A muted end to the life of a Soviet spy

Shabtai Kalmanovich was laid to rest yesterday at a cemetery in Petah Tikva, a muted end to an extraordinary life. Kalmanovich, convicted of espionage in Israel, was murdered in Moscow last week. Absent from the funeral, which drew only about 100 people, were many of his celebrity and high-powered friends.

In 1986, a KGB officer defected to the United States and told the CIA agents debriefing him of a Soviet spy in Israel. The information was relayed to authorities in Israel but it was too vague: it spoke of a Jew who had emigrated to Israel from Lithuania, but did not specify when; the agent was said to live in central Israel, but no specific location was given. Nor was his name given - possibly because the source did not know, or because the CIA didn't disclose some of the information to avoid the source from being revealed.

"It was like looking for a needle in a haystack," said a veteran Shin Bet counter-intelligence agent who was involved in the search for the spy. The man in charge of the case was Shmulik, and he and his colleagues scoured through tens of thousands of bits of information. Several hundred new immigrants from Lithuania were questioned. At some point, Shmulik was the only one left among the team, including superiors, who wanted to go on. Slowly he managed to narrow the possible suspects, and about 18 months later reached the conclusion that the one suspect who stuck out was Shabtai Kalmanovich.

The Shin Bet's problem was threefold. First, Kalmanovich was a respected and well-off businessman with many high-ranking connections, both in politics and the army. The Shin Bet, unlike the police, does not arrest Israelis without sufficient evidence. Second, Kalmanovich was a low-level informer for the Shin Bet. He gave information to the counter-Soviet intelligence department, and was one of the first Israelis to be allowed into the Soviet Union when Mikhail Gorbachev took over as secretary general. Third, Kalmanovich did not live in Israel at the time. He'd been arrested in Britain and was a wanted man in the United States for alleged financial fraud.

Shmulik continued to push for an investigation, which was finally approved. "It was a major gamble," Shmulik said, "since if this failed it would damage the organization's image among the new immigrants from the Soviet Union."

Kalmanovich's phone at his office in Israel was tapped, and when the Shin Bet learned he planned to be in Israel they decided to arrest him. That happened in December 1987.

Kalmanovich expressed dismay at the charges thrown at him by Shin Bet interrogators. "I am a Jew and a Zionist who immigrated to Israel and helps [the Shin Bet], so why are you treating me this way?" he complained. Finally he broke, admitting he had arrived in Israel after first meeting with his Soviet handlers in Moscow.