Chapter 4

A Valuable Commodity

Olen is a pretty red-bricked village twenty-five miles east of Antwerp that drums up a respectable tourist trade on the strength of a somewhat implausible Flemish legend. It is said that in the sixteenth century King Charles I of Flanders and Saxony stopped to refresh himself with a tankard of beer at one of Olen’s taverns. The traditions of local hospitality insisted that the landlord should hold the pewter tankard by its handle when passing it to his guest; the king’s dignity required him to

receive the tankard by grasping the same handle. A blacksmith was hastily summoned to equip the tankard with a second handle but the landlord now insisted on holding both. The impasse was ended only when the blacksmith added a third handle for the king. Today every tavern in Olen displays what is claimed to be the original three-handled pot. Replicas are for sale, of course.

The more serious side of life at Olen is situated some way from its tourist attractions. On the bank of a wide canal five miles from the village centre are the smoke-belching chimneys and gigantic black slag heap of a metal refinery. It is owned by the Belgian company Metallurgie Hoboken-Overpelt, and it is the only place in Belgium licensed to store radioactive materials. It was there, in a silo, that Israel’s uranium was waiting.

The order for the uranium arrived at the Brussels headquarters of the Belgian company Société Générale des Minerais in March 1968. SGM, a sister company of Metallurgie Hoboken-Overpelt, is a part of the giant conglomerate Société Générale de Belgique, with interests ranging from banking to shipping, paper-making to mining. As befits its status at the centre of the Belgian economy, SGM occupies a prest6igious and somewhat old-fashioned office building in the Rue du Marais in central Brussels. It is a solid, stone building with calm, wide corridors, heavy wooden doors, polished mahogany furniture, and cut-glass ashtrays. The uranium order was directed to the large and comfortable office of Denis Dewez, deputy head of SGM’s uranium division.

Dewez knew it was an order that SGM could easily fill. Another of SGM’s sister companies was Union Minière, a mining corporation which for a long time was the power behind Belgium’s rule over her African colony, the Belgian Congo. Belgium had pulled out in 1960, bequeathing a bloody civil war as different factions vied for political control and the Congo’s rich mineral resources. By staying on until 1965 Union Minière managed to ship home large quantities of those resources, including copper and a substantial amount of uranium oxide. It was that uranium which was stored in the silo near the village of Olen. SGM was having trouble finding buyers to help diminish the small mountain. In 1968 there was little military demand because of the nuclear test-ban treaty passed five years earlier, and little civil demand because peaceful nuclear programmes were still in their infancy. Even so, Dewez regarded the order for 200 tons with considerable caution.

His wariness stemmed from the fact that the would-be buyer was Asmara Chemie of Wiesbaden. Nobody at SGM had ever heard of Asmara Chemie. And since the transaction would undoubtedly involve several million dollars, Dewez was naturally curious to knew whether this unknown company was in a position to pay. When Dewez initiated a polite inquiry to that effect, Asmara’s reply was reassuring. Not only was it able to pay, the necessary funds were already lodged with a bank in Zurich, waiting to be transferred at the appropriate moment to SGM’s account. The bank itself confirmed that this was true. But no one in SGM had heard of the bank, either. SGM had not achieved its position as one of the biggest non-ferrous metal dealers in the world by casting aside prudence, so it caused circumspect inquiries to be made into the bank’s financial standing. When those inquiries resulted in satisfactory references, SGM said it would be happy to deal with Asmara. The reason Asmara had given Dewez for wanting to buy the uranium seemed plausible, and SGM saw no need to inquire any further into the standing, financial or otherwise, of Asmara itself. In the circumstances, that was just as well.

The story Herbert Schulzen had told Dewez went like this, Asmara was about to engage in the mass production of petrochemicals. In that endeavour it intended to use the uranium as a catalyst to begin or accelerate the chemical reactions which this type of manufacturing calls for. This in itself seemed reasonable to Dewez because in those days of comparative plenty, uranium was sometimes used in this way.

Before it can be used as a catalyst, however, uranium needs to be treated, a fairly complex process which Asmara explained it was not capable of carrying out. Asmara told Dewez it had arranged for its uranium to be treated by a chemical company called Chimagar of Casablanca in Morocco. Asmara proposed to ship the uranium to Morocco, and then after treatment ship it back to Wiesbaden.

