The Pure (7 page)

‘Yes, of course. You’re in. But you could still fail the training, don’t forget.’

‘That would be a shame.’

‘Wouldn’t it? Anyway, mazal tov. I can see you’re going to be a great father.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Mazal tov again.’ Yigal turned his face away, looking out at the road.

‘You seem to know something I don’t,’ said Adam.

‘Not any more,’ said Yigal over his shoulder.

Adam tried to dismiss the information as just another part of the training, just another mind game. But as the car sped through the city, something deep inside him began to twist. Nehama had polycystic ovaries. The chances of her being able to conceive a child were slim. Surely she wouldn’t have kept the information from him?

He took out his phone, brought up her number, almost pressed ‘call’. But he hesitated; biting his lip, he sent her a text instead. He was surprised when the answer came immediately: ‘Talk when you get back.’

Adam’s emotions went in all directions at once. But he’d been pursuing this goal for months single-mindedly; he’d got through the recruitment process, and he wasn’t going to let anything stop him now. The car reached their destination. As he opened the door and stepped out on to the sun-faded gravel, he drew on all of his training to marshal his thoughts and feelings. He raised his face to the new sun, allowing it to tighten his skin. Suddenly his mind felt taut, clear, locked down. Ready for anything.

‘Daniel? Daniel?’

Uzi opened his eyes. For a few moments, a haze of glittering sparks moved across his field of vision. He blinked, and they gradually cleared.

‘Waxman?’ said Uzi.

‘Don’t try to move, Daniel. You’ve lost a lot of blood.’

‘Where am I?’

‘In H2.’

‘H2?’

‘Hatzola Ambulance 2.’

‘Where are we?’

‘I just transferred you here for treatment. We’re parked outside your flat.’

‘How the hell did you carry me down two flights of stairs?’

‘It wasn’t easy.’

‘Fuck.’ Uzi felt woozy and the pain from his wounds was almost unbearable. But, to his relief, it was no longer a critical sort of pain. Instinctively he felt that his core had been stabilised, that he was not going to lose his life. Not yet.

‘Nice ambulance,’ he said, mustering a sardonic smile. He was lying on a narrow bed; all around him was medical equipment.

‘This thing cost eighty thousand pounds,’ said Waxman.

‘A private ambulance for the community. Rich Jews, eh?’

‘Generous Jews. Hatzola’s a charity, Adam.’

‘That’s what I meant.’ Uzi saw Waxman glance nervously at his watch. He looked jittery, as usual. That’s what the Office did to its Sayanim. ‘Will you do something for me?’

‘Of course.’

‘In my pocket there should still be a packet of cigarettes. Light me a cigarette.’

A look of alarm passed across Waxman’s face. ‘A cigarette?’

‘What, you can’t hear properly? Yes, a cigarette. A cigarette,’ said Uzi.

Waxman, unsure of himself, complied.

Uzi inhaled deeply, coughed, and blew a jet of smoke vertically towards the ceiling of the vehicle.

‘I’ll open the door,’ mumbled Waxman.

‘Don’t touch the fucking door,’ said Uzi. ‘You could get us both killed.’

The man paled and Uzi broke into a grin. ‘Relax, my brother, relax,’ he said. ‘Have a cigarette.’

Waxman declined and stood there, awkwardly, in silence.

‘So,’ said Uzi, wincing, ‘tell me how it is.’

‘Daniel: you’re a lucky man,’ said Waxman, relieved at the opportunity to slip back into his doctor’s role. ‘Both times the blade missed your arteries. You’ve lost blood but I’m giving you a transfusion. I’ve sewn up the wounds. I could have done with a hospital, but needs must.’

Uzi traced a tube from his arm upwards to a bag of blood. ‘How long before I can get off this thing?’

‘Half an hour minimum.’

‘Twenty minutes. I have my cigarettes.’

Waxman shuffled his feet. ‘I would lose my position if I let a patient smoke in an ambulance.’

‘So what? We’d take you and your family straight to Israel. That’s where you should be anyway.’

‘Perhaps. But my children are at school, my wife and I have our careers . . .’

‘But I was never here, right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So.’

