Triple

by Ken Follett

Genres: Historical Fiction; Thrillers; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

EGYPT - where, hidden deep in the desert, a top-secret project to build a nuclear plant that will give the Arabs the bomb nears completion...

ISRAEL - where the Mossad's top agent, Nat Dickstein, a master of disguise and deceit, is given an impossible mission: to beat the Arabs in the arms race by finding and stealing 200 tons of uranium without any other nation discovering the theft...

RUSSIA - where top KGB officials have decided to tip the atomic balance in Egypt's favor...

ENGLAND - where Dickstein makes what could be the fatal mistake of his career by falling under the seductive spell of Suzie Ashford, the dazzling, dark-haired beauty who may be his dearest ally or his deadliest enemy...

THE HIGH SEAS - where the Mossad, KGB, Egyptians, and Fedayeen terrorists play out the final violent, bloody moves in a devastating game where the price of failure is nuclear holocaust...

Release date: February 3, 2015

Publisher: Penguin Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

THERE was a time, just once, when they were all together.

They met many years ago, when they were young, before all this happened; but the meeting cast shadows far across the decades.

It was the first Sunday in November, 1947, to be exact; and each of them met all the others—indeed, for a few minutes they were all in one room. Some of them immediately forgot the faces they saw and the names they heard spoken in formal introductions. Some of them actually forgot the whole day; and when it became so important, twenty-one years later, they had to pretend to remember; to stare at blurred photographs and murmur, “Ah, yes, of course,” in a knowing way.

This early meeting is a coincidence, but not a very startling one. They were mostly young and able; they were destined to have power, to take decisions, and to make changes, each in their different ways, in their different countries; and those people often meet in their youth at places like Oxford University. Furthermore, when all this happened, those who were not involved initially were sucked into it just because they had met the others at Oxford.

However, it did not seem like an historic meeting at the time. It was just another sherry party in a place where there were too many sherry parties (and, undergraduates would add, not enough sherry). It was an uneventful occasion. Well, almost.

*   *   *

Al Cortone knocked and waited in the hall for a dead man to open the door.

The suspicion that his friend was dead had grown to a conviction in the past three years. First, Cortone had heard that Nat Dickstein had been taken prisoner. Towards the end of the war, stories began to circulate about what was happening to Jews in the Nazi camps. Then, at the end, the grim truth came out.

On the other side of the door, a ghost scraped a chair on the floor and padded across the room.

Cortone felt suddenly nervous. What if Dickstein were disabled, deformed? Suppose he had become unhinged? Cortone had never known how to deal with cripples or crazy men. He and Dickstein had become very close, just for a few days back in 1943; but what was Dickstein like now?

The door opened, and Cortone said, “Hi, Nat.”

Dickstein stared at him; then his face split in a wide grin and he came out with one of his ridiculous Cockney phrases: “Gawd, stone the crows!”

Cortone grinned back, relieved. They shook hands, and slapped each other on the back, and let rip some soldierly language just for the hell of it; then they went inside.

Dickstein’s home was one high-ceilinged room of an old house in a run-down part of the city. There was a single bed, neatly made up in army fashion; a heavy old wardrobe of dark wood with a matching dresser; and a table piled with books in front of a small window. Cortone thought the room looked bare. If he had to live here he would put some personal stuff all around to make the place look like his own: photographs of his family, souvenirs of Niagara and Miami Beach, his high school football trophy.

Dickstein said, “What I want to know is, how did you find me?”

“I’ll tell you, it wasn’t easy.” Cortone took off his uniform jacket and laid it on the narrow bed. “It took me most of yesterday.” He eyed the only easy chair in the room. Both arms tilted sideways at odd angles, a spring poked through the faded chrysanthemums of the fabric, and one missing foot had been replaced with a copy of Plato’s Theaetetus. “Can human beings sit on that?”

“Not above the rank of sergeant. But—”

“They aren’t human anyway.”

They both laughed: it was an old joke. Dickstein brought a bentwood chair from the table and straddled it. He looked his friend up and down for a moment and said, “You’re getting fat.”

