The Volunteer

by Michael Ross

  Then, to my total shock, the soldier put the barrel of his Kalashnikov up against my forehead. He pushed hard and my head started to tilt back. Things slowed down. I heard a strong, high-pitched whine from the nearby insects, accompanied by the thudding bass line of my own heart.

  After a few seconds, without a word of explanation, he withdrew his weapon and my head sprang back toward him like one of those bobbleheaded sports figures you see stuck on people’s dashboards. “Give me your papers,” he ordered. I immediately handed him a photocopy of my passport (the original being back in my hotel safe). He inspected it briefly, then handed it back and said something in a local dialect to Nelson, who hopped out and opened the trunk. It was empty and we were free to go—back to Harare.

  As we drove in silence, I inspected my forehead in the mirror. There, smack in the middle, was a perfect red circle—the imprint of this young thug’s weapon in my skin. During the whole of my tenure in the Mossad, this was the only time I’d had a weapon pointed directly at me. Not to put too fine a point on it, the experience scared the absolute crap out of me.

  Nelson dropped me off at my hotel. Before we parted, he looked at me and said with touching sincerity, “Sorry, boss.” I gave him some cash and thanked him for standing up for me at the roadblock. Had I been on my own, I might well have ended up lying in some ditch with jackals and vultures dining on my innards.

  The next day, Larry picked me up, and we drove to see the local Jewish community leader. Morris lived in an affluent Harare suburb with his wife and two dogs, a black Labrador and a Jack Russell. Most whites in Zimbabwe have dogs, and for unexplained reasons, one always seems to be a Jack Russell. I don’t know why because they can be more demanding than a small child.

  As I went to pet the Lab, the Jack Russell jumped at me and almost bit my nose off, the second assault on my face in as many days. While the Labrador and I exchanged mutual looks of commiseration, Morris’s wife called me a “poor dear” for the mark still on my forehead and promptly asked Larry to prepare me a cup of tea. I was grateful for the hospitality, especially when Morris slipped two fingers of very good Lagavulin single malt whisky into the cup.

  Before Mugabe expelled most of them in recent years, Zimbabwe’s whites lived in a time warp. Morris’s house, an unintentional retro tribute to 1960s British decorating, was typical. It was a living, breathing anachronism of a time when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, Ian Smith was in charge, and the country had close ties to Mother England. With the striped wallpaper, lace curtains, and Georgian-style furniture, I could have been in the drawing room of any middle-class family.

  Five other targeted members of the Jewish community were at Morris’s home. One of the men, a single father of three girls whose wife had recently died of cancer, had already been picked up and tortured by the security services. Only through Larry’s intervention had he been released.

  As we sat in the living room, I told them the plan. I now knew the route through Mozambique was a no-go, which meant the best option was west into Botswana, where I knew the border was fairly porous. Moreover, the trip west would allow us to pick up a few Jews from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city. No one in the room took any joy in planning to leave a country they’d called home for decades. But we all knew it was better than Mugabe’s electroshock alternative.

  The next morning, I departed for Bulawayo in a rickety old plane that I shared with all manner of colorful locals—some openly brandishing the sort of knives and spears that would have post-9/11 airport security officials reaching for their walkie-talkies. At Bulawayo Airport, the wife of one of my escapees picked me up. It was a long drive, and I was humbled by her extravagant use of precious gasoline. She was a matronly and tight-lipped woman, and seemed to have mixed feelings about my presence. Like everyone else I met, she loved Zimbabwe, and she probably half-resented my plan to uproot her.

  Bulawayo is the hub of the province of Matabeleland, which comprises the whole of western Zimbabwe from the South African border in the south to Victoria Falls in the north. It’s a sleepy town of wide tree-lined streets, surrounded by beautiful parks, a legacy of its founder, Cecil Rhodes. The jacaranda trees were in full bloom. The roads are wide because Rhodes insisted trains of oxen and their burden should be able to perform a U-turn if necessary.

