Esther's Sling (2 page)

The deal offered by Margolis allowed PTC to aggressively bid as a subcontractor to design dedicated chips for a Tor M-1E surface-to-air missile system being built for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Margolis would guarantee a nice profit for PTC if the company bid for the contract at cost, ensuring a win. Behind the scenes, a Canadian company cont
rolled by “Michael Jenkins” entered into a technology consulting project with PTC that guaranteed a nice profit for no real work. For Gordienko the money was welcome. But the real motivation was the chance to inflict harm on an Islamic nation. He only hoped that whatever the real purpose was for the chips now in his briefcase, it would wreak massive destruction on Iran.

“I will pay you half of what I owe next week. The balance will be paid when the chips are inside the Tor computers.”

Gordienko nodded. He was satisfied with the business response, but still far from satisfied with his knowledge of the man across from him. “At least tell me what country. I know you are either American or Israeli or British, but I think American.”

“I am Canadian. You have seen my passport many times.” Amit smiled at the man he had successfully recruited into the service of Mossad eight months earlier.

“Come on Mike. I deserve to know at least this much. I deserve to know who I am working for right now.”

Amit looked out the window. If this same series of questions had occurred in Moscow, he would be very nervous about a setup. In the distance, a rain shower was moving in their direction. “I have friends in Washington. That’s as much as I will say.”

“American. I knew it.”

Amit Margolis smiled. He had not lied to his Russian friend, at least not directly. Disinformation was the ancient art of intelligence agencies and he was an artist.
Seeds
, he thought to himself.
I am planting seeds
.

The chips fabricated by
Citadel would soon be on their way to Moscow to be tested, certified and then delivered by Phase Technologies Corporation to Diamond-Alnay Concern, the leading manufacturer of high-technology military equipment in Russia. The chips were destined for the command, control and network integration computers for 29 batteries of the mobile Tor M-1E systems purchased by Iran and scheduled for delivery in early 2007.

The Application Specific Integrated Circuits, or ASIC chips, were subcontracted to a Chinese chip foundry instead of being sourced inside Russia because the Russian government would not let the latest generation of Field Programmable Gate Array chips be sold for export. As designed by PTC, these specific ASIC chips would prohibit the Iranians from using symmetric enciphering keys longer than 110 bits and limit the number of targets that the system could track simultaneously – a safety valve for the remote possibility that the Russian Air Force might someday need to attack Iran, or the more likely risk that Iran might deliver one of these systems to an enemy of Russia. This type of degradation of cutting edge technology was a routine practice of both the U.S. and Russia when selling military hardware. Every country wanted to retain a
qualitative military advantage if at all possible.

“Gentlemen, please be seated.” These had become the trademark words of Eli Cohen to signal the start of any meeting. He would use this phrase even when, as now, everyone present was already seated. As the long-serving prime minister of Israel, Cohen commanded the full attention and respect of the small gathering. The date was Wednesday, May 20, 2009, and Prime Minister Cohen had just returned from Washington, where he held his first face-to-face meeting in the White House with the new President of the United States. He had no need to tell the men in this room just how poorly that meeting had gone; it had been the only news story occupying Israel’s attention for the last three days.

Cohen and the six other men in the room formed Israel’s unofficial ”Kitchen” Cabinet – the small group that made the most critical decisions facing the tiny nation of almost 6 million Jews and 1.7 million Arabs. The discussions of this group were always important. Sometimes the words being exchanged probed the very issue of Israel’s continued existence as a nation-state. Today was one of those days. The sense of isolation for these men was only accentuated by the meter of reinforced concrete that formed the walls and roof of this room in the basement of the prime minister’s office building located at 3 Kaplan Street in Jerusalem.

Cohen sat at the head of the conference table and opened a new bottle of water. He averaged about a bottle every hour – three liters over the course of his typically long work days, the end point of a habit started as a young Army sergeant in command of a Sherman tank during the Six Day War. At age 62 he still looked like he would be right at home inside a tank, his strong physique obvious despite his full head of gray hair and the lines that etched deeper on his face during times like this.

The prime minister took a long swig of water. “I will start by saying that my trip was as bad as you are all thinking,” he began. “If anything, the headlines understate the problem. The man who came here as a candidate last summer and gave that speech on Iran was just bullshitting for votes. Unfortunately I learned the man’s real thoughts on Monday. Frankly, I am not even sure we have an ally in the White House anymore.”

A thump interrupted the prime minister’s words. Zvi Avner sat two seats to his left. The 56-year-old Israeli defense minister had pounded his fist on the table, a reaction which surprised no one. “We should have gone while Bush was president,” he said. “We had the chance in December. I told everybody this. We knew this!”

