company. The front company was Limon's idea, aided by his connections with Mila Brenner (1921–1999), a retired naval officer with a rank of commander and the co-owner of the Israel-based Maritime Fruit Carriers Company, a company that operated cargo ships transporting fruit. Milla Brenner knew the Norwegian businessman Martin Siem, who was able to provide assistance. The front company feigned interest in the boats as potential survey ships for searching for oil, and declared that the boats' specifications met their needs. To add to the deception Limon pretended to have "tough negotiations" with Starboat. The terms agreed were that the boats would be transferred to Starboat and would be crewed by members of the Israeli Navy due to their experience with the boats. The boats were sold and transferred legally by the government of Israel to the front company with the approval of Michel Debré, the French Defense Minister. The next stage of the operation was to build a day-to-day routine with the aim of ultimately misleading the French at Cherbourg. Israeli skeleton crews took over the boats and maintained a routine of short voyages, heading north into the Atlantic. The skeleton crews were secretly reinforced by 80 Israeli officers, ratings and sailors in civilian clothes who arrived in groups of two at different destinations throughout Europe as tourists, and then travelled to Cherbourg. It was feared that sending them all to Cherbourg at once would alert French intelligence. They were ordered to keep moving between hotels, and not to stay in any one hotel for more than one night. The crews travelled on Israeli passports so that in the event they were caught, they could not be charged with passport fraud. By 23 December, all crews had arrived, and were scattered around the city. Mossad director-general Meir Amit considered the risk to the operation to be very high, recalling "it just needed one suspicious French policeman to ask why so many Jews were coming to Cherbourg for Christmas and the whole operation could be blown." Prior to the escape, the boats had to be fuelled with a large amount of diesel and stocked with enough food to sustain an eight-day voyage. Stocking and fuelling this amount all at once could have alerted observers to the fact that a long voyage was planned. Commander Rinat, the head of operations, instead ordered the boats to be gradually fuelled using a small