is against us. The Ambs can afford to lose a war from time to time. We can't: our first defeat will be our last war. 'Conclusion: the survival of Israel depends on our breaking out of the vicious spiral our enemies have prescribed for us.' Dickstein nodded. 'It's not a novel line of thought. It's the usual argument for 'peace at any price.' I should think the bright boy got fired from the Ministry of Defense for that paper.' 'Wrong both times. He went on to say, 'We must inflict, or have the power to inflict, permanent and crippling damage to the next Arab army that crosses our borders. We must have nuclear weapons. Is Dickstein was very still for a moment; then he let out his breath in a long whistle. It was one of those devastating ideas that seems completely obvious as soon as it has been sai(L It would change everything. He was silent for a while, digesting the implications. His mind teemed with questions. Was it technically feasible? Would the Americans help? Would the Israeli Cabinet approve it? Would the Arabs retaliate with their own bomb? What he said was, 'Bright boy in the Ministry, hell. That was Moshe Dayan's paper.' 'No comment,' said Borg. Did the Cabinet adopt it?- 'There has been a long debate, Certain elder statesmen argued that they had not come this far to see the Middle East wiped out in a nuclear holocaust. But the opposition faction relied mainly on the argument that if we have a bomb, the Arabs will get one too, and we will be back at square one. As it UnWA out, that was their big mistake.' Borg reached into his pocket and took out a small plastic box. He handed it to Dickstein. Dickstein switched on the interior light and examined the box. It was about an inch and a half square, thin, and blue in color. It opened to reveal a small envelope made of heavy light-proof paper. 'What!s this?' he -said. Borg said, 'A physicist named Friedrich Schulz visited Cairo in February. He is Austrian but he works in the United States. He was apparently on holiday in Europe, but his plane ticket to Egypt was paid for by the Egyptian government. 'I had him followed, but he gave our boy the slip and disappeared into the Western Desert for forty-eight hours. We know from CIA satellite pictures that there is a major construction Project going on in that part of the desert. When Schulz came back, he had that in his pocket It's a personnel dosimeter. The envelope, which is light-tight, contains a piece of ordinary Photographic film. You carry the box in your pocket, or pinned to your lapel or trouser belt. If you!re exposed to radiation, the film will -show fogging when irs d&veloped. Dosimeters are carried, as a matter of routine, by everyone who visits or works in a nuclear power station.' Dickstein switched off the light and gave the box back to Borg. 'You're telling me the Arabs are already making atom bombs,' he said softly. 'That's right.' Borg spoke unnecessarily loudly. 'So the Cabinet gave Dayan the go- ahead to make a bomb of his own.' 'In principle, yes.' 'How so?' 'Mere are some practical difficulties. The mechanics of the business are simple-the actual clockwork of the bomb, so. to speak. Anyone who can make a conventional bomb can make a nuclear bomb. Ile problem is getting hold of the explosive material, plutonium. You get plutonium out of an atomic reactor. It's a by-product. Now, we have a reactor, at Dimona in the Negev Desert. Did you know thair, 'Yes.' 'It's our worst-kept secret. However, we don't have the equipment for extracting the plutonium from the spent fuel. We could build a reprocessing plant, but the problem is that we have no uranium of our own to put through the reactor.' 'Wait a minute.' Dickstein frowned. 'We must have uranium, to fuel the reactor for normal use.' 'correct. We get it from France, and it's supplied to us on condition we return the spent fuel to them for reprocessing, so they get the plutonium.' 'Other suppliers?' 'Would impose the same condition-it's part of all the nuclear non-proliferation treaties.' Dickstein said, 'But the people at Dimona could siphon off some of the spent fuel without anyone noticing.' 'No. Given the quantity of uranium originally supplied, it's possible to calculate precisely how much plutonium comes out the other end. And they weigh it very carefully-it's expensive stuff.' 'So the problem is to get hold of some uranium.' 'Right' 'And the solution?' 'Me solution is, you're going to steal it.' Dickstein looked out of the window. The moon came out, revealing a flock of sheep huddled in a corner of a field, watched by an Arab shepherd with a staff: a Biblical scene. So this was the game: stolen uranium for the land of milk and honey. Last time it had been the murder of a terrorist leader in Damascus; the time before, blackmailing a wealthy Arab in Monte Carlo to stop him funding the Fedayeen. Dickstein's feelings had been pushed into the background while Borg talked about politics and Schulz and nuclear reactors. Now he was reminded that this involved him; and the fear came back, and with it a memory. After his father died the family had been desperately poor, and when creditors called, Nat had been sent to the door to say mummy was out. At the age of thirteen, he had found it unbearably humiliating, because the creditors knew he was lying, and he knew they knew, and they would look at him with a mixture of contempt and pity which pierced him to the quick. He would never forget that feeling-and it came back, like a reminder from his unconscious, when somebody like Borg said something like, 'Little Nathaniel, go steal some uranium for your motherland.' To his mother he had always said, 'Do I have to?' And now he said to Pierre Borg, 'If we're going to steal it any~-way, why not buy it and simply refuse to send it back for reprocessing?' 