The fading storm was still at their backs as they entered the Mediterranean but the Israeli sailors now had the feeling of being on home ground. One of Nave’s men kept polishing every piece of brass in the engine room out of sheer joy. Nave himself was busy changing injectors and fuel filters every hour to prevent the recurrence of the blockages due to the tainted fuel. Listening to the radio, the men began to realize that they and their five small boats were at the focus of world attention. Journalists were said to be flying out over the North Sea and the Mediterranean in rented planes to search for them. One report had them headed for Alaska. Late on Saturday, Europe Number One Radio reported the Lloyd’s agent in Gibraltar sighting five small vessels headed eastward. The vessels, said the agent, flew no flags.
The Saars passed many ships, including American and Russian freighters, but no one seemed to pay them special note. Off Algeria, the French fleet finally made contact. A twin-engined Atlantique observation plane from the fleet’s air arm based in Nimes in southern France circled overhead for three hours and took photographs. Whenever it made a low run from the side, in an apparent search for identifying numbers, the boats turned their bows toward it.
The sailors who appeared in the photographs developed a few hours later were in civilian clothing but French intelligence officers had no trouble identifying the vessels. If French warships from Toulon attempted to intercept, the Saars would attempt to outrun them. However, they would be dead in the water for more than twelve hours during their second refueling. The French knew the boats’ range and could easily calculate when they would have to stop.
Towards evening, a small plane with civilian markings appeared overhead. Radiomen aboard the boats heard the excited voice of a radio reporter saying he had just spotted the five Israeli boats from a plane he had rented on Malta. With darkness, Kimche changed course and headed for the tiny island of Lampedusa between the African coast and Italy, remote from any shipping lane. As they drew near the next day, the men on the bridge saw a single ship drifting on the horizon. Kimche recognized the familiar profile of the Dan.
* * *
The French pilot boarding the Lea outside Dunkirk was an old acquaintance and he greeted Tadmor boisterously. “You clever bastards really did it to us,” he shouted. Tadmor was startled for a moment before he realized that the Frenchman was referring to the escape of the boats as reported on the radio, not to the Lea’s role.
As the pilot oriented himself on the bridge, his expression suddenly froze. He stared at the pumping equipment and the extensive oil stains on the rear deck. The crew’s efforts to clean them had been only partially successful. “You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?” asked the pilot in astonishment.
“Are you crazy? We’ve got a cargo of phosphates to deliver.”
The pilot kept staring at the pumps and the oil stains and then, with a widening grin, turned to Tadmor and winked.
* * *
Avi Primor, the press secretary at the Israeli embassy, could hear his footsteps ringing as he and the embassy’s charge d’affaires, Eytan Ron, followed their escort through the empty corridors of the Quai d’Orsay. They had received a highly unusual Sunday summons to the Foreign Ministry to meet with the minister himself, Maurice Schumann. The Israelis could read the anger on Schumann’s face the instant they were ushered into his office, although it was not clear whether this was feigned or real.
The minister wasted little time on formalities. The French government, he said, did not want to believe that the stories being broadcast about the five Israeli boats were true. “It is clear to the French government that the boats sold by Israel will not be going to Israel.” If, however, it became clear to the French government that it had erred, then “les plus graves consequences” would follow. These consequences would be particularly felt, said Schumann, by Limon, who had signed a document waiving Israel’s rights to the boats, and by Primor, who had been issuing statements to the same effect. “The French government of course does not want to believe these stories,” reiterated Schumann.
Even before the summons to the Foreign Ministry, Primor had felt the tempo of events building up over the weekend. He had been wakened early Saturday morning by a reporter from Agence France Presse checking out the story from Cherbourg about five embargoed Israeli patrol boats that had disappeared Christmas Eve. Yes, said Primor, Israel had ordered the boats in Cherbourg but it had since renounced its interest in them. They had been sold, he understood, to a Panamanian company but whether they had taken delivery he didn’t know. The reporter sounded highly skeptical and rang off.
A few moments later the phone rang again. The caller identified himself as the AFP duty editor who had asked the reporter to call. “Excuse me, please, but I just want to check. You are Avraham Primor, the spokesman for the Israeli embassy?” The editor gave a telephone number and asked whether this was Primor’s office number. Primor confirmed.
“Now, about these boats,” said the editor. “You say they were sold to a Panamanian company?” Primor went through the story again. The French press had not yet picked up the Mann story and had been ignorant of the boats’ existence. From the editor’s questions, pauses, and intonation, Primor could sense him slowly ingesting the meaning of this odd tale — that there had been warships built in Cherbourg for Israel that virtually no one knew about, that these boats had been embargoed and no one knew about that either, and that they had now disappeared into a storm on Christmas Eve, ostensibly bound, as the journalist understood, for Panama. “This is an unbelievable story,” said the editor, using a phrase that encompassed both the bizarre nature of the story being offered and an inkling of the tremendous tale – the true tale -- that must lie behind it.
