Triple Identity
Authors: Haggai Carmon
To My Family
I
ntelligence gathering seems so glamorous. Hollywood movies contribute to the appeal; the general public's vision of an intelligence operative is of a sleek man in a three-piece suit moodily stirring his drink at a swank club.
There are no glitzy stories about missions that faced a dead end or about the long and cold nights spent outside in freezing temperatures waiting for a contact to show up, because routine is never headline news or the basis for a movie thriller. In reality, the villain is never as romantic or mysterious as its representation. It is rarely a gorgeous blond who tries to seduce you — most likely it's a man who could snap and behave like a truck driver with violent propensities.
In real life, however, clandestine operations sometimes overshadow even the most innovative thriller-writer's imagination. After nearly three decades in the Mossad, Israel's foreign-intelligence service, retiring as a member of the organization's top management, I thought I'd seen and heard it all. Haggai has managed to surprise even my skeptical mind with his seamless weaving of fact and fiction that has left me wondering which is which. Haggai found the gentle balance between the dull, plodding reality and the peaks of ingenuity, which makes this story so riveting.
Foreign gathering of intelligence is always problematic because governments do not appreciate foreign agents violating their sovereignty. Therefore confidentiality is a must, not only as a precautionary measure against the opposition but also against the wrath of the unsuspecting, uninvolved foreign country's government. Comprehensive planning, training, the element of surprise, and technical aides assist the agent, but a conniving mind is something you possess, not learn. Haggai's illustration of Dan Gordon's maneuvering tactics, self-motivation, and deceitful manners fit the profile of a successful undercover agent. “For by deception thou
shalt make thy war,” said King Solomon in Proverbs 24:6.
*
The Mossad adopted this verse as its motto because it engages in the war of minds, not weapons. Dan Gordon is a perfect example of how that philosophy is applied. Is there a real-life Dan Gordon? I'm sure my former colleagues would love to take him back.
A
NONYMOUS
*
The Hebrew word “tachbulot” (
) is often mistranslated as “wisdom.” The correct meaning is somewhere between “trick” and “deception.”
— Trans
.
O
ne afternoon in 1993, in a windowless conference room in Washington, D.C., a tall visitor opened a powerful laptop and turned it to face a closed session of an interagency committee of senior investigative agents and lawyers from a dozen government offices.
Everyone sitting in that room investigated major multinational crimes or managed other substantial international cases on behalf of the United States. All of us were concerned with recovering profits of crime or to win redress for victims of civil wrongs.
Our successes, whether generally unknown or splashed across the media, were matters of public record. We of course relied for them on an array of law enforcement investigative tools and governmental mechanisms for international cooperation. But as he clicked on screen after screen Haggai Carmon, an international lawyer in private practice, surprised those of us meeting him for the first time with true tales of how, as a consultant to the U. S. government, his independent approaches had ferreted out millions in U.S. crime profits that perpetrators had cached abroad. In this work Haggai had also gathered legal intelligence in more than thirty countries that proved to be at least significant and sometimes crucial to civil and criminal cases, money laundering cases in particular, involving the U.S. government.
The methods Haggai outlined were original, effective, and unusually swift. Some made creative use of that slim computer of his. All were perfectly legal. Whether retained to work in tandem with government investigators or operating independently for the government, Haggai had in numerous major cases been responsible not only for tracking down ill-gotten assets abroad but for facilitating their return to the United States.
Nearly a decade later, Haggai surprised me again. By then I'd retired from my Department of Justice job as general counsel for the
INTERPOL-
U.S.
National Central Bureau, slipping gratefully off to a quieter life. But Haggai had another true tale, and he tracked me down to tell it.
During sleepless, jet-lagged nights in remote hotels, he'd pounded out an international legal/spy thriller based on his years as a money hunter in more than thirty countries. Would I look at
Triple Identity
's discussions of
INTERPOL
to see that they were authentic?
I agreed to check relevant sections. When the bulky manuscript arrived, however, I glanced at its first page, the first sentence — and read straight through to the very last word.
Parts of the book sprang, it was obvious, from pure imagination.
Triple Identity
's David Stone, mythical head of a nonexistent U.S. Department of Justice office, has “an ample budget.” This does not happen. Given their heavy and ever-increasing caseloads, no government international office I've known, regardless of country, has had a budget that its agents or lawyers would call “ample.” Nice thought! But it's fiction.
Nor would any government lawyer resort to a certain few of the ploys used by unbureaucratic Dan Gordon, the book's dual-nationality Department of Justice lawyer and a veteran of the Mossad. No government lawyer who tried them could keep job, law license, or, in the worst case, liberty. You'll spot these certain ploys. They're clever. They're highly entertaining. They're even plausible. In real life, though, they don't happen.
But what about that twisting plot, those interlaced subplots, incident after curious incident? What about much more than ninety million dollars spirited from a California bank? What about the fugitive banker, real identity as elusive as he, who spirited these millions away? What of that multinational cast of bad, good, and in-between guys crisscrossing Europe and the Middle East, double-crossing one another, intent on seizing the money, stalking the man, securing materials to manufacture weapons of mass destruction? Did these spring from Haggai's cases? From cases that others handled? From Haggai's innovative and inventive mind?
Haggai says that they're fiction. He certainly should know. So, fiction they are. But as far as my experience goes, they nonetheless ring true. I'd say that they could have happened.
S
ARAH
M
C
K
EE
T
he white, masklike face wore an inquisitive expression, as if, when final darkness came, Raymond DeLouise had asked, “What happened?” then, “Who are you?” and finally, “I should have …”The entry wound on his forehead was barely noticeable but for the round gunpowder-burn marks from a close-range shot.
I identified him by comparing the passport picture I held of Raymond DeLouise with the corpse's face. I'd found the man I was looking for.
“That's what killed him,” said the man in the white gown and clear plastic gloves, pointing at the tiny wound. I wanted to leave. The metallic click of refrigerated drawers and the cold glare of fluorescent lights sent chills down my spine. I was also uncomfortable with the harsh-sounding German words that, though attempting to be courteous, sounded almost sadistically gleeful. Duty or not, feeling sick to my stomach was not in my job description.
It wasn't the corpse. I had seen many before, including the poor souls I personally sent to their just rewards. But back then it was during battle, when it's your life or theirs, or — during discretionary warfare, sometimes also called “black operations,” in which there are no rules, no records, no attribution — when it was only their lives.
What nauseated me was the smell of formaldehyde mixed with cleansing detergents: the stench of death. The odor seeps under doors, along hallways; it sticks to your clothes, infiltrates your nostrils, convulses your stomach.
This was my first visit to a morgue, and its deep-chill atmosphere put death in a different perspective. DeLouise was not my enemy, only my target, and we were not at war. At least I thought so then.
