"You did very well," Hassan said. Nik ignored this. "We want you to go back to the club, pick out the delivery man and follow him home," Hassan said. "Colonel Rostov said this?" "Yes." "Okay." Hassan stopped the car close to the club. Nil went in. He stood in the doorway, looking carefully all about the club. The delivery man had gone.
The computer printout ran to more than one hundred pages. Dickstein's heart sank as he flicked through the prized sheets of paper he had worked so hard to get. None of it made sense. . He returned to the first page and looked again. There were a lot of jumbled numbers and letters. Could it be in code? No-this printout was used every day by the ordinary office workers of Euratom, so it had to be fairly easily comprehensible. Dickstein concentrated. He saw you." He knew that to be an isotope of uranium. Another group of letters and numbers was "180KG"---one hundred and eighty kilograms. "17F68" would be a date, the seventeenth of February this year. Gradually the lines of computer-alphabet letters and numbers began to yield up their meanings: he found placenames from various European countries, words such as "TamN" and "TRucx!I with distances affixed next to them and names with suffixes "SA" or "mc," indicating companies. Eventually the layout of the entries became clear: the first line gave the quantity and type of material, the second line the name and address of the sender, and so on. His. spirits lifted. He read on with growing comprehension and a sense of achievement. About sixty consignments were listed in the printout. There seemed to be three main types: large quantities of crude uranium ore coming from mines in South Africa, Canada and France to European refineries; fuel elements-oxides, uranium metal or enriched mixtures-moving from fabrication plants to reactors; and spent fuel from reactors going for reprocessing and disposal. There were a few nonstandard shipments, mostly of plutonium and transuranium elements extracted from spent fuel and sent to laboratories in universities and research institutes. Dickstein!s head ached and his eyes were bleary by the time he found what he was looking for. On the very last page there was one shipment headed "NON-NUCLEAR." He had been briefly told, by the Rehovot physicist with the flowered tie, about the non-nuclear uses of uranium and its compounds in photography, in dyeing, as coloring agents for glass and ceramics and as industrial catalysts. Of course the stuff always had the potential for fission no matter how mundane and innocent its use, so the Euratom regulations still applied. However, Dickstein thought it likely that in ordinary industrial chemistry the security would be less strict. The entry on the last page referred to two hundred tons of yellowcake, or crude uranium oxide. It was in Belgium, at a metal refinery in the countryside near the Dutch border, a site licensed for storage of fissionable material. The refinery was owned by the Soci6t6 Generale de la Chimie, a mining conglomerate with headquarters in Brussels. SGC had sold the yelloweake to a German concern called F.A. Pedler of Wiesbaden. Pedler planned to use it for "manufacture of uranium compound especially uranium carbide, in commercial quantities." Dickstein recalled that the -carbide was a catalyst for the production of synthetic ammonia. However, it seemed that Pedler were not going to work the uranium themselves, at least not initially. Dickstein's interest sharpened as he read that they had not applied for their own works In Wiesbaden to be licensed, but instead for permission to ship the yellowcake to Genoa by sea. There it was to undergo "non-nuclear processing" by a company called Angeluzzi e Bianco. By seat The implications struck Dickstein instantly: the load would be passed through a European port by someone else. He read on. Transport would be by railway from SGCs refinery to the docks at ' Antwerp. There the yelloweake would be loaded on to the motor vessel Coparelli for shipment to Genoa. The short journey from the Italian port to the Angeluzzi e Bianco works would be made by road. For the trip the yellowcake-looking like sand but yellower-would be packed into five hundred and sixty 200-liter oil drums with heavily sealed lids. The train would require eleven cars, the ship would carry no other cargo for this voyage, and the Italians would use six trucks for the last leg of the journey. It was the sea journey that excited Dickstein: through the English Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, down the Atlantic coast of Spain, through the Strait of Gibraltar and across one thousand miles of the Mediterranean. A lot could go wrong in that distance. Journeys on land were straightforward, controlled: a train left at noon one day and arrived at eight-thirty the following morning; a truck traveled on roads that always carried other traffic, Including police cars; a plane was continually in contact with someone or other on the ground. But the sea was unpredictable, with its own laws-a trip could take ten days or twenty, there might be storms and collisions and engine trouble, unscheduled ports of call and sudden changes of direction. Hijack a plane and the whole world would see it on television an hour later; hijack a ship and no one would know about it for days, weeks, perhaps forever. The sea was the inevitable choice forThe Pirate. Dickstein thought on, with growing enthusiasm and a sense that the solution to his problem was within his reach. Hijack the Coparelli ... then what? Transfer the cargo to the hold of the pirate ship. The Coparelli would probably have its own derricks. But transferring a cargo at sea could be chancy. Dickstein looked on the printout for the proposed date of the voyage: November. That was bad. There might be storms--even the Mediterranean could blow up a gale in November. What, then? Take over the Coparelli and sail her to Haifa? It would be hard to dock a stolen ship secretly, even in top-secarity Israel. Dickstein glanced at his wristwatch. It was past midnight. He began to undress for bed. He needed to know more about the Coparelth her tonnage, bow many crew, present whereabouts, who owned her, and if possible her layout. Tomorrow he would go to London. You could find out anything about ships at Iloyd's of London. There was something else be needed to know- who was following him around Europe? There had been a big team in France. Tonight as he left the nightclub in the Rue Dicks a thuggish face had been behind him. He had suspected a tail, but the face had disapptared---coincidence, or another big team? It rather depended on whether Hassan was In the game. He could make inquiries about that, too, in England. He wondered how to travel. If somebody had picked up his scent tonight he ought to take some precautions tomorrow. Even if the thuggish face were nobody, Dickstein had to make sure. he was not spotted at Luxembourg airport He picked up the phone and dialed the desk. When the clerk answered, he said, "Wake me at six-thirty, please." 'Wery good, sir." I He hung up and got into bed. At last he had a definite target: the Caparelli. He did not yet have a plan, but he knew in outline what had to be done. Whatever other difficulties came up, the combination of a non-nuclear consignment and sea journey was irresistible. He turned out the light and closed his eyes, thinking: What good day.