The Angel Page 4

  The best way to show them was to give his loyalty to Nasser’s greatest enemy of all, the enemy that, just three years before, had handed Egypt its most humiliating defeat, shaming the president and hurting him in a way that nothing and no one had ever done before. Whether Marwan was conscious of it or not, disloyalty to Nasser offered him the most effective solution to both his financial and psychological crises.

  But Marwan’s issues went beyond getting back at Nasser. His narcissism expressed itself in an infinite craving for honor, power, and influence, and the insistence that people follow his advice. In this he closely resembled Col. Oleg Penkovsky of the Soviet Military Intelligence. Penkovsky believed that Khrushchev’s policies endangered the nation’s very existence and saw himself as somebody who could save the country. Both his behavior and his thinking patterns suggest a man convinced that he can and should change the course of history. Marwan, as we will see, displayed similar tendencies. His Mossad handlers recognized these qualities in him and knew how to use them. The decision, for example, to introduce him to the chief of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, was partially made out of the belief that this young man needed to be shown that only the Israelis really understood his true worth.

  Ideology, in the way it is normally understood, was less of a factor. Ashraf Marwan was no closet Zionist. But there were what we may call ideational qualities, aspects of his worldview that led him to conclude that he should be on the Israeli side. Israel’s impressive victory in the Six-Day War may have flipped a switch in his mind. He was not a man to take the humiliation of his country lightly. Such a feeling was felt throughout Egypt and certainly had its greatest impact on those closest to Nasser. By switching his inner loyalty to the Israeli side and putting himself on the side of the victor, he found a way out of the agony of defeat. The Israelis who spoke with him saw that he had a deep emotional need to be on whichever side had the upper hand in the Arab-Israeli conflict. As we will see, the results of the Yom Kippur War, and especially the restoration of Egypt’s wounded pride, ended up having an opposite effect on Marwan, undermining his motivation to continue working for the Mossad.

  It is also possible that the Six-Day War had another effect, as well. One of Nasser’s greatest achievements before 1967 had been his ability to infuse in Arabs in general, and Egyptians in particular, a belief that under his leadership, they were returning to the center stage of world history after having been sidelined for centuries by European powers. A whole generation grew up in an atmosphere of excitement, accompanied by slogans coined by Nasser: Brother, raise your head! The days of your humiliation have passed. The Six-Day War, however, took the wind out of Nasser’s sails. He had failed to lead Egypt into the kind of modernity that was meant to prevent exactly this sort of humiliation. The national disappointment was channeled, after the war, in two main directions: One was Islamism, reflecting a search for new sources of faith. The other was a kind of nihilism, the abandonment of faith in any national, religious, or social ideology, looking instead for fast wealth as the key to a personal self-fulfillment detached from the fate of the collective. It could well be that Marwan was pushed into the latter channel.

  Finally, we should not forget that Marwan was no ordinary man. One of the Mossad operatives who knew his case from up close described him as “very complicated,” having “acute complexes.” His behavior included a need for stimulus, which often drives people to take risks, whether physical or emotional. Some people take up rock climbing, skydiving, or bungee jumping. But Marwan was not drawn to the sporting life; instead, he indulged both in gambling and, later, in unsavory business deals; or in taking needless risks in his contacts with the Israelis. It is therefore fair to assume that alongside his inflated ego, his frustrated relationship with Nasser, and his need for money, the act of betrayal itself gave Marwan a sense of adventure that his stormy psyche desperately needed.

  All of this came to a head with his decision, in the summer of 1970, to place a call to the Israeli embassy in London.

  Chapter 2

  LONDON, 1970: CONTACT1

  Ashraf Marwan began his path to the Israeli Mossad in one of those iconic red phone booths that used to mark London. He had come to London in connection with his studies, as allowed for in the agreement between Nasser and his father. Although some people would later claim that he just showed up one day at the Israeli embassy demanding to speak with the intelligence officer, this is inaccurate. Marwan may have been reckless at times in dealing with the Israelis, but his first contact actually involved a great deal of forethought.

