Agents of Innocence (34 page)

“Speculative?” asked Levi, feeling a knot in the stomach he remembered too well from the old days.

“And too dangerous if you’re wrong. Look some more.”

So Levi went back to his files. He read them once again. He found more details. Then in early June there was a startling development in the case. A piece of intelligence arrived from Europe—from a friendly official in Rome—that was so unmistakably clear and so obvious that it forced Levi’s superiors to pay attention to what he was saying.

Levi delivered his briefing on Jamal Ramlawi to the intelligence chiefs in late June 1972. They met away from the downtown offices, in a more modern compound on a hill overlooking the Haifa Road, just before the turn for Herzliya. The sign out front said: “Ministry of Defense, Bureau of Research.”

The group was called in Hebrew the
Rashai
. The Chiefs. That was enough.

Levi waited in the hall outside the meeting room for the Chiefs to finish another piece of business. He was nervous. Not the fear in his gut he had known when he was an officer conducting operations in enemy territory. It was more like shyness. In Beirut, his only true emotion had been fear, and that had necessarily been mute. Now Levi had to speak for himself.

A uniformed aide opened the door and motioned for him to come in. He was surprised by how bright it was, bright with the sunlight of Israel in midsummer.

The men at the conference table were dressed as Levi was, in open-neck, short-sleeve shirts. Most of them were smoking. Many of them were bald. It might have been a philosophy seminar at the Hebrew University. The faces and the room would have looked almost the same.

Levi’s eye focused on an older man sitting at the far end of the table. He was a short man with bushy eyebrows, and he was smoking a pipe. Levi imagined that he must be the chief of the Mossad. In truth, Levi had never met the chief and wasn’t even sure of his real name.

“So?” said the little man with the bushy eyebrows. It was a brief rhetorical question, which he answered for himself. “So this young man is Mr. Levi, and he has come to us today to tell us about his research into Black September. Is that right?”

“Yes,” said Levi. His voice sounded like a frog croaking.

“So?”

“My briefing concerns a Palestinian named Jamal Ramlawi,” began Levi. “First, I will tell you what we know about him. Then I will tell you what we suspect.”

“Yes, yes,” said the short man with bushy eyebrows. “Don’t keep us waiting.”

“Yes, chief,” said Levi.

“Don’t call me chief,” said the little man.

“Yes, sir,” said Levi. He must be the head of the service, Levi thought. That is the way the head of Mossad should look. Like everyone’s uncle.

“First, what we know,” said Levi. “We know that Jamal Ramlawi is a leader of Black September. Until two weeks ago, that was a near-certainty. Now it is a certainty, thanks to a piece of intelligence that we obtained from Rome. I believe that most of you have heard the tape recording of Jamal Ramlawi. Yes? I have brought along a tape recorder and can play it now if anyone would like to hear it.”

“We’ve heard it,” said the man with the bushy eyebrows.

“The Rome tape proves what we have suspected for many months,” said Levi.

“What is that?” asked the little man skeptically, puffing on his pipe.

“It proves that Jamal Ramlawi, a senior Fatah intelligence officer, is the chief logistician of Black September. It proves that he obtained weapons and explosives for Black September in Italy, and probably in other countries of Europe, too. The tape is evidence of what we have been trying to tell the world. Black September
is
Fatah.”

Another man spoke up. One that Levi had missed in looking around the room. He didn’t look like an Israeli; he looked like an American. A professor at the Harvard Law School, maybe. He was tall and thin, so fit that his body seemed almost stringy. He was dressed in loose khaki slacks and a white button-down Oxford-cloth shirt. He wore a pair of clear plastic glasses, which gave him a slightly boyish look. He spoke with a quick, sharp tone of voice that was at once intelligent and impatient.

“The tape doesn’t prove that,” said the button-down professor. “What you said may be true. I personally have no doubt that it is true. But the tape does not prove it. The tape proves only that Ramlawi made arrangements to obtain four automatic pistols and one hundred kilos of explosive in Rome. It doesn’t even prove that, actually, but we will take that on faith.”

Levi’s throat felt dry. He took a drink of water and continued his briefing.

