Triple

by Ken Follett

  "What?"

  "Hassan can also take over the Coparelli without firing a shot."

  Rostov stared at her. The blood seemed to drain from his thin face. Suza was shocked to see him suddenly lose all his poise and confidence. He said, "Hassan intends to hijack the Coparelli?"

  Suza pretended to be shocked. "Are you telling me that you didn't know?"

  "But who? Not the Egyptians, surely!"

  "The Fedayeen. Hassan said this was your plan."

  Rostov banged the bulkhead with his fist, looking very uncool and Russian for a moment. "Hassan is a liar and a traitor!"

  This was Suza's chance, she knew. She thought: Give me strength. She said: "Maybe we can stop him . . ."

  Rostov looked at her. "What's his plan?"

  "To hijack the Coparelli before Dickstein gets there, then ambush the Israeli team, and sail to . . . he didn't tell me exactly, somewhere in North Africa. What was your plan?"

  "To ram the ship after Dickstein had stolen the uranium--"

  "Can't we still do that?"

  "No. We're too far away, we'd never catch them."

  Suza knew that if she did not do the next bit exactly right, both she and Dickstein would die. She crossed her arms to stop the shaking. She said, "Then there is only one thing we can do."

  Rostov looked up at her. "There is?"

  "We must warn Dickstein of the Fedayeen ambush so that he can take back the Coparelli."

  There. She had said it. She watched Rostov's face. He must swallow it, it was logical, it was the right thing for him to do!

  Rostov was thinking hard. He said, "Warn Dickstein so that he can take the Coparelli back from the Fedayeen. Then he can proceed according to his plan and we can proceed according to ours."

  "Yes!" said Suza. "That's the only way! Isn't it? Isn't it?"

  FROM: SAVILE SHIPPING, Zurich

  TO: ANGELUZZI E BIANCO, GENOA

  YOUR YELLOWCAKE CONSIGNMENT FROM F.A. PEDLER INDEFINITELY DELAYED DUE TO ENGINE TROUBLE AT SEA. WILL ADVISE SOONEST OF NEW DELIVERY DATES. PAPAGOPOLOUS.

  As the Gil Hamilton came into view, Pyotr Tyrin cornered Ravlo, the addict, in the 'tweendecks of the Coparelli. Tyrin acted with a confidence he did not feel. He adopted a bullying manner and grabbed hold of Ravlo's sweater. Tyrin was a bulky man, and Ravlo was somewhat wasted. Tyrin said, "Listen, you're going to do something for me."

  "Sure, anything you say."

  Tyrin hesitated. It would be risky. Still, there was no alternative. "I need to stay on board ship when the rest of you go on the Gil Hamilton. If I'm missed, you will say that you have seen me go over."

  "Right, okay, sure."

  "If I'm discovered, and I have to board the Gil Hamilton, you can be sure I'll tell them your secret."

  "I'll do everything I can."

  "You'd better."

  Tyrin let him go. He was not reassured: a man like that would promise you anything, but when it came to the crunch he might fall to pieces.

  All hands were summoned on deck for the changeover. The sea was too rough for the Gil Hamilton to come alongside, so she sent a launch. Everyone had to wear lifebelts for the crossing. The officers and crew of the Coparelli stood quietly in the pouring rain while they were counted, then the first sailor went over the side and down the ladder, jumped into the well of the launch.

  The boat would be too small to take the whole crew--they would have to go over in two or three detachments, Tyrin realized. While everyone's attention was on the first men to go over the rail, Tyrin whispered to Ravlo, "Try and be last to go."

  "All right."

  The two of them edged out to the back of the crowd on deck. The officers were peering over the side at the launch. The men were standing, waiting, facing toward the Gil Hamilton.

  Tyrin slipped back behind a bulkhead.

  He was two steps from a lifeboat whose cover he had loosened earlier. The stem of the boat could be seen from the deck amidships, where the sailors were standing, but the stern could not. Tyrin moved to the stern, lifted the cover, got in and from inside put the cover back in place.

  He thought: If I'm discovered now I've had it.

  He was a big man, and the life jacket made him bigger. With some difficulty he crawled the length of the boat to a position from which he could see the deck through an eyelet in the tarpaulin. Now it was up to Ravlo.

