Triple (38 page)

Ken Folleff

ment. However, while he was using his own radio, incon-dng signals would

not reach the ship's radio room; and he would not hear them either since

his set would be tuned to another frequency. He could have wired

everything so that both radios would receive at the same time, but then

Moscows replies to him would be received by the ship's radio, and somebody

might notice ... Well, there was nothing very suspicious about a small

ship taking a few minutes to pick up signals. Tyrin would take care to use

his radio only at times when no traffic was expected for the ship.

When he reached Moscow he made: Checking secondary transmitter.

They acknowledged, then made: Stand by for signal from Rostov. All this

was in a standard KGB code.

Tyrin made: Standing by, but hurry.

The message came: Keep your head down until something happens. Rostov.

Tyrin made: Understood. Over and out. Without waiting for their sign-off

he disconnected his wires and restored the ship's cables to normal. The

business of twisting and untwisting bare wires, even with insulated

pliers, was time-consuming and not very safe. He had some quick-release

connectors among his equipment in the ship's radio room: he would pocket

a few and bring them. here next time to speed up the process.

He was well satisfied with his evening's work. He had made his nest, he

had opened his lines of communication, and he had remained undiscovered.

All he had to do now was sit tight; and sitting tight was what he liked

to do.

He decided to drag in another cardboard box to put in front of the radio

and conceal it from a casual glance. He opened the door and shined his

flashlight into the main store--and got a shock.

He had company.

The overhead light was on, casting restless shadows with its yellow glow.

In the center of the storeroom, sitting against a grease drum with his

legs stretched out before him, was a young sailor. He looked up, just as

startled as Tyrin andTyrin realized from his face-just as guilty.

Tyrin recognized him. His name was Ravlo. He was about nineteen years

old, with pale blond hair and a thin white face. He had not joined in the

pub-crawls in Cardiff, yet he

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Often looked bung over, with dark discs under his eyes and a distracted

air.

Tyrin said, 'Vbat are you doing hereT' And then be saw.

Ravlo had rolled up his left sleeve past the elbow. On the deck between

his legs was a phial, a watch-glass and a small waterproof bag. In his

right hand was a hypodermic syringe,' with which he was about to inject

himself.

Tyrin frowned. "Are you diabetic?"

Ravlo's face twisted andhe gave a dry, humorless laugh.

"An addict," Tyrin said, understanding. He did not know much about drugs,

but he knew that what Ravlo was doing could get him discharged at the

next port of call. He began to relax a little. This could be handled.

Ravlo was looking past him, into the smaller store. Tyrin looked back and

saw that the radio was clearly visible. The two men stared at one

another, each understanding that the other was doing something he needed

to hide.

Tyrin said, "I will keep your secret, and you will keep

Inine.00

Ravlo gave the twisted smile and the dry, humorless laugh again; then he

looked away from Tyrin, down at his arm, and be stuck the needle into his

flesh.

The exchange between the Coparellf and Moscow was picked up and recorded

by a U.S. Naval Intelligence listening station. Since it was in standard

KGB code, they were able to decipher it. But all it told them was that

someone aboard a ship-they did not know which ship-was checking his sec-

ondary transmitter, and somebody called Rostov-the name was not on any

of their files-wanted him to keep his head down. Nobody could make any

sense of it, so they opened a file titled "Rostov" and put the signal in

the Me and forgot about it.

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Twelve

When he had finished his interim debriefing in Cairo, Hassan asked

permission to go to Syria to visit his parents in the refugee camp. He was

given, four days. He took a plane to Damascus and a taxi to the camp.

He did not visit his parents.

He made certain inquiries at the camp, and one of the refugees took him,

by means of a series of buns, to Dara, across the Jordanian border, and

all the way to Amman. From there another man took him on another bus to

the Jordan River.

On the night of the second day he crossed the river, guided by two men

who carried submachine guns. By now Hassan was wearing Amb robes and a

headdress like them, but he did not ask for a gun. They were young men,

their soft adolescent faces just taking on lines of weariness and

cruelty, like recruits in a new army. They moved across the Jordan valley

in confident silence, directing Hassan with a touch or a whisper: they

seemed to have made the journey many times. At one point all thm of them

lay flat behind a stand of cactus while lights and soldiers! voices

passed a quarter of a mile away.

Hassan felt helpless-and something more. At first he thought that the

feeling was due to his being so completely in the hands of these boys,

his life dependent on their knowledge and coumge. But later, when they

had left him and he was alone on a country road trying to get a lift, he

realized that this. journey was a kind of regression. For years now he

had been a European banker, living in Luxembourg with his car and his

refrigerator and his television set. Now, suddenly, he was walking in

sandals along the dusty PalestIft roads of his youth: no car, no jet; an

Arab again, a peasant, a second-class citizen in the country of his

birth. None of his

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reflexes would work here-it was not possible to solve a problem by picking

up a phone or pulling out a credit card or calling a cab. He felt like a

child, a pauper and a fugitive all at the same time.

He walked five miles without seeing a vehicle, then a fruit truck passed

him, its engine coughing unhealthily and pouring smoke, and pulled up a few

yards ahead. Hassan ran after it.

"ro Nablus?" he shouted.

"imp iet

7he driver was a heavy man whose forearms bulged with muscle as he heaved

the truck around bends at top speed. He smoked 0 the time. He must have

been certain there would not be anoffier vehicle in the way all night,

driving as he did on the crown of the road and never using the brake.

