The Damascus Cover Page 5

  “Shit,” he mumbled to himself. “Come on, Ari, this kind of sentimental crap is exactly the stuff the characters say in those lousy plays in the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv. Besides, the Colonel’s right. This assignment isn’t important enough.”

  Abruptly he ground out his cigarette and headed for the hallway. Any fieldwork was a hell of a lot better than what he was doing at the moment.

  The Colonel had just finished a cup of coffee and was about to go over the most recent transmission from the Gideon network in Egypt when he heard a sharp knock on his door.

  “Come in,” he said, looking up in surprise as Ari entered. “Did I forget something in your office?” he asked.

  “No.” Ari noticed that there was a new Matisse reproduction hanging on the wall behind the Colonel’s desk. “I was just thinking about what you said.”

  “Yes.” The seams and wrinkles around his eyes tightened, demanding further explanation.

  “It’s about taking those kids out of Damascus. I’d like to do it.”

  The Colonel closed the file in front of him and pushed it to the side. “Ari, this is not the type of mission I’m inclined to send you on. First of all, to be quite honest, it’s not exactly top drawer and second and more importantly, I’m looking for an agent who can pass as an Arab. That’s why I want Shaul Barkai.”

  “But you said you needed two agents. What about Hans Hoffman?”

  The Colonel rubbed the back of his neck. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Why not? As a wealthy businessman anxious to purchase large quantities of furniture and textiles he would be able to move freely inside Syria.”

  A long silence followed.

  Slowly the Colonel got up and walked around the room, searching for an ashtray. He found one, put it by his chair, then ignored it. His thoughts were elsewhere.

  “Well, what do you think?” Ari asked finally.

  Pacing behind his desk, the Colonel began mumbling out loud. “Hans Hoffman could gain access to the German colony in Damascus. And from there, yes, if he had a good cover story… possibly as an ex-SS officer… and you do know Dachau well.” He stopped and looked directly at Ari. “It could work. But are you sure you…”

  “I’m sure,” Ari said forcefully, drowning out the rest of his sentence.

  “It just might be a good idea at that.” The Colonel settled back into his soft chair. “All right, I’ll send you to Syria. Pack a suitcase and take the bus down to Kibbutz Revivim the day after tomorrow. Report to Yosef Tsur. I’ll tell him to be expecting you.”

  Ari nodded.

  “Okay, that’s all. Now leave me alone so I can work out the details.”

  Buoyed by a sense of hope Ari thanked him and left. He’d never been to Revivim but he knew about the kibbutz, located thirty-five miles southwest of Beersheva. There on a desolate stretch of the Negev desert, behind the hills outside the settlement, the Mossad had constructed a walk-through scale model of Damascus.

  ◆◆◆

  Throughout the evening Kim suspected that something had happened that afternoon; after they made love she was sure of it. It was as if a heavy weight had been knocked off his shoulders and he could charge into every activity with renewed relish. Kim wondered how long the change would last. Several times she asked if anything special had occurred that day. Each time he brushed aside her queries with a kiss and a terse no. She knew better than to press him; like most successful women she’d learned that was not the way to get what she wanted.

  As they lay entwined in the soft afterglow of sex she ran her fingers from his buttocks up his spine to the nape of his neck and back again. After a few minutes he took her hand in his, brought it to his lips, and brushed the knuckles with a kiss.

  “I want to ask you something,” he said, turning to face her.

  She looked at him, her blue-gray eyes bright in the darkness.

  “I just had an idea. The way things have worked out I find I’m going to be flying to Damascus to purchase a rather large quantity of Arab textiles and furniture. I may be there for several weeks or longer. I don’t know yet. The point is, you could do the other half of your photographic essay from Syria instead of Egypt. It shouldn’t make much difference which of Israel’s major adversaries you cover.” A note of expectancy edged his voice. “We could meet in Damascus.”

  Silence filled the room.

  “Kim…”

  No response.

  “Do you want to?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, restlessly shifting position under the covers. “What about my plans?”

  “It seems silly for you to be in Cairo while I’m in Damascus.”

