Read Online The Seventh Secret by Irving Wallace - Free Book Online Page A

despised it, despised what it had been. Yet she had found the young people decent and friendly and much like herself and her Israeli friends. When she had mentioned this softness in her to her father, he had laughed and said, "Don't worry about the young. They are not your enemies. Worry about the old ones, those from sixty to eighty. They were most of them Nazis, you can be sure. They are the ones who say, 'Ah, that was a good time under the Führer. Now our Berlin is filled with strangers, our young who are stupid and drugged by the Americans and other foreigners. We need to be harder on them. We need to clean out the garbage.' Those are the ones, Tovah, who wish for a nation of blondes again."
    Languages aside, Tovah's major at the university had been journalism. From early on she'd had a reporter's curiosity and a reporter's eye. She had done very well in her journalism classes, and after graduation and her stint in the army she had been readily taken on by the Jerusalem Post as a feature writer. Near the end of her first year she had been called into the office of the managing editor, a rare occurrence.
    "Tovah," he had said, "I have an unusual assignment for you, very unusual."
    "What does that mean?"
    "It means that the director of Mossad wants to give you an interview. The Mossad has never done this, has never even permitted one of our reporters into their building outside Tel Aviv. But this morning the director initiated the invitation. He specifically requested you."
    Tovah had been astounded. She had always known the secrecy that surrounded this arm of the Israeli government, the secret service branch founded in 1951.
    "Why me?" she had wondered.
    "They've probably read some of your byline pieces and liked them."
    "What can they possibly tell me?"
    "Find out. Your appointment is with the memuneh —the father—the director himself. Ten tomorrow morning. Yes, you'll find out then."
    Five minutes after she was closeted alone with the director of Mossad, a forceful and straightforward man with no words to waste, she had found out quickly what he had to tell her. He didn't want to give her a story. He wanted to give her a job.
    "Our business is keeping an eye on people," he had said. "We've kept an eye on you for the last half year. While we have nine hundred agents and other personnel—one hundred in the headquarters here, the rest elsewhere in the world—most of the agents are not women. Like our previous chief, Meir Amit, I am uncomfortable using women. Sooner or later a female may find it necessary to use sex to get what she wants. I don't like that, but . . ."
    He had shrugged, letting it hang there, and Tovah had become conscious that he was taking in her appearance. She knew—had always known—that she was attractive in a perfectly goyish way. Long flaxen blond hair. Blue eyes. Aquiline nose. Small mouth. Full firm bosom. Shapely legs. Nothing obviously Jewish. Aryan Germans might have regarded her as one of their perfect specimens.
    Now the director had been measuring her womanhood.
    She had felt the necessity to speak up. "I don't mind. About the sex part, I mean. I'm not a child. One does what one has to do in life."
    The director had grunted. "For the agent in the field, it can be a dangerous job. We do not encourage assassination. We do encourage self-defense. Every agent is trained to use a weapon, many weapons. Every agent is taught to lie and cheat, when it is necessary. We care only about results. Our agents are civil servants, on government salary. For three years, it is a million three hundred ten thousand shekels—not much when you think in American currency, eight hundred dollars a month. None will become rich. All will know they are helping Israel survive. If you are interested, we can arrange things with your editor. You'd still be working for the Jerusalem Post here and abroad. That would be your cover. But your main job would be working for Mossad."
    "Doing