Triple (9 page)

K*n Folieff

"You don't know what he is saying privately to the Minister. He is in a

very strong position."

Assam frowned. "How did you find out about the project, anyway?19

Kawash leaned back against the cool concrete wall. "One of Maraji's men was

doing a bodyguarding job in Cairo and realized he was being followed. The

tail was an Israeli agent called Towfik. Maraji doesn!t have any field men

in the city, so the bodyguard's request for action was passed to me. I

picked Towfik up."

Assam snorted with disgust. "Bad enough to let himself be followed. Worse

to call the wrong department for help. This is terrible."

"Perhaps we can do something about it, my cousin."

Assam scratched his nose with a hand heavy with rings. "Go on."

'Tell the Director about Towfik. Say that Maraji, for all his considerable

talents, makes mistakes in picking his men, because he is young and

inexperienced by comparison with someone such as yourself. Insist that you

should have charge of personnel for the Qattara project. Then put a man

loyal to us into a job there."

Assam nodded slowly. "I see."

The taste of success was in Kawash's mouth. He leaned forward. "Me Director

will be grateful to you for having discovered this area of slackness in a

top-security matter. And you will be able to keep track of everything

Maraji does."

'This is a very good plan," Assam said. "I will speak to the Director

today. I'm grateful to you, cousin."

Kawash had one more thing to say-the most important thing-and he wanted to

say it at the best possible moment. It would wait a few minutes, he

decided. He stood up and said, "Haven't you always been my patron?"

They went arm-in-arm out into the heat of the city. Assam said, "And I will

find a suitable man immediately."

"Ali, yes," Kawash said, as if that reminded him of another small detail.

"I have a man who would be ideal. He is intelligent, resourceful,' and very

discreet-and the son of my late wife's brother."

Assam's eyes narrowed. "So he would report to you, too."

Kawash looked hurt. "If this is too much for me to ask He spread his hands in

4 gesture of resignation.

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"No," Assam said. "We have always helped one another."

They reached the comer where they parted company. Kawash struggled to keep

his feeling of triumph from showing in his face. "I will send the man to

see you. You will find him completely reliable."

"So be it," said Assam.

Pierre Borg had known Nat Dickstein for twenty years. Back in 1948 Borg had

been sure the boy was not agent material, despite that stroke with the

boatload of rifles. He had been thin, pale, awkward, unprepossessing. But

it had not been Borg's decision, and they had given Dickstein a trial. Borg

had rapidly come to acknowledge that the kid might not look like much but

he was smart as shit. He also had an odd charm that Borg never understood.

Some of the women in the Mossad were crazy about him-while others, like

Borg, failed to see the attraction. Dickstein showed no interest either

way--.his dossier said, "Sex life: none."

Over the years Dickstein had grown in skill and confidence, and now Borg

would rely on him more than any other agent. Indeed, if Dickstein had been

more personally ambitious he could have had the job Borg now held.

Nevertheless, Borg did not see how Dickstein could fulfill his brief. The

result of the policy debate over nuclear weapons had been one of those

asinine political compromises which bedeviled the work of all civil

servants: they bad agreed to steal the uranium only if it could be done in

such a way that nobody would know, at least for many years, that Israel had

been the thief. Borg had fought the decision-he had been all for a sudden,

swift piece of buccaneering and to hell with the consequences. A more

judicious view had prevailed in the Cabinet; but it was Borg and his team

who had to put the decision into effect.

There were other men in the Mossad who could carry out

ibed scheme as well as Dickstein-Mike, the head of a prescri Special

Operations, was one, and Borg himself was another. But there was nobody else

to whom Borg could say, as he had said to Dickstein: This is the

problern--go solve it.

The two men spent a day in a Mossad safe house in the town of Ramat Gan,

just outside Tel Aviv. Security-vetted Mossad employees made coffee, served

meals, and patrolled thegarden with revolvers under their jackets. In the

morning

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Ken Folleff

Dickstein saw a young physics teacher from the Weizmann Institute at

Rehovot. The scientist had long hair and a flowered tie., and he explamed

the chemistry of uranium, the natm of radioactivity and the working of an

atomic pile with limpid clarity and endless patience. After lunch Dickstein

talked to an administrator from Dimona about uranium mines, enrichment

plants, fuel fabrication works, storage and transport; about safety rules

and international regulations; and about the International Atomic Energy

Agency, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy

Authority and Euratom.

In the evening Borg and Dickstein had dinner together. Borg was on a

halfhearted diet, as usual: he ate no bread with his skewered lamb and

salad, but he drank most of the bottle of red Israeli wine. His excuse was

that he was calming his nerves so that he would not reveal his anxiety to

Dickstein.

After dinner he gave Dickstein three keys. "There are spare identities for

you in safety-deposit boxes in London, Brussels and Zurich," he said.

"Passports, driving licenses, cash and a weapon in each. If you have to

switch, leave the old documents in the box."

