Sympathy for the Tamils runs high in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where 40 million Tamils live. Many Sri Lankan Tamils, escaping the bloodshed, have sought refuge there, and the Sri Lankan government has accused Indian officials of arming and training the Tamils. They should be accusing the Mossad.
The Tamils were training at the commando naval base, learning penetration techniques, mining landings, communications, and how to sabotage ships similar to the Devora. There were about 28 men in each group, so it was decided that Yosy should take the Tamils to Haifa that night while I took the Sinhalese to Tel Aviv, thus avoiding any chance encounters.
The real problem started about two weeks into the courses, when both the Tamils and Sinhalese unknown to each other, of course were training at Kfar Sirkin. It is a fairly large base, but even so, on one occasion the two groups passed within a few yards of each other while they were out jogging. After their basic training routine at Kfar Sirkin, the Sinhalese were taken to the naval base to be taught essentially how to deal with all the techniques the Israelis had just taught the Tamils. It was pretty hectic. We had to dream up punishments or night training exercises just to keep them busy, so that both groups wouldn't be in Tel Aviv at the same time. The actions of this one man (Amy) could have jeopardized the political situation in Israel if these groups had met. I'm sure Peres wouldn't have slept at night if he'd known this was going on. But, of course he didn't know.
When the three weeks were just about up and the Sinhalese were preparing to go to Atlit, the top-secret naval commando base, Amy told me he wouldn't be going with them. The Sayret Matcal would take over the training. This was the top intelligence reconnaissance group, the on that carried out he famous Entebbe raid. (The naval commandos are the equivalent of the American seals.)
“Look, we have a problem,” said Amy. “We have a group of 27 SWAT team guys from India coming in.”
“My God,” I said “What is this? We've go Sinhalese, Tamils, and now Indians. Who's next?”
The SWAT team was supposed to train at the same base where Yosy had the Tamils, a tricky and potentially volatile situation. And I still had my regular office work to do, along with the daily reports. In the evenings,I took the SWAT team to dinner, again making sure none of the groups ended up in the same place. Every day I had an envelop brought to me with about $300 in Israeli currency to spend on them.
At the same time, I was meeting with a Taiwanese air-force general named Key, the representative of their intelligence community in Israel. He worked out of the Japanese embassy, and he wanted to buy weapons. I was told to show him around, but not to sell to him, since the Taiwanese would replicate in two days anything they bought, and end up competing with Israel on the market. I took him to the Sultan factory in Galil, where mortars and mortar shells were made. He was impressed, but the manufacturer told me he couldn't sell him anything, anyway: first, because he was from Taiwan, and second because everything he had was pre-ordered. I told him I had no idea we were training so hard with mortars. He said, “We aren't, but the Iranians are sure using a lot of them.” That was keeping the company in business.
At one point they made arrangements to bring in a whole group of Taiwanese for training. It was a compromise of sorts. They had asked the Mossad to give them combatants in China, but they wouldn't; instead, they trained a unit similar to the nevoit, capable of gathering information from inanimate objects.
At this time, the department also had a series of Africans coming and going and being offered various services. I stayed with the department two months longer than I was supposed to, at Amy's specific request both a compliment and a useful addition to my personnel record.
They used to tell the story of the “kerplunk machine” to illustrate some of the weird and useless things the Africans would spend their money on. Someone asked an African leader if he had a kerplunk machine. He didn't, so they offered to build him one for $25 million. When a huge arm, nearly 1, 000 feet long and over 600 feet high, hovering over the water, was complete, its creator went back to the leader and said he'd need another $5 million to finish it. He then devised an elevator apparatus under the arm that held a huge stainless steel ball more than 60 feet in diameter. All the leader's subjects and visiting dignitaries from other African countries gathered at the river bank on “launch” day to see the wonderful machine in action. When it was turned on, the elevator moved slowly along to the end of the arm, it opened, and the giant ball feel into the water and went “kerplunk”.
It's just a joke, but it's not so far from the truth.
I never saw so much money changing hands so quickly and among so many peoples as during my time with Amy. The Mossad regarded all these contracts as initial contact with various places that someday would bring diplomatic relations, so money was no object. And the businessmen, of course, were looking at it from a profit a point of view. They were all getting their healthy percentages.
My last assignment with Amy was a four-day trip around Israel with a man and woman from communist china who wanted to buy electronic equipment.
They were angry at being shown equipment of lesser quality than they already had. They complained saying, “What are they trying to sell us, socks?”, which I found really funny, because I used to say that if we could sell socks to the Chinese army, we'd be economically sound. Everybody would be knitting.
But the Chinese couples were badly treated, and that was because Amy thought they weren't high-ranking enough. He was making foreign-affairs decisions by himself, without asking anyone. It was astonishing. All his life Amy worked for government at a government salary, yet he lived on this acreage north of Tel Aviv in a huge villa with a small forest of his own. We'd stop there sometimes for a drink when we were working on the weekends and there were always businessmen wandering around the lawns, and a barbecue going. I once said to him, “How can you manage all this?” and he said, “You work hard, you save, and you can manage.” Yeah, sure.
* * *
I was next assigned to the Tsomet (or Meluckah) department and put on the Benelux desk, where part of my job was approving Danish visa applications.
In Tsomet, the desk is there to service the station, not to instruct it. The head of a station in Tsomet is the boss and, in most cases, equals the rank of the head of the branch he's under. (This is the opposite of Kaisarut, where I had just been working. There, decisions are taken at the desk and the branches, so that the liaison station head in London, for example, is the direct subordinate of the head of London desk in Tel Aviv, which has total control.)
