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  So whether it was because he really wanted to go back to school, or just to get out from under the eyes of his father-in-law, Ashraf Marwan decided to put in a request to study abroad. To justify it, he cited the poor level of educational institutions in Egypt. Even Cairo University, where he had completed his bachelor’s degree, and which was considered the best in the Arab world, didn’t meet his profession’s standards. Criticisms of Egypt’s higher education system, especially in the sciences, were even voiced in public.30 Without a doubt, life outside Egypt looked more promising. In 1968, the Marwans relocated to London, where he was to undertake a master’s degree program in chemistry.

  Nasser gave his approval.

  IN LATE 1968, Ashraf and Mona Marwan arrived in one of the most dynamic and stimulating cities on earth. The music and fashion mecca, the ultimate playground for the beautiful and the wealthy—this was London of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, boutiques on Carnaby Street, fashion realms of Chelsea and Knightsbridge. The reigning designer was Mary Quant, inventor of the miniskirt and hot pants; and the supermodel was Twiggy, who gave new, diminutive dimensions to feminine beauty. London had become the setting for countless movies and novels, the global capital of the new world culture, the premier destination for anyone fashionable and young.

  It fit Ashraf Marwan like a glove.

  The couple quickly settled in. Nasser had arranged a modest allowance for them, and Marwan added to it his salary as a junior employee at the Egyptian embassy in London. He also began his studies, and Mona took care of the home and raised their boy, Gamal. Their relationship was a good one. Mona loved Ashraf, even revered him. And Marwan, even if he didn’t love her in the same way, at least remained faithful. London, however, was a city of infinite temptations, and Ashraf Marwan was easily tempted. Soon after their arrival, he was spotted at the card tables of the Playboy Club, the most grandiose casino in the city, which, since its opening in 1965, had become a magnet for those wealthy enough to play there. Marwan wasn’t among them, but he somehow managed to get the most out of what London offered, and to feed his fondness for gambling.

  But he was careless, and soon his behavior caught the attention, and fierce disapproval, of Nasser. With his own two hands, Ashraf Marwan precipitated the greatest crisis that ever took place between them—and he nearly lost everything he had gained.

  Soon after arriving in London, the Marwans befriended a couple who themselves had only recently arrived: Sheikh Abdullah al-Mubarak al-Sabah and his second wife, Souad, daughter of Muhammad al-Sabah. The sheikh was the youngest child of the founder of modern Kuwait, Mubarak al-Kabir. In 1954 he became commander of the Kuwaiti armed forces, and he served for a few years as deputy prime minister until his resignation and retirement from political life in 1961. He spent the 1960s outside of Kuwait, mostly in London, until he returned to his home country in the mid-1970s. In 1960 he married Souad, who was nearly thirty years younger, and who would give birth to five of his six children. But Souad al-Sabah was also an important personality in her own right. At age thirty-one she finished her bachelor’s degree at the University of Cairo with honors, and she would later receive her doctorate in economics from the University of Surrey in Great Britain. She was also a poet, publishing three collections in 1960. Later she published additional books, including academic works. She was also something of a social activist, speaking out on the status of women, education, and culture.

  The sheikh, who was a pan-Arabist and ideologically anti-British, first met Nasser in 1956 and was immediately enraptured, counting himself as one of the Egyptian leader’s most ardent followers. So was his wife, who gradually became the model of an educated, modern Arab woman. By Nasser’s invitation, they moved to Egypt in 1965 and built a web of relationships there. The sheikh took part in various official ceremonies, such as the opening of parliamentary sessions, Revolution Day celebrations, and visits from foreign leaders. The couple became close friends of the Nassers and were invited to Mona and Ashraf’s wedding.31

  So it was only natural that upon the Marwans’ arrival in London, the Al-Sabahs took them under their wing, showing them the city and taking them out for nights on the town. And when Ashraf Marwan’s gambling habit got him in trouble, Souad even covered his debts. We have no reason to suspect any romantic link between Souad and Marwan. He may have been handsome and charismatic, and she was only two years his elder while her husband was much older, but still there is no evidence of an affair. And indeed, the 1995 biography she wrote about her husband is a paean to the man with whom she shared a rich, long life. Nor is it reasonable to assume that Marwan cheated on his wife so soon after his marriage—not just out of fear of his father-in-law but also because infidelity was not known to be among his weaknesses. The explanation that Souad gave after the fact was compelling: She believed it was simply unthinkable that the daughter of the greatest leader in the Arab world, mother to Nasser’s grandson, should live in poverty. Since she had the means to prevent it, she acted accordingly. This also fit the Kuwaiti couple’s pattern of financial generosity: In early 1963 the sheikh donated twenty-five jeeps to the Egyptian army, and twice, just before the 1967 and 1973 wars, he gave $1 million to help defray Egypt’s military expenses. In 1966 he personally gave Nasser $1 million to do with as he pleased. Nasser donated the money to education in Egypt.32 So it was clear that the Al-Sabahs, who had enjoyed the fruits of Kuwaiti oil, saw it as completely natural to support projects they thought were dear to Nasser’s heart, or the hearts of his family.