  Finding the address and phone number of the embassy did not require high-level espionage skills. They were in the phone book. When the switchboard operator answered, Marwan asked to speak with someone from the Mukhabarat—the intelligence agency. For him, such a request was only natural, not just because he was offering himself to Israeli intelligence but because in Marwan’s world, the man in charge of the Mukhabarat was always the most powerful person around.

  The operator may not have known Marwan’s world. But she did know the protocol. This wasn’t the first time she had fielded a phone call from someone with an Arab accent asking to speak with the embassy’s intelligence officer or a defense official. The procedures were clear. She transferred the call to the office of the Israel Defense Forces military attaché.

  The attaché picked up the phone and responded politely. Ashraf Marwan identified himself by name and asked to speak with the embassy’s intelligence officer. Like the switchboard operator, the attaché followed protocol. The name meant nothing to him, and Nasser’s son-in-law did not elaborate. The attaché told him that he could not transfer him directly to the intelligence officer but suggested that Marwan leave a message; he promised he would pass it on to the relevant authorities. Marwan repeated his name, adding that he wanted to offer his services to Israeli intelligence. The attaché asked him to spell his name again. Marwan refused to leave a phone number where he could be reached, so the attaché asked that he call back again. The call ended.

  The attaché took the slip of paper where he’d written down Marwan’s name and details and put it in the outbox on his desk. There it remained. The IDF attaché in London was not, at that moment, on especially good terms with the Mossad’s local representatives.

  ABOUT FIVE MONTHS after his initial contact, late in 1970, Marwan returned to London and decided to try again. But between his first attempt and the second, a major development had taken place: His father-in-law, the greatest Arab leader since Saladin, died after suffering a major heart attack. Nasser’s death had a huge impact on the course of Egypt’s history as well as that of the Arab world and of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It also brought changes in Ashraf Marwan’s life. But what didn’t change was Marwan’s determination to work for the Mossad.

  Again Marwan called the embassy and was again transferred to the IDF attaché—a different one. Maj. Gen. Shmuel Eyal, a longtime senior officer who had held a number of top army positions, including directing the IDF’s Human Resources Branch, had just been rotated to London following new orders arising from the targeting of Israeli embassies in Europe. Again Marwan asked to speak with the intelligence officer, only this time he left a number where he could be reached. Eyal, however, explained to him that he would have to come to the embassy in person. Marwan explained that he was a public personality and could not do that. Eyal stood his ground, and a few days went by without any progress. Like his predecessor, Eyal, too, had troubled relations with the local Mossad officials, and he also failed to pass Marwan’s message along.

  It is hard to imagine what history would have looked like had fate not intervened—and not for the last time. In mid-December, two senior Mossad officials arrived in London on unrelated business. One was Rehaviah Vardi, the head of Tzomet (“Crossroads”), the Mossad’s Human Intelligence (Humint) wing. Forty-seven years old and balding, Vardi was known as a superb professional with excellent instincts and wide experience. His intelligence career had begun bef
ore the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, when he was an intelligence officer in the pre-state Haganah defense force, handling Arab operatives in the Sharon region. After statehood he worked for the IDF’s Military Intelligence wing, and in 1950 he took command of MI’s Humint division. Later he was given responsibility for all of MI’s intelligence-gathering operations; there he learned about technological surveillance (Sigint) as well. In 1963, the chief of MI, Maj. Gen. Meir Amit, was appointed to take charge of the Mossad, and he took Vardi with him to run the Mossad’s Humint operations. In that context, Vardi also took responsibility for special projects, the most famous of which was getting an Iraqi pilot to defect to Israel in 1966, bringing his advanced Soviet aircraft with him.

  Traveling with Vardi in London was Shmuel Goren, director of the Mossad’s European operations. Twice wounded in Israel’s War of Independence while serving under Moshe Dayan’s command, Goren joined MI after the war and launched a career in handling agents. After filling a string of posts that involved close cooperation with the Mossad, Goren was appointed deputy IDF attaché in Israel’s embassy in Washington in 1968. Before he took the post, the incoming director of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, asked him to join his organization; Goren deferred the request. A year later, Zamir turned to him again, this time with a concrete offer to head up the Mossad’s European division, which in practice meant Western Europe. The ambassador in Washington, Yitzhak Rabin, and MI chief Aharon Yariv gave their consent, and Goren agreed as well. By late 1970, he had gained vital experience with the agency.

