The Odessa File

‘So what do the rest of us do? Keep running scared?’

Hoffmann jerked his cigar out of his mouth.

‘I don’t have to take that from you, Miller,’ he said, his eyes snapping. ‘I hated the bastards then and I hate them now. But I know my readers. And they don’t want to know about Eduard Roschmann.’

‘All right. I’m sorry. But I’m still going to cover it.’

‘You know, Miller, if I didn’t know you, I’d think there was something personal behind it. Never let journalism get personal. It’s bad for reporting and it’s bad for the reporter. Anyway, how are you going to finance yourself?’

‘I’ve got some savings.’ Miller rose to go.

‘Best of luck,’ said Hoffmann, rising and coming round the desk. ‘I tell you what I’ll do. The day Roschmann is arrested and imprisoned by the West German police, I’ll commission you to cover the story. That’s straight news, so it’s public property. If I decide not to print, I’ll buy it out of my pocket. That’s as far as I’ll go. But while you’re digging for him you’re not carrying the letterhead of my magazine around as your authority.’

Miller nodded.

‘I’ll be back,’ he said.

Chapter Five

THAT SAME WEDNESDAY morning was also the time of the week when the heads of the five branches of the Israeli intelligence apparat met for their informal weekly discussion.

In most countries the rivalry between the various separate intelligence services is legendary. In Russia the KGB hates the guts of the GRU; in America the FBI will not cooperate with the CIA. The British Security Service regards Scotland Yard’s Special Branch as a crowd of flat-footed coppers, and there are so many crooks in the French SDECE that experts wonder whether the French intelligence service is part of the government or the underworld.

But Israel is fortunate. Once a week the chiefs of the five branches meet for a friendly chat without inter-departmental friction. It is one of the dividends of being a nation surrounded by enemies. At these meetings coffee and soft drinks are passed round, those present use first-name terms to each other, the atmosphere is relaxed and more work gets done than could be effected by a torrent of written memoranda.

It was to this meeting that the controller of the Mossad, head of the joint five services of Israeli intelligence, General Meir Amit, was travelling on the morning of 4th December. Beyond the windows of his long, black chauffeur-driven limousine a fine dawn was beaming down on the white-washed sprawl of Tel Aviv. But the general’s mood failed to match it. He was a deeply worried man.

The cause of his worry was a piece of information that had reached him in the small hours of the morning. A small fragment of knowledge to be added to the immense file in the archives, but vital, for the file into which that despatch from one of his agents in Cairo would be added was the file on the rockets of Helwan.

The forty-two-year-old general’s poker face betrayed nothing of his feelings as the car swung round the Zina Circus and headed towards the northern suburbs of the capital. He leaned back in the upholstery of his seat and considered the long history of those rockets being built north of Cairo, which had already cost several men their lives and had cost his predecessor, General Isser Harel, his job …

During the course of 1961, long before Nasser’s two rockets went on public display in the streets of Cairo, the Israeli Mossad had learned of their existence. From the moment the first despatch came through from Egypt, they had kept Factory 333 under constant surveillance.

They were perfectly well aware of the large-scale recruitment by the Egyptians, through the good offices of the Odessa, of German scientists to work on the rockets of Helwan. It was a serious matter then; it became infinitely more serious in the spring of 1962.

In May that year Heinz Krug, the German recruiter of the scientists, made approaches to the Austrian physicist, Dr Otto Yoklek, in Vienna. Instead of allowing himself to be recruited, the Austrian professor made contact with the Israelis. What he had to say electrified Tel Aviv. He told the agent of the Mossad who was sent to interview him that the Egyptians intended to arm their rockets with warheads containing irradiated nuclear waste and cultures of bubonic plague.

