I called Michael two days later. I didn't want to look too eager. The phone rang once and a woman answered. “Yes?” No hello, no announcement, no identification. Just an impersonal “yes.” I asked for Michael. The phone went silent. No “hold on” or “please wait” – just silence. I thought it was stupid. With these responses they had assumed a face of mystery: “We are secretive. But you're not supposed to know.”
Another female voice came on. “Michael is not available, but I can handle this for him. What is your answer?”
“Yes,” I said in a choked, excited voice. “It's yes,” I said again, clearing my throat, “I'd like to be considered.” She took my name and number, told me I would be contacted, and hung up. I slowly lowered the receiver into its cradle. The conversation had left me puzzled. They couldn't be that obvious, could they? Where was the glory? I'd expected them to be more subtle, not like a regional office of the DMV.
Days went by – the tense waiting for a phone call slowly being replaced by a creeping feeling that they weren't interested in me after all. I became less and less enthusiastic about the whole thing. I found myself thinking that I didn't really care any more if the Mossad recruited me. I began to make plans to go to law school.
Then the brief letter came in a small, plain, government-like yellow envelope. No letterhead, just a typewritten message telling me that I should report the following week for evaluation at a psychologist's home in northern Tel Aviv.
The doctor was a fat woman in her forties with two chins going on three. Her face had seen better days. Or maybe not. The downward curve of her upper lip made her look as if she perpetually smelled something unpleasant. Maybe she'd decided that as long as other people had problems psychologists wouldn't have any. I walked into her office and sat down across the desk from the good lady. There were tacky landscape oil paintings of swans and rainbows on the wall and another wall full of professional books, many of which looked as if they hadn't been removed from the shelves in years.
Without any ado she put me on the spot in an obvious effort to make me feel uncomfortable and shake my contemptuous half-smile. She started with embarrassing personal questions about my family and my sexual habits: the works. Did she really need to know how I masturbated or was it her personal kinky curiosity? Then she showed me ink spots on paper and asked me to explain what I saw. For some reason it didn't seem to be a genuine psychological screening, like the ones I had been through during my military service. I began to think that this was their way of evaluating my conduct under pressure and embarrassment.
Three hours later I was back on the street relieved it was over. I thought of the psychologist as the kind of person you don't want to remember but nevertheless can't forget. The medical checkup came next; a variety of other aptitude and psychometric tests and interviews followed. The process went on for months.
The initial novelty surrounding my recruiting process and the interviews was fading fast. I was being stripped psychologically and intellectually bare. Facing up to that without any sense of accompanying challenge or reward became increasingly difficult.
After two weeks with no contact, a telephone message left at my parents’ home, where I was still living, instructed me to appear for a personal interview. I looked at the address. It was on a side street in the southern end of Hakirya, a government center in eastern Tel Aviv. Strangely, most of the government and military offices occupied turn-of-the-century farm buildings built by German missionaries. Sarona, they called the neighborhood then. The buildings each had one or two floors with a red shingle roof covered by hyssop, with citrus trees in the backyards. In the 1950s, when I was six or seven years old, my dad sometimes took me for long walks into the same neighborhood to see the citrus trees in blossom. In later years, when it became a government center, the charm evaporated.
I went to the interview on schedule. A high limestone wall covered with ivy surrounded the inconspicuous building, but that wasn't unusual. Other government buildings in the area looked the same. I rang the bell on a wrought-iron gate. Again, a woman's voice, this time from a hidden speaker: “Yes?”
“I'm Dan Gordon. I'm here for an interview.”
She said nothing, but a minute later the gate opened and a bald, short man in his early fifties asked me to follow him. We went through several narrow, mazelike corridors, then through a back door to an inner backyard with three lemon trees, then through another door into yet another building. I followed him into a small office.
There he turned to me and said, “I'm Mr. Shani. Please wait.” I sat down as he left the room.
I looked around, but there was nothing to see. The only window faced the backyard and the three lemon trees. Although we must have passed offices, the view from the corridor had been blocked. I didn't see people, or desks, or anything other than the darkness of the corridor itself. Aside from my own chair, there were only a simple wooden desk and three more chairs in the room. A photo of Levi Eshkol, Israel's then-prime minister, hung on the wall. The door opened and three people, Mr. Shani among them, walked in. I stood.
“Sit down.” The speaker was a tall man in his early sixties with white hair and a tanned face. I sat. The third person was a woman dressed like my high school biology teacher, in a business suit with shoulder pads that probably hadn't been fashionable since before I was born and a cut that killed any sign of femininity. If you have never met my biology teacher, then think of a female commissar in an early Soviet film.
Shani began. “Good morning, Dan. You're here today to allow us to get a firsthand impression. Thus far we've seen only the reports.”
He saw the question in my eyes. “They're all positive,” he added in response. “Tell us why you want to join us.” He said “us,” not “the Mossad.” In fact, nobody used that word throughout the entire screening process. I wondered why.
