In chapter 4, MI-6 agent Nigsy Meadows receives a flash from London.
Quote:
The ‘eyes only’ signal could be anything from a run-and-hide, to some panic-button crash meeting with the one man he still ran in Arafat’s shop.
What is “Arafat’s shop”? Just a shop owned by an Arafat? or it means Yasser Arafat’s inner circle?
It’s just a bit confusing to me that a MI6 controller could have a meeting with an agent from Arafat’s inner circle in Tel Aviv, not in Palestine.
“Arafat’s shop” here just means somebody from the PLO, not necessarily an inner-circle figure. Could be from the ranks closest to Arafat, could be just a foot soldier. Lower rank agents often access valuable product, are generally easier to recruit and handle. And since they get access to information often as one of a larger number of officials it’s much more difficult for counterintelligence to flush them out.
If you can recruit the secretary of a minister, fine. If you can recruit somebody in the ministry’s post room, even better. Everything the minister gets on his table passes through post - and everything else in the whole ministry. Real life example: the Americans recruited an agent in the German’s intelligence service, basically a postman. And got from him everything that passed through his hands…
As to where the handler would meet the agent, no idea really, I hardly remember much detail about TMFB.