by Ken Follett
There was some confusion out on deck. A man ran past him, heading for the stern; another ran off in the opposite direction. Somebody was in the prow. Down in the stern a man lay on the deck with two others bending over him; presumably he had been injured in the fire.
Dickstein ran forward to the ladder that he had used to board. He eased his gun on to his shoulder, shifted Suza a little on the other shoulder, and stepped over the rail.
Looking about the deck as he started to go down, he knew that they had seen him.
It was one thing to see a strange face on board ship, wonder who he was, and delay asking questions until later because there was a fire alarm: but it was quite another to see someone leaving the ship with a body over his shoulder.
He was not quite halfway down the ladder when they began to shoot at him.
A bullet pinged off the hull beside his head. He looked up to see three men leaning over the rail, two of them with pistols. Holding on to the ladder with his left hand, he put his right hand to his gun, pointed up and fired. His aim was hopeless but the men pulled back.
And he lost his balance.
As the prow of the ship pitched up, he swayed to the left, dropped his gun into the sea and grabbed hold of the ladder with his right hand. His right foot slipped off the rung--and then, to his horror, Suza began to slip from his left shoulder.
"Hold on to me," he yelled at her, no longer sure whether she was conscious or not. He felt her hands clutch at his sweater, but she continued to slip away, and now her unbalanced weight was pulling him even more to the left.
"No!" he yelled.
She slipped off his shoulder and went plunging into the sea.
Dickstein turned, saw the launch, and jumped, landing with a jarring shock in the well of the boat.
He called her name into the black sea all around him, swinging from one side of the boat to the other, his desperation increasing with every second she failed to surface. And then he heard, over the noise of the wind, a scream. Turning toward the sound he saw her head just above the surface, between the side of the boat and the hull of the Karla.
She was out of his reach.
She screamed again.
The launch was tied to the Karla by the rope, most of which was piled on the deck of the boat. Dickstein cut the rope with his knife, letting go of the end that was tied to the Karla's ladder and throwing the other end toward Suza.
As she reached for the rope the sea rose again and engulfed her.
Up on the deck of the Karla they started shooting over the rail again.
He ignored the gunfire.
Dickstein's eyes swept the sea. With the ship and the boat pitching and rolling in different directions the chances of a hit were relatively slim.
After a few seconds that seemed hours, Suza surfaced again. Dickstein threw her the rope. This time she was able to grab it. Swiftly he pulled it, bringing her closer and closer until he was able to lean over the gunwale of the launch perilously and take hold of her wrists.
He had her now, and he would never let her go.
He pulled her into the well of the launch. Up above a machine gun opened fire. Dickstein threw the launch into gear then fell on top of Suza, covering her body with his own. The launch moved away from the Karla, undirected, riding the waves like a lost surfboard.
The shooting stopped. Dickstein looked back. The Karla was out of sight.
Gently he turned Suza over, fearing for her life. Her eyes were closed. He took the wheel of the launch, looked at the compass, and set an approximate course. He turned on the boat's radio and called the Coparelli. Waiting for them to come in, he lifted Suza toward him and cradled her in his arms.
A muffled thud came across the water like a distant explosion: the magnetic mine.
The Coparelli replied. Dickstein said, "The Karla is on fire. Turn back and pick me up. Have the sick bay ready for the girl--she's badly burned." He waited for their acknowledgment, then switched off and stared at Suza's expressionless face. "Don't die," he said. "Please don't die."
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. She opened her mouth, struggling to speak. He bent his head to her. She said, "Is it really you?"
"It's me," he said.
The corners of her mouth lifted in a faint smile. "I'll make it."
There was the sound of a tremendous explosion. The fire had reached the fuel tanks of the Karla. The sky was lit up for several moments by a sheet of flame, the air was filled with a roaring noise, and the rain stopped. The noise and the light died, and so did the Karla.
"She's gone down," Dickstein said to Suza. He looked at her. Her eyes were closed, she was unconscious again, but she was still smiling.
Epilogue
Nathaniel Dickstein resigned from the Mossad, and his name passed into legend. He married Suza and took her back to the kibbutz, where they tended grapes by day and made love half the night. In his spare time he organized a political campaign to have the laws changed so that his children could be classified Jewish; or, better still, to abolish classification.
