Haggai Harmon - The Chameleon Conspiracy

Damn. It had better be important.

“Dan?” I heard Benny’s familiar voice. “What did I catch you doing?”

I stared down at the sandwich longingly. “Nothing but a baguette sandwich. Anyway, are you still around? I need to talk to you.”

“Yes, I’m in Paris too. What’s on your mind?”

“Can we meet?”

“Sure. How about you come to the George V hotel and meet me in the lobby at six p.m.”

I took a cab to 31 avenue George V and entered La Galerie, a high-ceilinged lobby decorated with Flemish tapestries and excellent nineteenth-century paintings and furniture. A pianist was playing a quiet Chopin nocturne, while elegant waiters in the adjacent courtyard were serving tourists who had deep personal pockets or expense accounts not scrutinized by frugal bean counters.

“What happened? The office discovered the lost treasures of the Count of Monte Cristo? We never used to stay in these hotels.” I looked around. A typical room probably cost more than $1,000 a night.

Benny glanced at me above his eyeglasses, which had slipped halfway down his nose. “Of course not. I just like these first-class places. Here money doesn’t buy you friends, but it can get you a better class of rivals.”

I felt that something was different with Benny, his cynical quip notwithstanding.

“What happened?” I asked, looking at his gloomy face. “Nothing,” his mouth said, but his expression gave a different answer.

“Is it something at home? Are Batya and the kids all right?”

“Yes, thank god, they’re fine.”

“Then what is it?” I persisted. I’ve known Benny for long enough to know that only a serious problem would affect his usual easygoing demeanor. “Something at work?” I tried again.

He nodded. “Things aren’t the way they used to be.”

“That’s too general,” I said. “Something must have hit you hard. What is it?”

“Changes,” he said summarily. “Dagan is shaking up the house with the prime minister’s backing.” He was talking about the Mossad head.

“Isn’t it time?” I asked. “Routine is the biggest enemy, right?”

“Well, Dagan has every right to install changes,” said Benny, but his tone belied the statement. He sighed.

“Look around you. The old historic rivalry between states that require foreign intelligence service is decreasing, and, as a result, so is the need for classic intelligence gathering on enemies. We’ve had to redefine who the enemy is-and where he is.”

“And the effect of that change on Mossad?” I said, pushing him to get to the point. I knew all that.

“Dagan says he wants to turn Mossad into a more operational body. Redefine Tsiach.” The acronym stood for Tsiyun yediot hiyuniot, indicating the vital information priorities historically determined by Aman, Israeli’s military intelligence. Benny said Dagan wanted to take advantage of Israel’s known, and many more unknown, successes in recruiting human assets and informers and concentrate on three major targets: Arab and Palestinian terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, and intelligence gathering on hostile forces’ armament with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

“So you are getting de-emphasized,” I said succinctly.

“Probably,” said Benny with a sigh. “But I’m not the issue here. It’s the importance of Tevel that’s being questioned.” By Tevel Benny was referring to the Mossad’s former name for the now-renamed foreign-relations wing, responsible for liaison with foreign services among other clandestine activities.

“Is he breaking it up?” I found that hard to believe, given the wing’s tremendous achievements, even though most of them were unknown to the public. Dagan was thought to scorn introspection, but encourage originality.

Benny shook his head. “No, but he made structural changes. The bud get’s been reduced and the resources for the research division and Tevel have been limited. Now we’re divided into two ‘directorates,’ as he’s calling them. The ‘operational’ one is responsible for all operational wings, divisions, departments, and units, such as Tsomet, Neviot, Tevel, Kesaria, Intelligence, and technological units. The other one is the ‘general staff/headquarters,’ which runs everything else-strategic planning, human resources, internal security, logistics, communications, computers, counterintelligence, and so forth.”

I remembered that Kesaria, after the old Roman city known in English as Caesarea, was in charge of operations and included an assassinations unit. Kidon was Hebrew for bayonet. Kesaria handles the “combatants,” a euphemism for Israeli spies, Mossad employees who assume different identities to penetrate hostile Arab countries. Tsomet, from the Hebrew word for junction, was the main intelligence-gathering division, engaging “case officers”-KATSA, in its Hebrew acronym. It also controlled and handled non-Israeli agents on the Mossad payroll as “independent contractors.” Neviot’s agents infiltrated buildings and communication centers to install video and other digital listening and monitoring devices.

“Neviot,” I said absentmindedly.

Benny brought me back from my silent reminiscing. “It needs a shake-up too, I suppose,” he said. “You remember what happened in ninety-eight.”

“Remind me.”

“I can’t believe you don’t remember. On February 19, an agent from Neviot was caught in Switzerland trying to install surveillance equipment in an apartment building. It was in Bern, a building that contained the home office of a Hezbollah supporter. Anyway, the operation was botched when the neighbors got suspicious-strangers carrying suitcases into the building, et cetera. Some of our men got away, but one was caught and tried. Israel had to apologize. It was a complete humiliation, but if that wasn’t bad enough, nine months later there was another fiasco. Two agents were caught spying on a military base in Cyprus where Russian-made S-300 missiles were to be deployed. The Cyprus government accused Israel of spying for the Turks, their archenemies, since the missiles were deployed aiming at Turkey. The Cypriots accused the Turks of spying on their defense plan. The Turks, according to the Cyprus government, wanted to know how Cyprus would defend itself in case the Turks decided to resolve the Cyprus problems between the local Turks and Greeks by walking onto the scene with their tanks and artillery.”

“Yeah, I read about it in the paper. I was long out of the Mossad. But that’s ancient history. What does it have to do with what you’re talking about now?”

“He wants to avoid debacles like that. That means changing things around-and that’s where it hurts.”

“Does anything personally impact you?”

“It affects everybody. But it’s all under the surface, because no one knows what’s going to happen. There’s an atmosphere of suspicion-who’ll be promoted and who’ll be passed over, whose department will be downsized. That’s unhealthy in any organization, and particularly for us. Complete confidence and trust among the employees are an absolute must, because human lives are at stake. For us, internal rifts could be devastating.”

“What’s happened so far?”

“Several heads of divisions and units, and at least as many department heads resigned, and many line personnel.”

“And you oppose it?”

“I think it’s OK to make the changes and make Mossad more operational. But cutting our bud get or ignoring our activities isn’t helping that goal.”

“I hope you’re not planning to resign as well,” I said. I knew Mossad was Benny’s heart and soul.

“I haven’t made any plans yet, but…I heard Dagan was saying that our unit doing political research is redundant. He thinks through the narrow prism of operational needs, and concluded that our foreign-relations wing isn’t vital in supporting operations, and the political-research unit’s role is secondary at best. He wants to downgrade us to a division and limit our intelligence-gathering activities.”