Cortone patted the slight swell of his stomach. “We live well in Frankfurt—you really missed out, getting demobilized.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice, as if what he was saying was somewhat confidential. “I have made a fortune. Jewelry, china, antiques—all bought for cigarettes and soap. The Germans are starving. And—best of all—the girls will do anything for a Tootsie Roll.” He sat back, waiting for a laugh, but Dickstein just stared at him straight-faced. Disconcerted, Cortone changed the subject. “One thing you ain’t, is fat.”

At first he had been so relieved to see Dickstein still in one piece and grinning the same grin that he had not looked at him closely. Now he realized that his friend was worse than thin: he looked wasted. Nat Dickstein had always been short and slight, but now he seemed all bones. The dead-white skin, and the large brown eyes behind the plastic-rimmed spectacles, accentuated the effect. Between the top of his sock and the cuff of his trouser-leg a few inches of pale shin showed like matchwood. Four years ago Dickstein had been brown, stringy, as hard as the leather soles of his British Army boots. When Cortone talked about his English buddy, as he often did, he would say, “The toughest, meanest bastard fighting soldier that ever saved my goddamn life, and I ain’t shittin’ you.”

“Fat? No,” Dickstein said. “This country is still on iron rations, mate. But we manage.”

“You’ve known worse.”

Dickstein smiled. “And eaten it.”

“You got took prisoner.”

“At La Molina.”

“How the hell did they tie you down?”

“Easy.” Dickstein shrugged. “A bullet broke my leg and I passed out. When I came round I was in a German truck.”

Cortone looked at Dickstein’s legs. “It mended okay?”

“I was lucky. There was a medic in my truck on the POW train—he set the bone.”

Cortone nodded. “And then the camp...” He thought maybe he should not ask, but he wanted to know.

Dickstein looked away. “It was all right until they found out I’m Jewish. Do you want a cup of tea? I can’t afford whiskey.”

“No.” Cortone wished he had kept his mouth shut. “Anyway, I don’t drink whiskey in the morning anymore. Life doesn’t seem as short as it used to.”

Dickstein’s eyes swiveled back toward Cortone. “They decided to find out how many times they could break a leg in the same place and mend it again.”

“Jesus.” Cortone’s voice was a whisper.

“That was the best part,” Dickstein said in a flat monotone. He looked away again.

Cortone said, “Bastards.” He could not think of anything else to say. There was a strange expression on Dickstein’s face; something Cortone had not seen before, something—he realized after a moment—that was very like fear. It was odd. After all, it was over now, wasn’t it? “Well, hell, at least we won, didn’t we?” He punched Dickstein’s shoulder.

Dickstein grinned. “We did. Now, what are you doing in England? And how did you find me?”

“I managed to get a stopover in London on my way back to Buffalo. I went to the War Office . . .” Cortone hesitated. He had gone to the War Office to find out how and when Dickstein died. “They gave me an address in Stepney,” he continued. “When I got there, there was only one house left standing in the whole street. In this house, underneath an inch of dust, I find this old man.”

“Tommy Coster.”

“Right. Well, after I drink nineteen cups of weak tea and listen to the story of his life, he sends me to another house around the corner, where I find your mother, drink more weak tea and hear the story of her life. By the time I get your address it’s too late to catch the last train to Oxford, so I wait until the morning, and here I am. I only have a few hours—my ship sails tomorrow.”

“You’ve got your discharge?”

“In three weeks, two days and ninety-four minutes.”

“What are you going to do, back home?”

“Run the family business. I’ve discovered, in the last couple of years, that I am a terrific businessman.”

“What business is your family in? You never told me.”

“Trucking,” Cortone said shortly. “And you? What is this with Oxford University, for Christ’s sake? What are you studying?”

“Hebrew Literature.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I could write Hebrew before I went to school, didn’t I ever tell you? My grandfather was a real scholar. He lived in one smelly room over a pie shop in the Mile End Road. I went there every Saturday and Sunday, since before I can remember. I never complained—I love it. Anyway, what else would I study?”

