good man in Cairo.' This was not what Borg wanted to talk about. 'What are you trying to do, pump me for information?' he said crossly. 'Thinking aloud.' There was silence for a few moments. Borg crunched some more onions. At last he said, 'I've told you what I want, but I've left to you all the decisions about how to get it.' 'Yes, you have, haven't you.' Dickstein stood up. 'I think IT go to bed.' 'Have you got any idea where you're going to start?' Dickstein said, 'Yes, I have. Goodnight.'
Chapter Three
Nat Dickstein never got used to being a secret agent It was the continual deceit that bothered him. He was always lying to people, biding, pretending to be someone he was not, surreptitiously following people and showing false documents to officials at airports. He never ceased to worry about being found out He had a daytime nightmare in which he was surrounded suddenly by policemen who shouted, 'You're a spyl You're a spyl' and took him off to prison where they broke his leg. He was uneasy now. He was at the Jean-Monnet building in Luxembourg, on the Kirchberg Plateau across a narrow river valley from the hilltop city. He sat in the entrance to the offices of the Euratom Safeguards Directorate, memorizing the faces of the employees as they arrived at work. He was waiting to see a press officer called Pfaffer but he had intentionally come much too early. He was looking for weakness. The disadvantage of this ploy was that all the staff got to see his face, too; but he had no time for subtle precautions. Pfaffer turned out to be an untidy young man with an expression of disapproval and a battered brown briefcase. Dickstein followed him into an equally untidy office and accepted his offer of coffee. They spoke French. Dickstein was accredited to the Paris office of an obscure journal called Science International. He told Pfaffer that it was his ambition to get a job on Scientific A merican Pfaffer asked him, 'Exactly what are you writing about at the moment?' I 'The article is called 'MUF.'' Dickstein explained in English, 'Material Unaccounted For.' He went on, 'In the United States radioactive fuel is continually getting lost Here in Europe, I'm told, there's an international system for keeping track of all such material.' 'Correct,' Pfaffer said. 'The member countries hand over control of fissile substances to Euratom. We have, first of all, a complete list of civilian establishments where stocks are hold- from mines through preparation and fabrication plants, stores, and reactors, to reprocessing plants.' 'You said civilian establishments.' 'Yes. The military are outside our scope.' 'Go on.' Dickstein. was relieved to get Pfaffer talking before the press officer had a chance to realize how limited was Dickstein's knowledge of these subjects. 'As an example,' Pfaffer continued, 'take a factory making fuel elements from ordinary yellowcake. The raw material coming into the factory is weighed and analyzed by Euratom. inspectors. Their findings are programmed into the Euratom computer and checked against the information from the inspectors at the dispatching installation- in this case, probably a uranium mine. If there is a discrepancy between the quantity that left the dispatching installation and the quantity that arrived at the factory, the computer will say so. Similar measurements are made of the material leaving the factory--quantity and quality. These figures will in turn be checked against information supplied by inspectors at the premises where the fuel is to be used-a nuclear power station, probably. In addition, all waste at the factory is weighed and analyzed. 'This process of inspection and double-checking is carried on up to and including the final disposal of radioactive wastes. Finally, stocktaking is done at least twice a year at the factory.' 'I see.' Dickstein looked impressed and felt desperately discouraged. No doubt Pfaffer was exaggerating the efficiency of the system-but even if they made half the checks they were supposed to, how could anyone spirit away one hundred tons of yellowcake without their computers noticing? To keep Pfaffer talking, he said, 'So, at any given moment, your computer knows the location of every scrap of uranium in Europe. 'Within the member countries-France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. And Ws not just uranium, ifs all radioactive material.'
'What about details of transportation?' 'All have to be approved by us.' Dickstein closed his notebook. 'It sounds like a good system. Can I see it in operation?' 'Mat wouldn't be up to us. You'd have to contact the atomic energy authority in the member country and ask permission to visit an installation. Some of them do guided tours.' 'Can you let me have a list of phone numbers?' 'Certainly.' Pfaffer stood up and opened a filing cabinet Dickstein had solved one problem only to be confronted with another. He had wanted to know where he could go to find out the location of stockpiles of, radioactive material, and he now had the answer: Euratom's computer. But an the uranium the computer knew about was subject to the rigorous monitoring system, and therefore extremely difficult to steal. Sitting in the untidy little office, watching the smug Herr Pfaffer rummage through his old press releases, Dickstein thought: If only you knew whats in my- mind, little bureaucrat, yoxfd have a blue fit; and he suppressed a grin and felt a little more cheerful. Pfaffer handed him a cyclostyled leaflet. Dickstein folded it and put it in his pocket. He said, 'Thank you for your help.' Pfaffer said, 'Where are you staying?' 'The Alfa, opposite the raflway station.' Pfaffer saw him to the door. 'Enjoy Luxembourg.' 'I'll do my best,' Dickstein said, and shook his hand.