  We drove to the cramped doctor’s office that belonged to my driver’s husband, a jovial, portly man who had been practicing medicine for most of his life. The patients crowding his waiting room were of all colors. (Despite his service to the black community, Mugabe’s men didn’t like the doctor because, aside from being Jewish, he’d been treating senior opposition leaders in the region.) He informed me that the other local escapees were on their way and put me in a tiny examination room to wait. I busied myself fiddling with the quaint medical instruments, which wouldn’t have been out of place in Rhodes’s time. It was oddly comforting to be in the examining room. I felt relieved to be out of Harare and in the relative safety of Bulwayo. I had been routinely checking for surveillance since my departure out of the capital and was quite certain that I was not being watched.

  When the others arrived, the doctor abruptly told us he was staying put. “I’m sorry,” he said in an apologetic tone, “I shan’t be coming with you. I’ve too much to do here and, well, you can see that I’m needed here.” He had that look of resolve in his eyes that said he wasn’t about to change his mind. I’d seen the look at varying points over my career and knew better than to argue. Besides, I’d been in his waiting room and seen the crowds of people requiring his attention.

  “If you change your mind, you know how to reach me, day or night” was all I could think to say. A country where a third of the population is HIV-positive needs its medical men. The doctor’s place was taken by Cyril, a tall, string bean of a man with a thin military moustache and an ascot. I resisted the urge to stand up and salute when he entered the room. He was a veteran of the Second World War and organized the final details of our little exodus with military precision. The next day, it was agreed, we’d begin the long drive to Botswana after the arrival of Morris’s group, which would be driving in from Harare.

  After we discussed the escape plan, one of the escapees took me to his house for lunch. As we pulled up to the gate, he leaned on his horn. We sat in silence for a while, and I began to wonder what we were waiting for. Then I saw his housekeeper, a large black woman who was wiping her hands with a dishtowel, scurry from the house to open the gate for her boss. In Africa, old habits die hard.

  After lunch, I asked to visit the local Jewish school, which was still theoretically Jewish but had no more Jewish students: the Jewish community in Zimbabwe is old, and the young have all left. In their place, African children sang nursery rhymes in Hebrew, and I applauded their performance.

  I visited the Jewish old folks’ home as well, to make sure everyone there was safe. One old man called me into his room. He had giant hearing aids on both ears and enormous eyeglasses. He proudly showed me a certificate from Queen Elizabeth in commemoration of his one hundredth birthday. Sixty-one years his junior, I congratulated him. He was lucid and spry, and I took note of his other framed certificates and medals for service in both world wars.

  For our journey, I was assigned an African driver named George. We had a convoy of well-appointed long-wheelbase Land Cruisers with extra jerry cans of fuel. They were bought with money from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (or “Joint” for short). The Joint’s mission is to serve the needs of Jews throughout the world, particularly where their lives are threatened through political or natural upheavals. Zimbabwe certainly fit the bill, though in this situation, they didn’t know that a Mossad officer was running the show.

  I retired to my hotel and tried to contact my headquarters. Using a global system for mobile phone communications, I informed my desk officer in a barely audible, static-ridden voice that we were a “go,” and that I would call her once we reached our destination. It was a short, businessl
ike call due to the insecure method of communication. Any time you make a call in Zimbabwe, you risk having Mugabe’s men listening in.

  The next day, we met at the prearranged rendezvous point and started off for the border. A few miles from the scrubby desert of Botswana, we cut away toward an unofficial crossing, which turned out to be abandoned. We entered Botswana without incident under a clear sky, and made for the road to Selebi-Phikwe. From there, the escapees made their own way to South Africa, which has become something of a haven for Zimbabwean Jews in recent years. Everyone was relieved to be out of Zimbabwe, including me. Yet given the incident I’d endured at the roadblock, this uneventful ending seemed vaguely anticlimactic. There is always a feeling of slight depression when things are over. I was just tired and anxious to go home. In retrospect, I know that the roadblock incident had contributed greatly to my professional mental fatigue but I was in denial about it.

