by Ken Follett
"It's not so simple. I'm asked to interfere in a contest between two people, both of whom are my friends."
"But only one of them is in the right."
"So I should help the one who is in the right--and betray the one who is in the wrong?"
"Of course."
"There isn't any 'of course' about it . . . What will you do, if and when you find Dickstein?"
"I'm with Egyptian Intelligence, professor. But my loyalty--and, I believe, yours--lies with Palestine."
Ashford refused to take the bait. "Go on," he said noncommittally.
"I have to find out exactly when and where Dickstein plans to steal this uranium." Hassan hesitated. "The Fedayeen will get there before Dickstein and steal it for themselves."
Ashford's eyes glittered. "My God," he said. "How marvelous."
He's almost there, Hassan thought. He's frightened, but he's excited too. "It's easy for you to be loyal to Palestine, here in Oxford, giving lectures, going to meetings. Things are a little more difficult for those of us who are out there fighting for the country. I'm here to ask you to do something concrete about your politics, to decide whether your ideals mean anything or not. This is where you and I find out whether the Arab cause is anything more to you than a romantic concept. This is the test, professor."
Ashford said, "Perhaps you're right."
And Hassan thought: I've got you.
Suza had decided to tell her father that she was in love with Nat Dickstein.
At first she had not been sure of it herself, not really. The few days they had spent together in London had been wild and happy and loving, but afterward she had realized that those feelings could be transient. She had resolved to make no resolutions. She would carry on normally and see how things turned out.
Something had happened in Singapore to change her mind. Two of the cabin stewards on the trip were gay, and used only one of the two hotel rooms allotted to them; so the crew could use the other room for a party. At the party the pilot had made a pass at Suza. He was a quiet, smiling blond man with delicate bones and a delightfully wacky sense of humor. The stewardesses all agreed he was a piece of ass. Normally Suza would have got into bed with him without thinking twice. But she had said no, astonishing the whole crew. Thinking about it later, she decided that she no longer wanted to get laid. She had just gone off the whole idea. All she wanted was Nathaniel. It was like . . . it was a bit like five years ago when the second Beatles album came out, and she had gone through her pile of records by Elvis and Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers and realized that she did not want to play them, they held no more enchantment for her, the old familiar tunes had been heard once too often, and now she wanted music of a higher order. Well, it was a bit like that, but more so.
Dickstein's letter had been the clincher. It had been written God knew where and posted at Orly Airport, Paris. In his small neat handwriting with its incongruously curly loops on the g and y he had poured out his heart in a manner that was all the more devastating because it came from a normally taciturn man. She had cried over that letter.
She wished she could think of a way to explain all that to her father.
She knew that he disapproved of Israelis. Dickstein was an old student, and her father had been genuinely pleased to see him and prepared to overlook the fact that the old student was on the enemy side. But now she planned to make Dickstein a permanent part of her life, a member of the family. His letter said "Forever is what I want," and Suza could hardly wait to tell him, "Oh, yes; me, too."
She thought both sides were in the wrong in the Middle East. The plight of the refugees was unjust and pitiful, but she thought they ought to set about making themselves new homes--it was not easy, but it was easier than war, and she despised the theatrical heroics which so many Arab men found irresistible. On the other hand, it was clear that the whole damn mess was originally the fault of the Zionists, who had taken over a country that belonged to other people. Such a cynical view had no appeal for her father, who saw Right on one side and Wrong on the other, and the beautiful ghost of his wife on the side of Right.
It would be hard for him. She had long ago scotched his dreams of walking up the aisle with his daughter beside him in a white wedding dress; but he still talked occasionally of her settling down and giving him a granddaughter. The idea that this grandchild might be Israeli would come as a terrible blow.
Still, that was the price of being a parent, Suza thought as she entered the house. She called, "Daddy, I'm home," as she took off her coat and put down her airline bag. There was no reply, but his briefcase was in the hall: he must be in the garden. She put the kettle on and walked out of the kitchen and down toward the river, still searching in her mind for the right words with which to tell him her news. Maybe she should begin by talking about her trip, and gradually work around--
She heard voices as she approached the hedge.
"And what will you do with him?" It was her father's voice.
Suza stopped, wondering whether she ought to interrupt or not.
"Just follow him," said another voice, a strange one. "Dickstein must not be killed until afterwards, of course."
She put her hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp of horror. Then, terrified, she turned around and ran, soft-footed, back to the house.
"Well, now," said Professor Ashford, "following what we might call the Rostov Method, let us recall everything we know about Nat Dickstein."
Do it any way you want, Hassan thought, but for God's sake come up with something.
Ashford went on: "He was born in the East End of London. His father died when he was a boy. What about the mother?"
"She's dead, too, according to our files."
"Ah. Well, he went into the army midway through the war--1943, I think it was. Anyway he was in time to be part of the attack on Sicily. He was taken prisoner soon afterward, about halfway up the leg of Italy, I can't remember the place. It was rumored--you'll remember this, I'm sure--that he had a particularly bad time in the concentration camps, being Jewish. After the war he came here. He--"
"Sicily," Hassan interrupted.
"Yes?"