Tle memory thing was a trick. Dickstein had picked it up as a small child, sitting with his grandfather in a smelly room over a pie shop in the Mile End Road, struggling to recognize the strange characters of the Hebrew alphabet. The idea was to isolate one unique feature of the shape to be remembered and ignore everything else. Dickstein had done that with the faces of the Euratom staff. He waited outside the Jean-Monnet building in the late afternoon, watching people leave for home. Some of them interested him more than others. Secretaries, messengers and coffee-makers were no use to him, nor were senior administrators. He wanted the people in between: computer programmers, office managers, heads of small departments, personal assistants and assistant chiefs. He had given names to the likeliest ones, names which reminded him of their memorable feature: Diamante, Stiffcollar, Tony Curtis, Nonose, Snowhead, Zapata, Fatbum. Diamante was a plump woman in her late thirties without a wedding ring. Her name came from the crystal glitter on the rims of her spectacles. Dickstein followed her to the car park, where she squeezed herself into the driving seat of a white Fiat 500. Dickstein!s rented Peugeot was parked nearby. She crossed the Pont-Adolphe, driving badly but slowly, and went about fifteen kilometers southeast, finishing. up at a small village called Mondorf-les-Bains. She parked in the cobbled yard of a square Luxembourgeois house with a nailstudded door. She let herself in with a key. The village was a tourist attraction, with thermal springs. Dickstein slung a camera around his neck and wandered about, passing Diamante's house several times. On one pass he saw, through a window, Diamante serving a meal to an old woman. The baby Fiat stayed outside the house until after midnight, when Dickstein left. She had been a poor choice. She was a spinster living with ter elderly mother, neither -rich nor poor-the house was probably the mothees--and apparently without vices. If Dickstein had been a different kind of man he might have seduced her, but otherwise there was no way to get at her. He went back to his hotel disappointed and frustrated-unreasonably so, for he had made the best guess he could on the Information he bad. Nevertheless he felt he had spent a day skirting the problem and he was impatient to get to grips with it so he could stop worrying vaguely and start worrying specifically. He spent three more davs getting nowhere. He drew blanks with Zapata, Fatburn and Tony Curtis. But Stiffcollar was perfect. He was about Dickstein's age, a slim, elegant man in a dark blue suit, plain blue tie, and white shirt with starched collar. His dark hair, a little longer than was usual for a man of his age, was graying over the ears. He wore handmade shoes. He walked from the office across the Alzette River and uphill into the old town. He went down a narrow cobbled street and entered an old terraced house. Two minutes later a light went on in an attic window. Dickstein hung around for two hours. -When Stiffcollar came out he was wearing close-fitting light trousers and an orange scarf around his neck. His hair was combed forward, making him look younger, and his walk was jaunty. Dickstein followed him to the Rue Dicks, where he ducked into an unlit doorway and disappeared. Dickstein stopped outside. The door was open but there was nothing to indicate what might be inside. A bare flight of stairs went down. After a moment, Dickstein heard faint music. Two young men in matching yellow jeans passed him and went in. One of them grinned back at him and said, 'Tes, this is the place.' Dickstein followed them down the stairs. It was an ordinary-looking nightclub with tables and chairs, a few booths, a small dance floor and a jazz trio in a comer. Dickstein paid an entrance fee and sat at a booth, within sight of Stiffcollar. He ordered beer. He had already guessed why the place had such a discreet air, and now, as he looked around, his theory was confirtned: it was a homosexual club. It was the first club of this kind he had been to, and he was mildly surprised to find it so unexceptionable. A few of the men wore light make-up, there were a couple of outrageous queens camping it up by the bar, and a very pretty girl was holding hands with an older woman in trousers; but most of the customers were dressed normally by the standards of peacock Europe, and there was no one in drag. Stiffbollar was sitting close to a fair-haired man in a maroon double-breasted jacket. Dickstein had no feelings about homosexuals as such. He was not offended when people supposed, wrongly, that he might be homosexual because he was a bachelor in his early forties. To him, StiffcolJar was just a man who worked at Euratom. and had a guilty secret. He listened to the music and drank his beer. A waiter came across and said, 'Are you on your own, dear?' Dickstein shook his head. 'I'm waiting for my friend.' A guitarist replaced the trio and began to sing vulgar folk songs in German. Dickstein
