Sam 7, p.2
SAM 7, page 2
Life at Epping had nearly made Thompson opt for a transfer to a truly country police force, like Hampshire or Gloucester. Carol’s verdict against such a move was coincidentally rewarded by further promotion, back to the East End, as an inspector. Finally, a year ago, at forty-seven, he had reached the appointment that placed silver georgettes on his tunic, next below the Assistant and Deputy Commissioners who ran the force under its ultimate arbiter the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. But like every single policeman, from the Commissioner downwards, Thompson remained a constable. That was the basic rank. All the grades above that were appointments, earned on merit and able to be taken away for lack of it, and a constable’s primary task remained as it had been laid down in 1829 – the protection of life and property. Furthermore the overwhelming majority still preferred, as did Thompson himself, to carry out their task without resort to firearms if possible. Lately the activities both of armed robbers and of terrorists had made more skill at arms training necessary, but the principle held.
Thompson’s reverie ended abruptly as he remembered that 12 May was his wedding anniversary. He and Carol had always joked about avoiding the unlucky thirteenth. This year 12 May would be a Sunday. Last year he had been involved in the control of a demo and the year before that with the siege of some gunmen, holed up in a tenement flat. This year he would damned well be at home. Having, as it were, filed and docketed this intention, his thoughts turned back to the Palestinians. He picked up the phone and called Colin Sturgess.
‘I’d like you to do a bit of devilling for me. Drop in at the library at the Commissioner’s Office and see what you can find out about these Arab guerrilla organizations and their contacts with London. I’d like to know who we’re up against.’
Colin would enjoy a bit of ferreting. He was a bright lad, the college-educated copper the force had been trying to attract. Not yet thirty, he’d be promoted again in a year or two.
Downstairs in the Ceremonials Office, which handled arrangements for all public occasions, Sturgess spoke to the sergeant who was helping him plot the marches.
‘Well, skipper, I’m off to do a little digging at the Commissioner’s Office.’
‘Let’s hope she’s pretty, sir.’
Sturgess smiled. He was a bachelor and, unusually for a policeman, shared a flat with two outsiders, an accountant and a lawyer. Ever since he moved there he had suffered inevitable jokes about his sex life. In fact the reason he had left the officially provided police quarters was his dislike of belonging to a race apart. Of course you could never pretend you were not a policeman. Both literally and metaphorically, your uniform was always hanging ready in the cupboard. But at least by living as most other young professional men in London did, he could retain a feel for what was going on in the community.
It was barely ten minutes’ walk to the Commissioner’s Office, as the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police in New Scotland Yard is known. Sturgess went past the Houses of Parliament, where a flag was flying on one of the Gothic towers to denote that Parliament was sitting, past the ancient bulk of Westminster Abbey, and down Victoria Street. It was a curious street this, a busy thoroughfare leading to Victoria Station which not so long ago had been rundown and dowdy, familiar to Londoners mainly for the station and the Army and Navy Stores. In the 1960s the developers had moved in, tearing down the small shops and erecting great concrete office blocks in their place. The Department of Trade and Industry occupied one, Monsanto Chemicals another and New Scotland Yard a third. The building stood roughly halfway down Victoria Street, close to St James’s Park underground station. A slowly revolving triangular sign in the forecourt announced the name, successor to the famous Scotland Yard adjacent to Cannon Row, which had featured in countless detective novels and films. On 8 March 1967 everything had been transferred, including the Black Museum of murder weapons. But what New Scotland Yard lacked in tradition, it more than made up for with efficiency. It was a far better place to work in.
Reaching the library Colin Sturgess made his inquiry.
‘What have you got on the Palestine Liberation Organization?’
‘It’s a complicated subject,’ the librarian answered. ‘Let’s have a look.’
He went off and returned quickly with a handful of books and pamphlets.
‘Christ alive!’ said Sturgess, ‘I’m only briefing myself, not writing a thesis!’
