Life Is not a popularity contest, especially in the ROB. David Rostov was now very unpopular with his boss and with all those in the section who were loyal to his boss. Feliks, Vorontsov was boiling with anger atthe way he had been bypassed: from now on he would do anything he could to destroy Rostov. Rostov had anticipated this. He did not regret his decision to go for broke on the Dickstein affair. On the contrary, he was rather glad. He was already planning the finely stitched, stylishly tut dark blue English suit he would buy when he got his pass for Section 100 on the third floor of the GUM department store in Moscow. What he did regret was leaving the loophole for Vorontsov. He should have thought of the Egyptians and their reaction. That was the trouble with the Arabs, they were so clumsy and useless that you tended to ignore them as a force in the intelligence world. Fortunately Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB and confidante of Leonid Brezhnev, had seen what Feliks Vorontsov was trying to do, namely win back control of the Dickstein project; and he had not permitted it. So the only consequence of Rostov's error was that he would be forced to work with the wretched Arabs. That was bad enough. Rostov had his own littlie team, Nik Bunin and Pyotr Tyrin, and they worked well together. And Cairo was as leaky as a sieve: half the stuff that went through them got back to Tel Aviv. The fact that the Arab in question was Yasif Hassan might or might not help. Rostov remembered Hassan very clearly: a rich kid, indolent and haughty, smart enough but with no drive, shallow politics, and -too many clothes. His wealthy father had got him into Oxford, not his bmins; and Rostov resented that more now than he had then. Still, knowing the man should make it easier to control him. Rostov planned to start by making it clear Hassan was essentially superfluous, and was on the team for purely political reasons. He would need to be very clever about what he told Hassan and what he kept secret: say too little, and Cairo would bitch to Moscovr, too much, and Tel Aviv would be able to frustrate his every move. It was damned awkward, and he had only himself to blame for it.
He was uneasy about the whole affair by the time he reached Luxembourg. He had flown in from Athens, having changed identities twice and planes three times since Moscow. He took this little precaution because, if you came direct from Russia, the local intelligence people sometimes made a note of your arrival and kept an eye on you, and that could be a nuisance. There was nobody to meet him at the airport, of course. He took a taxi to his hotel. He had told Cairo he would be using the name David Roberts. When he checked into the hotel under that name, the desk clerk gave him a message. He opened the envelope as he, went up in the lift with the porter. It said simply "Room 179." He tipped the porter, picked up the room phone and dialed 179. A voice said, "Hello?" "I'm in 142. Give me ten minutes, then come here for a conference." "Fine. Listen, is that-" 'Shut up!" Rostov snapped. "No names. Ten minutes." "Of course, I'm sorry, 1-2' Rostov hung up. What kind of idiots was Cairo hiring now? The kind that used your real name over the hotel phone system, obviously. It was going to be even worse than he had feared. TUere was a time when he would have been over-professional, and turned out the lights and sat watching the doorway with a gun in his hand until the other man arrived, in case of a trap. Nowadays be considered that sort of behavior to be obsessive and left it to the actors in the television shows. Elaborate personal precautions were not his style, not anymore. He did not even carry a gun, in case customs officials searched his luggage at airports. But there were precautions and precautions, weapons and weapons- he did have one or two KOB gadgets subtly concealed-including an electric toothbrush that gave out a hum calculated to jam listening devioes, a miniature Polaroid camera, and a bootlace garrote. He unpacked his small case quickly. There was very little in it: a safety razor, the toothbrush, two American-made wash-and-wear shirts and a change of underwear. He made himself a drink from the room bar-scotch whiskey was one of the perks of working abroad. After exactly ten minutes there was a knock on the door. Rostov opened it~ and Yasif Hassan came in. Hassan smiled broadly. "How are you?" "How do you do," said Rostov, and shook his hand. "It's twenty years ... how have you been?" to BUSY. "Ibat we should meet again, after so long, and because of Dickstein!" "Yes. Sit down. Let's talk about Dickstein." Rostov sat, and Hassan followed suit. "Bring me up to date," Rostov continued. "You spotted Dickstein, then your people picked him up again at Nice airport. What happened next?" "He went on a guided tour of a nuclear power station, then shook off his tail," Hassan said. "So we've lost him again.st Rostov gave a grunt of disgust. "We'll have to do better than that." Hassan smiled-a salesman's smile, Rostov thought-and said, "If he wasn't the sort of agent who is bound to spot a tail and lose it, we wouldn't be so concerned about him, would wer, Rostov Ignored that. "Was he using a carr' 'Yes. He hired a Peugeot." "OkaY. What do you know about his movements before that, when he was here in Luxembourg?" Hassan spoke briskly, adopting Rostov's businesslike air. "He Stayed at the Alfa Hotel for a week under the name Ed Rodgers. He gave as his address the Paris bureau of a mag*zffie called Sciewe International. There is such a magazine; theY do have a Paris address, but ifs only a forwarding address for mail; they do use a freelance called Ed Rodgers, but theY haven't heard from him for over a year." Rostov nodded. "As you may know, that is a typical Mossad cover story. Nice and tight. Anything else?" "Yes. The night before he left there was an incident in the Rue Dicks. Two men were found quite savagely beatem It had the look of a professional job-neatly broken bones, you know the kind of Oft. The police aren't doing anything about It: the men were known thieves, thought to have been lying in wait close to a homosexual nightclub." "Robbing the queers as they come out!'