Tinker, Tailor, Goyim, Spy

December, 2001, King Saul Blvd, Israel.

Imi Morgenstern tried not to roll his eyes as his director of personnel continued his rant for what must have been the second year in a row. If Morgenstern didn't know any better, he would have sworn that nothing got done in Human Resources but kvetching.

"We still have all of these new kids who come in thinking that this is going to be all James Bond all the time, " Yossi continued. "I mean, who wants to come into Mossad to be some oversexed goy?"

More importantly, Morgenstern thought, why can't this elevator go any faster? Would jamming the button a fourth time would be too obvious?

"I mean," Yossi continued, "you want a role model for spying? George Smiley. A goy, but alright. Did you see Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy with Alec Guiness? He's a spy who plays chess, only with people. Most of a spy's job is sitting around listening to people talk. The other half is getting them into position. I mean, hell, they have to think. They don't want to think, they can go to Sayeret."

Morgenstern eyed the button for his floor one more time. He didn't answer that he had spent some time with the Sayeret Matkal, Special Forces of the Israeli Defense Force, before joining the Mossad. It's nice to see that old bigotries don't die.

Imi Morgenstern heard the ping and just kept himself from bolting through the doors like a greyhound breaking his leash. Morgenstern got through the doors, and held up both hands, like a diplomat saying "Nice doggie" while looking for a rock.

"Glad we had this talk, Yossi," Morgentsern told him. "We should discuss this further sometime soon."

The doors closed on Yossi's blank face.

Morgenstern sighed, and then took a slow, deep, calming ... and caught a whiff of smoke.

He blinked. Pipe smoke in an office building was not unusual. After all, this was Israel, not America, and no smoking signs were more like a suggestion than anything else. However, this smell was different, it had flavor. It was pipe tobacco.

However, no one on that floor smoked a pipe, and neither did anyone who was high enough on the food chain to see him. He didn't know any politician who smoked a pipe ... so, who did that leave? An agent? But agents couldn't get to see someone on his level, either. Even the latest reports on nuclear threats came through people who already knew him by sight. And if an officer in the Mossad had business urgent enough to report to him directly, as well as making it through the multiple levels of bureaucracy to see Imi face to face, he would have been paged already.

After all, that was how they did things with Imi Morgenstern, the Commander of Mossad.

Imi turned to face the wood paneled floor, and it didn't take him long to spot the source of the pipe smoke.

The smoker was pale, with a hair color that was somewhere between dark blonde and light brown, and eyes that Morgenstern could only classify as "dark." Despite the amount of time that Imi had put in as an agent, trying to find words to describe this fellow proved impossible. Unless "indistinct" was a description. Though if someone had used that in a report, Morgenstern would have skinned them.

Morgenstern sighed, ran his fingers through his thinning white hair, and stared at his secretary. Joshua Janosh, for whom the nickname "JJ" was a given, caught the look, rose, and moved towards his employer.

Morgenstern smiled. "Is there something you would like to tell me, JJ?"

"Yes, sir," Janosh said, his voice hushed. "There's a person here to see 'someone of importance.' I was going to wait until just before the lunch hour was over, and kick him out before he could see anyone."

The Mossad Chief smiled. If Yossi hadn't been haranguing him through his lunch break, Morgenstern might have never even known this fellow was here. He would still be downstairs. Morgenstern answered with his own voice softened. The smoker was ten meters away, but it never hurt to be cautious. "I'll take longer lunches next time. What does he want?"

Janosh smirked. "He wants to work for us."

Morgenstern blinked, then looked over Janosh's shoulder to get a second look at the pipe smoker. "What is he? Eighteen? Nineteen? And he's not local, not with a tan like that."

"Like what?"

"Exactly."

The secretary shrugged, then his voice dropped lower, into a whisper. "I think he's an American. He says his name is Scott Murphy, and trust me, he's not Jewish."

Morgenstern wanted to laugh. "With a name like Murphy," Imi whispered right back, "I wouldn't expect him to be. Did you get a CV?"

"Yes. Human Resources asked to send him up because he wouldn't go away."

Morgenstern raised a brow. And funny that Yossi never mentioned that in the elevator. Or during lunch. Note to self: cut his budget. Let's see how he likes it when I have him make bricks without straw.

"Obviously," Janosh continued, "HR said no—not necessarily because he's a goy, but ... a foreigner?"

