“Is there something else?” I asked in anticipation.
“Patience,” he counseled. “Please understand that I trust you not to disclose this information to anyone. I don't want this to haunt us. You can draw your own conclusions and use the information to make progress, but don't put it in writing, discuss it with anyone, or reveal your source.”
This must be some heavy stuff, I thought, if Benny went out of his way to tell me that. We were trained together; we knew the rules. I nodded and waited for Benny to continue.
“After his honorable discharge from the army, Peled was looking for a job. He took up teaching physics in a high school but left after one year. I guess he was bored. Then the Mossad approached him and offered him a place in the ranks, specifically the ultrasecret unit assigned to worldwide gathering of scientific and industrial information from public and, more importantly, private sources. He was assigned to the nuclear physics section. He was to collect data on the military applications of the most recent developments in the atomic energy field.”
I didn't want to say anything, fearing I'd break Benny's train of thought or that he'd change his mind about telling me all this.
“He resigned suddenly in 1957 and emigrated to the United States. That's where our story ends.”
“Serious stuff,” I breathed. “So this son of a bitch could lead triple lives. Tack on his Mossad training, and he could disappear anytime he wanted.
“At least I've got a place to start now,” I said. “But triple legal identities? I don't think I've seen that one before.”
“There could certainly be some side benefits to that,” said Benny.
“Like what?” I asked absentmindedly, looking up at him. “What do you mean?”
Then I saw the sparkle in his eyes.
“You could have three wives,” Benny chuckled.
“But then you're punished,” I quipped.
“You mean for polygamy?”
“No,” I said, “You'd have three mothers-in-law.”
He smiled. Benny knew marriage was a sensitive topic. Benny and his wife, Batya, had been good friends to Dahlia and me. The news that we were divorcing had stunned them. There'd been no side to take because the decision came so suddenly and the marriage ended so quickly. Even an intelligence expert like Benny hadn't seen the storm approaching. I had simply packed and left. No battles, just good but fading memories tarnished by two people growing apart. I needed a change and the United States looked like a good new leaf for me.
“Thanks for the information,” I said, when I realized he had finished the story.
“Hey, what are friends for?”
I wanted to find out if DeLouise had maintained any contact with the Mossad after he'd left, but I didn't want to push Benny with further questions. I'd try to find another opportunity to ask him that. The information could be relevant to my case.
“I'll read this stuff and call you to return it or if I have any questions.”
“I'll be here,” he said, and with that he left.
I was tempted to open the envelope and go through the documents then and there, but I resisted. I looked around at the other diners. I could easily pick out the Mossad types. Once you'd spent time there you learned the identifying marks – like that guy over at the other table who wore his name tag tucked inside a pocket shirt, but with the clip still visible on the outside. I could still be one of them, I thought. If I'd stayed on I would now be on the same level as Benny, or even higher up, given my extroverted personality and my pushy character and ambitions. I remembered my mother telling anyone who cared to listen, and a few who didn't, that I had ambition. That was long before I even knew what the word meant.
Three years after my service with the Mossad had begun, I decided to leave. I'd had enough. The work had become too routine. Every great organization is like a Swiss watch with many wheels working in sync. My superiors had all been veterans of the old Russian school of thought. Jews who emigrated from Russia had ruled Israel in its formative years. Some of them became the legendary leaders of Israel's security services and had implemented their strict purist doctrines in their organizations.
Their idol had been the second and celebrated head of the Mossad, Isser Harel, who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s. He was a short man with jumbo ears, piercing eyes, and unrelenting dedication in his character. People who knew him said he had ice water in his veins. He'd been revered and feared. Judging from the stories I'd heard, I didn't think anyone had loved him. Admired, yes. Loved? Hardly. During his years as head of the Mossad, from 1952 to 1963, he had carte blanche on all matters of security from David Ben-Gurion, the founder of modern Israel and its first prime minister.
