Triple (41 page)

TRIPLE

Prime Minister. Dickstein told him, "I don't know, I've never met him. Shake

hands and call him by his name."

Cohen smiled. He was beginning to share Dickstein!s feeling of

mischievousness.

Pierre Borg met them at Lod Airport with a car to take them to Jerusalem.

He smiled and shook hands with Cohen, but he was seething underneath. As

they walked to the car he muttered to Dickstein, "You better have a fucking

good reason for all this."

"I have."

They were with Cohen all the while, so Borg did not have an opportunity to

cross-examine Dickstein. They went straight to the Prime Minister's

residence in Jerusalem. Dickstein and Cohen waited in an anteroom while

Borg explained to the Prime Minister what was required and why.

A couple of minutes later they were admitted. "This is Nat Dickstein, sir,"

Borg said.

They shook hands, and the Prime Minister said, "We haven't met before, but

I've heard of you, Mr. Dickstein."

Borg said, "And this is Mr. Josef Cohen of Antwerp."

"Mr. Cohen." IMe Prime Minister smiled. "You're a very cautious man. You

should be a politician. Well, now . . . please do this thing for us. It is

very important, and you will come to no harm from it."

Cohen was bedazzled. "Yes, sir, of course I Will do this, Ilm sorry to have

caused so much trouble . . ."

"Not at all. You did the right thing." He shook Cohen!s hand again. 'Thank

you for coming. Goodbye."

Borg was less polite on the way back to the airport. He sat fient in the

front seat of the car, smoking a cigar and fidgeting. At the airport he

managed to get Dickstein alone for a minute. "If you ever pull a stunt like

this again . . ."

"It was necessary," Dickstein said. "It took less than a minute. Why

not?-

"Why not, is because half my fucking department has been working all day to

fix that minute. Why didn't you just point a gun at the man's head or

something?"

"Because were not barbarians," Dickstein said.

"So people keep telling me."

'They do? Tliat!s a bad sign."

"Because you shouldn!t need to be told."

233

Ken Folleff

Then their fight was called. Boarding the plane with Cohen, Dickstein

reflected that his relationship with Borg was in ruins. They had always

talked like this, with bantering insults, but until now there had been

an undertone of . . . perhaps not affection, but at least respect. Now

that had vanished. Borg was genuinely hostile. Dickstein's refusal to be

pulled out was a piece of basic defiance which could not be tolerated.

If Dickstein had wanted to continue in the Mossad, he would have had to

fight Borg for the job of director-there was no longer sufficient room

for both men in the organization. But there would be no contest now, for

Dickstein was going to resign.

Flying back to Europe through the night, Cohen drank some gin and went

to sleep. Dickstein ran over in his mind the work he had done in the past

five months. Back in May he had started out with no real idea of how he

was going to steal the uranium Israel needed. He had taken the problems

as they came up, and found a solution to each one: how to locate uranium,

which uranium to steal, how to hijack a ship, how to camouflage the

Israeli involvement in the theft, how to prevent the disappearance of the

uranium being reported to the authorities, how to placate the owners of

the stuff. If he had sat down at the beginning and tried to dream up the

whole. scheme he could never have foreseen all the complications.

He had had some good luck and some bad. The fact that the owners of the

Coparelli used a Jewish crew agency in Antwerp was a piece of luck; so

was the existence of a consignment of uranium for non-nuclear purposes,

and one going by sea. The bad luck mainly consisted of the accidental

meeting with Yasif Hassan.

Hassan, the fly in the ointment. Dickstein was reasonably certain he had

shaken off the opposition when he flew to Buffalo to see Cortone, and

that they had not picked up his trail again since. But that did not mean

they had dropped the case.

It would be useful to know how much they had found out before they lost

him.

Dickstein could not see Suza again until the whole affair was over, and

Hassan was to blame for that too. If he were to go to Oxford, Hassan was

sure to pick up the trail somehow.

234

TRIPLE

The plane began its descent. Dickstein fastened big seat belt. It was all

done now, the scheme in place, the preparations made. Ile cards had been

dealt. He knew what was in his hand, and he knew some of his opponents'

cards, and they knew some of his. All that remained was to play out the

game, and no one could foretell the outcome. He wished he could see the

future more clearly, 'he wished big plan were less complicated, he wished

he did not have to risk his life once mom, and he wished the game would

start so that he could stop wishing and start doing things.

Cohen was awake. "Did I dream all that?" he said.

"No." Dickstein smiled. There was one more unpleasant duty he had to

perform: he had to scare Cohen half to death. 'I told you this was

important, and secret."

"Of course, I understand."

"You don't understand. If you talk about this to anyone other than your

wife, we will take drastic action."

"Is that a threat? What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, if you don't keep your mouth shut, we will kill your wife."

Cohen stared, and went pale. After a moment he turned away and looked out

of the window at the airport coming up to meet them.

235

Thirteen

Moscow's Hotel Rossiya was the largest hotel in Europe. It had 5,738 beds,

ten miles of corridors, and no air-conditioning.

Yasif Hassan slept very badly there.

It was simple to say, "The Fedayeen should hijack the ship before

Dickstein gets there," but the more he thought about it, the more

terrified he was.

