Chapter 14

The Salesman Was a Spy

 

Dan Aerbel should never have been selected as a secret agent in the first place. It is true that he was well-motivated, identifying firmly with Israel’s cause. As a personable and widely travelled young man he had a certain talent for collecting scraps of useful information. But from the very beginning he displayed weaknesses which made him unsuitable for a career in the business of espionage. He was indiscreet, and had an undue liking for melodrama. Under stress these flaws in Aerbel’s personality became fatal weaknesses. When it came to the crunch in Norway in July 1973 his istinct for self-preservation overrode all other considerations.

A clue to Aerbel character is to be found in the variety of names he used during his ten years with Mossad. There was the name he was born with, Erteschick; the versions he shortened that to, first Ertz, then Ert, also Ertl; the name Aerbel which he came to use in Israel; and the rather selective Arbel which he had inscribed on visiting cards for the occasions when he wanted to conduct business in English. One explanation is that these switches were an elaborate and carefully planned part of his Mossad cover. But they occur too frequently and too randomly for that. He seems to have switched his name as frequently as he switched his role until in the end he became all things to all men. The question left unanswered is whether Dan Aerbel ever discovered where his true identity lay.

Dan Erteschick was born in a suburb of Copenhagen, capital of Denmark, on 28 February 1937. His father Mario was a prosperous businessman who owned a clothing factory. Dan, the middle of three children, was brought up in a spacious white stone house on the sweeping shore of the Baltic some ten miles north of Copenhagen. A short way beyond was Helsinger, the Elsinore of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The name of Dan’s mother was Gertrud.

The Erteschicks were respected members of Denmark’s Jewish community, and Dan’s would have been a privileged childhood had World War Two not intervened. The Nazis invaded Denmark in April 1940 and at first hoped their occupation would be received peacefully. But opposition from the Danes mounted and by 1943 there were frequent riots and acts of sabotage. In August the Nazis declared martial law and the German army took control. In October 1943 the roundup of jews began.

For the Erteschicks there was an obvious route to safety close at hand – the ferry from Helsingor to neutral Sweden, just two miles away across the Baltic. But the Nazis realized it too, and the Erteschicks went into hiding as they awaited their chance. For six-year-old Dan it was an experience of utter terror. He and other Jewish children were hidden in a school cellar, and to increase their chances of avoiding detection they were bricked in. Dan spent two months in fear and semi-darkness before the family could escape to Sweden. Those two months left Dan with two deeply-scored psychological marks: a total identification with the plight of the Jews; and a fear of being confined, an acute claustrophobia, that would never leave him.

After the Nazi,s defeat the family returned to Denmark and Mario Erteschick built his business again with a chain of fashionable furniture stores which he named Diva. At school Dan was considered bright and industrious. He showed some interest in economics and foreign languages and went on to study at college in the United States. He left before graduating and returned to Denmark.

On his return he found that his father was coming to an important decision. Mario Erteschick was eighty-six and felt that it was time to go to his spiritual home, Israel. It was a convenient moment to leave, for the Danish government had embarked on a somewhat drastic policy of environmental improvement on the coast north of Copenhagen. In order to create clear views across the Baltic it was buying up houses that stood in the way and the Erteschick home was one of them.

 

[Four pages of images: One of the Scheersberg A renamed KERKYRA; one of Dan Aerbel; one of Zwi Zamir; one of Herbert Schulzen; one of Francesco Sertorio; one of Asmara Chemie; one of Ali Hassan Salameh; one of Ahmed Bouchiki; one of Sylvia Raphael, and one of Steinar Ravlo]

 

Mario sold the white stone house for 350,000 kroner (£18,000) and got a good price for his chain of furniture stores, too. In 1962 Mario and Gertrud Erteschick emigrated to Israel. Their son, then twenty-five, stayed behind. Soon afterwards he was recruited by Mossad.

At that time, Mossad was renewing its European network. Its helpers and allies from the days of the fight against the Nazis were growing old and soon would need replacing. In its search for recruits, Mossad asked for recommendations from the leaders of Jewish communities, and almost certainly heard about Dan Aerbel in this way. He seemed ideal agent material. He was from an old and established family that had shared in the sufferings of the Jews during the war. He was already well-travelled and fluent in several languages. His parents had just come to Israel but he had decided to remain in Denmark to start a career of his own. Above all, he was well-motivated. He was loyal to the concept of Israel. He also had told several of his friends that he hated Arabs.

