Alvey said nothing, but he knew Aurbach well enough to imagine it wasn’t very difficult at all for him to leave his man swinging in the breeze. Hawthorn was an asset for Aurbach, after all, not one of his children.

Aurbach continued. “I left him in detainment, said nothing to the Americans about knowing the man, unsure if he would ever see the light of freedom. Fortunately the CIA decided he possessed no value, and he was eventually released. As it turned out, his detainment was the best thing that could have happened to him operationally. He joined al Qaeda in Iraq with his newfound credibility, and he began passing us critical intelligence, some of which we traded with the U.S., some of which we used to influence matters in other ways.

“Soon the idea came to me that we should grow Hawthorn into a long-term deep-penetration asset of al Qaeda. To get him as close to the core leadership as possible. When much of AQ was rolled up by the Americans during their surge in Iraq, we protected Hawthorn.”

Alvey was impressed. “Incredible. That was many years ago. How far has he gotten since then?”

Aurbach crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray, taking his time in doing so. It seemed to Alvey as if his boss was hesitating with his story. Finally the old man looked up. “Yanis, why, in God’s name, are we not drinking?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Aurbach shouted to the men outside the room, surprising Alvey. “A bottle of scotch, please! Whatever you have lying around will do. And two glasses.”

When the booze came, Menachem Aurbach drank, and while he drank, he told Yanis Alvey everything.

—

The director of the Mossad took an entire hour to finish his story, and then he went to the toilet. Yanis Alvey remained in his chair, his eyes unfixed, generally pointing to a spot on the wall, but focusing on nothing. After a long time, time enough for Aurbach to return and to light another cigarette, Alvey’s head slowly collapsed down, like he was an inflatable doll with a leak. Finally his head settled, forehead down, on the table. He covered his head with his hands.

He spoke in a whisper. “I did not know.”

“Of course you didn’t. You can’t know everything, can you? That’s why there is a chain of command. That’s why unilateral actions like the one you took are dangerous. Foolish.”

“I am truly sorry.”

Alvey sat up straight now, his eyes rimmed with red, glassy and blurring with tears of shame.

Before he could speak, Menachem said, “You are free to leave here. You will not be held, you will not be prosecuted. Just know that by your actions you have hurt your nation. You are a good man, so knowing this is punishment enough.”

Alvey’s water-rimmed eyes returned to the wall.