  However, it is difficult to discern what Ashraf Marwan was thinking when he went into debt and accepted the money. As someone who had worked under Sami Sharaf, he knew what kind of scrutiny faced anyone connected to the Egyptian regime. That was why he went to London in the first place. Marwan was well aware that Nasser strongly opposed any effort to translate the reverence people felt for him into gifts to his family. So he must have known what kind of tightrope he was walking when he took the money, and what kind of crisis it might cause if it were discovered. But Ashraf Marwan apparently enjoyed taking risks. He had tremendous self-confidence, in part because he had succeeded in becoming part of the presidential family in Egypt, and this confidence stayed with him so long as he didn’t come into daily contact with Nasser himself. He clearly didn’t see anything wrong with taking the money. In his view—a view grounded firmly in the norms of the society he grew up in—both giving and taking bribes were an inextricable part of life. In this case one couldn’t even call it a bribe. Ashraf Marwan had nothing he could give the Al-Sabahs in return, other than a feeling of intimacy with the president’s family.

  Under the circumstances, a major clash with Nasser was only a matter of time.

  The Marwans’ deepening friendship with the Al-Sabahs did not go unnoticed at the Egyptian embassy in London, which had been given a standing order to keep an eye on the president’s son-in-law. Shortly after the two couples began spending time together, Sami Sharaf started getting reports. And when money changed hands, he heard about it immediately. The distance from Sharaf’s office to Nasser’s ear was not far. The damning evidence was on the president’s desk within hours, and his reaction was swift and explosive. He ordered the embassy to put Marwan on the first flight to Cairo. Upon his arrival, Marwan was taken directly to Nasser, who demanded an explanation. Not that anything Marwan said would have made a difference. He tried to argue that London’s high cost of living put him in a position where he had to take the money. Nasser, however, had heard about the couple’s lifestyle in the city, their nights out, and Ashraf’s gambling. He demanded that his daughter return to Egypt, and when she did, he insisted that she divorce Marwan.

  But Mona, who loved Ashraf with all her heart, refused.

  Just as in their dispute over the marriage itself, this time, too, it emerged that in the struggle between the peeved father and his implacable daughter, Mona had a leg up. Nasser capitulated. He summoned Marwan’s father to meet him, and the two worked out an agreement that
would allow the marriage to continue without the risk that the president of Egypt would gain a reputation as someone whose family is supported by a Kuwaiti sheikh.33 First, Marwan would return the money he received from Souad al-Sabah. Second, Ashraf and Mona would move back to Egypt. Ashraf would go back to working for Sami Sharaf; he would continue his studies in London but he would go to England only for a few days at a time to submit papers or take exams. The rest of the time he would remain under Sharaf’s watchful eye. And so, Ashraf Marwan went back to the life he had so desperately wanted to escape.34

  Although Marwan’s standing in Nasser’s eyes was certainly fragile, the president would at times make use of his diplomatic skills. Possibly the most important case involved Saad el-Shazly, who later became chief of staff of Egypt’s armed forces during the 1973 war. In his memoirs, Shazly recounts how, in March 1969, he quit his post as commander of the special forces because of Nasser’s decision to appoint Ahmad Ismail to the position of army chief of staff, replacing Abdel Munim Riad, who had been killed by an Israeli mortar attack. Shazly and Ismail had been bitter rivals since 1960, and in Egyptian military circles everybody knew about the punch that Shazly had landed on Ismail’s jaw during one of their disagreements.

  Attempts to convince Shazly to withdraw his resignation had little effect. Finally, three days after Shazly resigned, Nasser sent Marwan, carrying a personal letter from the president, who wrote that he saw the resignation as a personal criticism of himself. Shazly denied this, insisting that his decision was solely a function of his poor relations with the designated chief of staff. Marwan relayed the message back to Nasser. Finally, Shazly agreed to return to his post only after Nasser—again, using Marwan as a go-between—promised not to allow Ismail to impinge upon his authority.35

  From the public confidence Nasser placed in his son-in-law in the Shazly affair, it seems reasonable to conclude that, notwithstanding the deepening tensions between the two, Marwan was never fully sidelined. To be sure, part of what made him the right man to solve the Shazly crisis were his family ties; symbolically he embodied the personal will of the president. At the same time, the fact that Nasser relied on him for the job suggests that he also recognized Marwan’s specific talents, talents that could advance Nasser’s interests in the situation at hand. Marwan apparently had good access to senior figures of the military; they saw him as reliable and, in some cases, even one of them.

  This, however, was not enough for Ashraf Marwan.

  IN THE SUMMER of 1970, he was just twenty-six years old, a chemical engineer and an officer in the Egyptian army. As the son from a good family, Ashraf Marwan succeeded, through his marriage to Mona, to tie himself to the center of power, dining at the table of the greatest leader in the Arab world. Neither he nor his family had ever been neglected or threatened by the state.

