Triple (18 page)

TIME

"I have," Stiffcollar said. "I'm going to resign the job."

"If you do," Dickstein said slowly, "I Will beat your friend to a pulp.99

"We'll go to the policel" the friend said.

"I would go away," Dickstein said. "Perhaps for a year. But I would come

back. And I'd find you. And I will very nearly kill you. Your face will be

unrecognizable."

Stiffcollar stared at Dickstein. "What are you?"

"It really doesn!t matter what I am, does it? You know I can do what I

threaten."

"Yes," Stiffcollar said. He buried his face in his hands.

Dickstein let the silence build. Stiffcollar was cornered, helpless. There

was only one thing he could do, and he was now realizing this. Dickstein

let him take his time. It was several moments before Dickstein spoke.

"Me printout will be bulky," he said gently.

Stiffcollar nodded without looking up.

"Is your briefcase checked as you leave the office?"

He shook his head.

"Are the printouts supposed to be kept under lock and key?"

"No." Stiffcollar gathered his wits with a visible effort. "No," he said

wearily, "this information is not classified. It's merely confidential, not

to be made public."

"Good. Now, you'll need tomorrow to think about the details-which copy of

the printout to take, exactly what you'll tell your secretary, and so on.

The day after tomorrow you will bring the printout home. You'll find a note

from me waiting for you. The note will tell you how to deliver the document

to me."Dickstein smiled. "After that, you'll probably never see me again."

Stiffcollar said, "By God, I hope so."

Dickstein stood up. "You'd rather not be bothered by phone calls for a

while," he said. He found the telephone -and pulled the cord out of the

wall. He went to the door and opened it.

The friend looked at the disconnected wire. His eyes seemed to be

recovering. He said, "Are you afraid hell change his mind?"

Dickstein said, "You're the one who should be afraid of that" He went out,

closing the door softly behind him.

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Ken FoNeff

Life Is not a popularity contest, especially in the ROB. David Rostov was

now very unpopular with his boss and with all those in the section who

were loyal to his boss. Feliks, Vorontsov was boiling with anger atthe

way he had been bypassed: from now on he would do anything he could to

destroy Rostov.

Rostov had anticipated this. He did not regret his decision to go for

broke on the Dickstein affair. On the contrary, he was rather glad. He

was already planning the finely stitched, stylishly tut dark blue English

suit he would buy when he got his pass for Section 100 on the third floor

of the GUM department store in Moscow.

What he did regret was leaving the loophole for Vorontsov. He should have

thought of the Egyptians and their reaction. That was the trouble with

the Arabs, they were so clumsy and useless that you tended to ignore them

as a force in the intelligence world. Fortunately Yuri Andropov, head of

the KGB and confidante of Leonid Brezhnev, had seen what Feliks Vorontsov

was trying to do, namely win back control of the Dickstein project; and

he had not permitted it.

So the only consequence of Rostov's error was that he would be forced to

work with the wretched Arabs.

That was bad enough. Rostov had his own littlie team, Nik Bunin and Pyotr

Tyrin, and they worked well together. And Cairo was as leaky as a sieve:

half the stuff that went through them got back to Tel Aviv.

1he fact that the Arab in question was Yasif Hassan might or might not

help.

Rostov remembered Hassan very clearly: a rich kid, indolent and haughty,

smart enough but with no drive, shallow politics, and -too many clothes.

His wealthy father had got him into Oxford, not his bmins; and Rostov

resented that more now than he had then. Still, knowing the man should

make it easier to control him. Rostov planned to start by making it clear

Hassan was essentially superfluous, and was on the team for purely

political reasons. He would need to be very clever about what he told

Hassan and what he kept secret: say too little, and Cairo would bitch to

Moscovr, too much, and Tel Aviv would be able to frustrate his every

move.

It was damned awkward, and he had only himself to blame for it.

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TRIPLE

He was uneasy about the whole affair by the time he reached Luxembourg. He

had flown in from Athens, having changed identities twice and planes three

times since Moscow. He took this little precaution because, if you came

direct from Russia, the local intelligence people sometimes made a note of

your arrival and kept an eye on you, and that could be a nuisance.

There was nobody to meet him at the airport, of course. He took a taxi to

his hotel.

He had told Cairo he would be using the name David Roberts. When he checked

into the hotel under that name, the desk clerk gave him a message. He

opened the envelope as he, went up in the lift with the porter. It said

simply "Room 179."

He tipped the porter, picked up the room phone and dialed 179. A voice

said, "Hello?"

"r.m in 142. Give me ten minutes, then come here for a conference."

"Fine. Listen, is that-"

'Shut upl" Rostov snapped. "No names. Ten minutes."

"Of course, I'm sorry, 1-2'

Rostov hung up. What kind of idiots was Cairo hiring now? The kind that

used your real name over the hotel phone system, obviously. It was going to

be even worse than he had feared.

TUere was a time when he would have been over-professional, and turned out

the lights and sat watching the doorway with a gun in his hand until the

other man arrived, in case of a trap. Nowadays be considered that sort of

behavior to be obsessive and left it to the actors in the television shows.

Elaborate personal precautions were not his style, not anymore. He did not

even carry a gun, in case customs officials searched his luggage at

airports. But there were precautions and precautions, weapons and weapons-

he did have one or two KOB gadgets subtly concealed-including an electric

toothbrush that gave out a hum calculated to jam listening devioes, a

miniature Polaroid camera, and a bootlace garrote.

He unpacked his small case quickly. There was very little in it: a safety

razor, the toothbrush, two American-made wash-and-wear shirts and a change

of underwear. He made himself a drink from the room bar-scotch whiskey was

one

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Ken Felleff

of the perks of working abroad. After exactly ten minutes there was a

knock on the door. Rostov opened it~ and Yasif Hassan came in.

