Triple (1991)

by Ken Follett

  Five and Twenty, both of you listen to me'. Do not follow. Have you got that-Five? Yes. Twenty? Tyrin said, "Understood." He stopped walking. and stood on the comer watching Meier and Dickstein disappear in the direction of Chelsea. Twenty, go back into the hotel. Get his room number. Book a room close to his. Call nte on the telephone as soon as it's done. "Understood." Tyrin turned back, rehearsing his dialogue: Excuse me, the fellow that just walked out of here, short an with glasses, I think I know him but he got into a cab before I could catch up with him ... his name is John but we all used to call him Jack, what room . . . ? As it turned out, none of that was necessary. Dickstein's key was still on the desk. Tyrin memorized the number. The desk clerk came over. "Can I help your, "I'd Eke a room," Tyrin said.

  He kissed her, and he was like a man who has been thirsty all day. He savored the smell of her skin and the soft motions of her lips. He touched her face and said, I'Ms, this, this is what I need." They stared into each other's eyes, and the truth between them was like nakedness. He thought: I can do anything I want. The idea ran through his mind again and again like an incantation, a magic spell. He touched her body greedily. He stood face to face with her in the little blueand-yellow kitchen, looking into her eyes while he fingered the secret places of her body. Her red mouth opened a fraction and he felt her breath coming faster and hot on his face; he inhaled deeply so as to breathe the air from her. He thought: If I can do anything I want, so can she; and, as if she had read his mind, she opened his shirt, and bent to his chest, and took his nipple between her teeth, and sucked. The sudden, astonishing pleasure of it made him gasp aloud. He held her head gently in his hands and rocked to and fro a little to intensify the sensation. He thought: Anything I wantl He reached behind her, lifted her skirt, and feasted his eyes on the white panties clinging to her curves and contrasting with the brown, skin of her long legs. His right hand stroked her face and gripped her shoulder and weighed her breasts, his left hand moved over her hips and inside her panties and between her legs; and everything felt so good, so good, that he wished he had four hands to feel her with, six. Then, suddenly, he wanted to we her face, so he gripped her shoulder and made her stand upright, saying, "I want to look at you." Her eyes filled with tears, and he knew that these were sips not of sadness but of intense pleasure. Again they stared into each other's eyes, and this time it was not just truth between them but raw emotion gushing ft-om one to another in rivers, in torrents. Then he knelt at her feet like a supplicant First he lay his head on her thighs, feeling the heat of her body through her clothing Then he reached beneath her skirt with both hands, found the waist of her panties, and drew them down slowly, holding the shoes on her feet as she stepped out He got up from the floor. 'They were still standing on the spot where they had kissed when he had first come into the room. Just there, standing up, they began to make love. He watched her face. She looked peaceful, and her eyes were half closed. He wanted to do this, moving slowly, for a long time: but his body would not wait. He was compelled to thrust harder and faster. He felt himself losing his balance, so he put both arms around her, lifted her an inch off the floor, and without withdrawing from her body moved two paces so that her back was against the wall. She pulled his shirt out of his waistband and dug her fingers into the hard muscles of his back. He linked his hands beneath her buttocks and took her weight. She lifted her legs high, her thighs gripping his hips, her ankles crossed behind his back, and, incredibly, he seemed to penetrate even deeper inside her. He felt he was being wound up like a clockwork motor, and everything she did, every look on her face, tightened the spring. He watched her through a haze of lust. Them came into her eyes an ex pression of something like panic; a wild, wide-eyed animal emotion; and it pushed him over the edge, so that he knew that it was coming, the beautiful thing was going to happen now, and he wanted to tell her, so he said, "Suza, here it comes," andshe said, "Oh, and me," and she dug her nails into the skin of his back and drew them down his spine in a long sharp tear which went through him like an electric shock and he felt the earthquake in her body just as his own erupt ed and he was still looking at her and he saw her mouth open wide, wide as she drew breath and the peak of delight overtook them both and she screamed.

  "We follow the Israelis and the Israelis follow Dickstein. All it needs is for Dickstein to start following us and we can all go around in a circle for the rest of the day," Rostov said. He strode down the hotel corridor. Tyrin hurried beside him, his short plump legs almost running to keep up. Tyrin said, "I was wondering what, exactly, was your thinking in abandoning the surveillance as soon as we saw him? "It's obvious," Rostov said irritably; then he reminded himself -that Tyrin's loyalty was valuable, and he decided to explain. "Dicksteia has been under surveillance a great deal during the last few weeks. Each time he has eventually spotted us and thrown us off. Now a certain amount of surveillance is inevitable for someone who has been in the game as long as Dickstein. But on a particular operation, the more he is followed the more likely he is to abandon what he's doing and hand it over to someone els&-and we might not know who. All too often the information we pin by following someone is canceled out because they discover that we're following them and therefore they know that we've got the information in question. This way-by abandoning the surveillance as we have done today-we know where he is but he doesn't know we know." "I see," said Tyrin. "Hell spot those Israelis in no time at all," Rostov added. "He must be hypersensitive by now." "Why do you suppose they're following their own man?" "I really can't understand that." Rostov frowned, thinking aloud. -rm sure Dickstein met Borg this morning-which would explain why Borg threw off his tail with that tax! maneuver. it's possible Borg puffed Dickstein out and now he's simply checking that Dickstein really does come out, and doesn't try to carry on unofficially." He shook his head, a gesture of frustration. 'That doesn't convince me. But the alternative is that Borg doesn't trust Dickstein anymore, and I find that unlikely, too. Careful, now." They were at the door to Dickstein's hotel room. TYrin took out a small, powerful flashlight and shone it around the edges of the door. "No telltales," he said.

