The Odessa File

‘I’m sure they’re doing their best,’ he said huffily.

‘I wonder,’ said Miller.

They parted in the main hall two floors up and Miller went out into the rain.

The building in the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv that houses the headquarters of the Mossad excites no attention, even from its nearest neighbours. The entrance to the underground car park of the office block is flanked by quite ordinary shops. On the ground floor is a bank, and in the entrance hall, before the plate-glass doors that lead into the bank, is a lift, a board stating the business of the firms on the floor above and a porter’s desk for inquiries.

The board reveals that inside the block are the offices of several trading companies, two insurance firms, an architect, an engineering consultant and an import-export company on the top floor. Inquiries for any of the firms below the top floor will be met courteously. Questions asked about the top-floor company are politely declined. The company on the top floor is the front for the Mossad.

The room where the chiefs of Israeli intelligence meet is bare and cool, white-painted, with a long table and chairs round the walls. At the table sit the five men who control the branches of intelligence. Behind them on the chairs sit clerks and stenographers. Other non-members can be seconded for a hearing if required, but this is seldom done. The meetings are classified top secret, for all confidences may be aired.

At the head of the table sits the Controller of the Mossad. Founded in 1937, its full name Mossad Aliyah Beth, or Organisation for the Second Immigration, the Mossad was the first Israeli intelligence organ. Its first job was to get Jews from Europe to a safe berth in the land of Palestine.

After the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 it became the senior of all intelligence organs, its Controller automatically the head of all the five.

To the controller’s right sits the chief of the Aman, the military intelligence unit whose job is to keep Israel informed of the state of war-readiness of her enemies. The man who held the job at that time was General Aharon Yaariv.

To the left sits the chief of the Shabak, sometimes wrongly referred to as the Shin Beth. These letters stand for Sherut Bitachon, the Hebrew for security service. The full title of the organ that watches over Israel’s internal security, and only internal security, is Sherut Bitchon Klali, and it is from these three words that the abbreviation Shabak is taken.

Beyond these two men sit the last two of the five. One is the director-general of the research division of the Foreign Ministry, charged specifically with the evaluation of the political situation in Arab capitals, a matter of vital importance to the security of Israel. The other is the director of a service solely occupied with the fate of Jews in the ‘countries of persecution’. These countries include all the Arab countries and all the Communist countries. So that there shall be no overlapping of activities, the weekly meetings enable each chief to know what the other departments are doing.

Two other men are present as observers, the Inspector-General of Police, and the Head of the Special Branch, the executive arms of the Shabak in the fight against terrorism inside the country.

The meeting on that day was quite normal. Meir Amit took his place at the head of the table, and the discussion began. He saved his bombshell until the last. When he had made his statement, there was silence, as the men present, including the aides scattered round the walls, had a mental vision of their country dying as the radio-active and plague warheads slammed home.

‘The point surely is,’ said the head of the Shabak at last, ‘that those rockets must never fly. If we cannot prevent them making warheads, we have to prevent the warheads ever taking off.’

‘Agreed,’ said Amit, taciturn as ever, ‘but how?’

‘Hit them,’ growled Yaariv. ‘Hit them with everything we’ve got. Ezer Weizmann’s jets can take out Factory 333 in one raid.’

‘And start a war with nothing to fight with,’ replied Amit. ‘We need more planes, more tanks, more guns, before we can take Egypt. I think we all know, gentlemen, that war is inevitable. Nasser is determined on it, but he will not fight until he is ready. But if we force it on him now, the simple answer is that he, with his Russian weaponry, is more ready than we are.’

There was silence again. The head of the Foreign Ministry Arab section spoke.

‘Our information from Cairo is they think they will be ready in early 1967, rockets and all.’

‘We will have our tanks and guns by then, and our new French jets,’ replied Yaariv.

‘Yes, and they will have those rockets from Helwan. Four hundred of them. Gentlemen, there is only one answer. By the time we are ready for Nasser, those rockets will be in silos all over Egypt. They’ll be unreachable. For once in their silos and ready to fire, we must not simply take out ninety per cent of them, but all of them. And not even Ezer Weizmann’s fighter pilots can take them all, without exception.’

‘Then we have to take them in the factory at Helwan,’ said Yaariv with finality.

‘Agreed,’ said Amit, ‘but without a military attack. We shall just have to try to force the German scientists to resign before they have finished their work. Remember, the research stage is almost at an end. We have six months. After that the Germans won’t matter any more. The Egyptians can build the rockets, once they are designed down to the last nut and bolt. Therefore I shall step up the campaign against the scientists in Egypt and keep you informed.’

For several seconds there was silence again as the unspoken question ran through the minds of all those present. It was one of the men from the Foreign Ministry who finally voiced it.

‘Couldn’t we discourage them inside Germany again?’

General Amit shook his head.

‘No. That remains out of the question in the prevailing political climate. The orders from our superiors remain the same; no more muscle tactics inside Germany. For us from henceforth the key to the rockets of Helwan lies inside Egypt.’

General Meir Amit, Controller of the Mossad, was not often wrong. But he was wrong that time. For the key to the rockets of Helwan lay in a factory inside West Germany.

Chapter Six

IT TOOK MILLER a week before he could get an interview with the chief of section in the department of the Hamburg Attorney General’s office responsible for investigation into war crimes. He suspected Dorn had found out he was not working at Hoffmann’s behest and had reacted accordingly.