Dickstein said, 'Okay, let's go.' They pulled away, leaving the tail on the pavement looking for another taxi. It was a quiet street: he would not find one for five or ten minutes. Borg said, 'Slick.' &$IF lasy,' Dickstein replied. The driver said, 'What was all that about, then?' 'Don!t worry,' Dickstein told him. 'We're secret agents.' The cabbie laughed. 'Where to now-MI5r' 'The Science Museum.' Dickstein sat back in his seat. He smiled at Borg. 'Well, Bill, you old fart, how the hell, are your' Borg frowned at him. 'What have you got to be so fucking cheerful about?' They did not speak again in the cab, and Dickstein realized he had not prepared himself sufficiently for this meeting. He should have decided in advance what he wanted *from Borg and how he was going to got it. He thought: What do I want? The answer came up out of the back of his mind and hit him like a slap. I want to give Israel the bomb-and then I want to go home. He turned away from Borg. Rain streaked the cab window like tem. He was suddenly glad they could not speak because of the driver. On the pavement were three coatless hippies, soaking wet, their faces and hands upturned to enjoy the rain. It I could do this, if I could finish this assignment, I could rest. The thought made him unaccountably happy. He looked at Borg and smiled. Borg turned his face,to the window. They reached the museum and went inside. They stood in front of a reconstructed dinosaur. Borg said, 'I'm thinking of taking you off this
assignment.' Dickstein nodded, suppressing his alarm, thinking fast. Hassan must be reporting to Cairo, and Borg's man in Cairo must be getting the reports and passing them to Tel Aviv. 'I've discovered Im blown,' he told Borg. 'I kneW that weeks ago,' Borg said. 'if you!d keep in touch you!d be up-to-date on these things.' 'If I kept in touch I'd be blown more often.' Borg grunted and walked on. He took out a cigar, and Dickstein said, 'No smoking in here.' Borg put the, cigar away. Is 'Blown is nothing,' Dickstein said. qes happened to me half a dozen times. What counts is how much they know.' 'You were fingered by this Hassan, who knows you from years back. Hes working with the Russians now.' 'But what do they know?' 'You've been in Luxembourg and France.' 'That's not much.' 'I realize it's not much. I know you've been in Luxembourg and France too, and I have no idea what you did so there. 'So you'll leave me in,' Dickstein said, and looked hard at Borg. 'That depends. What have you been doingT' 'Well.' Dickstein continued looking at Borg. Ime man had become fidgety, not knowing what to do with his hands now that he could not smoke. The bright lights on the displays illurninated his bad complexion: his troubled face was like a gravel parking lot. Dickstein needed to judge very carefully bow much he told Borg: enough to give the impression that a great deal had been achieved; not so much that Borg would think he could get another man to operate DicksteiWs plan. .'. . 'I've picked a consignment of uranium for us to steal,' he began. 'It's going by ship from Antwerp to Genoa in November. I'm going to hijack the ship.' 'Shitl' Borg seemed both pleased and afraid at the audacity of the idea. He said, 'How the bell will you keep that secret?' 'Tm working on that' Dickstein decided to tell Borg just a tantalizing little bit more. 'I have to visit Lloyd's, here in London. I'm hoping the ship will turn out to be one of a series of identical vessels--I'm told most ships are built that Way. If I can buy an identical vessel, I can switch the two somewhere in the Mediterranean.' Borg rubbed his hand across his close-cropped hair twice Pt then Pulled at his ear. 'I don't see ... 'I haven't figured. out the details yet, but I'm sure this is the only way to do the thing clandestinely.' 'So get on and figure out the details.' 'But You're thinking of puffing me out' 'Yeah . - .' Borg tilted his head from one side to the other, a gesture of indecision. 'If I put an experienced man in to replace you, he may be spotted too.'
'And if you put In an unknown he won't be experienced.' 'Plus, I'm really not sure there is anyone, experienced or otherwise, who can pun this off apart from you. And there is something else you don't know.' They stopped in front of a model of a nuclear reactor. 'Well?' Dickstein said. 'Ve've had a report from Qattara. The Russians are helpIng them now. Were in a hurry, Dickstein. I can!t afford delay, and changes of plan cause delay.' 'Will November be soon enough?' Borg considered. 'Just,' he said. He seemed to come to a decision. 'All right, I'm leaving you in. Youll have to take evasive action.' Dickstein grinned broadly and slapped Borg on the back. 'You're a pal, Pierre. Don!t you worry now, I'll run rings around them.' Borg frowned. 'Just what is it with you? You caet stop grinning.' 'It's seeing you that does it. Your face is like a tonic. Your sunny disposition is infectious. When you smile, Pierre, the whole world smiles with you.' 'You're crazy, you prick,' said Borg.
