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Chapter 5

5

Thailand

The hunger pains were more than he could bear. His mouth was dry to the point he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to continue yelling for help. But Yoram tried to stay calm. It was as if being paralyzed while in his sleep. Relax, his light-skinned Ashkenazic mother would tell him. Relax until you can break free from it. Don’t panic.

The piercing wind on that Kullu mountainside had made his hands go numb. He and Reuven could hardly speak with each other because of their chattering teeth. Yoram now could remember that after boarding the train and returning to New Delhi, Binyamin was unusually garrulous. Normally he was an old man who kept to himself, rarely showing emotion, but always passionate about his Zionistic beliefs and the crucial need for accurate intelligence and sharp, strong agents to gather it. Do whatever Israel needed of them. Drivel or pointless speech had never dripped from his tongue, but that night on the train he spoke of the cultures and sites found in the area.

At that time, Yoram thought it was such a peculiar topic. Did his mentor really care about a theme park in Singapore? Or going to the top of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur? Then there was talk of a small tribe in northern Burma, discovered by Christian missionaries as having customs and beliefs that were remarkably Jewish-like. But it had been Binyamin speaking, and Yoram listened to everything he had to say. Yoram wondered what Binyamin could have learned on that mountain to have made the old grey-haired, hawkish-looking man giddy.

Binyamin Mizrahi was born before the war had ended. His parents had escaped the Nazis and arrived on the shores of the Promised Land while Binyamin’s mother was three months pregnant. His childhood was spent observing the daring adults surrounding him build a nation and survive the hostile Arabs that surrounded them. He became politically active in his late teens when he caught the attention of Israeli’s leaders. In an effort to increase the tiny country’s operations against hostile Arab nations, starting with Iraq, the only country not to sign a ceasefire at the end of the war for independence, the Israelis started courting the Kurds in northern Iraq. Mossad began using Israeli spies in Arab countries at this time, too, as before 1964 their spies were mostly non-Jewish. Binyamin was barely an adult, but he was sent to Kurdish territory.

His assignment was to help build Kurdish resistance to distract the Iraqis but also create opportunities to gather intelligence on the Iraqi army. He was very successful. He knew the geography as well as any Kurdish guide and learned the language to add to his skills in Arabic. So much so that when Mossad came in contact with Munir Radfa, an Iraqi air force pilot frustrated with being passed over for promotion and mistreated because he was Christian, Binyamin was given a great responsibility. Radfa was going to hand over a Soviet MiG-21 to the Israelis but not before his family was safely taken from Iraq. Some members had been spirited away by Mossad long before the pilot’s run. But the morning that he took off in his MiG, the rest of his family members were driven to the Iranian border and helped across by anti-Iraq Kurds. Binyamin was there escorting the van, as a member of the fourth of the five teams set up for the mission, watching the pilot’s family safely cross the border.

Israel tapped into Binyamin’s knowledge of Iraq once again during the Six-Day War. Though the Israeli assault mostly targeted the air forces of its immediate neighbors, it did want to retaliate against Iraq for shelling Israeli targets. Binyamin confirmed the presence of many Iraqi aircraft at an airbase in its far western desert. Ten aircraft were still on the tarmac. They were swiftly reduced to seared scrap metal.

But later that same year, Binyamin was pulled from Iraq and “loaned” to Shin Bet, as arranged by the Va’adat. As a result of the Six-Day War, the region saw the emergence of Palestinian nationalism. Shin Bet needed every individual it could find who could communicate in Arabic and send them to the territories to sniff out fedayeen support for the PLO and search out cell groups. His actions in the West Bank during the late 60s cemented his reputation for being harsh, decisive, and in control. Mossad, with the need to focus on Palestinian activities abroad, took Binyamin back in 1970. Binyamin most likely didn’t have enough time to establish long-term moles, but it was rumored that he helped provide names of individuals which Shin Bet interrogators would drop in front of Palestinian suspects before letting them go, planting in the poor suspects’ minds that their colleagues were double agents, increasing the tension among the Palestinians.

After he rejoined Mossad, the nature of his work began to change. In the early part of his career, his skills were used to gather intel. But the 70s saw a more violent Binyamin emerge. After the EL AL hijacking, Binyamin had a hand in the assassinations of the hijackers. He may have been involved with the assassination of three senior PLO officers in Lebanon and a car bomb in Paris, but few knew the truth. He was nearly selected to help plan the assassination of a wanted terrorist thought to be in Lillehammer who turned out to be just a Moroccan waiter. The Lillehammer fiasco and its black eye on Israeli intelligence were excuses Binyamin could use to leave his work. He realized how hardened he was becoming.

So in 1974 Binyamin left and became a Foreign Service Officer in the United States. He was a member of the Israeli committee that tried to pressure the U.S. to force France to halt its assistance to Iraq’s nuclear aims. But when the Lebanese Civil War broke out, Mossad came calling again. He was to monitor U.S. attitudes toward the war from D.C. After the Israeli ambassador to Great Britain was assassinated by Abu Nidal, an anti-Fatah, anti-Arafat leader backed by Iraq, Binyamin was asked for his assessment of Iraq’s support. He explained the differences between the Palestinian groups and the politics between them, but he was ignored. Prime Minister Begin saw no difference. Every armed Palestinian was PLO to him. Frustrated, Binyamin returned to D.C. and determined that he wouldn’t get involved again.

