Triple (59 page)

Ken Folleff

right hand to his gun, pointed up and fired. His aim was hopeless but the

men pulled back.

And he lost his balance.

As the prow of the ship pitched up, he swayed to the left, dropped his gun

into the sea and grabbed hold of the ladder with his right hand. His right

foot slipped off the rung-and then, to his horror, Suza began to slip from

his left shoulder.

"Hold on to me," he yelled at her no longer sure whether she was conscious

or not. He felt her hands clutch at his sweater, but she continued to slip

away, and now her unbalanced weight was pulling him even more to the left.

"Not" he yelled.

She slipped off his shoulder and went plunging into the sea.

I)ickstein turned, saw the launch, and jumped, landing with a jarning shock

in the well of the boat

He called her name into, the black sea all around him, swinging from one

side of the boat.to the other, his desperation increasing with every second

she failed to surface. And then he heard, over the noise of the wind, a

scream. Turning toward the sound he saw her head just above the surface,

between the side of the boat and the bull of the Karla.

She was out of his reach.

She screamed again.

The launch was tied to the Karla by the rope, most of which was piled on

the deck of the boat. Dickstein cut the rope with his knife, letting go of

the end that was tied to the Karta's ladder and taowing the other end

toward Suza.

As she reached for the rope the sea rose again and engulfed her.

Up on the deck of the Karla they started shooting over the rail again.

He ignored the gunfire.

Dickstein's eyes swept the sea. With the ship and the boat pitching and

rolling in different directions the chances of a hit were relatively slim.

After a few seconds that seemed hours, Suza surfaced again. Dickstein threw

her the rope. This time she was able to grab it. Swiftly he pulled it,

bringing her closer and closer until he was able to lean over the. gunwale

of the launch perilously and take hold of her wrists.

He had her now, and he would never let her go.

He pulled her into the well of the launch. Up above a

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machine gun opened fire. Dickstein threw the launch Into gear then fell

on top of Suza, covering her body with his own. The launch moved away from

the Karla, undirected, riding the waves like a lost surfboard.

The shooting stopped. Dickstein looked back. The Karla was out of sight.

Gently he turned Suza over, fearing for her life. Her eyes were closed.

He took the wheel of the launch, looked at the compass, and set an

approximate course. He turned on the boalVs radio and called the

Coparelli. Waiting for them to come in, he lifted Suza toward him and

cradled her in his arms.

A muffled thud came across the water like a distant explosion: the

magnetic mine.

Ile Coparelli replied. Dickstein said, "The Karla is on fire. Turn back

and pick me up. Have the sick bay ready for the girl--shes badly burned."

He waited for their acknowledgment, then switched off and stared at

Suza!s expressionless face. "Don!t die," he said. "Please don!t die."

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. She opened her mouth,

struggling to speak. He bent his head to her. She said, "Is it really

you?"

"It's me," he said.

The comers of her mouth lifted in a faint smile. 111711 make

There was the sound of a tremendous explosion. The fire had reached the

fuel tanks of the Karla. The sky was lit up for several moments by a

sheet of flame, the air was filled with a roaring noise, and the rain

stopped. The noise and the light died, and so did the Karla.

"Shes gone down," Dickstein said to Suza. He looked at her. Her eyes were

closed, she was unconscious again, but she was still smiling.

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Epilogue

Nathaniel Dickstein resigned from the Mossad, and his name passed into

legend. He married Suza and took her back to the kibbutz, where they tended

grapes by day and made love half the night. In his spare time he organized

a political campaign to have the laws changed so that his children could be

classified Jewish; or, better still, to abolish classification.

They did not have children for a while. 'Mey were prepared to wait: Suza

was young, and he was in no hurry. Her bums never healed completely.

Sometimes, in bed, she would say, "My legs are horrible," and he would kiss

her knees and tell her, "neyre beautiful, they saved my life."

When the opening of the Yom Kippur War took the Israeli armed forces by

surprise, Pierre Borg was blamed for the lack of advance intelligence, and

he resigned. The truth was more complicated. Ile fault lay with a Russian

intelligence officer called David Rostov-an elderly-looking man who had to

wear a neck brace every moment of his life. He had gone to Cairo and,

beginning with the interrogation and death of an Israeli agent called

Towfik early in 1968, he had investigated all the events of that year and

concluded that Kawash was a double agent. Instead of having Kawash tried

and hanged for espionage, Rostov had told the Egyptians how to feed him

misinformation, which Kawash, in all innocence, duty passed on to Pierre

Borg.

Ile result was that Nat Dickstein came out of retirement to take over

Pierre Borg's job for the duration of the war. On Monday, October 8, 1973,

he attended a crisis meeting of the Cabinet. After three days of war the

Israelis were in deep trouble, The Egyptians bad crossed the Suez Canal and

pushed the Israelis back into Sinai with heavy casualties. On the other

front, the Golan Heights, the Syrians were pushing forward, again with

heavy losses to the Israeli side. The pro-

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posal before the Cabinet was to drop atom bombs on Cairo and Damascus. Not

even the most hawkish ministers actually relished the idea; but the

situation was desperate and the Americans were dragging their heels over

the arms airlift which might save the day.

