Moreover, as he spoke, Harari began to feel that his body language was wrong. His English was authentically Canadian but he carried no briefcase and no business card and his pitch seemed weak for someone so eager to set up a meeting. Harari, hardened by experience into a permanent state of suspicion, checked that the man was staying at the hotel he claimed to be in and agreed to grant him five minutes of his time. And no matter how many times Harari’s secretary tried to brush him aside, he persisted. He had a plan to invest in an underwater pearl farm in Eilat. Several years after he retired, for instance, his secretary was besieged by calls from a Canadian businessman. Harari, left, with the leader of Panama during the 70s Omar Torrijo (photo credit: courtesy Mike Harari)īut in truth some of the most telling depictions in the book, the first such exposure for Harari, come amid the non-operational moments. Only a change in the “quality target’s” travel plans foiled the ambush and spared the man’s life. He would not hide the sniper’s rifle he was asked to smuggle into the country, as the head of the Mossad Isser Harel had suggested he would place it at the bottom of a huge set of luxury suitcases from Paris and if anyone had any questions he would act as if it was understood that he traveled with his own firearm. Harari, then the station chief in Paris in the 60s, drafted his own cover story – as a filthy rich hunting afficionado eager to bag an elephant and other wild animals. There are several such episodes in the book, including a plan to assassinate “a quality target” in a Muslim country – an operation that would have altered the reality of the Middle East and one that, the commander of the Mossad told Harari, “only God will save you from if things get complicated…” “No!” Harari roars, “do you know what sculpture that is?”Ī few moments later, with the officer still cursing about the missed opportunity, Harari gives the order and the man is eliminated – a hit that was hitherto considered a terror-related work accident. At a traffic circle featuring a grand 17 th century sculpture, the other officer, subordinate to Harari, sees he has a window of opportunity and, remote control in hand, asks, “Activate? Activate?”
They follow close behind, determined not to lose the explosive-laden car and to do the deed in an area devoid of innocent civilians. Harari and the officer by his side are looking for a convenient place to kill him. Harari, who began his service in 1943 as a 16 year-old member of the Palmach, spent his most intense years at the helm of Caesarea, the Mossad’s primary operational unit, during the tumultuous period before and after the Munich Olympics massacre in 1972, when dozens of terror plots were foiled in Europe and one innocent man, Ahmed Bouchiki, was gunned down in Lillehammer, Norway, solely because he resembled a wanted terrorist.Ī fluent speaker of French, Arabic, Italian, Spanish and English, and a diehard lover of Italian opera, the reader first encounters Harari in 1973, in a car, tailing a Palestinian terrorist through what Klein was forced to call “a European capital.” The PFLP man, driving a Fiat 132 and in the midst of planning an airline hijacking, is weaving through the crowded streets. Harari, left, in Milan in 1947 (photo credit: courtesy of Mike Harari)