  Soon after arriving in London, the two Mossad officials met up with Eyal and the local Mossad station chief, and the four agreed to drive together to Heathrow Airport, where the MI chief was scheduled for a brief layover on his way to the United States. In the car, Eyal mentioned the Arab fellow who had been calling for a few days to offer his services, but who refused to come to the embassy in person. When they asked his name, Eyal said that he called himself Ashraf Marwan.

  Vardi, Goren, and the station chief all looked at one another. They knew the name well.

  Marwan had been in the Mossad’s sights for some time. The London station, which always looked for new sources from the Arab side, had kept tabs on Nasser’s son-in-law from the moment he had first arrived in London. They knew he was strapped for cash, even if they didn’t know the details, and they knew he had been forced to return to Egypt. They knew, in other words, that money could be a decisive factor in motivating Marwan to sell his country’s secrets. His closeness to Nasser and access to materials that passed through his office would make Marwan a source of extreme value—but until now, these same factors also made it hard to believe that he would ever work for the Mossad. What Eyal now had said almost in passing, however, completely changed the picture.

  The fear that Marwan would again leave London without successfully making contact now set the pace of events. With no idea how much time they had to work with, they would have to improvise, bending the rules regarding meetings with agents. A message about Marwan’s call did make its way immediately to Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, but Goren, acting in his capacity as director of Mossad operations in Western Europe, didn’t wait for the analysts back home to examine the situation from every angle and approve contact with the prospect. The fact that he and Vardi, two top Mossad officials, were in on the decision made it easier. This, too, was a matter of luck being on Israel’s side: The London station chief would not have made such a decision on his own, even if he had gotten the message from the attaché. And any delay could easily have meant losing track of Marwan.

  And yet, engaging Marwan was still not an easy decision. Marwan was what intelligence people call a “walk-in”—someone from the enemy’s side who just shows up one day offering his services. Intelligence agencies generally steer clear of such volunteers, mostly because of the high likelihood that they represent some kind of trap. The CIA, for example, had discovered how complicated working with such volunteers could be in 1962, when a KGB officer named Yuri Nosenko offered his services to the CIA, and then defected to the United States two years later. James Jesus Angleton, the agency’s head of counterespionage, soon became convinced that Nosenko was a double agent, having been sent by the KGB to quell suspicions that Lee Harvey Oswald had been trained and sent by the Soviets to assassinate President Kennedy. Others in the CIA and the broader American intelligence community rejected Angleton’s theory, seeing Nosenko as a genuine defector whose information should be considered reliable. The flap went on for years, disrupting a major part of the agency’s operations in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s.2

  The Mossad knew all about the Nosenko affair. Angleton was, after all, not only in charge of counterespionage but also the point man on Israel for the entire American intelligence community. Both Mossad and CIA officials saw him as Israel’s best friend at the agency, and there can be little doubt that in the ongoing conversations between Angleton and Mossad representatives in Washington, Nosenko was a major topic of discussion. Goren, we may assume, was thoroughly versed in the affair as well. While Egyptian intelligence agencies were not nearly as sophisticated as the KGB, there was still room to wonder whether they were setting a trap. The last thing Goren and Vardi needed was for the British MI5 to discover Mossad operations taking place in central London after being tipped off by Egyptian intelligence. Even worse was the possibility that an Arab intelligence agency or Palestinian terror group would try to kill Mossad agents who showed up at a meeting with someone claiming to be Ashraf Marwan. But against these fears stood a heavy countervailing consideration: The prize was so enormous, the potential intelligence boon so great, that it pushed aside other considerations.

  All these questions resolved into a single quick decision as the four men made their way to Heathrow. They stopped the car, and the Mossad station chief got out and headed back to the embassy.

