Triple Page 7

  Stiffcollar went white. "I don't know . . ."

  Dickstein stuck out his hand. "Ed Rodgers," he said, giving the name he had used with Pfaffer. "I'm a journalist."

  Stiffcollar muttered, "How do you do." He was shaken, but he had the presence of mind not to give his name.

  "I've got to rush away," Dickstein said. "It was nice to see you."

  "Goodbye, then."

  Dickstein turned away and went out of the club. He had done all that was necessary, for now: Stiffcollar knew that his secret was out, and he was frightened.

  Dickstein walked toward his hotel, feeling grubby and ashamed.

  He was followed from the Rue Dicks.

  The tail was not a professional, and made no attempt at camouflage. He stayed fifteen or twenty steps behind, his leather shoes making a regular slap-slap on the pavement. Dickstein pretended not to notice. Crossing the road, he got a look at the tail: a large youth, long hair, worn brown leather jacket.

  Moments later another youth stepped out of the shadows and stood squarely in front of Dickstein, blocking the pavement. Dickstein stood still and waited, thinking: What the hell is this? He could not imagine who could be tailing him already, nor why anyone who wanted him tailed would use clumsy amateurs from off the streets.

  The blade of a knife glinted in the street light. The tail came up behind.

  The youth in front said, "All right, nancy-boy, give us your wallet."

  Dickstein was deeply relieved. They were just thieves who assumed that anyone coming out of that nightclub would be easy game.

  "Don't hit me," Dickstein said. "I'll give you my money." He took out his wallet.

  "The wallet," the youth said.

  Dickstein did not want to fight them; but, while he could get more cash easily, he would be greatly inconvenienced if he lost all his papers and credit cards. He removed the notes from the wallet and offered them. "I need my papers. Just take the money, and I won't report this."

  The boy in front snatched the notes.

  The one behind said, "Get the credit cards."

  The one in front was the weaker. Dickstein looked squarely at him and said, "Why don't you quit while you're ahead, sonny?" Then he walked forward, passing the youth on the outside of the pavement.

  Leather shoes beat a brief tattoo as the other rushed Dickstein, and then there was only one way for the encounter to end.

  Dickstein spun about, grabbed the boy's foot as he aimed a kick, pulled and twisted, and broke the boy's ankle. The kid shouted with pain and fell down.

  The one with the knife came at Dickstein then. He danced back, kicked the boy's shin, danced back, and kicked again. The boy lunged with the knife. Dickstein dodged and kicked him a third time in exactly the same place. There was a noise like a bone snapping, and the boy fell down.

  Dickstein stood for a moment looking at the two injured muggers. He felt like a parent whose children had pushed him until he was obliged to strike them. He thought: Why did you make me do it? They were children: about seventeen, he guessed. They were vicious--they preyed on homosexuals; but that was exactly what Dickstein had been doing this night.

  He walked away. It was an evening to forget. He decided to leave town in the morning.

  When Dickstein was working he stayed in his hotel room as much as possible to avoid being seen. He might have been a heavy drinker, except it was unwise to drink during an operation--alcohol blunted the sharp edge of his vigilance--and at other times he felt no need of it. He spent a lot of time looking out of windows or sitting in front of a flickering television screen. He did not walk around the streets, did not sit in hotel bars, did not even eat in hotel restaurants--he always used room service. But there were limits to the precautions a man could take: he could not be invisible. In the lobby of the Alfa Hotel in Luxembourg he bumped into someone who knew him.

  He was standing at the desk, checking out. He had looked over the bill and presented a credit card in the name of Ed Rodgers, and he was waiting to sign the American Express slip when a voice behind him said in English, "My God! It's Nat Dickstein, isn't it?"

  It was the moment he dreaded. Like every agent who used cover identities, he lived in constant fear of accidentally coming up against someone from his distant past who could unmask him. It was the nightmare of the policeman who shouted, "You're a spy!" and it was the debt-collector saying, "But your mother is in, I just saw her, through the window, hiding under the kitchen table."

