by Yaël Dayan
They took the hint and left. David relaxed into a red velvet armchair.
The intelligence officers briefed him on the city of Suez. As far as they could tell from the various reports, very little resistance could be expected. Troops were withdrawing from the area and the fate of the 3rd Army, cut off and surrounded, didn’t encourage those who stayed behind.
Unexpectedly, after receiving word that the regiment commanders would be late, David declared, “Leave me alone with the spy. We’ll have dinner, and I’ll discuss tomorrow’s plan with you later. You better get a couple of hours’ sleep while you are excluded from our company.”
The officers left smiling, and other than a redheaded soldier at the communication set, we were left alone. I found it amazing to realize how fond I had grown of a man I barely knew, in a matter of hours. He wanted to listen and I felt like talking.
“Son of a bitch Phoenix,” he suggested for an opener. “I hope he is worth the trouble.”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“Not if he does it for money.”
“How much do you want to know?”
“As long as we have the time, let’s have the story. I have always been intrigued by you guys. Seems like a dumb game, but I know of occasional results, too. Also I appreciate a lonely game. I work with a group, we all do. We surround ourselves with sons and daddies. I have a cook who knows my taste, a driver who takes care of my intestines, batallion commanders who never question me and friends who can stand my dirty habits. Even this stinking velvet armchair pops up whenever we camp because I mentioned I was comfortable in it. I doubt how well I could operate alone. I have to feed and be fed. Even homosexuality I suspect to be better than masturbation.”
I doubted he really wanted the whole story. I wasn’t even sure how well I remembered the whole story.
I clearly recalled the original file. It had been handed to me, together with another four, at my Tel-Aviv desk. I was leaving for Europe and I had to choose one of the five. Someone who had the potential, who could be developed into a worthy operator. On my desk rested five lives, and I had the satanic power to take one of them in my hands, give it an identity and reshape it. Give it meaning but perhaps destroy it. It was a professional task then. Now I shuddered even thinking about it.
Is it age or a safety valve that makes my memory so strangely selective? Marginal things—code names, passport numbers, aliases, names of cafes—I remember. Whole episodes, at the time constituting my entire life, are erased from my brain. Thus, with an effort, I tried to reconstruct the five files. What made me settle for Phoenix? The final choice was narrowed down to two. Phoenix and an American businessman. The American was a middle-aged retired millionaire, recently divorced and utterly bored with whatever affluence endowed him with. Ex-marine, a yacht owner, sports car collector and world traveler, he was looking for “something different.” For excitement, a challenge, something youthful and active. He was the chief’s candidate. He believed the man had the talent to survive and the freedom to detach himself. He asked me to examine the file carefully, discuss it with the psychologist and the graphology expert. He believed that the man was suitable for Saudia even if we started getting results only in a few years. Egypt was anti-American then, and he wouldn’t have been welcome there in any capacity. The graphologist’s report was rather positive. The man had courage, initiative and drive. What was lacking was depth and total sincerity. He left his wife, having tired of the attributes of marriage, in the hope that a blond secretary would arouse in him forgotten appetites. By the same token I feared he would leave us one day for other challenges. I remembered the report from our man in Madrid.
Rafi had met him in Ibiza, with the blond secretary, and recommended him. Rafi’s recommendations resulted too often in disaster and this must have helped me make up my mind. The final touch was the chief’s words, “Take good care of him, he’s my baby. I almost drafted him in a Chicago sauna, both of us naked in a steam bath. If it works out, what a chapter his story could make in my autobiography.” Phoenix was different. According to the book and the principles of the previous chief I would never have touched him. He was a classic example of a “redemption case.” “Never take someone whose motivation is atonement. Criminals who seek forgiveness or deserters who want to be rehabilitated. We are not the Catholic church,” he used to say, “and basically, we need brave people, but within the normal human structure.”
Phoenix’s curriculum vitae was not complex. He was born in England during World War II. His mother was a nurse in a north London hospital. When the boy was fifteen his parents divorced, and he continued to live with his mother. He won a scholarship to the university, studied hydraulic engineering and held a job with a plant which manufactured pumps. In the university he was friendly with two Israeli students. In the summer of 1965 he visited the Middle East, part vacation, but doing market research for the firm. He liked Lebanon, where he had a schoolmate as well, and had stayed two weeks in a kibbutz in Israel.
There was also a report by a Shmuel from kibbutz Naot. He described the young man as eager to help, to share and to belong. He added that he was “very reserved and unemotional, diffident and self-conscious in a very British manner.”
This visit took place six months before I examined the file, and it seemed that the youth, soon after his return to Britain, contacted the embassy and offered his services.
I couldn’t remember his original name. I always thought of him as Phoenix and two aliases we made him use.
The graphology expert added, “Consistent, determined, unambitious, a loner with an undefinable sense of guilt.”