  On the face of things, he was the archetypal Egyptian patriot.

  In truth, however, he was about to undertake the single greatest act of treason in his country’s history. Precisely why he chose to risk his life and career in order to help his country’s most despised enemy, in the middle of an ongoing violent conflict that daily spilled the blood of his country’s best youths, is a difficult question to answer.

  In recent years, an entire field of research has emerged to help us understand what drives people in the middle of successful careers in military, intelligence, or public affairs to hand over their nation’s most highly guarded secrets to the enemy. Until recently, it was widely believed that there were five main causes: ideology, money, ego, extortion, and sexual temptation. Recent studies have suggested an additional motive, that of dual loyalty with a country of origin or strong ethnic affiliation. The case of Jonathan Pollard, a naval intelligence officer who passed classified information to Israel because of his ardent Zionism, is the best-known example; Muslim Americans working for Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah have created an enormous challenge for federal enforcement agencies since 2001.

  Another fact that emerges from these studies is that the main motivations behind treason tend to change over time. From the 1930s to the 1960s, for example, betrayal was heavily ideological, usually by committed Communists who chose to assist the Soviet Union. The ring known as the “Cambridge Five,” men who attended Cambridge University together and were recruited by the KGB in the 1930s, were typical of their time. Ideology weighed heavily, too, for many of the Manhattan Project scientists who, after having helped the United States develop an atom bomb during World War II, then passed their secrets on to the Soviets. Most of them had escaped Europe and either identified with the Soviet Union, which had taken the lion’s share of the burden in defeating the Nazis, or believed that the cause of peace dictated that Americans not be the only ones with the bomb. Sometimes ideological considerations worked in the opposite direction as well: Col. Oleg Penkovsky, who was considered the most important Western spy in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, passed his country’s secrets to Great Britain and the United States out of a deep concern for Russia’s future under Nikita Khrushchev.

  Disillusionment with communism after the de-Stalinization of the 1950s and 1960s brought about a relative rise in the importance of the second major motive to commit treason: money. Aldrich Ames, a counterespionage officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, handed the Soviets names of dozens of American agents working in the Soviet Union during the 1980s, in exchange for $4.6 million. For the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Robert Hanssen, the betrayal was just as serious, though his fee of $1.4 million was smaller. For Hanssen, money was not the only motive: Studies about his case suggest a whole web of complex and clashing personality issues, such as a tendency toward risk-taking, bizarre sexual inclinations, and a fractured ego, all of which combined to create a powerful impetus to betray his homeland.

  By itself, however, greed is rarely enough of a motive to undertake something so morally problematic and personally dangerous as betraying one’s country. Studies have suggested that such behavior is connected to specific personality patterns. One of the most striking is the tendency to divide one’s loyalties, including an inclination to extramarital affairs. Another is a tendency toward narcissism and egocentrism—often expressed in a dysfunctional relationship with one’s employer or spouse, and a sense of being unappreciated in their talents or achievements. Further studies, covering cases of deserters and traitors during the Cold War, have noted that many suffered from the untimely loss of, or a problematic relationship with, their fathers. The sense of loss, these studies suggest, is channeled into action and motivation to offer their service to the enemy.36

  All this research can help us understand why Ashraf Marwan decided to offer his services to Israeli intelligence. Two factors seem especially pertinent. One was financial. Marwan yearned for the good life, and his time in London made it especially clear to him what that might entail. His entry into the presidential family brought him into contact with a wide range of wealthy people in Egypt and abroad—but paradoxically it also reduced his chances of becoming wealthy himself because of the Spartan ethic that Nasser imposed on his family. If Marwan thought he might be able to work around the problem through his newfound friends, his clash with Nasser over the assistance from the Al-Sabahs disabused him of the thought. If he wanted to fulfill his dreams, he now understood, he would need a source of income that even Nasser’s intelligence couldn’t discover.

  The second motive was ego. This is the best explanation for why, of all the intelligence agencies he could have turned to, Marwan chose the Mossad. Having married the president’s daughter and joined the circle of power in Egypt, this good-looking, talented, ambitious young man had succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of any other Egyptian his age. But Ashraf Marwan’s ambitions went further. Carrying the burden of infinite self-confidence, he yearned for the power and influence he felt he deserved. Not only did he fail to receive these from his surroundings; what he got from his father-in-law was very much the opposite. Marwan’s salary was paltry, an
d his stature was barely noticeable compared with many others around him who were not married to the president’s daughter. The feeling that he was suspected, his every move scrutinized, followed him wherever he went. Nasser, he must have already understood, had little faith in him or his marriage to Mona. The pressure the president put on her to divorce Marwan was only the most blatant expression of it, a permanent reminder of the possibility that one day he would be evicted from the family. For Marwan, this looming threat was also a source of shame. Nor did he have any reason to think things might improve in the near future. His advanced state of egoism so dramatically clashed with the lack of credit he received that it apparently created in him a need to extract a price from the world around him, the world that stood in his way. He would have to show them.