The evidence suggests that Mossad’s first tentative approach was made in the autumn of 1962. At around that time Aerbel had answered an advertisement in a Copenhagen paper for the post of furniture salesman. It had been placed by a young, expanding company named Danskform, which owned a factory in northern Denmark and had just opened a smart office in the Town Hall square in the centre of Copenhagen. Aerbel went for an interview and made a good impression. ‘I was very pleased to get someone so eager,’ says Aldo Eggers-Lura, one of Danskform’s directors. Aerbel got a job which paid a monthly retainer, plus commission.

So it was with some surprise that Eggers-Lura learned from Aerbel soon after he joined the firm that he intended to visit England early in 1963. ‘I was a bit peeved,’ Eggers-Lura says, ‘because we had no business in England at all.’ Aerbel said he was obliged to go to London to visit a relative. Because Aerbel had already proved himself an enthusiastic salesman, Eggers-Lura raised no further objection.

Aerbel was away for six weeks. He sent a rather enigmatic card to the girls in the Copenhagen office which said he was ‘riding around London in a Rolls Royce.’ Back in Denmark he told a fellow salesman that he had stayed in a luxurious flat put at his disposal by a wealthy Jewish businessman. When Eggers-Lura reminded Aerbel that he had said he was going to London to visit a relative, he replied: ‘Well, it was something like that.’

It was almost certainly something quite different. Having told Jewish community leaders in Denmark that he was willing to perform services for Israel, Aerbel was sent to London to meet the ‘wealthy businessman.’ The businessman entertained Aerbel lavishly, and he was duly flattered. At the same time his attitudes and capabilities as a suitable Mossad recruit, he was asked to see what he could find out for Israel in his travels in Europe. It all seemed straightforward to Aerbel, and he happily agreed.

But Aerbel was already displaying the fatal flaw that was to prove his – and Mossad’s – undoing. Aerbel liked to brag. That was the reason for the post card mentioning the Rolls Royce, and the boast about the luxury flat. He also dropped other hints about his visit to London being for some ‘higher purpose’.

Aerbel made up for his temporary absence from Danskform by working with renewed vigor. Scandinavian furniture, with its clean designs in oak and pine, had suddenly become popular in Europe, especially among the United States forces serving there. For Danskform, like other European companies, America’s military bases were a highly desirable market. It showed its furniture at a series of exhibitions, arranged through the ubiquitous PX’s, at US bases in Spain, Italy, France and – especially – West Germany. Danskform sold the highest volume of its furniture in and around the European headquarters of the US Air Force at Wiesbaden.

Business was good but the selling procedure was cumbersome. When an exhibition was over the salesman would have to wait until the military could arrange transport to the next base. The proposal for an improvement came from Dan Aerbel: why didn’t Danskform set up a travelling exhibition of its own? Eggers-Lura soon found a bargain in a single-decker bus that he bought from a kitchen-equipment firm for £1,800. Danskform’s sales staff thought the bus a great improvement. It saved them considerable waiting time and gave them greater freedom of movement. Indeed, Eggers-Lura was occasionally annoyed to find that Aerbel deviated from the firm’s carefully prepared touring schedule. But once again he was prepared to forgive Aerbel. The work of a travelling salesman was hard, and Eggers-Lura concedes that he did not pay his salesman too well: ‘He was the only one who didn’t complain about the work or the wages.’

One reason why Dan Aerbel was so enthusiastic in his work is suggested by fellow salesman Torben Hviid, the latter-day pornographer and sex show impresario. He had been at school with Aerbel and started working for Danskform at roughly the same time. Hviid and Aerbel sometimes went5 on selling trips together and Hviid remembers clearly where Aerbel’s interests lay: ‘He went after the girls, and he wanted a good time.’ Aerbel was good-looking in a sensual way. He was tall and well-built, if slightly overweight. He had fleshy lips, rather full cheeks and a good head of curly black hair. He had a bold stare and was not afraid to meet people full in the eyes. When he wanted to, Hviid says, he could be very charming indeed.

But there was one other strong reason why the life of a salesman suited Aerbel. He was eager to prove his use to Israel and in his travels was acquiring valuable information for Mossad. Armed with a pass issued by the United States authorities at Wiesbaden, Aerbel had access to almost any American base in Europe. Security varied from base to base. Some had three checkpoints to pass through, and the guards would conduct body searches and ask questions like: ‘Have you dyed your hair?’ But once inside, an intelligent man who kept his eyes and ears open could learn quite a lot. After the selling session Aerbel would be invited to the mess for a drink. Young officers away from home found the pleasant young Dane, with his fluent English, a good listener.

