Triple (52 page)

TRIPLE

They looked at the drums then at each other. For a moment all rivalry was

forgotten.

"We did it," said Haman. "By Ood, we did it."

As darkness fell Tyrin had watched the engineer go forward to switch on the

white fight. Coming back, he had not gone UP to the bridge but had walked

farther aft and entered the galley. He was going to get something to eat.

Tyrin was hungry too. He would give his arm for a plate of salted herring

and a loaf of brown bread. Sitting cramped in his lifeboat all afternoon,

waiting for Koch to move, he had had nothing to think about but his hunger,

and be had tortured himself with thoughts of caviar, smoked salmon,

marinated mushrooms and most of all brown bread.

Not yet, Pyotr, he told himself.

As soon as Koch had disappeared from sight, Tyrin got out of the lifeboat,

his mu cles protesting as he stretched, and hurried along the deck to the

foeard store.

He had shifted the boxes and junk in the main store so that they concealed

the entrance to his small radio room. Now he had to get down on hands and

knees, pun away one box, and crawl through a little tunnel to get in.

Ile, set was repeating a short two-letter signal. Tyrin checked the code

book and found it meant he was to switch to another wavelength before

acknowledging. He set the radio to transmit and followed his instructions.

Rostov immediately replied. CHANGE OF PLAN. HASSAN WILL ATTACK COPARELL1.

Tyrin frowned in puzzlement, and made: REPEAT PLEASE.

RASSAN IS A TRAITOR. FEDAYEEN WILL ATTACK COPARELLI.

Tyrin said aloud: "Jesus, what's going on?" The Coparelli was here, he was

on it ... Why would Hassan for the uranium, of course.

Rostov was SO signaling. HASSAN PLANS TO AMBUSH DICK5TEIN. FOR OUR PLAN TO

PROCEED WE MUST WARN DICKSTEIN OF THE AMBUSH.

Tyrin frowned as he decoded tb* then his face cleared as he understood.

"Men we'll be back to square one," he said to himself. 'Ibat's clever. But

what do I dor,

He made: How?

YOU WILL CALL STROMBERG ON COPARELLIS REGULAR WAVELENGTH AND SEND POLLOWINO

MESSAGE PRECISELY RE-

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PEAT PRECISELY. QUOTE COPARELLI TO STROMBERO I AM BOARDED ARABS I THINK.

WATCH UNQUOTE.

Tyrin nodded. Dickstein would think that Koch had time to get a few words

off before the Arabs killed him. Forewarned, Dickstein should be able to

take the Coparelli. Then Rostov's Karla could collide with Dickstein's

ship as planned. Tyrin thought: But what about me?

He made: UNDERSTOOD. He heard a distant bump, as if something had hit the

ship's hull. At first he ignored it, then he remembered there was nobody

aboard but him and Koch. He went to the door of the for'ard store and

looked out.

The Fedayeen had arrived.

He closed the door and hurried back to his transmitter. He made: HASSAN

is HERE. .

Rostov replied, SIGNAL DICKSTEIN NOW.

WHAT DO I DO THEN?

MDE.

Thanks very much, Tyrin thought. He signed off and tuned to the regular

wavelength to signal the Stromberg.

The morbid thought occurred to him that he might never eat salted herring

again.

"I've heard of being armed to the teeth, but this is ridiculous," said

Nat Dickstein, and they all laughed.

The message from the Coparelli had altered his mood. At first he had been

shocked. How had the opposition managed to learn so much of his plan that

they had been able to hijack the Coparelli first? Somewhere he must have

made terrible errors of judgment. Suza ... ? But there was no point now

in castigating himself. There was a fight ahead. His black depression

vanished. The tension was still there, coiled tight inside him like a

steel spring, but now he could ride it and use it, now he had something

to do with it.

The twelve men in the mess room of the Stromberg sensed the change in

Dickstein and they caught his eagerness for the battle, although they

knew some of them would die soon.

Armed to the teeth they were. Each had an Uzi 9-mm submachine gun, a

reliable, compact firearm weighing nine pounds when loaded with the

25-round magazine and only an inch over two feet long with its metal

stock extended. They had three spare magazines each. Each man had a 9-mm

Luger in a belt holster-the pistol would take the same car-

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tridges as the machine gun-and a clip of four grenades on the opposite

side of his belt. Almost certainly, they all had extra, weapons of their

own choice: knives, blackjacks, bayonets, knuckle-dusters and others more

exotic, carried superstitiously, more like lucky charms than fighting

implements.

Dickstein knew their mood, knew they had caught it from him. He had felt

it before with men before a fight. They were afraid,

and-paradoxically-the fear made them eager to get started, for the

waiting was the worst part, the battle itself was anesthetic, and

afterward you had either survived or you were dead and did not care

anymore.

Dickstein had figured his battle plan in detail and briefed them. 'Me

Coparelli was designed like a miniature tanker, with holds forward and

amidships, the main superstructure on the afterdeck, and a secondary

superstructure in the stern. The, main superstructure contained the

bridge, the officers' quarters and the mess; below it were crew's

quarters. The stern superstructure contained the galley, below that

stores, and below these the engine room. The two superstructures were

separate above deck, but below deck they were connected by gangways.

They were to go over in three teams. Abbas's would attack the bows. The

other two, led by Bader and Gibli, would go up the port and starboard

ladders at the stern.