  Rostov nodded, waiting. This was Tyrin!s province. The little round man was the best general technician in the KGB, in Rostov's opinion. He watched as Tyrin took from his pocket a skeleton key, one of a large collection of such keys that he had. By tying several on the door of his own room here, he had already established which one fitted the locks of the Jacobean Hotel. He opened Dickstein's door slowly and stayed outside, looking in. "No booby traps," be said after a minute. He stepped inside and Rostov followed, closing the door. This part of the game gave Rostov no pleasure at all. He liked to watch, to speculate, to plot: burglary was not his style. He felt exposed and vulnerable. If a maid should come in now, or the hotel manager, or even Dickstein who might evade the sentry in the lobby . . . it would be so undignified, so humiliating. 'Let's make it fast," he said. The room was laid out according to the standard plan: the door opened into a little passage with the bathroom on one side and. the wardrobe opposite. Beyond the bathroom the room was square, with the single bed against one wall and the television set against tke other. There was a large window in the exterior wall opposite the door. Tyrin picked up the phone and began to unscrew the mouthpiece. Rostov stood at the foot of the bed, looking around, ft*g to get an impression of the man who was staying in this room. There was not much to go on. TIle room had been cleaned and the bed made. On the bedside table were a book of chew problems and an evening newspaper. There were no signs of tobacco or alcohol. The wastepaper basket was empty. A small black vinyl suitcase on a stool contained clean underwear and one clean shirt. Rostov muttered. "Me man travels with one spare shirtl" The drawers of the dresser were empty Rostov looked into the bathroom. He saw a toothbrush, a rechargeable electric shaver with spare plugs for different kinds of electrical outlets, and-the only personal touch-a pack of indigestion tablets. Rostov went back into the bedroom, where Tyrin was reassembling the telephone. "Its done." "Put on
e behind the headboard," Rostov said. Tyrin was taping a bug to the wall behind the bed when the phone rang. If Dickstein returned the sentry in the lobby was to call Dickstein's room on the house phone, let it ring twice, then hang up. It rang a second time. Rostov and Tyrin stood still, silent waiting. It rang They rel ed. It stopped after the seventh ring. Rostov said, "I wish he had a car for us to bug." "I've got a shirt button." 'NVhat?" "A bug like a shirt button." "I didn't know such things existed." That's new. "Got a needle? And thread?" "Of course." 'Then go ahead." Tyrin went to Dickstein's case and without taking the shirt out snipped off the second button, carefully removing all the loose thread. With a few swift strokes he sewed on the new button. His pudgy hands were surprisingly dexterous. Rostov watched but his thoughts were elsewhere. He wanted desperately to do more to ensure that he would hear what Dickstein said and did. The Israeli might find the bugs in the phone and the headboard; he would not wear the bugged shirt all the time. Rostov liked to be sure of things, and Dickstein was maddeningly slippery: there was nowhere you could hook on to him Rostov had harbored a faint hope that somewhere in this room there would be a photograph of someone Dickstein loved. "There." Tyrin showed him his handiwork. The shirt was plain white nylon with the commonest sort of white button. The new one was indistinguishable from the others. "Good," Rostov said. "Close the case." Tyrin did so. "Anything else?" "Take another quick look around for telltales. I can't believe Dickstein would go out without taking any precautions at all." They searched again, quickly, silently, their movements practiced and economical, showing no signs of the haste they both felt. There were dozens of ways of planting telitales. A hair lightly stuck across the crack of the door was the most simple; a scrap of paper jammed against the back of a drawer would fall out when the drawer was opened; a lump of sugar,under a thick carpet would be silently crushed by a footstep; a penny behind the lining of a suitcase Rd would slide from front to back if the case were opened They found nothing. Rostov said, "All Israelis are paranoid. Why should he be different?" "Maybe hes been pulled out." Rostov grunted. "Why else would he suddenly get carelessT, "He could have fallen in love," Tyrin suggested. Rostov laughed. "Sure," he said. "And Joe Stalin could have been canonized by the Vatican. Lets get out of here." He went out, and Tyrin followed, closing the door softly behind him.

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