Triple (46 page)

K*n Folleff

brains for things he had not done, precautions he might yet take,

loopholes he still had time to close. He went over his plan again and

again in his mind, like a man who has learned by heart an important speech

he must make but still wishes it were better.

The high shadow of the Stromberg loomed ahead, and the boatman brought

the little vessel around in a foamy arc to stop alongside, where a rope

ladder dangled in the water. Dickstein scrambled up the ladder and on to

the decL

IMe ship's master shook his hand and introduced himself. Like all the

officers aboard the Stromberg, he was borrowed from the Israeli Navy.

They took a turn around the deck. Dickstein said, "Any problems,

captain?"

"She's not a good ship," the captain said. "Shes slow, clumsy and old.

But weve got her in good shape."

From what Dickstein could see in the twilight the Stromherg was in better

condition than her sister ship the Coparellt had been in Antwerp. She was

clean, and everything on deck looked squared away, shipshape.

They went up to the bridge, looked over the powerful equipment in the

radio room, then went down to the mess, where the crew were finishing

dinner. Unlike the officers, the ordinary seamen were all Mossad agents,

most with a little experience of the sea. Dickstein had worked with some

of them before. They were all, he observed, at least ten years younger

than he. They were all bright-eyed, well-built, dressed in a peculiar

assortment of denims and homemade sweaters; all tough, humorous,

well-trained men.

Dickstein took a cup of coffee and sat at one of the tables. He outranked

all these men by a long way, but there was not much bull in the Israeli

armed forces, and even less in the Mossad. The four men at thi table

nodded and said hello. Ish, a gloomy Palestine-born Israeli with a dark

complexion, said, "ne weather's changing."

"Don't say that. I was planning to get a tan on this cruise." The speaker

was a lanky ash-blond New Yorker named Fein-* berg, a deceptively

pretty-faced man with eyelashes women envied. Calling this assignment a

"cruise" was already a standing joke. In his briefing earlier in the day

Dickstein had said the Coparellt would be almost deserted when they hi-

jacked it. "Soon after she passes through the Strait of Gibral262

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tar," he had told them, "her engines will break down. The damage willbe

such that it can!t be. repaired at sea. The captain cables the owners to

that effect-and we are now the owners. By an apparently lucky coincidence,

another of our ships will be close by. She's the Gil Hamilton, now moored

across the bay here. She will go to the Coparellf and take off the whole

crew except for the engineer. Then shes out of the picture: shell go to

her next port of call, where the crew of the Copparelli will be let off

and given their train fares home.'~

They had had the day to think about the briefing, and Dickstein was

expecting questions. Now Levi Abbas, a short, solid man-"built like a

tank and about as handsome," Feinberg had said-asked Dickstein, "You

didn't tell us how come you're so sure the Coparelli will break down when

you want her to."

"Ah." Dickstein sipped his coffee. "Do you know Dieter Koch, in naval

intelligence?"

Feinberg knew him.

'Hes the Coparelli's engineer."

Abbas nodded. "Which is also how come we know well be able to repair the

Coparelli. We know what!s going to go wrong. "

"Rtight."

Abbas went on. "We paint out the name Coparelli, rename her Stromberg,

switch log books, scuttle the old Stromberg and sail the Coparelli, now

called the Stromberg, to Haifa with the cargo. But why not transfer the

cargo from one ship to the other at sea? We have cranes."

"That was my original idea," Dickstein said. "It was too risky. I

couldn!t guarantee it would be possible, especially in bad weather."

"We could still do it if the good weather holds."

"Yes, but now that we have identical sister ships it will be easier to

switch names than cargoes."

Ish said lugubriously, "Anyway, the good weather won't hold."

The fourth man at the table was Porush, a crewcut youngster with a chest

Me a barrel of ale, who happened to be married to Abbas's sister. He

said, "If it's going to be so easy, what are all of us tough guys doing

herer'

Dickstein said, "I've been running around the world for the

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Ken Fol"

past six months setting up this thing. Once or twice rve bumped into people

from the other side-inevitably. I don't think they know what we're about to

do ... but if they do, we may find out just how tough we are."

One of the officers came in with a piece of paper and apProached Dickstein.

"Signal from Tel Aviv, sir. The Coparefli Just passed Gibraltar.-

"Thaes it," said Dickstein, standing up. "We sail in the Morning."

Suza Ashford and Al Cortene changed planes in Rome and arrived in Sicily

early in the morning. Two of Cortone's cousins were at the airport to meet

him. There was a long argument between them; not acrimonious, but

nevertheless loudly excitable. Suza could not follow the rapid dialect

properly, but she gathered the cousins wanted to accompany Cortone and he

was insisting that this was something he had to do alone because it was a

debt of honor.

