by Michael Ross
Throughout it all, my family back on the kibbutz might as well have been a million miles away. Both my wife and I suffered emotionally for my absence. Yet we knew that this was nothing compared with the far longer periods of separation that awaited us. I missed my son, too, and I hated the fact that he was growing up fast without me. When I dwelt on this aspect of the experience, I felt like quitting. But I also remembered the commitment I’d made to Benny. He’d warned me about the downside; I hadn’t been tricked. I kept moving forward with my training.
About six months into my training, events took a traumatic turn—so traumatic that I tried to quit for a second time.
I was on a mission in the old port of Jaffa, taking photos of boats in the marina as part of a tour group I’d joined for operational cover. A creepy little man walked up to me and asked if I wanted to buy some drugs. He was shifty and kept rubbing his nose. I brushed him off, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He kept following me, and I finally hissed at him between clenched teeth, “Piss off.” Eventually I left on the tour bus, and I forgot about the incident—but only for a short while.
I was in my hotel later that night when someone knocked at my door. It was two plainclothes detectives. All business, they had a warrant for my arrest. I asked on what charge and they told me “drug smuggling.” I protested my innocence, but they put me in cuffs all the same. I decided to ride with it, sure that a simple, rational chat would clear the whole thing up. They collected all my belongings and then led me in handcuffs through the hotel’s packed lobby—quite the spectacle for my fellow guests.
At the police station, I was processed—fingerprints, mug shot, the works. They even took my belt and shoelaces. Then they put me in a cell with a huge steel door with a small eye slot. I was freezing; it was December and even Israel gets cold at night. The toilet was a foulsmelling hole in the floor. I had no window and the only light came from a single bulb overhead. I went over my cover story in my head and tried to rest, but couldn’t close my eyes. This seemed serious, and I wondered where it was going to lead.
Early the next morning, a uniformed cop led me up to a chamber about the size of a standard office conference room, where I was met by two men. One was boyish with short brown hair. He looked like Kevin Bacon. The other was heavyset with glasses and thinning hair. He reminded me of Jack Nicholson. I called them Kevin and Jack in my head.
I tried a friendly approach, and said “good morning” with the best smile I could muster. Spread on a table in front of me were all the articles from my bag and suitcase. My photos were developed and scattered in plain view. My small shortwave radio was in pieces, and so was my camera.
I was shoved into a chair; Jack kicked its legs out from under me and I tumbled to the floor. He hauled me up and sat me back down. He then cracked me a good one across the face.
“Who are you?” Kevin demanded. I told him my spiel. My status cover story had changed since those early days in training: I was now a businessman on Mossad-fabricated foreign documents.
They told me that they had seen me interact with a drug dealer in Jaffa, and were sure that I was a smuggler. I pleaded my innocence and insisted that the dealer was a stranger to me. I don’t know how I did it, but I stuck to my story—even though I was sorely tempted to tell them that this was all a big mistake and that I was on a Mossad exercise. The questioning went on all day, and then I was sent back down to my cell.
I was now able to sit in silence and ponder my predicament. I felt sick with fear. I was thinking endlessly about my family and started to feel my resolve weaken. I wanted to break cover and make it stop, but something inside my head wouldn’t let me. I remember thinking, if I can just endure this a little longer, someone will realize that I’m missing and start to look for me. I felt alone and completely out of control. I went over my cover story in my head and worried until my stomach ached. I didn’t sleep.
The next day, they roughed me up a bit more. They humiliated and mocked me. They made me sit and stand for long periods at their whim, and on many occasions forced my head down between my knees while I was being questioned. They slapped me (far more humiliating for a man than a punch) when I gave less than satisfactory answers, and kicked me at random intervals. They asked why I was unmarried and why I never took pictures of pretty girls. They made all kinds of comments about my manhood and sexual preferences. When one stopped, the other one started in on me. One tried to appear kind and the other was mean—classic good cop, bad cop.
After about eight hours of this, they started taking things up a notch. Jack put a hood over my head. They stripped me naked and cuffed my hands behind my back. I then heard electronic buzzing. Over the din I could hear Kevin saying, “We’re going to run some high-voltage current through your balls and see if that makes you talk.” All I could see was a thick cable through the bottom of the hood. I really started to panic at that point, and pleaded with them to believe that I was who I said I was, and not a criminal.
I never got the shock. All of a sudden, they stopped what they were doing and told me to collect my things and get dressed.
One of the cops who’d arrested me forty-eight hours earlier took me out to the parking lot. Someone had brought my rental car from the hotel. He handed me my car keys and told me, “Get the fuck out of Dodge.” I looked at him blankly and he snarled at me, “You’re free, idiot!” I was euphoric and would have hugged him had I not remembered that he arrested me in the first place. He also didn’t look like the hugging type.
And so there I was, a little while later, with Oren and Elan in the lounge of the Sheraton Hotel, looking at the waves crash on the beach and sipping a ginger ale.
“How do you think you did?” asked Elan. It was one of the rare moments when he actually talked to me, as opposed to merely staring at me.
“Terribly,” was all I could answer.
