak to a third man in the stem. He was tempted to take all three out with a burst from his submachine gun-three men was probably one fifth of the opposition-but decided not to: it was too early, Suza!s diversion had not started and he had no idea where she was. The two men came back along the starboard deck and went inside. Dickstein walked up to the remaining man in the stem, who seemed to be on guard. The man spoke to him in Russian. Dickstein grunted something unintelligible, the man replied with a question, then Dickstein was close enough and be jumped forward and cut the man's throat. He threw the body overboard and retraced his steps. Two dead, and still they did not know he was on board. He looked at his watch. The luminous hands showed five~thirty. It was time to go inside. He opened a door and saw an empty gangway and a companionway leading up, presumably to the bridge. He climbed the ladder. Loud voices came from the bridge. As he emerged through the companionhead he saw three men-the captain, the first officer and the second sublieutenant, he guessed. The first officer was shouting into the voice-pipe. A strange noise was coming back. As Dickstein brought his gun level, the captain pulled a lever and an alarm began to sound all over the ship. Dickstein pulled the trigger. The loud chatter of the gun was partly smothered by the wailing Maxon of the fire alarm. The three men were killed where they stood. Dickstein hurried back down the ladder. The alarm must mean that Suza's diversion had started. Now all he had to do was stay alive until he found her. The companionway from the bridge met the deck at a junction of two gangways-a lateral one, which Dickstein had used, and another running the length of the superstructure. In response to the alarm, doors were opening and men emerging all down both gangways. None of them seemed to be armed: this was a fire alarm, not a call to battle stations. Dickstein decided to run a bluff, and shoot only if it failed. He proceeded briskly along the central gangway, pushing his way through the milling men, shouting, "Get out of the way" in German. They stared at him, not knowing who he was or what he was doing, except that he seemed to be in authority and there was a fire. One or two spoke to him. He ignored them. There was a rasping order from somewhere, and the men began to move purposefully. Dickstein reached the end of the gangway and was about to go down the ladder when the officer who had given the order came into sight and pointed at him, shouting a question. Dickstein dropped down. On the lower deck things were better organized. The men were running in one direction, toward the stem, and a group of three hands under the supervision of an officer was breaking out fire-fighting gear. There, in a place where the gangway widened for access to hoses, Dickstein saw something which made him temporarily unhinged, and brought a red mist of hatred to his eyes. Sm was on the floor, her back to the bulkhead. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, her trousers torn. He could see her scorched and blackened skin through the tatters. He heard Rostov's voice, shouting at her over the sound of the alarm: "What did you tell Dickstein?" Dickstein jumped from the ladder onto the deck. One of the hands moved in front of him. Dickstein knocked him to the deck with an elbow blow to the face, and jumped on Rostov. Even in his rage, he realized that he could not use the gun in this confined space while Rostov was so close to Suza. Besides, he wanted to kill the man with his hands.