“The tape is only the final piece of information. We have collateral evidence of Ramlawi’s role in Black September. We have photographs of him meeting with a man who was arrested in Cairo last year after the Black September attack on the Jordanian prime minister.”

“Soooo?” said another voice from around the table. He was a fat man wearing a knitted yarmulke. “So what do photos prove? Proximity. Contact. And what is that, my friend? Nothing!”

“We have transcripts of the Egyptian interrogation of the Black September terrorists in which they say they received training from a man who fits the description of Ramlawi.”

“Oh very nice!” said a tall, thin man sitting by the window. “So now we’re depending on the Egyptians for our intelligence? God forbid! How do they know anything? What are they all of a sudden, geniuses?”

Everyone laughed.

Levi realized then that he was getting razzed. That this group liked nothing better in the world than giving young officers a hard time. He set his feet more squarely under him and continued the briefing.

“We have other collateral evidence about Ramlawi’s involvement in Black September, but I won’t bore you with it. Take my word for it. I have analyzed the evidence carefully, and I tell you on my honor that it is accurate. The man is involved in Black September operations. Period. Take my word for it or find another analyst.”

“Not so loud, please,” said the man with bushy eyebrows. He relit his pipe. He was happy now. He didn’t want facts. For all Levi knew, the Chiefs had all spent more time with the files than he had. They wanted analysis.

“Now I will turn to the interesting part,” said Levi. “Here we are not dealing with hard facts, but with speculations—guesses—that are based on the available evidence.”

“What is your speculation?” said the little man. “Just tell us. Don’t make a big production of it, please.”

“The speculation is that Jamal Ramlawi is an American agent.”

There was a momentary silence in the room, broken by the sound of chairs moving, cigarettes being lit, pipes being puffed.

“That’s crazy,” said the little man with bushy eyebrows. “Completely crazy. Why would our friends the Americans do this? Tell us the evidence for this crazy theory.”

“The evidence is complicated,” said Levi.

“Soooo?” said the fat man with the knitted yarmulke. “Do we look stupid?”

“First, we know that Ramlawi is impulsive. We know that in Beirut he led a wild life. Chasing women. Dozens of women. We think that he even had an affair with the wife of a French diplomat.”

“Very nice,” said the tall, thin man by the window. “They deserve each other.”

“We know Ramlawi is a pet of the Fatah leadership,” continued Levi. “We know that he was one of the Fatah men who was sent to Egypt for a special training course in intelligence. We know that he speaks many languages, including English, French, Italian, and German. We know that he has travelled extensively.”

“Sooooo?” queried the fat man. “What does this have to do with the CIA.”

“I’m coming to that,” said Levi. “In Beirut, we collected the travel histories of everyone flying in and out of Beirut International Airport.”

“We know. We know,” said the man with the bushy eyebrows. “Whose idea do you think that was? Eh?”

“I’m coming to the important part,” said Levi testily. “In analyzing the travel records, we find two instances in which Jamal Ramlawi was out of Lebanon in 1970 at the same time as a CIA case officer working under diplomatic cover at the American Embassy in Beirut.”

The law school professor rapped his pen against his glass.

“Mr. Levi,” said the law school professor quietly. “What is the name of this CIA officer?”

“Rogers. Thomas Rogers.”

“And where did they go, the terrorist and the CIA man?”

“To Kuwait in March 1970, and to Egypt in May 1970. We cannot confirm that they actually met. But we are sure that they went to those countries at the same time.”

“It could be a coincidence, of course,” said the button-down profesor. “Even twice in one year. But it is interesting, I must admit.”

“Yes,” said the little man with the bushy eyebrows.

“Yes,” said the fat man in the yarmulke.

“Continue,” said the professor.

“The second important piece of evidence is an agent report in the files about a visit to Rome in July 1970 by an American intelligence officer. I wouldn’t have found it at all, since it never went into the Fatah file. I noticed it when I was researching the background of the Italian general in Rome who provided us with the tape.”

“Go on, go on,” said the little man. “Spare us the details.”

