As an exercise, Levi gathered every fact he could find about two Black September operations: the bombing of an electronics plant in Hamburg and the sabotage of an oil terminal at Rotterdam. He began to see a pattern, a distinctive signature that identified these operations and others as the work of a particular individual. The operations had several obvious common characteristics:
– They were meticulously planned. The bombs exploded where they were supposed to, when they were supposed to. They did the damage that was intended, no less and no more. Warnings were delivered when appropriate. Credit was taken in a distant capital, usually just a few minutes after the attack.
– They were clean. There were no obvious clues. Frightened Arabs weren’t caught running from the scene. Fingerprints weren’t found. Guns with traceable serial numbers weren’t captured.
– They were professional. Levi suspected that the planner must be a trained intelligence officer, who knew how to cover his trail. Checks of the Arab underworld in Europe, and of agents who operated on the fringe of the guerrilla movement, failed to turn up any clues. Inquiries with arms dealers who might have supplied weapons and explosives also produced nothing. Whoever was planning the operations was skillful enough to keep several layers of cut-outs between himself and his handiwork.
– They were the work of someone who spoke German. Though Black September operated across Europe, it seemed to strike in West Germany with unusual regularity. Whoever was planning the operations felt comfortable there, spoke the language, understood the culture.
The German-speaking requirement triggered something in Levi’s memory. There was a Palestinian operative in Beirut who had been renowned for his continental charm, and his ability to bed down women from every province of Europe. What Levi remembered now was the voice of that Palestinian, recorded by a surveillance tap placed by a Mossad agent, declaring his love in German to a beautiful Fraulein. Levi began then to focus his research on this particular Palestinian. When he imagined the face of Black September, he saw not an anonymous figure in the shadows, but a smooth-shaven young man in a black leather jacket.
Levi had another hunch, one that he had begun to formulate long ago in Lebanon. The Americans are not stupid, Levi reasoned. They must have tried to penetrate Fatah, just as we have. In recruiting an agent, where would the CIA turn? To the intelligence service of Fatah, of course! That’s what spies do. They recruit other spies. Otherwise, what was the point?
So Levi opened a second, parallel investigation. He asked the registry for the files that Mossad had compiled on American penetration of the Fatah leadership. The librarian was apologetic. There wasn’t one particular file on that subject. Mossad officers had gathered information on the topic, of course, but it was scattered among various files. So Levi began reading.
He came across a crucial bit of evidence almost by accident. He was sitting one morning in the registry, a dark and windowless room in the center of the Mossad headquarters building, trying to decide what files to request that day. He had already combed the registry on Fatah, on the Old Man, on Jamal Ramlawi and a dozen other Palestinians.
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.”