Humanitarian Spies — Part Three
“What are you doing, you fool? Are you out of your mind, shooting at tourists?”
Continued from Part One and Part Two.
Paid Vacation
Danny and a part of his team returned to Israel and were debriefed. The naval operation had been a success. The Mossad was convinced of the utility of the resort which allowed its agents free access across most of Sudan. A suitable budget for sprucing up the resort and strengthening the tourist infrastructure in the village was earmarked. Shimron and Ruby were informed that a hotel and food professional was being sent to organise the place and run it professionally.
Meanwhile Shimron ended up chipping a tooth, ordinarily a trivial annoyance quickly taken care of with painkillers and a short trip to the dentist. Except Arous had no dentist. So he drove, in agony, to Port Sudan where someone pointed him to the government hospital. The manager of the hospital had heard of the tourist resort operating in Arous, and was happy to help the nice European out. Shimron got to jump the queue and had his chipped tooth repaired. When he asked the dentist his charges, he was told that since they were a socialist country there were no charges. After Shimron had exited the building and walked halfway to his vehicle, the dentist came running and said:
It is a socialist state but I would be happy if you paid me fifty pounds.
Back at the resort, Shimron and Ruby’s routine of sun-tanning, diving, and stargazing was interrupted by the arrival of an Egyptian army platoon. The officers rented two bungalows at the resort and spent a couple of days playing football, taking dips in the sea, and enjoying seafood. Shimron recounts interesting conversations between him and the Egyptian officers — who didn’t know their hosts were Israelis — about Israel and Palestine in his book along with a joke a senior Egyptian personality had shared with him:
One Palestinian in the Nile — pollution. All Palestinians in the Nile — solution.
When they received word that the food professional was arriving at Port Sudan, Shimron and Ruby drove to the airport to receive him. Turns out, the Mossad had sent Apke, fifty-five year old and formerly in charge of the kitchen at Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. Shimron wondered why someone that old would volunteer to work in the middle of nowhere in Sudan. The bumpy ride back to Arous was followed by Apke being shocked by the filth in the kitchen, which he got cleaned. Later, while having a beer with Shimron and Ruby, he revealed his motivation:
I spent the years of my youth in Auschwitz. I immigrated to Israel as an illegal immigrant, and therefore feel that I’m doing a sacred job here.
Another Exfiltration
By Road
After a few months, Danny returned to Sudan with the rest of his team organised another batch of refugees. This time, instead of waiting in a wadi outside Gedaref for days on end like earlier, the team stayed at the Hilton in Khartoum, driving down to Gedaref when the refugees — 172 of them this time — were ready. Their route would take them from Gedaref via Kassala across a mountain range topping at 5,000 feet to the coast near Suakin and thence to Port Sudan and Arous.
The journey onwards from Gedaref to Kassala and beyond to the mountain range was uneventful, and roadblocks were breached like last time, with cigarettes. And rusk, which the Sudanese called esh Fransawi or French Bread.
They stopped at the foot of the mountain range at daybreak and hid for the day, having covered 500km as the crow flies. Shimron and Ruby broke away from the convoy and continued onward, reaching Arous in the afternoon. That night they set off in a Zodiac with communications equipment and a bundle of light sticks — “for a dive”, they told their employees.
Light stick in action
By Boat
Their job that night was to mark an access route from the sea through coral reefs to a quiet lagoon some distance up the coast from Arous. They did that by attaching light sticks to thin metal rods anchored into concrete pillars under the water on reefs, a relic of the British era. Four kilometres from the lagoon they noticed a wooden boat 20m long moored close to a long reef — a smugglers’ boat. The upper deck was dark, so they figured the crew were asleep and moved on.
Fridge Bay is located somewhere along this coastline
A little while later, having marked the remainder of the path, they reached Fridge Bay which was named after a rusty refrigerator that had washed ashore there. Shimron scouted the area — everything was quiet except for a brown fox that he surprised when he jumped off the Zodiac onto the shore. After making sure the rest of the bay was deserted, he climbed a hillock and settled down as a lookout armed only with a radio, binoculars and a bar of chocolate. Ruby returned to the outer reefs.