An indication of the type of information available to Aerbel comes from another of his fellow salesman, a Dane named Per Bonnesen. With his attractive Australian wife Ann, he also toured American bases for Danskform. Once the Bonnesens visited a base in France soon after General de Gaulle had told the United States that planes armed with nuclear weapons could no longer fly from NATO bases on French territory. The United States had apparently agreed. ‘Don’t take any notice of the General,’ one American pilot told the Bonnesens. ‘We’re flying them all right.’ Torben Hviid says that such indiscretions were common: ‘In Germany and France a lot of the PX officers were Jewish, and they talked politics all the time.’

Beside picking up informed gossip, Aerbel was also in a position to spot potential ‘friends’ – like Herbert Schulzen of Asmara Chemie – who might be useful to Israel. Events suggest that Aerbel performed this role well, for in the summer of 1964 his Mossad apprenticeship seems to have come to an end. Aerbel announced to a rather disappointed Eggers-Lura that he was leaving Danskform – in order to go to Israel. This news surprised Aerbel’s friends. Only two years earlier, at the time of his parents’ emigration, he had explained his decision to stay in Denmark by saying that he was afraid Israel would be invaded by her Arab neighbours. He did not now explain his change of heart.

It may have been that Mossad, impressed with Aerbel’s efforts so far, wanted to take a closer look at him. In any event, Aerbel moved to Tel Aviv where he soon found a new business partner, a South African named Geoffrey Tollmann. Together they opened a shop in Tel Aviv’s fashionable Trumpeldor Street. It was named Danish Interior and it sold Scandinavian furniture.

The partnership was not a total success. Tollmann found Aerbel a restless character: ‘He wasn’t working very efficiently. I though he was some kind of dreamer.’ And little more than a year after the business had been formed, Aerbel told Tollmann that he was pulling out. ‘He told me that he wanted to travel before settling down to have a family,’ Tollmann says. Aerbel sold his shares in the partnership and made a decent profit on his original stake. ‘We weren’t sorry when he went,’ says Tollmann. ‘He never really seemed to fit in.’

Aerbel moved to Paris. He took with him his new wife Debra, the Israeli-born daughter of an American professor. They rented an apartment in the university quarter of the Left Bank and Debra started a course of the Sorbonne.

The choice of Paris was no accident. Mossad had selected the city as its European headquarters, for a convincing array of reasons. In the early 1960’s France’s relations with Israel were at their best, and Mossad was given tacit hints that its presence would be tolerated. A number of Arab organizations had also chosen Paris as their headquarters, which made it a convenient place for Mossad to find out about their activities. Mossad’s agents liked Paris for solid human reasons, too: it does contain the best restaurants in the world.

In Paris Mossad established itself as a virtual second embassy. It secretly negotiated with the embassies of governments with whom Israel had no formal ties, such as Turkey, Iran Jordan, and morocco. It liaised with the European companies supplying Israel’s strategic needs, not least among them a French front company which helped to build and equip Dimona.

At the same time Mossad built the apparatus it needed for its more nefarious purposes. It rented apartments, offices, and houses: at 50 Rue Remy Dumoncel in the 14th arrondissement, for example, it build a somewhat sinister totally soundproof room. In another apartment it stored a full range of up-to-date electronic surveillance equipment. In Apartment 3, at 5 Quai Louis Bleriot, in the 16th, it installed one of its most successful operatives: an attractive thirty-year-old South African named Sylvia Raphael, who posed, very convincingly, as a Canadian freelance photographer under the alias Patricia Roxburgh. As such she had carte blanche to travel the world, and her collection of photographs in Mossad’s files grew steadily. Another agent lived at 134 Avenue Wagram in the 17th. A British Jew, born in Manchester as Jonathan Isaac Englesberg, he had since become the businessman Jonathan Ingleby, with a genuine British passport – number 832427 – in that name, and a reputation as a successful specialist in trade between France and Eastern Europe.

It was also though Paris that Israel financed much of Mossad’s work. It was a tricky operation, for the sums involved were considerable, but there were always businessmen to help: one, for example, was a French Jew who made a lot of money speculating in the Paris property boom of the early 1960’s. He laundered some of  Mossad’s money and paid it into the bank accounts Mossad’s Paris agents discreetly maintained.

For his part, Aerbel was instructed to take up his life as a European businessman, travelling to and making contacts in as many countries as possible. Mossad also asked him to resume his visits to United States military bases.