"Sicily is mentioned in his file. He is supposed to have been involved in the theft of a boatload of guns. Our people had bought the guns from a gang of criminals in Sicily."
"If we are to believe what we read in the newspapers," said Ashford, "there is only one gang of criminals in Sicily."
Hassan added, "Our people suspected that the hijackers had bribed the Sicilians for a tip-off."
"Wasn't it Sicily where he saved that man's life?"
Hassan wondered what Ashford was talking about. He controlled his impatience, thinking: Let him ramble--that's the whole idea. "He saved someone's life?"
"The American. Don't you remember? I've never forgotten it. Dickstein brought the man here. A rather brutish G.I. He told me the whole story, right here at this house. Now we're getting somewhere. You must have met the man, you were here that day, don't you remember?"
"I can't say I do," Hassan muttered. He was embarrassed . . . he had probably been in the kitchen feeling Eila up.
"It was . . . unsettling," Ashford said. He stared at the slowly moving water as his mind went back twenty years, and his face was shadowed by sadness for a moment, as if he were remembering his wife. Then he said, "Here we all were, a gathering of academics and students, probably discussing atonal music or existentialism while we sipped our sherry, when in came a big soldier and started talking about snipers and tanks and blood and death. It cast a real chill: that's why I recall it so clearly. He said his family originated in Sicily, and his cousins had feted Dickstein after the life-saving incident. Did you say a Sicilian gang had tipped off Dickstein about the boatload of guns?"
"It's possible, that's all."
"Perhaps he didn't have to bribe them."
Hassan shook his head. This was information, the kind of trivial information Rostov always seemed to make something of--but how was he
going to use it? "I don't see what use all this is going to be to us," he said. "How could Dickstein's ancient hijack be connected with the Mafia?"
"The Mafia," said Ashford. "That's the word I was looking for. And the man's name was Cortone--Tony Cortone--no, Al Cortone, from Buffalo. I told you, I remember every detail."
"But the connection?" Hassan said impatiently.
Ashford shrugged. "Simply this. Once before Dickstein used his connection with Cortone to call on the Sicilian Mafia for help with an act of piracy in the Mediterranean. People repeat their youth, you know: he may do the same thing again."
Hassan began to see: and, as enlightenment dawned, so did hope. It was a long shot, a guess, but it made sense, the chance was real, maybe he could catch up with Dickstein again.
Ashford looked pleased with himself. "It's a nice piece of speculative reasoning--I wish I could publish it, with footnotes."
"I wonder," said Hassan longingly. "I wonder."
"It's getting cool, let's go into the house."
As they walked up the garden Hassan thought fleetingly that he had not learned to be like Rostov; he had merely found in Ashford a substitute. Perhaps his former proud independence had gone forever. There was something unmanly about it. He wondered if the other Fedayeen felt the same way, and if that was why they were so bloodthirsty.
Ashford said, "The trouble is, I don't suppose Cortone will tell you anything, whatever he knows."
"Would he tell you?"
"Why should he? He'll hardly remember me. Now, if Eila were alive, she could have gone to see him and told him some story . . ."
"Well . . ." Hassan wished Eila would stay out of the conversation. "I'll have to try myself."
They entered the house. Stepping into the kitchen, they saw Suza; and then they looked at each other and knew they had found the answer.
By the time the two men came into the house Suza had almost convinced herself that she had been mistaken when, in the garden, she thought she heard them talk about killing Nat Dickstein. It was simply unreal: the garden, the river, the autumn sunshine, a professor and his guest . . . murder had no place there, the whole idea was fantastic, like a polar bear in the Sahara Desert. Besides, there was a very good psychological explanation for her mistake: she had been planning to tell her father that she loved Dickstein, and she had been afraid of his reaction--Freud could probably have predicted that at that point she might well imagine her father plotting to kill her lover.
Because she nearly believed this reasoning, she was able to smile brightly at them and say, "Who wants coffee? I've just made some."
Her father kissed her cheek. "I didn't realize you were back, my dear."
"I just arrived, I was thinking of coming out to look for you." Why am I telling these lies?
"You don't know Yasif Hassan--he was one of my students when you were very small."
Hassan kissed her hand and stared at her the way people always did when they had known Eila. "You're every bit as beautiful as your mother," he said, and his voice was not flirtatious at all, not even flattering: it sounded amazed.
Her father said, "Yasif was here a few months ago, shortly after a contemporary of his visited us--Nat Dickstein. You met Dickstein, I think, but you were away by the time Yasif came."
"Was there any connec--connection?" she asked, and silently cursed her voice for cracking on the last word.
The two men looked at one another, and her father said, "Matter of fact, there was."
And then she knew it was true, she had not misheard, they really were going to kill the only man she had ever loved. She felt dangerously close to tears, and turned away from them to fiddle with cups and saucers.
"I want to ask you to do something, my dear," said her father. "Something very important, for the sake of your mother's memory. Sit down."
No more, she thought; this can't get worse, please.
She took a deep breath, turned around, and sat down facing him.
He said, "I want you to help Yasif here to find Nat Dickstein."
