Triple (48 page)

TRIPLE

a Ionger lease on Dickstein's trust You won't pass the message on ...

"of course not." Borg's mind turned to another tack. "If they went to

Sicily they know about the Stromberg. What conclusions can they draw from

thatr

w1bat the Stromberg will be used in the uranium theft?"

"Exactly. Now, if I were Rostov, I'd follow the Stromberg, let the hijack

take place, then attack. Damn, damn, damn. I think this will have to be

called off." He dug the toe of his shoe into the soft sand. "What's the

situation at Qattara?"

"I was saving the worse news until last. Ali tests have been completed

satisfactorily. The Russians are supplying uranium. The reactor goes on

stream three weeks from today."

Borg stared out to sea, and he was more wretched, pessimistic and

depressed than he had ever been in the whole of his unhappy life. "You

know what this fucking means don't you? It means we can't call it off.

It means I can't stop Dickstein. It means that Dickstein is Israers last

chance."

Kawash was silent. After a moment Borg looked at him. The Arab's eyes

were closed. "What are you doing?" Borg said.

The silence went on for a few moments. Finally Kawash opened his eyes,

looked at Borg, and gave his polite little half smile. "Praying," he

said.

TEL AVIV TO MV STROMBERG

PERSONAL BORG TO DICKSTEIN EYES ONLY MUST BE DECODED BY THE ADDRESSEE

BEGINS SUZA ASHFORD CONFIRMED ARAB AGENT STOP SHE PERSUADED CORTONE TO

TAKE HER AND HASSAN TO SICILY STOP THEY ARRIVED AFTER YOU LEFT` STOP

CORTONE NOW DEAD STOP THIS AND OTHER DATA INDICATES STRONG POSSIBILITY

YOU WILL BE ATTACKED AT SEA STOP NO FURTHER ACMON WE CAN TAKE AT THIS

END STOP YOU FUCKED IT UP ALL ON YOUR OWN NOW GET OUT OF IT ALONE ENDS

The clouds which had been massing over the western Mediterranean for the

previous few days finally burst that night,

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drenching the Stromberg with rain. A brisk wind blew up, and the

shortcomings of the ship's design became apparent as she began to roll and

yaw in the burgeoning waves.

Nat Dickstein did not notice the weather.

He sat alone in his little cabin, at the table which was screwed to the

bulkhead, a pencil in hand and a pad, a codebook and a signal in front

of him, transcribing Borg's message word by crucifying word.

He read it over and over again, and finally sat staring at the blank

steel wall in front of him.

It was pointless to speculate about why she might have done this, to

invent farfetched hypotheses that Hassan had coerced or blackmailed her,

to imagine that she had acted from mistaken beliefs or confused motives:

Borg had said she was a spy, and he had been right. She had been a spy

all along. That was why she had made love to him.

She had a big future in the intelligence business, that girl.

Dickstein put his face in his hands and pressed his eyeballs with his

fIngertips, but still he could see her, naked except for her high-heeled

shoes, leaning against the cupboard in the kitchen of that little flat,

reading the morning paper while she waited for a kettle to boil.

The worst of it was, he loved her still. Before he met her he had been

a cripple, an emotional amputee with an empty sleeve hanging where he

should have had love; and she had performed a miracle, making him whole

again. Now she had betrayed him, taking away what she had given, and he

would be more handicapped than ever. He had written her a love letter.

Dear God, he thought, what did she do when she read that letter? Did she

laugh? Did she show it to Yasif Hassan and say, "See how rve got him

hooked?"

If you took a blind man, and gave him back his sight, and then, after a

day made him blind again during the night while he was sleeping, this was

how he would feel when he woke up.

He had told Borg he would kill Suza if she were an agent, but now he knew

that he had been lying. He could never hurt her, no matter what she did.

It was late. Most of the crew were asleep except for those taking

watches. He left the cabin and went up on deck without seeing anyone.

Walking from the batch to the gunwale he got soaked to the skin, but be

did not notice. He stood at the

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rail, looking into the darkness, unable to see where the black sea ended

and the black sky began, letting the rain stream across his face like

tears.

He would never kill Suza, but Yasif Hassan was a different matter.

If ever a man had an enemy, he had one in Hassan. He had loved Eila, only

to see her in a sensual embrace with Hassan. Now he had fallen in love

with Suza, only to find that she had already been seduced by the same old

rival. And Hassan had also used Suza in his campaign to take away

Dickstein!s homeland.

Ob, yes, he would kill Yasif Hassan, and he would do it with his bare

hands if he could. And the others. The thought brought him up out of the

depths of despair in a fury: he wanted to hear bones snap, he wanted to

see bodies crumple, he wanted the smell of fear and gunfire, he wanted

death all around him.

Borg thought they would be attacked at sea. Dickstein stood gripping the

rail as the ship sawed through the unquiet sea; the wind rose momentarily

and lashed his face with cold, hard rain; and he thought, So be it; and

then he opened his mouth and shouted into the wind: "Let them come-let

the bastards comet"

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Fifteen

Hassan did not go back to Cairo, then or ever.

