Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thriller) (6 page)

The recruiter’s “legend,” his cover story that enables the contact with the target, must be carefully crafted.  Obviously, the recruiter’s identity can be anything but that of an
intelligence operative, unless of course he has a death wish or aspires to dine on local prison food for the indefinite future. A team of psychologists and intelligence experts analyzes the potential asset’s background to create a suitable legend. Who should approach the target?
A male or a female?
Young or old?
Where will the contact be made? Under what pretext would the recruiter initiate the first conversation? What to do if the target recoils and refuses any cold turkey contact, or luckily appears to be open to the dynamics of the contact? How would the
relationship continue, and for how long? When will the target become a real asset—that is, shift from being a valuable person within an enemy’s ranks, to becoming a spy or a defector?

According to Alex, motivating an asset to defect is always a serious consideration for the recruiting intelligence service. What would serve its interests best? Leaving the asset in place as a spy, or extricating him to debrief him thoroughly? But what do you do with him once the information he has is squeezed out? Maybe engage him as an instructor for intelligence combatants
intending to infiltrate the asset’s former country, that is, if he qualifies and if he won't risk the combatants if he returns.

Alex used to lean on his lectern, and say in his English-accented Hebrew, “
Listen to me
,
don’t take notes; we’ll rehearse all this in the field so many times that it’ll be engraved in your minds
.”

And indeed it is. Alex’s first rule of recruiting: “
Be careful
.” I remember exactly where I was when I heard him say this: the front row.

“
Did I already say careful
?” Alex went on, rubbing his tweed, “
I mean extremely careful. Any potential asset whom you think is ready for the move could betray you when you least expect it. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. In the intelligence business in
general, and in recruiting in particular, there are no morals, no ethics, no sentiments, no friendships—only interests. That means you can’t trust anyone. Therefore, all recruiting attempts should be made outside the target’s country. If you try recruiting a target in his home country, you never know whom he’ll be bringing to the next meeting—it could be half of his country’s counterintelligence agents to make your life miserable for years, not to mention that they may be scoping a potential target for
their own
recruitment. Therefore, Rule #2 is: ‘If at all possible, approach a potential asset when he is out of his home country’.”

With that wisdom in mind, it is clear why international conventions attended by scientists, government officials, or anyone with access to national security secrets are recruiters' favorite safaris. In these circumstances, the approach can be especially well disguised, with the spotter or the recruiter actually participating in the convention as a
bona fide
professional. A nuclear scientist won’t be nearly as suspicious if he’s approached during a convention by another scientist wearing the convention’s ID tag.   

“I’ve read your recent work, and I’m really fascinated by your findings,” could be an opening line. A little brown-nosing never hurt anyone. Then comes more talk about the “findings,” maybe a few drinks at the bar, exchanging business cards and departing as friends. Then you send him a short courtesy letter with a benign question – “I have a question… on page 123 of your article you said that…could you elaborate a bit?” When an answer comes, and it always comes because scientists love talking about their papers- you thank him, suggesting you’d like to return the favor regarding his “articles" and asking whether he’ll be participating in the next convention. Once you meet again, you’re already good friends. You suggest jointly authoring an article to be published in a top peer reviewed scientific magazine. You say, “The editor was my brother’s classmate. It doesn’t mean that he’ll publish an article not fit for print, but with so much congestion on his desk, it might put ours on the top of the pile waiting for peer review.”

And so on.

In a class of twelve cadets in the Operational Course at the Mossad, only three were sent to international conventions to try out recruiting techniques.  The rest were told that budgetary constraints prevented their going. Luckily, I was chosen to go -- not as a scientist, since I was too young to pass as one, but as
the son of a 56 year old microbiology professor who attended a convention called “An Annual Update in Allergy and Autoimmune Diseases," that was held in Joao, Paraiba, one of the oldest cities in Brazil. The hotel was constructed as a circle; each room had either a view of the internal gardens, or of the beach—the sand was bone-white and stretched as far as the eye could see. My window faced the beach.
During my entire time there, I saw absolutely no one on it. This was a convention of serious scientists who, it seemed, preferred the semi-dark interior of the hotel’s lecture halls.

My legend for this convention described me as sociology major at UCLA, joining my Canadian mother who was attending the convention. Professor Janice Webber, my “mother,” was a tall, willowy woman, who kept her hair back in a bun. She could have been an aging model, but she wasn’t. She was the real thing, a genuine scientist who didn’t ask too many questions when her close friend, a Mossad confidant, asked her to allow me to pose as her son. “He’s doing research on interactions among strangers during short term multinational conventions, and how social barriers are removed. He couldn’t ask the organizers to enroll because he doesn’t qualify as a natural sciences researcher, and couldn’t reveal he was doing research, fearing that any disclosure could tilt the results.” To this day, I don’t know if
she bought the story, although she had no reason to suspect any ulterior motive. Once, she looked at me with probing eyes and asked me about my research methods. Luckily, I was fresh out of the Tel Aviv University Political Science faculty. One of the most hated classes there was Research Methods. But now it came to my aid.
             

Now: whom do you recruit in a scientific convention when you are not a scientist, but a man in his late 20s posing as a student who came to meet his mother? The answer is, recruit a young man or a woman in a similar situation.