Harel had ruled not only the Mossad, which was primarily responsible for activity outside Israel, but also the Shin Bet, the secret internal police whose mere existence was kept a state secret until the mid-1970s. When I joined the Mossad, Harel had already been out of power for almost two years. But he continued to cast a long shadow, influencing organizational procedures and philosophy long after his departure. As in any other intelligence-gathering organization, discipline in the Mossad had been tight to prevent leaks and infiltration attempts by hostile powers. The high moral standards imposed by Harel, which had become the norm, continued to be applied. That was fine with everyone, though to be sure there was a double standard involved. When you were on a mission outside Israel, you were expected to lie, cheat, steal, or even kill. But when you returned to Israel you had to be the exemplary model worker and citizen. Never run a red light, tell a lie, or, God forbid, forget to turn over a receipt for ten bucks you spent on the job. Outside Israel we made sizeable cash payments to informers who hadn't exactly been in the habit of giving out receipts. But in Israel? Don't even think of it. Outside Israel we had had other ways to keep a receipt – sometimes on paper, sometimes on a roll of film. The backup unit used photography in the prevideo era. The recording of the “receipt” was useful not only for bookkeeping purposes. Once you had an informer on film receiving payment from you, he was yours forever.
I had been a deputy on several major operations. It was fascinating and dangerous, but at that level there had been no room for personal initiative or original thinking. I quickly discovered that my lone-wolf personality, cutting corners on my way to the target, was in direct conflict with the rigid structure of such a discipline-based organization.
Then there was a major problem. Two groups from Mossad had been sent to Rome in January 1971. I'd accompanied Alon, a blond and athletic-looking senior case officer, and a small backup unit had followed separately. The Mossad was collecting information on the hijackers of an El Al flight from Rome on July 22, 1968. The hijackers, who called themselves the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had diverted the plane to Algeria. Thirty-two Israeli passengers had been held hostage for five weeks, the first-ever hijack of a civilian aircraft by Palestinians. It was standard procedure to investigate incidents like this, no matter how many years it took. Nothing was ever shelved, no unsolved case was ever closed, until the responsible individuals had been identified and brought to justice, in public or (more likely) clandestinely.
Our target was a Libyan diplomat keener on his payoff than on his loyalty to Khadafi, the Libyan dictator who'd been in power for just one year. We planned to meet the diplomat in a cafe. He thought he was going to be interviewed by Scandinavian journalists investigating the hijacking, and he'd promised to bring someone along who had firsthand knowledge of the operation.
I sat at a table with Alon who held, as agreed, a white umbrella – an old trick of the trade. The diplomat arrived with a dark-skinned young man who scanned the area with piercing eyes. Then he looked at me, our eyes met, and he recognized me. The young man was Hammed, a Palestinian who happened to work in my parents’ garden as a landscaper. How did he get here? It really wasn't important. What was important was that, through an extraordinary coincidence, my cover had been blown. The moment Hammed recognized me, he snapped something to the diplomat; they turned around and left the cafe in a hurry.
“It's a professional risk,” said Alon afterward. “There's no way to know if a person you once met as a friend might not return as an enemy.”
My disappointment was acute. Not only had the operation failed, but I knew what the personal consequences would be; once identified, I could not soon again, or maybe ever, participate in clandestine operations. I would have to spend the rest of my working life pushing papers at Mossad headquarters as a researcher and analyst while watching others triumph. I couldn't stand the thought of playing second fiddle, and being out of field operations meant I wouldn't even be in the orchestra.
Even within a glorious entity, there are many unimportant ants working to give the queen her glory. Now that my cover had been blown, I would have to become one of those ants permanently. I had to make a change. I wanted to become royalty elsewhere.
My decision to leave was met with surprise. Service in the Mossad is considered a lifetime career, not a single line, however distinguished, in a long resume.
I applied to Israel's toughest law school, at Tel Aviv University. That changed the course of my life, ushering me into a new profession and a new country and, ironically, as my lunch with Benny revealed, bringing me back years later into contact with the Mossad.
I paid for the tea and the energy bar that looked like compost and tasted no better, took the envelope Benny had given me, and left the cafeteria on my way back to my hotel on Tel Aviv beach overlooking the old Mediterranean port of Jaffa, half a mile away. Sitting at the desk in my twelfth-floor room, I opened the envelope. It contained photocopies of documents. The first document I saw was obviously an application form. The top portion of the document was cut off. I guessed it was Peled's application to the Mossad. His bio details matched what I already knew about him, but there was something else that attracted my immediate attention. He had a wife in Israel. Dov Peled had married one Mina Lerer. That was a surprise, since all I knew of DeLouise so far was that he had a wife and son in California. There was only an indication of his Israeli wife's date of birth, April 6,1930, in Romania, and her Israeli ID number. The treasures are always buried in the minute, seemingly unimportant details.
