Crafty Ploy

By Michael Demarest

TRIPLE by Ken Follett Arbor House; 377pages; $10.95

One of the most bizarre episodes in nu clear history was the 1968 disappear ance at sea of a shipment of 200 tons of uranium. The heist was not confirmed until 1977, when it was generally assumed that the Israelis had latched onto the ore, enough to make 30 bombs at their atomic reactor in the Negev. This insubstantial news snippet was seized upon by bestselling English Novelist Ken Follett (Eye of the Needle), who has processed it into one of the liveliest thrillers of the year.

Follett's fissionable plot involves the intelligence agencies of three nations--Israel's Mossad, the Soviet KGB and Egypt's General Intelligence--as well as the fedayeen and the Mafia. It begins 20 years before the uranium theft, at, of all places, Oxford University. By not too improbable coincidence, three of the protagonists are students there: David Rostov, a Soviet who will later become an ambitious intelligence officer in Moscow; Yasif Hassan, a Palestinian who subsequently serves as a triple agent for the Egyptians, the Soviets and the fedayeen; and Nathaniel Dickstein, a cockney Jew who migrates to Israel and wins fame as his adopted country's most resourceful spy.

On a Sunday morning at Oxford, Al Cortone, a discharged G.I., catches up with Dickstein, who as a wartime tommy had saved his life in Sicily. The Soviet, the Palestinian, the Jew and the Yank meet over sherry at the house of Stephen Ashford, professor of Semitic literature, and his ravishing Lebanese wife. The Ashfords' small daughter Suza is there too. Over the amontillado, conversations come and go, foreshadowing characters' destinies.

They all come together again after Israeli intelligence learns that Egypt is building a nuclear reactor in the western desert. The only solution, as the Israelis see it, is to obtain enough uranium to make their own bombs. The assignment is handed to Dickstein, whose cover is subsequently blown by Hassan. Enter Ros tov and his Muscovites, bent on thwarting Israel's campaign. Enter also the fedayeen, who aim to capture the stolen uranium and trumpet Israel's perfidy to the world. Dickstein is also dogged by his own mistrustful Mossad; his most useful ally turns out to be Wartime Buddy Cor tone, now a Mafia don. And, for the first time in a bitter life, Nat falls in love; the object of his unexpected affection is Suza Ashford, a look-alike of her mother who almost winds up as a dead ringer.

Follett is a master of crafty ploy and credible detail, ranging effortlessly from an Israeli kibbutz to the intricacies of Euratom and the shipping world. In the novel's set piece, Dickstein's men, the fedayeen and the Soviets battle ferociously for the wheezing old freighter with its uranium cargo. At times the reader can only wonder, with Pierre Borg, head of the Mossad, ''You wouldn't think we were the chosen people, with our luck.'' But good luck holds, and so does Follett's sizzling narrative.

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