  George and I promptly drove back to Bulawayo. I called my headquarters and let them know that all had gone well. Without delay, I then went to the airport, drank lots of Zambezi Lager, and caught the first flight out.

  A number of months later, I was surprised to be awarded a commendation in front of my division by the Mossad’s deputy director general, Ilan Mizrachi, in large part for the job I’d done in Zimbabwe. The fact that reports from our embassy in Harare indicated repeatedly that Mugabe’s security people were looking for an “Israeli agent” and I kept making repeated visits to the country to complete my mission must have impressed my superiors. This was the first commendation I’d received as an individual while working for the Mossad.20

  Seven years have passed, but my memories of Zimbabwe’s self-destruction are still fresh. I am amazed that Mugabe hasn’t yet been turfed out. Anyone who has read news reports from the country knows just how thoroughly he’s ruined Zimbabwe. Even as I write these words in August 2006, a Christian NGO reports that seven hundred thousand people are now homeless thanks to Mugabe’s recent campaign to drive politically restless urban dwellers into the outback by razing the country’s poorest slums. Through his so-called “land reform” policies, Mugabe seized white-owned lands and redistributed them to black Zimbabweans, prompting an exodus of the country’s white entrepreneurs, farmers, and doctors. Though those whites were unfashionable in their views and habits, they were the backbone of the nation’s economy. Mugabe threw them out for no other reason than bold-faced demagoguery.

  I don’t know what’s become of the escapees, but one day I plan to return to the region and find out. And when I do, I sincerely hope Mugabe and his hangers-on have gone the way of fellow dictators Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Nicolae Ceauşescu of Romania.

  18

  ODD JOBS

  Do not dig a hole for somebody else; you yourself will fall into it.

  RUSSIAN PROVERB

  During my time as Bitsur’s man in Africa, I was what’s known in the Mossad as a “jumper.” This meant I lived in Israel much of the time, traveling to my target region as needed. Jumpers are rarities: most Mossad agents who work overseas stay overseas, and either work out of the local Israeli embassy or live undercover.

  The downside of my new job was that I seemed to spend half my time on an airplane. And no, I didn’t get to fly business class, nor was I permitted to keep the millions of frequent flyer points I would have racked up. But the arrangement did allow me to see my family often. My kids were growing up fast, especially my older son, who at fourteen was exhibiting all the normal symptoms of being a teenager. He taught himself the guitar and was playing everything from Jimi Hendrix to Metallica. (I wondered where this talent originated, given that his father is tone deaf.) His eight-year-old younger brother, meanwhile, had taken up horseback riding and martial arts—and still competes in both to this day.

  When I was in Israel, I did my best to make the odd school play and neighborhood social function. For the most part, however, my social life revolved around my Mossad colleagues, with whom I could speak candidly. When the weekend came, I invariably ended up with my work buddies and their families, talking shop around the barbecue with beer in hand.

  Being a jumper also meant I spent a fair bit of time at Mossad HQ in Tel Aviv, which gave me the opportunity to meet agents from other departments and learn about their projects. Sometimes, I would even get a chance to lend a helping hand.

  Such was the case in 1999, when I fell in with two analysts, Tomer and Eran, working with the Mossad’s counter-proliferation department. They had become apprised of a scheme by a former Soviet general to sell Syria the technology needed to place chemical warheads on Scud-C missiles. The irony was that these were the same Scud-C missiles that Charles and I were supposed to have blown up in 1991. Yitzhak Shamir’s refusal to sink the Al-Yarmouk had come back to bite Israel in the ass.

  The two analysts identified the Russian as Lieutenant General Anatoly Kuntsevich, a former Soviet officer who’d commanded the Russian defense ministry’s research and testing institute, and had since earned a reputation in intelligence circles for peddling Soviet-vintage chemical technology. Astonishingly, this same Kuntsevich had been a consultant on chemical disarmament to the United Nations in 1988. In the mid-1990s, we were told, Syria received some seventeen hundred pounds of raw material for the production of VX gas through a shady commercial venture facilitated by General Kuntsevich, even as he was working under Boris Yeltsin as commander of the Russian Military Academy for Chemical Warfare. Now, Kuntsevich was going to sell the Syrians the means to drop that VX on Tel Aviv.

