by Ken Follett
Life at sea was uncomfortable, but it was not as bad as Pyotr Tyrin had expected. In the Soviet Navy, ships had been run on the principles of unremitting hard work, harsh discipline and bad food. The Coparelli was very different. Tte captain, Eriksen, asked only for safety and good seamanship, and even there his standards were not remarkably high. The deck was swabbed occasionally, but nothing was ever polished or painted. The food was quite good, and Tyrin had the advantage of sharing a cabin with the cook. In theory Tyrin could be called upon at any hour of the day or night to send radio signals, but in practice all the traffic occurred during the normal working day so he even got his eight hours sleep every night. It was a comfortable regimen, and Pyotr Tyrin was concerned about comfort. Sadly, the ship was the opposite of comfortable. She was a bitch. As soon as they rounded Cape Wrath and left The Minch and the North Sea she began to pitch and roll like a toy yacht in a gale. Tyrin felt terribly seasick, and had to conceal it, since he was supposed to be a sailor. Fortunately this occurred while the cook was busy in the galley and Tyrin was not needed in the radio room, so be was able to lie flat on his back in his bunk until the worst was over. The quarters were poorly ventilated and inadequately heated, so immediately it got a little damp above, the mess decks were full of wet clothing hanging up to dry and making the atmosphere worse. Tyrin's radio gear was in his sea-bag, well protected by polythene and canvas and some sweaters. However, he could not set it up and operate it in his cabin, where the cook or anyone else might walk in. He had already made routine radio contact with Moscow on the ship~s radio, during a quiet-but nonetheless tense--mornent when nobody was listening; but he needed something safer and more reliable. -Tyrin was a nest-building man. Whereas Rostov would move from embassy to hotel room to safe house without noticing his environment, Tyrin liked to have a base, a place where he could feel comfortable and familiar and secure. On static surveillance, the kind of assignment he preferred, he would always find a large easy chair to place in front of the window, and would sit at the telescope for hours, perfectly content with his bag of sandwiches, his bottle of soda and his thoughts. Here on the Copareffl, he had found a place to nest. Exploring the ship in daylight, he had discovered a little labyrinth of stores up in the bow beyond the for'ard hatch. The naval architect had put them there merely to fill a space between the hold and the prow. The main store was entered by a semiconcealed door down a flight of steps. It contained some tools, several drums of grease for the cranes and-inexplicably-a rusty old lawn mower. Several smaller rooms opened off the main one: some containing ropes, bits of machinery and decaying cardboard boxes of nuts and bolts; others empty but for msects. Tynn had never seen anyone enter the area-stuff that was used was stored aft, where it was needed. He chose a moment when darkness was failing and most of the crew and officers were at supper. He went to his cabin, picked up his sea-bag and climbed the companionway to the deck. He took a flashlight from a locker below the bridge but did not yet switch it on. The almanac said there was a moon, but it did not show through the thick clouds. Tyrin made his way stealthily foeard holding on to the gunwale, where his silhouette would be less likely to show against the off-white deek. There was some light from the bridge and the wheelhouse, but the duty officers would be watching the surrounding sea, not the deck. Cold $Pray fell on him, and as the Copareni executed her notorious roll he had to grab the rail with both hands to avoid being swept overboard. At tunes she shipped waternot much, but enough to soak into Tyrin's sea boots and frem his feet. He hoped fervently that he would never find out what she was like in a real gale. He was miserably wet and shivering when he reached the bow and entered the litdc disused store. He closed the door behind him, switched on his flashlight and made his way through the assorted junk to one of the small rooms off the main store. He closed that door behind him too. He took off his oilskin, rubbed his hand on his sweater to dry and warm them some, then opened his bag. He put the transmitter in a corner, lashed it to the bulkhead with a wire tied through rings in the deck, and