“Last year you were arrested after you knocked down two guys in the Carmel fruit market.”
I smiled. “I was released immediately. Those guys snatched the purse of an elderly lady right next to me.”
“But was there a need to send them to the hospital?” he said, smiling.
“I had no choice. They used an old trick, shouting that I was the thief and they were trying to help the woman.”
“Then a month ago you answered an ad in the newspaper seeking volunteers to go to Africa to teach English for one year.”
“So it was you!”
He smiled. “Need I continue?”
“No. That's enough.” They'd done their homework.
I realized with surprise that Michael had also read my university file. I didn't know whether to be proud that someone had bothered or ashamed that my so-so academic achievements were revealed. What did he mean by my “other traits”? I hoped that my ability to charm the faculty secretaries and the female lecturers to obtain academic and other more personal favors was still undiscovered. It didn't occur to me then that that quality – or drawback, depending on whom you're asking – was an important factor in the selection process. But I immediately thought of a James Bond movie I'd seen a week earlier. Fast cars and easy women. I liked that. “Please tell me more,” I asked.
“I can't tell you anything further at this time, but if you're interested, call me at this number.” He gave me a piece of paper with a Tel Aviv phone number scribbled on it.
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
