The Volunteer

by Michael Ross

  A few hours before the ship’s scheduled departure, I parked my car just outside the embarkation area, and waited. Eventually, I saw the big Mercedes 560SEL with the license plate number I’d memorized. As it passed, I got only a brief glimpse of the driver in silhouette. There were no passengers. This was a relief: I don’t know what I would have done if this anonymous bad guy had been traveling with his kids in the back seat.

  The toughest question, of course, is how I would have reacted had my quarry been traveling with passengers. I would have had two options. The first, which is the prerogative of every combatant in the field, would have been to abort the mission based on my own good judgment. Avi had told me on several occasions that when faced with operational dilemmas in the field, I was the commander and had to act on my own accord. I couldn’t pass the buck, and while I could consult with HQ, I didn’t always have the time or the means to do so.

  The other option, which I would have been more inclined to adopt, would be to attach the explosive device and inform HQ of the fact that he was not alone in the car. While that may seem as though I would have been shirking the tough decision and fobbing the burden off to other shoulders, HQ probably would have scrubbed the mission and waited for a clearer (and less morally obstructed) shot at the target. Besides, who was to say that he wasn’t going to drop his passengers off before heading toward Syria?

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about that, so after one more vehicle got in line, I pulled into the embarkation lane. I wanted to ensure our cars were loaded in the same part of the ship’s vehicle hold. That way, a purported desire to access my own vehicle would give me a pretext for snooping around his.

  It took a while to get each car onto the ship, and by the time I had parked mine, the driver of the 560SEL was gone. But this fact didn’t affect my mission one way or the other: I was after the car, not him.

  It was after stowing my gear and heading up to the dining room that I spotted her: a woman with the kind of body that Raymond Chandler would describe as “hard-boiled and full of sin,” with long black hair arranged in cornrows and emerald-green eyes. She caught my attention not only because she was beautiful but because she seemed to be the only other Westerner on the ship. In that corner of my brain reserved for paranoid thoughts—which it was my duty as a spy to consult, and occasionally obey—something about her struck me as suspicious. In an improbable reverie, I imagined that this might be some temptress out to foil my plot.

  The next day, as I was sitting at the back of the boat drinking a beer and taking some photos of the Adriatic off the boot of Italy, she approached me and introduced herself. Her name was Ute and she was twenty-two years old. She had a strong German accent, which instantly made me think of the TV show Hogan’s Heroes.

  When she asked me why I was going to Turkey, I replied cautiously, “I have some business there.” As usual, my cover for the operation involved meetings arranged under the auspices of my Europe-based import-export operation.

  “Ach, zo. I am on my way to Iraq to make photograph of Kurds.”

  My eyes widened, and I blurted out, “Alone?” Although Turkey’s main tourists spots are reasonably safe for foreign travellers, the same isn’t true of the southeastern regions, where the country’s Kurdish minority is concentrated. For years, many Kurds had been in a state of quasi-rebellion against Ankara’s assimilationist policies. (Until 1991, the use of the Kurdish language was illegal.) During the previous decade, in fact, more than twenty thousand people had been killed in a terrorist war conducted by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), then led by Abdullah Öcalan. If you didn’t know what you were doing, traveling to the region in those days was a lot like going to Afghanistan, Chechnya, or Colombia today.

  “Why? You want to join me?”

  “No thanks,” I replied. “I don’t think it’s safe.”

  Her gaze lingered on me, and I felt unnerved. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I have some Kurdish friends who are taking me with them.” Ute then explained how she’d fallen in with a clutch of activists in Germany, which has a large, politically active Kurdish population. At the time, the Kurds were desperate to get the same sort of publicity for their cause as the Palestinians had long enjoyed.

  She then produced a bag and showed me her equipment. I knew enough about photography to recognize it as a serious kit. I thought this was a safe topic for conversation, so we sat and talked about cameras for a while, each of us snapping shots off the stern. My hope was that she’d eventually get bored and drift away, allowing me to go below deck and take a closer look at my friend’s Mercedes. Unfortunately, her flirtation persisted. The experience was more unnerving than flattering. I’m no Elephant Man, but I wasn’t used to this kind of attention from an attractive woman.

  My cover identity was that of a single man, so I wasn’t able to shoo Ute away with a wedding ring, as most married people do when they’re subject to unwanted come-ons. Eventually, I simply excused myself and got up. When she started to follow, I told her I needed a little nap, as I was still battling the after-effects of a hangover (this was no lie). She began to pout as I walked away, and I wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better for me to pretend I didn’t speak English from the getgo. Whatever she had in mind seemed likely to conflict not only with my marital vows, but the job I had to do.

  Unfortunately, that job was going to be harder than I expected. Once I got down to the car deck, I discovered something the operational planners hadn’t considered: there was a padlock the size of my fist on the doorway. Like me, the people at Mossad HQ had assumed that, as on most ferries, passengers had free access to their cars. For whatever reason, that wasn’t the case on this boat. I felt like an idiot for not having foreseen this contingency. Over the next two days, I would have to find a way to get past that padlock.