wedged it with a cardboard box. He was Wearing rubber soles, but he put on rubber gloves as an additional precaution for the next task. The cables to the ship's radio mast ran through a pipe along the deckhead above him. With a small hacksaw pilfered from the engine room TYrin cut away a six-inch section of the pipe, exposing tht cables. He took a tap from the power cable to the power input of the transmitter, then connected the aerial socket of Ins radio with the signal wire from the mast He switched on the radio and called Moscow. His Outgoing sigrials would not interfere with the shies radio because he was the radio operator and it was unlikely that an)rone else would attempt to send on the ship!s equipment. However, while he was using his own radio, incon-dng signals would not reach the ship's radio room; and he would not hear them either since his set would be tuned to another frequency. He could have wired everything so that both radios would receive at the same time, but then Moscows replies to him would be received by the ship's radio, and somebody might notice ... Well, there was nothing very suspicious about a small ship taking a few minutes to pick up signals. Tyrin would take care to use his radio only at times when no traffic was expected for the ship. When he reached Moscow he made: Checking secondary transmitter. They acknowledged, then made: Stand by for signal from Rostov. All this was in a standard KGB code. Tyrin made: Standing by, but hurry. The message came: Keep your head down until something happens. Rostov. Tyrin made: Understood. Over and out. Without waiting for their sign-off he disconnected his wires and restored the ship's cables to normal. The business of twisting and untwisting bare wires, even with insulated pliers, was time-consuming and not very safe. He had some quick-release connectors among his equipment in the ship's radio room: he would pocket a few and bring them. here next time to speed up the process. He was well satisfied with his evening's work. He had made his nest, he had opened his lines of communication, and he had remained undiscovered. All he had to do now was sit tight; and sitting tight was what he liked to do. He decided to drag in another cardboard box to put in front of the radio and conceal it from a casual glance. He opened the door and shined his flashlight into the main store--and got a shock. He had company. The overhead light was on, casting restless shadows with its yellow glow. In the center of the storeroom, sitting against a grease drum with his legs stretched out before him, was a young sailor. He looked up, just as startled as Tyrin andTyrin realized from his face-just as guilty. Tyrin recognized him. His name was Ravlo. He was about nineteen years old, with pale blond hair and a thin white face. He had not joined in the pub-crawls in Cardiff, yet he often looked bung over, with dark discs under his eyes and a distracted air. Tyrin said, 'Vbat are you doing hereT' And then be saw. Ravlo had rolled up his left sleeve past the elbow. On the deck between his legs was a phial, a watch-glass and a small waterproof bag. In his right hand was a hypodermic syringe,' with which he was about to inject himself. Tyrin frowned. "Are you diabetic?" Ravlo's face twisted andhe gave a dry, humorless laugh. "An addict," Tyrin said, understanding. He did not know much about drugs, but he knew that what Ravlo was doing could get him discharged at the next port of call. He began to relax a little. This could be handled. Ravlo was looking past him, into the smaller store. Tyrin looked back and saw that the radio was clearly visible. The two men stared at one another, each understanding that the other was doing something he needed to hide. Tyrin said, "I will keep your secret, and you will keep Inine. Ravlo gave the twisted smile and the dry, humorless laugh again; then he looked away from Tyrin, down at his arm, and be stuck the needle into his flesh.
The exchange between the Coparellf and Moscow was picked up and recorded by a U.S. Naval Intelligence listening station. Since it was in standard KGB code, they were able to decipher it. But all it told them was that someone aboard a ship-they did not know which ship-was checking his secondary transmitter, and somebody called Rostov-the name was not on any of their files-wanted him to keep his head down. Nobody could make any sense of it, so they opened a file titled "Rostov" and put the signa
l in the Me and forgot about it.
