by Ken Follett
Rostov went back into the bedroom, where Tyrin was reassembling the telephone. "It's done."
"Put one behind the headboard," Rostov said.
Tyrin was taping a bug to the wall behind the bed when the phone rang.
If Dickstein returned the sentry in the lobby was to call Dickstein's room on the house phone, let it ring twice, then hang up.
It rang a second time. Rostov and Tyrin stood still, silent, waiting.
It rang again.
They relaxed.
It stopped after the seventh ring.
Rostov said, "I wish he had a car for us to bug."
"I've got a shirt button."
"What?"
"A bug like a shirt button."
"I didn't know such things existed."
"It's new."
"Got a needle? And thread?"
"Of course."
"Then go ahead."
Tyrin went to Dickstein's case and without taking the shirt out snipped off the second button, carefully removing all the loose thread. With a few swift strokes he sewed on the new button. His pudgy hands were surprisingly dexterous.
Rostov watched but his thoughts were elsewhere. He wanted desperately to do more to ensure that he would hear what Dickstein said and did. The Israeli might find the bugs in the phone and the headboard; he would not wear the bugged shirt all the time. Rostov liked to be sure of things, and Dickstein was maddeningly slippery: there was nowhere you could hook on to him. Rostov had harbored a faint hope that somewhere in this room there would be a photograph of someone Dickstein loved.
"There." Tyrin showed him his handiwork. The shirt was plain white nylon with the commonest sort of white button. The new one was indistinguishable from the others.
"Good," Rostov said. "Close the case."
Tyrin did so. "Anything else?"
"Take another quick look around for telltales. I can't believe Dickstein would go out without taking any precautions at all."
They searched again, quickly, silently, their movements practiced and economical, showing no signs of the haste they both felt. There were dozens of ways of planting telltales. A hair lightly stuck across the crack of the door was the most simple; a scrap of paper jammed against the back of a drawer would fall out when the drawer was opened; a lump of sugar under a thick carpet would be silently crushed by a footstep; a penny behind the lining of a suitcase lid would slide from front to back if the case were opened . . .
They found nothing.
Rostov said, "All Israelis are paranoid. Why should he be different?"
"Maybe he's been pulled out."
Rostov grunted. "Why else would he suddenly get careless?"
"He could have fallen in love," Tyrin suggested.
Rostov laughed. "Sure," he said. "And Joe Stalin could have been canonized by the Vatican. Let's get out of here."
He went out, and Tyrin followed, closing the door softly behind him.
So it was a woman.
Pierre Borg was shocked, amazed, mystified, intrigued and deeply worried.
Dickstein never had women.
Borg sat on a park bench under an umbrella. He had been unable to think in the Embassy, with phones ringing and people asking him questions all the time, so he had come out here, despite the weather. The rain blew across the empty park in sheets, and every now and then a drop would land on the tip of his cigar and he would have to relight it.
It was the tension in Dickstein that made the man so fierce. The last thing Borg wanted was for him to learn how to relax.
The pavement artists had followed Dickstein to a small apartment house in Chelsea where he had met a woman. "It's a sexual relationship," one of them had said. "I heard her orgasm." The caretaker of the building had been interviewed, but he knew nothing about the woman except that she was a close friend of the people who owned the apartment.
The obvious conclusion was that Dickstein owned the flat (and had bribed the caretaker to lie); that he used it as a rendezvous; that he met someone from the opposition, a woman; that they made love and he told her secrets.
Borg might have bought that idea if he had found out about the woman some other way. But if Dickstein had suddenly become a traitor he would not have allowed Borg to become suspicious. He was too clever. He would have covered his tracks. He would not have led the pavement artists straight to the flat without once looking over his shoulder. His behavior had innocence written all over it. He had met with Borg, looking like the cat that got at the cream, either not knowing or not caring that his mood was all over his face. When Borg asked what was going on, Dickstein made jokes. Borg was bound to have him tailed. Hours later Dickstein was screwing some girl who liked it so much you could hear her out in the fucking street. The whole thing was so damn naive it had to be true.
All right, then. Some woman had found a way to get past Dickstein's defenses and seduce him. Dickstein was reacting like a teenager because he never had a teenage. The important question was, who was she?
The Russians had files, too, and they ought to have assumed, like Borg, that Dickstein was invulnerable to a sexual approach. But maybe they thought it was worth a try. And maybe they were right.
Once again, Borg's instinct was to pull Dickstein out immediately. And once again, he hesitated. If it had been any project other than this one, any agent other than Dickstein, he would have known what to do. But Dickstein was the only man who could solve this problem. Borg had no option but to stick to his original scheme: wait until Dickstein had fully conceived his plan, then pull him out.
He could at least have the London Station investigate the woman and find out all they could about her.
Meanwhile he would just have to hope that if she were an agent Dickstein would have the sense not to tell her anything.
It would be a dangerous time, but there was no more Borg could do.
His cigar went out, but he hardly noticed. The park was completely deserted now. Borg sat on his bench, his body uncharacteristically still, holding the umbrella over his head, looking like a statue, worrying himself to death.
