“You have such a man?”
“Yes, sir. But he must be able to live somewhere—quietly, discreetly, innocently—while he picks up the messages and delivers our own inquiries. We ask that he be allowed to pose as an Iraqi on the staff of a senior member of the Soviet embassy.”
Gorbachev steepled his chin on the tips of his fingers. He was anything but a stranger to covert operations; his own KGB had mounted more than a few. Now he was being asked to assist the KGB’s old antagonists in mounting one, and to lend the Soviet embassy as their man’s umbrella. It was so outrageous, he almost laughed.
“If this man of yours is caught, my embassy will be compromised.
“No, sir. Your embassy will have been cynically duped by Russia’s traditional Western enemies.
Saddam will believe that,” said Laing.
Gorbachev thought it over. He recalled the personal entreaty of one president and one prime minister in this matter. They evidently held it to be important, and he had no choice but to regard their goodwill to him as important. Finally he nodded.
“Very well. I will instruct General Vladimir Kryuchkov to give you his full cooperation.”
Kryuchkov was, at that time, Chairman of the KGB. Ten months later, while Gorbachev was on vacation on the Black Sea, Kryuchkov, with Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov and others, would launch a coup d’état against their own President.
The two Westerners shifted uncomfortably.
“With the greatest respect, Mr. President,” asked Laing, “could we ask that it be your Foreign Minister and him only in whom you confide?”
Eduard Shevardnadze was then Foreign Minister and a trusted friend of Mikhail Gorbachev.
“Shevardnadze and him alone?” asked the President.
“Yes, sir, if you please.”
“Very well. The arrangements will be made only through the Foreign Ministry.”
When the Western intelligence officers had gone, Mikhail Gorbachev sat lost in thought. They had wanted only him and Eduard to know about this. Not Kryuchkov. Did they, he wondered, know something that the President of the USSR did not?
There were eleven Mossad agents in all—two teams of five and the mission controller, whom Kobi Dror had picked personally, pulling him off a boring stint as lecturer to the recruits at the training school outside Herzlia.
One of the teams was from the yarid branch, a section of the Mossad concerned with operational security and surveillance. The other was from neviot, whose speciality is bugging, breaking and entering—in short, anything where inanimate or mechanical objects are concerned.
Eight of the ten had reasonable or
good German, and the mission controller was fluent. The other two were technicians anyway. The advance group for Operation Joshua slipped into Vienna over three days, arriving from different European points of departure, each with a perfect passport and cover story.
As he had with Operation Jericho, Kobi Dror was bending a few rules, but none of his subordinates were going to argue. Joshua had been designated ain efes , meaning a no-miss affair, which, coming from the boss himself, meant top priority.
Yarid and neviot teams normally have seven to nine members each, but because the target was deemed to be civilian, neutral, amateur, and unsuspecting, the numbers had been slimmed down.
Mossad’s Head of Station in Vienna had allocated three of his safe houses and three bodlim to keep them clean, tidy, and provisioned at all times.
A bodel , plural bodlim , is usually a young Israeli, often a student, engaged as a gofer after a thorough check of his parentage and background. His job is to run errands, perform chores, and ask no questions.
In return he is allowed to live rent-free in a Mossad safe house, a major benefit for a short-of-money student in a foreign capital. When visiting “firemen” move in, the bodel has to move out but can be retained to do the cleaning, laundry, and shopping.
Though Vienna may not seem a major capital, for the world of espionage it has always been very important. The reason goes back to 1945, when Vienna, as the Third Reich’s second capital, was occupied by the victorious Allies and divided into four sectors—French, British, American, and Russian.
Unlike Berlin, Vienna regained her freedom—even the Russians agreed to move out—but the price was complete neutrality for Vienna and all Austria. With the cold war getting under way during the Berlin blockade of 1948, Vienna soon became a hotbed of espionage. Nicely neutral, with virtually no counterintelligence net of its own, close to the Hungarian and Czech borders, open to the West but seething with East Europeans, Vienna was a perfect base for a variety of agencies.
Shortly after its formation in 1951, the Mossad also saw the advantages of Vienna and moved in with such a presence that the Head of Station outranks the ambassador.
The decision was more than justified when the elegant and world-weary capital of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire became a center for ultradiscreet banking, the home of three separate United Nations agencies, and a favored entry point into Europe for Palestinian and other terrorists.
Dedicated to its neutrality, Austria has long had a counterintelligence and internal security apparatus that is so simple to evade that Mossad agents refer to these well-intentioned officers as fertsalach , a not terribly complimentary word meaning a fart.