The responsibility for ensuring secrecy over Israel’s complicity in this deadly game weighed heavily, and the Mossad Director sighed, accepting that any disclosure would not only be harmful to the Middle East Accord, but could also wreck Israeli-American relations. He considered the ramifications of discovery, believing that the imminent nuclear threat to his people greatly outweighed these risks. The possibility that Israel could be destroyed in a Moslem nuclear holocaust only strengthened his resolve; the general had mobilized Mossad’s powerful resources in anticipation of a favorable response from the Prime Minister’s office.
He was reminded of earlier operations conducted under his predecessor’s leadership, and the secrecy which surrounded Mossad and its clandestine activities. The Director frowned, unhappy with recent revelations which he believed undermined the organization’s operational capabilities.
Traditionally a state secret, the identity of the Mossad director was not widely known until the government had announced his appointment. He was gravely concerned by the gradual deterioration in the level of secrecy surrounding the Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks, more commonly known as Mossad.
When Director Saguy was appointed, he had inherited a sophisticated intelligence machine second to none, with a staff in excess of fifteen hundred specifically trained and highly skilled men and women. Upon reading Ben Gurion’s words at the time he had first established the organization back in 1951, Shabtai Saguy wondered if Israel’s elder statesman had ever envisaged a Mossad, such as his creation had now become.
The director reflected on how the original concept had evolved over the years into a highly sophisticated tactical arm, dedicated to Israel’s defence.
Details of earlier successes attracted unnecessary attention, although the agency’s funding benefited from such celebrated operations as the kidnapping of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann from Argentina in 1960.
Saguy was reminded of Israel’s current dilemma as Mordechai Vanunu’s name crossed his thoughts, and how his organization had kidnapped this man and brought him back for trial, charged with revealing details of Israel’s nuclear weapons’ program to the London tabloids.
And then there were the successful assassination operations which removed a number of Arabs connected to the Black September group, and executed Arafat’s deputy, Abu Jihad, who at that time was considered to be the section chief responsible for all PLO military and terrorist operations against Israel. But it was the Brussels murder of Gerald Bull, the Canadian scientist who had developed the infamous ‘Super Gun’ for Iraq, that had focused media attention on the existence of the Mossad assassination teams, resulting in more accountability. Although there had been substantial changes to the organization’s structure, Saguy knew that Mossad would always be surrounded by controversy.
The new and more streamlined Mossad with its eight departments would continue to provide his country with intelligence resources of the highest caliber, although Saguy admitted that the institute had not always been successful in its endeavors. He recalled his government’s embarrassment when Mossad mistakenly assassinated a Swedish national. Then, there was the failed attempt to eliminate Khalid Meshaal by injecting the Palestinian Hamas leader with poison. But it was Mossad’s failure to provide adequate protection to Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin against Yigal Amir’s deadly attack that had resulted in leadership changes which, in turn, had paved the way for Saguy’s ascent to his current position and the unenviable task with which he was now faced.
Israel’s enemies had continued to arm, the threat of a nuclear war becoming more real by the day. Mossad became increasingly preoccupied with the necessity to maintain intelligence access by penetrating its neighbors’ defenses, and it was the success of these missions which had provided the information revealing the growing nuclear arms build-up amongst the Moslem nations. The director did not need to refer to his database to refresh his mind. The Iranians, he knew, now boasted their new Zelzal-3 missiles could destroy any target within fifteen hundred kilometers with a one thousand kilogram warhead and would soon test the first of their North Korean Nodong-2’s, capable of delivering their deadly payload as far as Germany and Western China.
Of even greater concern was confirmation that Iran now had at least fifteen nuclear material sites. The list went despairingly on; Saddam Hussein’s arsenal contained not only deadly nerve gases and chemicals, but also eleven confirmed nuclear facilities left undestroyed by the Gulf War.
Now, it would seem, Indonesia, the world’s largest Moslem nation, wished to enter the Arms Race. Mossad had become alarmed when the Indonesians acquired all thirty-nine warships from the former Soviet-backed, East German Fleet. Alarmed by this shift in policy, and unable to penetrate the Jakarta-based government with his intelligence teams, Director Saguy had depended on other Israeli resources to gather information regarding the Indonesian’s long-term strategies and military ambitions.
This had not been so difficult. Indonesia remained heavily in debt to both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Conditions precedent in all financial loan agreements required transparency in the debtor nation’s fiscal policies and, through Mossad-related resources, Saguy had managed to obtain the information he required. Senior officers within both the World Bank and the IMF reported directly to Mossad, and this provided Saguy with a clear overview of Indonesia’s future military intentions through the monetary monitoring processes.
He had become further alarmed with the growth of militancy amongst the powerful, and previously apolitical, Indonesian Moslem movements, the Director’s concerns growing even further with the discovery of a developing relationship between Islamic terrorist groups, headed by the Saudi, Osama bin Ladam and the powerful Indonesian Mufti Muharam movement. Saguy had flown to Washington with evidence of bin Ladam’s plans to expand his terrorist movement’s activities to include Indonesia and Malaysia, where training camps could be conveniently disguised by Moslem elements within those nations’ military hierarchy.
Saguy had been convincing in his arguments. Mossad teams had infiltrated a number of bin Ladam’s terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, close to the Pakistani border where the Saudi tycoon frequently recruited guerrillas from amongst those fighting against the Indian army in Kash-mir. Saguy revealed to the Americans that his agents had observed Osama bin Ladam hosting meetings in his mountain stronghold with Chinese and Pakistani officials. The Mossad Director had extrapolated his theory that the wealthy bin Ladam was already well advanced in his strategy to develop an international terrorist organization with training camps already established in most Moslem nations.
Armed with an adequate flow of funds, Saguy had argued that bin Ladam would soon be capable of threatening both Israel and the West with Chinese manufactured copies of Soviet missiles. He firmly believed, although the CIA had scoffed at the time, that it was the terrorist’s intentions to test such weaponry in Pakistan, for any such trial detonation in Iran, Iraq, or other Middle Eastern Moslem states, would result in an immediate United States response. The Israeli had, unfortunately, been unable to convince all those present during the Washington visit, how his intelligence justified these conclusions.
When he suggested that the successful testing of a nuclear device by a Moslem nation would act as a catalyst for unification amongst the Islamic world, the American Defense Secretary, Steven Cohen, had disagreed, citing Indonesia’s Moslem community as being non-aggressive and committed to their government’s policy of non-alignment. It was when Saguy suggested that elements within the Indonesian Government actively supported the terrorist organization, that the Americans became indifferent to his theories.
Saguy had insisted that China’s willingness to provide technology to Moslem states would eventually lead to confrontation. Members of the Israeli Cabinet who were also present, urged the American Administration to act quickly before even the less powerful Moslem countries acquired nuclear technology and missile weaponry from the Chinese. It seemed that the Mossad-proposed hypothesis was to be rejected. The Americans were not convinced, unable to accept that countries such as Indonesia would ever desert their lucrative pro-Western alliances in the interests of international terrorism.
Saguy and his fellow countrymen had returned to Tel Aviv,