The fun was over, Dickstein told himself: it was time to get back to work.
Entering his hotel room at ten o'clock in the morning, he realized that--incredibly--he had left no telltales. For the first time in twenty years as an agent, he had simply forgotten to take elementary precautions. He stood in the doorway, looking around, thinking about the shattering effect that she had had on him. Leaving her and going back to work was like climbing into a familiar car which has been garaged for a year: he had to let the old habits, the old instincts, the old paranoia seep back into his mind.
He went into the bathroom and ran a tub. He now had a kind of emotional breathing-space. Suza was going back to work today. She was with BOAC, and this tour of duty would take her all the way around the world. She expected to be back in twenty-one days, but it might be longer. He had no idea where he might be in three weeks' time; which meant he did not know when he would see her again. But see her again he would, if he lived.
Everything looked different now, past and future. The last twenty years of his life seemed dull, despite the fact that he had shot people and been shot at, traveled all over the world, disguised himself and deceived people and pulled off outrageous, clandestine coups. It all seemed trivial.
Sitting in the tub he wondered what he would do with the rest of his life. He had decided he would not be a spy anymore--but what would he be? It seemed all possibilities were open to him. He could stand for election to the Knesset, or start his own business, or simply stay on the kibbutz and make the best wine in Israel. Would he marry Suza? If he did, would they live in Israel? He found the uncertainty delicious, like wondering what you would be given for your birthday.
If I live, he thought. Suddenly there was even more at stake. He was afraid to die. Until now death had been something to avoid with all skill only because it constituted, so to speak, a losing move in the game. Now he wanted desperately to live: to sle
ep with Suza again, to make a home with her, to learn all about her, her idiosyncracies and her habits and her secrets, the books she liked and what she thought about Beethoven and whether she snored.
It would be terrible to lose his life so soon after she had saved it.
He got out of the bath, rubbed himself dry and dressed. The way to keep his life was to win this fight.
His next move was a phone call. He considered the hotel phone, decided to start being extra careful here and now, and went out to find a call box.
The weather had changed. Yesterday had emptied the sky of rain, and now it was pleasantly sunny and warm. He passed the phone booth nearest to the hotel and went on to the next one: extra careful. He looked up Lloyd's of London in the directory and dialed their number.
"Lloyd's, good morning."
"I need some information about a ship."
"That's Lloyd's of London Press--I'll put you through."
While he waited Dickstein looked out the windows of the phone booth at the London traffic, and wondered whether Lloyd's would give him what he wanted. He hoped so--he could not think where else to go for the information. He tapped his foot nervously.
"Lloyd's of London Press."
"Good morning, I'd like some information about a ship."
"What sort of information?" the voice said, with--Dickstein thought--a trace of suspicion.
"I want to know whether she was built as part of a series; and if so, the names of her sister ships, who owns them, and their present locations. Plus plans, if possible."
"I'm afraid I can't help you there."
Dickstein's heart sank. "Why not?"
"We don't keep plans, that's Lloyd's Register, and they only give them out to owners."
"But the other information? The sister ships?"
"Can't help you there either."
Dickstein wanted to get the man by the throat. "Then who can?"
"We're the only people who have such information."
"And you keep it secret?"
"We don't give it out over the phone."
"Wait a minute, you mean you can't help me over the phone."
"That's right."
"But you can if I write or call personally."
"Um . . . yes, this inquiry shouldn't take too long, so you could call personally."
"Give me the address." He wrote it down. "And you could get these details while I wait?"
"I think so."
"All right. I'll give you the name of the ship now, and you should have all the information ready by the time I get there. Her name is Coparelli." He spelled it.
"And your name?"
"Ed Rodgers."
"The company?"
"Science International."
"Will you want us to bill the company?"
"No, I'll pay by personal check."
"So long as you have some identification."
"Of course. I'll be there in an hour. Goodbye."
Dickstein hung up and left the phone booth, thinking: Thank God for that. He crossed the road to a cafe and ordered coffee and a sandwich.
He had lied to Borg, of course: he knew exactly how he would hijack the Coparelli. He would buy one of the sister ships--if there were such--and take his team on to meet the Coparelli at sea. After the hijack, instead of the dicey business of transferring the cargo from one ship to another offshore, he would sink his own ship and transfer its papers to the Coparelli. He would also paint out the Coparelli's name and over it put the name of the sunken sister ship. And then he would sail what would appear to be his own ship into Haifa.
This was good, but it was still only the rudiments of a plan. What would he do about the crew of the Coparelli? How would the apparent loss of the Coparelli be explained? How would he avoid an international inquiry into the loss at sea of tons of uranium ore?
The more he thought about it, the bigger this last problem seemed. There would be a major search for any large ship which was thought to have sunk. With uranium aboard, the search would attract publicity and consequently be even more thorough. And what if the searchers found not the Coparelli but the sister ship which was supposed to belong to Dickstein?
