glad to see him. Maybe the man was bored. He should be, if he ate dinner every night with a silent wife, two surly boys and a shark-faced counselor. Dickstein did all he could to keep the bonhomie going: he wanted Cortone in a good mood when he asked his favor . Afterward Cortone and Dickstein sat in leather armchairs in a den and a butler brought brandy and cigars. Dickstein refused both. 'You used to be a hell of a drinker,' Cortone said. 'It was a hell of a war,' Dickstein replied. The butler left the room. Dickstein watched CDrtone sip brandy and pull on the cigar, and thought that the man ate, drank and smoked joylessly, as though he thought that if he did these things long enough he would eventually acquire the taste. Recalling the sheer fun the two of them had had with the Sicilian cousins, Dickstein wondered whether there were any real people left in Cortone?s life. Suddenly Cortone laughed out loud. 'I remember every minute of that day in Oxford. Hey, did you ever make it with that professoes wife, the Ay-rab?' 'No.' Dickstein barely smiled. 'She's dead, now.' 'I'M sorry. to 'A strange thing happened. I went back there, to that house by the river, and met her daughter ... She looks just like Efla used to.,, 'No kidding. And . . .' Cortone leered. 'And you made ft with the daughter-I don't believe itl' Dickstein nodded. 'We made it in more ways than one. I want to marry her. I plan to ask her next time I see her.' 'Will she say yes?'
'I'm not sure. I think so. I'm older than she is.' 'Age doesn't matter. You could put on a little weight, though. A woman likes to have something to get hold of.' The conversation was annoying Dickstein, and now he re. alized why: Cortone was set on keeping it trivial. It might have been the habit of years of being close-mouthed; it might have been that so much of his 'family business' was criminal business and he did not want Dickstein to know it (but Dickstein had already guessed); or there migbt have been some. thing else he was afraid of revealing, some secret disappointment he could not share: anyhow, the open, garrulous, excitable young man had long since disappeared inside this fat man. Dickstein longed to say, Tell me what gives you joy, and who you love, and how your life runs on. Instead he said, 'Do you remember what you said to me in oxfordr, 'Sure. I told you I owe you a debt, you saved my life.' Cortone inhaled on his cigar. At least that had not changed. 'Im here to ask for your to help. 'Go ahead and ask.' 'Mind if I put the radio on?' Cortone smiled. 'Mis place is swept for bugs about once a week.' 'Good,' said Dickstein but he put the radio on all the same. 'Cards on the table, Al. I work for Israeli Intelligence. Cortones eyes widened. 'I should have guessed.' 'I'm running an operation in the Mediterranean in November. It's . . .' Dickstein wondered how much he needed to tell, and decided very little. 'Ifs something that could mean the end of the wars in the Middle East.' He paused, remembering a phrase Cortone had used habitually. 'And I aWt to shittin! YOU. Cortone laughed. 'If you were going to shit me, I figure you would have been here sooner than twenty years.' 'It's important that the operation should not be traceable back to Israel. I need a base from which to work. I need a big house on the coast with a landing for small boats and an anchorage not too far offshore for a big ship. While Im there-a couple of weeks, maybe mom-I need to be protected from inquiring police and other nosy officials. I can think of only one place where I could get all that, and only one person could get it for me.' Cortone nodded. 'I know a place--a derelict house in Sicily. Ifs not exactly plush, kid ... no heat, no phone-but it could fill the bill.' Dickstein smiled broadly. nlat!s terrific,' he said. 'Thats what I came to ask for.' 'You!re kidding,' said Cortone. 'That's all?'
To: Head of Mossad FRom: Head of London Station DATE: 29 July 1968 Suza Ashford is almost certainly an agent of an Arab intelligence service. She was born in Oxford~ England, 17 June 1944, the only child of Mr. (now Professor) Stephen Ashford (born Guildford, England, 1908) and Eila Zuabi (born Tripoli, Lebanon, 1925). The mother, who died in 1954, was a full-blooded Arab. The father is what is known in England as an 'Arabist'; he spent most of the first forty years of his life in the Middle East and was an explorer, entrepreneur and linguist. He now teaches Semitic Languages at Oxford University, where he is well known for his moderately pro-Arab views. Therefore, although Suza Ashford is strictly speaking a U.K national, her loyalties may be assumed to lie with the Arab cause. She works as an air hostess for BOAC on intercontinental routes, traveling frequently to Tehran, Singapore and Zurich, among other places. Consequently, she has numerous opportunities to make clandestine contacts with Arab diplomatic staff. She is a strikingly beautiful young woman (see attached photograph-which, however, does not do her justice, according to the field agent on this case). She is promiscuous, but not unusually so by the standards of her profession nor by those of her generation in London. To be specific: for her to have sexual relations with a man for the purpose of obtaining information might be an unpleasant experience but not a traumatic one.