Morgenstern shrugged. "We tap people all over the planet for aid."

"Other Jews," his secretary replied. "And rarely then."

Morgenstern sighed, then looked at his office door. There was no label on it with his position; anyone with the clearance to be up on that floor already knew who and what he was. There were days he was surprised his name was even on the door.

Morgenstern finally rolled his eyes. "I'll go talk to him. I'm curious."

Janosh blinked. "Really?"

A shrug. "Why not? I find out why he's here, put the fear of Adonai into him, and send him home."

The pipe smoker, Scott Murphy, coughed a little, and said, "I'm here because of John 'Taliban' Walker Lindh."

Morgenstern, who had still been whispering, blinked. He leaned in closer to his secretary and said, "He can't hear us from here, can he?"

Murphy looked right at them. "I used to hear dog whistles growing up."

Morgenstern and Janosh shared a look, and the Mossad Commander stepped towards the newcomer. From up close, Murphy didn't look much bigger. He might have been 5'8", and thin, almost as if he had grown up malnourished, which immediately made Morgenstern consider a Napoleon complex in the making. While he could respect chutzpa, this fellow was going to Tone It Down.

"Didn't you see the no smoking sign?" Morgenstern began.

Murphy smiled. "No." He used the pipe stem as a pointer. "I saw the ashtray on every other desk."

"Did you ask if you could smoke?"

Murphy arched a brow. "Did you ask if I care?"

"And you're looking for a job here?"

"No, I'm telling you that you're hiring me."

So much for toning down the chutzpa, Imi Morgenstern thought. "Into my office. Let's see what's so important."

Once they were settled, Murphy handed him a resume. Morgenstern glanced at it. "You're an accountant?"

"That was my education, yes," Murphy answered. "However, accountants no longer have the skill sets I want. No one teaches spying in Massachusetts, unless you count the fraternities going after the sororities, or the internal intrigues of either group. After experiencing that level of stupidity, I think decapitation with a sword is far more civilized."

Normally, the Mossad man would ask if that was a reference to Daniel Pearle, but Morgenstern wanted a way to get this conversation over with as soon as possible. "You're against intrigue and you want to be an agent?"

"I'm not against intrigue." Murphy answered, "I'm against stupid and shallow intrigue. I don't care if the internal office politics are like that of a high school locker room, I assume most of the activities around here are geared towards stopping or killing the enemy, not getting drunk, high, or laid."

"Depends on the office party," Morgenstern muttered to himself. He glanced down at the education portion of the resume. Somehow, this kid had gotten into college by age sixteen. However ... "Why are there three colleges here on your resume?"

"I had a plan," Murphy told him. He leaned back in his chair, making himself comfortable ... a cute trick, considering that Morgenstern had picked that chair specifically to make people uncomfortable. "A little known segment of the Harvard charter is that they have to accept Cambridge residents. I had my official mailing address moved into the area the last year of high school. Granted, Harvard doesn't have to keep any of those students they take in. After an eighteen-credit summer of Harvard, getting low- to mid-Bs, I transferred to Yale, who took me because, well, they hate Harvard. I went to the University of Massachusetts next semester, because, frankly, they'd give me a scholarship just for attending both Universities and deciding on them. Take two years of eighteen credit semesters, add in two summer semesters of the same amount, and you have a degree."

Morgenstern looked at him, trying to imagine this kid having earned all of those credits so fast.

Murphy saw Morgenstern's face and added, "When you're my size and two years younger then your classmates, it focuses the mind wonderfully; you become goal-oriented. The goal being to get the hell out of Dodge." He glanced around the room and smiled . "Though I should perhaps say I wanted to get out of Baghdad. When in Israel...."

Morgenstern chuckled. "I'm sure your initials didn't help in high school."

Scott Murphy arched a brow. "I guess I should ask if your last name, Morning Star in German, makes you named after the medieval weapon or Lucifer."

"I prefer the weapon. Call me Imi."

"I'd rather tell you why I'm here."

Morgenstern waved him on.

Murphy nodded. "The September after graduation, I followed a job offer with Merrill Lynch in New York, expecting the least to come out of it with a tax write-off. Tuesday was the interview with Merrill Lynch, and the streets were clogged. At 8:45, hope was in sight, and so was the building."

