Several men came to the little house in Nablus that evening at dusk, just before curfew. Hassan did not know who they were exactly; they might have been the local leaders of the movement, or an assorted group of people whose judgment Mahmoud respected, or a permanent council of war that stayed close to Mahmoud but did not actually live with him. Hassan could see the logic in the last alternative, for if they all lived together, they could all be destroyed together. The woman gave them bread and fish and watery wine, and Mahmoud told them of Hassan's scheme. Mahmoud had thought it through more thoroughly than Hassan. He proposed that they hijack the Coparelli before Dickstein got there, then ambush the Israelis as they came aboard. Expecting only an ordinary crew and halfhearted resistance, Dickstein's group would be wiped out. Then the Fedayeen would take the Coparelli to a North African port and invite the world to come aboard and see the bodies of the Zionist criminals. The cargo would be offered to its owners for a ransom of half its market price one million U.S. dollars. There was a long debate. Clearly a faction of the movement was already nervous about Mahmoud's policy of taking the war into Europe, and saw the proposed hijack as a further extension of the same strategy. They suggested that the Fedayeen could achieve most of what they wanted simply by calling a press conference in Beirut or Damascus and revealing the Israeli plot to the international press. Hassan was convinced that was not enough: accusations were cheap, and it was not the lawlessness of Israel that had to be demonstrated, it was the power-of the Fedayeen. They spoke as equals, and Mahmoud seemed to listen to each with the same attention. Hassan sat quietly, hearing the low, calm voices of these people who looked like peasants and spoke Me senators. He was at once hopeful and fearful that they would adopt his plan: hopeful because it would be the fulfillment of twenty years of vengeful dreams; fearful because it would mean he would have to do things more difficult, violent and risky than the work he had been involved in so far. In the end he could not stand it any longer and he went outside and squatted in the mean yard, smelling the night and the dying fire. A little later there was a chorus of quiet voices from inside, like voting. Mahmoud came out and sat beside Hassan. "I have sent for a car." "Oh?" "We must go to Damascus. Tonight. There is a lot to do. It will be our biggest operation. We must start work immediately. "It is decided, then." "Yes. The Fedayeen will hijack the ship and steal the uranium.$# "So be it," said Yasif Hassan.
David Rostov had always liked his family in small doses, and as he got older the doses got smaller. The first day of his holiday was fine. He made breakfast, they walked along the beach, and in the afternoon Vladimir, the young genius, played chess against Rostov, Mariya, and Yuri simultaneously, and won all three games. They took hours over supper, catching up on all the news and drinking a little wine. The second day was similar, but they enjoyed it less; and by the third day the novelty of each other's company had worn off. Vladimir remembered he was supposed to be a prodigy and stuck his nose back into his books; Yuri began to play degenerate Western music on the record player and argued with his father about dissident poets; and Mariya fled into the kitchen of the dacha and stopped putting make-up on her face. So when the message came to say that Nili Bunin was back from Rotterdam and had successfully bugged the Stromberg, Rostov used that as an excuse to return to Moscow. Nik reported that the Stromberg had been in dry dock for the usual inspection prior to completion of the sale to Savile Shipping. A number of small repairs were in progress, and without difficulty Nik had gotten on board, posing as an eleotrician, and planted a powerful radio beacon in the prow of the ship. On leaving he bad been questioned by the dock foreman, who did not have any electrical work on his schedule for that day; and Nil had pointed out that if the work had not been requested, no doubt it would not have to be paid for. From that moment, whenever the ship's power was onwhich was all the time she was at sea and most of the time she was in dock-the beacon would send out a signal every thirty minutes until the ship sank or was broken up for scrap. For the rest of her life, wherever in the world she was, Moscow would be able to locate her within an hour. Rostov listened to Nik, then sent him home. He had plans for the evening. It was a long time since he had seen Olga, and he was impatient to see what she would do with the battery-operated vibrator he had brought her as a present from London.
In Israeli Naval Intelligence there was a young captain named Dieter Koch who had trained as a ship's engineer. When the Coparelli sailed from Antwerp with her cargo of yellowcake Koch had to be aboard. Nat Dickstein reached Antwerp with only the vaguest idea of how this was to be achieved. From his hotel room he phoned the local representative of the company that owned the Copareffl. When I die, he thought as he waited for the connection, they will bury me from a hotel room. A girl answered the phone. Dickstein said briskly, 'This is Pierre Beaudaire, give me the director." "Hold on, please." A man's voice, "Yes?" "Good morning, this is Pierre Beaudaire from the Beaudaire Crew List." Dickstein was making it- up as he went along. "Never heard of you." 'rhat's why I'm calling you. You see, we're contemplating Opening an office in Antwerp, and I'm wondering whether you would be willing to try us." "I doubt it, but you can write to me and-" "Are you completely satisfied with your present crew agency?"
"They could be worse. Look here-" "One more question and I won't trouble you further. May I ask whom you use at the momentr, "Cohen's. Now, I haven't any more time--~" "I understand. Thank you for your patience. Goodbye." Cohen's! That was a piece of luck. Perhaps I will be able to do this bit without brutality, Dickstein thought as he put down the phone. Cohenl It was unexpected--docks and shipping were not typical Jewish business. Wen, sometimes you gotlucky. , He looked up Cohen's crew agency in the phone book, memorized the address, put on his coat, left the hotel and hailed a cab. Cohen had a little two-room office above a sailor's bar in the red-right district of the city. It was not yet midday, and the night people were stiff asleep-the whores and thieves, musicians and strippers and waiters and bouncers, the people who made the place come to life in the evening. Now it might have been any run-down business district, gray and cold in the morning, and none too clean. Dickstein went up a staircase to a first-floor door, knocked and went in. A middle-aged secretary presided over a small reception room furnished with filing cabinets and orange plastic chairs. "I'd like to see Mr. Cohen," Dickstein told her. She looked him over and seemed to think he did not appear to be a sailor. "Are you wanting a ship?" she said doubtfully. "No," he said. "I'm from Israel." "Oh." She hesitated. She had dark hair and deep-set, shadowed eyes, and she wore a wedding ring. Dickstein wondered if she might be Mrs. Cohen. She got up and went through a door behind her desk into the inner office. She was wearing a pants suit, and from behind she looked her age. A minute later she reappeared and ushered him into Cohen's office. Cohen stood up, shook hands and said without preamble, "I give to the cause every year. In the war I gave twenty thousand guilders, I can show you the check. This is some new appeal? There is another war?" I'm not here to raise money, Mr. Cohen," Dickstein said with a smile. Mrs. Cohen had left the door open: Dickstein closed it. "Can I sit down?"