Triple (55 page)

TRIPLE

It gave him added speed. and power.

He took hold of Hassan's gun arm by the wrist and shoulder, and with a

downward pull broke the arm over his kneeHassan screamed and the gun

dropped from his useless hand. Turning slightly, Dickstein brought his

elbow back in a blow which caught Hassan just under the ear. Hassan turned

away, falling. Dickstein grabbed his bair from behind, pulling the head

backward; and as Hassan sagged away from him be lifted his foot high and

kicked. His heel struck the back of Hassan's neck at the moment he jerked

the bead. There was a snap as all the tension went out of the man7s muscles

and his head lolled, unsupported, on his shoulders.

Dickstein let go and the body crumpled.

He stared at the harmless body with exultation ringing in his ears.

Then he saw Koch.

The engineer was tied to a chair, slumped over, pale as death but

conscious. There was blood on his clothes. Dickstein c1rew his knife and

cut the ropes that bound Koch. Then he saw the man7s hands.

He said, "Christ."

"I'll live," Koch muttered. He did not get up from the chair.

Dickstein picked up Hassan's machine gun and checked the magazine. It was

almost full. He moved out on to the bridge and located the foghorn.

"Koch," he said, "can you get out of that chair?"

Koch got up, swaying unsteadily until Dickstein stepped across and

supported him, leading him through to the bridge. "See this button? I want

you to count slowly to ten then lean on it.99

Koch shook his head to clear it. "I think I can handle it."

"Start. Now."

"One," Koch said. 'Two."

Dickstein went down the companionway and came out on the second deck, the

one he had cleared himself. It was still empty. He went on down, and

stopped just before the ladder emerged into the mess. He figured all the

remaining Fedayeen must be here, lined against the walls, shooting out

through portholes and doorways; one or two perhaps watching the

companionway. There was no safe, careful way to take such a strong

defensive position.

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Come on, Kocht

Dickstein had intended to spend a second or two hiding in the

companionway. At any moment one of the Arabs might look up it to check.

If Koch had collapsed he would have to go back up there and-

Ile foghorn sounded.

Dickstein jumped. He was firing before he landed. There were two men

close to the foot of the ladder. He shot them first. The firing from

outside went into a crescendo. Dickstein turned in a rapid half circle,

dropped to one knee to make a smaller target, and sprayed the Fedayeen

along the walls. Suddenly there was another gun as Ish came up from

below; then Feinberg was at one door, shooting; and Dovrat, wounded, came

in through another door. And then, as if by signal, they all stopped

shooting, and the silence was like thunder.

All the Fedayeen were dead.

Dickstein, still kneeling, bowed his head in exhaustion. After a moment

he stood up and looked at his men. "Where are the others?" he said.

Feinberg gave him a peculiar look. "Iberes someone on the foredeck, Sapir

I think."

"And the rest?"

"That's it," Feinberg said. "All the others are dead."

Dickstein slumped against a bulkhead. "What a price," he said quietly.

Looking out through the smashed porthole he saw that it was day.

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Seventeen

A year earlier the BOAC jet in which Suza Ashford was serving dinner had

abruptly begun to lose height for no apparent reason over the Atlantic

Ocean. The pilot had switched on the seat-belt lights. Suza had walked up

and down the aisle-, saying "Just a little turbulence," and helping people

fasten their seat belts, all the time thinking: We're going to die, we're

all going to die.

She felt like that now.

There had been a short message from Tyrin: Israelis atfacking-then

silence. At this moment Nathaniel was being shot at. He might be wounded,

he might have been captured, he might be dead; and while Suza seethed

with nervous tension she had to give the radio operator the BOAC Big

Smile and say, "It's quite a setup you7ve got here."

The Karkes . radio operator was a big gray-haired man from Odessa. His

name was Aleksandr, and he spoke passable English. "It cost one hundred

thousand dollar," he said proudly. "You know about radioT'

"A little . . . I used to be an air hostess." She had said "used to be"

without forethought, and now she wondered whether that life really was

gone. "I've seen the air crew using their radios. I know the basics."

"Really, this is four radios," Aleksandr explained. "One picks up the

Stromberg beacon. One listens to Tyrin on Coparelli. One listens to

Coparelli's regular wavelength. And this one wanders. Look."

He showed her a dial whose pointer moved around slowly. "It seeks a

transmitter, stops when it finds one," Aleksan& sad.

'Thars incredible. Did you invent that?"

"I am an operator, not inventor, sadly."

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Ken Folleff

"And you can broadcast on any of the sets, just by switching to TRANsmrr?"

"Yes, Morse code or speech. But of course, on this oper. ation nobody uses

speech."

"Did you have to go through long training to become a ra. dio operator?"

"Not long. Learning Morse is easy. But to be a shipla radionian you must

know how to repair the sev, He lowered his voice. "And to be a KGB

operator, you must go to spy schooL" He laughed, and Suza laughed with him,

thinking: Come on, Tyrin; and then her wish was granted.

The message began, Aleksandr started writing and at the Uwe time said to

Suza, `fWn. Get Rostov, please."

