A cable from David Stone came in. “You are authorized a one-week vacation. No work is to be performed in any country other those included on the authorized list provided before your departure. David.”
That was David’s nice way of saying, “You can go wherever you want, but don’t mess up things or you’re on your own.”
An armored embassy car drove me to the airport. I had changed my mind about Switzerland. I had started to think that the Al Taqwa link Khan was selling me was dubious. If necessary, I’d pursue it with the bank’s receivers from New York. Instead, I took a British Airways flight to London. From London, I boarded an El Al flight to Ben Gurion Airport, Israel. When I arrived, it was already dark. I rented a car, listened to Israeli oldies, and drove to my hotel on the beach in Tel Aviv.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next morning I called Benny Friedman, my Mossad buddy. Friendship forged in military organizations lasts forever. Although we served together for only three years, we created a strong bond. Our friendship withstood the cultural gap between us. Benny came from an Orthodox family and adhered to all the tenets of the Jewish faith, while I considered myself nonreligious, only keeping the traditional rituals during holidays. Benny also had a wry sense of humor, but only those who knew him well could really “get it.” I was one of the few who did, and I felt that if anybody could penetrate what was going on in his agile mind, I could. Well, maybe.
I’d left the Mossad when I was exposed to the enemy during an operation which effectively “burned” me from participating in any future field operations. But Benny had stayed on. He’d climbed through the ranks and made it to the top of Tevel, the foreign-relations wing of the Mossad, which is charged with liaisons with foreign intelligence services, including with countries considered hostile to Israel.
When we’d first learned about this wing’s functions during our training at the Mossad Academy, some eyebrows were raised. “What? Trade secrets with your rivals?” one asked. Alex, our training instructor, was very calm about it. “We are in the game of interests, and you don’t let feelings and animosities get in your way,” he had said. “If you need to exchange information with someone, you just do it. Politics may collide, but we do our work. Same goes for any intelligence service worldwide. We collect intelligence concerning our enemies’ intentions and capabilities, and we’d get it from Satan if he were offering it at the right price.”
Benny’s secretary transferred the call.
“Dan, is that you? Where are you?”
“In Tel Aviv for a few days.”
“Business?” Benny knew what I was doing, and in the past we had helped each other in matters of our work. I never felt I was abusing our friendship, and I don’t think he felt any differently.
“Actually, I’m on a family visit. But you know me, I never stop working. Lunch?”
“Sure.” Benny never said no to a good meal, and neither did I. The only difference was that he ate only kosher food, while I ate also kosher.
Two hours later we met on the fishermen’s pier in Jaffa’s old port. The city of Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv, is one of the oldest port cities of the world, with a history dating back five thousand years. The pier is younger, only about a thousand years old, and is mainly used by fishing boats that bring their fresh catch to the restaurants lined along its outer walls. This was a place where restaurant decorators didn’t need to fake authenticity-it was the authentic place. Weatherworn fishermen’s boats bobbed nearby. Busy people were unloading crates of fish, and there was a strong mix of smells: sea air, fish, and burning wood coal from the open air grills barbecuing fish.
We sat at the table closest to the water. Benny hadn’t changed much during the past year or so since I’d last seen him. But his mustache had grayed, he had gained a little weight, and he had lost much of his hair. He was starting to look older than his years. I knew why. He took his job more seriously than anybody I’d ever known. To him it wasn’t just a job, it was almost some sort of sacred obligation.
“World travel is treating you well,” I said, looking at his belly.
“Age has its indignities,” he said wryly. “In 1975 I was interested in acid rock, and now I’ve got acid reflux. Besides,” he added, “look who’s talking. You don’t exactly look like the slim serviceman you once were.”
He had a point, of course, and I was quick to change the subject. After schmoozing for a while and catching up on our respective families, I moved on to business. I told Benny about my debacle in Sydney, without giving him any telltale details or mentioning Ward’s name.
Somehow Benny wasn’t surprised to hear my story, although he said nothing. I decided to whet his appetite.
“Ever heard of Nada Management?”
Benny left his fork stuck in the huge red snapper he was dissecting.
“Sure, why? Are you trying to dig dead corpses out of their graves?”
“What do you mean?”
“They went out of business and their principal figure committed suicide.”
“How come I missed that information?”
“I’m surprised. It was all over the place.”
“Do you have anything concrete on them?”
“I’m sure we do. I can send you some reading material later. Where are you staying?”
“The usual.”
“Good.”
At six P.M. there was a knock on my hotel-room door and a bellman brought me a yellow envelope. I opened it, and sat at the desk to read the printed document.
On the top it read “The Central Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations,” the official name of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service. Below that were today’s date and a handwritten note. Dan, I’m attaching the documents you have requested. Most of the information has already been made public. Some of it could be outdated or inaccurate, so treat it wisely and don’t regard it as evidence, but as uncorroborated intelligence to develop further leads. I’m here for the rest of the week if you need me. Regards, Benny.
To the note was attached a thick, bound, printed document which seemed like a photocopied section of even a bigger document. Nada Management aka Nada Management Organization SA, Switzerland, fka Al Taqwa Management Organization SA. A financial institution in Lugano, located at Viale Stefano Franscini 22, Lugano CH-6900 TI, Switzerland, not far from the Italian border. The company was previously named Al Taqwa Management (fear of God in Arabic). Al Taqwa is believed to have played a major part in laundering money for Osama bin Laden. Swiss and Liechtenstein police raided Al Taqwa’s offices in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, respectively, and Swiss police raided as well the home of its principal, Huber, in Rossimattstrasse 33, 3074 Muri, Bern (see more below), and the homes of Youssef Nada and Ali Ghaleb Himmat, two other Al Taqwa directors. Al Taqwa’s accounts in Swiss banks were frozen. Separately, Italian police closed an Islamic cultural center in Milan used as Al-Qaeda’s European logistical center. The center was financed by Ahmed Idris Nasreddin, a Kuwaiti businessman who was also an Al Taqwa director. Three months later, Al Taqwa was shut down permanently. The U.S. government’s Office of the Coordinator of Counterterrorism distributed a list of sixty-two organizations and individuals suspected of involvement in terrorist activities. Nada Management was included on the list. Al Taqwa was the financial arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. That organization was founded in Egypt in the late 1920s and has fought for the formation of a pure pan-Islamic theocratic state.
Obviously the document was sanitized, and anything meaningful had been redacted. What was left was history, not intelligence, I concluded, and just leafed through the rest of the pages. Since Nada Management and Huber were all dead, it was all very interesting, but what would I do with it? I pushed the bulky document aside and called Benny.