Triple (1991)

by Ken Follett

  'Me Arabs have equal rights." Dickstein smiled mirtblessly. "You!re so fucking naive." "Llstenr' Borg made an effort at self-control. Dickstein understood his anger: it was a reaction he had in common with many Lu-aea They thought that if these liberal ideas should ever take hold, they would be the thin edge of the wedge, and concession would follow concession until the land was handed back to the Arabs on a plate-and that prospect struck at the very roots of their identity. "Listen," Borg said again. "Maybe we should sell our birthright for a mess of potage. But this is the real world, and the people of this country won't vote for peace-at-any-price; and in your heart you know that the Arabs aren't in any great hurry for peace either. So, in the real world, we still have to fight them; and if we're going to fight them we'd better win; and if we're to be sure of winning, you'd better steal us some uranium." Dickstein said, "Me thing I dislike most about you though you're usually right." Borg wound down his window and threw away the stub of his cigar. It made a trail of sparks on the road, like a firecracker. The lights of Tel Aviv became visible ahead: they were almost them Borg said, "You know, with most of my people I don!t feel obliged to argue politics every time I give them an assignment. They just take orders, like operatives are supposed to." "I don't believe you," Dickstein said. "116 is a nation of idealists, or it!s nothing." "Maybe." "I once knew a man called Wolfgang. He used to say, 'I just take orders.'Then he used to break my leg." "Yeah," Borg said. "You told me."

  When a company hires an accountant to keep the books, the first thing he does is announce that he has so much work to do on the overall direction of the company's financial policy that he needs to hire a junior accountant to keep the books. Something similar happens with spies. A country sets up an intelligence service to find out how many tanks its neighbor has and where they are kept, and before you can say MI5 the intelligence service announces that it is so busy spying on subversive elements at home that a separate service is needed to deal with military intelligence. So it was in Egypt in 1955. The country's fledgling intelllgence service was divided into two directorates. Military Intelligence had the job of counting Israel's tanks; General Investigations had all the glamor. The man in charge of both these directorates was called the Director of General Intelligence, just to be confusing; and he was supposed-in theory-to report to the Minister of the Interior. But another thing that always happens to spy departments is that the Head of State tries to take them over. There am two reasons for this. One is that the spies are continually hatching lunatic schemes of murder, blackmail and invasion which can be terribly embarrassing if they ever get off the ground, so. Presidents and Prime Ministers like to keep a personal eye on such departments. The other reason is that intelligence services are a source of power, especially in unstable countries, and the Head of State wants that power for himselL So the Director of General Intelligence in Cairo always, in practice, reported either to the President or to the Minister of State at the Presidency. Kawash, the tall Arab who interrogated and killed Towfik and subsequently gave the personnel dosimeter to Pierre Borg, worked in the Directorate of General Investigations, the glamorous civilian half of the service. He was an intenigent and dignified man of great integrity, but he was also deeply religious,--to the point of mysticism. His was the solid, powerful kind of mysticism which could support the most unlikely-not to say bizarre--beliefs about the real world. He adhered to a brand of Christianity which held that the return of the Jews to the Promised Land was ordained in the Bible, and was a portent of the end of the world. To work against the return was therefore a sin; to work for it, a holy task. This was why Kawash was a double agent. The work was all he had. His faith had led him into the secret life, and there he had gradually cut himself off from friends, neighbors, and-with exceptions-family. He had no personal ambitions except to go to heaven. He lived ascetically, his only earthly pleasure being to score points in the espionage game. He was a lot like Pierre Borg, with this difference: Kawash was happy. At present, though, he was troubled. So far be was losing points in the affair which had begun with Professor Schulz, and this depressed him. The problem was that the Qattara project was being run not by General Investigations but by the other half of the intelligence effort-Military Intelligence. However, Kawash had fasted and meditated, and in the long watches of the night he had developed a scheme for penetrating the secret project He had a second cousin, Assam, who worked in the office of the Director of General Intelligence-the body which coordinated Military Intelligence and General Investigations. Assam was mom senior than Kawash, but Kawash was smarter. Ile two cousins sat in the back room of a small, dirty coffee house near the Sherif Pasha in the heat of the day, drinking lukewarm lime cordial and blowing tobacco smoke at the fUe& They looked alike in their lightweight suits and Nasser mustaches. Kawash wanted to use Assam to find out about Qattara. He had devised a plausible line of approach which he thought Assam would go for, but he knew he had to put the matter very delicately in order to win Assam's support. He appeared his usual imperturbable self, despite the anxiety he felt inside. He began by seeming to be very direct. "My cousin, do you know what is happening at Qattara?" A rather furtive look came over Assam's handsome face. "If you don't know, I can't tell you." Kawash shook his head, as it Assam had misunderstood him. "I don't want you to reveal secrets. Besides, I can guess what the project is." This was a Ile. "What bothers me is that Maraji has control of it." "For your sake. Im thinking of your career." -rm not worried---~' 'Then you should be. Maraji wants your job, you must know that." The Wit proprietor brought a dish of olives and two flat loaves of pita bread. Kawash was silent until he went on. He watched Assam as the man's natural insecurity fed on the lie about MamjL Kawash continued, "Maraji is reporting directly to the Minister, I gather." "I see all the documents, though," Assam said defensively.