Chimagar was the same company which had helped Herbert Scharf make his new start in Eritrea. And in the design of the scheme the Moroccan connection was an ingenious touch. Had this part of the plan come off, and had there been a hue and cry following ‘the loss’ of the uranium, then suspicion would have fallen not on Israel but on the Arab world. Unfortunately, the little joke misfired. As Dewez now innocently pointed out, Asmara seemed to have overlooked one inconvenient fact of European life.

Germany was part of the European Economic Community which then consisted of six nations: as well as Germany, there were France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. *

*In 1973, the EEC was enlarged to include Great Britain, Denmark, and the Republic of Ireland.

Movements of uranium into and within those countries were controlled by an EEC agency called Euratom. As nuclear watchdogs went, it was a pretty pathetic creature, with no bite and very little bark. But exporting uranium from the community even on a temporary basis, which is what Asmara said it had in mind, was a more controversial business. Euratom on its own did not have the authority to sanction exports and would have to seek permission from EEC’s executive, the European Commission. As this was an essentially political body incorporating many different shades of opinion, the Commission tended to be exceedingly cautious. Dewez warned Asmara that since Morocco was not a member of the EEC, obtaining permission to export the uranium to Casablanca would be neither quick nor easy.

Asmara appeared to accept the setback with stoicism. It told Dewez that it would look around for another company within the European community capable of treating the uranium. Meanwhile, Asmara said, there was no reason why negotiations over such matters as price, delivery and so on should not continue. They did, very satisfactorily, until Denis Dewez unwittingly cast a sizeable wrench in the works.

Up to this point, the late summer of 1968, the fiction that Asmara was going into the mass petrochemical business had been easy to maintain. All the negotiations had been conducted by letter or telephone, leaving SGM happily ignorant of the fact that Asmara was a very modest little company. But then Dewez called Herbert Schulzen to suggest that the time had come for some face-to-face bargaining. And since Asmara was the customer, Dewez said it was only right that he should accept the inconvenience and expense of travel. He proposed politely to Schulzen that he should visit Wiesbaden to continue the talks.

It was a decidedly nasty moment. Schulzen could hardly decline Dewez’s courteous offer. But neither could he possibly let Dewez visit Asmara’s premises. Once Dewez saw for himself the cobbled courtyard leading to the tiny entrance and cramped offices at 54 Am Scholspark, he would have realised the impossibility of even finding room there for 200 tons of uranium, let alone doing anything with it.

It was a time for quick thinking, and the quick-witted, extrovert Schulzen, with his long experience as a salesman, met the crisis. He responded to Dewez’s suggestion in the baden. With a swimming pool and three-car garage, it would certainly give Dewez the impression that Schulzen was a man of substance. And fortunately for the Plumbat scheme, which could have foundered at that moment, Dewez was not burdened with a suspicious nature. He accepted Schulzen’s invitation without further inquiry or complaint. The crisis passed.

The meeting itself went smoothly enough. There were several men present besides Schulzen whom Dewez assumed to be other representatives of Asmara, including, he supposed, at least one scientific or technical expert. He further assumed that they were all Germans, since that was the language they spoke to each other. As Dewez himself did not speak German, the actual negotiations were conducted in English. From Schulzen’s point of view the ground they covered was safe: such matters as the quality of the uranium, the delivery date and the price. And when it come to the unfortunate snag presented by the Moroccan company Chimagar, Schulzen was able to announce that he had now found another company willing and able to undertake the processing of the uranium. The company was in Milan, Italy. Since Italy was a member of the EEC Schulzen supposed that official permission to send the uranium to Milan would be easily obtained. Dewez agreed.

There was just one tiny snag, Schulzen said. Italy was a long way from Belgium and he felt the easiest way to get such a cumbersome load there would be by ship; however, that would mean the uranium leaving the EEC for the length of the voyage. Would that technicality present any problems? Dewez thought not. A voyage on the high seas did not really constitute exportation. In any event, Dewez said, when he returned to Brussels SGM would draw up a contract which could be submitted to Euratom for approval. As he left Hettenhain to return to Brussels, Dewez assured Schulzen that he was fairly confident that approval would be forthcoming.