  Like every agent he had been trained for this moment. The rule was simple: Whoever it is, you don't know him. They made you practice in the school. They would say, "Today you are Chaim Meyerson, engineering student," and so on; and you would have to walk around and do your work and be Chaim Meyerson; and then, late in the afternoon, they would arrange for you to bump into your cousin, or your old college professor, or a rabbi who knew your whole family. The first time, you always smiled and said "Hello," and talked about old times for a while, and then that evening your tutor told you that you were dead. Eventually you learned to look old friends straight in the eye and say, "Who the hell are you?"

  Dickstein's training came into play now. He looked first at the desk clerk, who was at that moment checking him out in the name of Ed Rodgers. The clerk did not react: presumably either he did not understand, or he had not heard, or he did not care.

  A hand tapped Dickstein's shoulder. He started an apologetic smile and turned around, saying in French, "I'm afraid you've got the wrong--"

  The skirt of her dress was around her waist, her face was flushed with pleasure, and she was kissing Yasif Hassan.

  "It is you!" said Yasif Hassan.

  And then, because of the dreadful impact of the memory of that morning in Oxford twenty years ago, Dickstein lost control for an instant, and his training deserted him, and he made the biggest mistake of his career. He stared in shock, and he said, "Christ. Hassan."

  Hassan smiled, and stuck out his hand, and said, "How long . . . it must be . . . more than twenty years!"

  Dickstein shook the proffered hand mechanically, conscious that he had blundered, and tried to pull himself together. "It must be," he muttered. "What are you doing here?"

  "I live here. You?"

  "I'm just leaving." Dickstein decided the only thing to do was get out, fast, before he did himself any more harm. The clerk handed him the credit-card form and he scribbled "Ed Rodgers" on it. He looked at his wristwatch. "Damn, I've got to catch this plane."

  "My car's outside," Hassan said. "I'll take you to the airport. We must talk."

  "I've ordered a taxi . . ."

  Hassan spoke to the desk clerk. "Cancel that cab--give this to the driver for his trouble." He handed over some coins.

  Dickstein said, "I really am in a rush."

  "Come on, then!" Hassan picked up Dickstein's case and went outside.

  Feeling helpless, foolish and incompetent, Dickstein followed.

  They got into a battered two-seater English sports car. Dickstein studied Hassan as he steered the car out of a no-waiting zone and into the traffic. The Arab had changed, and it was not just age. The gray streaks in his mustache, the thickening of his waist, his deeper voice--these were to be expected. But something else was different. Hassan had always seemed to Dickstein to be the archetypal aristocrat. He had been slow-moving, dispassionate and faintly bored when everyone else was young and excitable. Now his hauteur seemed to have gone. He was like his car: somewhat the worse for wear, with a rather hurried air. Still, Dickstein had sometimes wondered how much of his upper-class appearance was cultivated.

  Resigning himself to the consequences of his error, Dickstein tried to find out the extent of the damage. He asked Hassan, "You live here now?"

  "My bank has its European headquarters here."

  So, maybe he's still rich, Dickstein thought. "Which bank is that?"

  "The Cedar Bank of Lebanon."

  "Why Luxembourg?"

  "It's a considerable financial center," Hassan repli
ed. "The European Investment Bank is here, and they have an international stock exchange. But what about you?"

  "I live in Israel. My kibbutz makes wine--I'm sniffing at the possibilities of European distribution."

  "Taking coals to Newcastle."

  "I'm beginning to think so."

  "Perhaps I can help you, if you're coming back. I have a lot of contacts here. I could set up some appointments for you."

  "Thank you. I'm going to take you up on that offer." If worse came to worst, Dickstein thought, he could always keep the appointments and sell some wine.

  Hassan said, "So, now your home is in Palestine and my home is in Europe." His smile was forced, Dickstein thought.

  "How is the bank doing?" Dickstein asked, wondering whether "my bank" had meant "the bank I own" or "the bank I manage" or "the bank I work for."

  "Oh, remarkably well."

  They seemed not to have much more to say to each other. Dickstein would have liked to ask what had happened to Hassan's family in Palestine, how his affair with Eila Ashford had ended, and why he was driving a sports car; but he was afraid the answers might be painful, either for Hassan or for himself.

  Hassan asked, "Are you married?"

