A uniformed aide opened the door and motioned for him to come in. He was surprised by how bright it was, bright with the sunlight of Israel in midsummer.
The men at the conference table were dressed as Levi was, in open-neck, short-sleeve shirts. Most of them were smoking. Many of them were bald. It might have been a philosophy seminar at the Hebrew University. The faces and the room would have looked almost the same.
Levi’s eye focused on an older man sitting at the far end of the table. He was a short man with bushy eyebrows, and he was smoking a pipe. Levi imagined that he must be the chief of the Mossad. In truth, Levi had never met the chief and wasn’t even sure of his real name.
“So?” said the little man with the bushy eyebrows. It was a brief rhetorical question, which he answered for himself. “So this young man is Mr. Levi, and he has come to us today to tell us about his research into Black September. Is that right?”
“Yes,” said Levi. His voice sounded like a frog croaking.
“So?”
“My briefing concerns a Palestinian named Jamal Ramlawi,” began Levi. “First, I will tell you what we know about him. Then I will tell you what we suspect.”
“Yes, yes,” said the short man with bushy eyebrows. “Don’t keep us waiting.”
“Yes, chief,” said Levi.
“Don’t call me chief,” said the little man.
“Yes, sir,” said Levi. He must be the head of the service, Levi thought. That is the way the head of Mossad should look. Like everyone’s uncle.
“First, what we know,” said Levi. “We know that Jamal Ramlawi is a leader of Black September. Until two weeks ago, that was a near-certainty. Now it is a certainty, thanks to a piece of intelligence that we obtained from Rome. I believe that most of you have heard the tape recording of Jamal Ramlawi. Yes? I have brought along a tape recorder and can play it now if anyone would like to hear it.”
“We’ve heard it,” said the man with the bushy eyebrows.
“The Rome tape proves what we have suspected for many months,” said Levi.
“What is that?” asked the little man skeptically, puffing on his pipe.
“It proves that Jamal Ramlawi, a senior Fatah intelligence officer, is the chief logistician of Black September. It proves that he obtained weapons and explosives for Black September in Italy, and probably in other countries of Europe, too. The tape is evidence of what we have been trying to tell the world. Black September is Fatah.”
Another man spoke up. One that Levi had missed in looking around the room. He didn’t look like an Israeli; he looked like an American. A professor at the Harvard Law School, maybe. He was tall and thin, so fit that his body seemed almost stringy. He was dressed in loose khaki slacks and a white button-down Oxford-cloth shirt. He wore a pair of clear plastic glasses, which gave him a slightly boyish look. He spoke with a quick, sharp tone of voice that was at once intelligent and impatient.
“The tape doesn’t prove that,” said the button-down professor. “What you said may be true. I personally have no doubt that it is true. But the tape does not prove it. The tape proves only that Ramlawi made arrangements to obtain four automatic pistols and one hundred kilos of explosive in Rome. It doesn’t even prove that, actually, but we will take that on faith.”
Levi’s throat felt dry. He took a drink of water and continued his briefing.
“The tape is only the final piece of information. We have collateral evidence of Ramlawi’s role in Black September. We have photographs of him meeting with a man who was arrested in Cairo last year after the Black September attack on the Jordanian prime minister.”
“Soooo?” said another voice from around the table. He was a fat man wearing a knitted yarmulke. “So what do photos prove? Proximity. Contact. And what is that, my friend? Nothing!”
“We have transcripts of the Egyptian interrogation of the Black September terrorists in which they say they received training from a man who fits the description of Ramlawi.”
“Oh very nice!” said a tall, thin man sitting by the window. “So now we’re depending on the Egyptians for our intelligence? God forbid! How do they know anything? What are they all of a sudden, geniuses?”
Everyone laughed.
Levi realized then that he was getting razzed. That this group liked nothing better in the world than giving young officers a hard time. He set his feet more squarely under him and continued the briefing.
“We have other collateral evidence about Ramlawi’s involvement in Black September, but I won’t bore you with it. Take my word for it. I have analyzed the evidence carefully, and I tell you on my honor that it is accurate. The man is involved in Black September operations. Period. Take my word for it or find another analyst.”
“Not so loud, please,” said the man with bushy eyebrows. He relit his pipe. He was happy now. He didn’t want facts. For all Levi knew, the Chiefs had all spent more time with the files than he had. They wanted analysis.
“Now I will turn to the interesting part,” said Levi. “Here we are not dealing with hard facts, but with speculations—guesses—that are based on the available evidence.”
“What is your speculation?” said the little man. “Just tell us. Don’t make a big production of it, please.”
“The speculation is that Jamal Ramlawi is an American agent.”
There was a momentary silence in the room, broken by the sound of chairs moving, cigarettes being lit, pipes being puffed.
“That’s crazy,” said the little man with bushy eyebrows. “Completely crazy. Why would our friends the Americans do this? Tell us the evidence for this crazy theory.”
“The evidence is complicated,” said Levi.
“Soooo?” said the fat man with the knitted yarmulke. “Do we look stupid?”
“First, we know that Ramlawi is impulsive. We know that in Beirut he led a wild life. Chasing women. Dozens of women. We think that he even had an affair with the wife of a French diplomat.”