But the U.S. press in the 80s unknowingly saw a lot of blowback, false information, about Syria, Arafat, and PLO. There were leaks and rumors regarding Israel’s capability to deter Syria. Binyamin became quite adept in creating rumors for Israel’s benefit.

When the PLF, Palestinian Liberation Front, hijacked an Italian cruise liner, Binyamin once again had the chance to explain the differences between the groups and how the PLF was not happy with Arafat’s move toward diplomacy. But Israel again wanted to implicate the PLO as a whole.

Then without explanation, Binyamin was ready to leave the U.S. and willingly return to Mossad. He was given the chance to work on a peaceful mission of helping the Falashas from Ethiopia. After the Gulf War, he was consulted about the Kurdish uprising against Saddam and how Israel could “stoke” it. What Binyamin did for the rest of the 90s before taking in Reuven and Yoram is unknown. But Yoram saw Binyamin as hard and withdrawn from the very beginning, with the occasional sign of tenderness shown when Yoram made him proud.

Yoram’s thoughts stopped, interrupted by the sound at the door. He turned and saw four uniformed men. The first one was the oldest and by the number of colorful pins and badges on his shirt, the highest ranking. They weren’t dark enough to be Malays or Burmese, and they certainly weren’t Chinese. They looked Thai. They looked at his limited mobility and talked amongst themselves. Yoram noticed the tonal syllables in their language, up and down as though singing a song. That ruled out the Cambodian and Malay languages. Besides Chinese, the only languages in the area that were tonal were Thai, Lao, and Vietnamese. But these men were too dark and big for Vietnamese.

‘Where am I?’ he asked, interrupting their discussion.

The older officer nodded for a junior officer to approach Yoram.

‘What’s your nationality?’ the junior asked. He was thin but wiry, approaching Yoram with confidence and authority.

‘Israeli,’ Yoram said. He wanted to ask about Binyamin and Reuven, but he couldn’t. Not until he knew what had happened, and whether they or him were in danger.

‘Where’s your passport?’

Yoram shook his head. He didn’t know where he was. ‘What country is this? Where am I?’

‘Thailand,’ the junior officer answered.

Yoram tried to raise his arms, showing the men his predicament. ‘Why this?’

The junior turned to the older one and spoke in Thai, shoulders slumped, showing deference. Translating the older officer’s response, he said, ‘You threatened the lives of many policemen.’

‘Policemen,’ Yoram muttered. Another question answered. Their uniforms were so army-like to him. ‘Please tell me why I’ve been immobilized.’

‘Drug addicts can turn violent at any moment, as you did in your hotel room. This,’ the junior policeman said, gesturing to Yoram’s tied-down limbs, ‘is for your protection as well as ours.’

Drug addicts, Yoram repeated in his mind. He closed his eyes and wondered if he was still asleep. ‘Drugs? I don’t take drugs. I’m not a drug addict. Let me go,’ he said, in neither a demanding nor pleading tone.

He turned to speak with the older officer again, and they shared a laugh. ‘You were a wild animal yesterday, full of yaa bah and heroine. Yaa bah is-‘ he thought of the long, lisping word in English ‘-amphetamines. We found it in your blood and you had more in your hotel room.’

Yoram raised his neck and shook his head at the policemen, frowning incredulously. ‘I said I don’t take drugs.’ Mossad or not, he needed to know where Binyamin was. He had always been there to help Yoram. A spine-chilling feeling swept through his body at the thought of Binyamin abandoning him. ‘I was with two other men. Where are they?’

‘You were alone.’

‘My belongings, where are they?’

‘You had no belongings.’

‘My friends’ belongings, were they in the room?’

‘You were alone.’

Those words scared Yoram. He turned to face that dirty wall. He tried not to believe them, resisting a foreboding that he had been left for dead. He took a few deep breaths. His mother’s words rang in his head. Relax he did. The training, think of the tough, crushing training. He was a Mossad agent, part of a fearsome institution that had hunted down Nazi leaders, terrorized the terrorists, and pounded mighty reputations of world leaders to dust with truth and lies. He was to be feared, not the one to be conquered by his own fear. Binyamin would have backhanded him across his cheek if the old man could have seen the fear and self-pity raising their ugly heads in Yoram’s heart.

His spirit resurrected the boldness that had been pounded into him at the Institute. Be brutal, he could hear Binyamin say. Relax, he could hear his mother say.

The young officer stepped forward again, reestablishing his authority with his posture. ‘What’s your name?’ he said.

‘Yoram,’ he answered.

‘Do you have a passport?’

‘If you didn’t find it in my room, and if my belongings are truly gone, then I’m afraid it’s lost.’

Yoram saw him write something on a notepad. ‘How do you spell your name?’

‘Y-O-R-A-M.’

‘And your last name?’

Yoram only stared at them. The junior officer waited for an answer.

‘Your last name?’ he demanded.

‘I’d like to have a representative of my embassy here.’

‘This isn’t Bangkok,’ he said, but smiled before adding, ‘I doubt there’s another Jew within two hundred kilometers from here.’

Not in Bangkok, Yoram thought. And what damn hotel did they find him in? He couldn’t remember checking into a hotel in Thailand. No Jew near here. The police did not have Reuven and Binyamin in custody. They were not near him. Fear tried to well up inside him again, but he wouldn’t let it.