“According to this agent in Rome, the American intelligence man had flown in specially to meet with an Arab agent, a Palestinian perhaps. The Italians never figured out who he was supposed to meet. Neither did we. But last week I had one of our friends do a travel check to see if anyone interesting had travelled from Beirut to Rome in July 1970. And guess who popped out from one of the MEA passenger lists, travelling with a phony Algerian passport that he has used several times since then?”

“Ramlawi,” said several voices around the table.

“Correct,” said Levi, beaming.

“And who was this American who came to Rome?” asked the button-down professor.

“Marsh. John Marsh.”

“And why did Mr. Marsh come, and not Mr. Rogers?”

Levi thought for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he said eventually.

“Good,” said the professor. “If you had answered that question, I would have suspected that you were making everything up. Sometimes the correct answer is that we don’t know what the correct answer is.”

Heads around the table nodded sagely. Levi nodded too.

“Go on!” barked the little man with bushy eyebrows. “What are you waiting for?”

“After Rome, everything gets a little fuzzy,” said Levi. “We have a report from an agent in Lebanon. I know a little about him, since I used to collect his reports from dead drops. He is a priest, and something of an amateur detective in his spare time. This may be a little hard to understand, so bear with me. The priest had received from his Mossad case officer in Europe a list of people in whom we had some intelligence interest. One of them was Jamal Ramlawi. So he took it upon himself to put a question to Rogers, the CIA man, about Ramlawi.”

“He did what?” asked the fat man with the knitted yarmulke.

“He asked Rogers, the CIA man, for information about Ramlawi.”

“What an idiot!” said the fat man. “And what did Rogers say?”

“He told the priest to ask the Israelis.”

“Ach!” said the fat man. “What an idiot we have for an agent.”

“What else?” asked the professor.

“One last thing. An agent’s report that I carried out of Syria myself. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a report from a Palestinian inside the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”

“Yes, yes. We know the name of the group,” said the little man with bushy eyebrows. “What did the report say?”

“It said that the leadership of the PFLP was convinced that there was an American agent inside Fatah. The PFLP leadership wasn’t sure about the identity of the agent, but they suspected that it was Ramlawi.”

“Well, well, well,” said the little man. As he talked, he inserted a pipe cleaner in the stem of his pipe and withdrew a wad of wet brown goo. “So, now we are getting our intelligence from the lunatics in the PLO, is that what you are telling me?”

“We take it wherever we can get it,” said Levi.

“Correct,” said the law school professor with the clear plastic glasses. “And since you understand that fact of life so well, perhaps you can answer the big question.”

“What is that?” said Levi.

“The big question is what should we do about all of this?”

“You want my recommendation?”

“Why not?”

“Let me think.”

“Not too long,” said the professor. “If you think too long, you will become like the rest of us. Don’t think. Just say.”

“We could try to use Ramlawi ourselves. Threaten to expose his contacts with the Americans if he doesn’t agree to work with us.”

“Wrong,” said the professor. “Interesting, but wrong. The Palestinian would just assume that the Americans had told everything to their Israeli friends. Trying to blackmail him would accomplish nothing. It would only cut off the American connection. Any more ideas?”

“We could make an approach to Rogers, the CIA officer. Or to Marsh, the one who was in Rome.”

“Wrong again. Too risky. We do not want to start recruiting CIA officers. We don’t need the aggravation. Do you want to know the correct answer?”

“Of course,” said Levi.

“Don’t do
anything
. At first, that is always the best thing to do. Nothing. Just watch and wait. Don’t make the water muddy by stirring it up. Be patient.”

“Yes, sir,” said Levi.

That was it. People began rising from their seats. Levi felt deflated, somehow, to have travelled this far, assembled all this material, only to be told to do nothing. Perhaps it showed, because as the group was filing out of the room, the button-down professor and the diminutive man with the bushy eyebrows both walked over to Levi.

Levi watched them approach and wondered, which one is the boss? Which one is the true face of Mossad? The wily little man with the sardonic sense of humor or the clipped, carefully controlled analyst? The man in the button-down shirt approached Levi first and shook his hand.

“My name is Natan Porat,” said the man in the clear glasses. “I am the chief of the service. You did a fine job today. Keep up the good work.”