He grabbed Rostov's shoulder and spun him around. Rostov saw his face. "You!" Dickstein hit him in the stomach first, a pile-driving blow that buckled him at the waist and made him gasp for air. As his head came down Dickstein brought a knee up fast and hard, snapping Rostov's chin up and breaking his jaw; then, continuing the motion, he put all his strength.behind a kick into the throat that smashed Rostov's neck and drove him backward into the bulkhead. Before Rostov had completed his fall Dickstein turned quickly around, went down on one knee to bring his machine gun off his shoulder, and with Suza behind him and to one side opened fire on three hands who appeared in the gangway. He turned again, picking Suza up in a fireman's lift, trying not to touch her charred flesh. He had a moment to think, now. Clearly the fire was in the stern, the direction in which all the men had been running. If he went forward now he was less likely to be seen. He ran the length of the gangway, then carried her up the ladder. He could tell by the feel of her body on his shoulder -that she was still conscious. He came off the top of the ladder to the main deck level, found a door and stepped out. There was some confusion out on deck. A man ran past him, heading for the stem; another ran off in the opposite direction. Somebody was in the prow. Down in the stem a man lay on the deck with two others bending over him; presumably he had been injured in the fire. Dickstein ran forward to the ladder that he had used to board. He eased. his gtm on to his shoulder, shifted Suza a little on the other shoulder, and stepped over the rail. Looking about the deck as he started to go down, he knew that they had seen him. It was one thing tp see a strange face on board ship, wonder who he was, and delay asking questions until later because there was a fire alarm: but it was quite another to see someone leaving the ship with a body over his shoulder. He was not quite halfway down the ladder when they began to shoot at him. A bullet pinged off the hull beside his head. He looked Up to see three men leaning over the rail, two of them with pistols. Holding on to the ladder with his left hand, he put his right hand to his gun, pointed up and fired. His aim was hopeless but the men pulled back. And he lost his balance. As the prow of the ship pitched up, he swayed to the left, dropped his gun into the sea and grabbed hold of the ladder with his right hand. His right foot slipped off the rung-and then, to his horror, Suza began to slip from his left shoulder. "Hold on to me," he yelled at her no longer sure whether she was conscious or not. He felt her hands clutch at his sweater, but she continued to slip away, and now her unbalanced weight was pulling him even more to the left. "Not" he yelled. She slipped off his shoulder and went plunging into the sea. I)ickstein turned, saw the launch, and jumped, landing with a jarning shock in the well of the boat He called her name into, the black sea all around him, swinging from one side of the boat.to the other, his desperation increasing with every second she failed to surface. And then he heard, over the noise of the wind, a scream. Turning toward the sound he saw her head just above the surface, between the side of the boat and the bull of the Karla. She was out of his reach. She screamed again. The launch was tied to the Karla by the rope, most of which was piled on the deck of the boat. Dickstein cut the rope with his knife, letting go of the end that was tied to the Karta's ladder and taowing the other end toward Suza. As she reached for the rope the sea rose again and engulfed her. Up on the deck of the Karla they started shooting over the rail again. He ignored the gunfire. Dickstein's eyes swept the sea. With the ship and the boat pitching and rolling in different directions the chances of a hit were relatively slim. After a few seconds that seemed hours, Suza surfaced again. Dickstein threw her the rope. This time she was able to grab it. Swiftly he pulled it, bringing her closer and closer until he was able to lean over the. gunwale of the launch perilously and take hold of her wrists. He had her now, and he would never let her go. He pulled her into the well of the launch. Up above a machine gun opened fire. Dickstein threw the launch Into gear then fell on top of Suza, covering her body with his own. The launch moved away from the Karla, undirected, riding the waves like a lost surfboard. The shooting stopped. Dickstein looked back. The Karla was out of sight. Gently he turned Suza over, fearing for her life. Her eyes were closed. He took the wheel of the launch, looked at the compass, and set an approximate course. He turned on the boalVs radio and called the Coparelli. Waiting for them to come in, he lifted Suza toward him and cradled her in his arms. A muffled thud came across the water like a distant explosion: the magnetic mine. Ile Coparelli replied. Dickstein said, "The Karla is on fire. Turn back and pick me up. Have the sick bay ready for the girl--shes badly burned." He waited for their acknowledgment, then switched off and stared at Suza!s expressionless face. "Don!t die," he said. "Please don!t die." She opened her eyes and looked up at him. She opened her mouth, struggling to speak. He bent his head to her. She said, "Is it really you?" "It's me," he said. The comers of her mouth lifted in a faint smile.

There was the sound of a tremendous explosion. The fire had reached the fuel tanks of the Karla. The sky was lit up for several moments by a sheet of flame, the air was filled with a roaring noise, and the rain stopped. The noise and the light died, and so did the Karla. "Shes gone down," Dickstein said to Suza. He looked at her. Her eyes were closed, she was unconscious again, but she was still smiling.

*

Epilogue

Nathaniel Dickstein resigned from the Mossad, and his name passed into legend. He married Suza and took her back to the kibbutz, where they tended grapes by day and made love half the night. In his spare time he organized a political campaign to have the laws changed so that his children could be classified Jewish; or, better still, to abolish classification. They did not have children for a while. 'Mey were prepared to wait: Suza was young, and he was in no hurry. Her bums never healed completely. Sometimes, in bed, she would say, "My legs are horrible," and he would kiss her knees and tell her, "neyre beautiful, they saved my life." When the opening of the Yom Kippur War took the Israeli armed forces by surprise, Pierre Borg was blamed for the lack of advance intelligence, and he resigned. The truth was more complicated. Ile fault lay with a Russian intelligence officer called David Rostov-an elderly-looking man who had to wear a neck brace every moment of his life. He had gone to Cairo and, beginning with the interrogation and death of an Israeli agent called Towfik early in 1968, he had investigated all the events of that year and concluded that Kawash was a double agent. Instead of having Kawash tried and hanged for espionage, Rostov had told the Egyptians how to feed him misinformation, which Kawash, in all innocence, duty passed on to Pierre Borg. Ile result was that Nat Dickstein came out of retirement to take over Pierre Borg's job for the duration of the war. On Monday, October 8, 1973, he attended a crisis meeting of the Cabinet. After three days of war the Israelis were in deep trouble, The Egyptians bad crossed the Suez Canal and pushed the Israelis back into Sinai with heavy casualties. On the other front, the Golan Heights, the Syrians were pushing forward, again with heavy losses to the Israeli side. The proposal before the Cabinet was to drop atom bombs on Cairo and Damascus. Not even the most hawkish ministers actually relished the idea; but the situation was desperate and the Americans were dragging their heels over the arms airlift which might save the day. The meeting was coming around to accepting the idea of using nuclear weapons when Nat Dickstein made his only contribution to the discussion: "Of course, we could tell the Americans that we plan to drop these bombs--on Wednesday, say-unless they start the airlift immediately . And that is exactly what they did.

