Triple

by Ken Follett

  "Why?"

  "Because you shouldn't need to be told."

  Then their flight was called. Boarding the plane with Cohen, Dickstein reflected that his relationship with Borg was in ruins. They had always talked like this, with bantering insults, but until now there had been an undertone of . . . perhaps not affection, but at least respect. Now that had vanished. Borg was genuinely hostile. Dickstein's refusal to be pulled out was a piece of basic defiance which could not be tolerated. If Dickstein had wanted to continue in the Mossad, he would have had to fight Borg for the job of director--there was no longer sufficient room for both men in the organization. But there would be no contest now, for Dickstein was going to resign.

  Flying back to Europe through the night, Cohen drank some gin and went to sleep. Dickstein ran over in his mind the work he had done in the past five months. Back in May he had started out with no real idea of how he was going to steal the uranium Israel needed. He had taken the problems as they came up, and found a solution to each one: how to locate uranium, which uranium to steal, how to hijack a ship, how to camouflage the Israeli involvement in the theft, how to prevent the disappearance of the uranium being reported to the authorities, how to placate the owners of the stuff. If he had sat down at the beginning and tried to dream up the whole scheme he could never have foreseen all the complications.

  He had had some good luck and some bad. The fact that the owners of the Coparelli used a Jewish crew agency in Antwerp was a piece of luck; so was the existence of a consignment of uranium for non-nuclear purposes, and one going by sea. The bad luck mainly consisted of the accidental meeting with Yasif Hassan.

  Hassan, the fly in the ointment. Dickstein was reasonably certain he had shaken off the opposition when he flew to Buffalo to see Cortone, and that they had not picked up his trail again since. But that did not mean they had dropped the case.

  It would be useful to know how much they had found out before they lost him.

  Dickstein could not see Suza again until the whole affair was over, and Hassan was to blame for that too. If he were to go to Oxford, Hassan was sure to pick up the trail somehow.

  The plane began its descent. Dickstein fastened his seat belt. It was all done now, the scheme in place, the preparations made. The cards had been dealt. He knew what was in his hand, and he knew some of his opponents' cards, and they knew some of his. All that remained was to play out the game, and no one could foretell the outcome. He wished he could see the future more clearly, he wished his plan were less complicated, he wished he did not have to risk his life once more, and he wished the game would start so that he could stop wishing and start doing things.

  Cohen was awake. "Did I dream all that?" he said.

  "No." Dickstein smiled. There was one more unpleasant duty he had to perform: he had to scare Cohen half to death. "I told you this was important, and secret."

  "Of course, I understand."

  "You don't understand. If you talk about this to anyone other than your wife, we will take drastic action."

  "Is that a threat? What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying, if you don't keep your mouth shut, we will kill your wife."

  Cohen stared, and went pale. After a moment he turned away and looked out of the window at the airport coming up to meet them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Moscow's Hotel Rossiya was the largest hotel in Europe. It had 5,738 beds, ten miles of corridors, and no air-conditioning.

  Yasif Hassan slept very badly there.

  It was simple to say, "The Fedayeen should hijack the ship before Dickstein gets there," but the more he thought about it, the more terrified he was.

  The Palestine Liberation Organization in 1968 was not the tightly knit political entity it pretended to be. It was not even a loose federation of individual groups working together. It was more like a club for people with a common interest: it represented its members, but it did not control them. The individual guerrilla groups could speak with one voice through the PLO, but they did not and could not act as one. So when Mahmoud said the Fedayeen would do something, he spoke only for his own group. Furthermore, in this case it would be unwise even to ask for PLO cooperation. The organization was given money, facilities and a home by the Egyptians, but it had also been infiltrated by them: if you wanted to keep something secret from the Arab establishment, you had to keep it secret from the PLO. Of course, after the coup, when the world's press came to look over the captured ship with its atomic cargo, the Egyptians would know and would probably suspect that the Fedayeen had deliberately thwarted them, but Mahmoud would play innocent and the Egyptians would be obliged to join in the general acclamation of the Fedayeen for frustrating an Israeli act of aggression.