“Please calm down Zvi
,” the prime minister responded. “We all know that we had a friend, but we know equally well that he had not yet been convinced that a strike was necessary. And let’s face the facts here – we have been floating along and relying upon the U.S. Air Force as our strike force. We do not even have a plan yet. At least not one that, in my opinion, offers the right odds of success without relying upon the Americans. We have to change our thinking and develop a plan that assumes we are acting alone.” He paused for a second before adding, “And that works!”

Heads nodded around the room
, signifying unanimous consent on Cohen’s last point. The prime minister understood that his point was uncontroversial. But he also realized that reaching a plan the extended Israeli Cabinet would support and that didn’t include the armed forces of the greatest military power on earth would be a great challenge. He was not at all sure he would achieve this goal.

Benjamin Raibani shifted in his chair as he always did when  preparing to speak. He sat between Cohen and Avner, a symbolic position for the minister who had no real portfolio
to worry about. As the oldest man in the room, Raibani was responsible for imparting wisdom and caution into the discussions and thinking of the Israeli Cabinet, especially when it came to Iran. Without any practical duties, the 71-year-old minister of strategic affairs was free to apply his considerable brain power to any situation without the constraints that come from daily obligations. He had been a friend and confidant of Eli Cohen for more than four decades and there was no secret left unknown between the two men. “Please, Eli, can you summarize where we stand with the Americans and especially the president?”

On a lighter day Cohen would joke about his nickname for Raibani, the
“Metronome” – the man who always returned the group to topics at hand and maintained the proper pace. But right now, Cohen welcomed this quality in Raibani. “Yes, you’re right. Let me hit the ... well I would say highlights, but in this case the right word is lowlights. First, we have all read the Mossad file on the president. I have to give kudos to the Mossad analyst or analysts who wrote the summary. Now that I have met the man one-on-one, I realize that they were spot on. I made a couple of pages of notes on the flight home that I gave to Ami. I am sure these will help update the profile.” Amichai “Ami” Levy was the director of Mossad and, in the mind of Eli Cohen, the most important man in Israel not present in this room at this moment.

The prime minister continued. “I am going to be charitable and refrain from calling the man an anti-Semite, but there is no doubt that he is a product of the decades long t
ilt toward the Palestinian cause among the academic left in America. I went to Washington hopeful that the weight of the office would overcome his background. I left disappointed. We had the predictable dialogue on the Palestinians.” Cohen paused, his eyes staring at nothing, his lip quivered slightly. “No. It was no dialogue. I received a fifteen minute lecture on the importance of a Palestinian state and the … um … I am trying to recall the word. Ah, yes, the ‘intransigence’ of Israel in general and me in particular.” Cohen drank more water. “This discussion is not important. After the lecture I defended myself, of course, but then I asked him specifically about Iran. He referred to his CIA reports and told me that Iran was at least three to four years away from a bomb. He stated flatly that he believes that under his administration the U.S. and Iran will be able to negotiate honestly and fairly – these were his words – ‘honestly and fairly’. The man is incredibly naïve.” Cohen stabbed his finger into the air as he spoke to emphasize his point.

“I tried to nail him down so that I could judge where we stand now. So I asked him a hypothetical. I said ‘Mister President, assume the CIA walks into your office tomorrow and tells you that they have absolute proof that the Iranians will have a working bomb in six months. Will you then join us in using military force to remove this program?’” The prime minister took the time to look each man in the room briefly in the eye. He leaned forward in his chair, his right elbow on the table in front of him supporting his weight. His index finger pointed outward to the opposite wall as if facing the President of the United States. “Do you know what that man said to me?” he asked rhetorically. “He said ‘you are asking me a hypothetical question. All I can tell you is that it is the policy of the United States to insist that all signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty abide by their obligations.’” Eli Cohen was now reliving the moment when he came to the conclusion that Israel stood alone in the world. His face was reddening and everyone in the room could see it. ‘“If Iran fails in its obligations,
then the United States will work with you and all other nations to contain any threat.’”

Cohen leaned further forward, assuming the posture he wished he could have
assumed three days earlier with the president. “I replied, ‘Mister President, with all due respect, we are not in a theoretical debate at Harvard. We are discussing life and death for eight million Israeli citizens. We are discussing in real terms whether or not the world will stand by as it did in the Thirties while darkness overwhelms the Jewish people. We are discussing the next Holocaust.’” Cohen relaxed slightly, his right arm returning to a rested position on the table. His eyes shifted downward. “Well that man was clearly angered at my tone. And I freely admit that perhaps I was somewhat condescending to the most powerful man on the planet.” Cohen offered the hint of a smile, breaking the tension of the moment. The other men in the room all knew Eli Cohen intimately, including his strengths and weaknesses. Some of them even smiled. “All he would say to me in response was something like ‘I will continue to review this situation in a rational and restrained manner.’ Without saying it directly, the message was clear. This man will not join us in a military strike. We are on our own.”