They did not have children for a while. They were prepared to wait: Suza was young, and he was in no hurry. Her burns never healed completely. Sometimes, in bed, she would say, "My legs are horrible," and he would kiss her knees and tell her, "They're beautiful, they saved my life."
When the opening of the Yom Kippur War took the Israeli armed forces by surprise, Pierre Borg was blamed for the lack of advance intelligence, and he resigned. The truth was more complicated. The fault lay with a Russian intelligence officer called David Rostov--an elderly-looking man who had to wear a neck brace every moment of his life. He had gone to Cairo and, beginning with the interrogation and death of an Israeli agent called Towfik early in 1968, he had investigated all the events of that year and concluded that Kawash was a double agent. Instead of having Kawash tried and hanged for espionage, Rostov had told the Egyptians how to feed him misinformation, which Kawash, in all innocence, duly passed on to Pierre Borg.
The result was that Nat Dickstein came out of retirement to take over Pierre Borg's job for the duration of the war. On Monday, October 8, 1973, he attended a crisis meeting of the Cabinet. After three days of war the Israelis were in deep trouble. The Egyptians had crossed the Suez Canal and pushed the Israelis back into Sinai with heavy casualties. On the other front, the Golan Heights, the Syrians were pushing forward, again with heavy losses to the Israeli side. The proposal before the Cabinet was to drop atom bombs on Cairo and Damascus. Not even the most hawkish ministers actually relished the idea; but the situation was desperate and the Americans were dragging their heels over the arms airlift which might save the day.
The meeting was coming around to accepting the idea of using nuclear weapons when Nat Dickstein made his only contribution to the discussion: "Of course, we could tell the Americans that we plan to drop these bombs--on Wednesday, say--unless they start the airlift immediately . . ."
And that is exactly what they did.
The airlift turned the tide of the war, and later a similar crisis meeting took place in Cairo. Once again, nobody was in favor of nuclear war in the Middle East; once again, the politicians gathered around the table began to persuade one another that there was no alternative; and once again, the proposal was stopped by an unexpected contribution.
This time it was the military that stepped in. Knowing of the proposal that would be before the assembled presidents, they had run checks on their nuclear strike force in readiness for a positive decision; and they had found that all the plutonium in the bombs had been taken out and replaced with iron filings. It was assumed that the Russians had done this, as they had mysteriously rendered unworkable the nuclear reactor in Qattara, before being expelled from Egypt in 1972.
That night, one of the presidents talked to his wife for five minutes before falling asleep in his chair. "It's all over," he told her. "Israel has won--permanently. They have the bomb, and we do not, and that single fact will determine the course of history
in our region for the rest of the century."
"What about the Palestine refugees?" his wife said.
The president shrugged and began to light his last pipe of the day. "I remember reading a story in the London Times . . . this must be five years ago, I suppose. It said that the Free Wales Army had put a bomb in the police station in Cardiff."
"Wales?" said his wife. "Where is Wales?"
"It is a part of England, more or less."
"I remember," she said. "They have coal mines and choirs."
"That's right. Have you any idea how long ago the Anglo-Saxons conquered the Welsh?"
"None at all."
"Nor have I, but it must be more than a thousand years ago, because the Norman French conquered the Anglo-Saxons nine hundred years ago. You see? A thousand years, and they are still bombing police stations! The Palestinians will be like the Welsh . . . They can bomb Israel for a thousand years, but they will always be the losers."
His wife looked up at him. All these years they had been together, and still he was capable of surprising her. She had thought she would never hear words like this from him.
"I will tell you something else," he went on. "There will have to be peace. We cannot possibly win, now, so we will have to make peace. Not now; perhaps not for five or ten years. But the time will come, and then I will have to go to Jerusalem and say, 'No more war.' I may even get some credit for it, when the dust settles. It is not how I planned to go down in history, but it's not such a bad way, for all that. 'The man who brought peace to the Middle East.' What would you say to that?"
His wife got up from her chair and came across to hold his hands. There were tears in her eyes. "I would give thanks to God," she said.
Franz Albrecht Pedler died in 1974. He died content. His life had seen some ups and downs--he had, after all, lived through the most ignominious period in the history of his nation--but he had survived and ended his days happily.