  Anyway, Mahmoud believed he did not need the help of the others. His group had the best connections outside Palestine, the best European set-up, and plenty of money. He was now in Benghazi arranging to borrow a ship while his international team was gathered up from various parts of the world.

  But the most crucial task devolved on Hassan: if the Fedayeen were to get to the Coparelli before the Israelis, he would have to establish exactly when and where Dickstein's hijack was to take place. For that, he needed the KGB.

  He felt terribly uneasy around Rostov now. Until his visit to Mahmoud he had been able to tell himself he was working for two organizations with a common objective. Now he was indisputably a double agent, merely pretending to work with the Egyptians and the KGB while he sabotaged their plans. He felt different--he felt a traitor, in a way--and he was afraid that Rostov would observe the difference in him.

  When Hassan had flown in to Moscow Rostov himself had been uneasy. He had said there was not enough room in his apartment for Hassan to stay, although Hassan knew the rest of the family were away on holiday. It seemed Rostov was hiding something. Hassan suspected he was seeing some woman and did not want his colleague getting in the way.

  After his restless night at the Hotel Rossiya, Hassan met Rostov at the KGB building on the Moscow ring road, in the office of Rostov's boss, Feliks Vorontsov. There were undercurrents there too. The two men were having an argument when Hassan entered the room, and although they broke it off immediately the air was stiff with unspoken hostility. Hassan, however, was too busy with his own clandestine moves to pay much attention to theirs.

  He sat down. "Have there been any developments?"

  Rostov and Vorontsov looked at one another. Rostov shrugged. Vorontsov said, "The Stromberg has been fitted with a very powerful radio beacon. She's out of dry dock now and heading south across the Bay of Biscay. The assumption would be that she is going to Haifa to take on a crew of Mossad agents. I think we can all be quite satisfied with our intelligence-gathering work. The project now falls into the sphere of positive action. Our task becomes prescriptive rather than descriptive, as it were."

  "They all talk like this in Moscow Center," Rostov said irreverently. Vorontsov glared at him.

  Hassan said, "What action?"

  "Rostov here is going to Odessa to board a Polish merchant ship called the Karla," Vorontsov said. "She's an ordinary cargo vessel superficially, but she's very fast and has certain extra equipment--we use her quite often."

  Rostov was staring up at the ceiling, an expression of mild distaste on his face. Hassan guessed that Rostov wanted to keep some of these details from the Egyptians: perhaps that was what he and Vorontsov had been arguing about.

  Vorontsov went on, "Your job is to get an Egyptian vessel and make contact with the Karla in the Mediterranean."

  "And then?" Hassan said.

  "We wait for Tyrin, aboard the Coparelli, to tell us when the Israeli hijack takes place. He will also tell us whether the uranium is transferred from the Coparelli to the Stromberg, or simply left aboard the Coparelli to be taken to Haifa and unloaded."

  "And then?" Hassan persisted.

  Vorontsov began to speak, but Rostov forestalled him. "I want you to tell Cairo a cover story," he said to Hassan. "
I want your people to think that we don't know about the Coparelli, we just know the Israelis are planning something in the Mediterranean and we are still trying to discover what."

  Hassan nodded, keeping his face impassive. He had to know what the plan was, and Rostov did not want to tell him! He said, "Yes, I'll tell them that--if you tell me the actual plan."

  Rostov looked at Voronstov and shrugged. Vorontsov said, "After the hijack the Karla will set a course for Dickstein's ship, whichever one carries the uranium. The Karla will collide with that ship."

  "Collide!"

  "Your ship will witness the collision, report it, and observe that the crew of the vessel are Israelis and their cargo is uranium. You will report these facts too. There will be an international inquiry into the collision. The presence of both Israelis and stolen uranium on the ship will be established beyond doubt. Meanwhile the uranium will be returned to its rightful owners and the Israelis will be covered with opprobrium."

  "The Israelis will fight," Hassan said.

  Rostov said, "So much the better, with your ship there to see them attack us and help us beat them off."

  "It's a good plan," said Vorontsov. "It's simple. All they have to do is crash--the rest follows automatically."