Obviously, a simple answer would have been to retort, “ I was approached by you, remember?” but it wasn't the place or the time to play cute. “I like the international nature of the work,” I said. “I have a curious mind. I never take things at their face value. My military service has helped me realize that I have other character traits that I'm sure stand out loud and clear from my file and from the various tests I've undertaken. I may not be proud of some of them, but they're part of me.”
The man with the white hair nodded as he went through some papers he brought into the room with him.
“Dan,” the woman said, “tell us what your worst personal quality is.”
“I have no patience for idiots,” I said immediately.
“Is that all?” she insisted.
“No. I also tend to prefer working independently rather than in a team, and I find it difficult to follow stupid instructions without questioning them first, at least in my mind.”
“So you're the judge of what is and what is not a stupid instruction?” There was a negative tone to the question.
“No,” I replied quickly trying to control the damage, “I'm certainly not an expert on anything. But I have some common sense and principles, and if my instincts or my brain tell me that something is wrong, I ask. I'm sure you've seen my military file. I was never court-martialed for disobedience, and I was involved in many sensitive incursions across the Syrian border that demanded strict adherence to orders. But if you're looking for someone to follow any orders, with no questions asked, then I'm the wrong person. On the other hand, if original thinking and an inquisitive mind are traits that fit the job, then I'm your man.”
The white-haired old man sitting in the center of the panel seemed to like my answer. He smiled.
“Let me hear your views about politics.”
We talked local politics for an hour. I didn't think he wanted to hear my opinion; he simply wanted to be assured that I wasn't a radical on either end of the political spectrum. Then it was over.
“You'll hear from us,” Shani said as he escorted me out.
Weeks went by with no word. Then one afternoon there was a knock on the door of my parents’ home. I answered the door. Michael walked in and, without any prefatory comment, asked me to join him for a meeting elsewhere. I didn't ask any questions and went along to his car. Ten minutes later, we arrived at the Mossad headquarters. I followed Michael through the corridors and was asked to wait in an empty conference room. After what was for me an agonizing interval, Michael entered with Shani, who shook my hand and said with a broad smile, “Congratulations! You're in.”
I was so unprepared that I didn't know whether I should be happy or sorry. Despite the long wait, it all seemed very sudden.
Michael handed me a stack of documents. “This is an oath of confidentiality,” he said, pulling out two stapled pages. “Read it carefully, because it will remain valid all your life, even when you are no longer in the service.”
I looked at the statement. “As a member of the Central Intelligence Institute, I understand that I will have access to confidential and top-secret information which concerns Israel's national security. By signing this statement, I am indicating my understanding of my responsibilities to maintain confidentiality and agree to the following.” There followed a list of penalties for breach, of which prison seemed the lightest.
I signed.
In those few minutes, though I didn't realize it then, I had just begun the most fascinating time of my life.
It was only May, but Tel Aviv was already hot and humid. My acceptance came right on time; graduation from university was only two months away. I broke the news to my parents at the dinner table that evening.
“What about your plans to go to law school and then join my firm?” my father asked, looking at me and then my mother.
“It'll have to wait for a while,” I responded. I don't think they liked the answer but they said nothing to discourage me. I didn't realize then that “a while” meant years.
On my first day on the job I was assigned to the archive. Thousands upon thousands of files, reeking of mildew, welcomed me. “Don't worry,” consoled Michael when he saw my gloomy face, “this is how everyone starts.” It took me two months to get the picture, reading endless files. I saw how many so-called accidents that had befallen terrorists had their roots in those files, in that stale room.
I was assigned to field training six months later, the first of its kind at the Mossad.
I packed a few things and took a bus to the Mossad training camp, twenty miles northeast of Tel Aviv, for what was called an “operations course.” The camp was located in an agricultural area, on an old military base that was surrounded by citrus orchards and small red-roofed houses. It included an airstrip that had been built and used by British forces until 1948, when Jewish resistance made them give up their mandate over Palestine, leading to the establishment of Israel. Several elite forces of the Israeli armed forces had taken over the base. Behind a seven-foot gated metal fence topped by razor wire stood a few one-story buildings. The smell of cow dung hung in the air. There was no sign on the fence.
I showed the guard in the small concrete booth my invitation letter. He asked me for my government-issued photo ID, compared it with my face, and picked up his telephone and said something. With a nod, he hung up and opened the electric gate, which screeched as it slowly rolled on its rails. I walked inside the camp.
Manhattan, New York City, September 1990
The office secretary, Lan, knocked on my door, walked in unceremoniously, and handed me a file folder.
“This just came in,” she said. “It looked like something you'd want to see right away.” I reached across my desk, took the folder, and began to read a cover memo.
OFFICE of INTERNATIONAL ASSET RECOVERY AND MONEY LAUNDERING
Memorandum To: Dan Gordon, Investigative Attorney From: David Stone, Director Date: September 15,1990 Re: U.S. v. Raymond DeLouise I'm assigning you this matter.
The subject Raymond DeLouise, born in Bucharest, Romania.