by Ken Follett
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 Coparell
i.
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.