  "No. You?"

  "No."

  "How odd," Dickstein said.

  Hassan smiled. "We're not the type to take on responsibilities, you and I."

  "Oh, I've got responsibilities," Dickstein said, thinking of the orphan Mottie who had not yet finished Treasure Island.

  "But you have a roving eye, eh?" Hassan said with a wink.

  "As I recall, you were the ladies' man," Dickstein said uncomfortably.

  "Ah, those were the days."

  Dickstein tried not to think about Eila. They reached the airport, and Hassan stopped the car.

  Dickstein said, "Thank you for the lift."

  Hassan swiveled around in the bucket seat. He stared at Dickstein. "I can't get over this," he said. "You actually look younger than you did in 1947."

  Dickstein shook his hand. "I'm sorry to be in such a rush." He got out of the car.

  "Don't forget--call me next time you're here," Hassan said.

  "Goodbye." Dickstein closed the car door and walked into the airport.

  Then, at last, he allowed himself to remember.

  The four people in the chilly garden were still for one long heartbeat. Then Hassan's hands moved on Eila's body. Instantly Dickstein and Cortone moved away, through the gap in the hedge and out of sight. The lovers never saw them.

  They walked toward the house. When they were well out of earshot Cortone said, "Jesus, that was hot stuff."

  "Let's not talk about it," Dickstein said. He felt like a man who, looking backward over his shoulder, has walked into a lamppost: there was pain and rage, and nobody to blame but himself.

  Fortunately the party was breaking up. They left without speaking to the cuckold, Professor Ashford, who was in a corner deep in conversation with a graduate student. They went to the George for lunch. Dickstein ate very little but drank some beer.

  Cortone said, "Listen, Nat, I don't know why you're getting so down in the mouth about it. I mean, it just goes to show she's available, right?"

  "Yes," Dickstein said, but he did not mean it.

  The bill came to more than ten shillings. Cortone paid it. Dickstein walked him to the railway station. They shook hands solemnly, and Cortone got on the train.

  Dickstein walked in the park for several hours, hardly noticing the cold, trying to sort out his feelings. He failed. He knew he was not envious of Hassan, nor disillusioned with Eila, nor disappointed in his hopes, for he had never been hopeful. He was shattered, and he had no words to say why. He wished he had somebody to whom he could talk about it.

  Soon after this he went to Palestine, although not just because of Eila.

  In the next twenty-one years he never had a woman; but that, too, was not entirely because of Eila.

  Yasif Hassan drove away from Luxembourg airport in a black rage. He could picture, as clearly as if it were yesterday, the young Dickstein: a pale Jew in a cheap suit, thin as a girl, always standing slightly hunched as if he expected to be flogged, staring with adolescent longing at the ripe body of Eila Ashford, arguing doggedly that his people would have Palestine whether the Arabs consented or not. Hassan had thought him ridiculous, a child. Now Dickstein lived in Israel, and grew grapes to make wine: he had found a home, and Hassan had lost one.

  Hassan was no longer rich. He had never been fabulously wealthy, even by Levantine standards, but he had always had fine food, expensive clothes and the best education, and he had consciously adopted the manners of Arab aristocracy. His grandfather had been a successful doctor who set up his elder son in medicine and his younger son in business. The younger, Hassan's father, bought and sold textiles in Palestine, Lebanon and Transjordan. The business prospered under British rule, and Zionist immigration swelled the market. By 1947 the family had shops all over the Levant and owned their native village near Nazareth.

  The 1948 war ruined them.

  When the State of Israel was declared and the Arab armies attacked, the Hassan family made the fatal mistake of packing their bags and fleeing to Syria. They never came back. The warehouse in Jerusalem burned down; the shops were destroyed or taken over by Jews; and the family lands became "administered" by the Israeli government. Hassan had heard that the village was now a kibbutz.

  Hassan's father had lived ever since in a United Nations refugee camp. The last positive thing he had done was to write a letter of introduction for Yasif to his Lebanese bankers. Yasif had a university degree and spoke excellent English: the bank gave him a job.

  He applied to the Israeli government for compensation under the 1953 Land Acquisition Act, and was refused.