Aerbel set about rebuilding his European business. His method was simple: he would contact a company, often out of the blue, and offer his services as a salesman. Job Fass is a Dutchman who owned a factory near Copenhagen that made what are known in Scandinavia as ‘Buden’ – the term covers souvenirs and knick-knacks of every kind, from trays, dishes and clothespegs to shopping reminders, fondue forks, and model Vikings. ‘I was just starting in business,’ says Fass, ‘when he approached me and asked if he could sell my things abroad. I agreed and I gave him a collection of samples and he took them with him in a suitcase. He travelled around and sent me the orders. I sent him the goods and I got my money. I was very satisfied with him.’

Fass met Aerbel only once or twice a year when he went to Denmark to collect his commission (Aerbel was on then per cent). Fass was always impressed: ‘He was very correct and very precise and he always did the things he promised.’ Fass was especially pleased when Aerbel managed to sell some of his goods in the renowned Paris department store, Galeries Lafayette. When Aerbel asked Fass to suggest other companies he could approach, Fass looked some names up in a trade directory and passed them on.

Aerbel’s repertoire grew to include furniture, sports equipment, chocolate, and cheese. And he contrived to return to some of the territory he had covered in his days with Danskform. Michael DeWitt is another Dutchman who made wooden Vikings in Denmark. Aerbel approached hin in much the same way as Fass. ‘He was a very good seller for us,’ says DeWitt. ‘He sold all over Germany, especially at American bases.’

Although Aerbel consistently won tributes to his selling ability, his personality struck people in different ways. Paul Schlie, a director of the Danish sports company Select, found Aerbel to be a ‘floater,’ someone who was hard to pin down. ?When we sent him a letter we couldn’t really be sure he would answer or say when he would visit us again,’ Schlie says. Even so, Aerbel made one proposition that Schlie could not resist. ‘He offered to sell our goods in Libya. He said he went there twice a year.’ Aerbel did indeed bring Select two orders for footballs, worth some £1,600. But the relationship ended in acrimony when Select, not having heard from Aerbel for some time, started dealing directly with the Libyan buyer. Aerbel resurfaced and demanded an introduction fee, which Select finally paid.

Select was not the only company Aerbel sold for in Libya. When Aerbel made his customary approach to Rudolf Madsen, another Danish manufacturer of souvenirs and household goods, Madsen told him he already had salesmen in Germany and Scandinavia but he was welcome to try his luck elsewhere. Madsen was somewhat taken aback when Aerbel forwarded an order from Tripoli for goods worth £500. That was a handsome order for us,’ Madsen says. Aerbel came to his office once or twice a year, and Madsen saw yet another side of Aerbel’s personality: ‘He was a very interesting and funny man. We enjoyed his visits very much. Every time he came he had some amusing thing to tell us.’

Even though Schlie and Madsen were impressed with Aerbel’s success in Libya, they were not in a position to appreciate the full extent of his achievement. Aerbel was a Jew, who lived in Israel for eighteen months, and into the bargain was working for Mossad. To have penetrated that far into enemy territory was a remarkable accomplishment that must have brought Mossad considerable fruits. Aerbel later claimed to have made another daring journey in this period, joining Sylvia Raphael, Mossad’s ‘Canadian freelance photographer,’ on one of her assignments. He says they cruised on a yacht in the eastern Mediterranean, calling at a number of Arab ports where Aerbel made a note of the vessels at anchor.

But Aerbel was not totally successful at blending the two halves of his double life. His employers found that it was harder and harder to contact Aerbel directly, and they could only leave messages for him in the hope that he would call back. To some he gave his Paris address; to others, the address of an apartment in Rome. He created occasional confusion, too, by using different names – most often Ert but sometimes Aerbel, and occasionally he even reverted to his original family name, Erteschick.

Eventually he seems to have become aware that he was overdoing the air of mystery. In April 1968 he announced to his business contacts a new and permanent telephone number where he could be contacted: Copenhagen 13 10 20. He explained that this was the telephone number of a company he had just acquired. The company’s name was Viking; its address, 43A Norregade, Copenhagen. As usual with Aerbel, however, things were not quite what they seemed.

Norregade is a long street that runs north from the city centre. The entrance to 43A is a narrow doorway at the end of a rather gloomy cobbled curtyard. Up a flight of wooden stairs, at the end of a dark and dusty corridor, is a room containing a small upright switchboard and three shelves lined with telephone receivers. Each receiver is marked with a different company name. One man sits in this room answering the calls that come in to those companies.

