Agents of Innocence (35 page)

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.”

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 what 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.

What was it, then, that made Levi and everyone he encountered that day feel so shattered by the events in Munich?

Perhaps it was the innocence and helplessness of the victims. They were athletes, symbols of the simplest and purest virtues of the nation. The strongest, the swiftest, the least tainted by the corruptions of life. They had come to Munich believing that twenty-seven years after the end of the Holocaust, Jews could come to Germany without fear. They had accepted an invitation to come and play with the other nations of the world. And it had ended with a pile of Jewish corpses.

Levi walked back to the office, sick at heart, wanting to talk to someone and also wanting to hide. The office was somber. Small groups of people talking quietly, secretaries staring blankly at their typewriters. I should do something, Levi thought. I shouldn’t sit and grieve. He went to the files and assembled a quick profile of the leaders of Black September. It was an offering to the vengeful God of Abraham and Isaac. He took it upstairs to the floor where the Chiefs had their offices. The reception desk was empty, so Levi walked down the hall until he reached the door of the deputy director, Avraham Cohen. The door was open. Cohen was sitting at his desk with his eyes closed. His head was bobbing slightly. Cohen was saying a prayer. On his arm, Levi saw, was a black armband.

Cohen raised his head eventually. His eyes were red and surrounded by dark circles.

“What do you want?” asked Cohen. The bark was gone from his voice.

“I thought this might be useful,” said Levi, handing him the file on the leaders of Black September.

“Do you know where these bastards are?”

“Some of them,” said Levi.

Cohen was silent. The bushy eyebrows, usually so animated, were at rest. Cohen was studying something on his desk, Levi noticed. It was a newspaper story listing the names of the eleven hostages—now the eleven victims—and brief biographies of each of them.

“This is the story of our people,” said Cohen.

“Yes,” said Levi. “I know.”

Cohen didn’t seem to hear him.

“Truly,” he said. “This is the story of Israel. Those boys in Munich were a map of who we are.”

“What do you mean?” asked Levi.

“Listen to me,” said Cohen, picking up the list from off his desk. “Let me tell you who these boys were. A wrestler who arrived in Israel just three months ago from the Soviet Union. Another wrestler from Russia. A riflery coach from Rumania. A weightlifter from Poland. A wrestling coach from Rumania. Can you listen to more? Eh? Do you want to hear more?”

“Yes,” said Levi.

“A weightlifter from America. A weightlifting coach from Poland. A weightlifter from Libya. A track coach from Tel Aviv. A fencing coach from Rumania. A wrestling coach from Germany, whose parents survived the Holocaust only to see their son die in Munich.”

Cohen put the list back on his desk. He put his head in his hands for a moment and then turned back to Levi.

“They are all from somewhere else, did you notice that? Eh? They came here to Israel to be safe and we let them down. You and I, the Institute. They trusted in us to keep them safe and we let them die like helpless Jews in Germany.”

“Yes.”

“And do you know what we should do about it?” asked Cohen, his voice rising, his eyebrows taking flight.

“No,” said Levi.

“We should kill the bastards! Every one of them.”

The next several days brought a flood of intelligence about the Munich incident. Much of it came across Levi’s desk. There were stacks of telephone and wireless intercepts, cables from every Israeli embassy in Europe, reports from agents and tipsters around the world about the Munich operation. The sheer volume of the material overwhelmed Levi. Somewhere in the mountain of paper there might be a message saying that the massacre had been planned by the president of Egypt himself, but it would take days to find it. The problem, Levi decided, wasn’t collecting intelligence. In the modern era of communications intercepts, that was easy. The problem was analyzing it in time to make a difference.

Much of what came in during those first few days was predictable and not very helpful. Black September had issued a four-page mimeographed statement in Cairo during the first few hours of the operation, declaring that the Israeli athletes were “under armed arrest” and explaining the conditions under which they would be freed. The Fatah leadership in Beirut issued a statement denying any responsibility for the Munich operation. Arab press reports generally condoned the massacre and said it was really Israel’s fault for oppressing the Palestinian people.

