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want to go by the rules, they could assign an embassy control officer to escort you during your meetings.”
    “I've been through that before,” I said. I couldn't have an embassy control officer escort me to my meeting with Benny. Benny would be as silent as a dead fish. “Couldn't you do something?” I almost begged.
    “Well,” said David, “if you're just dropping in and can operate under the radar, you might get host-country clearance in three days.”
    “I'm sure you could do better than that, David,” I said, relying more on hope than on fact.
    “OK,” he said, relenting. “Express me your filled-out travel forms. I'll sign and distribute them for approvals. Call me tomorrow for a possible green light. And let me know if you need anything else.”
    “I will,” I said, and hung up.
    “If I need anything,” David had said. I sure did need something; I needed to know more about DeLouise, the guy who was about to ruin the vacation in Israel I had promised my children.
    Ever since I'd divorced Dahlia, my wife of seven years, I'd tried my best to spend more time with my children, seventeen-year-old Karen and fifteen-year-old Tom. A year after our divorce the children decided they wanted to live with me, so they came to the States. Dahlia hadn't put up a fight over that. She knew too well it was a lost battle; the children were old enough to make up their own minds. Because they were grown and needed only minimal housekeeping assistance, namely in rearranging their mess at home, it was easier for me to travel and leave the house chores to Amanda, my loyal part-time housekeeper.
    But now I was about to go to Israel without them. I expected a major earthquake when I broke the news at home. I asked Lan to book me a flight to Tel Aviv for the following day, convinced that David would have the clearance issued quickly. I also gave her a pack of signed, blank travel-request forms. I had a hunch that visiting Israel would only be the beginning of an extensive multicountry hunt for DeLouise.
    I went out to lunch and when I got back I was handed a confirmation slip for my flight out of JFK.

S itting in the too-narrow seat of a TWA Boeing 747, I thought about Benny. While I'd left the Mossad three years after I'd joined, Benny had stayed on and had slowly risen to become section chief in the Tevel Division, responsible for the Mossad's contacts with foreign governments, particularly those with whom Israel had no diplomatic relations, and with other intelligence services. The “cocktail party agents,” they'd been called in the Mossad. And indeed, the instructor they'd sent to give the course on foreign relations looked more like a stiff-upper-lip British diplomat than a Mossad combatant. But then, what did Mossad combatants look like anyway? Hollywood movies stereotyped them as dark and handsome, but in reality they resembled your next-door neighbor or your school's bus driver.
    As for myself, things were more complicated. With my green eyes and brown hair I didn't look like an average Joe, which had always been an advantage when I was dating but a disadvantage when I wanted to blend in with the crowd during Mossad operations. My 6′4″ frame was too noticeable to ignore. Recently, world travel and irregular eating had added a few inches to my waistline. I was fighting it, without too much success. I realized that brain cells come and go but fat cells live forever. But in our trade, looks are not everything. Efraim, the Tevel Division representative, was definitely not a looker, but nonetheless he was a suave guy with worldly manners and a brilliant mind. He could have been my father's law partner.
    “Intelligence is a commodity traded over the world markets,” said Efraim. “We trade information for other information or take a credit slip for future exchange. For example, in 1968 a Mossad combatant in France came across information that OAS, the military organization of theFrench settlers in Algeria, was