  "Yes, it's a good plan," Hassan said. It fitted in perfectly with the Fedayeen plan. Unlike Dickstein, Hassan knew that Tyrin was aboard the Coparelli. After the Fedayeen had hijacked the Coparelli and ambushed the Israelis, they could throw Tyrin and his radio into the sea, then Rostov would have no way of locating them.

  But Hassan needed to know when and where Dickstein intended to carry out his hijack so that the Fedayeen could be sure of getting there first.

  Vorontsov's office was hot. Hassan went to the window and looked down at the traffic on the Moscow ring road. "We need to know exactly when and where Dickstein will hijack the Coparelli," he said.

  "Why?" Rostov asked, making a gesture with both arms spread, palms upward. "We have Tyrin aboard the Coparelli and a beacon on the Stromberg. We know where both of them are at all times. We need only to stay close and move in when the time comes."

  "My ship has to be in the right area at the crucial time."

  "Then follow the Stromberg, staying just over the horizon--you can pick up her radio signal. Or keep in touch with me on the Karla. Or both."

  "Suppose the beacon fails, or Tyrin is discovered?"

  Rostov said, "The risk of that must be weighed against the danger of tipping our hand if we start following Dickstein around again--assuming we could find him."

  "He has a point, though," Vorontsov said.

  It was Rostov's turn to glare.

  Hassan unbuttoned his collar. "May I open a window?"

  "They don't open," said Vorontsov.

  "Haven't you people heard of air-conditioning?"

  "In Moscow?"

  Hassan turned and spoke to Rostov. "Think about it. I want to be perfectly sure we nail these people."

  "I've thought about it," Rostov said. "We're as sure as we can be. Go back to Cairo, organize that ship and stay in touch with me."

  You patronizing bastard, Hassan thought. He turned to Vorontsov. "I cannot, in all honesty, tell my people I'm happy with the plan unless we can eliminate that remaining uncertainty."

  Vorontsov said, "I agree with Hassan."

  "Well, I don't," said Rostov. "And the plan as it stands has already been approved by Andropov."

  Until now Hassan had thought he was going to have his way, since Vorontsov was on his side and Vorontsov was Rostov's boss. But the mention of the Chairman of the KGB seemed to constitute a winning move in this game: Vorontsov was almost cowed by it, and once again Hassan had to conceal his desperation.

  Vorontsov said, "The plan can be changed."

  "Only with Andropov's approval," Rostov said. "And you won't get my support for the change."

  Vorontsov's lips were compressed into a thin line. He hates Rostov, thought Hassan; and so do I.

  Vorontsov said, "Very well, then."

  In all his time in the intelligence business Hassan had been part of a professional team--Egyptian Intelligence, the KGB, even the Fedayeen. There had been other people, experienced and decisive people, to give him orders and guidance and to take ultimate responsibility. Now, as he left the KGB building to return to his hotel, he realized he was on his own.

  Alone, he had to find a remarkably elusive and clever man and discover his most closely guarded secret.

  For several days he was in a panic. He returned to Cairo, told them Rostov's cover story, and organized the Egyptian ship Rostov had requested. The problem stayed in the front of his mind like a sheer cliff he could not begin to climb until he saw at least part of the route to the top. Unconsciously he searched back in his personal history for attitudes and approaches which would enable him to tackle such a task, to act independently.

  He had to go a long way back.

  Once upon a time Yasif Hassan had been a different kind of man. He had been a wealthy, almost aristocratic young Arab with the world at his feet. He had gone about with the attitude that he could do more or less anything--and thinking had made it so. He had gone to study in England, an alien country, without a qualm; and he had entered its society without caring or even wondering what people thought of him.

  There had been times, even then, when he had to learn; but he did that easily too. Once a fellow undergraduate, a Viscount something-or-other, had invited him down to the country to play polo. Hassan had never played polo. He had asked the rules and watched the others play for a while, noticing how they held the mallets, how they hit the ball, how they passed it and why; then he had joined in. He was clumsy with the mallet but he could ride like the wind: he played passably well, he thoroughly enjoyed the game, and his team won.