‘In either case,’ remarked the librarian drily, ‘the relevant deity is Allah.’ He picked out a thick pamphlet bearing the imprint of the Institute for the Study of Conflict. ‘This is a little out of date, but short and comprehensible. Try it first and come back for more if necessary.’
Sturgess took it to a table and started to read. A sentence caught his eye. ‘The threat and practice of selective terrorism have increased to a level where a wide range of Western interests have become targets.’ This was what he was after. Sturgess recalled photos of Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, addressing the UN General Assembly, a round fleshy face under an Arab headdress. He had held a gun in one hand and an olive branch in the other. Evidently at the moment Arafat favoured the olive branch – he was achieving more and more diplomatic recognition thereby. But the five main Fedayeen organizations who sheltered beneath the PLO’s umbrella often preferred the gun. The most notorious was Black September. ‘Arafat and the Central Committee appear powerless to control it,’ stated the pamphlet. Black September was created to avenge King Hussein’s clearing the Palestinian Fedayeen out of Jordan in September 1970. One of their first actions was to assassinate the Jordanian Prime Minister, Wasfi Tal, in Cairo. One of their few failures was attempting to shoot Hussein’s Ambassador in London in 1971. Sturgess remembered that. The gunman had fired on the Ambassador’s car as it slowed down at a street intersection in Kensington.
The style of Black September’s operations was exceptionally violent. On 5 September 1972 the Israeli team at the Munich Olympic Games had been attacked. Eleven Israeli athletes and one West German policeman were killed. So were five of the Black September commandos. That did not seem to have worried the organization. It was done for publicity, just as was the massacre at Athens airport when gunmen had fired on a crowd in a passenger lounge. There had been a great many lesser attacks. Oil installations in West Germany and the Netherlands had been sabotaged. There had been explosions in Trieste, a murder in Madrid.
Sturgess wondered about the psychology of this terrorism. Such cold-blooded ruthlessness ought to have produced international revulsion against the Palestinian cause. In fact the upshot had been a wider international recognition of it. He began to see why the French had passed that message through Interpol. The sponsor of the coming demo, the Association of Palestine Supporters, was one of the most militant Palestinian organizations in Western Europe, where some 60,000 Arabs resided.
After an hour and a half’s further research Sturgess went home on the underground to Gloucester Road. He found himself more than usually conscious of the number of Arabs going in and out of the hotels and shops. Any one of them could be a terrorist for all he knew, any one of the countless small flats and bedsitters in the neighbourhood could be a safe house for a guerrilla gang, just as similar ones in south London had been for the IRA. If the French were right and an extension of terrorist operations was about to take place, then London might indeed be in the front line.
Unknown to Sturgess, this same afternoon had seen a meeting not far from where he lived that would have interested him considerably. A well-known journalist, Sam Eckhardt of the Sunday Post, had been lunching with a Libyan diplomat. Eckhardt was a special breed of writer, a foreign correspondent, whose reputation rested largely on his skilled interpretation and reporting of events in the Middle East and Africa. His retentive memory held all that Sturgess had learnt in the New Scotland Yard library, plus a great deal more besides, while his files at the newspaper’s offices had yielded the material for two books. Eckhardt was an established veteran, albeit beginning to be affected by the self-indulgence that success in journalism often breeds. The Libyan’s motive in offering him lunch was simple: to set in motion a story which, if printed in the respected Sunday Post, would be widely repeated around the world. It was a story that not every journalist could persuade an editor to accept. Though it had the incalculable merit of being true, it sounded more like fiction.
‘My friend,’ the Libyan had insisted, ‘you did not believe when I told you how many Israeli killers are operating in Europe.’
Eckhardt had smiled across the wine glasses. ‘Journalists need facts, Ahmed. No bricks without straw.’