Cortone shrugged. “I don’t know, atomic physics maybe, or business management. Why study at all?”

“To become happy, clever and rich.”

Cortone shook his head. “Weird as ever. Lots of girls here?”

“Very few. Besides, I’m busy.”

He thought Dickstein was blushing. “Liar. You’re in love, you fool. I can tell. Who is she?”

“Well, to be honest . . .” Dickstein was embarrassed. “She’s out of reach. A professor’s wife. Exotic, intelligent, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Cortone made a dubious face. “It’s not promising, Nat.”

“I know, but still . . .” Dickstein stood up. “You’ll see what I mean.”

“I get to meet her?”

“Professor Ashford is giving a sherry party. I’m invited. I was just leaving when you got here.” Dickstein put on his jacket.

“A sherry party in Oxford,” Cortone said. “Wait till they hear about this in Buffalo!”

*   *   *

It was a cold, bright morning. Pale sunshine washed the cream-colored stone of the city’s old buildings. They walked in comfortable silence, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched against the biting November wind which whistled through the streets. Cortone kept muttering, “Dreaming spires. Fuck.”

There were very few people about, but after they had walked a mile or so Dickstein pointed across the road to a tall man with a college scarf wound around his neck. “There’s the Russian,” he said. He called, “Hey, Rostov!”

The Russian looked up, waved, and crossed to their side of the street. He had an army haircut, and was too long and thin for his mass-produced suit. Cortone was beginning to think everyone was thin in this country.

Dickstein said, “Rostov’s at Balliol, same college as me. David Rostov, meet Alan Cortone. Al and I were together in Italy for a while. Going to Ashford’s house, Rostov?”

The Russian nodded solemnly. “Anything for a free drink.”

Cortone said, “You interested in Hebrew Literature too?”

Rostov said, “No, I’m here to study bourgeois economics.”

Dickstein laughed loudly. Cortone did not see the joke. Dickstein explained, “Rostov is from Smolensk. He’s a member of the CPSU—the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.” Cortone still did not see the joke.

“I thought nobody was allowed to leave Russia,” Cortone said.

Rostov went into a long and involved explanation which had to do with his father’s having been a diplomat in Japan when the war broke out. He had an earnest expression which occasionally gave way to a sly smile. Although his English was imperfect, he managed to give Cortone the impression that he was condescending. Cortone turned off, and began to think about how you could love a man as if he was your own brother, fighting side by side with him, and then he could go off and study Hebrew Literature and you would realize you never really knew him at all.

Eventually Rostov said to Dickstein, “Have you decided yet, about going to Palestine?”

Cortone said, “Palestine? What for?”

Dickstein looked troubled. “I haven’t decided.”

“You should go,” said Rostov. “The Jewish National Home will help to break up the last remnants of the British Empire in the Middle East.”

“Is that the Party line?” Dickstein asked with a faint smile.

“Yes,” Rostov said seriously. “You’re a socialist—”

“Of sorts.”

“—and it is important that the new State should be socialist.”

Cortone was incredulous. “The Arabs are murdering you people out there. Jeez, Nat, you only just escaped from the Germans!”

“I haven’t decided,” Dickstein repeated. He shook his head irritably. “I don’t know what to do.” It seemed he did not want to talk about it.

They were walking briskly. Cortone’s face was freezing, but he was perspiring beneath his winter uniform. The other two began to discuss a scandal: a man called Mosley—the name meant nothing to Cortone—had been persuaded to enter Oxford in a van and make a speech at the Martyr’s Memorial. Mosley was a Fascist, he gathered a moment later. Rostov was arguing that the incident proved how social democracy was closer to Fascism than Communism. Dickstein claimed the undergraduates who organized the event were just trying to be “shocking.”

