Life in the Mossad had been good to Alvey, until very recently that was, when he was shot during an in extremis operation in Hamburg, Germany. He spent most of the following month recovering at Tel HaShomer Hospital in Ramat Gan, a suburb east of Tel Aviv, before finally being released to go home for a lengthy convalescence.

After several weeks his wound had all but healed, and he was nearly ready to return to work. Then, just five days ago, he was called in to a meeting at Mossad’s headquarters on the Coastal Highway north of Tel Aviv. Here he met with a superior officer who asked him a question that tipped Alvey off he was in serious trouble.

“Yanis, yes or no. Did you, in any way, facilitate the escape of the Gray Man from Europe last month?”

Yanis Alvey had done exactly that, and he’d done it without authorization. That his superiors suspected likely meant that his career in the Mossad was in jeopardy.

But Alvey told the truth because he was a man of good character. “Yes. I alone helped the Gray Man leave Europe.”

There were no more questions. He was told to stand and then he was handcuffed. It was done politely—no one thought the legendary Yanis Alvey was any sort of a threat—but he was restrained nevertheless. He was driven a kilometer east to Ramat HaSharon, a northern suburb of Tel Aviv, to a Mossad safe house on a gentle hillside. He’d visited here many times in his career, but this time, for the first time, it was clear he was a captive. He was uncuffed and led into a small apartment in the expansive home and told to remain inside. Security forces patrolled the garden and the driveway outside, and in the home outside Yanis’s door, bored Mossad officers half his age sat around and smoked and watched TV, keeping one eye on the older man locked in the apartment.

They brought Alvey his food and a collection of daily newspapers, but he had no more contact with the outside world, and no information about what was going to happen to him.

After the first day Alvey demanded to speak with Menachem Aurbach, director of the Mossad, but Alvey’s minders here had no way to make that happen, and to Yanis his handlers looked as if they had less of a clue about what was going on than he did.

So he just sat there, waiting for answers. He knew this strategy, of course. Aurbach was keeping him prisoner, softening him up, taking his time to allow Alvey to spend some time realizing the severity of his predicament and coming to terms with the fact his career, and his freedom, could be so easily threatened.