The Palestine Liberation Organization in 1968 was not the tightly-knit

political entity it pretended to be. It was not even a loose federation

of individual groups working together. It was more like a club for people

with a common interest: it represented its members, but it did not

control them. The individual guerrilla groups could speak with one voice

through the PLO, but they did not and could not act as one. So when

Mahmoud said the Fedayeen would do something, he spoke only for his own

group. Furthermore, in this case it would be unwise even to ask for PLO

cooperation. The organization was given money, facilities and a home by

the Egyptians, but it had also been infiltrated by them: if you wanted

to keep something secret from the Arab establishment, you had to keep it

secret from the PLO. Of course, after the coup, when the world's press

came to look over the captured ship with its atomic cargo, the Egyptians

would know and would probably suspect that the Fedayeen had deliberately

thwarted them, but Mahmoud would play innocent and the Egyptians would

be obliged to join in the general acclamation of the Fedayeen for

frustrating an Israeli act of aggression.

Anyway, Mahmoud believed he did not need the help of the others. His

group had the best connections outside Palestine, the best European

set-up, and plenty of money. He was now in Benghazi arranging to boxTow

a ship while his inter-

236

TRIPLE

national team was gathered up from various parts of the world.

But the most crucial task devolved on Hassan: if the Fedayeen were to get

to the Coparelli before the Israelis, he would have to establish exactly

when and where Dickstein!s hijack was to take place. For that, he needed

the KGB.

He felt terribly uneasy around Rostov now. Until his visit to Mahmoud he

had been able to tell himself he was working for two organizations with a

common objective. Now he was indisputably a double agent, merely pretending

to work with the Egyptians and the KGB while he sabotaged their plans. He

felt different-he felt a traitor, in a way-and he was afraid that Rostov

would observe the difference in him.

When Hassan bad flown in to Moscow Rostov himself had been uneasy. He had

said there was not enough room in his apartment for Hassan to stay,

although Hassan knew the rest of the family were away on holiday. It seemed

Rostov was hiding something. Hassan suspected he was seeing some woman and

did not want his colleague getting in the way.

After his restless night at the Hotel Rossiya, Hassan met Rostov at the KGB

building on the Moscow ring road, in the officeof Rostov's boss, Feliks

Vorontsov. There were undercurrents there too. The two men were having an

argument when Hassan entered the room, and although they broke it off

immediately the air was stiff with unspoken hostility. Hassan, however, was

too busy with his own clandestine moves to pay much attention to theirs.

He -sat down. "Have there been any developments?"

Rostov and Vorontsov looked at one another. Rostov shrugged. Vorontsov

said, "The Stramberg has been fitted with a very powerful radio beacon.

She's out of dry dock now and heading south across the Bay of Biscay. The

assumption would be that she is going to Haifa to take on a crew of Mossad

agents. I think we can all be quite satisfied with our

intelligence~-gathering work. The project now falls into the sphere of

positive action. Our task becomes prescriptive rather than descriptive, as

it were."

"They all talk like this in Moscow Center," Rostov said irreverently.

Vorontsov glared at him.

Hassan said, "What action?"

"Rostov here is going to Odessa to board a Polish merchant ship called the

Karla," V6rontsov said. "Shes an ordi-

237

Ken Folleff

nary cargo vessel superficially, but shes very fast and has certain extra

equipment-we use her quite often."

Rostov was staring up at the ceiling, an expression of mild distaste on

his face. Hassan guessed that Rostov wanted to keep some of these details

from the Egyptians: perhaps that was what he and Vorontsov had been

arguing abouL

Vorontsov went on, IrYour job Is to get an Egyptian vessel and make

contact with the Karla in the Mediterranean."

"And then?" Hassan said.

'We wait for T`yft aboard the Copawift, to tell us when the Israeli

hijack takes place. He will also tell us whether the uranium is

traiisferred from the Coparelli to the Stroynberg, or simply left aboard

the Coparell! to be taken to Haifa and unloaded."

"And then?" Hassan persisted.

Vorontsov began to speak, but Rostov forestalled him. "I want you to tell

Cairo a cover story," he said to Hassan. "I want your people to think

that we don!t know about the Coparelft, we Just know the Israelis an

planning something in the Mediterranean and we are still tying to

discover what."

Hassan nodded, keeping his face impassive. He had to know what the plan

was, and Rostov did not want to tell binif He said, 'Tee, Ill tell them

that-if you tell me the aotual plan.-

Rostov looked at Voronstov and shrugged. Vorontsov said, "After the

hijack the Karla will set a course for Dickstein!s ship, whichever one

carnes, the uranium, The Karla Will coIlide with that ship."

"Your ship will witness the collision, report it, and observe that the

crew of the vessel are Israelis and their cargo is uranium. You will

report these facts too. There will be an international inquiry into the

collision. The presence of both ls~ raefis and stolen uranhun. on the

ship will be established beyond doubt. Meanwhile the uranium will be

returned to its rightful owners and the Israelis will be covered with

opprobrim."

'Me Israelis will fight," Hassan said.

Rostov said, "So much the better, with your ship there to see them.

attackus and help us beat them off."

"It's a good plan," said Vorontsov. "It's simple. All they have to do is

crash-the rest follows automatically."

238