  He watched as a second detachment of men went down the ladder to the launch, then heard the first officer say, "Where's that radio operator?"

  Tyrin looked for Ravlo and located him. Speak, damn you!

  Ravlo hesitated. "He went over with the first lot, sir."

  Good boy!

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, sir, I saw him."

  The officer nodded and said something about not being able to tell one from another in this filthy rain.

  The captain called to Koch, and the two men stood talking in the lee of a bulkhead, close to Tyrin's hiding place. The captain said, "I've never heard of Savile Shipping, have you?"

  "No, sir."

  "This is all wrong, selling a ship while she's at sea, then leaving the engineer in charge of her and taking the captain off."

  "Yes, sir. I imagine they're not seafaring people, these new owners."

  "They're surely not, or they'd know better. Probably accountants." There was a pause. "You could refuse to stay alone, of course, then I would have to stay with you. I'd back you up afterward."

  "I'm afraid I'd lose my ticket."

  "Right, I shouldn't have suggested it. Well, good luck."

  "Thank you, sir."

  The third group of seamen had boarded the launch. The first officer was at the top of the ladder waiting for the captain, who was still muttering about accountants as he turned around, crossed the deck and followed the first officer over the side.

  Tyrin turned his attention to Koch, who now thought he was the only man aboard the Coparelli. The engineer watched the launch go across to the Gil Hamilton, then climbed the ladder to the bridge.

  Tyrin cursed aloud. He wanted Koch to go below so that he could get to the for'ard store and radio to the Karla. He watched the bridge, and saw Koch's face appear from time to time behind the glass. If Koch stayed there, Tyrin would have to wait until dark before he could contact Rostov and report.

  It looked very much as if Koch planned to remain on the bridge all day.

  Tyrin settled down for a long wait.

  When the Nablus reached the 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 Hassan 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 Coparelli's 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 knife-throwing 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 he was the one who had done all the important work: discovered Dickstein, brought the news of his plan, conceived the counter-hijack, and established the Stromberg's 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 Coparelli 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 had 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 won!

  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 Coparelli, 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 within half 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 just 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.

  "That's what a single white light means."

  Hassan said, "That would explain why she wasn't off Ibiza 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 fell.

  "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. "She's the Coparelli."

  He went below to the galley, where Mahmoud was addressing his troops. Mahmoud looked at him as he stepped inside. Hassan nodded. "This is it."

  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 as possible to the Coparelli and then stop engines."

  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 Nablus's engines died. The crew lowered the boats.

  Hassan and his Fedayeen went over 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 sign of activity on the ship. Surely, Hassan thought, the officer on watch must hear 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 Coparelli's crew. Hassan had 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 radio?"

  "Who?" Mahmoud said.

  They went back down to the deck. Slowly the men were emerging from the bowels of the boat, looking puzzled, their cold guns in their hands.

  Mahmoud said: "The 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. "What's happened here?"

  The sailor replied in some other language.

  Hassan had a sudden terrifying thought. "Let's check the hold," 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.

  "That's it," said Hassan. "That's the uranium."

  They looked at the drums then at each other. For a moment all rivalry was forgotten.

  "We did it," said Hassan. "By God, we did it."

  As darkness fell Tyrin had watched the engineer go forward to switch on the white light. 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 he 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 muscles protesting as he stretched, and hurried along the deck to the for'ard 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, pull away one box, and crawl through a little tunnel to get in.

  The set was repeating a short two-letter signal. Tyrin checked the codebook 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 COPARELLI.

  Tyrin frowned in puzzlement, and made: REPEAT PLEASE.

  HASSAN 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 Ha
ssan . . . for the uranium, of course.

  Rostov was still signaling. HASSAN PLANS TO AMBUSH DICKSTEIN. FOR OUR PLAN TO PROCEED WE MUST WARN DICKSTEIN OF THE AMBUSH.

  Tyrin frowned as he decoded this, then his face cleared as he understood. "Then we'll be back to square one," he said to himself. "That's clever. But what do I do?"

  He made: HOW?

  YOU WILL CALL STROMBERG ON COPARELLI'S REGULAR WAVELENGTH AND SEND FOLLOWING MESSAGE PRECISELY REPEAT PRECISELY. QUOTE COPARELLI TO STROMBERG 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?

  HIDE.

  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.