BOOK REVIEW : A True-Life Spy Tale Has Plots Within Plots of Its Conspiracy : TRIPLE CROSS Israel, the Atomic Bomb, and the Man Who Spilled the Secrets <i> by Louis Toscano</i> Carol Publishing Group/Birch Lane Press $19.95, 321 pages

There’s enough sex, spycraft and sheer suspense in “Triple Cross” to rival a thriller by Len Deighton or John le Carre. But Louis Toscano’s book, the story of Mordechai Vanunu and his betrayal of Israel’s nuclear secrets, is a work of investigative journalism by an experienced foreign correspondent. It’s a fast, hot and furious read with a story line as urgent as the headlines in today’s newspapers.

Mordechai Vanunu worked as a technician in the top-secret nuclear complex at Dimona in the Negev, where plutonium is recovered from spent fuel rods and then, according to Vanunu and his evidence, fashioned into bombs--or at least the makings of bombs. Vanunu claimed that Israel had stockpiled as many as 200 “screw-ready” atomic bombs, and was capable of making hydrogen and neutron bombs. After Vanunu told his story to the Sunday Times of London in 1986, he was lured out of Great Britain by a Mossad operative and then spirited back to Israel, where he is now serving an 18-year sentence for revealing his country’s secrets.

As Toscano spins out a remarkable story of real-life intrigue, we are introduced to a cast of characters so colorful that they might have stepped out of a spy novel: Oscar Guerrero, the self-styled journalistic impresario and world-class hoaxer who befriended Vanunu; John McKnight, the activist minister who converted Vanunu to Christianity and then undertook a public relations crusade on his behalf; Cheryl Hanin, the American-born Israeli who baited the “honey trap” in which Mossad eventually snagged Vanunu; Amnon Zichroni, the flamboyant civil rights activist who went on to make a fortune in corporate law but returned to the courtroom to represent Vanunu; and Vanunu himself, a loser and a loner who managed to thrust himself into the eye of a diplomatic and journalistic hurricane.

Of course, the fact that Israel possesses nuclear capability is one of the great non-secrets of the Middle East, as Toscano readily concedes. The familiar and yet enigmatic formulation of Israeli policy--”Israel will never be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East”--has always served to create “a surprisingly effective nuclear deterrent.” But, Toscano insists, Israel decided to turn Vanunu’s revelations to its own advantage in a cunning and cynical maneuver that he characterizes as the “triple cross” of the book’s title.

According to Toscano’s sources--who, he says, risked “criminal and political liability” by talking to him--Vanunu’s fate was debated in the highest circles of the Israeli government even before he went public with his story. Shamir, Toscano writes, suggested that the traitor be assassinated, but Peres had another idea--why not allow Vanunu to tell his story to the world press and then arrest him? The government would still brand him a liar, but the credibility of Israel’s nuclear deterrent would only be strengthened.

“It would essentially be another leak,” Toscano writes, “this time designed to warn the Arab world how advanced and powerful the Israeli arsenal had become.”

Toscano is not exactly an Israel-basher, but he does make use of Vanunu and his various miseries to dramatize all the problems that afflict a beleaguered Israel today. And Toscano gamely tries to lionize Vanunu, whom he describes as a man with “a deep commitment to basic values like truth, freedom, justice, and . . . . equality.” It’s as if Toscano, after casting Vanunu as a hero rather than a villain, can’t bear to portray him as something less than heroic.

Vanunu himself never seemed to be able to make up his mind about precisely why he was betraying his country’s secrets to the world. On Page 5, Toscano reports that Vanunu claimed that he took photographs of the Dimona nuclear facility “(p)artly as a souvenir.” On Page 120, it is suddenly revealed that Vanunu wanted to “give Israelis the opportunity denied to them by their government . . . to decide the nuclear issue.”

But the real reason for Vanunu’s treachery, it appears, was less a matter of idealism than abject psychological and spiritual crisis. “I am a failure in life,” Vanunu confided to his own journal. “ I am about to explode . . . . I want to be left alone and be with myself, with my dirty mind, which then will be cleaned of all the filth which has become part of me.” Even Toscano is finally forced to concede that Vanunu was “a naive misfit . . . a restless rebel searching for some cause out of an almost childish pique.”

Still, whether or not Vanunu deserves to be called a hero, Toscano expertly narrates the conspiracies within conspiracies that swirled around him--his infiltration of the most secret recesses of the Dimona complex and then his restless wanderings around the world; the efforts of Guerrero to peddle Vanunu’s story to the world press (and cut himself in on the score); the painstaking investigation undertaken by the Sunday Times to test Vanunu’s veracity and the authenticity of evidence; and the elaborate espionage operations of Mossad, whose agents shadowed Vanunu until they were finally authorized to snag him and bring him home.

As much as I admired and enjoyed Toscano’s book, I feel compelled to register one small complaint--the text is flawed by a number of typographical errors that are the result of cursory proofreading. Toscano is obviously a meticulous reporter who cares about getting his story right; I wondered why similar care was not extended to the presentation of his work in print.

Next: Michael J. Carroll reviews “Reservations Recommended” by Eric Kraft (Crown Publishers).