The Volunteer

by Michael Ross

  I remained in Europe, where my task was to build cover for Charles’s trip and manage logistics and communications while he was there. I was disappointed at not going, but knew it really was a one-man job. All Charles had to do was pass by the Palestinian’s residence, discreetly take some photos, and note the plate numbers of any vehicles on the premises.

  It sounds like child’s play, and by the standards of many of our later missions, I suppose it was. But it is important to remember that the Palestinians in Tunis were a fearful, violent lot. Many were senior members of Yasser Arafat’s PLO, and several assumed they’d been targeted by the Mossad, and were accordingly hyper-conscious of personal security.

  In the end, Charles pulled off the mission successfully. I had played my first supporting role in a real Mossad operation, and all had worked out fine. Professionally, I was gaining confidence. In fact, my main concern now was whether I could continue coexisting with Charles during our off hours.

  But in the coming months, events took an unexpected turn. The same month, August 1990, that Charles and I embarked on our Tunisian operation, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, a move President George H. W. Bush vowed would not be allowed to stand. During the ensuing Gulf War, Israel faced a new threat. And with my family at risk, my anxiety over Charles’s antics became the least of my worries.

  6

  TWO IF BY SEA

  I never was on the dull, tame shore, But I loved the great sea more and more.

  BRYAN W. PROCTOR

  I wanted to go home. It’s one thing to be away from your family for months at a stretch. It’s another to sit in front of a television screen and watch your country being bombed.

  Operation Desert Storm began on January 17, 1991. I was in Europe when I first heard the news, eating breakfast in my hotel dining room while watching the large-screen TV the manager had thoughtfully wheeled in so guests could see the bombs drop as they sipped their cappuccinos.

  The next day, Saddam Hussein fired a dozen Scud ground-to-ground missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa as part of a desperate effort to rally the Arab world to his side. Though I was terrified for my family, I couldn’t show it. After all, why would a European businessman be overly distressed about events in the Middle East? I was supposed to watch the war unfold with the emotional detachment of one whose interest lay primarily in how the conflict would affect oil futures.

  I’d been living like this for almost two years since beginning my training in early 1989. During that time, I’d felt the strain between my two competing identities—the real and the fake. But it had never been as bad as now. One problem was that I didn’t have any kind of social network to rely on in Europe. Though I had numerous local acquaintances, I’d deliberately avoided anything approaching true friendship. All the parts that made me a real person—my wife, my children, my friends, my real name, my national identity—had been put in boxes and stored in another country.

  This is one aspect of intelligence work that rarely gets portrayed in movies and books. It’s lonely—especially when you don’t have the stress of a mission to distract you. I exercised a great deal and joined a local martial arts club, but the majority of my time in between missions was spent developing cover opportunities that could grant me access to just about anywhere on the globe. It’s the type of loneliness you feel when you’re surrounded by millions of strangers. (I imagine that salespeople who spend a lot of time on the road exchanging fake smiles with clients and airport bartenders probably know this feeling well.) Perhaps this explains why overseas combatants are the only operational personnel in the Mossad who undergo a psychiatric assessment in addition to in-depth psychological testing. Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not complaining. Benny had warned me about this aspect of the job during that fateful visit to my kibbutz in 1988. But there’s no denying that this anomie was a large part of my life as a combatant.

  The onset of war added a new sense of powerlessness. Notwithstanding the soothing updates of Nachman Shai, the IDF’s wartime spokesman, I knew it took just 180 seconds for a Scud to travel from western Iraq to Israel. I also knew my wife and six-year-old son were sitting in a sealed room with gas masks donned, doing their best to soothe a newborn.

  Saddam and the moustachioed yes-men who surrounded him in Baghdad were hoping to elicit an Israeli counterattack that would bring a ring of truth to his claims of a joint Zionist-American conspiracy. Given that Israelis weren’t known for turning the other cheek, it wasn’t a bad bet. But George H. W. Bush had leaned hard on Israel to sit this one out. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was a wily pragmatist. He did the smart thing and held his fire.