He chewed over the problem for a while without coming up with any answers. There were still too many unknowns in the equation. Either the sandwich or the problem had stuck in his stomach: he took an indigestion tablet.
He turned his mind to evading the opposition. Had he covered his tracks well enough? Only Borg could know of his plans. Even if his hotel room were bugged--even if the phone booth nearest the hotel were bugged--still nobody else could know of his interest in the Coparelli. He had been extra careful.
He sipped his coffee; then another customer, on his way out of the cafe, jogged Dickstein's elbow and made him spill coffee all down the front of his clean shirt.
"Coparelli," said David Rostov excitedly. "Where have I heard of a ship called the Coparelli?"
Yasif Hassan said, "It's familiar to me, too."
"Let me see that computer printout."
They were in the back of a listening van parked near the Jacobean Hotel. The van, which belonged to the KGB, was dark blue, without markings, and very dirty. Powerful radio equipment occupied most of the space inside, but there was a small compartment behind the front seats where Rostov and Hassan could squeeze in. Pyotr Tyrin was at the wheel. Large speakers above their heads were giving out an undertone of distant conversation and the occasional clink of crockery. A moment ago there had been an incomprehensible exchange, with someone apologizing for something and Dickstein saying it was all right, it had been an accident. Nothing distinct had been said since then.
Rostov's pleasure at being able to listen to Dickstein's conversation was marred only by the fact that Hassan was listening too. Hassan had become self-confident since his triumph in discovering that Dickstein was in England: now he thought he was a professional spy like everyone else. He had insisted on being in on every detail of the London operation, threatening to complain to Cairo if he were excluded. Rostov had considered calling his bluff, but that would have meant another head-on collision with Feliks Vorontsov, and Rostov did not want to go over Feliks's head to Andropov again so soon after the last time. So he had settled on an alternative: he would allow Hassan to come along, and caution him against reporting anything to Cairo.
Hassan, who had been reading the printout, passed it across to Rostov. While the Russian was looking through the sheets, the sound from the speakers changed to street noises for a minute or two, followed by more dialogue.
Where to, guv?
Dickstein's voice: Lime Street.
Rostov looked up and spoke to Tyrin. "That'll be Lloyd's, the address he was given over the phone. Let's go there."
Tyrin started the van and moved off, heading east toward the City district. Rostov returned to the printout.
Hassan said pessimistically, "Lloyd's will probably give him a written report."
Tyrin said, "The bug is working very well . . . so far." He was driving with one hand and biting the fingernails of the other.
Rostov found what he was looking for. "Here it is!" he said. "The Coparelli. Good, good, good!" He thumped his knee in enthusiasm.
Hassan said, "Show me."
Rostov hesitated momentarily, realized there was no way he could get out of it, and smiled at Hassan as he pointed to the last page. "Under NON-NUCLEAR. Two hundred tons of yellowcake to go from Antwerp to Genoa aboard the motor vessel Coparelli."
"That's it, then," said Hassan. "That's Dickstein's target."
"But if you report this to Cairo, Dickstein will probably switch to a different target. Hassan--"
Hassan's color deepened with anger. "You've said all that once," he said coldly.
"Okay," Rostov said. He thought: Damn it, you have to be a diplomat too. He said, "Now we know what he's going to steal, and who he's going to steal it from. I call that some progress."
"We don't know when, where, or how," Hassan said.
Rostov nodded. "All this business about sister ships must have something to do with it." He pulled his nose. "But I don't see how."
Two and sixpence, please, guv.
Keep the change.
"Find somewhere to park, Tyrin," said Rostov.
"That's not so easy around here," Tyrin complained.
"If you can't find a space, just stop. Nobody cares if you get a parking ticket," Rostov said impatiently.
Good morning. My name's Ed Rodgers.
Ah, yes. Just a moment, please . . .
Your report has just been typed, Mr. Rodgers. And here's the bill.
You're very efficient.
Hassan said, "It is a written report."
Thank you very much.
Goodbye, Mr. Rodgers.
"He's not very chatty, is he?" said Tyrin.
Rostov said, "Good agents never are. You might bear that in mind."
"Yes, sir."
Hassan said, "Damn. Now we won't know the answers to his questions."
"Makes no difference," Rostov told him. "It's just occurred to me." He smiled. "We know the questions. All we have to do is ask the same questions ourselves and we get the answers he got. Listen, he's on the street again. Go around the block, Tyrin, let's try to spot him."
The van moved off, but before it had completed a circuit of the block the street noises faded again.
Can I help you, sir?
"He's gone into a shop," Hassan said.
Rostov looked at Hassan. When he forgot about his pride, the Arab was as thrilled as a schoolboy about all this--the van, the bugs, the tailing. Maybe he would keep his mouth shut, if only so that he could continue to play spies with the Russians.
I need a new shirt.
"Oh, no!" said Tyrin.
I can see that, sir. What is it?
Coffee.
It should have been sponged right away, sir. It will be very difficult to get the stain out now. Did you want a similar shirt?