Pierre Borg was vulgar, insensitive, malicious, and boring, but he was not stupid. 'He may be a bastard,' people would say, 'but he's a clever bastard.' By the time they parted company he knew that something important had changed in Nat Dickstein's life. He thought about it, walking back to the Israeli Embassy at No. 2 Palace Green in Kensington. In the twenty years since they had first met, Dickstein had hardly changed. It was still only rarely that the force of the man showed through. He had always been quiet and withdrawn; he continued to look like an out-of-work bank clerk; and, except for occasional flashes of rather cynical wit, he was still dour. Until today. At first he had been his usual self-brief to the point of rudeness. But toward the end he had come on like the stereotyped chirpy Cockney sparrow in a Hollywood movie. Borg had to know why. He would tolerate a lot from his agents. Provided they were efficient, they could be neurotic, or aggressive, or sadistic, or insubordinate-so long as he knew about it He could make allowances for faults: but he could not allow for unknown factors. He would be unsure of his hold over Dickstein until he had figured out the cause of the change. That was all. He had Do objection in principle to one of his agents acquiring a sunny disposition. He came within sight of the Embassy. He would put Dickmein under surveillance, he decided. It would take two cars and three teams of man working in eight-hour shifts. The Head of London Station would complain. I'lie. hell with him. The need to know why Dickstein's disposition had changed was only one reason Borg had decided not to pull him out The other reason was more important Dickstein had half a plan; another man might not be able to complete it Dickstein had a mind for this sort of thing. Once Dickstein had figured it all out, then somebody else could take over. Borg had decided to take him off the assignment at the first opportunity. Dickstein would be furious: he would consider he had been shafted. The hell with him, too.
Major-Pyotr Alekseivitch Tyrin did not actually like Rostov. He did not like any of his superiors: in his view, you had to be a rat to get promoted above the rank of major in the KGB. SO, he had a sort of awestruck affection for his clever, helpful boss. Tyrin had considerable skills, particularly with electronics, but he could not manipulate people. He was a major only because he was on Rostov's incredibly successful team. Abba Allon. High Street exit. Fifty-two, or nine? Where are you, fifty-two? Fifty-two. We're close. Well take him. What does he look like? Plastic raincoat, green hat, mustache. As a friend Rostov was not much; but he was a lot worse as an enemy. This Colonel Petrov in London had discovered that. He had tried to mess around with Rostov and had been surprised by a middle-of-the-night phone call from the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov himself. The people in the Lon. don Embassy said Petrov,had looked like a ghost when he hung up. Since then Rostov could have anything he wanted: if he sneezed five agents rushed out to buy handkerchiefs.
Okay, this Is Ruth Davisson, and she's going north ... Nineteen, we can take her- Relax, nineteen. False alarm. les a secretary who looks like her. Rostov had commandeered all Petrov's best pavement artists and most of his cars. -The area around the Israeli Embassy in London was crawling with agent&--someone had said, 'There are more Reds here than in the Kremlin Clinid'!--but it was hard to spot them. They were in cars, vans, minicabs, trucks and one vehicle that looked remarkably like an unmarked Metropolitan Police bus. There were more on foot, some in public buildings and others walking the streets and the footpaths of the park. There was even one inside the Embassy, asking in dreadfully broken English what he had to do to emigrate to Israel. The Embassy was ideally suited for this kind of exercise. It was in a little diplomatic ghetto on the edge, of Kensington Gardens. So many of the lovely old houses -belonged to foreign legations that it was known as Embassy Row. Indeed, the Soviet Embassy was close by in Kensington Palace Gardens. The little group of streets formed a private estate, and you, had to tell a policeman your business before you could get in. Nineteen, this time It is Ruth Davisson . . . nineteen, do you hear me? Nineteen here, yes. Are you still on the north side? Yes. And we know what she looks like. None of the agents was actually in sight of the Israeli Embassy. Only one member of the team could see the doorRostov, who was a half mile away, on the twentieth floor of a hotel, watching thr-ough a powerful Zeiss telescope mounted on a tripod. Several high buildings in the West End of London had clear views across the park of Embassy Row. Indeed, certain suites in certain hotels fetched inordinately high prices because of rumors that from them you could see into Princess Margaret's backyard at the neighboring palace, which gave its name to Palace Green and Kensington Palace Gardens. Rostov was in one of those suites, and he had a radio transmitter as well as the telescope. Each of his sidewalk squads had a walkie-talkie. Petrov spoke to his men in fast Russian, using confusing codewords, and the wavelength on which he transmitted and on which the men replied was changed every five minutes according to a computer program built into all the sets. The system was working very well, Tyrin thought- he had invented it-except that somewhere in the cycle everyone was subjected to five minutes of BBC Radio One. Eight, move up to the north side. Understood. If the Israelis had been in Belgravia, the home of the more senior embassies, Rostov's job would have been more difficult. There were almost no shops, cafes or public offices in
