by Ken Follett
Mahmoud was magnetic when he talked. His strong, clear voice rolled out short phrases, simple explanations, statements that sounded like devastating basic truths: Hassan suspected he said these same things often to his troops. In the back of his mind he remembered the sophisticated ways in which politics were discussed in places like Luxembourg and Oxford, and it seemed to him now that for all their mountains of information those people knew less than Mahmoud. He knew, too, that international politics were complicated: that there was more than oil behind these things, yet at bottom he believed Mahmoud was right.
They sat in the shade of a fig tree. The smooth, dun-colored landscape stretched all around them, empty. The sky glared hot and blue, cloudless from one horizon to the other. Mahmoud uncorked a water bottle and gave it to Hassan, who drank the tepid liquid and handed it back. Then he asked Mahmoud whether he wanted to rule Palestine after the Zionists were beaten back.
"I have killed many people," Mahmoud said. "At first I did it with my own hands, with a knife or a gun or a bomb. Now I kill by devising plans and giving orders, but I kill them still. We know this is a sin, but I cannot repent. I have no remorse, Yasif. Even if we make a mistake, and we kill children and Arabs instead of soldiers and Zionists, still I think only, 'This is bad for our reputation,' not, 'This is bad for my soul.' There is blood on my hands, and I will not wash it off. I will not try. There is a story called The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is about a man who leads an evil and debilitating life, the kind of life that should make him look old, give him lines on his face and bags under his eyes, a destroyed liver and venereal disease. Still, he does not suffer. Indeed, as the years go by he seems to stay young, as if he had found the elixir of life. But in a locked room in his house there is a painting of him, and it is the picture that ages, and takes on the ravages of evil living and terrible disease. Do you know the story? It is English."
"I saw the movie," said Yasif.
"I read it when I was in Moscow. I would like to see that film. Do you remember how it ended?"
"Oh, yes. Dorian Gray destroyed the painting, and then all the disease and damage fell on him in an instant, and he died."
"Yes." Mahmoud put the stopper back in the bottle, and looked out over the brown hillsides with unseeing eyes. Then he said, "When Palestine is free, my picture will be destroyed."
After that they sat in silence for a while. Eventually, without speaking, they stood up and began to walk back to the town.
Several men came to the little house in Nablus that evening at dusk, just before curfew. Hassan did not know who they were exactly; they might have been the local leaders of the movement, or an assorted group of people whose judgment Mahmoud respected, or a permanent council of war that staved close to Mahmoud but did not actually live with him. Hassan could see the logic in the last alternative, for if they all lived together, they could all be destroyed together.
The woman gave them bread and fish and watery wine, and Mahmoud told them of Hassan's scheme. Mahmoud had thought it through more thoroughly than Hassan. He proposed that they hijack the Coparelli before Dickstein got there, then ambush the Israelis as they came aboard. Expecting only an ordinary crew and halfhearted resistance, Dickstein's group would be wiped out. Then the Fedayeen would take the Coparelli to a North African port and invite the world to come aboard and see the bodies of the Zionist criminals. The cargo would be offered to its owners for a ransom of half its market price--one million U.S. dollars.
There was a long debate. Clearly a faction of the movement was already nervous about Mahmoud's policy of taking the war into Europe, and saw the proposed hijack as a further extension of the same strategy. They suggested that the Fedayeen could achieve most of what they wanted simply by calling a press conference in Beirut or Damascus and revealing the Israeli plot to the international press. Hassan was convinced that was not enough: accusations were cheap, and it was not the lawlessness of Israel that had to be demonstrated, it was the power of the Fedayeen.
They spoke as equals, and Mahmoud seemed to listen to each with the same attention. Hassan sat quietly, hearing the low, calm voices of these people who looked like peasants and spoke like senators. He was at once hopeful and fearful that they would adopt his plan: hopeful because it would be the fulfillment of twenty years of vengeful dreams; fearful because it would mean he would have to do things more difficult, violent and risky than the work he had been involved in so far.
In the end he could not stand it any longer and he went outside and squatted in the mean yard, smelling the night and the dying fire. A little later there was a chorus of quiet voices from inside, like voting.
Mahmoud came out and sat beside Hassan. "I have sent for a car."
"Oh?"
"We must go to Damascus. Tonight. There is a lot to do. It will be our biggest operation. We must start work immediately."
"It is decided, then."
"Yes. The Fedayeen will hijack the ship and steal the uranium."
"So be it," said Yasif Hassan.
