Read Triple Identity for Free Online

case was the first I'd seen to connect what seemed to be a non-Israeli matter with Israel, although the connection was hair thin.
    I called my friend Benny's home number in Israel.
    “Shalom,”
said a man's voice.
    “Hi, Benny,” I said, and went on without waiting for a response. “It's Dan.”
    “Hold on,” said the man on the other end, “It's not Benny, I'll get him for you.” I heard him shouting, “Dad, it's for you.”
    “Dad”? A grown man was calling Ben “Dad”? When I last saw Lior, Ben's son, he was ten years old. But that, I realized, had been ten years ago.
    “Erev tov
, good evening,” said the voice on the other end.
    “Hi, Benny,” I answered. “It's Dan Gordon. How are you?”
    “Still pulling,” he said.
    “And your family?”
    “Being schlepped.”
    “And how's Batya?” I'd always liked his wife.
    “Well, on one of these days I'm going to catch pneumonia because of her.”
    “Why?”
    “Because each time she sings in the shower, I have to go out to the balcony so that the neighbors won't think I'm beating her up,” he said, and I realized that he hadn't changed.
    “I need help.”
    “I'm here,” he said.
    “Well,” I said, sounding a bit apologetic, “this time it's ancient history. Could you please see what you have on Bruno Popescu, born in Romania, a July 15 birth date? He could be a person I'm looking for, a man named Raymond DeLouise. I suspect he was in Israel in November 1957.”
    “What did he do?” Benny asked curiously. “Steal something?”
    “Yeah,” I said, “ninety million dollars.”
    “Is that all? Fax me what you have and I'll see what I can do.”
    “Thanks, Benny,” I said, “and if this works out, I'll owe you lunch.”
    Benny mumbled his thanks. He knew he would not be making a sacrifice. As an observant Jew, he ate only kosher food, and there are few restaurants in Tel Aviv that are both kosher and good.
    “Give me a little time,” said Benny. “I'll call you right away if I find something.”
    Benjamin Friedman had been the odd man out in the Mossad's cadet course. The other eleven of us had been secular Israelis, like a substantial majority of the country's population. Benny was the son of Holocaust survivors who had owned a grocery store in central Tel Aviv. I used to stop by their store with Benny during our training years. His mother worked behind a tall display refrigerator that doubled as a counter. She wore the typical clothes of an Orthodox woman: head covering and long sleeves even in the height of summer.
    I noticed that Benny was embarrassed each time we stopped by his family's store. His mother would approach him, asking, “Have you eaten yet? Come have a piece of cake, you look too pale.” It hadn't mattered that Ben was a grown man of robust appearance. To his mother, he was still a child in need of her care.
    The store was cramped and smelled of the matjes herring and pickles in brine kept in open wooden casks. The smell always made me hungry.But I'd always restrained my urge to pluck a pickle while her own son was sidestepping her attempts to feed him. Benny never made an issue of his self-imposed dietary restrictions and unwillingness to work on Saturdays and other Jewish holidays. He had come to the cadet course from AMAN , the military intelligence division, where the words were not an oxymoron. AMAN was by far the largest intelligence agency in Israel. It was responsible for gathering all military intelligence concerning the surrounding Arab states and for submitting the periodic intelligence overview to the prime minister. All Benny had told us was that he'd served as a captain in what is now known as 8200, AMAN 's secret communication and computer unit. Basically it did what the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) did: intercept radio, telephone, fax, computer, and other communications; decipher their content; and draw intelligence conclusions.
    I could still hear Meir Amit, then-head of the Mossad, lecturing us