‘If you don’t want to taste the goat’s milk, at least watch the farmer in action’

Did Ashraf Marwan jump, or was he pushed? Not his fall off the balcony of his luxury apartment in London in July 2007, which is how Marwan, an Egyptian diplomat turned billionaire, met his unexplained and highly suspicious death, but his tumble into the arms of the Mossad, into whose tender embraces he slipped in 1970.

At the time, Marwan was also in the even more tender embraces of Mona Nasser, daughter of Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser. After Nasser’s death in 1970, Marwan became a close aide to Anwar Sadat, and brokered military and diplomatic deals with the Saudis and Gaddafi’s Libya. All the while, Marwan was supplying top-grade intelligence to a Mossad contact in London, while dodging surveillance by Nasser’s old advisers. In October 1973, Marwan warned his handler that the Egyptians were about to launch a surprise attack across the Suez Canal. The extra hours were crucial to Israel’s survival in the early stages of the Yom Kippur War, especially on the Golan Heights, where Syrian tanks nearly broke through on the second day of fighting.