David Rostov had always liked his family in small doses, and as he got older the doses got smaller. The first day of his holiday was fine. He made breakfast, they walked along the beach, and in the afternoon Vladimir, the young genius, played chess against Rostov, Mariya, and Yuri simultaneously, and won all three games. They took hours over supper, catching up on all the news and drinking a little wine. The second day was similar, but they enjoyed it less; and by the third day the novelty of each other's company had worn off. Vladimir remembered he was supposed to be a prodigy and stuck his nose back into his books; Yuri began to play degenerate Western music on the record player and argued with his father about dissident poets; and Mariya fled into the kitchen of the dacha and stopped putting make-up on her face.
So when the message came to say that Nik Bunin was back from Rotterdam and had successfully bugged the Stromberg, Rostov used that as an excuse to return to Moscow.
Nik reported that the Stromberg had been in dry dock for the usual inspection prior to completion of the sale to Savile Shipping. A number of small repairs were in progress, and without difficulty Nik had gotten on board, posing as an electrician, and planted a powerful radio beacon in the prow of the ship. On leaving he had been questioned by the dock foreman, who did not have any electrical work on his schedule for that day; and Nik had pointed out that if the work had not been requested, no doubt it would not have to be paid for.
From that moment, whenever the ship's power was on--which was all the time she was at sea and most of the time she was in dock--the beacon would send out a signal every thirty minutes until the ship sank or was broken up for scrap. For the rest of her life, wherever in the world she was, Moscow would be able to locate her within an hour.
Rostov listened to Nik, then sent him home. He had plans for the evening. It was a long time since he had seen Olga, and he was impatient to see what she would do with the battery-operated vibrator he had brought her as a present from London.
In Israeli Naval Intelligence there was a young captain named Dieter Koch who had trained as a ship's engineer. When the Coparelli sailed from Antwerp with her cargo of yellowcake Koch had to be aboard.
Nat Dickstein reached Antwerp with only the vaguest idea of how this was to be achieved. From his hotel room he phoned the local representative of the company that owned the Coparelli.
When I die, he thought as he waited for the connection, they will bury me from a hotel room.
A girl answered the phone. Dickstein said briskly, "This is Pierre Beaudaire, give me the director."
"Hold on, please."
A man's voice, "Yes?"
"Good morning, this is Pierre Beaudaire from the Beaudaire Crew List." Dickstein was making it up as he went along.
"Never heard of you."
"That's why I'm calling you. You see, we're contemplating opening an office in Antwerp, and I'm wondering whether you would be willing to try us."
"I doubt it, but you can write to me and--"
"They could be worse. Look here--"
"One more question and I won't trouble you further. May I ask whom you use at the moment?"
"Cohen's. Now, I haven't any more time--"
"I understand. Thank you for your patience. Goodbye."
Cohen's! That was a piece of luck. Perhaps I will be able to do this bit without brutality, Dickstein thought as he put down the phone. Cohen! It was unexpected--docks and shipping were not typical Jewish business. Well, sometimes you got lucky.
He looked up Cohen's crew agency in the phone book, memorized the address, put on his coat, left the hotel and hailed a cab.
Cohen had a little two-room office above a sailor's bar in the red-light district of the city. It was not yet midday, and the night people were still asleep--the whores and thieves, musicians and strippers and waiters and bouncers, the people who made the place come to life in the evening. Now it might have been any run-down business district, gray and cold in the morning, and none too clean.
Dickstein went up a staircase to a first-floor door, knocked and went in. A middle-aged secretary presided over a small reception room furnished with filing cabinets and orange plastic chairs.
"I'd like to see Mr. Cohen," Dickstein told her.
She looked him over and seemed to think he did not appear to be a sailor. "Are you wanting a ship?" she said doubtfully.
"No," he said. "I'm from Israel."
"Oh." She hesitated. She had dark hair and deep-set, shadowed eyes, and she wore a wedding ring. Dickstein wondered if she might be Mrs. Cohen. She got up and went through a door behind her desk into the inner office. She was wearing a pants suit, and from behind she looked her age.
A minute later she reappeared and ushered him into Cohen's office. Cohen stood up, shook hands and said without preamble, "I give to the cause every year. In the war I gave twenty thousand guilders. I can show you the check. This is some new appeal? There is another war?"
"I'm not here to raise money, Mr. Cohen," Dickstein said with a smile. Mrs. Cohen had left the door open: Dickstein closed it. "Can I sit down?"
"If you don't want money, sit down, have some coffee, stay all day," said Cohen, and he laughed.
Dickstein sat. Cohen was a short man in spectacles, bald and clean-shaven, and looked to be about fifty years old. He wore a brown check suit that was not very new. He had a good little business here, Dickstein guessed, but he was no millionaire.
Dickstein said, "Were you here in World War II?"
Cohen nodded. "I was a young man. I went into the country and worked on a farm where nobody knew me, nobody knew I was Jewish. I was lucky."
"Do you think it will happen again?"
