The Spy Who Came In from the Trunk

The yellowish, brassbound trunk not only moved--it talked. From its depths came kicks, wriggles, and a sepulchral voice pleading "Aiutatemi! Salvatemi!" (Help me! Save me!). Porter Mario Colelli, who was loading freight into the rear baggage compartment of United Arab Airlines flight 784 to Cairo, recalls, "It was good Italian, real Italian Italian. Suddenly, I thought, 'My God, this is an Italian, and these Arabs are kidnaping him--some political fellow or something. Who knows what they'll do to him down there in Cairo!' "

With the porter's alarm at Rome's Leonardo Da Vinci airport last week began an espionage yarn that grew steadily more hilarious to onlookers and more embarrassing to Egypt.

Well Packed. The trunk was addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Cairo, and had passed safely through customs because it was tagged "Diplomatic Mail." When it began shouting for help, two Egyptian diplomats grabbed it and pushed it into the Volkswagen truck that had brought it to the field. As police and customs officers tried to stop them, another Egyptian kept babbling that the trunk contained musical instruments and that the sounds probably were caused by accordions still filled with air. The truck raced away from the loading area, but it was soon caught by pursuing motorcycle police, who took the two nearly hysterical Egyptians and their baggage to a police station. When the cops opened the trunk they goggled at the contents: a slim, blond young man, strapped into an adjustable chair, with his head encased in a sort of crash helmet and his feet thrust into shoes nailed to the floor of the trunk. Small ventilating holes had been drilled into the sides to let him breathe.

His story was that he was a Moroccan named Josef Dahan who had come to Rome from Naples to meet the two Egyptians at the Cafe de Paris on the opulent Via Veneto. He had apparently been slipped a doped drink and then hustled by car to the Egyptian Embassy, where he was kept under heavy sedation and finally packed. He was supposed to stay unconscious until he was well on the way to Cairo, but the plane was late.

Double Career. The two diplomat-abductors were identified as Abdel Moneim el Neklawy and Selim el Saved, both first secretaries at Rome's Egyptian embassy. Claiming diplomatic immunity, they were released by the police later that night, and, next day, the Italian government ordered them from the country as persona non grata.

Meanwhile, onionskins of identity were being peeled from the captive. He proved to be Mordecai Luk, 31, a Moroccan-born Jew who had immigrated to Israel in 1949, did his army service, married and fathered four children, and took up two professions: carpentry and crime. He has a record of five convictions, on charges ranging from forgery to criminal trespass. In 1961 he slipped out of Israel to Egypt and began an equally unsavory new existence making anti-Israel broadcasts over Radio Cairo.

Luk now told police he had been working for Egyptian intelligence for a monthly salary of $100 to $160. During the past ten months, he had been based in Naples, presumably spying on NATO installations. He had come to Rome, he said, to beg a raise in salary. This story convinced nobody, for if Luk were merely a disgruntled small fish, it would hardly have been worth the trouble to kidnap him. The suspicion grew that Luk was either a double agent, also working for Israel, or that the Egyptians thought he was. Later reports linked Luk to a Western European power. Most likely, the Egyptians were shipping him alive to Cairo so they could take their time and carefully choose their persuaders in interrogating him.

Just Another Trip. Luk was as untrustworthy in love as in espionage. Two girls in Naples, a college student and a secretary, tearfully said he had promised to marry them. His wife in Israel has been trying for years to divorce Luk. and she said hitterlv last week, "I never spent a single happy day with him."

As for Egyptian intelligence, it still has egg on its face. The best story the embassy could come up with was that some fiend had switched trunks on them. The trunk itself had been made in Italy and was one of an ordinary commercial line that was discontinued several years ago. This strengthened the belief that the trunk, and its special Egyptian fittings, had very likely been used before and for the same purpose --most probably in the case of Lieut. Colonel Zaghloul Abdel Rahman, who had defected from the Egyptian army and vanished from Rome in 1962. Roman wags amused themselves by phoning the Egyptian embassy and asking what time the next trunk to Cairo was leaving.

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