Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

London was awash with former SAS men and regular army veterans who had seen service in Northern Ireland and were looking for a new outlet for their killing skills. The pay as PLO instructors was good and many of the mercenaries had a strong anti-Semitic attitude. A number signed on and traveled to Tunisia to work in PLO training camps. Other instructors were drawn from the ranks of former French foreign legionnaires and, at one stage, even included a former CIA officer, Frank Terpil, who would later become briefly involved with Mehmet Ali Agca, the fanatic who shot Pope John Paul II.

For a whole year Mustapha had slipped in and out of Britain without MI5 or the Special Branch even realizing who he was. When Mossad informed them, the only action taken was for an MI5 officer to remind the PLO office in London it would be closed and its staff expelled at the first hint they were engaged in terrorist activity against Britain. But they could continue to fulminate against Israel.

An intriguing sidelight to the propaganda war came when Bassam Abu-Sharif, then Arafat’s chief media spokesman, was invited to meet novelist Jeffrey Archer. The PLO man would remember that Archer had explained “how we should develop and manage our media relations, how to organize our political activity, how to set about building contacts with British politicians and mobilize public opinion. I am extremely impressed.”

That meeting ensured that Archer’s name found its way onto Mossad’s computers.

To the furious Israelis it appeared Mustapha was under the protection of the British authorities and that any attempt to deal with him in Britain could have repercussions for Mossad.

Ismail Sowan’s task was to try to lead Mustapha into a trap outside the country, preferably in the Middle East, where waiting Mossad kidons could execute him. Sowan had been told by Adam in Paris he would work under the guidance of his Mossad controllers based at the Israeli embassy in London. The first was Arie Regev. The other was Jacob Barad, who looked after Israel’s commercial interests. A third London-based katsa, not working under diplomatic cover, was Bashar Samara, who would be Sowan’s main contact. Samara had asked a sayan employed by a London house-letting agency to rent an apartment for Sowan in the Maida Vale district of the city.

A few days after arriving in London, Sowan set up his first contact with Samara. The couple met beneath the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus. Each carried a copy of the Daily Mirror, newly acquired by Robert Maxwell. Using the technique of exchanging newspapers that had worked in Paris, Sowan obtained his six hundred pounds first month’s salary, together with instructions on how to find office work at the PLO office in London.

Many of those who worked there wanted to be on the cutting edge of the action, such as carrying messages to various PLO cells around Europe, flying to the Organization’s Tunis headquarters with particularly important information, and afterward waiting for hours for the chance just to glimpse Arafat. These young, committed revolutionaries had no interest in routine office work, clerking or filing, reading the newspapers, manning the phones. When Sowan volunteered for this work, he was promptly taken on at the London office.

Within a few days he had met Mustapha. Over tiny cups of sweet mint tea, they quickly developed a rapport. Both had a common background of having lived through the Israeli bombardment of Beirut. They had walked the same streets with the same quickness of eye and mind, passed the same gutted buildings pocked with so many holes they looked like latticework. Both had slept in a different bed each night and waited for the dawn when, over the crackling loudspeakers, the muezzin called the faithful to prayer. Each of them had taken his turn on PLO checkpoint duty in Beirut, waving the Palestinian ambulances through, stopping everyone else, and only running for cover when the whine of Israeli aircraft once more filled their ears. They had laughed over the memory of the old Beirut saying, “If you hear the bomb explode, you’re still alive.” So many memories; the cries of the dead and dying, the wail of the women, their looks of helpless hatred at the sky.

Sowan and Mustapha spent a whole day in communion with their past. Finally, Mustapha asked what Sowan was doing in London. To further his education so as to better serve the PLO, Ismail replied. In turn, he asked Mustapha what had brought him to England.

The question unleashed a flow of revelations. Mustapha described Force 17 exploits: how its commandos had been about to hijack an Israeli aircraft filled with German tourists when Arafat canceled the mission for fear of antagonizing German opinion. But Mustapha had carried the war against Israel into Cyprus and Spain. Ismail knew that everything his companion boasted of would only make Mossad more determined to kill him.

They agreed to meet in a few days at Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner, London’s traditional venue for all kinds of opinion to be freely aired. Ismail Sowan called the special number he had been given if he had urgent news. Bashar Samara answered. They arranged to meet in Regent Street. Strolling among the lunchtime office workers, Sowan reported what Mustapha had told him. Samara said he would be at Speakers’ Corner to photograph Mustapha and then tail him wherever he went.

Mustapha did not keep the appointment. It would be weeks before Sowan saw him again. By that time, Ismail had been accepted as a student by a college in Bath, the spa resort. Twice a week he traveled to London to visit the PLO office to carry out his clerking. On one trip, Mustapha was there.

Once more the two men spoke over endless cups of mint tea. From his briefcase, Mustapha produced an illustrated book recording the history of Force 17. He boasted over one hundred thousand copies were to be distributed to Palestinians. Leafing through it, Ismail saw a picture of Mustapha taken in Lebanon. With a flourish, Mustapha signed it and presented the book to Ismail. Once more they arranged to meet, but Mustapha again broke the appointment.

Meanwhile, Sowan had handed over the book to Samara at what became a regular meeting place, the Bath railway station. The katsa would travel down on one train and return to London on the next, taking with him anything Sowan had learned at the PLO office and handing over his monthly stipend of six hundred pounds to the informer.

For almost a year their relationship continued in this manner. By then, Sowan had met an English girl named Carmel Greensmith. She agreed to marry him. But on the eve of the ceremony, Sowan had still not settled on a best man.

Making another trip to the PLO office, he again met Mustapha, who, as usual, did not explain where he had been. Mustapha had with him a bundle of tear sheets from the London-published Arab newspaper, Al-Qabas . Each page contained a biting cartoon mocking Yasser Arafat. The newspaper was subsidized by the Kuwaiti ruling family, long an enemy of the PLO.

The cartoons were the work of the Arab world’s most celebrated political artist, Naji Al-Ali. Based in London, he had waged a one-man war against Arafat, portraying the PLO leader as venal, self-serving, and politically inept. The cartoons had established Al-Qabas as the voice of opposition to Arafat.

Mustapha threw the tear sheets on the table and said Al-Ali deserved to die and his Kuwaiti paymasters taught a lesson.

Sowan smiled noncommittally. Mossad welcomed anything that undermined Arafat’s position. He also brought up a matter of more immediate personal concern, finding a best man for his wedding. Mustapha immediately offered himself for the role. They embraced each other in Arab fashion. That may well have been the moment when Ismail Sowan wished he could somehow remove himself from the clutches of Mossad.