Triple by Ken Follett Read Free Book Online Page A

I comer,
    "Why not?" Dickstein looked at his watch. "We've just got time to wash.
    Come to my room in five minutes."
    They parted, and Karen went into the showers. A kibbutz was the best place
    to be an orphan, she thought as she took off her clothes. McAtie's parents
    were both dead-the father blown up in the attack on the Golan Heights
    during the last war, the mother killed a year earlier in a shoot-out with
    Fedayeen. Both had been close friends of Dickstein. It was a tragedy for
    the child, of course; but he still slept in the same bed, ate in the same
    room, and had almost one hundred other adults to love and care for him-he
    was not foisted onto unwilling aunts or aging grandparents or, worst of
    all, an orphanage. And he had Dickstein.
    When she had washed off the dust Karen put on clean clothes and went to
    Dickstein's room. Mottie was already there, sifting on Dickstein's lap,
    sucking his thumb and listening to Treavure Island in Hebrew. Dickstein was
    the only person Karen had ever met who spoke Hebrew with a Cockney accent.
    His speech was even more strange now, because he was doing different voices
    for the characters in the story: a high-pitched boy's voice for Jim, a deep
    snarl for Long John
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Ken Folleff
    Silver, and a half whisper for the mad Ben Gunn. Karen sat and watched the
    two of them in the yellow electric light, thinking how boyish Dickstein
    appeared, and how grown-up the child was.
    When the chapter was finished they took Mottie to his dormitory, kissed
    him goodnight, and went into the dining room. Karen thought: If we
    continue to go about together like this, everyone will think we!re lovers
    already.
    They sat with Esther. After dinner she told them a story, and there was
    a young womWs twinkle in her eye. "When I first went to Jerusalem, they
    used to say that if you owned a feather pillow, you could buy a house."
    Dickstein willingly took the bait. "How was that?"
    "You could sell a good feather pillow for a pound. With that pound you
    could join a loan society, which entitled you to borrow ten pounds. Then
    you found a plot of land. The owner of the land would take ten pounds
    deposit and the rest in promissory notes. Now you were a landowner. You
    went to a builder and said, 'Build a house for yourself on this plot of
    land. All I want is a small flat for myself and my family.' "
    They all-Iaughed. Dickstein looked toward the door. Karen followed his
    glance and saw a stranger, a stocky man in his forties with a coarse,
    fleshy face. Dickstein got up and went to him.
    Esther said to Karen, "Don't break your heart, child. That one is not
    made to be a husband."
    Karen looked at Esther, then back at the doorway. Dickstein had gone. A
    few moments later she heard the sound of a car starting up and driving
    away.
    Esther put her old hand on Karen's young one, and squeezed.
    Karen never saw Dickstein again.
    Nat Dickstein and Pierre Borg sat in the back seat of a big black
    CitroEn. Borg's bodyguard was driving, with his machine pistol lying on
    the front seat beside him. They traveled through the darkness with
    nothing ahead but the cone of light from the headlamps. Nat Dickstein was
    afraid.
    He had never come to see himself the way others did, as a competent,
    indeed brilliant, agent who had proved his ability to survive just about
    anything. Later, when the game was on
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TRIPLE
    and he was living by his wits, grappling at close quarters with strategy
    and problems and personalities, there would be no room in his mind for
    fear; but now, when Borg was about to brief him, he had no plans to make,
    no forecasts to refine, no characters to assess. He knew only that he had
    to turn his back on peace and simple hard work, the land and the sunshine
    and caring for growing things; and that ahead of him there were terrible
    risks and great danger, lies and pain and bloodshed and, perhaps, his
    death. So he sat in the corner of the seat, his arms and legs crossed
    tightly, watching Borg's dimly