“To hell with him,” blurted out Zvi Avner. “What about our friends?”

“To hell with him?” admonished Cohen. “He is the goddamn president. There will be no U.S. military action without his orders.

“And most of our ‘friends’ worked to get him elected!” the prime minister continued. “Here, I will tell you a story. I had dinner Monday night with Senator Schein of New York. I relayed to him just what I have told you. Maybe I was even more blunt in my view of the motives of this president. He then spent five minutes reassuring me that the president will be a friend of Israel in the long-run and chalked our discussion up to his political inexperience. I don’t know, gentlemen. But I think our friends in America are in denial over this guy. I wonder
if we have lost American Jews.”

The prime minister then spent another ten minutes highlighting his meetings with senior American leaders, both Jew and Gentile. He summed up the situation. “We maintain deep support in the U.S. military and intelligence community. But we have lost the president. And that loss means we are alone in our struggle with Iran, at least when it comes to overt military support. I tell each of you here and now, we will develop a working plan over the next few months that assumes we are alone and addresses every contingency. If the day comes when we must strike Iran, we will have a plan that will succeed. This process starts right now. Zvi, please review the military issues as you see them.”

Eli Cohen finally leaned his weight back against his chair. He was no longer red. He had calmed and now was in his analytical mode, his mind focused on the enormous challenge that fell upon his shoulders. He swiveled his chair to reach back to the credenza behind him. Everyone in the room knew what he was reaching for. But for those who would soon be offended, they would suffer in silence as their prime minister indulged his famous addiction. Cohen swiveled back to the conference table. In his right hand he had a cigar cutter. In his left hand he held a Cohiba Espléndidos cigar. He clipped the tip and immediately began rolling the now truncated end between his lips. He placed the cutter on the table and reached into his right pocket to remove a cheap lighter, expertly applying the flame to the far end of the cigar.

The only man in the room comfortable enough to
respond, stood and took two steps over to the wall, turning on an upgraded air filtration system. The system had been added specifically for this prime minister and these occasions. Benjamin Raibani returned to his seat, rolling his eyes for the amusement of the other men in the room. “I thought you were giving up cigars?”

Cohen exhaled. “That is obviously an Arab disinformation campaign designed to undermine the morale of Israel.” Most in the room laughed.

“I hope you at least offered the president one of those,” replied Raibani.

“Well, at least he is a smoker. Of course, I could only offer him a cheap Dominican,” Cohen answered
with a smile, to the bemusement of the room. The prime minister had publicly switched to cigars rolled in the Dominican Republic to avoid offending his American benefactors. The conference room they now occupied was not public.

Zvi Avner cleared his throat. He had not been laughing, his mind fully absorbed by the subject of this meeting. Along with the man seated to his right, Benjamin Raibani, Avner had once served as the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Force, only more recently than the older Raibani. For the prior three years, Avner had been retired from the military and serving in the Likud Party as a member of the Knesset. He had embraced political life in Jerusalem fully, including indulging himself in the endless cocktail parties and dinners that were
the province of the powerful and connected. His waistline reflected his newly adopted lifestyle, no longer the reflection of fitness expected in a senior Israeli military officer. When Cohen asked him to become the minister of defense two months earlier, Avner did not hesitate. It was the post that he had always believed he was uniquely suited for.

“Thank you, Prime Minister.” Avner opened a manila folder. He picked up a pen and held it like a drum stick in his right hand. It was a long time mannerism that no one could understand or get him to change. He had to have a pen in his hand while he spoke. “You are indeed right that our planning has, unfortunately, been U.S. centric,” Avner began. “We have hoped all along to have a strike force led by B-2 Spirit bombers of the U.S. Air Force. They are a unique asset of the United States that we simply cannot reproduce.

“With the U.S. out of the picture, I have to start with a question that this group needs to answer. What is our strategic goal now? Our planning up to now has assumed at least ninety percent destruction of Persian nuclear infrastructure and significant damage to the Persian air defense network, ballistic missile inventory, electrical grid and military command and control.” Avner had an odd custom of referring to Iran as Persia and the Iranians as Persians. “Of course, most of this destruction was coming from the American Air Force. So if it is just us alone, I need to know what we are trying to achieve.” Avner was talking directly to his boss.

“This is a fair question,” Cohen replied. “I am open to discussion on this, but I will say that if we are being realistic then we have to narrow the scope of our goals. First, forget everything other than the nuclear program itself. The question is how do we define success?” No one in the room wanted to step onto that landmine. Prime Minister Cohen scanned the room but wasn’t surprised by the silence. “Okay, I will take a crack at it. I say if we go, then we must set back their program by at least a decade. Comments?”