  Tomer and Eran told me they wanted me to help scuttle the Scud deal in the negotiation phase. I said that I was interested, but I’d have to clear things with Michel first. I’d been in the Mossad long enough to know that the one thing guaranteed to make a department head go ballistic is the unauthorized commandeering of underlings.

  Seeing as I happened to be between assignments at the time, Michel didn’t have a good excuse to say no. Although he started off by telling me, “Tu me casses les couilles” (you drive a hard bargain), he understood that helping out other departments made for smart office politics. Or, as he put it: “If you air successful, zis will enhance our stachoor, non?”

  Helping out the counter-proliferation department was a particularly astute move in those days. In the pre-9/11 era, the Mossad’s counterterrorism department was a poor cousin to its counter-proliferation counterpart (which happened to be located just down the same corridor). Terrorism, while a significant problem, was not then cast as a strategic threat: a bus bomb, however horrific, did not threaten Israel’s existence to the same extent as an incoming Scud-C with a WMD warhead. (It was only years later that the West came to realize that if you get enough Muslim extremists with enough bombs strapped to them, they can terrorize a nation as thoroughly as a fleet of missiles.)

  Tomer gave me all the relevant intelligence that the counter-proliferation department had on the Kuntsevich-Syria relationship, and then left Ayal and me to come up with a plan.

  What we settled on was this: I would fly to Europe and set myself up as a freelance investigative journalist targeting Kuntsevich. In this guise, I would pester his government and the West’s various counter-proliferation watchdog groups, spreading the incriminating intelligence Tomer had provided to me during the course of my “interviews.” The point of the exercise was to focus so much unwanted attention on Kuntsevich that either he or one of his bosses in Moscow would kibosh the transaction. And for a variety of reasons—including protecting the Mossad’s intelligence sources—it all had to be done without leaving Israeli fingerprints.

  I chose a foreign identity with appropriate fake documents, and put together a convincing front as a journalist working with a freelance documentary production company. I printed business cards and opened an office services address in Zurich. I then flew to Europe and started working the telephone.

  An important part of the plan was to ensure that I didn’t sound as if I was out to get Kuntsevich, but that I was mer
ely an impartial documentary filmmaker looking to verify the truth of allegations that I’d heard from others. The advantage of this cover story was that I never had to reveal the origin of the classified intelligence I’d been provided by Tomer. Whenever asked how I knew what I knew, my prepared response was that I couldn’t say: I was sworn to protect my sources.

  Once I got someone on the phone who spoke English, my spiel went like this: “Hello, my name is Alex Turnbull of Turncoat Productions. We’re making a television documentary for sale to the major networks about the illicit trade in Soviet weaponry since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

  After some more general patter in this vein, I’d get to the important part: “Our sources have learned that General Kuntsevich, a former Red Army general, is selling chemical weapon delivery systems to the Syrian government. More specifically, he is alleged to be selling warheads that will be modified to carry Sarin, VX, and other chemical agents on Scud-C missiles. Are you aware of this sale and could you please give us additional information about General Kuntsevich’s activities?” I used the general’s name often so they’d remember it. I also left them the telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address that I’d set up in Zurich.

  Many of the people I spoke to in the Russian defense establishment came across as honest folk who were genuinely appalled at Kuntsevich and the other former Soviet military officers now doing back-alley business with third world dictators and rogue regimes. A few others—presumably those who were themselves implicated by Kuntsevich’s transactions—could barely suppress their panic. One official connected to President Vladimir Putin’s office became extremely agitated, especially after I told him that I’d already spoken to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and the nonproliferation officials at the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy offices. When I pressed him, he claimed that Putin’s government would do what it needed to in order to put Kuntsevich out of business.