Exultation fdled him as his plane took off from Palermo. It had been

close, but he had outwitted Rostov againl He could hardly believe it when

Rostov had said, "Get out Of MY sight." He had felt sure he would be

forced to board the Karla and consequently miss the hijack of the

Fedayeen. But Rostov completely believed that Hassan was merely over-en-

thusiastio, impulsive, and inexperienced. It had never occurred to him

that Hassan might be a traitor. But then, why should it? Hassan was the

representative of Egyptian Intelligence on the team and he was an Arab.

If Rostov had toyed with suspicions about his loyalty, he might have

considered whether he was working for the Israelis, for they were the op-

position-the Palestinians, if they entered the picture at all, could be

assumed to be on the Arab side.

It was wonderful. Clever, arrogant, patronizing Colonel Rostov and the

might of the notorious KGB had been fooled by a lousy Palestinian

refugee, a man they thought was a nobody.

But it was not over yet. He still had to join forces with the F6dayeen.

The flight from Palermo took him to Rome, where he tried to get a plane

to Annaba or Constantine, both near the Algerian coast. The nearest the

airlines could offer was Algiers or Tunis. He went to Tunis.

There he found a young taxi driver with a newish Renault and thrust in

front of the man's face more money in American dollars than he normally

earned in a year. The taxi took him across the hundred-mile breadth of

Tunisia, over the border into Algeria, and dropped him off at a fishing

village with a small natural harbor.

One of the Fedayeen was waiting for him. Hassan found

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him on the beach, sitting under a propped-up dinghy, sheltering from the

rain and playing backgammon with a fisherman. The three men got into the

fisherman's boat and cast off.

The sea was rough as they headed out in the last of the day. Hassan, no

seaman, worried that the little motorboat would capsize, but the fisherman

grinned cheerfully through it all.

The trip took them less than a half hour. As they approached the looming

hulk of the ship, Hassan felt again the rising sense of triumph. A ship ...

they had a ship.

He clambered up on to the deck while the man who had met him paid off the

fisherman. Mahmoud was waiting for him on deck. They embraced, and Hassan

said, "We should weigh anchor immediately-things are moving very fast now.

"Come to the bridge with me."

Hassan followed Mahmoud forward. The ship was a small coaster of about one

thousand tons, quite new and in good condition. She was sleek, with most of

her accommodations below deck. There was a hatch for one hold. She had been

designed to carry small loads quickly and to maneuver in local North

African ports.

They stood on the foredeck for a moment, looking about.

"She's just what we iieed," Hassan said joyfully.

"I have renamed her the Nablus," Mahmoud told him. "She is the first ship

of the Palestine Navy."

Hamm felt tears start to his eyes.

They climbed the ladder. Mahmoud said, "I got her from a Libyan businessman

who wanted to save his soul."

The bridge was compact and tidy. There was only one serious lack: radar.

Many of these small coastal vessels still managed without it, and there had

been no time to buy the equipment and fit it.

Mahmoud introduced the captain, also a Libyan---the businessman had

provided a crew as well as a ship, none of the Fedayeen were sailors. The

captain gave orders to weigh anchor and start engines.

The three men bent over a chart as Hassan told what he had learned in

Sicily. "The Stromberg left the south coast of Sicily at midday today. The

Coparelli was due to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar late last night,

heading for Genoa. They are sister ships, with the same top speed, so the

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earliest they can meet is twelve hours east of the midpoint between Sicily

and Gibraltar."

The captain made some calculations and looked at another charL "Ibey will

meet southeast of the island of Minorca."

"We should intercept the Coparelli no less than eight hom earlier."

The captain ran his finger back along the trade route. "That would put her

just south of the island of Ibiza at dusk tomorrow.09

"Can we make-it?"

"Yes, with a little time to spare, unless there is a storm."

"Will there be a storm?"

"Sometime in the next few days, yes. But not tomorrow, I think."

"Good. Where is the radio operatorr

"Here. This is Yaacov."

Hassan turned to see a small, smiling man with tobaccostained teeth and

told him, "There is a Russian aboard the Coparellf, a man called Tyrin, who

will be sending signals to a Polish ship, the Karl& You must listen on this

wavelength." He wrote it down. "Also, there is a radio beacon on the

Stromberg that sends a simple thirty-second tone every half hour. If we

listen for that every time we will be sure the Stromberg is not outrunning

us."

The captain was giving a course. Down on the deck the first officer had the

hands making ready. Mahmoud was speaking to one of the Fedayeen about an

arms inspection. The radio operator began to question Hassan about the

Stromberes beacon. Hassan was not really listenin& He was thinking:

Whatever happens, it will be glorious.

The ship's engines roared, the deck tilted, the prow broke water and they

were on their way.

Dieter Koch, the new engineer officer of the Caparelli, lay In his bunk in

the middle of the night thinking: but what do I say if somebody sees me?

What he had to do now was simple. He had to get up, go to the aft

engineering store, take out the spare oil pump and got rid of it. It was

almost certain he could do this without being seen, for his cabin was close

to the store, most of the crew were asleep, and those that were awake were

on the bridge and in the engine room and likely to stay there. But

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