  It was not long before the telephone at the number Marwan had left was ringing. He was told that a meeting would be arranged soon and was given a number in London to call whenever he wanted to make contact with Israeli intelligence. He was asked to stand by near his phone until he received a call with details of the rendezvous. Meanwhile the Mossad team in London got to work setting it up.

  The hour had grown late, and they decided to push the meeting off to the next day. It would take place in the lobby of a major hotel in central London. If everything went as planned, Marwan and his handler would talk in the lobby for a few minutes and then head up to a room that had been reserved on one of the upper floors, where they could speak openly.

  The short notice put significant pressure on those charged with securing the location, but the London Mossad station quickly pulled together the necessary arrangements. All that was left was to decide who, exactly, would attend the meeting. In a brief conversation between Goren and the station chief, they settled on a man named Dubi (his last name remains an official secret). He was the London station’s number two man and had been gathering intelligence in London for a few years. In his midthirties, a native Israeli whose grandparents had arrived in Palestine from Europe at the turn of the century, Dubi looked European but spoke fluent Arabic. This was an important consideration for the simple reason that nobody in the Mossad’s London station could say how well Marwan spoke English.

  The meeting was set for the evening hours. London-based Mossad operatives took up positions outside the hotel to make sure it wasn’t a trap. Goren sat on a couch in the lobby, pretending to read a newspaper as he kept his eye on the entrance. The paper hid from view a photograph he was holding of Ashraf Marwan. Dubi stood off to one side, keeping eye contact with Goren.

  They didn’t wait long. At precisely the time they had set with Marwan, he entered the lobby, carrying a black briefcase. Dubi immediately recognized him from the description he’d received: tall, slim, dark. Goren thought he recognized him as well but wanted to be sure. He glanced at the photo and back at the man. The photograph was from Ashraf and Mona’s weddi
ng four years earlier and was clipped from an Egyptian newspaper. Goren hesitated. Another look at the photo, and then again at the man who stood in the lobby, and that was enough. He looked at Dubi and nodded slightly. Marwan stood tense as Dubi walked up to him, extending his hand and smiling.

  “MR. MARWAN,” HE said to him quietly in Arabic. “It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Alex.”

  The young Egyptian was visibly surprised by the Arabic. He, too, worried that a trap had been set by the Egyptian Mukhabarat. He replied in English, “Are you Israeli?”

  Dubi switched into English as well, confirmed that he was Israeli, and tried to calm the fellow’s nerves. They exchanged a few more words, and Dubi suggested that they go up to a room where they could talk. Marwan nodded his assent. Goren, who was not far from them, took a deep breath of relief when he saw them walk toward the elevator. The initial contact had gone off without a hitch.

  Up in the room, Marwan felt considerably more at ease and led the conversation. He asked Dubi if he knew who he was. Dubi had been around long enough to know that he didn’t need to reveal everything he knew. Marwan began describing himself at length, his public stature, his marriage to Mona, his relationship with Nasser and Sadat, and the fact that he worked in the information bureau in the President’s Office under Sami Sharaf. Dubi tried to commit every detail to memory.

  Marwan explained his role at work, slightly overstating his importance. For Dubi, the more interesting question was not Marwan’s status or his relationship with Nasser’s successor, but what kind of information crossed his desk. He raised the point carefully and politely. Marwan smiled, almost boastfully. He explained that the most important information in all of Egypt was concentrated in the hands of Sami Sharaf. Dubi asked him to be more specific. Was it political information? Military or diplomatic? Relations with the Soviets? Marwan had been waiting for the question. Picking up his suitcase, he produced a number of pages of handwritten Arabic and told Dubi that he was handing over, as a kind of down payment, something of great interest to Israel. He began reading aloud. Dubi, who had some understanding of military affairs, realized that Marwan was giving over details from a top-secret memorandum cataloging the Order of Battle (OB) of the entire Egyptian military. Dubi began quickly writing down the details of units, their location, commanders, and equipment at their disposal. Occasionally he would stop to ask Marwan to clarify one point or another. When Marwan finished reading, the Mossad officer looked over the list. It was incredible.