David Ignatius - Agents of Innocence

On a hunch, he requested the files on the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Perhaps the PFLP had explored the possibility that Fatah had been penetrated by the Americans. Levi spent the morning reading reports from agents and case officers. He worked through lunch. Late that afternoon, as he was opening what seemed like the hundredth manila folder of the day, out fell something that looked eerily familiar. It was the coded message that had been hidden inside the elephant box in the diabolical maze of the Damascus souk. Attached to it was a decoded version in Hebrew, which he had never read before.

Levi could scarcely believe what he was reading. The PFLP intelligence report seemed to confirm that Levi’s two investigations were focusing on the same subject. The operations chief of Black September and the American penetration agent in Fatah appeared to be the same person!

Levi reported his initial findings to his division chief.

“Go slow,” said the chief. “It’s too speculative.”

“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.