The Libyan had gazed across the table. They went through the ritual of these lunches at regular intervals and since he very seldom possessed any worthwhile knowledge that his government wanted published, their conversations were often restricted to a tour d’horizon, wherein each attempted to pick the other’s brains. But the Libyan knew that Eckhardt, despite his German-Jewish name, would be basically well disposed to anything that gave him an exclusive story, even if it was about his own grandmother. And today, like diamonds concealed in the palm of his hand, Ahmed had brought some facts. To amuse himself, he proposed to make Eckhardt sit up and beg for them. The temptation was understandable. Eckhardt looked misleadingly like the sort of glutton who might easily beg for titbits. Nearly fifty, he was putting on weight. His face, with its prominent nose and full mouth, would have been perfect in an advertisement for gourmet dinners. One could imagine him holding up his manicured hands in horror at the idea of eating army food or sleeping in a tent. The fact was that he had spent a quarter of a century knocking around the world, sleeping in everything from deserts to bordellos as he reported on wars, famines, revolutions and disasters. Even if he was well fed now, he remained physically resilient and mentally tough. He waited for the Libyan to tell him more.
‘You receive the Agence France Presse?’
‘We do.’
The Sunday Post was one of very few British papers that subscribed to the French wire service.
‘Then you have read about the assassinations at Argenteuil?’
Eckhardt had not. However, he had let his host continue.
‘It is reported as an attack by one Algerian gang on another in a café compte rendu, a settling of accounts.’
‘And what makes you think the Israelis are involved?’
Eckhardt was intrigued. The diplomat paused. One day he, or whoever succeeded him as intelligence officer at the Embassy, would find out whether it was only journalistic greed that made this kind of political story strike such sparks in Eckhardt. In the meantime Allah be praised that the man was so strongly motivated.
The diplomat had pushed aside his plate and leant forward to speak confidentially across the table. ‘Firstly, my friend, those killed were not Algerians. Between ourselves, they were Palestinian representatives among the Algerian workers in France. Algerian workers there contribute generously to the cause.’
Eckhardt had to applaud such an ingenuous description of what must have been a terrorist group. ‘So, to paraphrase Chairman Mao, the Algerian settlements were the sea in which these Palestinian fish swam?’
‘The Argenteuil bidonville is impenetrable by outsiders, impenetrable.’ The Libyan spoke emphatically. ‘Believe me, I have been there. It should have been safe, yet somehow it was penetrated by the Israelis, by Mossad.’
Eckhardt eyed the diplomat warily. He knew that the bidonville was an unhealthy place for strangers. By chance he had been there too, because it was close to a wood that housed secret French radar installations on which he had once written a story. The bidonville was unquestionably a law unto itself and normally only coloured gendarmes, Arabs or Africans, were sent on inquiries there.
‘Every camp has its traitors,’ suggested Eckhardt.
‘There was a girl with the assassins,’ the Libyan diplomat continued. ‘Two people who passed their car in the street saw her. They swear she was not an Arab. She and the men with her were Israelis. Even the French do not know this yet. The fact is, my friend, that Israeli commandos are now operating in Europe. In France, in Germany, even in Britain.’
Eckhardt had sipped a little more wine, rolling the liquid round his tongue, savouring it, while he pondered. ‘It might make a story. But you’ll have to tell me more, Ahmed. Names particularly.’
He put down the glass sharply in a gesture of decision. A little wine spilt on the tablecloth making a spreading red stain. ‘Ring your friends in Argenteuil and tell them I shall be there this evening. Tell them a man with the good old Arab name of Eckhardt is coming to penetrate the bidonville.’
From the restaurant Eckhardt had telephoned, warning the Sunday Post to hold space for a major news piece and asking for a reporter to research all that could be found on the Israeli Intelligence agency, Mossad.
‘The Paris office won’t like this much, Sam,’ the Foreign Editor had complained.
‘Stuff the Paris office. Why haven’t they got the story themselves, the layabouts?’
