Gideon's Spies полностью

In Tel Aviv, in closed cabinet sessions, the vaunted public image of “no surrender” to terrorism wilted. Ministers favored freeing Israel’s PLO prisoners. Prime Minister Rabin produced a Shin Bet report to show there was a precedent for releasing convicted criminals. Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur announced he could not recommend military action due to insufficient intelligence from Entebbe. While their anguished deliberations continued, news came from Entebbe that the Jewish passengers had been separated from the others on board—those passengers had been released and were on their way to Paris.

That had been the opening Mossad needed. Yitzhak Hofi, Mossad’s chief, in what was to be his finest hour, argued powerfully and passionately for a rescue to be mounted. He dusted down the plan Rafi Eitan had used to capture Eichmann. There were similarities: Rafi Eitan and his men had worked far from home in a hostile environment. They had improvised as they went along using bluff—the renowned Jewish chutzpah. It could be done again. Soaked in sweat, his voice hoarse from pleading and arguing, Hofi had stared around the cabinet room.

“If we let our people die, it will open the floodgates. No Jew will be safe anywhere. Hitler would have won a victory from the grave!”

“Very well,” Rabin had finally said. “We try.”

As well as Kimche, every other strategist and planner in Mossad was mobilized. The first step was to open a safe communication channel between Tel Aviv and Nairobi; Hofi had nursed the unpublicized intelligence link between Mossad and its Kenyan counterpart introduced by Meir Amit. The link started to bear immediate results. Half a dozen katsas descended on Nairobi and were installed in a Kenyan intelligence service safe house. They would form the bridgehead for the main assault. Meantime Kimche had overcome another problem. Any rescue mission would require a fuel stop at Nairobi. Working the phone, he obtained Kenya’s approval in a matter of hours, granted “on humanitarian grounds.”

But there was still the formidable problem of reaching Entebbe. The PLO had established the airport as their own entry point to Uganda, from where the Organization ran its own operation against the pro-Israeli white supremacist regime in South Africa. Idi Amin, Uganda’s despotic dictator, had actually given the PLO the residence of the Israeli ambassador as a headquarters after breaking off diplomatic relations with Jerusalem in 1972.

Kimche knew it was essential to know if the PLO were still in the country. Their battle-hardened guerrillas would be a formidable force to overcome in the short time allowed for the actual rescue mission : the Israeli forces could only be on the ground for minutes, otherwise they ran the risk of a powerful counterattack. Kimche sent two katsas from Nairobi by boat across Lake Victoria. They landed near Entebbe and found the PLO headquarters deserted; the Palestinians had recently moved on to Angola.

Then, with the stroke of luck any operation needs, one of the Kenyan security officers who had accompanied the katsas discovered that one of his wife’s relatives was actually one of the men guarding the hostages. The Kenyan inveigled himself into the airport and was able to see that the hostages were all alive, but he counted fifteen very tense and nervous guards. The information was radioed to Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, two other katsas, both qualified pilots, hired a Cessna and flew from Nairobi, ostensibly to photograph Lake Victoria for a holiday brochure. Their aircraft passed directly over Entebbe Airport, enabling one katsa to obtain good photographs of the runway and adjoining buildings. The film was flown to Tel Aviv. There, Kimche recommended yet another strategy to confuse the hijackers.

During several telephone conversations with Amin’s palace, Israeli negotiators in Tel Aviv made it clear their government was ready to accept the hijacker’s terms. A diplomat in a European consulate in Uganda was used to add credibility to this apparent surrender by being called “in confidence” to see if he could negotiate suitable wording the hijackers would accept. Kimche told the envoy, “It must be something not too demeaning to Israel but also not too impossible for the hijackers to accept.” The diplomat hurried to the airport with the news and began to draft suitable words. He was still doing so as Operation Thunderball moved to the final stages.

An unmarked Israeli Boeing 707 to be used as a flying hospital landed at Nairobi Airport, flown by IDF pilots who knew Entebbe Airport. Meantime six Mossad katsas had surrounded that airport; each man carried a high-frequency radio and an electronic device that would jam the radar in the control tower. It had never before been tried under combat conditions.