Free The Volunteer by Michael Ross Page B

can bear it). If American, he might be slightly louder and less bashful than everyone else in the room.
    Once Avi had welcomed me to Caesarea, I was made to attend what can only be described as a sort of finishing school for Mossad agents. My instructor was Doron, a former combatant of some renown. Meticulously dressed, tall, with blue eyes and sandy-blonde hair, he was self-possessed, almost haughty. Doron spoke English, German, and Hebrew (as well as several other languages he didn’t reveal to me, I’m guessing), all without the trace of an accent. He looked like a poster boy for the Aryan Nation, yet he was as Jewish as they come. Israelis refer to such specimens with the somewhat derogatory term yekke, used to describe Jews of German origin who exhibit the fastidious habits attributed to that country. Those who know me will say that I answer to the same description. But when I was in the same room as Doron, we were like the Odd Couple of movie fame, with me playing Oscar Madison to his Felix Unger.
    Appearances aside, Doron was a perfect instructor for an agent looking to blend in among Europe’s urbane business class. He gave me primers in finance and put me through an accelerated program in international commerce and trade. He would appear at my doorstep with copies of the Financial Times , Fortune , and various European and Middle Eastern business reports. He taught me how to read the financial pages and decipher the arcane codes contained in the stock market listings—the FTSE 500, NYSE, Hang Seng , Nikkei, CAC 40—until I could discuss stocks and bonds with all the casual panache of someone who made six-figure investment decisions with the click of a mouse.
    The studying took place mostly at night. During the day, we ran SDRs, or “surveillance detection routes,” which are pre-planned journeys that spies take to detect if they’re being followed. The art of the SDR is to make it look as if you’re going about your normal business—browsing in shops, visiting restaurants, taking taxis, riding the bus—without giving the appearance that you’re trying to detect a “tail.” SDR drills are to a junior combatant what scales are to a piano student. Even veteran agents often do refresher courses.
    â€œTail” is a misleading term (albeit one used commonly even by intelligence agents). In truth, any surveillance team worth its salt—and I trained against the best—doesn’t follow you around like a bunch of hounds on the scent. Its members dance around their targets with a practiced choreography worthy of the Bolshoi Ballet. Far from the menacing, chisel-featured spies you see in the movies, the good ones resemble everyday schleps who can blend into the urban landscape. Their cat-and-mouse sport is played out every day on the streets of every major city in the world.
    Any intelligence operative heading out for a meeting with a source or colleague has to make sure he is clean when he arrives at his destination. If an agent with a tail doesn’t abort, he risks letting the “locals”—that is, domestic counterintelligence—in on whatever mischief he’s up to.
    On my SDR drills with Doron, I did my best to implement the detail-recognition skills Oren had taught me. Moving from one section of Tel Aviv to another, I scanned the people around me. If the same person kept popping up, I knew there was a good chance my movements were being monitored.
    As is often the case in the field, I had help—teammates who watched from a series of “choke points,” which are places where spies could easily observe without drawing attention to themselves, like an outdoor café. This is known as countersurveillance, or watching the watchers.
    The critical moment comes when the SDR is complete, and the countersurveillance team must send a signal to the agent telling him whether he’s clean or dirty. Before spies entered the era of