This is the office of ‘Telefon Sekretaeren,’ a Danish organization that provides companies with both a respectable address and somebody to take their calls. Aerbel rented one of its telephones in the name of Viking. There was no such company registered in Denmark but that did not deter Aerbel from adding a company nameplate to the collection at the entrance to the courtyard. And whereas most of these were discreetly engraved in metal, Viking proclaimed its existence in large letters painted on a green sign.

Despite Viking’s lack of substance, the companies Aerbel dealt with were pleased with the new arrangement. And Telefon Sekretaeren liked their new client. They were used to fending off complainants and creditors but Aerbel gave them no such trouble. He also paid their bills promptly.

By the autumn of 1969 things were going Aerbel’s way, and his cover as an ambitious and successful businessman was pretty solid. That is why he must have seemed to Mossad the ideal candidate to take over the affairs of the Biscayne Traders Shipping Corporation. It is, therefore, extraordinary that Aerbel should have jeopardized all that by recruiting someone like Torben Hviid to help dispose of the Scheersberg A.

In fairness, however, it should be said that – his criminal propensities aside – Hviid was a perfect accomplice because he displayed a remarkable lack of curiosity about Aerbel’s strange life style. Once, for example, Hviid had been astonished when Aerbel turned up in Copenhagen with his hair dyed red, but did not press for an explanation. On another occasion Hviid visited an apartment Aerbel maintained in Rome which was bare and unlived in, and was particularly struck by the lack of any cutlery. Hviid pretended not to notice. (According to the Italian police Aerbel’s Rome apartment was used as a Mossad ‘safe house’ for agents on active service.) And when Hviid agreed to become company secretary of Biscayne Traders he did not ask any questions.

It is also true that Hviid was genuinely found of Aerbel.  Other would have regarded Aerbel as cheap. When, for instance, it was his turn to pay for dinner he would take his friends to an economical vegetarian restaurant where he would extol the virtues of a meat-free diet. When someone else was paying, Aerbel was quite ready to eat an expensive non-vegetarian meal. It was also Aerbel’s habit, when calling his wife in Paris from a pay phone, to insert a coin of the lowest possible denomination to allow just time to say, ‘Hi Debra, all okay.’ But Hviid found Aerbel and all his quirks endearing. Perhaps he recognized in Aerbel some to keep any number of balls in play at the same time.

Certainly Hviid was very sorry when in 1971, after the affairs of Biscayne traders had been tidied up, his friend announced that he and his wife were leaving Paris, and going home to Israel. Aerbel said he felt the time had come to settle down.

 

Back in Israel Aerbel did two things he had never done before. He took a steady job, and he bought a house. He joined the export division of the Sunfrost frozen foods company of Ashdod, commuting the twenty miles from Tel Aviv each day. And he asked the fashionable Israeli architect Haim Heifetz to build him a home.

Aerbel’s years in Europe had not been unprofitable, and he asked Heifetz for something special. Heifetz responded enthusiastically. His design was for a house constructed of three linking domes made of waterproof papier-mache that looked like part of a moon colony.

It had one most unusual feature – almost no interior doors. It was to be built in Herzliyya, the Tel Aviv suburb regarded by many prominent Israelis as the only socially acceptable place to live. (Aerbel was typically eager to advertise his spectacular acquisition. When next is Copenhagen on business he walked into the office of the Danish good living magazine Bo Bedre with a set of photographs of the house. Bo Bedren took up his suggestion that it should publish an article and an amply illustrated report eventually appeared early in 1973.)

Aerbel had a growing family, two boys and a girl, and he spent most of his time in Israel. But during occasional business trips to Europe for Sunfrost he continued to carry out assignments on Mossad’s behalf. In April 1973 Aerbel left Sunfrost and became export director of Osem (Hebrew for abundance), Israel’s largest private food corporation. About a month later he heard from Mossad again. There was a job coming up and Mossad asked Aerbel to make himself available. It was fortunate for Mossad that Osem were understanding employers. Even though Aerbel had only just joined the company he was granted a six-week vacation starting on 15 June.

Mossad telephoned Aerbel again on 8 July. The caller was Aerbel’s customary control, a Mossad executive named Abraham Gehmer, and he asked Aerbel to come into the ministry of Defence offices in north Tel Aviv. There Gehmer told Aerbel that the job was on for the following day. It was connected with ‘a threat’ to Israeli property in Scandinavia, and Aerbel would be away for at most five days.

Gehmer was understanding it. The threat was a man called Alì Hassan Salameh and Israel did not have a more implacable enemy.

 

 

Chapter 15

The Wrath of Zwi Zamir