Scott paused a moment to relight his pipe, letting the blue smoke act as a mask. "The building was the World Trade Center. You can also conclude how the rest of my day in September went. My job search was briefly put on hold..."

The smoke cleared, his dark blue eyes were almost black, a cold burn smoldering in them. "Until recently, when John 'Taliban' Walker Lindh fired at US troops. That over-privileged little white bread Berkeley bastard decided to fire on his own countrymen because he couldn't take up a more civilized hobby, like backpacking across Europe or becoming a hippie in some commune. I'm the antidote. I would like to help you kill as many of these bastards as possible."

With the use of the pronoun, Morgenstern couldn't decide on who Murphy meant. There were so many bastards in the region, and some of them were fellow Mossad officers. "Any one of them in particular?"

"If possible," Murphy said darkly, "I'd like to kill the ones who aided the attack, the ones who planned the attack, and everyone who was happy about it."

Morgenstern leaned back in his chair, studying this serious young man for a long moment. "Normally, I believe the question should be 'what planet are you from?' But I think I know better."

"The land of the free and the home of the seriously pissed," Murphy replied.

The head of Mossad laughed. "That's why I know better. We've been getting a lot of Evangelicals into Israel lately. We're having an interesting time placing them."

Morgenstern then sighed. This kid was interesting, and possibly more mature than some of the agents he already had. However, nationality aside, allowing this goy into the Institute for Intelligence would go over like a clam bake during Yom Kippur. Most of Mossad agents were good with a gun, and had gone through military training. Murphy's anemic look was discouraging. While Morgenstern already liked Murphy, if only for pure gall, there was no way he was going to be allowed into Mossad. And even if they did let him in, the cultural differences would be murderous.

Best get rid of him now. "We have a first time test for new recruits," Morgenstern told him. "A simple survival test. You'll be assigned a Palestinian camp to stay in in the West Bank. We'll be happy to extract you out if you want, but if you want to pass, you'll stay until morning. Understood?"

Murphy studied him a moment, as if he knew that this was meant to get rid of him. But, no, Murphy couldn't possibly know that for certain. "Sure," Murphy said slowly, "I'll just need a little time with your quartermaster's office."

"I'll let JJ know," Imi told him, "he'll see to it ... by the way, why a pipe?"

"All the cool kids were smoking cigarettes. I didn't like them very much. Think of it as reverse peer pressure."

An hour later, Imi Morgenstern looked over Yossi of Human Resources, a task he found generally distasteful. Yossi was a weasel-faced little man whose own people printed out Dilbert comic strips with a focus on the "Evil Cat of HR" and left them all over the office; there was a reason that Morgenstern had the deliberately uncomfortable chair. It might as well have had Yossi's name on it.

Thank Adonai that he's just the paper pusher, if he were actually in recruitment, we'd look like the French secret service. And they were outsmarted by a guy like Carlos the Jackal.

"So," Morgenstern started, "did you know about our little gray man before you cornered me in the elevator, Yossi?"

Yossi shrugged. "Meh, he's a goy."

Morgenstern raised a brow. "And? Weren't you the one kvetching about how everyone wanted to be James Bond? There were no spymasters—"

"But he's a goy."

"No chess players—"

"He's a goy."

"No 'George Smiley' types?"

"Did I mention he's a goy?"

The Commander of Mossad took a deep, calming breath. It was something he always did in the old days, right before he shot someone in the head. Darn, and me without my gun. "Does it matter?"

"Of course," Yossi spat. "You know it does. We've always done things on our own. We get some logistical support from America, but people? No. It's always been us, the Israelis, against everyone who comes after us."

"Ourselves alone?" Morgenstern asked with a smile.

"Absolutely."

"Funny, that's the slogan of the Irish Republican Army. Fine company you're keeping."

Yossi blinked a moment. "Now wait a moment—"

"Have there been others?"

Yossi blinked again. He blinked any more, they would jam that way. "What?"

Morgenstern leaned back in the chair. "Have there been other goys trying to get in?"

"A few," Yossi admitted.

"And you've rejected all of them?"

"Of course. What else are we going to do? Allow people who weren't born here to enter the intelligence services? They don't know the risks, they don't know the day-to-day struggle of staying alive. They have not lived and breathed our troubles since they were born."

Morgenstern restrained himself from rolling his eyes. "Save it for your political campaign."

Yossi arched a brow. "How did you know that I was running?"