  Iraq’s Scuds turned out to be ineffective. The forty missiles Saddam lobbed at Israel during the Gulf War killed a total of one person. But at the time, we didn’t know whether the Iraqi leader might be crazy enough to attack us with chemical or biological weapons, and rumors that the Scuds would be full of Sarin or VX nerve agents seemed credible. Just a few years earlier, during the late 1980s, Saddam had waged a genocidal campaign against Iraqi Kurds, killing about two hundred thousand people. In one village alone, Halabja, an estimated five thousand innocents were slaughtered with poison gas. If Saddam was willing to do this to his own Muslim citizens, why wouldn’t he use the same weapons on Israeli Jews?

  As I watched the war unfold in that hotel dining room, I began to hate my job. It occurred to me that I could go home: just walk out the door, hop on a plane, and bus it back to the kibbutz. My family was now sitting in what had overnight become part of a war zone, and all I could do was tut-tut along with the other hotel guests. The frustrating irony was that I was supposed to be the one in harm’s way, not my wife and children. This was the ultimate test of my ability to maintain cover: sitting impassively in front of a television while my family, friends, and home were under attack.

  When my anxieties got the better of me that morning, I made a circuitous surveillance-detection route and found a pay phone. But thanks to the war, the lines to Israel were jammed. After several unsuccessful attempts—each punctuated by obscene outbursts on my part—I finally got through to Dahlia. She put on a brave voice, but I could tell she was worried.

  Eventually, I was granted leave to fly home, where I spent a week with my family, experiencing the Scud missile attacks first-hand. I spent long hours in a sealed room, listening to news reports on a batterypowered radio while I helped my wife put our infant son into what resembled an incubator (his head was too small for him to don a gas mask). The most disturbing image I retain is of my older child sitting calmly in a chair with a gas mask on his head, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. Not for the first time, I questioned my fitness as a parent. In what sort of world was I raising my family?

  But before making that trip back to Israel, Charles and I were going to do our small part to make that world a little safer. And by coincidence, we would be targeting exactly the sort of weapon system and rogue tyranny that were attacking Israel. It felt good to know that, at least indirectly, I would be doing something to protect the people I loved.

  In John’s le Carré’s legendary spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the director-general of the British Secret Intelligence Service, known cryptically as “Control,” states that “good intelligence work was gradual and rested on a kind of gentleness.”4 So it normally is in the nonfictional intelligence world. But there are exceptions, and our mission to Casablanca, Morocco, was one of them. My Mossad commanders had ordered Charles and me to identify a ship whose contents—Scud missiles of the type being launched at Israel—needed to be diverted to the bottom of the ocean. The mission would be neither gradual nor gentle. A ship would be sunk and its crew would likely die in the process.

  The missiles were destined for shipment not to Iraq, but to its neighbor, Syria, another country ruled by Baathist tyrants. And there was little doubt what Damascus planned to do with them: aim them south at the hated Zionist enemy. Israel has defeated Syria in several wars—including the Six-Day War of 1967, i
n which the IDF seized the strategic Golan Heights. In 1973, Syria invaded northern Israel, but ultimately was pushed back. Since that time, Syria has given up on the idea of assaulting Israel with a conventional ground attack—especially following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Syria’s onetime military supplier and benefactor. Instead, Damascus has sought to build up a large missile force with the power to rain death on Israeli cities in the event of war.

  Syria’s attempts to expand its ballistic missile capabilities were stalled in the late 1980s by the limitations imposed by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prevented the Soviet Union from selling its sophisticated solid-fuel SS-23 missiles to Damascus. Frustrated, Syrian President Hafez Assad turned to North Korea, which had on offer a simpler, liquid-fueled missile, the Scud-C.