Suza left the bridge reluctantly; she wanted to know what was in the

message. She hurried to the mess, expecting to find Rostov there drinking

strong black coffee, but the room was empty. She went down another deck and

made her way to his cabin. She knocked on the door.

His voice in Russian said something which might have meant come in.

. She opened the door. Rostov stood there in his short% washing in a bowl.

'Tyrin's coming through," Suza said. She tamed to leave.

'Suza.

She turned back. 'What would you say if I surprised you in your underwear?"

'Td say piss off," she said.

"Wait for me outside."

She closed the door, thinking: Tbat's done it

When he came out she said, "I'm sorry."

He gave a tight smile. "I should not have been so unprofessional. Lets go."

She followed him up to the radio room, which was Imme. diately below the

bridge In what should have been the captain's cabin. Because of the mass of

extra equipment, Aleksandr had explained, it was not possible to put the

radio operator adjacent to the bridge, as was customary. Suza bad figured

out for herself that this arrangement bad the additional advantage of

segregating the radio from the crew when the ship carried a mixture of

ordinary seamen and KGB agents.

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TRIPLE

Aleksandr had transcribed Tyrin!s signal. He banded it to Rostov, who

read it in English. "Israelis have taken Coparelli. St?vmberg alongside.

Dickstein alive."

Suza went lunp with relief. She had to sit down. She slumped into a

chair.

No one noticed. Rostov was already composing his reply to Tyrin: "We will

hit at Six A.M. tomorrow."

The tide of relief went out for Suza and she thought: Oh, God, what do

I do now?

Nat Dickstein stood in silence, wearing a borrowed seaman!s cap, as the

captain of the Stromberg read the words of the service for the dead,

raising his voice against the noise of wind, rain and sea. One by one the

canvas-wrapped bodies were tipped over the rail into the black water:

Abbas, Sharrett, Porush, Gibli, Rader, Reinez, and Jabotinsky. Seven of

the twelve had died. Uranium was the most costly metal in the world.

There had been another funeral earlier. Four Fedayeen had been left

alive--three wounded, one who had lost his nerve find hidden-and after

they had been disarmed Dickstein had allowed them to bury their dead.

"Mein had been a bigger funeral-they had dropped twenty-five bodies into

the sea. lbey had hurried through their ceremony under the watchful

eyes,--and guns--of three surviving Israelis, who understood that this

courtesy should be extended to the enemy but did not have to like it,

Meanwhile, the Stromberg's captain had brought aboard all his shies

papers. ne team of fitters and joiners, which had come along in case it

was necessary to alter the Coparelli to match the Stromberg, was set to

work repairing the battle damage. Dickstein told them to concentrate on

what was visible from the deck: the rest would have to wait until they

reached port. 'Mey set about filling holes, repairing furniture, and

replacing panes of glass and metal fittings with spares Cannibalized from

the doomed Stromberg. A painter went down a ladder to remove the name

Coparelli from the bull and replace it with the stenciled letters

s-T-R-o-m-B-E-R-o. When he had finished he set about painting over the

repaired bulkheads and woodwork on deck. All the Copareffs life. boats,

damaged beyond repair, were chopped up and thrown Over the side, and the

Stromberg's boats were brought over to

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Ken Folleff

replace them. The new oil pump, which the Stromberg had carried on Koch's

instructions, was installed in the Coparellirs engine.

Work had stopped for the burial. Now, as soon as the captain had uttered

the final words, it began again. Toward the end of the afternoon the

engine rumbled to life. Dickstein stood on the bridge with the captain

while the anchor was raised. The crew of the Strontherg quickly found

their way around the new ship, which was identical to their old one. The

captain set a oourse and ordered full speed ahead.

It was almost over, Dickstein thought The Coparelli had disappeared: for

all intents and purposes the ship in which he now sailed was the

Stromberg, and the Stromberg was legally owned by Savile Shipping. Israel

had her uranium, and nobody knew how she had got it. Everyone in the

chain of operation was now taken care of-except Pedler, still the legal

owner of the yellowcake. He was the one man who could ruin the whole

scheme if he should become either curious or hostile. Papagopolous, would

be handling him right now: Dickstein silently wished him luck.

WeW clear," the captain said.

The explosives expert in the chartroom pulled a lever on his radio

detonator then everybody watched the empty Strontberg, now more than a

mile away.

There was a loud, dull thud, like thunder and the Stromberg seemed to sag

in the middle. Her fuel tanks caught fire and the stormy evening was lit

by a gout of flame reaching for the sky; Dickstein felt elation and faint

anxiety at the sight of such great destruction. The Stromberg began to

sink. slowly at first and then faster. Her stem went under; seconds later

her bows followed; her funnel poked up above the water for a moment like

the raised arm of a drowning man, and then she was gone.

Dickstein smiled faintly and turned away.

He beard a noise. The captain heard it too. They went to the side of the

bridge and looked out, and then they understood.

Down on the deck, the men were cheering.

Franz Albrecht Pedler sat in his office on the outskirts of Wiesbaden and

scratched his snowy-white head. The telegram from Angeluzzi. e Bianco in

Genoa, translated from the Ital-

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