margin of reports. No more excuses to prevent him seeing the two men who waited in his outer office.
He saw they were both young when they came through the door. Fit and good-looking. They shook his hand. He neither apologized for keeping them so long nor did they seem to expect it. Joseph Mackowicz had come to talk, Gad Elkin to listen.
Mackowicz said, 'I am glad you could see us, Professor.
We are both to be travelling with you throughout your journey. We will be very close to you at all times. It is best on these visits that we get to meet the people we accompany before we leave, rather than meeting at the airport, just seeing each other a few minutes before departure. I think you have little experience of being escorted on a visit abroad?'
' I have not been away for some years. It was a long time ago and then I travelled only with my secretary.' He saw Elkin smile from his chair. 'Not the one I have now, I can assure you. A rather more formidable lady. When I indented to take Anna to handle my correspondence, type my speeches, things like that, it was refused. Not enough money for her to go, I was told. I did not anticipate that if they could not scrape together the lire for Anna they would be able to send two gentlemen such as yourselves. I had resigned myself to travelling on my own.'
'Your typing will be taken care of; the embassies will find a girl for that.' Mackowicz did not react, was not one to rise to even the most gentle humour. 'We have the places that you will be visiting, and we will supervise your programme. What we want for the moment is a guarantee that you will afford us your co-operation, and take most seriously our advice.'
The professor looked hard at the young man, adjusted his glasses, then pushed them back to the bridge of his nose.
'I would never knowingly not co-operate.'
'That, Professor, is excellent news. Not everybody in a similar position to yours is happy to have us in such proximity. Some talk of embarrassment for their foreign colleagues. I can assure you if there is embarrassment it is something we must suffer.'
'I had not given myself such importance,' said the professor slowly, a tinge of sadness in his voice. 'Nor had I realized that I might be at risk. It is not the sort of situation that one considers.'
Mackowicz said, 'We had not considered our athletes at Munich to be either politically important or at risk. We knew, we'd been told, that an Arab attack, from the Black September faction, would come at about that time somewhere in Europe, at some international gathering. No one put the sum together, and no guard was given to our people. They died defenceless, and it will not happen again. A single tennis player, or swimmer or runner, if they represent Israel, then they are protected. It was all laid down in the reorganization that followed Munich. Inevitably, so too for a politician, a diplomat, or a scientist of your status.'
Anna carried in a tray with coffee. No milk, too expensive, sugar, coarse and with the granules over- large.
The men stopped talking while she was in the room and handing out the mugs. The professor thanked her, said he would send a postcard, and see her on his return. She should go home, he told her. He could lock up. She waved, a small feminine gesture, at the door, closing it behind her.
'Gentlemen,' said Sokarev. 'I am only a scientist, perhaps only a technician. Not versed in the ways outside Dimona.
I read the paper, not often, but I read it, and I listen to the wireless in the evening. Though I had not imagined it before I can accept the possibility of threat. But I would not take it as a great one, a small risk only. So I ask myself these questions. First: why did you come here tonight, a long journey — and we have discussed nothing of importance so far? Second, I say: why do we need two men to look after me? Why cannot this be done by our own people from the embassies when I get off the plane, or by the police forces of the countries that I visit?'
There was silence in the room. Sokarev continued to gaze at Mackowicz, waiting for the answer. He watched him light his cigarette, unhurried, patient with the ignorance. In the distance there was the noise of a car starting up. The other scientists would be gone soon, and the cleaners would be on their rounds. Permeating the room came the semi-audible moan of a far-off electric generator.
A fly played around the professor's nose till he swatted it away.
It was Elkin this time who spoke, it had been intended there would be just one of us. The situation changed, and we have to change with it. You are regarded by the Government as a high-risk category. You have much specialized knowledge from your work here. You head an important team. All those things make you an important target, but then all those things we knew weeks ago when your itinerary was filed. Since that time there have been movements — information — that have suggested to us that your protection should be increased. Our work, in a way, can be considered perhaps as sensitive as yours. You would not wish me to say more.'
'You have said nothing,' retorted Sokarev.
'We have listening posts,' Mackowicz cut in. 'We have people who listen for us, and we have people who interpret what they hear. It's a difficult, drawn-out process, and many times we are wrong. Often there are several factors in the air at the same time; rarely do they come to land together. But from what we learn we try to form a shape, to anticipate their actions. This is what we are doing at the moment. The pattern is not yet whole in this instance, but it has a form, an outline.'
'Specifically, there is a threat to me?' There was puzzlement from Sokarev, his confidence about to drain.
'We cannot take it that far yet,' said Elkin. 'We know a squad from one of the Palestinian terror groups has been moving north across Europe. They were intercepted on our advice by the French authorities. At least two of them died. We believed from our informants that there were three. If so, one is not yet accounted for. They were on the road to Boulogne when they were blocked. It is reasonable to assume from that route that their destination was a cross-Channel ferry, and Britain. We have no political leaders, no military men in Britain in the next month. Only yourself, Professor.'
Sokarev was quiet, subdued and unhappy in the presence of these chilling young men, and growing resentful of the message they brought. The silence, long and perceptible, even to the point of shuffled feet, was broken by Mackowicz. 'You will not have read about this, nor will you need to repeat it. Six nights ago the same group that has held our interest in Europe mounted a raid from their advance base in Lebanon across the fence towards Ramot Naftali, south of Kiryat Shmona. They were ambushed by an army patrol.
There were five in all and we captured one. The rest we killed in the action. The IDF statement that evening announced that one of the terrorists had escaped, though he was in fact in our hands. Under interrogation he talked to us. They often do, you know. We gave him his life by barter. He would survive but he would take back with him a radio transmitter. He could give us further information about operations. That was the agreement we made. There were no messages, and he is dead. We have many eyes and ears in Fatahland, and yesterday we were told. He died not nicely, but in pain, and choking because his testicles were blocking his windpipe. You will see from what I say that information is not easy to come by, and when we do have access then we listen to what we are told.'
Sokarev felt he wanted to vomit. He rose up unsteadily from his chair and moved across the room. By the door he switched on the light, banishing the spreading shadows, flooding the office from the fluorescent bar hung from the ceiling. Apart from a single photograph and a chart that showed him which members of his team had booked their annual leave or were on extended sick leave the walls were bare. As he wanted his office — uncomplicated. The photograph showed his three children; two girls in army slacks and regulation V-necked navy blue sweaters, and between them his son, a head taller and in light, air-force summer khaki, with his pilot's wings on his chest. Home together for a 'shabbat' leave, and they'd be together again same opportunity tomorrow. They expected to fight, could comprehend the modern war fought crawling at belly-level beyond the frontiers of their country. But to Sokarev the dark and sinister images that the two security men had introduced to his office were hostile and alien.
'You are presumably going to tell me what this terrorist said under questioning?' He had stayed by the door.
Mackowicz and Elkin stood up. Mackowicz said, 'He told us they had been planning an attack in Europe. He did not know the location, he did not know the target. He knew only the code-word for the operation. Under extreme interrogation he gave it to us. The PFLP General Command are the terrorist grouping, and they have given this operation the word 'kima'. It is an Arabic word, of the Palestinian dialect. Translated, it is 'mushroom'. Not the small button-shaped one of the kitchen, but the larger, free-growing plant that magnifies and flourishes. That is why we consider a man from Dimona to be at risk. And why there will be two of us at your side when you travel.'