Oren regarded me with compassion. “We thought you did well. You stuck to your story and have earned the right to get on with the next phase of your training. Only a small percentage get this far.” So it was a training exercise after all. It was so well-staged that I hadn’t a clue—like something you’d see in Mission Impossible. I felt a confused mixture of anger and relief.
“I’d like to go home and stay there. This is not a life for me,” I told them. I was horrified by the reality of what could happen to me in this job. It was all great when I was taking pictures of boats on a beach or whatnot. But being captured and subjected to genital electrocution—that was a different story.
Oren said matter-of-factly, “We can’t let you go home like this. You need a couple of days to decompress—then you can go home.” They probably thought I wouldn’t return if they let me go right then and there. They were right.
I found out a few days later that I had undergone an interrogation by two of the Shin Bet’s finest (Shin Bet is Israel’s domestic security service, and one of its mandates is counterintelligence—hence they have the capability to weed out spies.) Oren told me that one of the two would be coming over later with a videocassette of the interrogation, and we would discuss it.
When Oren showed up with Jack, I was cool in my reception, wearing my injured pride on my sleeve. Jack took it all with a grain of salt. He’d probably been through this dozens of times,
I was embarrassed by the tape, and it was hard to watch. To his credit, Jack kept things on a professional level, and the experience turned out to be very instructive. Once again, I learned a lot about myself. Some of it wasn’t pretty. I was a mess and looked like hell. Maybe we should never see ourselves in such situations. But that was me on the TV screen, and I couldn’t hide from what had happened.
When Jack left, he shook my hand and told me that I had done well. “Don’t feel bad,” he said. “It’s nothing personal. You should see how many people break cover before they even get to us.”
When I got home to the kibbutz, I didn’t tell Dahlia about what had gone on in the cell. She wasn’t in love with the Office to begi
n with, and I didn’t want to sour her view further. As for my son, he probably didn’t understand why I couldn’t stop hugging him: while being interrogated, I’d had visions of being locked up until he was a teenager.
In the end, I decided not to quit, so I went back to Tel Aviv and embarked on more advanced training—firearms, martial arts, and complicated exercises involving special forces units, helicopters, and boats. I learned about commercial cover (how to travel to foreign locales undercover as a businessman), and did an intensive course in international commerce. In all, my training took a full year.
Then one summer afternoon in 1989, I returned to my apartment to find a good-looking man in his early fifties sitting in my living room. “Hi, Rick,” he said. “I’m Avi, the head of Caesarea, and the fact that you are meeting me is a good sign.” Being the head of the unit, he knew all about me although I had never met him before.
I stood dumbfounded, with a look that probably said “how’s that ?”
“I’m the man who not only accredits you as a combatant, but also authorizes your deployment overseas,” he said. “You’ve finished your training. Welcome to Caesarea.”
4
DEPLOYMENT
A brave heart and a courteous tongue. They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling.
RUDYARD KIPLING
Cover is an intelligence agent’s air and water. Without a credible alternate identity, an agent simply cannot operate in the field. An agent’s identity documents receive the same reverential treatment that devout Jews give to Torah scrolls. Passports are the most valuable specimens, but driver’s licenses, national ID cards, and credit cards are also useful. The more documentation a spy has—even a library card or gym membership can help in a pinch—the more legitimacy and protection he or she will enjoy. Mossad field personnel are trained to be obsessive about their documents. To this day, I often get an uncontrollable urge to stop what I’m doing and run a discreet physical check to make sure my wallet and personal effects are in the appropriate pockets. Getting your wallet snatched is traumatic whatever the circumstances, but for an intelligence officer, it can spell disaster. When I was working for the Mossad in Africa, I carried two wallets. One contained about thirty dollars and some throwaway identification—a decoy to be hauled out if I was mugged or shaken down by a crooked cop. The other was my real wallet, safely tucked in a Velcro-sealed compartment attached to my clothing.
But documents are just the beginning. They may tell people who you are, where you live, and what you do for a living, but eventually you have to open your mouth and talk. And the personality you project has to match your supposed identity. That means getting the vocabulary and diction right, as well as the clothing, food preferences, mannerisms, and grooming.
Even a single wrong word choice can betray you. I once heard a story about a German spy clad in a U.S. army uniform who’d infiltrated Allied positions during the Second World War. His downfall came when he drove his Jeep up to a U.S. fuel depot and asked for a tank full of “petrol.” Urban legend? Perhaps. But there’s a lesson in it either way.
Refining your cover to the point where you can fool true experts means becoming something of an anthropologist, or at least a connoisseur of national stereotypes. If a spy’s adopted identity is British, he may tend toward politeness and a reserved persona. If Irish, he might spin his drinking companions a soulful tale or two while quaffing a Guinness (served warm, if he can bear it). If American, he might be slightly louder and less bashful than everyone else in the room.