  Now, in 1968, he said to himself: I can do anything, but whom shall I emulate?

  The answer, of course was David Rostov.

  Rostov was independent, confident, capable, brilliant. He could find Dickstein, even when it seemed he was stumped, clueless, up a blind alley. He had done it twice. Hassan recalled:

  Question: Why is Dickstein in Luxembourg?

  Well, what do we know about Luxembourg? What is there here?

  There is the stock exchange, the banks, the Council of Europe, Euratom--

  Euratom!

  Question: Dickstein has disappeared--where might he have gone?

  Don't know.

  But who do we know that he knows?

  Only Professor Ashford in Oxford--

  Oxford!

  Rostov's approach was to search out bits of information--any information, no matter how trivial--in order to get on the target.

  The trouble was, they seemed to have used all the bits of information they had.

  So I'll get some more, Hassan thought; I can do anything.

  He racked his brains for all that he could remember from the time they had been at Oxford together. Dickstein had been in the war, he played chess, his clothes were shabby--

  He had a mother.

  But she had died.

  Hassan had never met any brothers or sisters, no relatives of any sort. It was all such a long time ago, and they had not been very close even then.

  There was, however, someone else who might know a little more about Dickstein: Professor Ashford.

  So, in desperation, Yasif Hassan went back to Oxford.

  All the way--in the plane from Cairo, the taxi from London airport to Paddington station, the train to Oxford and the taxi to the little green-and-white house by the river--he wondered about Ashford. The truth was, he despised the professor. In his youth perhaps he had been an adventurer, but he had become a weak old man, a political dilettante, an academic who could not even hold his wife. One could not respect an old cuckold--and the fact that the English did not think like that only increased Hassan's contempt.

  He worried that Ashford's weakness, together with some kind of loyalty to Dickstein as one who had been a f
riend and a student, might make him balk at getting involved.

  He wondered whether to play up to the fact that Dickstein was Jewish. He knew from his time at Oxford that the most enduring anti-Semitism in England was that of the upper classes: the London clubs that still blackballed Jews were in the West End, not the East End. But Ashford was an exception there. He loved the Middle East, and his pro-Arab stance was ethical, not racial, in motivation. No: that approach would be a mistake.

  In the end he decided to play it straight; to tell Ashford why he wanted to find Dickstein, and hope that Ashford would agree to help for the same reasons.

  When they had shaken hands and poured sherry, they sat down in the garden and Ashford said, "What brings you back to England so soon?"

  Hassan told the truth. "I'm chasing Nat Dickstein."

  They were sitting by the river in the little corner of the garden that was cut off by the hedge, where Hassan had kissed the beautiful Eila so many years ago. The corner was sheltered from the October wind, and there was a little autumn sunshine to warm them.

  Ashford was guarded, wary, his face expressionless. "I think you'd better tell me what's going on."

  Hassan observed that during the summer the professor had actually yielded a little to fashion. He had cultivated side-whiskers and allowed his monkish fringe of hair to grow long, and was wearing denim jeans with a wide leather belt beneath his old tweed jacket.

  "I'll tell you," Hassan said, with an awful feeling that Rostov would have been more subtle than this, "but I must have your word that it will go no farther."

  "Agreed."

  "Dickstein is an Israeli spy."

  Ashford's eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.

  Hassan plunged on. "The Zionists are planning to make nuclear bombs but they have no plutonium. They need a secret supply of uranium to feed to their reactor to make plutonium. Dickstein's job is to steal that uranium--and my job is to find him and stop him. I want you to help me."

  Ashford stared into his sherry, then drained the glass at a gulp. "There are two questions at issue here," he said, and Hassan realized that Ashford was going to treat this as an intellectual problem, the characteristic defense of the frightened academic. "One is whether or not I can help; the other, whether or not I should. The latter is prior, I think; morally, anyway."

  Hassan thought: I'd like to pick you up by the scruff of the neck and shake you. Maybe I can do that, at least figuratively. He said, "Of course you should. You believe in our cause."