Chapter Twelve
When he had finished his interim debriefing in Cairo, Hassan asked permission to go to Syria to visit his parents in the refugee camp. He was given, four days. He took a plane to Damascus and a taxi to the camp. He did not visit his parents. He made certain inquiries at the camp, and one of the refugees took him, by means of a series of buns, to Dara, across the Jordanian border, and all the way to Amman. From there another man took him on another bus to the Jordan River. On the night of the second day he crossed the river, guided by two men who carried submachine guns. By now Hassan was wearing Amb robes and a headdress like them, but he did not ask for a gun. They were young men, their soft adolescent faces just taking on lines of weariness and cruelty, like recruits in a new army. They moved across the Jordan valley in confident silence, directing Hassan with a touch or a whisper: they seemed to have made the journey many times. At one point all thm of them lay flat behind a stand of cactus while lights and soldiers! voices passed a quarter of a mile away. Hassan felt helpless-and something more. At first he thought that the feeling was due to his being so completely in the hands of these boys, his life dependent on their knowledge and coumge. But later, when they had left him and he was alone on a country road trying to get a lift, he realized that this. journey was a kind of regression. For years now he had been a European banker, living in Luxembourg with his car and his refrigerator and his television set. Now, suddenly, he was walking in sandals along the dusty PalestIft roads of his youth: no car, no jet; an Arab again, a peasant, a second-class citizen in the country of his birth. None of his reflexes would work here-it was not possible to solve a problem by picking up a phone or pulling out a credit card or calling a cab. He felt like a child, a pauper and a fugitive all at the same time. He walked five miles without seeing a vehicle, then a fruit truck passed him, its engine coughing unhealthily and pouring smoke, and pulled up a few yards ahead. Hassan ran after it. "ro Nablus?" he shouted. "imp iet The driver was a heavy man whose forearms bulged with muscle as he heaved the truck around bends at top speed. He smoked 0 the time. He must have been certain there would not be anoffier vehicle in the way all night, driving as he did on the crown of the road and never using the brake. Hassan could have used some sleep, but the driver wanted to talk. He told Hassan that the Jews were good rulers, business had prospered since they occupied Jordan, but of course the land must be free one day. Half of what he said was insincere, no doubt; but Hassan could not tell which half. They entered Nablus in the cool Samaritan dawn, with a red sim rising behind the hillside and the town still asleep. The track roared into the market square and stopped. Hassan said goodbye to the driver. He walked slowly through the empty streets as the sun began to take away the chill of the night. He savored the clean air and the low white buildings, enjoying every detail, basking in the glow of nostalgia for his boyhood: he was in Palestine, he was home. He had precise directions to a house with no number in a street with no name. It was in a poor quarter, where the little stone houses were crowded too close together and nobody swept the streets. A goat was tethered outside, and he wondered briefly what it ate, for there was no grass. The door was unlocked. He hesitated a moment outside, fighting down the excitement in his belly. He had been away too long-now he was back in the Land. He had waited too many years for this opportunity to strike a blow in revenge for what they had done to his father. He had suffered exile, he had endured with patience, he bad nursed his hatred enough, perhaps too much. He went in.
There were four or five people asleep on the floor. One of them, a woman, opened her eyes, saw him and sat up instantly, her hand under the pillow reaching for what might have been a gun. "What do you want?" Hassan spoke the name of the man who commanded the Fedayeen.
Mahmoud had lived not far from Yasif Hassan when they were both boys in the late Thirties, but they had never met, or if they had neither remembered it. After the European war, when Yasif went to England to, study, Mahmoud tended sheep with his brothers, his father, his uncles and his grandfather. Their lives would have continued to go in quite different directions but for the 1948 war. Mahmoud's father, like Yasif's, made the decision to pack up and flee. The two sons--Yasif was a few years older than Mahmoud-met at the refugee camp. Mahmoud's reaction to the ceasefire was even stronger than Yasif's, which was paradoxical, for Yasif had lost more. But Mahmoud was possessed by a great rage that would allow him to do nothing other than fight for the liberation of his homeland. Until then he had been oblivious of politics, thinking it had nothing to do with shepherds; now he set out to understand it. Before be could do that, he had to teach himself to read. They met again in the Fifties, in Gaza. By then Mahmoud bad blossomed, if that was the right word for something