Just as SGM had felt no curiosity about Asmara’s background, it now displayed no interest whatsoever in the credentials of the Italian company. That, too, was fortunate. Schulzen had chosen the company on the strength of a personal friendship with its owner, Francesco Sertorio, that went back twenty years. Sertorio, a tall and aristocratic looking Italian, had readily accepted Schulzen’s proposition that he be named, in lieu of the Moroccan company, as the recipient of 200 tons of uranium. The fact that Sertorio’s company had, like Asmara, never handled uranium and had no idea how to process it, did not bother either man one little bit.

The beauty of Operation Plumbat lay in the way it was designed to exploit weakness. Above all, of course, Mossad was relying on the weakness of the safeguards that were supposed to prevent uranium from falling into the wrong hands. But there was also the more subtle way in which the designers of the plot preyed on human frailties, such as avarice. A man in trouble does not usually interrogate the bearer of any good tiding. When Schulzen had arrived in Milan, bearing the uranium proposition, Sertorio, or at least his company, was in trouble.

Società Anonima Italiana Colori e Affini (SAICA) had been founded in May 1934 to trade in ships’ varnishes. When the varnish business went into recession, the company had switched to dealing in dyes for the textile industry. It had barely had time to become established before the commercial strains of World War II all but killed it.

After the war SAICA had limped along until Sertorio invented an ingenious method of mixing dyes which gave printed textiles a brighter blue. He took out patents on his idea and was able to export it to several countries, including West Germany, earning the company substantial royalties. On the strength of that SAICA had been able to sell some of its shares to the Italian public, and in recognition of his achievement Sertorio had been appointed managing director. But SAICA suffered from the handicap that it did not actually manufacture anything; it was simply a trading company. And by the mid-1960s, when Sertorio’s original patents began expiring, trade was none too god.

In 1965 SAICA’s profits were around £700* before tax which, as Sertorio said in the company’s annual report, ‘must be considered really modest.’

*All sums of money are stated in pounds sterling. The conversions from other currencies are based on the exchange rates prevailing at the time.

No dividends were paid that year and 1966 was no better. The profits did creep up to £900 or so but there were still ‘tax problems’ and no dividend.

It was much the same story in 1967, and again in 1968 when matters seemed to reach a catastrophic climax.

Sertorio’s main partners in SAICA were two brothers named Giancarlo and Franco Campari. On 19 March 1968, Giancarlo was killed in a car crash and soon afterwards Franco had a blazing argument with Sertorio and quit.

It was around this depressing time that Schulzen approached Sertorio with the uranium proposition. Asmara had represented SAICA’s interests in West Germany for some time and Schulzen and Sertorio had become close friends, perhaps drawn together because both were considerable extroverts. Sertorio’s son Stefano remembers that ‘Schulzen used to make us laugh. He was very un-German.’

In view of SAICA’s precarious condition, Schulzen’s proposition was obviously enticing, but there were a couple of problems standing in the way. For one thing, SAICA did not have a plant in which to process any uranium, only modest office premises in Milan. Fortunately Sertorio was also a director of a company called Chemitalia, a more substantial concern, which was in the business of manufacturing dyes and colours, and which did have a plant, of sorts, in Lainate, about ten miles from Milan. Perhaps SAICA could borrow the plant?

The second problem concerned SAICA’s constitution, which under Italian law specified what sort of business the company could engage in. SAICA’s constitution at that time allowed it merely to ‘trade in paints and related substances,’ a definition that could not easily be stretched to include 200 tons of uranium oxide. The best solution was for SAICA to adopt a far more liberal constitution and that is what it did on 26 August 1968: Henceforth SAICA could engage in ‘the intimate mixing of pigments and other chemical products or primary materials of any type and for any branch of industry,’ which just about covered everything.

All SAICA now had to do was learn the art of turning uranium into a petrochemical catalyst. Sertorio readily accepted Schulzen’s blithe assertion that SAICA would be able to carry out the treatment process by following a set of written instructions. Schulzen said he would send the instructions with the uranium.

Chapter 5

The Mysterious Mr Yarisal