General Armani put the second copy of the tape in his briefcase. He called his wife Anna and told her that he would be home late for dinner. When he left the office, he walked briskly down the Via Venti Settembre to Via Delle Quatro Fontane, where he ducked into a cafe and made a quick telephone call.
The general reached his Israeli contact at home. They met an hour later in a quiet cafe off the Via del Corso.
“We ran across something of interest this week,” said the general.
“And what is that, my friend?” said the Israeli. He was smiling and squinting at the general.
“We grabbed a cheap Arab smuggler at the airport. To save himself, the man told us an interesting tale. It involves a Palestinian who seems to be acquiring a small arsenal here in Europe.”
“Who told you these things?” asked the Israeli as if he had not quite heard the name.
“I cannot tell you who. It doesn’t matter, anyway. He is just a cheap hoodlum. I have something better for you.”
“And what is that, my friend?” asked the Israeli, still smiling and squinting.
“The Palestinian. On tape,” said General Armani. He nodded to the newspaper he had placed on the table when he entered the cafe. Inside it was a cassette tape of the Palestinian.
The Israeli nodded. Otherwise, his expression didn’t change. Still the squint. It was the very ordinariness of Israeli intelligence officers that made them trustworthy, the Italian general had concluded long ago. Their bad teeth, bald heads, squinting eyes, poor posture. They were too ordinary to play the self-deceiving games that led most intelligence services to disaster.
General Armani explained the meaning of the code used by the Palestinian. The suits and shoes, and how they really referred to pistols and plastic explosive. The only thing he left out, other than Mumtazz’s name, was the plot to kill the American president. Let the Italians get sole credit for that one.
General Armani left the tape in the folded newspaper when he got up from the table. The Israeli sent the cassette that night to Tel Aviv, where it was added to a growing Mossad file on the activities of Fatah’s intelligence service.
34
Washington/Beirut; May 1972
The CIA attacked the problem systematically. They compiled a list of known Palestinian operatives who might fit the profile of “Nabil” next they prepared an audio analysis of the tape recording, so that the voice could be matched with others on file as neatly as if it were a fingerprint. Then, with help from the NSA, they compared the voice of Nabil to tape recordings of various Palestinian suspects.
In less than a week, it was obvious to agency officials that the CIA had an embarrassing problem on its hands. The voice matched identically with that of someone who was well known to the agency. A Palestinian whose conversations had been recorded at various CIA safehouses for more than two years, and who had nearly been recruited by the agency a year earlier. The files showed that the Palestinian had even been assigned a cryptonym: PECOCK.
Edward Stone interrupted a spring yachting weekend to deal with the “Nabil” crisis. The situation was a nightmare, as far as Stone was concerned. He arrived at his office on a Sunday dressed in white flannel trousers, well-worn Topsiders, and a frayed sweater. The Middle East Division chief pulled the files, read and reread them, and turned the possibilities over in his mind. Was the Palestinian seeking revenge because of the humiliating incident with Marsh? Was Fatah striking back at the United States because of American complicity in the destruction of the fedayeen in Jordan? Were the commandos simply lashing out blindly at the ultimate symbol of American power? The questions went on and on. A threat to assassinate the president was a serious problem in itself. But when the assassin was a former CIA asset-a man who had spurned a recruitment effort-then it was positively a disaster.
Stone saw the Director first thing Monday morning. The Director was in his private dining room, eating his breakfast, when Stone arrived. He was picking the soft doughy bread out of the middle of a hard roll. That was one of the Director’s eccentricities, the taste for soft bread from inside hard rolls. Like many well-bred men, he had invented his own version of table manners.
Stone summarized the intelligence reports. The man on the tape was unquestionably Jamal Ramlawi. There was no reason to doubt the Libyan’s statement that he had provided weapons and explosives to the Palestinian. It was a case that contained the most worrying possibilities, Stone said.
“What in the hell is going on?” grumbled the Director. “This fellow is our man in Fatah, isn’t he?”
“Yes and no,” said Stone. “We tried to recruit him but failed.”
“So he has a motive.”
“It would appear so.”
“Oh shit,” said the Director. He stood up from the table and walked to the window. Stone noticed that the legs of his gray pinstripe trousers were covered with tiny flakes of bread crust.
“What connection does this business have with Black September?” asked the Director.
“I don’t know,” said Stone. “Perhaps none.”
“Well, find out. Because if we’re walking into a terrorist war between Black September and the United States of America, I would like to know about it. To be more precise, I would like to avoid it. Understood?”
“Yes, Director.”
“You must solve this problem. Immediately. We will not have Palestinians out there shooting at the president. Or at any other American, for that matter. This is an election year. We don’t need terrorists killing American citizens anywhere. And certainly not this year. Right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Solve it!” repeated the Director.
Stone nodded.
“There is the question of the Italians and the other liaison services. What should they be told?”
“Don’t tell anybody anything,” answered the Director emphatically. He added that he didn’t, for the moment, plan to share information about the identity of Nabil with the White House, let alone foreign governments.
The Director sent Stone packing for Beirut that same Monday. A military jet was placed at his disposal.
During the long plane ride to Beirut, Stone struggled to think through a plan of action that would put out this fire, and perhaps prevent the next one from igniting, as well.
Stone was exhausted when he arrived in Beirut. He had arranged a brief stopover in Europe, for several hours, but not long enough to sleep. When he landed in Lebanon, he went immediately into a meeting with Hoffman and Rogers.
The meeting was held in the bubble, the soundproof room deep inside the embassy that the CIA used for its most sensitive meetings. It was all white and lined with so much acoustic-damping material that words seemed to die in the air as soon as they were spoken.
Stone outlined the intelligence from Rome and the subsequent process of investigation that had convinced the CIA-beyond any doubt-that the Nabil who was allegedly plotting to kill the President of the United States was the same person as PECOCK, whose case was already well known to the Beirut station.
“What do you gentlemen think?” asked Stone, when he had finished with his briefing.
“I think that somebody’s dicking us around,” said Hoffman gruffly.
“And who might that be, Frank?”
“I’m not sure who yet, but somebody is. I mean, why would a Palestinian commando whose main interest in life is fucking white girls suddenly decide to kill the President of the United States? It doesn’t make sense. Golda Meir, maybe. The King of Jordan, maybe. But not the President of the United States, for Christ’s sake. Even Palestinians aren’t that dumb.”