  "You don't know what he is saying privately to the Minister. He is in a very strong position." Assam frowned. "How did you find out about the project, anyway? Kawash leaned back against the cool concrete wall. "One of Maraji's men was doing a bodyguarding job in Cairo and realized he was being followed. The tail was an Israeli agent called Towfik. Maraji doesn!t have any field men in the city, so the bodyguard's request for action was passed to me. I picked Towfik up." Assam snorted with disgust. "Bad enough to let himself be followed. Worse to call the wrong department for help. This is terrible." "Perhaps we can do something about it, my cousin." Assam scratched his nose with a hand heavy with rings. "Go on." 'Tell the Director about Towfik. Say that Maraji, for all his considerable talents, makes mistakes in picking his men, because he is young and inexperienced by comparison with someone such as yourself. Insist that you should have charge of personnel for the Qattara project. Then put a man loyal to us into a job there." Assam nodded slowly. "I see." The taste of success was in Kawash's mouth. He leaned forward. "Me Director will be grateful to you for having discovered this area of slackness in a top-security matter. And you will be able to keep track of everything Maraji does." 'This is a very good plan," Assam said. "I will speak to the Director today. I'm grateful to you, cousin." Kawash had one more thing to say-the most important thing-and he wanted to say it at the best possible moment. It would wait a few minutes, he decided. He stood up and said, "Haven't you always been my patron?" They went arm-in-arm out into the heat of the city. Assam said, "And I will find a suitable man immediately." "Ali, yes," Kawash said, as if that reminded him of another small detail. "I have a man who would be ideal. He is intelligent, resourceful,' and very discreet-and the son of my late wife's brother." Assam's eyes narrowed. "So he would report to you, too." Kawash looked hurt. "If this is too much for me to ask He spread his hands in a gesture of resignation.

  "No," Assam said. "We have always helped one another." They reached the comer where they parted company. Kawash struggled to keep his feeling of triumph from showing in his face. "I will send the man to see you. You will find him completely reliable." "So be it," said Assam.

  Pierre Borg had known Nat Dickstein for twent
y years. Back in 1948 Borg had been sure the boy was not agent material, despite that stroke with the boatload of rifles. He had been thin, pale, awkward, unprepossessing. But it had not been Borg's decision, and they had given Dickstein a trial. Borg had rapidly come to acknowledge that the kid might not look like much but he was smart as shit. He also had an odd charm that Borg never understood. Some of the women in the Mossad were crazy about him-while others, like Borg, failed to see the attraction. Dickstein showed no interest either way--.his dossier said, "Sex life: none." Over the years Dickstein had grown in skill and confidence, and now Borg would rely on him more than any other agent. Indeed, if Dickstein had been more personally ambitious he could have had the job Borg now held. Nevertheless, Borg did not see how Dickstein could fulfill his brief. The result of the policy debate over nuclear weapons had been one of those asinine political compromises which bedeviled the work of all civil servants: they bad agreed to steal the uranium only if it could be done in such a way that nobody would know, at least for many years, that Israel had been the thief. Borg had fought the decision-he had been all for a sudden, swift piece of buccaneering and to hell with the consequences. A more judicious view had prevailed in the Cabinet; but it was Borg and his team who had to put the decision into effect. There were other men in the Mossad who could carry out ibed scheme as well as Dickstein-Mike, the head of a prescri Special Operations, was one, and Borg himself was another. But there was nobody else to whom Borg could say, as he had said to Dickstein: This is the problern--go solve it. The two men spent a day in a Mossad safe house in the town of Ramat Gan, just outside Tel Aviv. Security-vetted Mossad employees made coffee, served meals, and patrolled thegarden with revolvers under their jackets. In the morning