  The first signs that the two rogue states were doing business came when North Korean Prime Minister Yi Chong-ok travelled to Damascus in the spring of 1990. His visit resulted in the signing of an agreement that ensured “mutual co-operation” in unspecified “technical and scientific” fields—a euphemism for weapons transfers. And thanks to a two-billion-dollar (US) windfall Syria received from the Gulf States in return for participation in the Desert Storm campaign against Iraq, Assad would soon have the funds to go on a missile-buying spree.5

  By the end of 1990, Syria had entered the final stages of secret negotiations with North Korea for the purchase of Scud-C missiles, which were improved versions of the Scud-Bs Saddam was using. Naturally, the business relationship between the two nations had gotten Israel’s attention.

  Of course, North Korea had nothing in particular against Israel. Had Tel Aviv come knocking, Pyongyang gladly would have sold missiles to the Jews, too. Then, as now, North Korea was the global equivalent of the neighborhood drug pusher. Its leaders couldn’t care less about who gets blown up; they just want their money.

  The first shipment of Scud-Cs was scheduled to leave North Korea in January 1991 aboard a Syrian-Jordanian co-owned ship called the Al-Yarmouk. Our intelligence indicated it was carrying at least twenty-four Scud-Cs in kit form, including twenty Scud launchers.

  From North Korea, the ship was to chart a circuitous path to the Syrian port of Lattakia on the Mediterranean, via the Cape of Good Hope, thus bypassing the Suez Canal. In order to avoid the possibility of detection by the U.S. naval armada sailing in the Persian Gulf region in support of the war against Iraq, the Al-Yarmouk’s captain had declared to Lloyds of London that the ship’s destination was Cyprus.

  The Syrians had overestimated U.S. omniscience: the Americans were fixated on Saddam and didn’t have a clue what the Syrians, their nominal allies, were up to. But the IDF’s military intelligence branch, Aman (a Hebrew abbreviation for the Israeli Defense Forces Directorate of Military Intelligence) and the Mossad’s counter-proliferation department were carefully monitoring the shipment.

  Caesarea had dispatched teams of combatants from Southeast Asia to Africa in a bid to keep a close eye on the boat. We were to be the final link in the chain of Israeli intelligence contacts that would track the Al- Yarmouk before it reached its final destination. Our role would come when it made its last stop in Casablanca for bunkering (refuelling and resupply) before entering the Mediterranean via the Straits of Gibraltar.

  Charles and I met at one of our safe houses in Europe for a briefing on the mission. These safe houses are actually apartments rented by “helpers” who are local agents, for clandestine meetings and to provide a place for combatants to hide from the local security service. The helpers didn’t know for whom or what purpose they were renting the premises and merely handed the keys over to a HQ representative, who also gave the helper money, to make sure the rent was paid. Being local citizens, the helpers didn’t fall under suspicion or have to provide extraneous documentation like passports.

  Charles and I were apprised of the Al-Yarmouk’s journey and cargo via a briefing from a Tel Aviv-based intelligence officer whose beatnik appearance was enhanced by sandals and an abundance of facial hair. Struck by his unusual appearance, I made a snide crack about the possibility that the boat might be an LSD-induced hallucination.

  He promptly told me that he had a doctorate in comparative literature from a prestigious U.S. university. He was something of an expert on Jack Kerouac, it turned out. Politely passing over my sarcasm, he explained that he admired the icons of the Beat generation because they rejected traditional social and artistic forms long before the hippies came onto the scene. Comparing his area of study to various Eastern religions, he told me that he appreciated beatnik culture because it encouraged expression through intensely felt personal experiences and something called “beatific illumination.” It was a serious lecture—albeit a surreal one, coming in the midst of a discussion of a missile interdiction mission. I behaved myself after that.

  Beatnik philosophy notwithstanding, the intelligence officer—I’ll call him Kerouac—came equipped with an arsenal of maps, photos, and satellite images of the ship. All we had to do was pick out our target in port and attach a homing device (or “beacon”) so the Israeli air force could track her and sink the vessel in the middle of the Mediterranean. There are a lot of ships in the Mediterranean, and we didn’t want to make a mistake.