Hassan smiled broadly. "How are you?"

"How do you do," said Rostov, and shook his hand.

"It's twenty years ... how have you been?" to BUSY.

"Ibat we should meet again, after so long, and because of Dickstein!"

"Yes. Sit down. Let's talk about Dickstein." Rostov sat, and Hassan

followed suit. "Bring me up to date," Rostov continued. "You spotted

Dickstein, then your people picked him up again at Nice airport. What

happened next?"

"He went on a guided tour of a nuclear power station, then shook off his

tail," Hassan said. "So we've lost him again.st

Rostov gave a grunt of disgust. "We'll have to do better than that."

Hassan smiled-a salesman's smile, Rostov thought-and said, "If he wasn't

the sort of agent who is bound to spot a tail and lose it, we wouldn't

be so concerned about him, would wer,

Rostov Ignored that. "Was he using a carr'

'Yes. He hired a Peugeot."

"OkaY. What do you know about his movements before that, when he was here

in Luxembourg?"

Hassan spoke briskly, adopting Rostov's businesslike air. "He Stayed at

the Alfa Hotel for a week under the name Ed Rodgers. He gave as his

address the Paris bureau of a mag*zffie called Sciewe International.

There is such a magazine; theY do have a Paris address, but ifs only a

forwarding address for mail; they do use a freelance called Ed Rodgers,

but theY haven't heard from him for over a year."

Rostov nodded. "As you may know, that is a typical Mossad cover story.

Nice and tight. Anything else?"

"Yes. The night before he left there was an incident in the Rue Dicks.

Two men were found quite savagely beatem It had the look of a

professional job-neatly broken bones, you know the kind of Oft. The

police aren't doing anything about It: the men were known thieves,

thought to have been lying in wait close to a homosexual nightclub."

"Robbing the queers as they come outr'

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TRIPLE

'Ibat's the general idea. Anyway, there's nothing to connect Dickstein

with the incident, except that he is capable of it and he was here at the

time."

"llat's enough for a strong presumption," Rostov said. "Do you think

Dickstein is a homosexual?"

"It's possible, but Cairo says there's nothing like that in his file, so

he must have been very discreet about it all these years."

"And therefore too discreet to go to queer clubs while he~s on

assignment. Your argument is self-defeating, isn't it?"

A trace of anger showed in Hassan's face. "So what do you think?" he said

defensively.

"My guess is that he had an informant who is queer." He stood up and

began to pace the room. He felt he had made the right start with Hassan,

but enough was enough: no point in making the man surly. It was time to

ease up a little. "Let's speculate for a moment. Why would he want to

look around a nuclear power station?"

Hassan said, 'The Israelis have been on bad terms with the French since

the Six-Day War. De Gaulle cut off the supply of arms. Maybe the Mossad

plans some retaliation: like blowing up the reactor?"

Rostov shook his head. "Even the Israelis aren!t that irresponsible.

Besides, why then would Dickstein be in Luxembourg?"

"Who knowsr'

Rostov sat down again. "What is there, here In Luxembourg? What makes it

an important place? Why is your bank here, for exampler'

"It's an important European capital. My bank is here because the Euronean

Investment Bank is here. But there are also several Common Market

institutions-in fact, there's a European Center over on the Kitchberg."

"Which institutions?"

"Me Secretariat of the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers, and

the Court of Justice. Oh, and Euratom."

Rostov stared at Hassan. "Euratom?"

"It's short for the European Atomic Energy Community, but everybody----~'

"I know what it is," Rostov said. "Don't you see the connection? He comes

to Luxembourg, where Euratom has its headquarters, then he goes to visit

a nuclear reactor."

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Ken Folloff

Hassan shrugged. "An interesting hypothesis. What's that you're ddnkingT'

"Whiskey. Help yourself. As I recall, the French helped the Israelis build

their nuclear reactor. Now they've probably cut off their aid. Dickstein

may be after scientific secrets."

Hassan poured himself a drink and sat down again. "How shall we operate,

you and I? My orders are to cooperate with

Y01L "

"My, team is arriving this evening," Rostov said. He was thinking:

Cooperate, hell-youll follow my orders. He said, "I always use the same two

men-Nik Bunin and Pyotr Tyrin. We operate very well together. They know how

I like things done. I want you to work with them, do what they say-youll

learn a lot, they're very good agents."

"And my people. . ."

"We won't need them much longer," Rostov said briskly. "A small team is

best. Now, our first job is to make sure we we Dickstein if and when he

comes back to Luxembourg."

"I've got a man at, the airport twenty-four hours a day."

"Hell have thought of that, he won't fly in. We must cover sorni other

spots. He might go to Euratom. .

'vMe Jean-Monnet building, yes."

"We can cover the Alfa Hotel by bribing the desk clerk, but he won't go

back there. And the nightclub in the Rue Dicks. Now, then, you said he

hired a car."

"Yes, in France."

"Hell have dumped it by now-he knows that you know the number. I want you

to call the rental company and find out where it was left-that may tell us

what direction hes traveling in."

"Very well."

"Moscow has put his photograph on the wire, so our people will be looking

out for him in every capital city in the world." Rostov finished his drink.

"We'll catch him. One way or another."

94M you really think sor Hassan asked.

"I've played chess with him, I know how his mind works. His opening moves

are routine, predictable; then suddenly he does something completely

unexpected, usually something highly risky. You just have to wait for him

to stick out his neck-then you chop his head off."

Hassan said, "As I recall, you lost that chess match."

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