Cortone listened and watched the two men. They were an odd couple: tall Rostov, his scarf like a striped bandage, taking long strides, his too-short trousers flapping like flags; and diminutive Dickstein with big eyes and round spectacles, wearing a demob suit, looking like a skeleton in a hurry. Cortone was no academic, but he figured he could smell out bullshit in any language, and he knew that neither of them was saying what he believed: Rostov was parroting some kind of official dogma, and Dickstein’s brittle unconcern masked a different, deeper attitude. When Dickstein laughed about Mosley, he sounded like a child laughing after a nightmare. They both argued cleverly but without emotion: it was like a fencing match with blunted swords.

Eventually Dickstein seemed to realize that Cortone was being left out of the discussion and began to talk about their host. “Stephen Ashford is a bit eccentric, but a remarkable man,” he said. “He spent most of his life in the Middle East. Made a small fortune and lost it, by all accounts. He used to do crazy things, like crossing the Arabian Desert on a camel.”

“That might be the least crazy way to cross it,” Cortone said.

Rostov said, “Ashford has a Lebanese wife.”

Cortone looked at Dickstein. “She’s—”

“She’s younger than he is,” Dickstein said hastily. “He brought her back to England just before the war and became Professor of Semitic Literature here. If he gives you Marsala instead of sherry it means you’ve overstayed your welcome.”

“People know the difference?” Cortone said.

“This is his house.”

Cortone was half expecting a Moorish villa, but the Ashford home was imitation Tudor, painted white with green woodwork. The garden in front was a jungle of shrubs. The three young men walked up a brick pathway to the house. The front door was open. They entered a small, square hall. Somewhere in the house several people laughed: the party had started. A pair of double doors opened and the most beautiful woman in the world came out.

Cortone was transfixed. He stood and stared as she came across the carpet to welcome them. He heard Dickstein say, “This is my friend Alan Cortone,” and suddenly he was touching her long brown hand, warm and dry and fine-boned, and he never wanted to let go.

She turned away and led them into the drawing room. Dickstein touched Cortone’s arm and grinned: he had known what was going on in his friend’s mind.

Cortone recovered his composure sufficiently to say, “Wow.”

Small glasses of sherry were lined up with military precision on a little table. She handed one to Cortone, smiled, and said, “I’m Eila Ashford, by the way.”

Cortone took in the details as she handed out the drinks. She was completely unadorned: there was no makeup on her astonishing face, her black hair was straight, and she wore a white dress and sandals—yet the effect was almost like nakedness, and Cortone was embarrassed at the animal thoughts that rushed through his mind as he looked at her.

He forced himself to turn away and study his surroundings. The room had the unfinished elegance of a place where people are living slightly beyond their means. The rich Persian carpet was bordered by a strip of peeling gray linoleum; someone had been mending the radio, and its innards were all over a kidney table; there were a couple of bright rectangles on the wallpaper where pictures had been taken down; and some of the sherry glasses did not quite match the set. There were about a dozen people in the room.

An Arab wearing a beautiful pearl-gray Western suit was standing at the fireplace, looking at a wooden carving on the mantelpiece. Eila Ashford called him over. “I want you to meet Yasif Hassan, a friend of my family from home,” she said. “He’s at Worcester College.”

Hassan said, “I know Dickstein.” He shook hands all around.

Cortone thought he was fairly handsome, for a nigger, and haughty, the way they were when they made some money and got invited to white homes.

Rostov asked him, “You’re from Lebanon?”

“Palestine.”

“Ah!” Rostov became animated. “And what do you think of the United Nations partition plan?”

“Irrelevant,” the Arab said languidly. “The British must leave, and my country will have a democratic government.”

“But then the Jews will be a minority,” Rostov argued.

“They are in a minority in England. Should they be given Surrey as a national home?”

“Surrey has never been theirs. Palestine was, once.”

Hassan shrugged elegantly. “It was—when the Welsh had England, the English had Germany, and the Norman French lived in Scandinavia.” He turned to Dickstein. “You have a sense of justice—what do you think?”

Dickstein took off his glasses. “Never mind justice. I want a place to call my own.”

“Even if you have to steal mine?” Hassan said.

“You can have the rest of the Middle East.”

“I don’t want it.”

Rostov said, “This discussion proves the necessity for partition.”