  That evening, as I passed the boat’s modest bar on my way back from dinner, I saw Ute hanging around with a clutch of Kurdish friends, listening to tacky Dutch disco music. I declined Ute’s invitation to dance but, to be polite, I hung around and spoke with her friends, who did their best to educate me about their two favorite subjects: the plight of Kurds in Turkey and the need for Western countries to accept more Kurds as political refugees.

  While listening to the conversation, my curiosity was piqued by the presence of an outsider: a Turkish woman in modern Western dress who, according to Ute, had made a point of tagging along with the group since they’d boarded the ship. As Ute’s friends briefed me on the plight of the Kurds, this new addition followed the dialogue with unnatural interest.

  It was after I returned to my reeking cabin that my malodorous cabin steward stopped by my room to offer a warning. “That German girl, she is watch by secret police,” he whispered with somewhat boozy breath. He spoke to me in English, but he used the Turkish name “İstihbarat” to describe the agents—a clear reference to Turkey’s feared national intelligence organization Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MIT). At the time, the PKK was active in Germany, so the MIT was doing its best to infiltrate Kurdish activist groups there. No doubt, this is how they stumbled on Ute’s little fact-finding mission.

  I asked Onur how he knew this, and he answered, “Kapitan tell me.” If the information was true—and I could think of no reason for either Onur or the captain to invent such a tale—it was a worrying development. While I was neither Kurdish nor of any particular interest to the Turks, the fact that Ute had spoken with me at length made me a potential source of interest to the İstihbarat. And I did not need a set of eyes watching my movements, Turkish or otherwise.

  After Onur left, I started concentrating on my primary concern: getting onto the car deck. Picking the lock wasn’t an option—I had no idea how to do that. Nor did I have access to bolt cutters, or any other heavy tools that would allow me to destroy the lock. Even if I did, using brute force wouldn’t be smart. It would turn the boat into a crime scene, and thereby invite all sorts of unwanted scrutiny. I was mortified at the thought of calling HQ and
telling them a simple padlock had prevented me from performing my mission.

  Early the next morning, I wove my way around the prostrate Muslims at prayer in the stairwells and corridors, and sought out the ship’s chief steward. He was a crisply dressed and affable man with a wide smile and, like most of the men I met on the ship, a thick black moustache.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said, knocking on his office door. “I’m wondering if you can help me.”

  “What can I do for you, young man?” he replied in perfect English. Something about our exchange reminded me of the sort of model dialogues that appear at the beginning of English-as-a-second-language textbooks.

  “I seem to have left my chest medicine in my car. If I don’t take it, I could get quite ill.” I tried to look contrite and desperate.

  “I don’t have the authority to open the car deck. Only the captain does.”

  “Oh, goodness. Do you think we could go see him?”

  “He’s very busy.”

  “I wouldn’t bother either of you if this were not a serious matter.”

  “Very well. Follow me to the bridge.”

  The captain turned out to be a short balding man with a greying moustache and a white uniform. He looked like the responsible type—hardly the sort who would blurt out sensitive intelligence information about passengers to the custodial crew. He spoke to the steward again, who then motioned that I should follow him out of the bridge. “You can go, but a crew member will have to accompany you,” he told me as we retraced our footsteps.

  “Great, thank you so much,” I replied. It was false gratitude. How could I attach a bomb with a Turkish sailor watching over my shoulder?

  When we returned to his office, the steward summoned a crewman and gave him a key, along with a brief set of instructions in Turkish. This friendly young fellow then led me to the car deck, opened the padlock, and pulled back the big steel bulkhead door.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said. As I spoke these words, I looked him in the eye and motioned to him to remain where he was. To my surprise, he obeyed, smiling by the door as I wove my way in between the closely packed vehicles en route to my car.

  I opened the car door and grabbed the pills sitting on the console next to the shift—yes, I had actually forgotten them there. Then, in case my crewman friend happened to have his eye on me, I made a show of dropping the bottle. I bent down to retrieve it and, while doing so, wrenched the magnetic casing containing the explosive device from the underside of my car.

  I looked over toward the door to see if my fumblings were arousing any suspicion. But my guardian’s attention was elsewhere. Making sure I kept the explosive charge out of his line of sight, I moved toward the 560SEL, which now sat in between me and the exit. I rechecked the license plate number, just to be certain, and repeated my bottledropping ruse. I then knelt down and attached the magnetic device.

  As I walked over to the door, I held up the antibiotics for the crewman to see. Motioning to my chest, I said, “I really need these! Tes¸ekkür, tes¸ekkür.” He smiled at my thank-yous, pleased to be of service.

  Later, at dusk, the ship passed through the Corinth Canal with what seemed to be only three feet or so of space to spare on either side. From the banks, Greek soldiers took no pains to hide their animosity for the Turkish crew, their ship, and their passengers. (Turkish ships actually had to lower the flag when sailing this canal.)

  As I snapped photos of these scowling sentries, Ute sidled up and took my arm. In somewhat brusque fashion, I told her I had a dinner engagement, and walked off. I didn’t want to be rude; too much had gone my way for me to blow it over a show of good manners to a flirtatious romantic. I took some food to my cabin and went to bed early.

