Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

In Tel Aviv, Nahum Admoni had begun to wonder how long it would be before MI5 discovered the truth about the eight forged British passports left in the telephone booth in Germany in July 1986. Shimon Peres, no admirer of Mossad, was, in the closing months of his coalition government, asking pointed questions. The prime minister was saying the debacle would ruin Israel’s relationship with the Thatcher government; that it was better to make a clean breast of the matter, in keeping with the well-known Peres sentiment, “The sooner said, the sooner mended.”

Admoni opposed the idea. It could lead to MI5 and the Special Branch beginning an investigation into just what else Mossad was doing in Britain. That could result in Ismail Sowan being expelled; he had proven to be a mine of useful information. Further, to admit the truth about the passports would be to reveal a piece of incompetent bungling by Mossad.

The passports had been intended for the Israeli embassy in Bonn. The job of couriering them from Tel Aviv had been given to a bodel who was new to the job and had never been to Bonn before. He had driven around the city for a while, not wishing to ask directions for fear of drawing attention to himself. Finally he had used the pay phone to call the embassy. An official had berated him for his tardiness. Either through panic or sheer carelessness, the bodel had left the carrier bag in the phone booth. Arriving at the embassy he realized his mistake but, even more panic-stricken, he couldn’t remember exactly the location of the street from where he had made the call. Accompanied by the embassy’s furious head of security, they had finally found the phone box. The bag was gone. The bodel had been posted to the Negev. But the problem of the passports had continued to trouble Admoni. The Foreign Office, through Britain’s Tel Aviv ambassador, was raising the matter with the Israeli government.

One of the passports had been intended for Sowan’s use to enable him to travel more easily between London and Tel Aviv; a British passport meant he would be subjected to fewer checks by immigration at Heathrow than with his Canadian one.

In the time Sowan had been in London, he had made occasional trips to Israel to visit his family; it was part of his cover to do so. To them he was still a PLO activist. He played the role so convincingly that his elder brother, Ibrahim, finally warned him the Israelis would arrest him. He jokingly suggested Ismail should preempt matters by offering to work for the Organization. Ismail pretended to be horrified at the idea and returned to London to continue his work.

Soon matters were taking an unexpected turn. Sowan’s new wife had urged her husband to accept a post as a researcher at Humberside College in Hull. For her it would mean more money to supplement his office work for the PLO. She knew nothing of her husband’s relationship with Mossad, or the six hundred pounds it paid him every month. For Ismail the move to Hull could be an opportunity to escape the ever-increasing demands of his Mossad controller.

Like many an informer who had taken the Mossad shekel, Ismail Sowan had become badly frightened by the risks he faced. After performing his duties as best man, Mustapha had become even friendlier. He regularly dropped in to see Ismail and his wife, bringing gifts from the Middle East for the couple. Over dinner, Mustapha told stories of how he had dealt with the latest enemy of the PLO. Over the months, he boasted of killing several “traitors to the cause.” Sowan had sat mesmerized, hoping “my heart beat wasn’t thumping too loud.” He was becoming equally frightened after his meetings with Samara; the katsa was asking him to access the PLO office computer and photocopy sensitive documents; he was also to try to arrange to go on “holiday” with Mustapha to Cyprus, where a kidon team would be waiting. So far, Sowan had managed to come up with excuses—he was never able to be alone in the computer room, or the pressure of his studies meant he had to forgo holidays—but he had sensed a growing threat behind Samara’s demands. In Hull, he hoped he would be in less contact with both Mustapha and Samara, and be allowed to have an academic life without further pressures. Mossad had very different plans for him.

On Friday, March 13, 1987, Mossad’s headquarters on King Saul Boulevard buzzed with the rumor that Admoni was expecting an important visitor. Shortly before noon, the MI6 liaison officer was escorted up to the director general’s ninth-floor office. Their meeting was short. Admoni was told that MI6 was satisfied that the forged passports found in Germany were the work of Mossad. A Special Branch officer who had been involved in the operation recalled in June 1997 how “the man from Six just walked in, said ‘Good morning, ’ declined a cup of tea or coffee, and spelled it out. He then nodded and walked out again. It probably took less than a minute for him to deliver the message.”

In London, the Foreign Office called in the Israeli ambassador and delivered a strong protest accompanied by a demand that such behavior would not happen again. The only small comfort for Admoni was that no one had mentioned Ismail Sowan.

In the early evening of July 22, 1987, Ismail Sowan turned on the BBC early-evening television news in his Hull apartment. He had not heard from Mossad since April, when Bashar Samara had traveled to Hull for a meeting at the city’s railway station and told Sowan to keep a low profile until further notice—unless Mustapha made contact.

Now, the face of the man Mustapha had said deserved to die filled the screen; Naji Al-Ali, the cartoonist, had been shot as he left the offices of Al-Qabas in London. The gunman had fired once and disappeared. The bullet had entered through the cartoonist’s cheek and lodged in his brain. Sowan’s first reaction was that the assailant was not from Mossad or Force 17. Both organizations used the same professional way of killing: several shots in the head and the upper body. This looked like an amateur attack. The TV report said a massive police hunt was under way and that the cartoonist’s colleagues were hinting the attack was because of the unnamed “powerful enemies” Naji had made.

Sowan remembered a previous conversation with Mustapha. He became increasingly certain Yasser Arafat had ordered the shooting. He suddenly wondered if he was the only person Mustapha had confided in about the need for the cartoonist to die. Sowan decided it would be best for him and his wife to fly to Tel Aviv. But even as they packed, there was a knock on the front door. Sowan would recall:

“The man had two suitcases. He said Mustapha needed to hide them urgently. When I said I wanted to know what was inside, he just smiled and told me not to worry. ‘He who asks no questions is told no lies,’ was all he would say. When he was gone, I looked inside the cases. They were full of arms and explosives: enough Semtex to blow up the Tower of London; AK-47s, pistols, detonators, the works.”

Ismail called the special Mossad contact number in London. It had been disconnected. He telephoned the Israeli embassy. He was told that Arie Regev and Jacob Barad were not available. He asked to speak to Bashar Samara. The voice at the other end of the phone asked him to wait. A new voice came on the line. When Ismail gave his name, the voice said, “This is a good time for a holiday in the sun.” The words were a signal for Sowan to travel to Tel Aviv.

There, in the Sheraton Hotel, he met Jacob Barad and Bashar Samara. He explained what he had done after discovering the contents of the suitcase. They told him to wait while they reported to their superiors. Later that night, Samara returned and told Sowan to fly to London on the next plane. When he arrived he would find everything had been taken care of.