"Yes. It's happened all through history, why should it stop now? It will happen again--but not in my lifetime. It's all right here. I don't want to go to Israel."
"Okay. I work for the government of Israel. We would like you to do something for us."
Cohen shrugged. "So?"
"In a few weeks' time, one of your clients will call you with an urgent request. They will want an engineer officer for a ship called Coparelli. We would like you to send them a man supplied by us. His name is Koch, and he is an Israeli, but he will be using a different name and false papers. However, he is a ship's engineer--your clients will not be dissatisfied."
Dickstein waited for Cohen to say something. You're a nice man, he thought; a decent Jewish businessman, smart and hardworking and a little frayed at the edges; don't make me get tough with you.
Cohen said, "You're not going to tell me why the government of Israel wants this man Koch aboard the Coparelli?"
"No."
There was a silence.
"You carry any identification?"
"No."
The secretary came in without knocking and gave them coffee. Dickstein got hostile vibrations from her. Cohen used the interruption to gather his thoughts. When she had gone out he said, "I would have to be meshugah to do this."
"Why?"
"You come in off the street saying you represent the government of Israel, yet you have no identification, you don't even tell me your name. You ask me to take part in something that is obviously underhanded and probably criminal; you will not tell me what it is that you're trying to do. Even if I believe your story, I don't know that I would approve of the Israelis doing what you want to do."
Dickstein sighed, thinking of the alternatives: blackmail him, kidnap his wife, take over his office on the crucial day . . . He said, "Is there anything I can do to convince you?"
"I would need a personal request from the Prime Minister of Israel before I would do this thing."
Dickstein stood up to leave, then he thought: Why not? Why the hell not? It was a wild idea, they would think he was crazy . . . but it would work, it would serve the purpose . . . He grinned as he thought it through. Pierre Borg would have apoplexy.
He said to Cohen, "All right."
"What do you mean, 'all right'?"
"Put on your coat. We'll go to Jerusalem."
"Now?"
"Are you busy?"
"Are you serious?"
"I told you it's important." Dickstein pointed to the phone on the desk, "Call your wife."
"She's just outside."
Dickstein went to the door and opened it. "Mrs. Cohen?"
"Yes."
"Would you come in here, please?"
She hurried in, looking worried. "What is it, Josef?" she asked her husband.
"This man wants me to go to Jerusalem with him."
"When?"
"Now."
"You mean this week?"
Dickstein said, "I mean this morning, Mrs. Cohen. I must tell you that all this is highly confidential. I've asked your husband to do something for the Israeli government. Naturally he wants to be certain that it is the government that is asking this favor and not some criminal. So I'm going to take him there to convince him."
She said, "Don't get involved, Josef--"
Cohen shrugged. "I'm Jewish, I'm involved already. Mind the shop."
"You don't know anything about this man!"
"So I'm going to find out."
"I don't like it."
"There's no danger," Cohen told her. "We'll take a scheduled flight, we'll go to Jerusalem, I'll see the Prime Minister and we'll come back."
"The Prime Minister!" Dickstein realized how proud she would be if her husband met the Prime Minister of Israel. He said, "This has to be secret, Mrs. Cohen. Please tell people your husband has gone to Rotterdam on business. He will be back tomorrow."
She stared at the two of them. "My Josef meets the Prime Minister, and I can't tell Rachel Rothstein?"
Then Dickstein knew it was going to be all right.
Cohen took his coat from a hook and put it on. Mrs. Cohen kissed him, then put her arms around him.
"It's all right," he told her. "This is very sudden and strange, but it's all right."
She nodded dumbly and let him go.
They took a cab to the airport. Dickstein's sense of delight grew as they traveled. The scheme had an air of mischief about it, he felt a bit like a schoolboy, this was a terrible prank. He kept grinning, and had to turn his face away so that Cohen would not see.
Pierre Borg would go through the roof.
Dickstein bought two round-trip tickets to Tel Aviv, paying with his credit card. They had to take a connecting flight to Paris. Before they took off he called the embassy in Paris and arranged for someone to meet them in the transit lounge.
In Paris he gave the man from the embassy a message to send to Borg, explaining what was required. The diplomat was a Mossad man, and treated Dickstein with deference. Cohen was allowed to listen to the conversation, and when the man had gone back to the embassy he said, "We could go back, I'm convinced already."
"Oh, no," Dickstein said. "Now that we've come this far I want to be sure of you."
On th
e plane Cohen said, "You must be an important man in Israel."
"No. But what I'm doing is important."
Cohen wanted to know how to behave, how to address the 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." The 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, I'm 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 silent 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 we're not barbarians," Dickstein said.
"So people keep telling me."
"They do? That's a bad sign."