  “Couldn’t you buy similar merchandise in Egypt?”

  “No.”

  She propped a pillow against the headboard and leaned back against it. As he moved nearer, touching his mouth to her thigh, she outlined his nose with her forefinger. “I do want to stay with you. I guess I could cable my editor. I don’t think he’d mind if I…”

  He pulled her down to him and covered the rest of her sentence with his lips. She snuggled against his chest. Her skin felt warm where it met his. Her scent was familiar, comforting.

  Gradually they came together trying to freeze the sweep of time, to hold onto the moment, to keep it from receding into the past. Breathing audibly, they rocked back and forth; Ari surging into a rolling climax, followed seconds later by Kim. Afterward they both drifted to sleep.

  Ari arrived at Kibbutz Revivim Tuesday afternoon at the peak of the sun’s arc across the heavens. The fiery ball, consuming an entire quadrant of the sky, sucked all moisture from the air. The kibbutz, set in the midst of rolling hills of rock and arid earth, survived on water piped down from the north. Walking along a row of white stucco cottages surrounded by patches of grass and leafy palms, he asked directions to the communal dining room and was taken there by a brown-skinned girl wearing shorts and sandals. Yosef Tsur, a slight thin-faced man with a pencil mustache, was waiting for him inside.

  After lunch, Tsur, a Syrian Jew who had escaped from Damascus in 1961, took Ari to his cottage, a one-room house on the fringes of the kibbutz with a window facing the desert. The walls of the cottage, bare now, would soon be covered with aerial photographs of Damascus. Ari was told to rest. Avraham Mendelssohn, an expert in the history and internal workings of the Waffen SS, would be in to see him at five.

  For the next eight days Ari’s time was split between Tsur and Mendelssohn. Up at five-thirty to escape the summer sun, which was unbearable by eleven; each morning Tsur drove him by Jeep to the mile-long scale model where a host of Israeli agents had first familiarized themselves with the Syrian capital. Over and over again Tsur walked him through the streets of Damascus, spending a large chunk of time in the southeast sector of the inner-city—the Haret al Yahoud, the guarded ghetto where Damascus’s three thousand Jews were imprisoned.

  In the evenings and nights, Mendelssohn drilled Ari on everything he needed to know to pass as an SS officer. He reviewed the titles, modes of address, color insignias and the types of uniforms worn at various occasions, quickly— for they were already etched on Ari’s mind. He remembered them from Dachau. Next Mendelssohn rushed him through the ideological course he would have received had he been trained at the SS police school near Rabka in the Carpathian Mountains. Then came the marching songs, drinking songs, and various unit songs. In the past Mendelssohn had always spent a minimum of several weeks turning former German Jews into SS officers, but the Colonel had ordered him to take only eight days this time. Ari was expected to move socially among the Nazis, not penetrate their organization. Consequently, he need not be letter perfect. Though Mendelssohn thought his instructions a bit unusual, he didn’t question them.

  The following Wednesday Ari took the bus back to Jerusalem, where the Colonel outlined the steps he and Lieutenant Barkai were to take to bring Chief Rabbi Sassoon’s and Headmaster Kimche’s seven children safely to Israel. For security reasons,
from this point on, the mission was to be referred to only as Operation Goshen: the Biblical name of the land the Hebrew slaves inhabited before Moses led them out of Egypt.

  When the particulars of the briefing had been laid out and all questions answered the Colonel stacked the papers scattered in front of him and turned to Ari.

  “Now, if and only if something of a desperate urgency arises you can contact our permanently placed agent in Syria, Operative 66.”

  Surprised, Ari looked up at the Colonel. “There’ve always been rumors. For years I’ve heard we’ve had someone high up in the Baath Party but it’s never been confirmed. How did…”

  “Don’t ask any questions,” the Colonel said, cutting him off. “Operative 66 is a member of the Syrian parliament. He was a sleeper agent for twelve years. You needn’t know more than that. As the last of the last resorts here’s how you reach him…”

  After he’d gone over the procedure for contacting Operative 66 Ari rose to leave. But the Colonel halted him with a sweep of his hand.