The meeting was coming around to accepting the idea of using nuclear

weapons when Nat Dickstein made his only contribution to the discussion:

"Of course, we could tell the Americans that we plan to drop these

bombs--on Wednesday, say-unless they start the airlift immediately .

And that is exactly what they did.

'The airlift turned the tide of the war, and later a similar crisis

meeting took place in Cairo. Once again, nobody was in favor of nuclear

war in the Middle East; once again, the politicians gathered around the

table began to persuade one another that therr, was no alternative; and

once again, the proposal was stopped by an unexpected contribution.

This time it was the military that stepped in. Knowing of the proposal

that would be before the assembled presidents, they had run checks on

their nuclear strike force in readiness for a positive decision; and they

had found that all the plutonimn in the bombs had been taken out and

replaced with iron filings. It was assumed that the Russians had done

this, as they had mysteriously rendered unworkable the nuclear reactor

in Qattara, before being expelled from Egypt in 1972.

That night, one of the presidents talked to his wife for five minutes

before falling asleep in his chair. "It!s an over," he told her. "Israel

has won-permanently. They have the bomb, and we do not, and that single

fact will determine the course of history in our region for the rest of

the century."

'Vhat about the Palestine refugees?" his wife said.

The president shrugged and began to light his last pipe of the day. "I

remember reading a story in the London Times ... this must be five years

ago, I suppose. It said that the Free Wales Army had put a bomb in the

police station in Cardiff."

"Wales?" said his wife. "Where is Wales?"

"It is a part of England, more or less."

"I remember," she said. "They have coal mines and choirs!,

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Ken Folleff

"Mars right. Have you any-idea how long ago the AngloSaxons conquered the

Welsh?"

"'None at all.91

"Nor have 1, but it must be more than a thousand years ago, because the

Norman French conquered the Anglo-Saxons nine hundred years ago. You see?

A thousand years, and they are still bombing police stationsl The

Palestinians will be like the Welsh ... They can bomb Israel for a

thousand years, but they will always be the losers."

His wife looked up at him. All these years they had been together, and

still he was capable of surprising her. She.had thought she would never

hear words like this from him.

"I will tell you something else," he went on. 'Mere will have to be

peace. We cannot possibly win, now, so we will have to make peace. Not

now; perhaps not for five or ten years. But the time will come, and then

I will have to go to Jenisalem and say, 'No more war.' I may even get

some credit for it, when the dust settles. It is not how I planned to go

down in history, but it's not such a bad way, for all that. 'Me man who

brought peace to the Middle East.' What would you say to that?"

His wife got up from her chair and came across to hold his bands. There

were tears in her eyes. "I would give thanks to God,- she said.

Franz Albrecht Pedler died in 1974. He died content. ITh life had seen

some ups and downs-he had, after all, lived through the most ignominious

period in the history of his nation--but he had survived and ended his

days happily.

He had guessed what had happened to the uranium. One day early in 1969

his company had received a check for two million dollars, signed by A.

Papagopolous, with a statement from Savile Shipping which read: 'To lost

cargo." The next day a representative of the Israeli Army had called,

bringing the payment for the first shipment of cleaning materials. As he

left, the army man had said, "on the matter of your lost cargo, we would

be happy if you were not to pursue any further Inquiries!'

Pedler began to understand then. "But what if Euratom asks me questionsT'

'Tell them the truth," the man said. "Me cargo was lost,

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and when you tried to discover what had ha~pened to it, you found that

Savile Shipping had gone out of business."

"Have they?"

4vI`hey have."

And that was what Pedler told Euratom. They sent an investigator to see

him, and he repeated his story, which was completely true if not truly

complete. He said to the investigator, "I suppose there will be publicity

about all this soon."

"I doubt it," the investigator told him. "It reflects badly on UL I don't

suppose we'll broadcast the story unless we get more information."

They did not get more information, of course; at least, not in Pedlees

lifetime.

On Yom Kippur in 1974 Suza Dickstein went into labor.

In accordance with the custom of this particular kibbutz, the baby was

delivered by its father, with a midwife standing by to give advice and

encouragement.

The baby was small, like both parents. As soon as its head emerged it

opened its mouth and cried. Dickstein's vision became watery and blurred.

He held the baby's head, checked that the cord was not around its neck,

and said, "Almost there, Suza."

Suza gave one more heave, and the baby's shoulders were born, and after

that it was all downhill. Dickstein tied the cord in two places and cut

it, then-again in accordance with the local custom-he put the baby in the

mother's arms.

"Is it all rightr' she said.

"Perfect," said the midwife,

"What is itT'

Dickstein said, "Oh, God, I didift even look . . . Ws a boy."

A little later Suza said, "What shall we call him? Nathaniel?"

"rd like to call him Towfik," Dickstein said.

"Towfik? Isn't that an Arab name?"

'Yes.

"Why? Why Towfik?"

"Well," he said, "thatts a long story."

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