“Welcome to the Stern Gang,” they had greeted him, explaining that the original Stern Gang had been a radical branch of the Irgun during World War Two, frequently jailed by the British and shunned by their fellow Zionists as too radical. Avraham Stern himself had ended up shot.

“You’ve pissed someone off for sure, young Janson,” Weintraub had said.

“Or scared the hell out of them,” Miles ventured. “Either way, you had better get used to Siberia.”

Janson had pulled every one of the few strings he had in those days to try to get out of it, but to no avail. He was liaison to the Stern Gang and would be for his entire time in Israel if the CIA had any say in the matter, and they did.

Donner, old Weintraub, and Grandig had treated him kindly. It was easy to see that the young American was going stir-crazy, and they invited him on excursions to “come shooting” at a military firing range. Janson was Army Ranger trained already and had received early doses of Cons Ops instruction. But there were assassin gun tricks he hadn’t known yet. Similarly, when the old men arranged for him to work out with close-combat instructors the Jewish Krav Maga techniques had opened him to huge new possibilities in hand-to-hand fighting. To see his grandfatherly comrades in action was a revelation that still served him.

Would he like to see the Mossad’s explosives school? They had accompanied him there repeatedly, admitted with a wink and a grin by young officers deeply loyal to their former bosses. They took him to “the kitchen,” where Mossad scientists concocted antidotes for exotic poisons. And to “the paperworks,” where passports, visas, and credit cards were fabricated.

Janson had been grateful. He would have gone nuts without the excursions. Only gradually had it dawned on him that he was not being taught so much as tested.

He said so.

Donner didn’t blink an eye. “You’ve passed with flying colors,” he replied. “How would you like to join a rogue operation?”

“What kind of rogue operation?”

“Less Shakespeare’s ‘sweet little rogue’ than savage-elephant rogue.”

“Without my bosses at State knowing?”

“Without any bosses knowing.”

“Not even the Mossad.”

“Especially the Mossad.”

“You guys are almost retired. I’m just starting out. Why would I risk my entire future on a rogue operation?”

“Shall we take a walk?”

Donner and Weintraub took him on a long hike in the desert. Deep in the Negev, far from anywhere, without a house or road in sight, the British-born spy and the old sabra commando had taken turns patting him down for a wire. They did it without apology.

It occurred to Janson that they didn’t completely trust their friend Grandig. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“We are faced with a problem. You can help us.”

“What kind of problem?” asked Janson.

“A South African problem.”

Back then the white South Africa dictatorship was vigorously defending apartheid but losing to the African National Congress and world opinion. After suppressing the black majority for generations, it was only a matter of time before the pariah regime went under. Janson had fixed his mentor—for Miles was surely that by now, more than any he had had—with an inquiring gaze and told him that he was familiar with the rumors about Israeli–South African collaboration and had always assumed them to be overblown.

Donner had replied, “Israel would not have an arms industry if we hadn’t had South Africa as our main customer.”

“How can a Jewish nation fought for by the survivors of the genocide of the Nazi Holocaust deal with a police state that invented apartheid—which is no better than another form of state-sponsored oppression?”

“The South Africans saved us.”

“President Vorster was a Nazi. Botha wasn’t much better.”

Miles waggled his hand in a yes-no gesture. “Regardless of your opinion of those gentlemen—and I believe the world will discover that F. W. de Klerk is cut of different cloth—white South African gold and white South African diamonds paid for Israel to develop our high-tech weapons. We had the scientists. They had the means.”

“But black—”

Miles cut him off harshly. “At the end of the day, my young friend, we discover what will we do to save ourselves.”

“What will we do to advance ourselves?”

The Titan had laughed. “There is the paradox. You say to save ourselves we must advance ourselves. Very American—full of moral hope—until you run into the paradox. First we must save ourselves or there will be nothing to advance.”

Janson had heard that same argument on various issues in the State Department. His reactions—and people’s reactions to his reactions—sometimes made him feel like a preacher at an orgy. It would take him years to become more supple, but even then a hard edge on his deepest beliefs made it impossible to succumb fully to compromise. Or, he supposed, had left him brittle.

“What does this have to do with me?”

“Among the weapons Israel developed is an atomic bomb.”

“I know that. I am young, not ignorant.”

“Young and aggressive.”

“Aggression is a fine quality in an operator,” said Weintraub.

“Not when he waves it like a flag,” Donner had snapped back with uncharacteristically visible passion that young Janson had felt aimed straight at him. In that moment he understood that The Titan believed that Paul Janson possessed the intellect and personality, as well as the physical gifts, to be taught to excel in the highest ranks of the clandestine world.

Janson knew that his superiors in the State Department did not doubt that Israel had the atom bomb. It had been widely assumed. Israel had been very clever about maintaining it as a threat to their enemies, without riling their friends who were trying to prevent nuclear proliferation.

“Nuclear deterrent by implication,” Janson said. “But I hadn’t realized South Africa’s role. How did this happen?”

“Back in the seventies, we traded pounds of rare tritium for tons of South African yellowcake uranium.”

Uranium for fissionable material, tritium to boost its impact.

“All right. Israel needed yellowcake to build its bomb. What did South Africa want with tritium?”

“To make their bomb.”

That had rocked Paul Janson to the core. “South Africa has a nuclear bomb?”

“Six of them, actually.”

“But they are insane.”

“Actually, they are not. They’ve decided to destroy their nuclear weapons.”

“That’s a huge relief, if true. Are you sure it’s true?”

“They are taking the most sensible course. They see the handwriting on the wall. They know they won’t be in power for long. So they will destroy their nuclear bombs rather than let them fall into the hands of the blacks, who they don’t trust to use them responsibly.”

“Score another for bigotry and hatred.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not unanimous. Their most radical army general wants to keep the bombs to use them against the blacks.”

“That’s the sort of insanity I’d expect.”

“General Klopper is only one man. But he is powerful, beloved of the far right wing of the National Party, the die-hard Apartheidists, and the Broderbon, and commands the loyalty of his elite commando groups. Nor is there any reasoning with him. Hans Klopper is obsessed by fear and hatred of black Africa.”

“If Israel gave South Africa the bomb, then the Mossad has to stop him.”

“Mossad doesn’t want to hear about it,” Donner shot back.

“They have to hear about it. It’s their job to stop him.”

“The Mossad,” Weintraub had explained with an air of weary patience, “nurtured the relationship with South Africa. Initiated it. Without the Mossad, there would have been no relationship. The Mossad has a huge stake in the relationship and the resultant personal connections. Therefore, they simply hopethat clearer heads will prevail and the six nuclear bombs will magically disappear.”