he turned up the second night they wondered if he was a jilted lover lying in wait for a showdown with his ex. He had about him the air of what the gays called rough trade, what with those shoulders and the leather jacket and his dour expression. Nik knew nothing of these undercurrents. He had been shown a photograph of a man and told to go to a club and look out for the man; so he memorized the face, then went to the club and looked. It made little difference to him whether the place was a whorehouse or a cathedral. He liked occasionally to get the chance to beat people up, but otherwise all he asked was regular pay and two days off every week to devote to his enthusiasms, which were vodka and coloring books. When Nat Dickstein came into the nightclub, Nik felt no sense of excitement. When he did well, Rostov always assumed it was because he had scrupulously obeyed precise orders, and he was generally right. Nik watched the mark sit down alone, order a drink, get served and sip his beer. It looked like he, too, was waiting. Nik went to the phone in the lobby and called the hotel. Rostov answered. 'Mis is Nik. The mark just came in.' 'Goodl'. said Rostov. 'Whafs he doing?' 'Waiting.' 'Good. Alone?' 'Yes. 'Stay with him and call me if he does anything.'
'I'm sending Pyotr down. Hell wait outside. If the mark leaves the club you follow him, doubling with Pyotr. The Arab will be with you in a car, well back. It's a ... wait a minute . . . its a green Volkswagen hatchback.' 'Okay.' 'Get back to him now.' Nik hung up and returned to his table, not looking at Dickstein as he crossed the club. A few minutes later a well-dressed, good-looking man of about forty came into the club. He looked around, then walked past Dickstein's table and went to the bar. Nik saw Dickstein pick up a piece of paper from the table and put it in his pocket. It was all very discreet: only someone who was carefully observing Dickstein would know anything had happened. Nik went to the phone again. 'A queer came in and gave him something-it looked like a ticket,' he told Rostov. 'Like a theater ticket, maybeT' 'Don't know.' 'Did they speak?'
'No, the queer just dropped the ticket on the table as he went by. They didn't even look at each other.' 'All right. Stay with it. Pyotr should be outside by now.' 'Wait,' Nik said. 'Me mark just come into the lobby. Hold on . . . he's going to the desk ... he's handed over the ticket, that!s what it was, it was a cloakroom ticket.' 'Stay on the line, tell me what happens.' Rostov's voice was deadly calm. 'The guy behind the counter is giving him a briefcase. He leaves a tip . . .' 'Ira a delivery. Good.' 'Ibe mark is leaving the club.' 'Follow him.' 'Shall I snatch the briefcase?' 'No, I don!t want us to show ourselves until we know what he!& doing, just find out where he goes, and stay low. Go!' Nik hung up. He gave the cloakroom attendant some notes, saying: 'I have to rush, this will cover my bill.' Then he went up the staircase after Nat Dickstein. Out on the street it was a bright summer evening, and there were plenty of people making their way to restaurants and cinemas or just strolling. Nik looked left and right, then saw the mark on the opposite side of the road, fifty yards away. He crossed over and followed. Dickstein was walking quickly, looking straight ahead, carrying the briefcase under his arm. Nik plodded after him for a couple of blocks. During this time, if Dickstein looked back he would see some distance behind him a man who had also been in the nightclub, and he would begin to wonder if he were being shadowed. Then Pyotr came alongside Nik, touched his arm, and went on ahead. Nik dropped back to a position from which he could see Pyotr but not Dickstein. If Dickstein looked again now, he would not see Nik and he would not recognize Pyotr. It was very difficult for the mark to sniff this kind of surveillance; but of course, the longer the distance for which the mark was shadowed, the more men were needed to keep up the regular switches. After another half mile the green Volkswagen pulled to the curb beside Nik. Yasif Hassan leaned across from the driving seat and opened the door. 'New orders,' he said. 'Jump in.' Nik got into the car and Hassan steered back toward the nightclub in the Rue Dicks.
'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