  Dickstein saw a young physics teacher from the Weizmann Institute at Rehovot. The scientist had long hair and a flowered tie., and he explamed the chemistry of uranium, the natm of radioactivity and the working of an atomic pile with limpid clarity and endless patience. After lunch Dickstein talked to an administrator from Dimona about uranium mines, enrichment plants, fuel fabrication works, storage and transport; about safety rules and international regulations; and about the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and Euratom. In the evening Borg and Dickstein had dinner together. Borg was on a halfhearted diet, as usual: he ate no bread with his skewered lamb and salad, but he drank most of the bottle of red Israeli wine. His excuse was that he was calming his nerves so that he would not reveal his anxiety to Dickstein. After dinner he gave Dickstein three keys. "There are spare identities for you in safety-deposit boxes in London, Brussels and Zurich," he said. "Passports, driving licenses, cash and a weapon in each. If you have to switch, leave the old documents in the box." Dickstein nodded. "Do I report to you or Mike?" Borg thought: You never report anyway, you bastard. He said, 'To me, please, Whenever possible, call me direct and use the jargon. If you can't reach me, contact any embassy and use the code for a meeting-III try to get to you, wherever you are. As a last resort, send coded letters via the diplomatic bags." Dickstein nodded expressionlessly: all this was routine. Borg stared at him, trying to read his mind. How did he feel? Did he think he could do it? Did he have any ideas? Did he plan to go through the motions of trying it and then report that it was impossible? Was he really convinced the bomb was the right thing for Israel? Borg could have asked, but he would have got no answers. Dickstein said, "Presumably there's a deadline." "Yes, but we don't know what it is." Borg began to pick onions out of the remains of the salad. "We must have our bomb before the Egyptians get theirs. That means your uranium has to go on stream in the reactor before the Egyptian reactor goes operational. After that point, everything is so TPJPLE

  chemistry-theres nothing either side can do to hurry subatomic particles. The first to start win be the first to finish." 'Ve need an agent in Qattara," Dickstein said. "I'm working on it." Dickstein nodded. "We must have a very good man in Cairo." This was not what Borg wanted to talk about. "What are you trying to do, pump me for information?" he said crossly. "Thinking aloud." There was silence for a few moments. Borg crunched some more onions. At last he said, "I've told you what I want, but I've left to you all the decisions about how to get it." "Yes, you have, haven't you." Dickstein stood up. "I think IT go to bed." "Have you got any idea where you're going to start?" Dickstein said, "Yes, I have. Goodnight."

  Chapter Three

  Nat Dickstein never got used to being a secret agent It was the continual deceit that bothered him. He was always lying to people, biding, pretending to be someone he was not, surreptitiously following people and showing false documents to officials at airports. He never ceased to worry about being found out He had a daytime nightmare in which he was surrounded suddenly by policemen who shouted, "You're a spyl You're a spyl" and took him off to prison where they broke his leg. He was uneasy now. He was at the Jean-Monnet building in Luxembourg, on the Kirchberg Plateau across a narrow river valley from the hilltop city. He sat in the entrance to the offices of the Euratom Safeguards Directorate, memorizing the faces of the employees as they arrived at work. He was waiting to see a press officer called Pfaffer but he had intentionally come much too early. He was looking for weakness. The disadvantage of this ploy was that all the staff got to see his face, too; but he had no time for subtle precautions. Pfaffer turned out to be an untidy young man with an expression of disapproval and a battered brown briefcase. Dickstein followed him into an equally untidy office and accepted his offer of coffee. They spoke French. Dickstein was accredited to the Paris office of an obscure journal called Science International. He told Pfaffer that it was his ambition to get a job on Scientific A merican Pfaffer asked him, "Exactly what are you writing about at the moment?" I "The article is called 'MUF."' Dickstein explained in English, "Material Unaccounted For." He went on, "In the United States radioactive fuel is continually getting lost Here in Europe, I'm told, there's an international system for keeping track of all such material." "Correct," Pfaffer said. "The member countries hand over control of fissile substances to Euratom. We have, first of all, a complete list of civilian establishments where stocks are hold-from mines through preparation and fabrication plants, stores, and reactors, to reprocessing plants." "You said civilian establishments." "Yes. The military are outside our scope." "Go on." Dickstein. was relieved to get Pfaffer talking before the press officer had a chance to realize how limited was Dickstein's knowledge of these subjects. "As an example," Pfaffer continued, "take a factory making fuel elements from ordinary yellowcake. The raw material coming into the factory is weighed and analyzed by Euratom. inspectors. Their findings are programmed into the Euratom computer and checked against the information from the inspectors at the dispatching installation-in this case, probably a uranium mine. If there is a discrepancy between the quantity that left the dispatching installation and the quantity that arrived at the factory, the computer will say so. Similar measurements are made of the material leaving the factory--quantity and quality. These figures will in turn be checked against information supplied by inspectors at the premises where the fuel is to be used-a nuclear power station, probably. In addition, all waste at the factory is weighed and analyzed. "This process of inspection and double-checking is carried on up to and including the final disposal of radioactive wastes. Finally, stocktaking is done at least twice a year at the factory." "I see." Dickstein looked impressed and felt desperately discouraged. No doubt Pfaffer was exaggerating the efficiency of the system-but even if they made half the checks they were supposed to, how could anyone spirit away one hundred tons of yellowcake without their computers noticing? To keep Pfaffer talking, he said, "So, at any given moment, your computer knows the location of every scrap of uranium in Europe. "Within the member countries-France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. And Ws not just uranium, ifs all radioactive material."