So important was the news that the Controller of the Mossad, General Isser Harel, the man who had personally escorted the kidnapped Adolf Eichmann back from Buenos Aires to Tel Aviv, flew to Vienna to talk to Yoklek himself. He was convinced the professor was right, a conviction corroborated by the news that the Cairo government had just purchased through a firm in Zürich a quantity of radio-active cobalt equivalent to twenty-five times their possible requirement for medical purposes.

On his return from Vienna, Isser Harel went to see Premier David Ben-Gurion and urged that he be allowed to begin a campaign of reprisals against the German scientists who were either working in Egypt or about to go there. The old premier was in a quandary. On the one hand he realised the hideous danger the new rockets and their genocidal warheads presented to his people; on the other he recognised the value of the German tanks and guns due to arrive at any moment. Israeli reprisals on the streets of Germany might just be enough to persuade Chancellor Adenauer to listen to his Foreign Ministry faction and shut off the arms deal.

Inside the Tel Aviv cabinet there was a split developing similar to the split inside the Bonn cabinet over the arms sales. Isser Harel and the Foreign Minister, Madame Golda Meir, were in favour of a tough policy against the German scientists; Shimon Peres and the army were terrified by the thought they might lose their precious German tanks. Ben-Gurion was torn between the two.

He hit on a compromise: he authorised Harel to undertake a muted, discreet campaign to discourage German scientists from going to Cairo to help Nasser build his rockets. But Harel, with his burning gut-hatred of Germany and all things German, went beyond his brief.

On September 11th, 1962, Heinz Krug disappeared. He had dined the previous evening with Dr Kleinwachter, the rocket-propulsion expert he was trying to recruit, and an unidentified Egyptian. On the morning of the 11th Krug’s car was found abandoned close to his home in a suburb of Munich. His wife immediately claimed he had been kidnapped by Israeli agents, but the Munich police found not a trace, either of Krug or of evidence as to his kidnappers. In fact, he had been abducted by a group of men led by a shadowy figure called Leon, and his body dumped in the Starnberg lake, assisted to the weed-bed by a corset of heavy-link chain.

The campaign then turned against the Germans in Egypt already. On November 27th a registered package, posted in Hamburg and addressed to Professor Wolfgang Pilz, the rocket scientist who had worked for the French, arrived in Cairo. It was opened by his secretary, Miss Hannelore Wenda. In the ensuing explosion the girl was maimed and blinded for life.

On November 28th another package, also posted in Hamburg, arrived at Factory 333. By this time the Egyptians had set up a security screen for arriving parcels. It was an Egyptian official in the mail-room who cut the cord. Five dead and ten wounded. On the 29th a third package was defused without an explosion.

By February 20th, 1963, Harel’s agents had turned their attention once again to Germany. Dr Kleinwachter, still undecided whether to go to Cairo or not, was driving back home from his laboratory at Loerrach, near the Swiss frontier, when a black Mercedes barred his route. He threw himself to the floor as a man emptied his automatic through the windscreen. Police subsequently discovered the black Mercedes abandoned. It had been stolen earlier in the day. In the glove compartment was an identity card, in the name of Colonel Ali Samir. Inquiries revealed this was the name of the chief of the Egyptian Secret Service. Isser Harel’s agents had got their message across – with a touch of black humour for good measure.

By now the reprisal campaign was making headlines in Germany. It became a scandal with the Ben Gal affair. On March 2nd the young Heidi Goerke, daughter of Professor Paul Goerke, pioneer of Nasser’s rockets, received a telephone call at her home in Freiburg, Germany. A voice suggested she meet the c

aller at the Three Kings Hotel in Basel, Switzerland, just over the border.

Heidi informed the German police, who tipped off the Swiss. They planted a bugging device in the room that had been booked for the meeting. During the meeting two men in dark glasses warned Heidi Goerke and her young brother to persuade their father to get out of Egypt if he valued his life. Tailed to Zürich and arrested the same night, the two men went on trial at Basel on June 10th, 1963. It was an international scandal. The chief of the two agents was Yossef Ben Gal, Israeli citizen.