He had guessed what had happened to the uranium. One day early in 1969 his company had received a check for two million dollars, signed by A. Papagopolous, with a statement from Savile Shipping which read: "To lost cargo." The next day a representative of the Israeli Army had called, bringing the payment for the first shipment of cleaning materials. As he left, the army man had said, "On the matter of your lost cargo, we would be happy if you were not to pursue any further inquiries."
Pedler began to understand then. "But what if Euratom asks me questions?"
"Tell them the truth," the man said. "The cargo was lost, and when you tried to discover what had happened to it, you found that Savile Shipping had gone out of business."
"Have they?"
"They have."
And that was what Pedler told Euratom. They sent an investigator to see him, and he repeated his story, which was completely true if not truly complete. He said to the investigator, "I suppose there will be publicity about all this soon."
"I doubt it," the investigator told him. "It reflects badly on us. I don't suppose we'll broadcast the story unless we get more information."
They did not get more information, of course; at least, not in Pedler's lifetime.
On Yom Kippur in 1974 Suza Dickstein went into labor.
In accordance with the custom of this particular kibbutz, the baby was delivered by its father, with a midwife standing by to give advice and encouragement.
The baby was small, like both parents. As soon as its head emerged it opened its mouth and cried. Dickstein's vision became watery and blurred. He held the baby's head, checked that the cord was not around its neck, and said, "Almost there, Suza."
Suza gave one more heave, and the baby's shoulders were born, and after that it was all downhill. Dickstein tied the cord in two places and cut it, then--again in accordance with the local custom--he put the baby in the mother's arms.
"Is it all right?" she said.
"Perfect," said the midwife.
"What is it?"
Dickstein said, "Oh, God, I didn't even look . . . it's a boy."
A little later Suza said, "What shall we call him? Nathaniel?"
"I'd like to call him Towfik," Dickstein said.
"Towfik? Isn't that an Arab name?"
"Yes."
"Why? Why Towfik?"
"Well," he said, "that's a long story."
Postscript
From the London Daily Telegraph of May 7, 1977: ISRAEL SUSPECTED OF HIJACKING SHIP WITH URANIUM
By Henry Miller in New York Israel is believed to have been behind the disappearance from the high seas nine years ago of a uranium shipment large enough to build 30 nuclear weapons, it was disclosed yesterday.
Officials say that the incident was "a real James Bond affair" and that although intelligence agencies in four countries investigated the mystery, it was never determined what had actually happened to the 200 tons of uranium ore that vanished . . .
--Quoted by permission of The Daily Telegraph, Ltd.
Praise
#1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR
KEN FOLLETT
"MASTER OF THE SUSPENSE THRILLER."
Seattle Times "ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR WRITERS OF THRILLERS AND ONE OF THE BEST."
Newark Star-Ledger "CAN FOLLETT WRITE! . . .
HE OUTCLASSES HIS COMPETITORS."
Newsday TRIPLE
"UNBEARABLE SUSPENSE."
Cleveland Press "A COMPULSIVE PAGE-TURNER."
Associated Press "HIGHLY IMAGINATIVE."
Washington Post "TIGHTLY WOVEN SUSPENSE . . .
FASCINATING . . . BREATHTAKING . . .
A HUMDINGER . . .
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED."
Raleigh News & Observer
By Ken Follett
THE MODIGLIANI SCANDAL
PAPER MONEY
EYE OF THE NEEDLE
TRIPLE
THE KEY TO REBECCA
THE MAN FROM ST. PETERSBURG
ON WINGS OF EAGLES
LIE DOWN WITH LIONS
THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH
NIGHT OVER WATER
A DANGEROUS FORTUNE
A PLACE CALLED FREEDOM
THE THIRD TWIN
THE HAMMER OF EDEN
CODE TO ZERO
JACKDAWS
HRNET FLIGHT
WHITEOUT
WORLD WITHOUT END
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright (c) 1979 by Fine Blend N. V.
ISBN 978-0-06-202088-8
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First Harper Premium printing: August 2010
First Harper paperback printing: May 2007
EPub Edition (c) AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780062109095
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (P.O. Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
https://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
https://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
https://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
https://www.harpercollins.com