Hassan could have used some sleep, but the driver wanted to talk. He told

Hassan that the Jews were good rulers, business had prospered since they

occupied Jordan, but of course the land must be free one day. Half of what

he said was insincere, no doubt; but Hassan could not tell which half.

They entered Nablus in the cool Samaritan dawn, with a red sim rising

behind the hillside and the town still asleep. The track roared into the

market square and stopped. Hassan said goodbye to the driver.

He walked slowly through the empty streets as the sun began to take away

the chill of the night. He savored the clean air and the low white

buildings, enjoying every detail, basking in the glow of nostalgia for his

boyhood: he was in Palestine, he was home.

He had precise directions to a house with no number in a street with no

name. It was in a poor quarter, where the little stone houses were crowded

too close together and nobody swept the streets. A goat was tethered

outside, and he wondered briefly what it ate, for there was no grass. The

door was unlocked.

He hesitated a moment outside, fighting down the excitement in his belly.

He had been away too long-now he was back in the Land. He had waited too

many years for this opportunity to strike a blow in revenge for what they

had done to his father. He had suffered exile, he had endured with pa-

tience, he bad nursed his hatred enough, perhaps too much.

He went in.

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There were four or five people asleep on the floor. One of them, a woman,

opened her eyes, saw him and sat up instantly, her hand under the pillow

reaching for what might have been a gun.

"What do you want?"

Hassan spoke the name of the man who commanded the Fedayeen.

Mahmoud had lived not far from Yasif Hassan when they were both boys in

the late Thirties, but they had never met, or if they had neither

remembered it. After the European war, when Yasif went to England to,

study, Mahmoud tended sheep with his brothers, his father, his uncles and

his grandfather. Their lives would have continued to go in quite

different directions but for the 1948 war. Mahmoud's father, like

Yasif's, made the decision to pack up and flee. The two sons--Yasif was

a few years older than Mahmoud-met at the refugee camp. Mahmoud's

reaction to the ceasefire was even stronger than Yasif's, which was

paradoxical, for Yasif had lost more. But Mahmoud was possessed by a

great rage that would allow him to do nothing other than fight for the

liberation of his homeland. Until then he had been oblivious of politics,

thinking it had nothing to do with shepherds; now he set out to

understand it. Before be could do that, he had to teach himself to read.

They met again in the Fifties, in Gaza. By then Mahmoud bad blossomed,

if that was the right word for something so fierce, He had read

Clausewitz on war and Plato's Republic, Das Kaphal and Mein Kwnpf, Keynes

and Mao and Galbraith and Gandhi, history and biography, classical novels

and modem plays. He spoke good English and bad Russian and a smattering

of Cantonese. He was directing a small cadre of terrorists on forays into

Israel, bombing and shooting and stealing and then returning to disappear

into the Gaza camps like rats into a garbage dump. The terrorists were

getting money, weapons and intelligence from Cairo: Hassan was, briefly,

part of the intelligence backup, and when they met again Yasif told

Mahmoud where his ultimate loyalty lay~not with Cairo, not even with the

pan-Arab cause, but with Palestine.

Yasif had been ready to abandon everything there and then-his job at the

bank, his home in Luxembourg, his role

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in Egyptian Intelligence--and join the freedom fighters. But Mahmoud had

said no, and the habit of command was already fitting him like a tailored

coat In a few years, he said-for he took a long view-they would have all

the guerrillas they wanted, but they would still need friends in high

PlacM European connections, and secret intelligence.

They had met once more, in Cairo, and set up lines of communication which

bypassed the Egyptians. With the Intelligence Establishment Hamm had

cultivated a deceptive image: he pretended to be a little less perceptive

than he was. At first Yasif sent over much the same kind of stuff he was

giving to Cairo, Principally the names of loyal Arabs who were stashing

away fortunes in Europe and could therefore be touched for fundL Recently

he had been of more immediate practical value as the Palestinian movement

began to operate in Europe. He had booked hotels and flights, rented cars

and houses, stockpiled weapons and transferred funds.

He was not the kind of man to use a gun. He knew this and was faintly

ashamed of it, so he was all the more proud to be so useful in other,

nonviolent but nonetheless practical, ways. ,

The results of his work had begun to explode in Rome that year. Yasif

believed in Mahmoud's program of European terrorism He was convinced that

the Arab armies, even with Russian support, could never defeat the Jews,

for this allowed the Yews to think of themselves as a beleaguered people

defending their homes against foreign soldiers, and that gave them

strength. The truth was, in Yasifs view, that the Palestine Arabs were

defending their home against invading Zionists. There were still more

Arab Palestinians than Jewish Israelis, counting the exiles in the camps;

and it was they, not a rabble of soldiers from Cairo and Damascus, who

would liberate the homeland. But first they had to believe in the

Fedayeen. Acts such as the Rome airport affair would convince them that

the Fedayeen had international resources. And when the people believed

in the Fedayeen, the people would be the Fedayeen, and then they would

be unstoppable.

The Rome airport affair was trivial, a peccadillo, by comparison with

what Hassan had in mind.

It 'Was an outrageous, mind-boggling scheme that would put the Fedayeen

on the front pages of the world's newspapers for weeks and prove that

they were a powerful interna-

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