Where was Mina Lerer now? I picked up the phone and called Ralph Lampert at his home in Tel Aviv. Ralph was a private investigator who had spent many years working in the Shin Bet. I'd met him on a joint operation before I left the Mossad. In those earlier years, operations on Mossad targets carried out within Israel were always in cooperation with the Shin Bet.
Ralph was the classic ordinary person. You could pass him by a thousand times and never pay him any mind; he looked like your neighborhood butcher or dry cleaner. He was that other guy sitting next to you on the train, on the bus, on the plane, the guy you never really noticed – a definite asset in his line of work. After leaving the Shin Bet, Ralph continued doing the only thing he knew how to do: private investigations, this time for insurance companies or suspicious wives or husbands. If there was something you needed to know in Israel, he could get it for you.
What I wanted from Ralph was simple: Mina Lerer. He agreed to come over to the hotel later in the afternoon.
I pulled out the second document pertaining to Peled. It was the standard Mossad employee evaluation sheet; every employee was judged on his personality, his attitude toward his coworkers, his traits, and his success in his work. Finally there was a recommendation concerning the employee's future in the Mossad's maslul kidum (Hebrew for “track of advancement”). A special section was devoted to a personal interview with the employee and the supervisor's impression of how the employee saw himself, his future in the organization, and his ability to take criticism. I could tell by looking at the handwriting that throughout the four-year period, the form had been filled in by two or three different individuals.
As reflected in his supervisors’ evaluations, Peled's personality came through loud and clear: intelligent, hardworking, persistent to the point of stubbornness, and conniving. “Marked for promotion,” said one comment, “but not in positions that require teamwork.” For a moment I suspected that Benny had pulled a fast one on me and given me a copy of my own evaluation form. The most recent comments on the form were written in 1955, although Benny had told me earlier that Peled left in 1957. Was something being kept from me?
The only other document in the envelope was a letter of appreciation Peled received from Professor Ernest David Bergman, the legendary founder and first head of Israel's Nuclear Energy Commission. The letter, only three lines long, commended him for a job well done. There was no mention of the type of work he did to deserve this letter. Why did Benny bother to include this letter among the documents he gave me? It didn't seem to have any relevance. Or maybe it was Benny's not-so-subtle way of saying it did.
Ralph came to see me two hours later. We went out to the park surrounding the hotel to sit on a bench and enjoy the sea breeze. I didn't need to keep our meeting a secret, and I wanted fresh air. Then again, with two people with backgrounds such as ours, even an innocent meeting might suggest we suspected the KGB was watching.
“Ralph, I need you to find a woman for me. Her name is Mina Lerer.” I gave him her ID number. “She was married to a Bruno Popescu, who later changed his name to Dov Peled; he probably divorced her.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“I don't, but I know of an American-born current wife. So I don't know what last name Mina Lerer would be using now. Call me at the hotel when you make progress. I think I'll be here for another week.”
“Sure,” he said, “I'll get right to work on it.”
I returned to my room and stood at the glass door looking at the sea. I was trying to conjure up Dov Peled in my mind. He must have been pretty sharp if he was in the nuclear science section of the Mossad. Israel's nuclear weapons policy and efforts, and the Arab countries’ capabilities, were off-limits, even within the organization, except for those actually assigned to that section. We were warned that it was the most closely guarded secret of Israel. In the mid- and late 1960s, Israel kept its nuclear capability under a dissembling cloud while vowing not to be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. “Non-introduction” meant doing it anyway, but quietly. Peled, I recalled, had joined the Mossad in 1952 and left in 1957. I wondered what Israel's “nuclear policy” had been in those years.
A call from Ralph woke me up the next morning. I'd closed my curtains so I didn't realize how late I'd slept. It was already past 10:00 A.M. – a case of jet lag at its worst. Ralph continued our conversation as if it had stopped only moments before.
“Your Mina Lerer is now Mina Bernstein. She lives in Haifa on Allenby Street.”