The Angel Read Free

surveillance (Sigint) as well. In 1963, the chief of MI, Maj. Gen. Meir Amit, was appointed to take charge of the Mossad, and he took Vardi with him to run the Mossad’s Humint operations. In that context, Vardi also took responsibility for special projects, the most famous of which was getting an Iraqi pilot to defect to Israel in 1966, bringing his advanced Soviet aircraft with him.
    Traveling with Vardi in London was Shmuel Goren, director of the Mossad’s European operations. Twice wounded in Israel’s Warof Independence while serving under Moshe Dayan’s command, Goren joined MI after the war and launched a career in handling agents. After filling a string of posts that involved close cooperation with the Mossad, Goren was appointed deputy IDF attaché in Israel’s embassy in Washington in 1968. Before he took the post, the incoming director of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, asked him to join his organization; Goren deferred the request. A year later, Zamir turned to him again, this time with a concrete offer to head up the Mossad’s European division, which in practice meant Western Europe. The ambassador in Washington, Yitzhak Rabin, and MI chief Aharon Yariv gave their consent, and Goren agreed as well. By late 1970, he had gained vital experience with the agency.
    Soon after arriving in London, the two Mossad officials met up with Eyal and the local Mossad station chief, and the four agreed to drive together to Heathrow Airport, where the MI chief was scheduled for a brief layover on his way to the United States. In the car, Eyal mentioned the Arab fellow who had been calling for a few days to offer his services, but who refused to come to the embassy in person. When they asked his name, Eyal said that he called himself Ashraf Marwan.
    Vardi, Goren, and the station chief all looked at one another. They knew the name well.
    Marwan had been in the Mossad’s sights for some time. The London station, which always looked for new sources from the Arab side, had kept tabs on Nasser’s son-in-law from the moment he had first arrived in London. They knew he was strapped for cash, even if they didn’t know the details, and they knew he had been forced to return to Egypt. They knew, in other words, that money could be a decisive factor in motivating Marwan to sell his country’s secrets. His closeness to Nasser and access to materials that passed through his office would make Marwan a source of extreme value—but until now, these same factors also made it hardto believe that he would ever work for the Mossad. What Eyal now had said almost in passing, however, completely changed the picture.
    The fear that Marwan would again leave London without successfully making contact now set the pace of events. With no idea how much time they had to work with, they would have to improvise, bending the rules regarding meetings with agents. A message about Marwan’s call did make its way immediately to Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, but Goren, acting in his capacity as director of Mossad operations in Western Europe, didn’t wait for the analysts back home to examine the situation from every angle and approve contact with the prospect. The fact that he and Vardi, two top Mossad officials, were in on the decision made it easier. This, too, was a matter of luck being on Israel’s side: The London station chief would not have made such a decision on his own, even if he had gotten the message from the attaché. And any delay could easily have meant losing track of Marwan.
    And yet, engaging Marwan was still not an easy decision. Marwan was what intelligence people call a “walk-in”—someone from the enemy’s side who just shows up one day offering his services. Intelligence agencies generally steer clear of such volunteers, mostly because of the high likelihood that they represent some kind of trap. The CIA, for example, had discovered how complicated working with such