What struck Levi, as he began to sift through the intelligence, was how cleverly Black September had planned the operation. They had known exactly where to go in the Olympic Village to reach the Israeli quarters, how to penetrate the supposedly tight security, when to stage the attack for maximum surprise. They had managed to smuggle a small arsenal of weapons into West Germany undetected. They had been able to deliver precise demands in Cairo, several thousand miles away, shortly after the attack began. And they had, in the final moments at the airport, seen through the West German ruse and exacted a bloody price by killing all the hostages. Clearly, these were not amateurs.

The West German police provided the first good clue. They combed the employment records of all the companies and contractors that had worked on the Olympic Village, looking for the “inside man” who might have helped Black September. They soon discovered that one of the architects who had worked on the Olympic Village was a well-educated Palestinian. Levi ran his name and passport number through the computer and found that Mossad maintained a small file on him. He was a Fatah sympathizer, born in Haifa and educated in Europe. He had attracted Mossad attention because of a report that he had attended a meeting in 1971 with a Fatah intelligence officer. A man named Jamal Ramlawi.

Communications intercepts added more clues. The analysts in Unit 8200 noted unusually heavy wireless traffic between the Fatah headquarters in Beirut and a transmitter in East Berlin on the day of the Munich operation. The analysts were still trying to break the code and decipher the communications. But they already had a working hypothesis: East Berlin was the Fatah command post for the operation. Someone there had been running the show.

The Israelis asked the West Germans for permission to review the names of all Arab passport holders who had entered East Berlin from the West during the previous month. The list duly arrived on Levi’s desk. Among the hundreds of names and numbers, one caught Levi’s eye like a bright red flag. It was an Algerian passport, issued to someone named Chadli bin Yehiya. A quick check in the files confirmed that the same name and passport number had been used once before by Jamal Ramlawi.

Levi fed his intelligence reports to the Chiefs, who were holding daily meetings to plan their response to Munich. They gathered now, not in a sunny conference room on the way to Herzliya, but in a dark command bunker under the streets of Tel Aviv. In the dark, they were preparing to fight a war in the shadows.

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, was celebrated three days after the Munich massacre. It was the end of the 5,732nd year of the Jewish people. “Who will live and who will die?” asked the traditional Rosh Hashana prayer. “Who by fire, who by sword?” The president of Israel issued a new year’s message to mark the beginning of year 5733. He spoke of the tragedy in Munich. “To the conscience of the world, we cry: ‘Let there be no rest till this evil arm is cut off!’ To the bereaved—parents and wives and children, friends and colleagues—we say: ‘The wounded hearts of all the nation feel with you. How shall we comfort you?’ ”

The Knesset delivered a simple answer when it met a week after Munich. Revenge.

The Israeli parliament passed a resolution declaring the terrorists “enemies of humanity” and vowing to “act with perseverance against the terrorist organizations, their bases and those who aid them, until an end is put to this criminal activity.” The meaning of that opaque language was hinted at in a dispatch by the military correspondent of
The Jerusalem Post
, who wrote: “Israel is expected to meet the terrorists on their own terrain in order to combat the rising wave of terror, using tactics which will be both unconventional and damaging.”

Israel, in other words, was embracing the weapons of its enemies in the war against terror.

Tel Aviv; October 1972

The Director of Central Intelligence travelled to the Middle East in October, a month after Munich. The trip had been planned long ago, but the terrorism problem gave it a sharper focus. So did a White House announcement in mid-September that the president had decided on a tough new anti-terrorism program. The Director wasn’t sure what that was all about. He wasn’t aware that there actually
was
any new presidential policy on terrorism, or indeed any policy at all. Nevertheless, he sensibly delivered to the president, Eyes Only, a copy of his itinerary with the notation: “Hope to gather support for our new anti-terrorism program during the trip.”