  He visited his family in the camp only once, but what he saw there stayed with him for the rest of his life. They lived in a hut made of boards and shared the communal toilets. They got no special treatment: they were just one among thousands of families without a home, a purpose or a hope. To see his father, who had been a clever, decisive man ruling a large business with a firm hand, reduced now to queuing for food and wasting his life playing backgammon, made Yasif want to throw bombs at school buses.

  The women fetched water and cleaned house much as always, but the men shuffled around in secondhand clothes, waiting for nothing, their bodies getting flabby while their minds grew dull. Teenagers strutted and squabbled and fought with knives, for there was nothing ahead of them but the prospect of their lives shriveling to nothing in the baking heat of the sun.

  The camp smelled of sewage and despair. Hassan never returned to visit, although he continued to write to his mother. He had escaped the trap, and if he was deserting his father, well, his father had helped him do it, so it must have been what he wanted.

  He was a modest success as a bank clerk. He had intelligence and integrity, but his upbringing did not fit him for careful, calculating work involving much shuffling of memoranda and keeping of records in triplicate. Besides, his heart was elsewhere.

  He never ceased bitterly to resent what had been taken from him. He carried his hatred through life like a secret burden. Whatever his logical mind might tell him, his soul said he had abandoned his father in time of need, and the guilt fed his hatred of Israel. Each year he expected the Arab armies to destroy the Zionist invaders, and each time they failed he grew more wretched and more angry.

  In 1957 he began to work for Egyptian Intelligence.

  He was not a very important agent, but as the bank expanded its European business he began to pick up the occasional tidbit, both in the office and from general banking gossip. Sometimes Cairo would ask him for specific information about the finances of an arms manufacturer, a Jewish philanthropist, or an Arab millionaire; and if Hassan did not have the details in his bank's files he could often get them from friends and business contacts. He also had a general brief to keep an eye on Israeli businessmen in Europ
e, in case they were agents; and that was why he had approached Nat Dickstein and pretended to be friendly.

  Hassan thought Dickstein's story was probably true. In his shabby suit, with the same round spectacles and the same inconspicuous air, he looked exactly like an underpaid salesman with a product he could not promote. However, there was that odd business in the Rue Dicks the previous night: two youths, known to the police as petty thieves, had been found in the gutter savagely disabled. Hassan had got all the details from a contact on the city police force. Clearly they had picked on the wrong sort of victim. Their injuries were professional: the man who had inflicted them had to be a soldier, a policeman, a bodyguard . . . or an agent. After an incident like that, any Israeli who flew out in a hurry the next morning was worth checking up on.

  Hassan drove back to the Alfa Hotel and spoke to the desk clerk. "I was here an hour ago when one of your guests was checking out," he said. "Do you remember?"

  "I think so, sir."

  Hassan gave him two hundred Luxembourg francs. "Would you tell me what name he was registered under?"

  "Certainly, sir." The clerk consulted a file. "Edward Rodgers, from Science International magazine."

  "Not Nathaniel Dickstein?"

  The clerk shook his head patiently.

  "Would you just see whether you had a Nathaniel Dickstein, from Israel, registered at all?"

  "Certainly." The clerk took several minutes to look through a wad of papers. Hassan's excitement rose. If Dickstein had registered under a false name, then he was not a wine salesman--so what else could he be but an Israeli agent? Finally the clerk closed his file and looked up. "Definitely not, sir."

  "Thank you." Hassan left. He was jubilant as he drove back to his office: he had used his wits and discovered something important. As soon as he got to his desk he composed a message.

  SUSPECTED ISRAELI AGENT SEEN Here. NAT DICKSTEIN ALIAS ED RODGERS. FIVE FOOT SIX, SMALL BUILD, DARK HAIR, BROWN EYES, AGE ABOUT 40.

  He encoded the message, added an extra code word at its top and sent it by telex to the bank's Egyptian headquarters. It would never get there: the extra code word instructed the Cairo post office to reroute the telex to the Directorate of General Investigations.

  Sending the message was an anticlimax, of course. There would be no reaction, no thanks from the other end. Hassan had nothing to do but get on with his bank work, and try not to daydream.