Another man spoke up. One that Levi had missed in looking around the room. He didn’t look like an Israeli; he looked like an American. A professor at the Harvard Law School, maybe. He was tall and thin, so fit that his body seemed almost stringy. He was dressed in loose khaki slacks and a white button-down Oxford-cloth shirt. He wore a pair of clear plastic glasses, which gave him a slightly boyish look. He spoke with a quick, sharp tone of voice that was at once intelligent and impatient.
“The tape doesn’t prove that,” said the button-down professor. “What you said may be true. I personally have no doubt that it is true. But the tape does not prove it. The tape proves only that Ramlawi made arrangements to obtain four automatic pistols and one hundred kilos of explosive in Rome. It doesn’t even prove that, actually, but we will take that on faith.”
Levi’s throat felt dry. He took a drink of water and continued his briefing.
“The tape is only the final piece of information. We have collateral evidence of Ramlawi’s role in Black September. We have photographs of him meeting with a man who was arrested in Cairo last year after the Black September attack on the Jordanian prime minister.”
“Soooo?” said another voice from around the table. He was a fat man wearing a knitted yarmulke. “So what do photos prove? Proximity. Contact. And what is that, my friend? Nothing!”
“We have transcripts of the Egyptian interrogation of the Black September terrorists in which they say they received training from a man who fits the description of Ramlawi.”
“Oh very nice!” said a tall, thin man sitting by the window. “So now we’re depending on the Egyptians for our intelligence? God forbid! How do they know anything? What are they all of a sudden, geniuses?”
Everyone laughed.
Levi realized then that he was getting razzed. That this group liked nothing better in the world than giving young officers a hard time. He set his feet more squarely under him and continued the briefing.
“We have other collateral evidence about Ramlawi’s involvement in Black September, but I won’t bore you with it. Take my word for it. I have analyzed the evidence carefully, and I tell you on my honor that it is accurate. The man is involved in Black September operations. Period. Take my word for it or find another analyst.”
“Not so loud, please,” said the man with bushy eyebrows. He relit his pipe. He was happy now. He didn’t want facts. For all Levi knew, the Chiefs had all spent more time with the files than he had. They wanted analysis.
“Now I will turn to the interesting part,” said Levi. “Here we are not dealing with hard facts, but with speculations-guesses-that are based on the available evidence.”
“What is your speculation?” said the little man. “Just tell us. Don’t make a big production of it, please.”
“The speculation is that Jamal Ramlawi is an American agent.”
There was a momentary silence in the room, broken by the sound of chairs moving, cigarettes being lit, pipes being puffed.
“That’s crazy,” said the little man with bushy eyebrows. “Completely crazy. Why would our friends the Americans do this? Tell us the evidence for this crazy theory.”
“The evidence is complicated,” said Levi.
“Soooo?” said the fat man with the knitted yarmulke. “Do we look stupid?”
“First, we know that Ramlawi is impulsive. We know that in Beirut he led a wild life. Chasing women. Dozens of women. We think that he even had an affair with the wife of a French diplomat.”
“Very nice,” said the tall, thin man by the window. “They deserve each other.”
“We know Ramlawi is a pet of the Fatah leadership,” continued Levi. “We know that he was one of the Fatah men who was sent to Egypt for a special training course in intelligence. We know that he speaks many languages, including English, French, Italian, and German. We know that he has travelled extensively.”
“Sooooo?” queried the fat man. “What does this have to do with the CIA.”
“I’m coming to that,” said Levi. “In Beirut, we collected the travel histories of everyone flying in and out of Beirut International Airport.”
“We know. We know,” said the man with the bushy eyebrows. “Whose idea do you think that was? Eh?”
“I’m coming to the important part,” said Levi testily. “In analyzing the travel records, we find two instances in which Jamal Ramlawi was out of Lebanon in 1970 at the same time as a CIA case officer working under diplomatic cover at the American Embassy in Beirut.”
The law school professor rapped his pen against his glass.
“Mr. Levi,” said the law school professor quietly. “What is the name of this CIA officer?”
“Rogers. Thomas Rogers.”
“And where did they go, the terrorist and the CIA man?”
“To Kuwait in March 1970, and to Egypt in May 1970. We cannot confirm that they actually met. But we are sure that they went to those countries at the same time.”
“It could be a coincidence, of course,” said the button-down profesor. “Even twice in one year. But it is interesting, I must admit.”
“Yes,” said the little man with the bushy eyebrows.
“Yes,” said the fat man in the yarmulke.
“Continue,” said the professor.
“The second important piece of evidence is an agent report in the files about a visit to Rome in July 1970 by an American intelligence officer. I wouldn’t have found it at all, since it never went into the Fatah file. I noticed it when I was researching the background of the Italian general in Rome who provided us with the tape.”
“Go on, go on,” said the little man. “Spare us the details.”
“According to this agent in Rome, the American intelligence man had flown in specially to meet with an Arab agent, a Palestinian perhaps. The Italians never figured out who he was supposed to meet. Neither did we. But last week I had one of our friends do a travel check to see if anyone interesting had travelled from Beirut to Rome in July 1970. And guess who popped out from one of the MEA passenger lists, travelling with a phony Algerian passport that he has used several times since then?”
“Ramlawi,” said several voices around the table.
“Correct,” said Levi, beaming.
“And who was this American who came to Rome?” asked the button-down professor.
“Marsh. John Marsh.”
“And why did Mr. Marsh come, and not Mr. Rogers?”
Levi thought for a moment.
“I don’t know,” he said eventually.
“Good,” said the professor. “If you had answered that question, I would have suspected that you were making everything up. Sometimes the correct answer is that we don’t know what the correct answer is.”
Heads around the table nodded sagely. Levi nodded too.
“Go on!” barked the little man with bushy eyebrows. “What are you waiting for?”
“After Rome, everything gets a little fuzzy,” said Levi. “We have a report from an agent in Lebanon. I know a little about him, since I used to collect his reports from dead drops. He is a priest, and something of an amateur detective in his spare time. This may be a little hard to understand, so bear with me. The priest had received from his Mossad case officer in Europe a list of people in whom we had some intelligence interest. One of them was Jamal Ramlawi. So he took it upon himself to put a question to Rogers, the CIA man, about Ramlawi.”
“He did what?” asked the fat man with the knitted yarmulke.
“He asked Rogers, the CIA man, for information about Ramlawi.”
“What an idiot!” said the fat man. “And what did Rogers say?”
“He told the priest to ask the Israelis.”
“Ach!” said the fat man. “What an idiot we have for an agent.”
“What else?” asked the professor.