Ayala looked at the man and knew he was going to try and get from her everything she had, whether she was willing to give it or not. She was, to some degree, prepared for that, but she was not here to recruit the man. He could not be relied upon to act as he said he would, and the chances that he would attempt to verify what she said if she told him the truth were just too great to be risked. But knowing she should keep the details of their plot from him was not the same as actually succeeding in doing so. This was no pompous executive or political buffoon, he was her intellectual match in every way and she would have to be careful.

She would have to give him just enough information for him to be useful to her, and hint at the severity of what he did not know so that he would not feel comfortable researching too vigorously the facts of her story. Most important of all, she had to use his own perceptiveness against him. She would not for a second expect him to believe her lie, but she would try to make him worried enough at what the truth was behind that lie that he would not go alerting the ever vigilant satellites above them to the fact that their presence was known to her and her colleagues.

“Saul, I have asked you here today to tell you I have become aware of something while in America that affects Israel. The people I am working with intend Israel harm, and I have discovered an aspect of their plot that worries me deeply.”

He looked at her. This was, perhaps, not a topic for an alleyway, but he had used this block on occasion, and unbeknownst to her he knew that the doorway they were standing in was the back door to an old safehouse of his, and was in fact bricked up. Their hushed voices would not be overheard here with the sound of the busy streets of Tel Aviv in the background.

She continued, “There is a plot afoot to spread a biological weapon in Israel. It may not come to fruition, and there are those of us who are trying to stop it, but my being here endangers us both. They have the ability to listen with ease to both our e-mails and our telephone calls.”