By Way of Deception

BY WAY OF DECEPTION 309Unfortunately, they ran out of oxygen in the submarine, and thebattery died. There was no point in trying to carry it with themonce they were in open waters, so they hooked it on to a buoywhere it could be recovered later, attached themselves to oneanother by rope, and performed what is called a "sunflower." Thatmeans putting a blast of air inside their wet suits, which makesthem expand like balloons, and allows the frogmen simply to floaton top of the water without having to do any work at all to stayafloat. They even took turns sleeping, with one man staying awakeon watch at all times. A few hours later, an Israeli patrol boatsneaked in, answering their beeper signals, picked them up, andwhisked them off to safety.At about 6 a.m. that day, there were four large explosions in theharbor, and two PLO ships went down, loaded with millions ofdollars worth of military equipment and ammunition.The katsa assumed that would be it for their harbormaster. Surelythe explosions would make him suspicious. Instead, when hecalled in that day, the man was tremendously excited about it."You won't believe what happened!" he said. "They blew up twoships right in the middle of the harbor!""Who did?""The Israelis, of course," he said. "I don't know how they found theships, but they did. Fortunately, they weren't any of yours, so youdon't have to worry."The harbormaster went on working for the Mossad for another 18months or so. He made a lot of money until one day, he justdisappeared, leaving a trail of destroyed and captured PLO armsships in his wake.