Asher Lichtman was on the telephone at this very moment talking to one of his ‘sons’, describing what had taken place, giving the licence number of the FedEx van and the smaller vehicle still outside 4188.
They had used 4187 as a surveillance post for two years. In fact, everyone was keyed up, expecting the order to snatch Leibermann any day. Now, under their very noses, the target had been grabbed, disappearing almost into thin air.
After waiting for five minutes, the other van drove away, the figure in its passenger seat talking rapidly into a microphone.
Markus Leibermann was due to be at a small dinner party that evening, given by the Rubinsteins at 4172, so that a few of their friends could meet their son, the psychiatrist, Adam, on a short visit to his parents. Adam did not get to meet Mr Leibermann, and though he was not to know it, he did not miss much.
Natkowitz did his stuff with the assistance of two slide projectors and a large computer screen, the kind software manufacturers use at trade shows. They had all trooped down to one of the secure briefing areas shielded from external directional mikes and bugproof, forty feet below ground in the huge basement, half of which was car park, the rest being rooms like this, or debriefing facilities.
The room was not unlike a film company’s screening theatre. There were no distracting pictures on the bare walls and it was furnished with soft, comfortable chairs which were bolted to the floor. A little console of coloured telephones was built into an enlarged armrest in the seat reserved for M. Apart from Bond and Natkowitz, M and Bill Tanner were joined by the man they all referred to as the Scrivener, Brian Cogger, an officer of great skill when it came to the preparation of documents, mainly passports and assorted pocket litter which made up the outward and visible signs of many an agent’s inward and spiritual cover. It was a hint that M had already made up his mind about the operation into Moscow. The Scrivener’s art was a dying trade, yet he was a busy man and his presence suggested that his talents would be required.
Bond wondered if they were taking precautions out of habit or whether there was yet cause to believe the old Eastern Bloc and Soviet intelligence communities were still at it and could pose security problems. Eventually he decided that, whatever the politicians said out loud, tolling the tocsin for Communism and the Cold War, the secret world would go on playing by its own rules. It was safer that way.
The hearty dilettante farmer image Natkowitz had presented in M’s office seemed to slide away once he started to brief them on the Mossad’s side of things. It was like watching a snake shed its skin but in reverse, for Bond felt the man had put on his true nature once he began. Here was the real Pete Natkowitz – able, steeped in the arcane ways and the secret language and with his subject at his fingertips.
First he dealt with the question of identity using great blow-ups of Joel Penderek side by side with existing pictures of SS-Unterscharführer Josif Vorontsov as he was in 1941 when he served with the Waffen-SS Special Duties Brigade.
Natkowitz flicked between the two side-by-side photos and a copy of Vorontsov’s recorded details filched from the SS files.
‘As you can see, the height’s about right,’ he said, his accent changing from the drawl to a more clipped, authoritative tone. ‘Around six one in 1941 according to the SS; and Joel Penderek about the same in ’46 if US Immigration is to be believed. The age is also nearly correct. Vorontsov was born January 19th, 1917, while Immigration says Penderek’s birthday is November 19th, 1916, which makes him a Scorpio if anyone should be interested in that kind of thing. It also makes him a couple of months older than Vorontsov, which is okay, or as near as damn it.
‘If, as we suspect in Tel Aviv, the Scales of Justice have gone out of their way to find a ringer, they’ve done a lot of homework.’ He took his wooden pointer and started to tap first one of the photographs and then the other. ‘You see, even in relatively old age, there is a resemblance. Look particularly at the nose, the eyes, chin and forehead. Distinct similarities. On the surface Joel Penderek could be taken for Josif Vorontsov.’ He gave them a knowing smile and gestured with his right hand – a quick tipping motion, fingers splayed. ‘Someone wishes us to believe they are the same person. But, on close examination, this is not so.’
He started to enumerate the obvious features. Vorontsov had a tiny scar below his lip and above the chin, the result of a childhood accident involving sharp little milk teeth and a tumble in his father’s Ukrainian home. There were blow-ups of the area on both sets of pictures. The scar was there for young Vorontsov while it was missing from old Penderek.
Again he turned to the details from the SS files on one hand and US Immigration’s profile on the other. A scar on Vorontsov’s right thigh was not mentioned in Penderek’s distinguishing marks listed in 1946. There was also the matter of an appendicitis operation performed in the Gorky University Hospital, Kharkov in 1939. ‘Vorontsov’s father was a medical practitioner who taught anaesthesiology at the university, and, it seems, was a favourite of Stalin. Certainly he escaped Stalin’s Great Terror, and our psychological profile of Josif suggests that he was both anti-Semitic and ambivalent about the way things were being run in the USSR at the time of the Nazi invasion – Barbarossa. This made him an ideal candidate for the SS recruitment, or so our tame shrinks tell us.
‘The US INS, the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, seems either to have missed the appendix scar or it just wasn’t there. No prizes for guessing which.’
Natkowitz continued with further contradictions, this time in a more detailed manner, using a computer programme which converted the photographs into three-dimensional heads. Someone had entered what measurement details existed on the two men, and the result showed likely bone structure which in turn drew attention to large discrepancies.
‘The pretty pix?’ Bond queried.
‘What about them?’ Nobody but Pete Natkowitz attempted to answer.
‘Obviously we’ve all got Vorontsov’s stuff on file, but what about Penderek? He on file as well? Does the Mossad know something we don’t?’
‘James, you’re a doubting Thomas. No, nobody had Penderek on file, except INS, passport control, and the FBI who found a large box of snaps in the poor old guy’s bedroom. FBI kindly circulated them for us. We all got them, including those wonderful people who gave us the camps on the Gulag, the mental hospitals for those who held different views, the quick bullet in the back of the neck in the Dzerzhinsky dungeons and encouragement to families to betray one another while they tickled every would-be traitor as a poacher tickles trout.’
‘Come on, Pete,’ Bond interrupted, ‘we’ve all done our fair share of tickling, most certainly your Service . . .’
‘Not to the extent KGB did it,’ Natkowitz snapped. So Bond kept his thoughts to himself as the Israeli continued. ‘We did have a large file on the real Vorontsov.’ Natkowitz ran his splayed fingers through his fireball of hair. ‘And don’t accuse us of fomenting family feuds when I say it’s common knowledge that we in the Mossad use a large number of part-time agents all over the world. One of those led us to Vorontsov. An accident, like so many others. An old lady, whose name I’ll keep to myself, was doing some grocery shopping at a Winn Dixie in Tampa, Florida, about four years ago. She turned a corner, from the canned goods to frozen foods, and there he was, his back towards her, selecting a TV dinner.