The trip marked the first visit ever by a sitting DCI to Israel. A stopover in Tel Aviv had never before seemed advisable, given the sensitivities, not to say paranoia, of the Arab intelligence services. The Director had decided, to hell with Arab sensitivities, and scheduled a trip that would include stops in Jordan, Israel and Lebanon. That seemed safe enough. All three countries were regarded in the Arab world as wholly-owned subsidiaries of the CIA anyway.

The Director travelled in style. He brought his wife, his tennis racket, his tuxedo, his smoking jacket, his golf clubs, and a sun reflector for poolside. He also brought several secretaries, code clerks, bodyguards, and, to help with the locals, the chief of the Near East Division of the clandestine service, Mr. Edward Stone.

They all piled into a comfortable Air Force 707, one of the fleet of planes that is available for top government officials when they travel abroad. This particular plane was known as “the Tube” because it had no windows, and for that reason it was shunned by most of the big shots. But it was the Director’s favorite. He thought it cozy. The plane was laid out inside like a small apartment, with a bed, a sitting room, a kitchen, a lounge, and, in the forward section, an elaborate, state-of-the-art communications system.

The Israelis were delighted that the Director was coming and seemed eager to use the trip to taunt the Arabs. The Israeli air traffic control tower near Tel Aviv took the bold step of communicating directly with the Director’s plane while it was still on the ground at Amman and suggesting a flight plan that would take the plane due west, across the Jordan River. The Jordanians were outraged by this violation of their airwaves and sent up several fighters as a gesture of protest. The Jordanian fighters circled the Amman airport for a few minutes and then returned meekly to the ground when the Israelis scrambled a squadron of F-4 Phantoms.

The pilot of the Director’s 707 rejected the Israeli flight plan, on the ground that Palestinian guerrillas on either side of the river might try to shoot the plane down. He opted for a slightly longer, and considerably safer, route that passed over Syria and Lebanon, headed out toward Cyprus, and then circled back over the Mediterranean to Israel.

The Mossad chief, Natan Porat, met the Director’s plane when it landed at a military airport near Tel Aviv. So did the CIA station chief from the embassy. There was a brief confusion over whose car the Director would ride in: one provided by the Mossad or one provided by the station. The Israelis had brought a shiny new Mercedes, the CIA a somewhat dilapidated Lincoln Continental. The Director reluctantly opted for the Lincoln.

The Director checked into the Tel Aviv Sheraton on the beach, sent his wife off shopping with the ambassador’s wife, trounced Stone in a set of tennis, showered and shaved, and headed off to a formal meeting with the Israelis. He was dressed in his usual gray pinstripe suit, which in Tel Aviv made him stand out like a visitor from another planet.

“It is a pleasure to welcome our friends into our midst,” said Natan Porat.

He was seated in a small conference room in the Mossad headquarters building near the railroad station. With him were the Director, Stone, and the deputy chief of the Mossad, Avraham Cohen.

Porat looked, in his way, even more American than the Director. He was dressed in a blue suit, a striped tie, black shoes. He might have been a high-class undertaker, except for the clear plastic glasses. Porat was the new Israel. Born in America, he had emigrated to Palestine as a teenager in 1946 and fought in the war of independence. He had entered the Israeli security service before he was twenty.

Porat, sharp as a razor, had brought along the perfect foil in Avraham Cohen: short, genial, avuncular, reassuring.

“Welcome to our friends,” said Cohen, echoing Porat. “That is what we call the CIA. ‘The Friends.’ Did you know that?”

“I did not,” said the Director.

“It’s true. The British call you ‘the Cousins.’ But we think of you as ‘the Friends.’ ”

“Well then,” said the Director, looking for something to toast with and, finding nothing, putting his hand over his heart. “It’s good to be among friends.”

“I hope that we can talk as friends, about the problems that we must face together,” said Porat.

The Director nodded.

“We don’t always agree, as you know, about events in the Middle East. We compete at times for attention and support. Some of your Arab acquaintances, such as Jordan, are our enemies. But for all that, we are friends.”