Eila Ashford offered a box of cigarettes. Cortone took one, and lit hers. While the others argued about Palestine, Eila asked Cortone, “Have you known Dickstein long?”

“We met in 1943,” Cortone said. He watched her brown lips close around the cigarette. She even smoked beautifully. Delicately, she picked a fragment of tobacco from the tip of her tongue.

“I’m terribly curious about him,” she said.

“Why?”

“Everyone is. He’s only a boy, and yet he seems so old. Then again, he’s obviously a Cockney, but he’s not in the least intimidated by all these upper-class Englishmen. But he’ll talk about anything except himself.”

Cortone nodded. “I’m finding out that I don’t really know him, either.”

“My husband says he’s a brilliant student.”

“He saved my life.”

“Good Lord.” She looked at him more closely, as if she were wondering whether he was just being melodramatic. She seemed to decide in his favor. “I’d like to hear about it.”

A middle-aged man in baggy corduroy trousers touched her shoulder and said, “How is everything, my dear?”

“Fine,” she said. “Mr. Cortone, this is my husband, Professor Ashford.”

Cortone said, “How are you?” Ashford was a balding man in ill-fitting clothes. Cortone had been expecting Lawrence of Arabia. He thought: Maybe Nat has a chance after all.

Eila said, “Mr. Cortone was telling me how Nat Dickstein saved his life.”

“Really!” Ashford said.

“It’s not a long story,” Cortone said. He glanced over at Dickstein, now deep in conversation with Hassan and Rostov, and noted how the three men displayed their attitudes by the way they stood: Rostov with his feet apart, wagging a finger like a teacher, sure in his dogma; Hassan leaning against a bookcase, one hand in his pocket, smoking, pretending that the international debate about the future of his country was of merely academic interest; Dickstein with arms folded tightly, shoulders hunched, head bowed in concentration, his stance giving the lie to the dispassionate character of his remarks. Cortone heard The British promised Palestine to the Jews, and the reply, Beware the gifts of the thief. He turned back to the Ashfords and began to tell them the story.

“It was in Sicily, near a place called Ragusa, a hill town,” he said. “I’d taken a T-force around the outskirts. To the north of the town we came on a German tank in a little hollow, on the edge of a clump of trees. The tank looked abandoned but I put a grenade into it to make sure. As we drove past there was a shot—only one—and a German with a machine gun fell out of a tree. He’d been hiding up there, ready to pick us off as we passed. It was Nat Dickstein who shot him.”

Eila’s eyes sparkled with something like excitement, but her husband had gone white. Obviously the professor had no stomach for tales of life and death. Cortone thought: If that upsets you, Pop, I hope Dickstein never tells you any of his stories.

“The British had come around the town from the other side,” Cortone went on. “Nat had seen the tank, like I did, and smelled a trap. He had spotted the sniper and was waiting to see if there were any more when we turned up. If he hadn’t been so damn smart I’d be dead.”

The other two were silent for a moment. Ashford said, “It’s not long ago, but we forget so fast.”

Eila remembered her other guests. “I want to talk to you some more before you go,” she said to Cortone. She went across the room to where Hassan was trying to open a pair of doors that gave on to the garden.

Ashford brushed nervously at the wispy hair behind his ears. “The public hears about the big battles, but I suppose the soldier remembers those little personal incidents.”

Cortone nodded, thinking that Ashford clearly had no conception of what war was like, and wondering if the professor’s youth had really been as adventurous as Dickstein claimed. “Later, I took him to meet my cousins—the family comes from Sicily. We had pasta and wine, and they made a hero of Nat. We were together only for a few days, but we were like brothers, you know?”

“Indeed.”

“When I heard he was taken prisoner, I figured I’d never see him again.”

“Do you know what happened to him?” Ashford said. “He doesn’t say much . . .”

Cortone shrugged. “He survived the camps.”

“He was fortunate.”

“Was he?”