  The mission may sound simple—the sort of thing James Bond could do between cocktails—but in real life, there are a million and one details that have to be worked out. As usual, cover was the main consideration. How would we gain access to Morocco, let alone to the port area of Casablanca, on short notice? How would we get close to the ship without arousing suspicion? How would we attach the beacon so that it went undetected and wouldn’t fall off?

  I’ve always loved the sea. I used to sail with my friend Chris McDonald, on his Cal20 sailboat after school. We’d head off to the marina on our bikes and within minutes be barefoot sailors on the blue Pacific around the Gulf Islands. Even as a small boy, I loved watching my older brothers sail a scale-model sloop around a pond off Dallas Road. I loved watching the wind take her, and was always amazed at how difficult sailboats are to capsize. And so to calm myself, I did my best to think of my new assignment not as a dangerous mission, but as an opportunity to revisit my nautical roots.

  Days before the Al-Yarmouk was to arrive, Charles and I made the uneventful flight to Morocco and checked into our hotel—a modernish effort with a lot of white tile. Charles called headquarters and uttered a prearranged code word that let the worrywarts know we’d arrived. Then we set out for some meetings we’d arranged before leaving Europe, with shipping companies that had operations in Casablanca’s port. The meetings would not only help us develop our cover, but also give us a chance to check out the security arrangements around the docks.

  Because I quit fieldwork before the Internet took off, I can’t comment on how it’s revolutionized tradecraft. But the effect, I imagine, must be enormous. Had an operation like this been performed today, Charles and I would have been able to access an abundance of information—including satellite photos of the dock area, chat rooms devoted to mariners and security experts, even video snippets from tourists—from our hotel room. Thanks to Google and the like, your average backpacker has access to more background information on short notice these days than the spies of 1991 did.

  The story we’d concocted had us looking for warehouse facilities to process goods en route from Southeast Asia to southern Europe. In particular, we were looking for a location near the port that would permit storage, repackaging, and redistribution.

  Commercial enterprises in the Arab world were always eager to solicit business from Western business representatives. Not only would they do their best to meet your needs, but they’d try to interest you in unrelated business ventures that required outside financing or a Western distribution partner. I did my best to follow up on these proposals, since they often provided golden opportunities to develop business cover for future intelligence operations. I could only take these relationships so far, of course. Since
I didn’t have any real business operations—in Southeast Asia, southern Europe, or anywhere else—I had to be deliberately vague as to my commercial activities.

  Casablanca, a port city on the Atlantic coast, is a nervous, chaotic place mythologized by travellers and Hollywood movies. It is a city of desert air, blue skies, and heavy scents. Open-air markets are piled high with rugs and handmade woodcarvings, and the strong smells of spicy North African cooking are pervasive. It’s the smells that stir my memory: each neighborhood seemed to have its own.

  We met with a garrulous shipping agent who spoke French-accented English and gave him our spiel. He was friendly and we drank tea in his office while the hot Moroccan sun poured in. We asked him if we could see the port facilities, and he agreed. In fact, he offered to take us to lunch and we happily accepted. North African cuisine is outstanding, and Morocco’s is, in my opinion, the best of the genre. There are few nations on earth where food is prepared more artfully, served more proudly, or consumed more enthusiastically.6

  After lunch, the three of us walked to the port, where Charles and I immediately spotted our quarry docked among a line of freighters. She was right where Kerouac told us she’d be: tied up against one of the long quays that stretch out from the port. Charles and I had memorized her lines and features, but a five-year-old could have picked her out: the ship’s name was written on the bow in the Roman and Arabic alphabets.

  As we had hoped, security was light, and we realized we would have little difficulty slipping into the port area that night. It was fenced, but with gaps. This was before 9/ 11; many port officials barely even read the ships’ manifests or checked them against the boats’ contents.