Ken Follett: Triple (1991)

Come on, Kocht Dickstein had intended to spend a second or two hiding in the companionway. At any moment one of the Arabs might look up it to check. If Koch had collapsed he would have to go back up there and- Ile foghorn sounded. Dickstein jumped. He was firing before he landed. There were two men close to the foot of the ladder. He shot them first. The firing from outside went into a crescendo. Dickstein turned in a rapid half circle, dropped to one knee to make a smaller target, and sprayed the Fedayeen along the walls. Suddenly there was another gun as Ish came up from below; then Feinberg was at one door, shooting; and Dovrat, wounded, came in through another door. And then, as if by signal, they all stopped shooting, and the silence was like thunder. All the Fedayeen were dead. Dickstein, still kneeling, bowed his head in exhaustion. After a moment he stood up and looked at his men. "Where are the others?" he said. Feinberg gave him a peculiar look. "Iberes someone on the foredeck, Sapir I think." "And the rest?" "That's it," Feinberg said. "All the others are dead." Dickstein slumped against a bulkhead. "What a price," he said quietly. Looking out through the smashed porthole he saw that it was day.

Chapter Seventeen

A year earlier the BOAC jet in which Suza Ashford was serving dinner had abruptly begun to lose height for no apparent reason over the Atlantic Ocean. The pilot had switched on the seat-belt lights. Suza had walked up and down the aisle-, saying "Just a little turbulence," and helping people fasten their seat belts, all the time thinking: We're going to die, we're all going to die. She felt like that now. There had been a short message from Tyrin: Israelis atfacking-then silence. At this moment Nathaniel was being shot at. He might be wounded, he might have been captured, he might be dead; and while Suza seethed with nervous tension she had to give the radio operator the BOAC Big Smile and say, "It's quite a setup you've got here." The Karkes . radio operator was a big gray-haired man from Odessa. His name was Aleksandr, and he spoke passable English. "It cost one hundred thousand dollar," he said proudly. "You know about radioT' "A little . . . I used to be an air hostess." She had said "used to be" without forethought, and now she wondered whether that life really was gone. "I've seen the air crew using their radios. I know the basics." "Really, this is four radios," Aleksandr explained. "One picks up the Stromberg beacon. One listens to Tyrin on Coparelli. One listens to Coparelli's regular wavelength. And this one wanders. Look." He showed her a dial whose pointer moved around slowly. "It seeks a transmitter, stops when it finds one," Aleksan& sad. 'Thars incredible. Did you invent that?" "I am an operator, not inventor, sadly."

"And you can broadcast on any of the sets, just by switching to TRANsmrr?" "Yes, Morse code or speech. But of course, on this oper. ation nobody uses speech." "Did you have to go through long training to become a radio operator?" "Not long. Learning Morse is easy. But to be a shipla radionian you must know how to repair the sev, He lowered his voice. "And to be a KGB operator, you must go to spy schooL" He laughed, and Suza laughed with him, thinking: Come on, Tyrin; and then her wish was granted. The message began, Aleksandr started writing and at the Uwe time said to Suza, `fWn. Get Rostov, please." Suza left the bridge reluctantly; she wanted to know what was in the message. She hurried to the mess, expecting to find Rostov there drinking strong black coffee, but the room was empty. She went down another deck and made her way to his cabin. She knocked on the door. His voice in Russian said something which might have meant come in. . She opened the door. Rostov stood there in his short% washing in a bowl. 'Tyrin's coming through," Suza said. She tamed to leave. 'Suza. She turned back. 'What would you say if I surprised you in your underwear?" 'Td say piss off," she said. "Wait for me outside." She closed the door, thinking: Tbat's done it When he came out she said, "I'm sorry." He gave a tight smile. "I should not have been so unprofessional. Lets go." She followed him up to the radio room, which was Imme. diately below the bridge In what should have been the captain's cabin. Because of the mass of extra equipment, Aleksandr had explained, it was not possible to put the radio operator adjacent to the bridge, as was customary. Suza bad figured out for herself that this arrangement bad the additional advantage of segregating the radio from the crew when the ship carried a mixture of ordinary seamen and KGB agents.