Once Avi had welcomed me to Caesarea, I was made to attend what can only be described as a sort of finishing school for Mossad agents. My instructor was Doron, a former combatant of some renown. Meticulously dressed, tall, with blue eyes and sandy-blonde hair, he was self-possessed, almost haughty. Doron spoke English, German, and Hebrew (as well as several other languages he didn’t reveal to me, I’m guessing), all without the trace of an accent. He looked like a poster boy for the Aryan Nation, yet he was as Jewish as they come. Israelis refer to such specimens with the somewhat derogatory term yekke, used to describe Jews of German origin who exhibit the fastidious habits attributed to that country. Those who know me will say that I answer to the same description. But when I was in the same room as Doron, we were like the Odd Couple of movie fame, with me playing Oscar Madison to his Felix Unger.
Appearances aside, Doron was a perfect instructor for an agent looking to blend in among Europe’s urbane business class. He gave me primers in finance and put me through an accelerated program in international commerce and trade. He would appear at my doorstep with copies of the Financial Times, Fortune, and various European and Middle Eastern business reports. He taught me how to read the financial pages and decipher the arcane codes contained in the stock market listings—the FTSE 500, NYSE, Hang Seng , Nikkei, CAC 40—until I could discuss stocks and bonds with all the casual panache of someone who made six-figure investment decisions with the click of a mouse.
The studying took place mostly at night. During the day, we ran SDRs, or “surveillance detection routes,” which are pre-planned journeys that spies take to detect if they’re being followed. The art of the SDR is to make it look as if you’re going about your normal business—browsing in shops, visiting restaurants, taking taxis, riding the bus—without giving the appearance that you’re trying to detect a “tail.” SDR drills are to a junior combatant what scales are to a piano student. Even veteran agents often do refresher courses.
“Tail” is a misleading term (albeit one used commonly even by intelligence agents). In truth, any surveillance team worth its salt—and I trained against the best—doesn’t follow you around like a bunch of hounds on the scent. Its members dance around their targets with a practiced choreography worthy of the Bolshoi Ballet. Far from the menacing, chisel-featured spies you see in the movies, the good ones resemble everyday schleps who can blend into the urban landscape. Their cat-and-mouse sport is played out every day on the streets of every major city in the world.
Any intelligence operative heading out for a meeting with a source or colleague has to make sure he is clean when he arrives at his destination. If an agent with a tail doesn’t abort, he risks letting the “locals”—that is, domestic counterintelligence—in on whatever mischief he’s up to.
On my SDR drills with Doron, I did my best to implement the detail-recognition skills Oren had taught me. Moving from one section of Tel Aviv to another, I scanned the people around me. If the same person kept popping up, I knew there was a good chance my movements were being monitored.
As is often the case in the field, I had help—teammates who watched from a series of “choke points,” which are places where spies could easily observe without drawing attention to themselves, like an outdoor café. This is known as countersurveillance, or watching the watchers.
The critical moment comes when the SDR is complete, and the countersurveillance team must send a signal to the agent telling him whether he’s clean or dirty. Before spies entered the era of cellphones and pagers (and even after, in many cases), this was accomplished through coded physical messages: a countersurveillance agent sitting in a café at the end of the route with a hat, scarf, or rolled-up magazine. All of the elements have to be timed and coordinated properly, of course, or the signal may be missed.
Doron also helped me take the new identity I’d devised—one that I cannot divulge in this book—and develop it into a three-dimensional persona. We devised plans whereby I would live undercover in a European nation for an extended period. I would study the history, culture, literature, language, and regional idioms. I would rent an apartment, open a bank account, join a gym, follow the local sports team. I’d form opinions about the country’s politics and become a regular at bars and restaurants. But my relationships would all be superficial: I’d become known without being known about. If people asked me where I’d popped up from, I’d tell them I’d been living overseas for many years.
I’d start
my own commercial trading company and build myself a life as a European national—an operational infrastructure that would allow me to come and go in places where Israelis were normally personae non gratae, and where, if they were discovered, they would become fodder for the torture chamber and the executioner.
Over the years, the Mossad has sustained abundant criticism for its agents’ practice of using foreign passports. In 1973, for instance, Canada complained when it was found that the Mossad assassination team that had mistakenly killed an Arab waiter in Norway was on fake Canadian passports. A similar tempest erupted in 1997, when two Mossad agents, also using fake Canadian passports, were caught in Jordan trying to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. And in 2004, New Zealand went so far as to impose diplomatic sanctions against Israel when a suspected Mossad-run passport-forging operation was discovered in that country.
But it is naive to assume that Israel is the only culprit; all national intelligence services break international rules when necessary, to protect their agents. If Israel is a more frequent offender, it is because the Jewish state is in a unique position: even ordinary Israeli citizens are denied entry in many Muslim nations simply for the sin of carrying their country’s passport. (Some countries won’t let you in if you even have an Israeli stamp in your papers—which is why many intelligence officers and journalists carry two passports, one that is stamped by Israeli border agents and the other that is kept diplomatically judenrein.) This is a problem with which the CIA, MI6, and other foreign intelligence services do not have to contend.
On the more mundane matter of clothing, Doron was insistent that I convey the image of a successful businessman. Nothing flashy or ostentatious, just tasteful and expensive. He managed to secure some extra money in my clothing budget and directed me to a number of high-end European tailors and clothiers he knew from his days on the Continent.