“Undoubtedly,” said the Director. “We don’t always agree. But we want the same things in the long run, I’m sure.”

There was a pause. The meeting was off to a proper, if somewhat stilted, beginning.

“Say,” spoke up Cohen. The tendrils of his eyebrows reached nearly to his hairline. He had a merry look on his face that was quite at odds with the somber tone of the gathering.

“Speaking of competition reminds me of the story about the two Hassidic Jews who wanted to be as rich as Rockefeller. Have you heard that story?”

“I don’t believe so,” said the Director. He looked toward Porat dubiously.

“Ah good,” said Cohen. “Two Hassidic Jews are talking one day. One of them says, ‘Imagine what it would be like if you could be as rich as Rockefeller.’

“ ‘Let me tell you something,’ says the second one. ‘If I was as rich as Rockefeller, then I’d be
richer
than Rockefeller.’

“ ‘How can you be richer than Rockefeller?’ says the first.

“ ‘Because even if I was as rich as Rockefeller, I’d still teach a little Talmud on the side.’ ”

The Director laughed vigorously. Porat looked at him with a bemused expression that seemed to say: Can it be that this man has never heard a Yiddish dialect joke before? Are we the first Jews he has ever met?

“We have prepared quite a program for you,” said Porat. “Tomorrow we’d like to give you some briefings on how we look at the Middle East, and explain how our service operates. But before your official program begins, I hoped that we could talk informally here about some matters of mutual interest.”

“Delighted,” said the Director. “What can we do for you?”

“Actually,” said Porat, “it is
we
who would like to do something for
you
.”

The Mossad chief picked up a brown envelope from the table next to his chair and handed it to the Director. Inside were three documents in Russian, along with several dozen photographs and technical drawings.

“Your Soviet analysts may find these useful,” said Porat. “They explain some recent changes in Soviet design requirements for missile guidance systems. Our specialists tell me they’re quite interesting.”

“I thought the Soviet had rolled up all your networks,” said the Director.

“That’s what the Soviets think, too,” replied Porat with a wink.

The Director, who had learned a little Russian years ago, leafed through the collection and nodded appreciatively.

“Coin of the realm. Any more where this came from?”

“We’ll see,” said Porat.

The Mossad chief withdrew another brown envelope from the table and handed it to the Director.

“More goodies?” said the Director, opening the second envelope. This one contained the names, photographs, and passport numbers of a dozen Arabs.

“These gentlemen are Palestinian terrorists,” said Porat. “Most of them are members of the PFLP, although some also maintain contact with Fatah. Several are connected with Black September. We have reason to believe that they are planning attacks against American targets over the next six to twelve months. We thought you would be interested.”

“Indeed we are,” said the Director. He handed the packet to Stone, who began leafing casually through the dozen photographs. Porat watched Stone intently as he thumbed through the packet. Stone paused for an instant when he saw the face of Jamal Ramlawi.

“We like to help our friends,” said Porat crisply. “And we hope that our friends will help us.”

“What can we do for you?” asked the Director once again.

“Israel has a terrorism problem. That is no secret to you. What you may not realize is that we have decided to take the most aggressive measures to deal with the problem.”

“What does that mean?” asked the Director. As he spoke, he was picking pieces of lint off the legs of his gray pinstripe trousers.

“I will tell you exactly what it means,” said Porat. “We are going to war with Black September. We intend to eliminate its leaders—every one of them—before they kill any more of our people. And we will punish those who planned the Munich massacre in the only way that is appropriate.”

“I don’t think I need any more details, thank you,” said the Director.

“Good.”

“I have a question, Nathan….”

“Natan,” said Porat, correcting him.

“What I’m not clear about, Natan, is what you want us to do?”

“Let us talk frankly,” said Porat. “When we ask for your help in fighting terrorism, we have in mind something quite specific. We assume that the United States tries, just as we do, to develop contacts within the terrorist organizations.”

