The Volunteer by Michael Ross Read Free Book Online

in the military, if you are of another faith, you can’t be recruited as a serving officer. There are no exceptions.
    I’d learned something about Jews since my conversion: their communities are usually tightly knit, and the six degrees of separation that are said to link any two people in the world often shrink to two or three degrees when both of them are Jews—even if they’re from opposite ends of the globe. If someone isn’t related to you in a distant fashion, then his great-grandfather and yours prayed at the same synagogue in the same shtetl in Lithuania. Or Poland. Or Romania. Tell people you’re from Canada, and they’ll recite lists of friends you might know—or their favorite kosher delis. If your face doesn’t light up with a flash of recognition at least once—well, that’s suspicious.
    Having lived in Israel for a few years, I’d been through this sort of conversation many times before. So rather than have the truth flushed out of me, during one of my early interviews I confessed to a fellow named Maor that I’d converted.
    I half expected to be bounced then and there. But Maor, a kindly old fellow, looked at me and said, “We already know about your conversion. And we make no distinction—you are as Jewish as any of us.” I remember being moved by his simple declaration of acceptance. It made up for the various small-minded Israelis I’d met who clearly thought otherwise.
    Next, I had to undergo a polygraph exam—commonly (and inaccurately) known as a lie detector test. 2 I was asked whether I was a mole working for a rival intelligence service, a criminal on the run, a drug user, or a homosexual. In each case, I truthfully said no.
    Today, sexual orientation is no longer a subject of inquiry for Mossad recruits. In my day, however, being gay was seen as a negative because it was believed enemies could use it as a source of leverage against an officer. Thankfully, attitudes have changed—at least in countries such as Israel. (Homosexuality is still a capital offense in many less enlightened nations.)
    Once I passed the tests, my training began. I was told to present myself with personal effects suitable for a two-night stay in Tel Aviv. The address turned out to be a well-appointed apartment, where I was met by a half-dozen men and women who looked me over with bemused detachment. After some basic introductions, their apparent leader, a tall, dark-haired man with piercing blue eyes named Halleck, told me to go into the next room and devise a cover story for both my identity and my reason for being in Israel. “Let your imagination go wild,” he told me. “The only rule is you can’t be Canadian. We want to make this challenging.”
    After fifteen minutes or so, I came up with what I thought was a winner: I was a U.S.-based journalist doing a background story on Tel Aviv for the Los Angeles Times . Once I worked out the biographical details, I came out of the room quite pleased with myself, and presented my invented identity to Halleck and his colleagues.
    Unbeknownst to me, this was a stock exercise in the intelligence business. I was being asked to create something that every covert intelligence operative must have: a bogus but believable cover story about who you are, where you come from, and what you’re doing. In intelligence parlance, this assumed identity is known as a legend. It sounds easy, but it’s not, as Halleck demonstrated to me in about thirty seconds.
    â€œNice to meet you, Fred Porter,” he said in a casual tone after I’d introduced myself. “Welcome to Israel. May I ask where you’re staying? The Hilton you say? Nice place. What’s your room number? I’d like to call you later in the day.”
    After I stammered who knows what unconvincing nonsense, he went to work on the rest of my cover story. “You sound disoriented,” he said. “Why don’t we