'Because that way, everyone would know what we're up tO.,V 'SO?' 'Reprocessing takes time-many months. During that time two things could happen: one, the Egyptians would hurry their program; and two, the Americans would pressure us not to build the bomb.' 'Oh!' It was worse. 'So you want me to steal this stuff without anyone knowing that it's us.' 'More than that.' Borg's voice was harsh and throaty. 'Nobody must even know it's been stolen. It must look as if the stuff has just been lost. I want the owners, and the international agencies, to be so embarrassed about the stuff disappearing that they will hush it up. Then, when they discover they've been robbed, they will be corhpromised by their own cover-up. 'It's bound to come out eventually.' 'Not before we've got our bomb.' They had reached the coast road from Haifa to Tel Aviv, and as the car butted through the night Oickstein could see, over to the right, occasional glimpses of the Mediterranean, glinting like jewelry in the moonlight. When he spoke he was surprised at the note of weary resignation in his voice. 'How much uranium do we need?' 'They want twelve bombs. In the yellowcake form-that's the uranium oro--it would mean about a hundred tons.' 'I won't -be able to slip it into my pocket, then.' Dickstein frowned. 'Vhat would all that cost if we bought it.' 'Something over one million U.S. dollars.' 'And you think the losers will just hush it up?' 'If it's done right' 'Howr 'That's your job, Pirate.' -rm not so sure its possible,' Dickstein said. 'It's got to be. I told the Prime Minister we could pun it off. I laidray career on the line, Nat.' 'Don't talk to me about your bleeding career.' Borg Ht another cigar-a nervous reaction to Dickstein's scorn. Dickstein opened his window an inch to let the smoke out. His sudden hostility bad nothing to do with Borg's clumsy personal appeal: that was typical of the man's inability to understand how people felt toward him What had unnerved Dickstein was a sudden vision of mushroom clouds over Jerusalem and Cairo, of cotton fields by the Nile and vineyards beside the Sea of Galilee blighted by fallout, the Middle East wasted by fire, its children deformed for generation& He said, 'I still think peace is an alternative.' Borg shrugged. 'I wouldn't know. I don't get involved in politics.' 'Btillshit.' Borg sighed. 'Look, if they have a bomb, we have to have one too, don't we?' 'If that was all there was to it, we could just hold a press conference, announce that the Egyptians are making a bomb, and let the rest of the world stop them. I think our people want the bomb anyway. I think they're glad of the excuse.' 'And maybe they're right!' Borg said. 'We can't go on fighting a war every few years-one of these days we might lose one.' 'We could make peace.' Borg snorted. 'You're so fucking naive.' 'If we gave way on a few things-the Occupied Territories, the Law of Return, equal rights for Arabs in Israel---~'
'Me Arabs have equal rights.' Dickstein smiled mirtblessly. 'You!re so fucking naive.' 'Llstenr' Borg made an effort at self-control. Dickstein understood his anger: it was a reaction he had in common with many Lu-aea They thought that if these liberal ideas should ever take hold, they would be the thin edge of the wedge, and concession would follow concession until the land was handed back to the Arabs on a plate-and that prospect struck at the very roots of their identity. 'Listen,' Borg said again. 'Maybe we should sell our birthright for a mess of potage. But this is the real world, and the people of this country won't vote for peace-at-any-price; and in your heart you know that the Arabs aren't in any great hurry for peace either. So, in the real world, we still have to fight them; and if we're going to fight them we'd better win; and if we're to be sure of winning, you'd better steal us some uranium.' Dickstein said, 'Me thing I dislike most about you though you're usually right.' Borg wound down his window and threw away the stub of his cigar. It made a trail of sparks on the road, like a firecracker. The lights of Tel Aviv became visible ahead: they were almost them Borg said, 'You know, with most of my people I don!t feel obliged to argue politics every time I give them an assignment. They just take orders, like operatives are supposed to.' 'I don't believe you,' Dickstein said. '116 is a nation of idealists, or it!s nothing.' 'Maybe.' 'I once knew a man called Wolfgang. He used to say, 'I just take orders.'Then he used to break my leg.' 'Yeah,' Borg said. 'You told me.'
When a company hires an accountant to keep the books, the first thing he does is announce that he has so much work to do on the overall direction of the company's financial policy that he needs to hire a junior accountant to keep the books. Something similar happens with spies. A country sets up an intelligence service to find out how many tanks its neighbor has and where they are kept, and before you can say MI5 the intelligence service announces that it is so busy spying on subversive elements at home that a separate service is needed to deal with military intelligence. So it was in Egypt in 1955. The country's fledgling intelllgence service was divided into two