Dickstein nodded. "Do I report to you or Mike?"

Borg thought: You never report anyway, you bastard. He said, 'To me,

please, Whenever possible, call me direct and use the jargon. If you can't

reach me, contact any embassy and use the code for a meeting-III try to get

to you, wherever you are. As a last resort, send coded letters via the dip-

lomatic bags."

Dickstein nodded expressionlessly: all this was routine. Borg stared at

him, trying to read his mind. How did he feel? Did he think he could do it?

Did he have any ideas? Did he plan to go through the motions of trying it

and then report that it was impossible? Was he really convinced the bomb

was the right thing for Israel?

Borg could have asked, but he would have got no answers.

Dickstein said, "Presumably there's a deadline."

"Yes, but we don't know what it is." Borg began to pick onions out of the

remains of the salad. "We must have our bomb before the Egyptians get

theirs. That means your uranium has to go on stream in the reactor before

the Egyptian reactor goes operational. After that point, everything is

so

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chemistry-theres nothing either side can do to hurry subatomic

particles. The first to start win be the first to finish."

'Ve need an agent in Qattara," Dickstein said.

"I'm working on it."

Dickstein nodded. "We must have a very good man in Cairo."

This was not what Borg wanted to talk about. "What are you trying to

do, pump me for information?" he said crossly.

"Thinking aloud."

There was silence for a few moments. Borg crunched some more onions.

At last he said, "I've told you what I want, but I've left to you all

the decisions about how to get it."

"Yes, you have, haven't you." Dickstein stood up. "I think IT go to

bed."

"Have you got any idea where you're going to start?"

Dickstein said, "Yes, I have. Goodnight."

51

Three

Nat Dickstein never got used to being a secret agent It was the continual

deceit that bothered him. He was always lying to people, biding,

pretending to be someone he was not, surreptitiously following people and

showing false documents to officials at airports. He never ceased to worry

about being found out He had a daytime nightmare in which he was sur-

rounded suddenly by policemen who shouted, "You're a spyl You're a spyl"

and took him off to prison where they broke his leg.

He was uneasy now. He was at the Jean-Monnet building in Luxembourg, on

the Kirchberg Plateau across a narrow river valley from the hilltop city.

He sat in the entrance to the offices of the Euratom Safeguards

Directorate, memorizing the faces of the employees as they arrived at

work. He was waiting to see a press officer called Pfaffer but he had in-

tentionally come much too early. He was looking for weakness. The

disadvantage of this ploy was that all the staff got to see his face,

too; but he had no time for subtle precautions.

Pfaffer turned out to be an untidy young man with an expression of

disapproval and a battered brown briefcase. Dickstein followed him into

an equally untidy office and accepted his offer of coffee. They spoke

French. Dickstein was accredited to the Paris office of an obscure

journal called Science International. He told Pfaffer that it was his

ambition to get a job on Scientific A merican

Pfaffer asked him, "Exactly what are you writing about at

the moment?" I

"The article is called 'MUF."' Dickstein explained in English, "Material

Unaccounted For." He went on, "In the United States radioactive fuel is

continually getting lost Here

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in Europe, rm told, there's an international system for keeping track of

all such material."

"Correct," Pfaffer said. "The member countries hand over control of

fissile substances to Euratom. We have, first of all, a complete list of

civilian establishments where stocks are hold-from mines through

preparation and fabrication plants, stores, and reactors, to reprocessing

plants."

"You said civilian establishments."

"Yes. The military are outside our scope."

"Go on." Dickstein. was relieved to get Pfaffer talking before the press

officer had a chance to realize how limited was Dickstein's knowledge of

these subjects.

"As an example," Pfaffer continued, "take a factory making fuel elements

from ordinary yellowcake. The raw material coming into the factory is

weighed and analyzed by Euratom. inspectors. Their findings are

programmed into the Euratom computer and checked against the information

from the inspectors at the dispatching installation-in this case,

probably a uranium mine. If there is a discrepancy between the quantity

that left the dispatching installation and the quantity that arrived at

the factory, the computer will say so. Similar measurements are made of

the material leaving the factory--quantity and quality. These figures

will in turn be checked against information supplied by inspectors at the

premises where the fuel is to be used-a nuclear power station, probably.

In addition, all waste at the factory is weighed and analyzed.

"This process of inspection and double-checking is carried on up to and

including the final disposal of radioactive wastes. Finally, stocktaking

is done at least twice a year at the factory."

"I see." Dickstein looked impressed and felt desperately discouraged. No

doubt Pfaffer was exaggerating the efficiency of the system-but even if

they made half the checks they were supposed to, how could anyone spirit

away one hundred tons of yellowcake without their computers noticing? To

keep Pfaffer talking, he said, "So, at any given moment, your computer

knows the location of every scrap of uranium in Europe.

"Within the member countries-France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the

Netherlands and Luxembourg. And Ws not just uranium, ifs all radioactive

material."

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