Ken Follett - Triple (1991)

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. "Irs 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. Th 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 wduld not have led thepavement artists straight to the flat without once looking over his shoulder. His behavior had innocence written all over it He had met with Borg, looldng 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 nalve it had to be true. AJI 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 Illes, 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 Loondon 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 ble 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 telitales. 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: be 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 an 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 five 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 sleep 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 Lloy&s of London in the directory and dialed their number. "Lloyd's, good morning." 'I need some information about a ship." "rhaes 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 informatio'nr, 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. "'Men who can?" "We're the only people who have such information." "And you keep it secretr' "We don't give it out over the phone." "Wait a minute, you mean you can!t help me over the phone." "Tbaes 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. IM give you the name of the ship now, and you should have a the information ready by the time I get there. Her name is CopareM." He spelled it "And your namer' "Ed Rodgers." 6611ie company?" "Science InternWianal." "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 Coparell! 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 Coparellt. 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 N the phone booth nearest the hotel were bugged-still nobody else could know of his interest in the Copareffl. He had been extra careful. He sipped his coffee, then another customer, on his way out of the caM, jogged Dickstein's elbow and made him spill coffee all down the front of his clean shirt.