I suppose I was attracted to the insignificance in his personality. He seemed ordinary enough, nothing fancy or lurid. School certificates and a report from the Israeli irrigation engineer who had gone to school with him and met him again in Israel showed genuine interest in his profession. He cared and knew. He was fascinated by achievements in the field in Israel, the water-carrier from Lake Tiberias down to the Negev desert, and visited some of the installations. What he lacked in experience was compensated by imagination and foresight.
There were other details. He had never been a party member and could be classified as a moderate conservative. His hobbies were chess and amateur radio. He had no passion for sport, food, drink or women.
So much has happened since that I can’t place information or thoughts in a consecutive sequence. I do remember, however, that before I met him for the first time I gave much thought to his motivation. When he arrived in the embassy and offered his services, he was not the one who thought in clandestine terms. I rather liked that, having a deep objection to those who are set on playing cloak and dagger. The thrill he was after was merely professional, and his admiration for Israel, coupled with a personal ambition within his profession, was positive. He had no hatred for the Arabs, or for that matter, knowledge of them. No seeking of revenge. I never trusted those who wanted to help us because they wanted to damage the other side. Still, at that time, the real driving motive was missing. Considerations crossed my mind. Was he running away from something? Was he, after all, after money, which he obviously lacked? He wasn’t an adventurer, but could he be the planted innocent? One thing was clear. Water fascinated him, the procuring of it, the pumping and the use of it, the desalination processes and the power it produced. He was a water-maniac and a thorough student of it. I was always taken by technological dedication.
There were details I don’t remember. Addresses, phone numbers, a medical report, biographies of a few friends.
A meeting was set in Paris; we are now in May, 1966. The purpose of the meeting was simple. I had to find out whether he was willing, and fit, to do something he didn’t intend—to work for us in Europe, go through special training and eventually work under cover in an Arab country.
I’ve had protégés before, so I was familiar with the guidance and training involved. The last one I worked with was a failure, against everybody’s expectations. He
had all it took, and he never really betrayed us. He wasn’t even a spectacular disaster, just lost his nerve at the crucial time. So I was rather reluctant to start the routine, and being in a senior position it was agreed that I’d control the new man, supervise his “education” and watch out for his morale. The technical training could be done by a field worker. This meant involving a third party, which we weren’t happy about. But it was understood that the two would not work together or meet again once the training was over.
Paris in May inspires everything but drafting a male operator. The soft-scented air lay gracefully on the city’s shoulders, like a mohair shawl. The trees were budding in the Tuileries gardens and the gilt statue of Jeanne d’Arc gleamed in the afternoon sun as I looked down the rue de Rivoli. At five sharp he appeared at the sidewalk cafe. Slightly shorter than I imagined, he fit the physical description I had of him. The cafe was half empty but he didn’t bother to look around. He knew he would be met and chose a seat, stretched his legs and unfolded the Herald Tribune. I crossed the street and pulled out a chair next to his. I introduced myself, using a false name, and after the inevitable preliminaries—the flight, the beauty of Paris, and one café-filtre—I suggested we go for a walk in the garden.
I decided to be as straight with him as I could. We sat on a bench looking at the pond and I asked him—something I never did—point blank: “Would you consider, after suitable training, working for us in Israel, or would you be prepared to help us in neighboring countries, too?” He didn’t seem surprised. (Was he, after all, planted? He did have a Lebanese engineer working with him.)
“In what capacity?” he asked. His eyes were deep brown and he had an intriguing way of lowering them when he asked a question and then staring me straight in the eye when I answered.
“I don’t know yet. That depends on circumstances. Economic and political.”
“I wouldn’t like to change my profession. Within the profession, I would like to contribute. I don’t care what organization I work for or whether it’s here or in the Middle East.”
“Why the eagerness? You have a job, a country, a flat. What I’m talking about may involve a complete change in all these.”
“I realize that. If we are sitting here and talking you must know all there is to know about me, so why should I add anything.”
“You are not surprised at my offer?”
“It did cross my mind. Your man in London wanted to know more than any employer would ever dare ask.” He didn’t smile once. He wasn’t nervous or ill at ease. He wasn’t chummy, but he was fully present. A presence that is noticed only by the vacuum it leaves when it’s gone.
“We are going to meet tonight. We’ll have dinner and talk and you have time to think. Afterward we won’t meet for a while, and then when we meet again we’ll be working together.”
We walked in opposite directions. He walked slowly, crossing the Concorde, and I took a side exit to rue de Castiglione. I felt tired and upset. He didn’t ask questions, he wasn’t curious, he didn’t try to sell himself or advertise his talents. He was not excited or confused and it was all too matter of fact. I felt tired at the prospect of a long relationship with this man. There was ice to penetrate or melt and form again. Girls in pastel spring fashions attracted my eyes and I sipped a lemonade in a quiet bar. I didn’t question my judgment as much as I questioned my own enthusiasm for the game.
He did smile when we met for dinner. He replaced his scarf with a necktie and looked fresh and attractive. He didn’t like fish, so we went to a small bistro I knew in Montparnasse.