Morgenstern made a mental note on ways and means to fire Yossi at the earliest opportunity. Maybe drop him off somewhere in Gaza at two in the morning.

In retrospect, maybe I should have hired Murphy on the spot. If only to piss off Yossi. Too late for that now, he's probably halfway back to Boston. Assuming anyone let him get out of that camp alive.

Imi Morgenstern walked into his office at six the next morning, only to find a security guard standing at his door. He blinked. "Can I help you, Zev?"

The security guard nodded. "Someone in your office." He bent down and hefted a duffel bag. "He had this with him. He said you'd understand."

Blink. "I don't know, but I guess I could ask."

Zev raised a hand. "By the way, one of the guys in the lobby was a little aggressive with him— and I mean as if a Palestinian had walked in off the street."

Morgenstern cocked his head. "And?"

"This guy took him out with a Bic."

Morgenstern thought about it for a moment. "I assume you mean the crappy ballpoints, and not the lighter?"

Zev nodded. "Jammed the tip right into his hand. So, we knew this guy must have been serious when he wanted to talk with you. He's either an assassin, or someone you didn't tell security about. Or both."

Morgenstern had to think about it... did he let someone loose on an unsuspecting world, only to have him come back to an unsuspecting security?

The security guard backed up, then opened the door, letting Morgenstern go first.

Sitting in the chair across from his desk was a dank, dirty, aromatic fellow, wearing rags that a homeless person would have rejected ...

And he was smoking a pipe.

"It's morning," Scott Murphy said from the chair. "And I'm back. I hope you enjoy some of the presents I brought you."

Morgenstern looked to Zev. "Sorry, yes, I am expecting him... sort of." He took the bag. He strode over to his chair, then placed the bag on the desk and looked inside.

He arched a brow. "Firing pins?"

"For AK-108s and --74s." Murphy shrugged. "I talked a few of them into allowing me to dry fire their guns. I'm sure no one will miss them for a day or two."

Morgenstern pushed aside the top layer. "Are these detonators?"

"From suicide bomber kits." A large grin formed around the pipe stem. "My mom let me play with her bomb disposal kit while I was growing up ... as she watched, of course. I picked up just enough to stay alive. I didn't mention she was on the bomb squad?"

Morgenstern did a very good job at not gaping like a fish at market. This man is a nothing— no training, no preparation, and tossed into the deep end with the hungry sharks— and yet, he's still alive, with souvenirs. "How did you get through the camp?"

Murphy puffed away a few times before he allowed himself a small smile. "I grew up in Brooklyn for the first ten years of my life, near Atlantic Avenue, so I speak Arabic with a Palestinian accent."

Morgenstern shook his head. "But it's not possible that they bought into your story so quickly. You had no cover ID, you had no documents to support any story you might have told them—"

"You forget," Murphy said, "there are multiple charities in America that support Hamas— which our State Department has yet to label a terrorist organization. I merely used what numbers I recall as my 'references.' I think we can both agree that the 'charities' are terrorist fronts?"

The Director of Mossad put up a hand to still him. "You're going to sit there and honestly tell me that you recall all of those numbers by heart?"

Murphy arched a brow. "Accountant, remember?"

He frowned. "Oh ... yes."

Murphy gestured into the back with his pipe stem. "And, you might want to check the notebook. Those are supposedly names and contacts of several terrorist cells backed by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein..." he shrugged. "But I figure if those are real, they wouldn't have told me. I wouldn't buy into them— either they're fake, or you probably have them tapped already."

Morgenstern sat, studying him closely. "And you survived ... how?"

At this, the goy chuckled. "Have you ever walked Cambridge at night?"

"You mean you've taken live fire?"

"Again, have you ever walked Cambridge at night?"

"Hmm." Morgenstern thought it over, noting Murphy's physique. "What is your attitude on physical activity?"

Murphy arched a brow. "I wanted to be an accountant, what do you think?"

"We would be hard pressed to put in a spy who has trouble fighting."

He smiled. "I don't consider a close quarters scuffle a 'fight' if it only lasts four seconds. I think it's, maybe, a way to get your heart rate up a bit. Besides, if I get shot at, I can't imagine that I'm doing my job well." He gestured with his pipe stem. "Besides, the guard downstairs would probably disagree with you. Like I said—" he put the tip of the pipe stem back in his mouth, "—Cambridge at night."