“Very nice,” said the tall, thin man by the window. “They deserve each other.”
“We know Ramlawi is a pet of the Fatah leadership,” continued Levi. “We know that he was one of the Fatah men who was sent to Egypt for a special training course in intelligence. We know that he speaks many languages, including English, French, Italian, and German. We know that he has travelled extensively.”
“Sooooo?” queried the fat man. “What does this have to do with the CIA.”
“I’m coming to that,” said Levi. “In Beirut, we collected the travel histories of everyone flying in and out of Beirut International Airport.”
“We know. We know,” said the man with the bushy eyebrows. “Whose idea do you think that was? Eh?”
“I’m coming to the important part,” said Levi testily. “In analyzing the travel records, we find two instances in which Jamal Ramlawi was out of Lebanon in 1970 at the same time as a CIA case officer working under diplomatic cover at the American Embassy in Beirut.”
The law school professor rapped his pen against his glass.
“Mr. Levi,” said the law school professor quietly. “What is the name of this CIA officer?”
“Rogers. Thomas Rogers.”
“And where did they go, the terrorist and the CIA man?”
“To Kuwait in March 1970, and to Egypt in May 1970. We cannot confirm that they actually met. But we are sure that they went to those countries at the same time.”
“It could be a coincidence, of course,” said the button-down profesor. “Even twice in one year. But it is interesting, I must admit.”
“Yes,” said the little man with the bushy eyebrows.
“Yes,” said the fat man in the yarmulke.
“Continue,” said the professor.
“The second important piece of evidence is an agent report in the files about a visit to Rome in July 1970 by an American intelligence officer. I wouldn’t have found it at all, since it never went into the Fatah file. I noticed it when I was researching the backgro
und of the Italian general in Rome who provided us with the tape.”
“Go on, go on,” said the little man. “Spare us the details.”
“According to this agent in Rome, the American intelligence man had flown in specially to meet with an Arab agent, a Palestinian perhaps. The Italians never figured out who he was supposed to meet. Neither did we. But last week I had one of our friends do a travel check to see if anyone interesting had travelled from Beirut to Rome in July 1970. And guess who popped out from one of the MEA passenger lists, travelling with a phony Algerian passport that he has used several times since then?”
“Ramlawi,” said several voices around the table.
“Correct,” said Levi, beaming.
“And who was this American who came to Rome?” asked the button-down professor.
“Marsh. John Marsh.”
“And why did Mr. Marsh come, and not Mr. Rogers?”
Levi thought for a moment.
“I don’t know,” he said eventually.
“Good,” said the professor. “If you had answered that question, I would have suspected that you were making everything up. Sometimes the correct answer is that we don’t know what the correct answer is.”
Heads around the table nodded sagely. Levi nodded too.
“Go on!” barked the little man with bushy eyebrows. “What are you waiting for?”
“After Rome, everything gets a little fuzzy,” said Levi. “We have a report from an agent in Lebanon. I know a little about him, since I used to collect his reports from dead drops. He is a priest, and something of an amateur detective in his spare time. This may be a little hard to understand, so bear with me. The priest had received from his Mossad case officer in Europe a list of people in whom we had some intelligence interest. One of them was Jamal Ramlawi. So he took it upon himself to put a question to Rogers, the CIA man, about Ramlawi.”
“He did what?” asked the fat man with the knitted yarmulke.
“He asked Rogers, the CIA man, for information about Ramlawi.”
“What an idiot!” said the fat man. “And what did Rogers say?”
“He told the priest to ask the Israelis.”
“Ach!” said the fat man. “What an idiot we have for an agent.”
“What else?” asked the professor.
“One last thing. An agent’s report that I carried out of Syria myself. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a report from a Palestinian inside the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”
“Yes, yes. We know the name of the group,” said the little man with bushy eyebrows. “What did the report say?”
“It said that the leadership of the PFLP was convinced that there was an American agent inside Fatah. The PFLP leadership wasn’t sure about the identity of the agent, but they suspected that it was Ramlawi.”
“Well, well, well,” said the little man. As he talked, he inserted a pipe cleaner in the stem of his pipe and withdrew a wad of wet brown goo. “So, now we are getting our intelligence from the lunatics in the PLO, is that what you are telling me?”
“We take it wherever we can get it,” said Levi.
“Correct,” said the law school professor with the clear plastic glasses. “And since you understand that fact of life so well, perhaps you can answer the big question.”
“What is that?” said Levi.
“The big question is what should we do about all of this?”
“You want my recommendation?”
“Why not?”
“Let me think.”
“Not too long,” said the professor. “If you think too long, you will become like the rest of us. Don’t think. Just say.”
“We could try to use Ramlawi ourselves. Threaten to expose his contacts with the Americans if he doesn’t agree to work with us.”
“Wrong,” said the professor. “Interesting, but wrong. The Palestinian would just assume that the Americans had told everything to their Israeli friends. Trying to blackmail him would accomplish nothing. It would only cut off the American connection. Any more ideas?”