Aleksandr had transcribed Tyrin!s signal. He banded it to Rostov, who read it in English. "Israelis have taken Coparelli. St?vmberg alongside. Dickstein alive." Suza went lunp with relief. She had to sit down. She slumped into a chair. No one noticed. Rostov was already composing his reply to Tyrin: "We will hit at Six A.M. tomorrow." The tide of relief went out for Suza and she thought: Oh, God, what do I do now?

Nat Dickstein stood in silence, wearing a borrowed seaman!s cap, as the captain of the Stromberg read the words of the service for the dead, raising his voice against the noise of wind, rain and sea. One by one the canvas-wrapped bodies were tipped over the rail into the black water: Abbas, Sharrett, Porush, Gibli, Rader, Reinez, and Jabotinsky. Seven of the twelve had died. Uranium was the most costly metal in the world. There had been another funeral earlier. Four Fedayeen had been left alive--three wounded, one who had lost his nerve find hidden-and after they had been disarmed Dickstein had allowed them to bury their dead. "Mein had been a bigger funeral-they had dropped twenty-five bodies into the sea. lbey had hurried through their ceremony under the watchful eyes,--and guns--of three surviving Israelis, who understood that this courtesy should be extended to the enemy but did not have to like it, Meanwhile, the Stromberg's captain had brought aboard all his shies papers. ne team of fitters and joiners, which had come along in case it was necessary to alter the Coparelli to match the Stromberg, was set to work repairing the battle damage. Dickstein told them to concentrate on what was visible from the deck: the rest would have to wait until they reached port. 'Mey set about filling holes, repairing furniture, and replacing panes of glass and metal fittings with spares Cannibalized from the doomed Stromberg. A painter went down a ladder to remove the name Coparelli from the bull and replace it with the stenciled letters s-T-R-o-m-B-E-R-o. When he had finished he set about painting over the repaired bulkheads and woodwork on deck. All the Copareffs life. boats, damaged beyond repair, were chopped up and thrown Over the side, and the Stromberg's boats were brought over to replace them. The new oil pump, which the Stromberg had carried on Koch's instructions, was installed in the Coparellirs engine. Work had stopped for the burial. Now, as soon as the captain had uttered the final words, it began again. Toward the end of the afternoon the engine rumbled to life. Dickstein stood on the bridge with the captain while the anchor was raised. The crew of the Strontherg quickly found their way around the new ship, which was identical to their old one. The captain set a oourse and ordered full speed ahead. It was almost over, Dickstein thought The Coparelli had disappeared: for all intents and purposes the ship in which he now sailed was the Stromberg, and the Stromberg was legally owned by Savile Shipping. Israel had her uranium, and nobody knew how she had got it. Everyone in the chain of operation was now taken care of-except Pedler, still the legal owner of the yellowcake. He was the one man who could ruin the whole scheme if he should become either curious or hostile. Papagopolous, would be handling him right now: Dickstein silently wished him luck. WeW clear," the captain said. The explosives expert in the chartroom pulled a lever on his radio detonator then everybody watched the empty Strontberg, now more than a mile away. There was a loud, dull thud, like thunder and the Stromberg seemed to sag in the middle. Her fuel tanks caught fire and the stormy evening was lit by a gout of flame reaching for the sky; Dickstein felt elation and faint anxiety at the sight of such great destruction. The Stromberg began to sink. slowly at first and then faster. Her stem went under; seconds later her bows followed; her funnel poked up above the water for a moment like the raised arm of a drowning man, and then she was gone. Dickstein smiled faintly and turned away. He beard a noise. The captain heard it too. They went to the side of the bridge and looked out, and then they understood. Down on the deck, the men were cheering.