During breakfast, I carefully viewed the tables to see if there were any young men or women who were too young to be university professors. There were three tables with such individuals. I passed by their tables and identified the nametag of a young woman sitting next to an elderly man. Their last names were identical. She must be his daughter, I assumed. She was rather plain, blonde with a Russian name, and stout in that way some Russian women seem to get, though it seemed the process has started early with her: she couldn’t have been more than 25. I later examined the list of the convention participants and saw the man’s name, Professor Igor Malshenkov from Ukraine. The woman, Anya Malshenkova, was not on the list. OK, I said to myself, Russia and Ukraine share a border, so maybe she was
Russian after all, as if it mattered. During lunch, I found an excuse to approach and befriend her. She was happy to talk to me, and soon we were walking in the hotel’s gardens, walking and talking. I told her what I knew about “my mother’s” research and then asked her about the area of expertise of her father.

“Father?” she giggled, “Igor is my husband.”

When she saw me embarrassed, she smiled and said, “Never mind, many people make that mistake. I was his student and we got married.” We stopped at the pool bar; she ordered a drink I didn’t catch the name of, but it was blue and came with a shish-ka-bob of tropical fruits. I ordered soda water – I never drink alcohol while on assignment unless it is part of the role I’m playing.

It became clear why she was happy to talk to me; she was deeply bored. She made vague allusions to the “difficulties” that come with having a much older husband, she’d relinquished her studies to keep house, and was trying to give him a child. We ended up back in their hotel room, “to have coffee,” as she suggested. When she excused herself to the bathroom, I used the opportunity very quickly to take photos of documents that were on the coffee table. This was my proof to Alex and my other instructors that I could obtain documents from a scientist. I had
no idea what I was copying; the documents were handwritten in Cyrillic. Anya came out from the bathroom wrapped barely in a towel. She sat down next to me and said, “To be around my own age, very nice,” with that guttural Russian accent. Her voice was low, and I could smell rum. I quickly told her I had to meet my mother for dinner, and slipped out. There was a limit to the things I was willing to do for my country during training—and having sex with an unattractive married woman wasn’t one of them, particularly when I already had what I really wanted – copies of documents. And concerning what she wanted – but didn't get from me – too bad.

The sad end for me was that I actually failed in my mission. It turned out I had copied documents that were worthless from an intelligence point of view; and the truth was I was supposed to have recruited an asset.

“Not enough time,” was my excuse. Now I know that such an excuse was so bad, it wouldn’t even warrant inclusion in the volume I intended to compile one day of
My Kids’ Excuses
: why they’d skipped school, or didn’t do their homework, or clean
up
their messes, or practice the piano.

Obviously, Alex didn’t buy that excuse. “You had a mission and you didn’t perform.” He was so serious that I thought I was
about to be expelled from the operational course. At the end, only a derogatory notation was entered in my personnel file.

“How can I redeem myself?” I asked, feeling deflated.

“I’ll give you one more chance to recruit an asset and obtain valuable information,” he said. “This time it will be in Israel. We can’t spend more money on futile trips.”

“Do I choose the target myself, or will you assign me?”

“Devise a plan and submit for my approval,” he said.

That night I went out with Benny for a beer, taking the opportunity to pick his brain for suggestions. We hit our favorite bar, ‘Puerto Rico,’ across from the Tel Aviv City Hall. It was small, dark, with a few couches in the back—and you could order chicken schnitzel. Not quite like my Mom used to make, but good. The food wasn't Kosher, so Benny just ordered beer.

“OK,” Benny said, staring into his beer, thinking.  He looked up. He had the look, that Cheshire cat smile. “What about that friend of yours whose mother is having an affair? Isn’t it with an ambassador from some African country?”

“Recruit him? I could cause a diplomatic incident if I fail,” I said, weighing it.

“Alex said to make a proposal. So make a proposal. He doesn’t have to go with it.”

Surprisingly, after consulting with his superiors, as well as with SHABAK, Israel’s internal security service, Alex approved my plan.

So I rekindled my friendship with Rina; she and I had had a short romance a year or so earlier, and had remained in touch after it ended. She was currently earning an economics degree at Tel Aviv University, and was planning to open a chain of “Hip-Kosher” bar/restaurants, beginning in Tel Aviv and expanding to New York. She lived with her parents in Kfar Shmaryahu, a posh neighborhood just north of Tel Aviv where diplomats and Israel’s higher echelon live, five minutes from the Mediterranean shore. I again became a welcome guest at their house, a spacious family home with a lush back yard, complete with poplar and olive trees and a sky-blue pool. It was early fall, and Rina was busy studying. I soon discovered that the African ambassador visited Rina’s mother each Tuesday at noon, when her husband was at work and Rina at the university. On one Tuesday, after I spotted the ambassador’s car parked in a side street a block away, I came into Rina’s backyard and dived into the pool, as I had done many times before, waiting for Rina to return from school.

Wet, with my bathing suit still on, I went directly upstairs “to look for a towel,” and surprised his Excellency, the very startled and embarrassed ambassador leaving the master bedroom buck-naked. I could see he recognized me from the family’s parties; he looked stricken. He had a diagonal scar on his chest; I dimly remembered reading a while ago how had been in a serious car accident in Tel Aviv; it had made all the papers. Besides the scar, though, he was, as the cliché dictates, tall, dark, and handsome, deeply brown with almond eyes, slightly Asiatic almost, giving him an exotic look—at least that’s what Rina called him, “exotic.” Even
she
thought he was cute; no doubt her opinion would change if she knew her mother felt the same way.

I pretended to look shocked, didn’t say a word and turned around to return to the pool.

He called me a day later and asked to see me.

“How did you get my phone number?” I sounded intentionally defensive.

“Rina’s mom gave it to me,” he answered. “We need to talk.”

We met in central Tel Aviv, at a café at the top of the Shalom Tower. Back then it had been the tallest tower in the Middle East, before Dubai’s massive construction boom hit. The view from the observation floor of the tower was spectacular: you
could see up and down the Mediterranean coast, and as
far east
as the Judean Hills.