From that moment she hated her father. She knew then suddenly, instantly, that his love for her was fraudulent, that he had never seen her as a person, that he used her as he had used her mother. Never again would she take care of him, serve him; never again would she worry about how he felt, whether he was lonely, what he needed . . . She realized, in the same flash of insight and hatred, that her mother had reached this same point with him, at some time; and that she would now do what Eila had done, and despise him.
Ashford continued, "There is a man in America who may know where Dickstein is. I want you to go there with Yasif and ask this man."
She said nothing. Hassan took her blankness for incomprehension, and began to explain. "You see, this Dickstein is an Israeli agent, working against our people. We must stop him. Cortone--the man in Buffalo--may be helping him, and if he is he will not help us. But he will remember your mother, and so he may cooperate with you. You could tell him that you and Dickstein are lovers."
"Ha-hah!" Suza's laugh was faintly hysterical, and she hoped they would assume the wrong reasons for it. She controlled herself, and managed to become numb, to keep her body still and her face expressionless, while they told her about the yellowcake, and the man aboard the Coparelli, and the radio beacon on the Stromberg, and about Mahmoud and his hijack plan, and how much it would all mean for the Palestine liberation movement; and at the end she was numb, she no longer had to pretend.
Finally her father said, "So, my dear, will you help? Will you do it?"
With an effort of self-control that astonished her, she gave them a bright air-hostess smile, got up from her stool, and said, "It's a lot to take in in one go, isn't it? I'll think about it while I'm in the bath."
And she went out.
It all sank in gradually, as she lay in the hot water with a locked door between her and them.
So this was the thing that Nathaniel had to do before he could see her again: steal a ship. And then, he had said, he would not let her out of his sight for ten or fifteen years . . . Perhaps that meant he could give up this work.
But, of course, none of his plans was going to succeed, because his enemies knew all about them. This Russian planned to ram Nat's ship, and Hassan planned to steal the ship first and ambush Nat. Either way Dickstein was in danger; either way they wanted to destroy him. Suza could warn him.
If only she knew where he was.
How little those men downstairs knew about her! Hassan simply assumed, just like an Arab male chauvinist pig, that she would do as she was told. Her father assumed she would take the Palestinian side, because he did and he was the brains of the family. He had never known what was in his daughter's mind: for that matter, he had been the same with his wife. Eila had always been able to deceive him: he never suspected that she might not be what she seemed.
When Suza realized what she had to do, she was terrified all over again.
There was, after all, a way she might find Nathaniel and warn him.
"Find Nat" was what they wanted her to do.
She knew she could deceive them, for they already assumed she was on their side, when she was not.
So she could do what they wanted. She could find Nat--and then she could warn him.
Would she be making things worse? To find him herself, she had to lead them to him.
But even if Hassan did not find him, Nat was in danger from the Russians.
And if he was forewarned, he could escape both dangers.
Perhaps, too, she could get rid of Hassan somehow, before she actually reached Nat.
What was the alternative? To wait, to go on as if nothing had happened, to hope for a phone call that might never come . . . It was, she realized, partly her need to see Dickstein again that made her think like this, partly the thought that after the hijack he might be dead, that this might be her last chance. But there were good reasons, too: by doing nothing she might help frustrate Hassan's scheme, but that still left the R
ussians and their scheme.
Her decision was made. She would pretend to work with Hassan so that she could find Nathaniel.
She was peculiarly happy. She was trapped, but she felt free; she was obeying her father, yet she felt that at last she was defying him; for better or worse, she was committed to Nathaniel.
She was also very, very frightened.
She got out of the bath, dried herself, dressed, and went downstairs to tell them the good news.
At four A.M. on November 16, 1968, the Coparelli hove to at Vlissingen, on the Dutch coast, and took on board a port pilot to guide her through the channel of the Westerschelde to Antwerp. Four hours later, at the entrance to the harbor, she took on another pilot to negotiate her passage through the docks. From the main harbor she went through Royers Lock, along the Suez Canal, under the Siberia Bridge and into Kattendijk Dock, where she tied up at her berth.
Nat Dickstein was watching.
When he saw her sweep slowly in, and read the name Coparelli on her side, and thought of the drums of yellowcake that would soon fill her belly, he was overcome by a most peculiar feeling, like the one he had when he looked at Suza's naked body . . . yes, almost like lust.
He looked away from berth No. 42 to the railway line, which ran almost to the edge of the quay. There was a train on the line now, consisting of eleven cars and an engine. Ten of the cars carried fifty-one 200-liter drums with sealed lids and the word PLUMBAT stenciled on the side; the eleventh car had only fifty drums. He was so close to those drums, to that uranium; he could stroll over and touch the railway cars--he already had done this once, earlier in the morning, and had thought: Wouldn't it be terrific just to raid this place with choppers and a bunch of Israeli commandos and simply steal the stuff.
The Coparelli was scheduled for a fast turnaround. The port authorities had been convinced that the yellowcake could be handled safely, but all the same they did not want the stuff hanging about their harbor one minute longer than necessary. There was a crane standing by ready to load the drums on to the ship.
Nevertheless, there were formalities to be completed before loading could begin.