When he was on to something Eckhardt became cut-throat and ruthless. This was how he had been in Vietnam, in Ulster, in the fighting in the Congo long ago when he first made his name. The Foreign Editor had hesitated but only for a moment. If the paper was going to pay highly for talent – and it did – it was common sense to give that talent rein. ‘Champagne living on beer incomes’ was how one Sunday Post staffer delighted in describing journalism. Eckhardt’s income was at least on the whisky level.
‘Okay, Sam,’ said the Foreign Editor, ‘go ahead. You know how badly we need early copy. If you can file on Friday night please do.’
Three hours later Eckhardt was in Paris.
At much the same moment, though it was evening there, a clutch of Israeli officers were in conference in Tel Aviv, out at the Hakirya, the army headquarters. Israel’s modest equivalent to the Pentagon is a sprawl of low-built modern office blocks inside a high fenced compound. Like the whole of Israel’s armed forces, the Hakirya operates with an informal camaraderie that would be unthinkable in Britain or America, or indeed in most countries. But then Israel is a close-knit community on permanent alert. There are plenty of women soldiers around at the Hakirya too, and usually they are better turned out than the men. One such was the lieutenant called Naomi, as crisp as a lettuce in a freshly pressed uniform, who had arrived in advance of the conference. The sentry at the gate to the compound greeted her with cordiality but no salute.
‘I heard you’ve been abroad,’ he remarked as she passed.
‘You’ll hear too much one day,’ she replied good-humouredly.
Abashed, the sentry grinned.
‘Some people have all the fun,’ he remarked.
‘Just keep the flag flying here,’ said Naomi tartly. ‘And we’ll win the war.’
The sentry watched her go with curiosity, noticing the large business-like sportsman’s watch on her wrist. When she was out of sight he relaxed again. Their best friends would hardly claim that the majority of Israeli soldiers are smart. The Israeli soldier wins battles, yes. But in other respects he is a sergeant-major’s bad dream. His most characteristic pose is slouching with his hat back on his head, a loaded Uzi sub-machine gun in one hand, a bottle of pop in the other. Having both hands full seriously impedes such minor military activities as saluting officers.
The soldiers at the Hakirya did salute one man, however. He was the stocky Director of Military Intelligence. In his late forties, spectacles adding a false air of sleepy benevolence to his broad sunburnt face, the General was respected for his energy and directness of speech. The soldiers liked his humour too. With him, as he returned to the Military Intelligence block on this evening of 3 May, was a man less often recognized, though much more discussed, one whose identity the Israeli government was always anxious to conceal: the Director of Mossad, which is Israel’s equivalent to America’s CIA, Britain’s DI6 and France’s Deuxième Bureau. In 1972 Mossad had organized a special department to conduct antiterrorist operations against the Palestinian guerrillas. The information given to Eckhardt had been correct. It had indeed been one of Mossad’s squads in the bidonville, and Naomi had led it. She had returned safely late on Wednesday. The documents she had seized were in the hands of the staff at the Hakirya less than an hour after El Al’s direct Paris-Tel Aviv plane had landed. Now their analysis was complete, and Naomi herself had come to join the experts evaluating their significance.
The general realized as he entered the room that they must have unearthed information of real importance. It radiated from their faces and the excitement of their greetings.
‘Shalom,’ he replied coolly. ‘Do I smell good news?’
A swarthy hook-nosed colonel in shirtsleeves answered. ‘Whether it is good, that is questionable. It is certainly important news. Used correctly, it might be good.’
‘Trust an Iraqi to talk in riddles,’ said the General, cordially. ‘Come on, explain. Like the American senator asking about the Cubans, I want to know: were these good guys or bad guys?’
The colonel flushed. He was an Iraqi born in the old Jewish quarter of Baghdad, who had come with his family to Israel at the age of twelve in 1947 when the State was founded. He still looked, thought and spoke like an Arab – which made him a valuable officer.