Ashford looked at Cortone for a moment, confused, then turned away and looked around the room. After a moment he said, “This is not a very typical Oxford gathering, you know. Dickstein, Rostov and Hassan are somewhat unusual students. You should meet Toby—he’s the archetypal undergraduate.” He caught the eye of a red-faced youth in a tweed suit and a very wide paisley tie. “Toby, come and meet Dickstein’s comrade-in-arms—Mr. Cortone.”

Toby shook hands and said abruptly, “Any chance of a tip from the stable? Will Dickstein win?”

“Win what?” Cortone said.

Ashford explained. “Dickstein and Rostov are to play a chess match—they’re both supposed to be terribly good. Toby thinks you might have inside information—he probably wants to bet on the outcome.”

Cortone said, “I thought chess was an old man’s game.”

Toby said, “Ah!” rather loudly, and emptied his glass. He and Ashford seemed nonplussed by Cortone’s remark. A little girl, four or five years old, came in from the garden carrying an elderly gray cat. Ashford introduced her with the coy pride of a man who has become a father in middle age.

“This is Suza,” he said.

The girl said, “And this is Hezekiah.”

She had her mother’s skin and hair; she too would be beautiful. Cortone wondered whether she was really Ashford’s daughter. There was nothing of him in her looks. She held out the cat’s paw, and Cortone obligingly shook it and said, “How are you, Hezekiah?”

Suza went over to Dickstein. “Good morning, Nat. Would you like to stroke Hezekiah?”

“She’s very cute,” Cortone said to Ashford. “I have to talk to Nat. Would you excuse me?” He went over to Dickstein, who was kneeling down and stroking the cat.

Nat and Suza seemed to be pals. He told her, “This is my friend Alan.”

“We’ve met,” she said, and fluttered her eyelashes. Cortone thought: She learned that from her mother.

“We were in the war together,” Dickstein continued.

Suza looked directly at Cortone. “Did you kill people?”

He hesitated. “Sure.”

“Do you feel bad about it?”

“Not too bad. They were wicked people.”

“Nat feels bad about it. That’s why he doesn’t like to talk about it too much.”

The kid had got more out of Dickstein than all the grown-ups put together.

The cat jumped out of Suza’s arms with surprising agility. She chased after it. Dickstein stood up.

“I wouldn’t say Mrs. Ashford is out of reach,” Cortone said quietly.

“Wouldn’t you?” Dickstein said.

“She can’t be more than twenty-five. He’s at least twenty years older, and I’ll bet he’s no pistol. If they got married before the war, she must have been around seventeen at the time. And they don’t seem affectionate.”

“I wish I could believe you,” Dickstein said. He was not as interested as he should have been. “Come and see the garden.”

They went through the French doors. The sun was stronger, and the bitter cold had gone from the air. The garden stretched in a green-and-brown wilderness down to the edge of the river. They walked away from the house.

Dickstein said, “You don’t much like this crowd.”

“The war’s over,” Cortone said. “You and me, we live in different worlds now. All this—professors, chess matches, sherry parties . . . I might as well be on Mars. My life is doing deals, fighting off the competition, making a few bucks. I was fixing to offer you a job in my business, but I guess I’d be wasting my time.”

“Alan . . .”

“Listen, what the hell? We’ll probably lose touch now—I’m not much of a letter writer. But I won’t forget that I owe you my life. One of these days you might want to call in the debt. You know where to find me.”

Dickstein opened his mouth to speak; then they heard the voices.

“Oh . . . no, not here, not now . . .” It was a woman.

“Yes!” A man.

Dickstein and Cortone were standing beside a thick box hedge which cut off a corner of the garden: someone had begun to plant a maze and never finished the job. A few steps from where they were a gap opened; then the hedge turned a right angle and ran along the riverbank. The voices came clearly from the other side of the foliage.

The woman spoke again, low and throaty. “Don’t, damn you, or I’ll scream.”

Dickstein and Cortone stepped through the gap.

Cortone would never forget what he saw there. He stared at the two people and then, appalled, he glanced at Dickstein. Dickstein’s face was gray with shock, and he looked ill; his mouth dropped open as he gazed in horror and despa