“One last thing. An agent’s report that I carried out of Syria myself. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a report from a Palestinian inside the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”
“Yes, yes. We know the name of the group,” said the little man with bushy eyebrows. “What did the report say?”
“It said that the leadership of the PFLP was convinced that there was an American agent inside Fatah. The PFLP leadership wasn’t sure about the identity of the agent, but they suspected that it was Ramlawi.”
“Well, well, well,” said the little man. As he talked, he inserted a pipe cleaner in the stem of his pipe and withdrew a wad of wet brown goo. “So, now we are getting our intelligence from the lunatics in the PLO, is that what you are telling me?”
“We take it wherever we can get it,” said Levi.
“Correct,” said the law school professor with the clear plastic glasses. “And since you understand that fact of life so well, perhaps you can answer the big question.”
“What is that?” said Levi.
“The big question is what should we do about all of this?”
“You want my recommendation?”
“Why not?”
“Let me think.”
“Not too long,” said the professor. “If you think too long, you will become like the rest of us. Don’t think. Just say.”
“We could try to use Ramlawi ourselves. Threaten to expose his contacts with the Americans if he doesn’t agree to work with us.”
“Wrong,” said the professor. “Interesting, but wrong. The Palestinian would just assume that the Americans had told everything to their Israeli friends. Trying to blackmail him would accomplish nothing. It would only cut off the American connection. Any more ideas?”
“We could make an approach to Rogers, the CIA officer. Or to Marsh, the one who was in Rome.”
“Wrong again. Too risky. We do not want to start recruiting CIA officers. We don’t need the aggravation. Do you want to know the correct answer?”
“Of course,” said Levi.
“Don’t do anything. At first, that is always the best thing to do. Nothing. Just watch and wait. Don’t make the water muddy by stirring it up. Be patient.”
“Yes, sir,” said Levi.
That was it. People began rising from their seats. Levi felt deflated, somehow, to have travelled this far, assembled all this material, only to be told to do nothing. Perhaps it showed, because as the group was filing out of the room, the button-down professor and the diminutive man with the bushy eyebrows both walked over to Levi.
Levi watched them approach and wondered, which one is the boss? Which one is the true face of Mossad? The wily little man with the sardonic sense of humor or the clipped, carefully controlled analyst? The man in the button-down shirt approached Levi first and shook his hand.
“My name is Natan Porat,” said the man in the clear glasses. “I am the chief of the service. You did a fine job today. Keep up the good work.”
He motioned to the short man with bushy eyebrows.
“This is my deputy, Avraham Cohen,” said Porat.
“You give a nice briefing, Mr. Levi,” said Cohen.
Porat took Levi aside. He seemed even more American up close. He didn’t sweat. His hair was trim. His voice was clipped. He didn’t gesture when he talked. He seemed to Levi almost bloodless. Porat looked with his clear eyes through his clear glasses. He spoke the language of the “A” students who run the modern-day security services around the world.
“We will do something about the Ramlawi problem, I assure you,” said Porat. “But you must understand that it is delicate. It is a little awkward to learn that an American agent is directing the operations of the leading terrorist group in the world.”
36
Tel Aviv; September 1972
Levi was at his desk when the first reports began to come in from Munich. Eight Palestinian terrorists had infiltrated the Olympic Village at dawn on the morning of September 5 and were holding eleven Israeli athletes hostage.
Like the rest of Israel, Levi spent that day listening to the radio. You couldn’t escape the news. Levi had a radio in his cramped office. There was one in the cafeteria. There was even a radio in the usually noiseless stacks of the registry. It was much the same in every office building and house in Israel. People stopped what they were doing and stared at the radio, listening to the awful news from Germany.
The bulletins came every hour from Munich. There were not eleven hostages, said the radio, but nine. The terrorists had killed two of the Israeli boys when they seized the building. All the hostages would be killed, reported the radio, unless Israel released 236 Palestinian prisoners. The terrorists set a deadline of noon, then 1:00 P.M., then 5:00 P.M., then 10:00 P.M. They asked for three planes to fly them and their hostages to an Arab country. The Germans agreed. The hostages were heading to the airport.
Israel sat by the radio and listened and prayed. People went home, had dinner, lay awake in bed listening to the news. Levi stayed at the office. Just after 1:00 A.M. in Israel, the announcement came. Thanks be to God! All nine Israeli athletes had been rescued. A spokesman for the German Federal Republic announced that a rescue operation had succeeded. The Israeli prime minister, listening to the radio like everyone else, opened a bottle of Cognac to celebrate.
Israel radio continued to carry confirmation that all the hostages were safe until it went off the air at 3:00 A.M. The late editions of the Israeli newspapers bannered the glorious news. “Hostages in Munich Rescued,” said The Jerusalem Post. “All Safe After Germans Trap Arabs at Military Airport.”
Israel woke up the next morning to the horror of what had really happened. Israel Radio went back on the air at 6:00 A.M. with a somber announcement that the earlier reports had somehow been mistaken. A German effort to storm the getaway plane had backfired. All nine Israeli athletes were dead. A massacre had taken place in Munich.
Levi was as stunned as anyone else in Israel. Perhaps more so, for he had allowed himself in the few months that he had been back home to relax. He had begun to forget in those months what he had felt every day and every minute outside Israeclass="underline" the feeling of vulnerability, the feeling that you could be killed at any moment by merciless enemies, the feeling that you were hated by the world-and would always be hated-simply because you were a Jew. Those feelings returned now for Levi like a ruptured wound inside his brain.
Levi took a walk that day and saw a city of red-eyed people, who had begun the day sobbing and were still stunned with grief. In the park benches along Jabotinsky Street, some old people were sitting and crying. A crowd had gathered spontaneously at the German Embassy. Levi heard the noise from several blocks away. The crowd was singing a song in Hebrew, “ Am Yisrael Hai ”-The People of Israel Live. Someone had drawn the number II on the pavement, the number of victims. Someone else had brought eleven candles. People were arriving with posters. “Never Again.” “Why No Olympic Solidarity for Jews?” “An Eye for an Eye.” An old woman was handing out black ribbons. Levi took one and put it on his arm.
What was it that had shaken the country so? Levi wondered as he walked back to the office. It wasn’t the number of people who had been killed. In the annals of terrorism against the state of Israel, eleven victims wasn’t a unique tragedy but a mere moment in a nearly continuous pattern of violence. It wasn’t the brutality of the killings, either. Dying in a hail of gunfire, after all, was not the worst way to die.
What was it, then, that made Levi and everyone he encountered that day feel so shattered by the events in Munich?
Perhaps it was the innocence and helplessness of the victims. They were athletes, symbols of the simplest and purest virtues of the nation. The strongest, the swiftest, the least tainted by the corruptions of life. They had come to Munich believing that twenty-seven years after the end of the Holocaust, Jews could come to Germany without fear. They had accepted an invitation to come and play with the other nations of the world. And it had ended with a pile of Jewish corpses.