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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.