“We could make an approach to Rogers, the CIA officer. Or to Marsh, the one who was in Rome.”
“Wrong again. Too risky. We do not want to start recruiting CIA officers. We don’t need the aggravation. Do you want to know the correct answer?”
“Of course,” said Levi.
“Don’t do anything. At first, that is always the best thing to do. Nothing. Just watch and wait. Don’t make the water muddy by stirring it up. Be patient.”
“Yes, sir,” said Levi.
That was it. People began rising from their seats. Levi felt deflated, somehow, to have travelled this far, assembled all this material, only to be told to do nothing. Perhaps it showed, because as the group was filing out of the room, the button-down professor and the diminutive man with the bushy eyebrows both walked over to Levi.
Levi watched them approach and wondered, which one is the boss? Which one is the true face of Mossad? The wily little man with the sardonic sense of humor or the clipped, carefully controlled analyst? The man in the button-down shirt approached Levi first and shook his hand.
“My name is Natan Porat,” said the man in the clear glasses. “I am the chief of the service. You did a fine job today. Keep up the good work.”
He motioned to the short man with bushy eyebrows.
“This is my deputy, Avraham Cohen,” said Porat.
“You give a nice briefing, Mr. Levi,” said Cohen.
Porat took Levi aside. He seemed even more American up close. He didn’t sweat. His hair was trim. His voice was clipped. He didn’t gesture when he talked. He seemed to Levi almost bloodless. Porat looked with his clear eyes through his clear glasses. He spoke the language of the “A” students who run the modern-day security services around the world.
“We will do something about the Ramlawi problem, I assure you,” said Porat. “But you must understand that it is delicate. It is a little awkward to learn that an American agent is directing the operations of the leading terrorist group in the world.”
36
Tel Aviv; September 1972
Levi was at his desk when the first reports began to come in from Munich. Eight Palestinian terrorists had infiltrated the Olympic Village at dawn on the morning of September 5 and were holding eleven Israeli athletes hostage.
Like the rest of Israel, Levi spent that day listening to the radio. You couldn’t escape the news. Levi had a radio in his cramped office. There was one in the cafeteria. There was even a radio in the usually noiseless stacks of the registry. It was much the same in every office building and house in Israel. People stopped what they were doing and stared at the radio, listening to the awful news from Germany.
The bulletins came every hour from Munich. There were not eleven hostages, said the radio, but nine. The terrorists had killed two of the Israeli boys when they seized the building. All the hostages would be killed, reported the radio, unless Israel released 236 Palestinian prisoners. The terrorists set a deadline of noon, then 1:00 P.M., then 5:00 P.M., then 10:00 P.M. They asked for three planes to fly them and their hostages to an Arab country. The Germans agreed. The hostages were heading to the airport.
Israel sat by the radio and listened and prayed. People went home, had dinner, lay awake in bed listening to the news. Levi stayed at the office. Just after 1:00 A.M. in Israel, the announcement came. Thanks be to God! All nine Israeli athletes had been rescued. A spokesman for the German Federal Republic announced that a rescue operation had succeeded. The Israeli prime minister, listening to the radio like everyone else, opened a bottle of Cognac to celebrate.
Israel radio continued to carry confirmation that all the hostages were safe until it went off the air at 3:00 A.M. The late editions of the Israeli newspapers bannered the glorious news. “Hostages in Munich Rescued,” said The Jerusalem Post. “All Safe After Germans Trap Arabs at Military Airport.”
Israel woke up the next morning to the horror of w
hat had really happened. Israel Radio went back on the air at 6:00 A.M. with a somber announcement that the earlier reports had somehow been mistaken. A German effort to storm the getaway plane had backfired. All nine Israeli athletes were dead. A massacre had taken place in Munich.
Levi was as stunned as anyone else in Israel. Perhaps more so, for he had allowed himself in the few months that he had been back home to relax. He had begun to forget in those months what he had felt every day and every minute outside Israel: the feeling of vulnerability, the feeling that you could be killed at any moment by merciless enemies, the feeling that you were hated by the world—and would always be hated—simply because you were a Jew. Those feelings returned now for Levi like a ruptured wound inside his brain.
Levi took a walk that day and saw a city of red-eyed people, who had begun the day sobbing and were still stunned with grief. In the park benches along Jabotinsky Street, some old people were sitting and crying. A crowd had gathered spontaneously at the German Embassy. Levi heard the noise from several blocks away. The crowd was singing a song in Hebrew, “Am Yisrael Hai”—The People of Israel Live. Someone had drawn the number II on the pavement, the number of victims. Someone else had brought eleven candles. People were arriving with posters. “Never Again.” “Why No Olympic Solidarity for Jews?” “An Eye for an Eye.” An old woman was handing out black ribbons. Levi took one and put it on his arm.
What was it that had shaken the country so? Levi wondered as he walked back to the office. It wasn’t the number of people who had been killed. In the annals of terrorism against the state of Israel, eleven victims wasn’t a unique tragedy but a mere moment in a nearly continuous pattern of violence. It wasn’t the brutality of the killings, either. Dying in a hail of gunfire, after all, was not the worst way to die.
Agents of Innocence Page 33
