It would not have been possible to assemble so complete a picture of Martin in so short a period of time if not for the help of someone who had never even set foot in Room 456C. His name was Rafael Bloch, and his contribution was the treasure trove of files gathered during his long and ultimately fatal investigation into Martin Landesmann. Bloch had left behind many pieces of the puzzle. But it was Eli Lavon who unearthed the true prize, and Rimona Stern who helped decode it.
Buried in an unlabeled tan folder were several pages of hand-written notes concerning Keppler Werk GmbH, a small metallurgy firm based in the former East German city of Magdeburg. Apparently, Landesmann had secretly purchased the company in 2002, then poured millions into transforming the once-dilapidated facility into a modern technological showpiece. It seemed that Keppler's assembly lines now manufactured some of the finest industrial-grade valves in Europe—valves it shipped to customers around the world. It was a list of those customers that raised alarm bells, for Keppler's distribution chain corresponded rather nicely to a global smuggling route well known to Office analysts. The network began in the industrial belt of Western Europe, snaked its way across the lands of the former Soviet Union, then looped through the shipping lanes of the Pacific Rim before finally reaching its terminus at the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It was this discovery, made on the fourth day of the team's effort, that prompted Gabriel to announce that they had just discovered Martin's loose thread. Uzi Navot immediately christened the operation Masterpiece and headed to Kaplan Street in Jerusalem. The prime minister wanted details, and Navot finally had a critical one to share. Gabriel's project was no longer simply about a missing Rembrandt portrait and a pile of looted Holocaust assets. Martin Landesmann was in bed with the Iranians. And only God knew who else.
THE NEXT EVENING, Martin Landesmann became the target of active, if distant, Office surveillance. The setting for this milestone was Montreal; the occasion was a charity gala at a downtown hotel for a cause Saint Martin supposedly held dear. The watchers took several photos of Landesmann as he arrived for the party—accompanied by Jonas Brunner, his personal security chief—and snapped several more as he departed in the same manner. When next they saw him he was stepping off his private business jet at Geneva International Airport and into the back of an armored Mercedes Maybach 62S limousine, which delivered him directly to Villa Elma, his palatial estate on the shores of Lake Geneva. Martin, they would soon discover, spent almost no time at GVI's headquarters on the Quai de Mont-Blanc. Villa Elma was his base of operations, the true nerve center of his vast empire, and the repository of Martin's many secrets.
As the surveillance operation settled into place, it began to produce a steady stream of intelligence, most of it useless. The watchers took many pretty pictures of Martin and recorded the occasional snatch of long-range audio, but their efforts produced nothing resembling an actionable piece of information. Martin conducted conversations they could not hear with men they could not identify. It was, said Gabriel, like listening to a melody without words.
The problem lay in the fact that, despite repeated efforts, Technical had been unable to penetrate GVI's well-fortified computer systems or to crack into Martin's ever-present mobile phone. Given no advance warning of Martin's hectic schedule, Gabriel's watchers were little more than a pack of hounds chasing a crafty fox. Only the flight plans filed by Martin's pilots betrayed his movements, but even those proved to be of little value. Ten days into the Landesmann watch, Gabriel announced that he never wanted to see another photo of Martin getting on or off an airplane. Indeed, Gabriel declared, he would be happy if he never saw Martin's face again. What he needed was a way inside Martin's world. A way to get his phone. A way to get his computer. And for that he needed an accomplice. Given Martin's daunting security, it would not be possible to create one out of whole cloth. Gabriel needed the help of someone close to Martin. He needed an agent in place.
AFTER A WEEK of around-the-clock searching, the team found its first potential candidate while staking out Martin at his luxury penthouse apartment located at 21 Quai de Bourbon, on the northern edge of the Ile Saint-Louis in Paris. She was delivered to his door by way of a chauffeured Mercedes at five minutes past nine in the evening. Her hair was dark and cut fashionably short; her eyes were large and liquid and brimming with an obvious intelligence. The surveillance team judged her to be a self-assured woman and, after hearing her bid good night to her driver, British. She punched the code into the entry keypad as though she had performed the task many times before, then disappeared through the doorway. They saw her again two hours later admiring the view of the Seine from Martin's window with Martin at her back. The intimacy of their pose, combined with the fact that her torso was bare, left no doubt about the nature of their relationship.
She departed at 8:15 the next morning. The watchers took several additional photos as she climbed into the back of a chauffeured Mercedes, then followed her to the Gare du Nord where she boarded the 9:13 Eurostar train to London. After three days of surveillance, Gabriel knew her name, her address, her telephone number, and the date of her birth. Most important, he knew where she worked.
It was the last piece of information—the place of her employment—that caused Uzi Navot to immediately declare her "flagrantly unsuitable" for recruitment. Indeed, during the heated argument that followed, an exasperated Navot would once again say things he would later regret. Not only did he call into question Gabriel's judgment but his sanity as well. "Obviously, the Cornish wind has affected your brain," he snapped at one point. "We don't recruit people like her. We avoid them at all costs. Cross her off your list. Find someone else."
In the face of Navot's tirade, Gabriel displayed a remarkable equanimity. He patiently refuted Navot's arguments, calmed Navot's fears, and reminded Navot of the formidable nature of Martin's many defenses. The woman they had first seen in Paris was the proverbial bird in the hand, he said. Release her to the wind, and it might be months before they found another candidate. Navot finally capitulated, as Gabriel had known he would. Given Martin's secret commercial ties to the Iranians, he was no longer a can that could be kicked down the road. Martin had to be dealt with and dealt with quickly.
The global nature of Martin's sins, combined with the passport carried by the potential recruit, meant it was not possible for the Office to proceed alone. A partner was required, perhaps two for good measure. Navot issued the invitations; the British quickly agreed to act as host. Gabriel had one final request, and this time Navot did not object. One didn't bring a knife to a gunfight, Navot conceded. And one never went to war against a man like Martin Landesmann without Ari Shamron in his back pocket.
44
THE MARAIS, PARIS
Many years earlier, Maurice Durand had stumbled across a newspaper article about the case of Christoph Meili, a private security guard who had the misfortune of being assigned to work at the Union Bank of Switzerland's headquarters on the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. While making his rounds on a January afternoon in 1997, the devoutly Christian father of two entered the bank's shredding room and discovered a pair of large rolling bins filled with old documents, including several ledgers detailing transactions conducted between UBS and Hitler's Germany. Meili found the presence of the material in the shredding room more than a little suspicious, since weeks earlier Swiss banks had been prohibited by federal law from destroying wartime documents. Sensing something was amiss, he stuffed two of the ledgers under his shirt and smuggled them to his modest home outside Zurich. The next morning, he handed the documents over to the Israeli Cultural Center, at which point his problems began.