other-side-of-deception-victor-ostrovsky

THE OTH5R Slllk OF DECtPlIO\ / 255Robert Maxwell's contact was not in the best of moods when hereceived a call on a special secure line at the Israeli embassy inMadrid. Maxwell was phoning from London, saying it was imperativethat a meeting be set up. He was willing to come to Madrid.The ties between Maxwell and the Mossad went back a long way.Elements within the Mossad had offered to finance Maxwell's first bigbusiness ventures, and in later years Maxwell received inside informationon global matters from the Office. Maxwell was originally codenamed"the Little Czech," and the sobriquet stuck. Only a handful ofpeople in the Israeli intelligence community knew who the Little Czechwas, yet he provided an unending supply of slush money for the organizationwhenever it ran low.For years, Maxwell would hit financial lows whenever the Mossadwas in the midst of expensive operations that could not be fundedlegitimately and when other less legitimate sources were unavailable,as was the case after the American invasion of Panama in 1990, whichdried up the Mossad's income from drug trafficking and forcedMaxwell to dig deep into his corporate pockets.But the Mossad had used its ace in the hole one time too many.Asking Maxwell to get involved in a matter of secondary importance(namely, the Vanunu affair) had been a big mistake, for which themedia mogul would be made to pay the price.That involvement caused suspicion in the British Parliament thatthere was no smoke without fire, particularly after the publication of abook by an American reporter claiming Maxwell was a Mossad agent.Maxwell retaliated in a lawsuit, but the ground was starting to burnunder his feet. The Mossad was late in giving him back his money, andi_the usual last-minute rescue of his financial empire was looking lessand less feasible.For Maxwell, what was already bad was about to get worse. Hiscall couldn't have been more poorly timed. Israel was participating ina peace negotiation process that the Mossad top clique believed wouldbe detrimental to the country's security. At the same time, news wasreaching the Office of a growing scandal caused by Mossad involvementin Germany. This scandal was a result of Uri's having made a callto the Hamburg River Police informing them that a shipment of armswas about to be loaded onto an Israeli ship.The arms consisted of Soviet tanks and antiaircraft equipment,concealed in large crates marked agricultural equipment. The shipmenthad been arranged with the help of the BND, without the knowledgeof the German government or the Ministry of Defense. It wasexactly the same equipment that the Ministry of Defense had refusedto send to Israel in March of the same year, because they believed theshipment would defy the German law forbidding the shipment of warmattriel to a conflict zone.The Mossad's right-wing element wasn't sure to what extent thisscandal would grow. They remembered very well the scandal that hadoccurred in 1978 when the German police had allowed Mossad officersposing as German intelligence officers to interrogate Palestiniansin German prisons. If the German government could contain the situation,things would be fine. But once the story was in the hands of themedia, there was no telling where it would go.And then came this call from Maxwell, insisting he must meet hiscontact on a matter of great urgency. The mogul was rebuffed at first,but then he issued a veiled threat: Now that he was being investigatedby Parliament and the British media, if he wasn't able to straighten outhis financial affairs, he wasn't sure he could keep the Kryuchkov meetinga secret.What he was referring to (and in doing so, he sealed his fate) wasa meeting that he'd helped arrange between the Mossad liaison andthe former head of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was nowjailed in Number Four Remand Center in Moscow for his role in theSoviet Union's August coup to oust Mikhail Gorbachev.At that meeting, which took place on Maxwell's yacht at anchorin Yugoslav waters, Mossad support for the plot to oust Gorbachevwas discussed. The Mossad promised to bring about, through its politicalconnections, an early recognition of the new regime, as well asother logistical assistance for the coup. In exchange, it requested that