“No comment,” said the Director.

“Of course not. But you asked me what we want and so I am telling you. We don’t know what contacts you may or may not have. That is none of our business. But we do want your help, whatever it might be, in destroying the Fatah terrorist arm that calls itself Black September. We will destroy this organization—and its leadership—whether you help us or not. But we would prefer to do it with your help.”

The Director cocked his head and looked at Porat out of one eye. “But you haven’t told me yet how you want us to help you,” said the Director.

“This is the Middle East,” said Porat, smiling. “A merchant does not name his price. So let us leave the question of how you might help us to the imagination.”

“Very well,” said the Director. “Let us leave it to the imagination. We’ll get back to you.”

There was another pause.

“Say, Director,” said Cohen. “Listening to you talk about agreeing with Natan reminds me of the story about the rabbi and the two suitors. Have you heard that one?”

“I suspect not,” said the Director.

“Okay. There was this rabbi from Lublin who tried to resolve a quarrel between two men who both wanted to marry the same woman. Are you sure you haven’t heard this one?”

“Quite sure,” said the Director.

“Okay. The rabbi asks the first suitor to come and make his case, and the young man says he should get the girl because he has money, a good job, a handsome face. When he finishes, the rabbi says, ‘You’re right, I agree with you.’

“Then the second suitor arrives and argues his case. And he also has a long list of reasons why the woman should marry him. Fame, fortune, eternal bliss. The rabbi hears him out and says: ‘You’re right. I agree with you.’

“Now the rabbi’s wife, who has been listening to all this, goes over to the poor rabbi from Lublin and says he is crazy to be telling both of the suitors he agrees with them. She tells him he has to make up his mind and choose.

“ ‘You’re right,’ says the rabbi. ‘I agree with you.’

This time everyone laughed.

The Director repeated the punch line to himself several times.

The meeting turned from serious business to ceremony. Glasses of vodka were poured, Polish-style, and toasts were drunk to friendship and cooperation. Stone took Cohen aside as they were leaving and said that it might be a week or so before the Director would have a response to Porat’s request for American help in dealing with Black September.

“What are they up to?” the Director asked Stone several hours later.

They were walking along the beach. The Director didn’t dare discuss sensitive business with Stone in his hotel room, or even in the American Embassy. That was asking for trouble, given Israeli surveillance technology. Even on the beach, Stone was carrying a small portable radio to mask the conversation from the ears of any long-range antennae.

“It’s a squeeze play,” said Stone.

“Explain what that means for an old friend who never played baseball.”

“The Israelis want us to give up Ramlawi,” said Stone. “It couldn’t be more obvious. They know we won’t admit openly that we’re running him as an agent, but they evidently suspect it. Putting his picture in with the other Palestinian mug shots was a clear tip-off.”

“Obviously,” said the Director. “But of what?”

“That he’s on their hit list,” answered Stone. “They probably mean what they said. They seem convinced that he’s part of Black September. Apparently they also suspect he was behind the Munich operation. And they probably do suspect that Ramlawi is planning to attack Americans. Maybe they’ve even heard about ‘Nabil’s’ supposed plot to kill the president. But that’s not really the message, the simple fact that they regard Ramlawi as dangerous to American and Israeli interests.”

“Then what is the message?”

“The message is that they are onto us. They know that we have contact with Ramlawi. And they are planning to kill him.”

“And?”

“And they want our help, either by passing on the intelligence take from Ramlawi, or in finding him.”

“And killing him.”

“Yes.”

They were walking toward a more crowded area of the beach. Several girls were out frolicking in the late afternoon sun. They were dressed in tiny bikinis, little more than string and loose triangles of fabric. The Director, still dressed in his gray pinstripe suit, looked appreciatively at one of the girls. Though only a teenager, she had the largest breasts the Director could ever remember seeing. They were so firm that they barely seemed to move, even when she was running. The girl smiled back flirtatiously. Apparently men in pinstripe suits were exotic on the beach at Tel Aviv.