Tel Aviv 1983. A car breaks down on a nondescript street. The two young occupants are arrested, beaten and interrogated by police - and then released. One of them is Frenchman Ariel Brenner. He came in Israel soon after his 18th birthday, ditching his sister, family and home in Paris without a word of explanation. His goal : to become one of those legendary Mossad agents. Now it is four years later, four years of grinding training in which his instructors, mainly Yossi - a veteran of the famous Munich revenge squad - tried to keep him consistently off balance. Ariel has officer's rank and an asignment to Unit 238, one of the Mossad's toughest squads. Familiar with all the techniques of the cloak-and-dagger world of Intelligence, Ariel is a specialist in the Mossad's favorite weapon : manipulation. His first assignments are in Paris, Tel Aviv, Washington. He is alone in a world governed by luck, not God, where mistakes are not allowed. Despite this, he is determined to remain his own man.