We talked mostly about water, his summer visit to Israel and his professional aspirations. These were the only subjects which interested him. Any deviation produced an expression of boredom on his face.
He was obviously admiring Israel for many wrong reasons. He respected our moral integrity and our virtuous dedication. He never scratched the surface, never questioned the self-advertised superlatives, yet he wasn’t simpleminded or shallow. He wanted to believe. And that was as far as I could penetrate in my search for motivation.
It was the strongest, the simplest and thus the most difficult motive to accept. Only later, when I purposely tried to shatter it, did I discover it to be true, but later I knew facts I hadn’t been aware of in Paris.
I stayed in a small hotel in the 16th arrondissement. The room was dark and quiet, the bed wide but uncomfortable. I spent a sleepless night trying to make up my mind. By dawn I reached a decision. He was to be trained and drilled, and whoever did it would add his opinion to mine. I didn’t suspect disloyalty or lack of talent. I couldn’t even place my doubt, though I suspected it had to do with lack of self-preservation. Not self-destruction. The man couldn’t care less whether he lived or not. It was both a reason and a result of lack of human contacts, ties, commitments—the things that keep us all going. This, perhaps, made him perfect for the service, but it was an unknown, weird quality which frightened me.
For the six months that followed I was absent from his life, though he was not from mine. The technician who worked with him—a professional master—briefed me on his progress and completed the character report.
As far as Phoenix could gather, he was trained for some form of economic warfare. We were to combat the blockade the Arabs put on Israeli goods and foreign companies dealing with Israel, discover more about the blacklist, and eventually try to sell Israeli exports under different trade names to Arab countries. We tried to remain within his professional boundaries and learn more about his character. I was busy with other things and Phoenix was only on the fringes of my thoughts.
He was an Englishman attracted to our cause and willing to be of use, which he might or might not be. He was a natural with radio equipment, so we didn’t waste time on communications training. If we had stopped there, he would have had no way of involving any of us. We didn’t offer him a cover or a change of identity. What was there—open and straight—was good enough, and we took no risks.
Just before the second meeting we had a break. I was half intent on keeping his name on the list without using him much, when we came across the missing piece in the motivation puzzle.
The use of women, planted to obtain information, is rare and I don’t encourage it. But by coincidence he knew an Israeli girl who was working for us so we decided to brief her and use her report. They had met in kibbutz Naot, and she had contacted him in London where she had gone to complete her studies. They met occasionally but he never told her about his meetings with me or with the other man. One Sunday she met his mother and returned with a strange report. The genteel, ordinary British nurse was more curious and knowledgeable about Israel than could be expected. She knew names of places, pronounced Hebrew words correctly and had a nostalgic sad attitude when Ofra, the girl, recounted stories about her own famliy.
During her next meeting with Phoenix she asked him whether his mother “was half Jewish or something” and out of the blue he said, “No, but I am.”
Our sense of failure at not having obtained the information through our own methodical sources was cleared away by the information itself.
Phoenix’s father was an Israeli, a soldier in Britain during the war. He met and loved the pretty nurse. At the same time that she discovered she was carrying his child, he was sent to North Africa and they lost touch. She married whomever she did and gave her son his name, and though she heard briefly from the real father later, she never told him about his son.
The father returned to Palestine, wrote a few letters about the country and its prospect of becoming a state, and was active in the underground against the British. When the nurse divorced, she tried to find her child’s father only to discover he had been killed in the War of Independence. She decided not to disclose to Phoenix his real identity, but on his return from Israel, so enthusiastic and involved, she did.
Thus, when he reported to our London embassy he performed an act of homecoming, even if he—for reasons known only to himself—decided t
o keep it a secret. I didn’t want him to know Ofra was my source, but I decided he should know I had this information. By then I had more than a vague idea of how we could really use his services.
When I met Phoenix in London I thought I had the upper hand. I knew something he didn’t realize I knew. And I asked him about it, as if it were a sin or a crime he was trying to hide.
“I thought you knew,” he said, and added it was his own business. He would have liked to work with us anyway, he said, whoever his father was. He wasn’t sentimental about it, or apologetic about not bringing it up earlier. If this was the end of a string leading somewhere, to a search for identity, he was unemotional about it. I didn’t pursue. I was comfortable in the thought that he was performing an act of homecoming, fulfilling an unwritten will of a father he never met.
“You must know about Ofra, too,” he said.
“I know you are seeing her. That is none of my business—for the time being anyway.”
We had two long talks. Mostly abstract, ideological. I told him about my own life, my commitments, my faith in what we were doing. Nothing factual, no planning of action, just the whys. He was a good listener, though he seldom asked questions. If he had doubts, he didn’t share them. I believe he grew fond of me, for when we parted he made sure we were going to meet again. He was rather eager to start working.
CHAPTER
11
It was almost midnight before the battalion commanders entered the war room. David greeted them with a hug and poured them coffee.
He hadn’t interrupted my long story and I was wondering whether he was really listening or just relaxed with his own thoughts and plans while I was busy talking.