  Just after dawn the next morning, we pulled into a drizzly, foggy Izmir. The cars drove off the car deck in the reverse order that they entered. After pulling off and clearing customs, I watched my quarry do likewise. While I was waiting, I went to the nearest pay phone and reported in code that everything was a “go.” It struck me then that I never really got a good look at the man whose life I might have just helped terminate. It was just as well. For all I know, I passed him a dozen times in the ship. My ignorance ensured I never betrayed any sign of recognition.

  Ute and her Kurdish friends drove off in a two-car convoy led by a dusty gold BMW 5 Series. As she passed, she smiled and waved at me. Evidently, there were no hard feelings. From her carefree manner, it seemed she had no idea she was being tailed. I only hope she didn’t end up in a Turkish jail.

  After dropping the car off with a local Mossad agent (alas, it was agency property), I typed out my reports in a hotel and caught a flight back to Europe, where I spent a lovely holiday with my family at Euro Disney in Paris. When I got back to work, one of my colleagues informed me that my target had detonated somewhere on a lonely stretch of highway in Kurdish bandit country near the Syrian border.

  Overall, my mission at sea ranks as one of the high points in my tenure as a Mossad combatant. It ran for about five weeks and was a complete success. Finally, one of my set-up operations resulted in someone actually pulling the trigger.

  10

  DANGEROUS LIAISONS

  A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

  JOHN LE CARRÉ

  Despite triumphs such as my mission in Turkey, life on the road was beginning to wear on me. Like many fathers whose jobs take them away from home for long stretches, I was beginning to wonder whether it wouldn’t be better to opt for a more stable nine-to-five gig.

  By now, I had put in almost seven years as a combatant. If you included my military service, my studies, and the Mossad training period, I hadn’t been a full-time father and husband for a decade. I was starting to show signs of what we call in Hebrew shchika—emotional wear and tear from living in lonely isolation. And although my family enjoyed France and my weekend visits, they were anxious to return to their home in Israel.

  I needed a change and wanted to leave Caesarea for a different job in the Mossad. My personal ennui had begun to affect my professional attitude. I was frustrated at Charles’s petty manipulations and Doron’s surrender to his every whim and demand. The stress was such that I began lashing out in inappropriate ways. One telling incident occurred in Brussels, when I was boarding a crowded TGV train. A Frenchman pushed in front of me, and I became so enraged that I grabbed his wrist from behind and twisted it around over my head until he howled in pain. I knew then that I’d better make changes to my life, or I’d end up doing something that would get me into real trouble.

  But I was faced with a dilemma. The usual career path for Mossad combatants returning to Israel was to become instructors for new recruits within Caesarea. This didn’t appeal to me: I’d witnessed during my own training in Tel Aviv that instructors were called upon to work hours that were just as long and unpredictable as those of overseas combatants. Moreover, I felt that becoming an instructor wouldn’t supply me with the real lifestyle change I needed. I wanted to throw myself into a field that was as far as possible from what I’d been doing in Europe.

  There was another reason to avoid continuing my work with Caesarea: Charles.

  Like me, Charles grew tired of life as a combatant. In 1996, he informed me that he was heading back to Israel to become an instructor. I knew that following his lead likely would mean we’d keep working together, and I had no appetite for a reprise of the friction and workplace irritations I’d endured over the last seven years.

  As it turned out, Charles spent only a few months instructing combatants in training before taking on a role for which he was far better suited. He became a case officer in the Mossad division Tsomet, where he was responsible for recruiting “human intelligence sources” (moles and snitches) in foreign lands. Within a few years, Charles was Tsomet’s golden boy—the top case officer in the Mossad, according to one of my well-informed colleagues. Thanks to their experience, former Mossad combatants typically make the best Tsomet case off
icers. Combatants interact with Arabs and Iranians all the time during the course of their tenure in the field and, in so doing, gain an insight into the mindset of potential human intelligence sources.

  I would run into Charles at other times over the course of my career, and with each encounter my anger mellowed. Despite all our bickering, we’d done some important work together in the field. In fact, many people in HQ told us separately that in the early and mid-1990s we were considered the best operational team in the field. I like to think that while Charles had a hard time expressing his gratitude, he was nevertheless thankful for our pairing. I know I was. Whatever Charles’s personal faults, his service to Israel was monumental. And I was always glad to know that he was on our side.

  My opportunity for a new career within the Office came in 1996, a year after my trip to Turkey. This job would not only allow me to see a whole new side of the Mossad, but also give me an inside look at its much larger American cousin, the Central Intelligence Agency. The man who got me in was none other than Avi, who’d recently been transferred from head of Caesarea to the top job at Tevel, the liaison and special political operations division.11

  Tevel is Hebrew for “world,” and it aptly describes the division’s responsibilities. Like other Western nations, Israel freely shares all but its most sensitive intelligence with allies around the globe. Tevel’s job was to make sure the information flowed in a free and timely fashion. Apart from intelligence sharing, the division’s most important jobs are to develop joint projects targeting terrorist groups and rogue regimes, and to provide a karit-raka, or “soft landing,” should any of the Mossad’s operatives get in trouble while on unilateral operations (also called “blue and white” operations, in reference to Israel’s flag) in a friendly country.