Cortone seemed to win the argument. They left the airport, without the

cousins, in a big white Fiat. Suza drove, Cortone directed her on to the

coast road. For the hundredth time she played over in her mind the reunion

scene with Nathaniel: she saw his slight, angular body; he looked up; he

recognized her and his face split in a smile of joy; she ran to him; they

threw their arms around each other-, be squeezed her so hard it hurt; she

said, "Oh, I love you," and kissed his cheek, his nose, his mouth ... But

she was guilty and frightened too, and there was another scene she played

less often in which be stared at her stony-faced and said, 'Vhat the hell

do you think you're doing here?"

It was a little like the time she bad behaved badly on Christmas Eve, and

her mother got angry and told her Santa Claus would put stones in her

Christmas stocking instead of toys and candy. She had not known whether to

believe this or not, and she had fain awake, alternately wishing for and

dreading the morning.

She glanced across at Cortone in the seat beside her. The transatlantic

journey tired him. Suza found it difficult to think of him as being the

same age as Nat, he was so fat and bald and . . . well, he had an air of

weary depravity that might have been amusing but in fact was merely

elderly.

The island was pretty when the sun came out. Suza looked

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at the scenery, trying to distract herself so that the time would pass

more quickly. The road twisted along the edge of the sea from town to

town, and on her right-hand side there were views of rocky beaches and the

sparkling Mediterranean.

Cortone lit a cigar. "I used to do this kind of thing a lot when I was

young," he said. "Get on a plane, go somewhere with a pretty girl, drive

around, see places. Not anymore. I've been stuck in Buffalo for years,

it seems like. Tbat's the thing with business-you get rich, but there's

always something to worry about. So you never go places, you have people

come to you, bring you stuff. You get too lazy to have fun."

"You chose it," Suza said. She felt more sympathy for Cortone than she

showed: he was a man who had worked hard for all the wrong things.

"I chose it," Cortone admitted. "Young people have no mercy." He gave a

rare half smile and puffed on his cigar.

For the third time Suza saw the same blue car in her rearview mirror.

"We're being followed," she said, trying to keep her voice calm and

normal.

"The Arab?"

"Must be." She could not see the face behind the windshield. "What will

we do? You said you'd handle it."

"I Will."

He was silent. Pxpecting him to say more, Suza glanced across at him. He

was loading a pistol with ugly brown-black bullets. She gasped: she had

never seen a real-life gun.

Cortone looked up at her, then ahead. "Christ, watch the goddsimn roadt"

She looked ahead, and braked hard for a sharp bend. "Where did you get

that thing?" she said.

"From my cousin."

Suza felt more and more as if she were in a nightmare. She had not slept

in a bed for four days. From the moment when she had heard her father

talking so calmly about killing Nathaniel she had been running: fleeing

from the awful truth about Hassan and her father, to the safety of

Dickstein's wiry arms; and, as in a nightmare, the destination seemed to

recede as fast as she ran.

"Why don't you tell me where were going?" she asked Cortone.

"I guess I can, now. Nat asked me for the loan of a house

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with a mooring and protection from snooping police. We're going to that

house."

Suza's heart beat faster. "How far?"

"Couple of miles."

A minute later Cortone said, "We'll get there, don't rush, we don't want to

the on the way."

She realized she had unconsciously put her foot down. She eased off the

accelerator but she could not slow her thoughts. Any minute now, to see him

and touch his face, to kiss him hello, to feel his hands on her

shoulders-

"rum in there, on the right."

She drove through an open gateway and along a short gravel drive overgrown

with weeds to a large ruined villa of white stone, When she pulled up in

front of the pillared portico she expected Nathaniel to come running out to

greet her.

There were no signs of life on this side of the house.

They got out of the car and climbed the broken stone staircase to the front

entrance. The great wooden door was closed but not locked. Suza opened it

and they went in.

There was a great hall with a floor of smashed marble. The ceiling sagged

and the walls were blotched with damp. In the center of the hall was a

great fallen chandelier sprawled on the floor like a dead eagle.

Cortone called out, "Hello, anybody here?"

There was no reply.

Suza thought: It's a big place, he must be here, it's just that he can't

bear, maybe hesout in the garden.

They crossed the hall, skirting the chandelier. They entered a cavernous

bare drawing room, their footsteps echoing loudly, and went out through the

glassless french doors at the back of the building.

A short garden ran down to the edge of the cliff. They walked that far and

saw a long stairway cut into the rock zigzaggingdown to the sea.

There was no one in sight.

He's not here, Suza thought; this time, Santa really did leave me stones.

"Look." Cortone was pointing out to sea with one fat hand. Suza looked, and

saw two vessels: a ship and a motorboat. The motorboat was coming toward

them fast, jumping the waves and slicing the water with its sharp prow;

there

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