The two stem teams were detailed to go below and work forward, Bushing

out the enemy amidships where they could be mown down by Abbas and his

men from the prow. The strategy was likely to leave a pocket of

resistance at the bridge, so Dickstein planned to take the bridge

himself.

The attack would be by night; otherwise they would never get aboard-they

would be picked off as they came over the rails. That left the problem

of how to avoid shooting at one another as well as the enemy. For this

he provided a recognition signal, the word Aliyah, and the attack plan

was designed so that they were not expected to confront one another until

the very end.

Now they were waiting.

They sat in a loose circle in the galley of the Stromberg, identical to

the galley of the Coparelli where they would soon be fighting and dying.

Dickstein was speaking to Abbas: "From the bows you'll control the

foredeck, an open field of fire. Deploy your men behind cover and stay

there. When the

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enemy on deck reveal their positions, pick them off. Your main problem is

going to be hailing fire from the bridge." -

Slumped in his chair, Abbas looked even more like a tank than usual.

Dickstein was glad Abbas was on his side. "And we hold our fire at first."

Dickstein nodded. "Yes. You've a good chance of getting aboard unseen. No

point in shooting until you know the rest of us have arrived."

Abbas nodded. "I see Porush is on my team. You know he's my

brother-in-law."

"Yes. I also know he's -the only married man here. I thought you might want

to take care of him."

"Thanks.19

Feinberg looked up from the knife he was cieaning. 'Me lanky New Yorker was

not grinning for once. "How do you figure these ArabsT'

Dickstein shook his head. 'They could be regular army or Fedayeen."

Feinberg grinned. "Let's- hope they're regular army-we make faces, they

surrender."

It was a lousy joke, but they all laughed anyway.

Ish, always pessimistic, sitting with his feet on a table and his eyes

closed, said, "Going over the rail will be the worst part. We'll be naked

as babes."

Dickstein said, "Remember that they believe we're expecting to take over a

deserted boat. Their ambush is supposed to be a big surprise for 'us.

They're looking for an easy victory-but we're prepared. And it will be

dark----

The door opened and the captain came in. "We've sighted the Coparelli."

Dickstein stood up. "Let's go. Good luck, and don't take any prisoners."

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Sixteen

7be three boats pulled away from -the Stramberg in the last few minutes

before dawn.

Within seconds the ship behind them was invisible. She had no navigation

lights, and deck lights and cabin lamps had been extinguished, even below

the waterline, to ensure that no light escaped to warn the Coparelft.

The weather had worsened during the night. The captain of the Stromberg

said it was still not bad enough to be called a storm, but the rain was

torrential, the wind strong enough to blow a steel bucket clattering

along the deck, the waves so high that now Dickstein was obliged to cling

tightly to his bench seat in the well of the-motorboat.

For a while they were in limbo, with nothing visible ahead

or behind. Dickstein could not even see the faces of the four

men in the boat with him. Feinberg broke the silence: "I still

say we should have postponed this fishing trip until tomor

row.90 -

Whistling past the graveyard.

Dickstein was as superstitious as the rest: underneath his oilskin and

his life jacket he wore his father's old striped waistcoat with a smashed

fob watch in the pocket over his heart. 1lie watch had once stopped a

German bullet.

Dickstein was thinking logically, but in a way he knew he had gone a

little crazy. His affair with Suza, and her betrayal, had turned him

upside down: his old values and motivations had been jolted, and the new

ones he had acquired with her had turned to dust in his hands. He still

cared for some things: he wanted to win this battle, he wanted Israel to

have the uranium, and he wanted to kill Yasif Hassan; the one thing he

did not care about was himself. He had no fear, suddenly, of bullets and

pain and death. Suza had betrayed him, and he had no burning desire to

live a long life with that in

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his past. So long as Israel got its bomb, Esther would die peacefully,

Mottie would finish Treasure Island, and Yigael would look after the grapes.

He gripped the barrel of the machine gun beneath his oilskin.

They crested a wave and suddenly, there in the next trough, was the

Coparelli.

Switching from forward to reverse several times in rapid succession Levi

Abbas edged his boat closer to the bows of the Coparel7i. The white fight

above them enabled him to see quite clearly, while the outward-curving hull

shielded his boat from the sight of anyone on deck or on the bridge. When

the boat was close enough to the ladder Abbas took a rope and tied it

around his waist under the oilskin. He hesitated a moment then shucked off

the oilskin, unwrapped his gun and slung-the gun over his neck. He stood

with one foot in the boat and one on the gunwale, waited for his moment,

and jumped.

He hit the ladder with both feet and both hands. He untied the rope around

his waist and secured it to a rung of the ladder. He went up the ladder

almost to the top, then stopped. They should go over the rail as close

together as possible.

He looked back down. Sharrett and Sapir were already on the ladder below

him. As he looked, Porush made his jump, landed awkwardly and missed his

grip, and for a moment Abbas's breath caught in his throat; but Porush

slipped down only one rung before he managed to hook an arm around the side

of the ladder and arrest his descent.

Abbas waited for Porush to come up close behind Sapir, then he went over

the rail. He landed softly on all fours and crouched low beside the

gunwale. The others followed swiftly: one, two, three. The white light was

above them and they were very exposed. . .

Abbas looked about. Sharrett was the smallest and he could wriggle like a

snake. Abbas touched his shoulder and pointed across the deck. "Take cover

on the port side."

Sharrett bellied across two yards of open deck, then he was partly

concealed by the raised edge of the foeard hatch. He inched forward.

Abbas looked up and down the deck. At any moment they

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