so fierce, He had read Clausewitz on war and Plato's Republic, Das Kaphal and Mein Kwnpf, Keynes and Mao and Galbraith and Gandhi, history and biography, classical novels and modem plays. He spoke good English and bad Russian and a smattering of Cantonese. He was directing a small cadre of terrorists on forays into Israel, bombing and shooting and stealing and then returning to disappear into the Gaza camps like rats into a garbage dump. The terrorists were getting money, weapons and intelligence from Cairo: Hassan was, briefly, part of the intelligence backup, and when they met again Yasif told Mahmoud where his ultimate loyalty lay~not with Cairo, not even with the pan-Arab cause, but with Palestine. Yasif had been ready to abandon everything there and then-his job at the bank, his home in Luxembourg, his role in Egyptian Intelligence--and join the freedom fighters. But Mahmoud had said no, and the habit of command was already fitting him like a tailored coat In a few years, he said-for he took a long view-they would have all the guerrillas they wanted, but they would still need friends in high PlacM European connections, and secret intelligence. They had met once more, in Cairo, and set up lines of communication which bypassed the Egyptians. With the Intelligence Establishment Hamm had cultivated a deceptive image: he pretended to be a little less perceptive than he was. At first Yasif sent over much the same kind of stuff he was giving to Cairo, Principally the names of loyal Arabs who were stashing away fortunes in Europe and could therefore be touched for fundL Recently he had been of more immediate practical value as the Palestinian movement began to operate in Europe. He had booked hotels and flights, rented cars and houses, stockpiled weapons and transferred funds. He was not the kind of man to use a gun. He knew this and was faintly ashamed of it, so he was all the more proud to be so useful in other, nonviolent but nonetheless practical, ways. , The results of his work had begun to explode in Rome that year. Yasif believed in Mahmoud's program of European terrorism He was convinced that the Arab armies, even with Russian support, could never defeat the Jews, for this allowed the Yews to think of themselves as a beleaguered people defending their homes against foreign soldiers, and that gave them strength. The truth was, in Yasifs view, that the Palestine Arabs were defending their home against invading Zionists. There were still more Arab Palestinians than Jewish Israelis, counting the exiles in the camps; and it was they, not a rabble of soldiers from Cairo and Damascus, who would liberate the homeland. But first they had to believe in the Fedayeen. Acts such as the Rome airport affair would convince them that the Fedayeen had international resources. And when the people believed in the Fedayeen, the people would be the Fedayeen, and then they would be unstoppable. The Rome airport affair was trivial, a peccadillo, by comparison with what Hassan had in mind. It 'Was an outrageous, mind-boggling scheme that would put the Fedayeen on the front pages of the world's newspapers for weeks and prove that they were a powerful international force, not a bunch of ragged refugees. Hassan hoped desperately that Malimoud would accept it. Yasif Hassan had come to propose that the Fedayeen should hijack a holocaust
They embraced like brothers, kissing cheeks, then stood back to look at one another. 'Tou smell like a whore," said Mahmoud. "You smell like a goatherd," said Hassan. They laughed and embraced again. Mahmoud was a big man, a fraction taller than Hassan and much broader
; and he looked big, the way he held his head and walked and spoke. He did smell, too: a sour familiar smell that came from living very close to many people in a place that lacked the modern inventions of hot baths and sanitation and garbage disposal. It was three days since Hassan had used after-shave and talcum powder, but he still smelled like a scented woman to Mahmoud. The house had two rooms: the one Hassan had entered, and behind that another, where Mahrfioud slept on the floor with two other men. There was no upper story. Cooking was done in a yard at the back, and the nearest water supply was one hundred yards away. The woman lit a fire and began to make a porridge of crushed beans. While they waited for it, Hassan told Mahmoud his story. "Mee months ago in Luxembourg r met a man I bad known at Oxford, a Jew called Dickstein. It turns out he is a big Mossad operative. Since then I have been watching him, with the help of the Russians, in particular a KGB man named Rostov. We have discovered that Dickstein plans to steal a shipload of uranium so the Zionists will be able to make atom bombs." At first Mahmoud refused to believe this. He cross-questioned Hassan: how good was the information, what exactly was the evidence, who might be lying, what mistakes might have been made? Then, as Hassan's answers made more and more sense, the truth began to sink in, and Mahmoud became very grave- "This is not only a threat to the Palestinian cause. These bombs could ravage the whole of the Middle East." It was like him, Hassan thought, to see the big picture.