'The airlift turned the tide of the war, and later a similar crisis meeting took place in Cairo. Once again, nobody was in favor of nuclear war in the Middle East; once again, the politicians gathered around the table began to persuade one another that therr, was no alternative; and once again, the proposal was stopped by an unexpected contribution. This time it was the military that stepped in. Knowing of the proposal that would be before the assembled presidents, they had run checks on their nuclear strike force in readiness for a positive decision; and they had found that all the plutonimn in the bombs had been taken out and replaced with iron filings. It was assumed that the Russians had done this, as they had mysteriously rendered unworkable the nuclear reactor in Qattara, before being expelled from Egypt in 1972. That night, one of the presidents talked to his wife for five minutes before falling asleep in his chair. "It!s an over," he told her. "Israel has won-permanently. They have the bomb, and we do not, and that single fact will determine the course of history in our region for the rest of the century." 'Vhat about the Palestine refugees?" his wife said. The president shrugged and began to light his last pipe of the day. "I remember reading a story in the London Times ... this must be five years ago, I suppose. It said that the Free Wales Army had put a bomb in the police station in Cardiff." "Wales?" said his wife. "Where is Wales?" "It is a part of England, more or less." "I remember," she said. "They have coal mines and choirs!, "Mars right. Have you any-idea how long ago the AngloSaxons conquered the Welsh?" "'None at all. "Nor have I, but it must be more than a thousand years ago, because the Norman French conquered the Anglo-Saxons nine hundred years ago. You see? A thousand years, and they are still bombing police stationsl The Palestinians will be like the Welsh ... They can bomb Israel for a thousand years, but they will always be the losers." His wife looked up at him. All these years they had been together, and still he was capable of surprising her. She.had thought she would never hear words like this from him. "I will tell you something else," he went on. 'Mere will have to be peace. We cannot possibly win, now, so we will have to make peace. Not now; perhaps not for five or ten years. But the time will come, and then I will have to go to Jenisalem and say, 'No more war.' I may even get some credit for it, when the dust settles. It is not how I planned to go down in history, but it's not such a bad way, for all that. 'Me man who brought peace to the Middle East.' What would you say to that?" His wife got up from her chair and came across to hold his bands. There were tears in her eyes. "I would give thanks to God,- she said.

Franz Albrecht Pedler died in 1974. He died content. ITh life had seen some ups and downs-he had, after all, lived through the most ignominious period in the history of his nation--but he had survived and ended his days happily. He had guessed what had happened to the uranium. One day early in 1969 his company had received a check for two million dollars, signed by A. Papagopolous, with a statement from Savile Shipping which read: 'To lost cargo." The next day a representative of the Israeli Army had called, bringing the payment for the first shipment of cleaning materials. As he left, the army man had said, "on the matter of your lost cargo, we would be happy if you were not to pursue any further Inquiries!' Pedler began to understand then. "But what if Euratom asks me questionsT' 'Tell them the truth," the man said. "Me cargo was lost, and when you tried to discover what had ha~pened to it, you found that Savile Shipping had gone out of business." "Have they?" They have." And that was what Pedler told Euratom. They sent an investigator to see him, and he repeated his story, which was completely true if not truly complete. He said to the investigator, "I suppose there will be publicity about all this soon." "I doubt it," the investigator told him. "It reflects badly on UL I don't suppose we'll broadcast the story unless we get more information." They did not get more information, of course; at least, not in Pedlees lifetime.

On Yom Kippur in 1974 Suza Dickstein went into labor. In accordance with the custom of this particular kibbutz, the baby was delivered by its father, with a midwife standing by to give advice and encouragement. The baby was small, like both parents. As soon as its head emerged it opened its mouth and cried. Dickstein's vision became watery and blurred. He held the baby's head, checked that the cord was not around its neck, and said, "Almost there, Suza." Suza gave one more heave, and the baby's shoulders were born, and after that it was all downhill. Dickstein tied the cord in two places and cut it, then-again in accordance with the local custom-he put the baby in the mother's arms. "Is it all rightr' she said. "Perfect," said the midwife, "What is itT' Dickstein said, "Oh, God, I didift even look . . . Ws a boy." A little later Suza said, "What shall we call him? Nathaniel?" "rd like to call him Towfik," Dickstein said. "Towfik? Isn't that an Arab name?" 'Yes. "Why? Why Towfik?" "Well," he said, "thatts a long story."

Postscript

From the London Daily Telegraph of May 7, 1977:

ISRAEL SUSPECTED OF HIJACKING SHIP WITH URANIUM by Henry Miller in New York

Israel is believed to have been behind the disappearance from the high seas nine years ago of a uranium shipment large enough to build 30 nuclear weapons, it was disclosed yesterday. Officials say that the incident was "a real James Bond affair" and that although intelligence agencies in four countries investigated the mystery, it was never determined what had actually happened to the 200 tons of uranium ore that vanished . . . -Quoted by permission of The Daily Telegraph, Ltd.