Revelation of the boats’ departure by the press sent the three governments implicated — France, Israel, and Norway — scurrying for legal cover. A French Defense Ministry spokesman, asked by reporters on Saturday afternoon about Oslo’s denial of the boats’ Norwegian identity, said, “According to the documents presented by the firm, it is Norwegian.” He suggested that the Norwegian authorities may have checked out the wrong company name. “The affair is confused,” he said wearily, “and we’re trying to shed light on it.” At the Foreign Ministry, a spokesman denied reporters’ suggestions that the French government might have been party to the breaching of its own embargo. “It’s just not true,” he said plaintively.
The Norwegian ambassador in Cairo, summoned to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry for an explanation, issued a statement denying his country’s connection to the matter. The French ambassador, likewise summoned, said he was waiting to hear from his government. In Oslo, where officials had spent a busy Saturday opening up locked offices and pulling files, a Foreign Ministry spokesman announced that the Starboat Company, which was registered in Panama, did have a post-office box in Oslo but had no other connection with Norway. Investigation had established that the boats were not flying Norwegian flags when they left Cherbourg, said the spokesman, nor were there any Norwegian nationals aboard. Although an import license was required for the purchase of boats abroad, no application had been made in Norway for the five boats built in Cherbourg. If the boats arrived in Norway, the spokesman said, they would be detained.
In the face of these strong denials, Paris could not maintain its previous position, which had dumped the matter in Norway’s lap. On Saturday night, the office of Premier Chaban-Delmas issued a new statement. “Upon learning that the Norwegian government contests the nationality of the company to which the gunboats were sold, the French government has opened an inquiry.” The statement said that the French government had consented on November 18 to the sale of the vessels— unarmed vessels, it emphasized — to “a commercial firm claiming to come under Norwegian law.” It had done so after Israel had agreed in writing to waive its claims to the vessels in return for the refund of its money.
With Ambassador Eytan on a holiday in the Swiss Alps and Jerusalem maintaining silence on the matter, Primor – who would in time become one of Israel’s senior diplomats -- was the sole official spokesman for the Israeli side. A word he kept hearing from the journalists to whom he repeated his official story deadpan was rocambolesque, fantastic. Enterprising journalists who tracked down four Israeli naval personnel still in Cherbourg were told that the Israeli crews had been asked by the Norwegians to sail the boats to their new port—a provision indeed covered by the formal request from Siemm. The journalists quoted them as saying that the Israelis had been joined on the voyage by Norwegian officers and noncoms. This statement, if actually made, was virtually the only outright untruth passed on to the press by any of the parties. But the half-truths were providing fog enough.
In Panama, an official of a local law firm — Arias, Fabrega and Fabrega — told Reuters that his firm had formed and registered the Starboat Company on behalf of a London law firm he refused to identify. Although Arias was resident agent for Starboat, the official said, the Panamanian law firm was not its head office. He declined to give further information.
The Lebanese government, in whose interests de Gaulle had supposedly imposed the embargo following Israel’s raid on Beirut Airport, did not reciprocate France’s gesture in this strained hour. In announcing the Lebanese government’s plans to put the boat affair on its agenda, a government source said, “The question uppermost in Lebanese minds is what effect this affair will have on French-Arab relations.”
The British press, reveling in the embarrassment of their neighbors across the Channel, gave the sale of the boats “to a non-existent Norwegian company” top play in their weekend editions. “It looks as though the Israelis have pulled off a cheeky coup,” wrote the Sunday Telegraph. With the failure of any port to note the arrival of the five boats for refueling, said the paper, it seemed increasingly likely that they were heading for a rendezvous with a tanker at sea.
Greek merchant-marine authorities issued an alert to all coastal vessels and harbors to report any sighting of the missing gunboats. Maritime officials in Athens said that if the boats were flying an internationally recognized flag, Greece could not by international law deny them refueling facilities—a clarification intended to head off anticipated Arab protests. A deputy premier of the army-backed government in Greece voiced admiration for the Israeli exploit. “When a country wants to survive, it shall survive,” he declared. “A small nation under duress can bring forth unsuspected latent strength. The same goes for Greece.”
In Cairo, foreign military attaches reported apparent preparations for an Egyptian naval force to put to sea. In Israel, reports were received that the Soviet Mediterranean fleet near Crete had weighed anchor.