  “Just one more thing. While you’re with the Nazis, if you can find out how much they know about Dov Elon and how much he’s told his interrogators it would be most helpful.”

  Ari nodded and continued toward the door, aware from a lifelong association with the Colonel that his casual, last-minute orders were invariably crucial—occasionally, they even superseded the primacy of the original assignment. He took the Mossad chief’s request and filed it in the back of his mind. The Colonel’s offhand tone betrayed the importance of his words; Ari would not forget either.

  After spending a final night with Kim and arranging to meet her at the New Ommayad Hotel in Damascus, he flew to Frankfurt.

  6.

  SEPTEMBER 4

  Guy Lavalle sat in his room in the Ledra Palace Hotel staring out the window. Across Marcos Drakos Avenue stood the ancient Venetian wall which still surrounded the old city of Nicosia. At the base of the wall, near United Nations Square, someone had painted the word ENOSIS—the name of the nationalist movement, active intermittently since 1878, that favored the union of Cyprus with Greece. Beyond the arrow-shaped battlements that topped the enormous ramparts Lavalle could see the twin minarets spiraling above the skyline from the Turkish section of the old city. They belonged to St. Sophia’s, once a magnificent Crusader cathedral, now the equally splendid Selimiye Mosque.

  Moving across the room, Lavalle picked up the phone on the nightstand and dialed. If all went well he would be back on the Continent in the morning. The phone rang for a long time. Just as he was about to hang up someone answered.

  “Hello.” The female voice sounded half-asleep.

  “Michelle Giroux?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I have some information you might be interested in.”

  “Who is this?” she asked suspiciously, pushing away the covers.

  “My name is of little importance. I could give you any one of a dozen, but you may call me Guy if you like.”

  Michelle sat on the edge of the bed and ran her fingers against her hair. It was 9 A.M. She was not her best until after lunch. “What kind of information?”

  “It’s about a mutual friend, or should I say adversary.”

  Michelle lit a cigarette and inhaled slowly. “What are you selling and how much do you want?”

  Lavalle laughed into the receiver. “I see then that we understand each other.”

  “What are you selling?” she repeated coldly. Like most agents Michelle approached the informer with contempt, particularly when he possessed quality information; for the better the information the greater the fear that lurking among one’s own colleagues was a malcontent, anxious to buttress his deflated ego by selling you out.

  “Do you know a Hans Hoffman?” Lavalle asked, slowly reeling out the bait.

  “If I didn’t, there wouldn’t be much point to this call, would there?” Michelle decided to play his game; she was excited. Hans Hoffman had been her biggest assignment before he’d gone back to Europe and disappeared. It had taken her months standing in line at the Ottoman Bank before she’d been able to lure him into initiating a conversation. Her superiors would reward her appreciably for additional information about the Israeli.

  “Then you’re interested?”

  “That depends on the extent of your information and the price.” Michelle ground out her cigarette and nervously lit another one.

  “Would you be interested in knowing where he is right now?”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand French francs.”

  “How will I know you’re telling the truth?”

  Lavalle tugged at his short, dark beard. “You won’t.”

  “Where can we meet?” Michelle asked.

  “Have the money this afternoon. I’ll be outside Salim’s Oriental Bazaar in the Turkish quarter at two o’clock.”

  “How will I recognize you?”

  “I’ll recognize you.”

  He hung up. Satisfied with the arrangements, Lavalle went downstairs and had a leisurely breakfast.

  He watched her from the shop across Asmalti Street, just off Ataturk Square. She wore a white blouse and a brown plaid skirt. Her black hair was pulled back and tied with a ribbon, exposing a quite lovely face. She was petite, yet perfectly proportioned. Lavalle suspected that more than a few men fell for her.