Finally-and this is the clincher-Yasif Hassan, the agent who spotted Dickstein in Luxembourg, studied under her father, Professor Ashford, at the same time as Dickstein, and has remained in occasional contact with Ashford in the intervening years. He may have visited Ashford--a man answering his description certainly did visit-about the time Dickstein's affair with Suza Ashford began. I recommend that surveillance be continued. (Signed) Robert Jakes
fo: Head of London Station FRom: Head of Mossad DATE: 30 July 1968 With all that against her, I cannot understand why you do not recommend we kill her. (Signed) Pierre Borg
To: Head of Mossad FROM: Head of London Station DATE: 31 July 1968 1 do not recommend eliminating Suza Ashford for the following reasons: 1. The evidence against her is strong but circumstantial. 2. From what I know of Dickstein, I doubt very much that he has given her any information, even if he is romantically involved. 3. If we eliminate her the other side wM begin looking for another way to get at Dickstein. Better the devil we know. 4. We may be able to use her to feed false information to the other side. S. I do not like to kill on the basis of circumstantial evidence. We are not barbarians. We are Jews. 6. If we kill a woman Dickstein loves, I think he will kill you, me and everyone else involved. (Signed) Robert Jakes
To: Head of LDndon Station FRom: Head of Mossad DATE: I August 1968 Do it your way. (Signed) Pierre Borg PosrscupT (marked Persond): Your point 5 is very noble and touching, but remarks like that wont get you promoted in this maWs army.P.B.
She was a small, old, ugly, dirty, cantankerous hitch. Rust bloomed like a skin rash in great orange blotches all over her hull. If there had ever been any paint on her upperworks it had long ago been peeled away and blasted off and dissolved by the wind and the rain and the sea. Her starboard gunwale had been badly buckled W aft of the prow in an old collision, and nobody had ever bothered to straighten it out. Her funnel bore a layer of grime ten years thick. Her deck was scored and dented and stained; and although it was swabbed often, it was never swabbed thoroughly, so that them were traces of past cargoe*--grains of corn, splinters of timber, bits of rotting vegetation and fragments of sackinghidden behind lifeboats and under coils of rope and inside cracks and joints and holes. On a warm day she smelled foul. I She was some Z500 tons, 200 feet long and a little over 30 feet broad. Ilere was a tall radio mast in her blunt prow. Most of her deck was taken up by two large hatches opening Into the main cargo holds. IMere were three cranes on deck: one forward of the hatches, one aft and one in between. Ibe wheelhouse, officere cabins, galley and crew's quarters were in the stem, clustered around the funnel. She had a single screw driven by a six-cylinder diesel engine theoretically capable of developing 2,450 b.hp. and maintaining a service speed of thirteen knots. FWly loaded, she would pitch badly. In ballast she would yaw like the very devil. Either way she would roll through seventy degrees of arc at the slightest provocation. Ile quarters were cramped and poorly ventilated, the galley was often flooded and the engine room had been designed by Hleronymous Bosch.
She was crewed by thirty-one officers and men, not one of whom had a good word to say for her. The only passengers were a colony of cockroaches in the galley, a few mice and several hundred rats. Nobody loved her, and her name was Coparelli.
Chapter Ten
Nat Dickstein went to New York to become a shipping tycoon. It took him all morning. He looked in the Manhattan phone book and selected a lawyer with an address on the lower East Side. Instead of calling on the phone he went there personally, and was satisfied when he saw that the lawyer's office was one room over a Chinese restaurant. The lawyer's name was Mr. Chung. Dickstein and Chung took a cab to the Park Avenue offices of Liberian Corporation Services, Inc., a company set up to assist people who wanted to register a Liberian corporation but bad no intention of ever going within three thousand miles of Liberia. Dickstein was not asked for references, and he did not have to establish that he was honest or solvent or sane. For a. fee of five hundred dollars-which Dickstein paid in cash-they registered the Savile Shipping Corporation of Liberia. The fact that at this stage Dickstein did not own so much as a rowboat was of no interest to anyone. The company's headquarters was listed as No. 80 Broad Street, Monrovia, Liberia; and its directors were P. Satia, EX Nugba and J.D. Boyd, all residents of Liberia. This was also the headquarters address of most Liberian corporations, and the address of the Liberian Trust Company. Satia, Nugba and Boyd were founding directors of many such corporations; indeed this was