The first branch of Tsomet had several desks. One, called the Benelux desk, handled Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, and also Scandinavia (with stations in Brussels and Copenhagen); then there were the French and the British desks, with stations in London, Paris and Marseille.
There was also a second major branch with the Italian desk, and stations in Rome and Milan; the German and Austrian desk, then with a station in Hamburg (changed later to Berlin); and a jumper desk, called the Israeli station, in Tel Aviv, with katsas jumping to Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Spain, when needed.
The head of a station had the rank of the head of a branch and could overrule him if need be, then go directly to the head of department. The structure was flawed, because if his case failed with the head of department, he could still turn to the head of Europe, in Brussels. As a field command, that would override even the head of department. It became a constant struggle, and with every change in personnel there, the power base shifted.
There was no such thing as orders in the Mossad. It was nicer that way. First, they didn't want to make anybody angry, and then, nobody really had to do what you asked them to do. Most people had a horse or two in the system an open horse and a secret horse one to help push you up and a secret one to get you out of shit. So there was a constant battle trying to guess who had whom and why.
When information came in on the computer from an agent, who was then assistant air attaché at the Syrian embassy in Paris, that the head of the Syrian air force (who was also head of their intelligence) would be coming to Europe to buy some expensive furniture, headquarters thought immediately of creating something that could “talk,” because of communications equipment planted inside it.
The computer was asked to find all available furniture sayanim. A plan would be devised to create a speaking table for the renovated offices at Syrian air-force headquarters. A katsa from the London station was sent to Paris to run the show, though the Mossad knew the general would be buying his furniture in Belgium, not France. (They did not know why.)
Prior to the general's arrival the London katsa was set up in business as someone who could get you any piece of furniture you wanted, but cheaper. We knew the general him self was not looking for bargains. He was rich and, anyway, would get cash through the embassy, and so pay in cash. The idea was not to get to him, but to the aide who would actually do the purchasing. We had less than three weeks to accomplish it.
We contacted a well-known interior designer, a sayan, and obtained photos of his work, putting together in a couple of days a brochure for a company that delivered quality furniture at good prices. We would use a three-point plan to approach the general's aide. First, we would try to reach him directly. Give him the brochure, see if he'd bite and buy the furniture directly from the Mossad. If that didn't work, we would find out where he bought the furniture and arrange to handle the delivery. The next step, if all else failed, was to hijack the furniture.
We knew what hotel the general was staying at in Brussels and that he'd be at the hotel with his bodyguards for three days before going off to Paris. We followed the general and his aide from store to store, watching the aide making notes.
At that point, the katsa thought he'd blown it. We didn't know what to do. The day was over and the general went back to his hotel. Our guy at the Syrian embassy notified us that the general was going back to Paris the next day, but one ticket had been canceled. We figured it had to be the aide staying behind to complete the purchase.
It was. The next morning, the aide was tailed from the hotel to a very exclusive furniture store. He had a long conversation with the salespeople, and the katsa decided that this was the best opportunity to make his move. So he went into the store and started looking around. A sayan came in then, walked up to the katsa and thanked him loudly, and with conviction, for getting him the furniture he'd wanted and saving him thousands of dollars.
After the sayan left, the general's aide glanced curiously in his direction.
“Buying furniture?” the katsa asked.
“Yes.”
“Here, look at this,” he said, handling him the special brochure.
“Do you work in the store?” the aide asked, appearing puzzled.
“No, no. I purchase for my clients,” the katsa told him. “I buy in large quantities at excellent discounts. Handle the shipping and make payment easier than most.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have customers all over. They come in and pick the style they want and I purchase it from the source. Then I ship it to them and they pay on arrival. That way they don't have to worry if something is broken. There's no hassle. They don't have to get involved in trying to get a refund or something.”
“How do you know they'll pay you?”
“That's never a problem.”
By now, all the lights were going on in the aide's head. He saw a chance to make some real money. It took the katsa about three hours, but he got a list of everything the general needed. The furniture alone came to $180,000, not counting shipping and crating, and the katsa “sold” it to him for $105,000, so right off the top, the aide could pocket $75, 000.
The funny thing was, the aide has the shipping address as the harbor in Litakia, but he gave a false name for himself and the general. The only thing that wasn't false was where to pick it up. He said if we needed verification, we could call the Syrian embassy in Paris. Half an hour after he left our katsa, the aide phoned our man inside the embassy and told him that if anyone called to verify that name and address, he was to do so because it was a top-priority operation.
Two days later, an ornate Belgian table was shipped to Israel. It was gutted, and $50,000 worth of listening and broadcasting equipment was installed in it, including a special battery that would last three to four years. The equipment was sealed up in such a way that no one would find it unless they took the top off the table and sawed it in two. The table was then shipped back to Belgium and out into the furniture shipment for Syria.
The Mossad are still waiting to hear from the table. They've already had combatants going around with listening devices trying to pick it up, and they can't find a thing. It would have been a dream, had it worked out. Of courses, it might have been put into a bunker office in Damascus. The Russians made some there, and they're frequency-proof. But if they'd discovered kit, they surely would have used it.
My work in the department was otherwise quite monotonous. I was filling, watching schedules, and most of all, covering up for bosses when their wives called asking where they were I had to say they were on assignment.
Like everybody else, I was working in the whorehouse.
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