Visitors
Danny radioed to indicate their approach, with the convoy reaching the bay an hour afterwards. Shimron stayed on lookout, and after observing the Israel Navy’s Zodiacs motor into the bay and the refugees alight from the trucks, he began scanning their surroundings. Movement on the range that bounded the bay to the west caught his eye. As he peered at it through binoculars, he was convinced there were people there. He radioed an alert to the team down below. Danny asked him to continue observing and report what’s happening, then exhorted the team to speed up loading the refugees into the boats.
One by one the Zodiacs, taking on as many refugees on board as they safely could, began pushing off and heading to the reefs at the entrance of the bay. Shimron could see several shadows moving at the foot of the hill he was lying on, and another group of people was moving slowly in the direction of Danny’s team. When he reported this, Danny told the commander of the naval commando team, Gadi Kroll, to evacuate the beach urgently, and ordered Shimron to abandon his post and join the rest of the team.
Within seconds the Zodiacs were in the water except the last one which was stuck on the beach. Shimron ran towards it, trying to help a team member and two commandos who were struggling push it into the water.
“Hands up,” someone shouted in Arabic.
A group of soldiers was now moving quickly towards them from the western range where Shimron had first spotted movement. They were still far away, but Shimron could see that they were armed, their rifles pointed towards the boat and the men on the beach. As Shimron and the others continued pushing, trying to get the Zodiac off the beach, Danny Limor shouted “Wait a minute” and took a couple of steps towards the approaching soldiers. One of the soldiers replied with a short burst of bullets.
The Zodiac meanwhile finally yielded, sliding across the sand and floating a few feet into the water even as fifty metres away Danny’s group raised their hands and were quickly surrounded by soldiers. One of the Sudanese soldiers there started running towards the Zodiac. Shimron pushed it deeper into the water while one of the commandos tried to start the engine. It took three nerve-wracking tries before the motor came to life. Shimron climbed aboard and they motored towards the reefs, away from the beach.
You Fool!
Radio transmissions about the situation had gone out from one of the other Zodiacs and Shimron heard that Gadi Kroll had already regrouped his commandos in the middle of the sea, organising them into three Zodiacs to assault the beach and rescue Danny and his team. But Danny had other ideas. Realising that the Sudanese soldiers had absolutely no idea what had happened before their eyes, he adopted an aggressive tone and shouted at the Sudanese officer:
“What are you doing, you fool? Are you out of your mind, shooting at tourists?”
The officer was stunned, and Danny pressed home his advantage, threatening to talk to the Chief of the Navy at Port Sudan to get the officer dismissed for firing at tourists who were being taken for a night dive. The officer began mumbling something, so Danny raised his voice even further:
“Who’s the idiot who made you an officer? Can’t you see what you’re doing?”
The officer apologised and explained that he thought they were smugglers.
Danny then used his handheld radio and transmitted that there had been a misunderstanding, asked that the tourists continue the dive and meet him later at the village. With that the naval commandos stood down and the Zodiacs proceeded to INS Bat Galim, with Shimron and Ruby taking their Zodiac back to Arous.
Carthago
After this episode the Mossad, wary of being mistaken for smugglers again, abandoned exfiltrating refugees from the coast. Shimron and team returned to Tel Aviv where they were given a crash course in guiding a C-130 aircraft to land in the desert. They found Carthago Airfield, an abandoned British era airfield in the middle of the desert south-west of Suakin, and began exfiltrating refugees via Israel Air Force C-130s which landed and took off from there.
The operation continued until an Israeli politician blabbed to the media and the Mossad operatives had to evacuate the Red Sea Diving Resort in a hurry.
Primary Source
Most of what I’ve narrated in these three parts is from Gad Shimron’s excellent book Mossad Exodus. I cannot recommend the book highly enough for its wonderful description of Sudan and the understated manner in which Shimron narrates what was one of the greatest humanitarian operations ever mounted.
Shaunak Agarkhedkar writes spy novels. His first two — Let Bhutto Eat Grass & Let Bhutto Eat Grass: Part 2 — are set in 1970s India, Pakistan, and Europe.