Was she testing how much I knew?
“I have the one on Allenby Street,” I said. “Which one do you have?”
“11-36 Weitzman Street, Haifa.”
“Yeah, that's her new address,” I said knowingly. “Allenby is her mother's address. Did she give you an address in Munich?”
“No. But she wanted her mother to be a signatory also.”
“Yes, I know that.” I quickly added, “Has Mrs. Bernstein been in yet?”
“No,” she said. “Miss Peled told us that her mother would come at a later time to sign the card.”
“Was there anything else?” I asked.
“No. That's it.”
I thanked her and left the bank. This was at least solid proof that Ariel had set foot in Munich.
So what did I know so far? Ariel had come to Munich and had rented a safe-deposit box to be jointly owned with her mother. Her father was murdered here. I didn't need to be a rocket scientist to see that there might be a connection. But that was only a possibility, not a fact.
During our training at the Mossad, we were taught the art of report writing. NAKA was the acronym in Hebrew for uniform writing procedure. “You must always bear in mind that the reader of your report has only the paper before him. He doesn't know you and cannot and should not read between the lines. So when you mean to report about seeing a bird, and another combatant at the other side of the world wants to report seeing the same type of bird, both of you should use the same word bird and not one use bird and the other use fowl. The analyst reading your report would be confused: are both reports describing the same bird? Next, establish the level of security of the document. ‘Top secret’ is applied to information which, if disclosed, could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to national security. ‘Secret’ is information which, if disclosed, could be expected to cause serious damage to national security. ‘Confidential’ is applied to information which, if disclosed, could be expected to cause damage to national security.
“Now, how do you define national security and the level of damage it could suffer without irreparable harm?” We had spent two weeks on that. The list of topics that had to be classified included military plans, weapons systems, or operations; foreign-government information; intelligence activities (including special activities); intelligence sources or methods; cryptology; foreign relations or foreign activities of the country, including confidential sources; Jewish emigration from economically or politically distressed countries; scientific (including nuclear), technological, or economic matters relating to national security; programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities; and vulnerabilities or capabilities of system installations, projects, or plans relating to national security.
In Alex's words: “Once you've done that, select the degree of reliability of the information it contains. Remember, it is not your reliability that is being reviewed but that of the information you are providing. So don't beautify the facts. If you do that, then your credibility would really be put into question. If the information is obtained from a single source, tell that to the reader, on the top of your report in bold type. The source may be your own mother, but mothers can be wrong too, you know. And finally, always distinguish between an assumption, a lead, a suspicion, an opinion, and a fact. A fact gets the highest degree of certainty, so the word is to be used only if the data provided is worthy of that definition. Preferably it would be based upon all-source intelligence; that is, information accumulated from various available sources.”
Accordingly, all I could conclude was that Ariel Peled had rented a safe-deposit box. That was a single source fact. Still, somebody posing as Ariel could also have done the same. That she put something she felt needed protection in the box was an assumption, not a fact, because the box could still be empty. But if it was Ariel who rented the box and put something in the box, I figured it was connected to her father. That was definitely a suspicion.
Back at the hotel, I went through my papers again. I looked at the identified phone numbers Lan had sent me and compared them with Peled's hotel bill. I examined the line on the bill where the charge was made for the two calls to the Mossad headquarters in Israel. The first call was made on September 22 and lasted twenty-nine minutes; the second call was made on September 24 and lasted thirty-six minutes. Since the calls came into the Mossad's general switchboard, I couldn't tell to whom DeLouise had directed his calls or whether both calls were made to the same person. I looked at the other numbers. The California numbers were easy – two calls to his wife, three calls to his son, and two calls to his attorneys. The three Swiss numbers were made to the Credit Suisse private banking branch in Geneva.
He's no different from the others, I muttered to myself, half in contempt. People who take off with large sums of money are typically repetitive in their conduct, and therefore their actions are fairly predictable. The calls to the private banking branch of Credit Suisse indicated that DeLouise was very likely to have had some banking relationship with them. But it was too premature to take any vigorous legal action to find out. I didn't know for sure that he was the bank's client. I also didn't know what name or legal entity he used. If the U.S. government filed papers with Swiss officials attempting to force Credit Suisse to disclose all records pertaining to Raymond DeLouise, the Department of Justice would have to wait six months until the bank responded. Only then would one discover that a target might have used a different name or a company or a trust to hide his assets or might have cleaned out the account and hidden the booty elsewhere. We would have lost not only important time but also the element of surprise. I'd seen cases where unscrupulous bankers tipped their clients off about the U.S. request for bank records or a law-enforcement inquiry, thus enabling them to move their money to a different location.
The Italian call was made to a company in Rome called Broncotrade SPA. I wrote a note to check that one out. The calls to Luxembourg were to Bank Hapoalim, a branch of Israel's largest bank. Then came the local calls. First on the list was a Herbert Oplatka. I dialed the number.
“Oplatka Travel,” said a young woman, “How may I help you?”
“I was left a message to call you.”
“And you are?”
“My name is Peter Wooten and I'm a partner of Mr. Raymond DeLouise. I don't know whether your message was meant for me or for him, because it was left on our voice mail.”
“Let me check,” she said, and put me on hold.
“Nobody here left any message for you or Mr. DeLouise, but it could be someone from the morning shift who called you,” she informed me a moment later.
“Would you please check your computer and see if Mr. DeLouise's reservations are confirmed?”
It was the longest shot in the dark I'd fired in a long time.
“Yes,” she replied after a few seconds.
Bingo! A hit.
She continued. “I see now. His flight tomorrow on Lufthansa from Munich through Frankfurt to Moscow is confirmed. I also see that he hasn't picked up his tickets yet, so that could be the reason for the message. Please ask him to pick them up, or maybe you want us to deliver them to his hotel?”
“I'll ask him to get back to you. Thanks.”
This was my lucky day. I went back to the list and picked up the next number, a Sonja and Ernest Bart. I called the number; an elderly man answered.
“Pension Bart.”
“I'm sorry, please say that again,” I asked.
“Pension Bart,” he repeated.
“Ah yes, thanks,” I said, recognizing the word finally. “May I have your address?”
He gave it to me and I went down to my car and got underway.
I was getting excited now that I was at long last warm, if not hot, on the trail. The pension was in a residential area, surrounded by evergreen trees and apartment buildings with small balconies. Flowers grew in pots on many of the balconies. Everything looked neat and clean.