  Michelle seemed comfortable in the bazaar, arguing with the Turkish storekeeper over the price of a ring with experienced intractability. After a few minutes she placed the stone on the counter with affected disinterest and started to leave. The merchant swore to himself, muttered an oath in praise of Allah, and gave into her price, making her promise not to tell anyone how little she paid for the turquoise gem. Michelle slipped the ring on her finger, remembering he’d said the same thing to her the last time she had made a purchase there.

  Lavalle waited until ten after two before crossing the street. Michelle was looking at some long embroidered dresses hanging in the open air when he drew near. “That one’s very nice,” he said, as she fingered a black dress with gold stitching. Michelle turned to find a tall, lean man with dark hair and a short beard looking over her shoulder. He was about thirty, younger than she had expected. “Shall we walk?” he suggested.

  She nodded. They headed deeper into the bazaar, past leather shops and displays of suitcases spilling into the street, past clothing stores and innumerable merchants who bid them enter just to look: “No charge for looking.” Finally they stopped across from a candy factory, heavy with the aroma of sticky honey.

  “Who are you?” she asked, speaking first.

  He smiled. “A friend.”

  “That’s not enough, my superiors will want to know more.”

  “Then tell them we have something in common, a mutual dislike for Hoffman and the rest of the Zionist swine.”

  “They will want to know who you represent.”

  Lavalle turned abruptly. “Do you want to ask questions or do you want the information?”

  “The money is in my purse. Now where is Hans Hoffman and what is he doing?”

  Ignoring her, he began to walk along Beuyum Hamam Street toward the Saray Onou Mosque, noticing that due to recent hostilities on the island the bazaar was almost devoid of tourists. She hurried to catch up, rushing past a bus sign that gave the mileage to Kyrenia: twenty-seven or forty-two kilometers, depending if one is a Turkish or Greek Cypriot. Greek busses are not allowed to pass through the Turkish sectors of Cyprus; consequently, the distances they must travel are greatly increased. But the sign was an old one. In 1974 invading forces from Turkey seized a third of the island, occupying everything north of a line running from Famagusta through Nicosia to Kokina. Greek buses no longer travel to Kyrenia.

  Lavalle soon stopped, but this time he looked at her without speaking. Understanding the message his eyes conveyed she withdrew an envelope from her purse and handed it to him. Without bothering to check the sum, he slipped the money into his
coat pocket.

  “Tomorrow Hans Hoffman will fly from Frankfurt to Damascus. What he is doing there should not be very hard for the Syrian Second Bureau to determine for itself.” With that he turned and hurried away.

  7.

  SEPTEMBER 5

  Fifteen thousand feet up and descending, the wings of the Lufthansa 707 seemed to shiver as the plane rolled in a pocket of turbulent air. Ari looked out the window at the desolate Syrian plain, broken by thorny shrubs and thistles. Although Damascus is less than fifty miles from the sea, the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountain ranges cut off the moisture-laden winds and allow only a few inches of rain to fall on the Syrian capital each year.

  Below him the Barada River, winding down from the mountain grottoes east of Beirut, cut a channel through the barren soil. Entering Damascus, the river separated into six main arteries and fanned out into al-Ghutah, an oasis of more than a hundred square miles. Beyond it stretched al-Sahra, the desert; then five hundred miles away, Baghdad, where the Barada dies. For centuries Damascus maintained contact with the outside world solely by means of camel-driven caravans which plodded across the sands. She is the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth; her sisters, Nineveh and Babylon, expired long ago. As the airliner began its final approach into the wind Ari fastened his seatbelt and looked down at the ancient metropolis, taking in the narrow streets, minarets, mosques, mausoleums, and generally colorless skyline.

  The plane banged down on the tarmac, bounced, then slid into the desert runway. Ari felt his breast pocket; his passport, the letters, cards, and documentary paraphernalia of a German national were all there. The Israeli Secret Service was meticulous, especially with the most minor details. His clothes, down to his underwear and socks, were of European manufacture, and his suits reflected the style and quality befitting a German commercial traveler in the import-export business. In the false bottom of his toiletry case the Mossad had installed a miniature transmitter; a long-range antenna, wired into the cord of his electric shaver, would allow him to communicate directly with Jerusalem.