Uzi sucked the last embers of life from his cigarette. ‘Pass me an ashtray, will you?’

Waxman looked around and offered Uzi a cardboard kidney dish. Uzi stubbed out and for a while lay there in silence. Waxman sat on a fold-out chair.

‘So have you been working much for us lately?’ Uzi asked.

‘A little. I did something last month, I think it was.’

‘Serious?’

‘No.’

They fell silent again until the bag of blood emptied. Then Waxman removed the needle and helped Uzi to his feet. Uzi felt strange, light-headed but strong. Waxman pressed a bottle of painkillers and a bundle of fresh dressings into his hand. ‘I’ll remove the stitches in three weeks’ time.’

‘I’ll do it myself,’ Uzi replied as he stepped out of the ambulance into the breaking dawn. ‘Let’s hope I don’t call on you again.’

Waxman smiled for the first time, openly relieved to have completed his mission.

Suddenly, Uzi was overcome with a sense of recklessness. Fuck them, he thought. A gnat biting an elephant. Fuck them. ‘You’ve done a great job,’ he said casually. ‘How does fifty thousand sound?’

Waxman gulped. ‘I’ve never been paid before . . . I’d donate it to charity. Well, most of it.’

‘Good. Who’s your contact at London Station?’

‘Arik.’

‘Well, speak to Arik and he’ll transfer the funds. You know the communication protocol?’

‘Yes, but I’m supposed to use it only in an emergency.’

‘Use it now. Tell Arik I authorised it.’

‘OK.’

‘And Waxman?’

‘Yes, Daniel?’

‘Don’t spend it all at once.’ With that, Uzi slammed the ambulance door and made his way back to his apartment.

The painkillers had a limited effect, and Uzi knew he would be unable to sleep, so he decided not to try. Through a crack in the curtains he watched until Waxman’s ambulance disappeared down the road. In the bathroom he scraped out the inside of the showerhead with a spoon and washed as best he could, without getting the bandages wet. Then he rolled himself a spliff and sat in front of his two televisions. The softening hand of marijuana caressed his injuries, led him to a pleasing remove from the world. He almost didn’t notice when his ear began to itch.

‘That was cheeky,’ said the Kol, ‘that thing with Waxman.’ The voice was as cool and unemotional as ever.

‘Can’t we get back into our routine?’ he mumbled. ‘You were supposed to only come out at night.’

‘I am the Kol. I can come out whenever I please.’

‘You’re a heartless bitch, you know that?’ said Uzi.

The Kol fell silent. Uzi squinted at the screen through the fragrant smoke. The heat of the day was beginning to fall into his apartment; he opened the window and sat down. Slowly but surely, his eyelids became leaden and his mind gently wandered. The picture of Ram Shalev – the one which had been on the front page of all the newspapers after he was killed by Operation Cinnamon – appeared his mind. Smiling in his garden with his two children, his wife. The trees behind, the vivid blue sky, the button-down shirt. Uzi tried not to hold on to the image. He knew it would only make things worse. Eventually it passed, and for a while images of the ambulance appeared, pleasant images, as if it had been a comfortable place to be. As if it were a womb.

Then, memories of a kill sprang up, his second kill for the Office. Beirut, 2007. Lebanon was being rebuilt in the aftermath of the Israeli bombardment. A network of new roads and bridges was being constructed throughout the capital; Adam was posing as a building contractor, bribing local construction workers to build plastic cases into the infrastructure as they worked. Airtight plastic cases containing little Israeli-made bombs that could remain in a serviceable state for years, even decades, buried in bridges and motorways, to be detonated remotely at the push of a button. They would give Israel a great advantage if there was another war. But it was dangerous work. Not only was there a good chance that one of the construction workers would be caught in the act, but it was difficult to trust them. They were being paid handsomely, of course, but the operation had been put together in haste, and Adam hadn’t had time to build up a solid connection with these men; as a result their relationship was always poisoned by suspicion.

One in particular – Walid Khaled, a wiry old labourer with the eyes of a beaten dog – had been spotted one night photographing the bridge with his mobile phone. No chances could be taken. A kill request was sent to Israel and the prime minister approved it within hours; an emergency closed-doors court case had ruled that the action was unavoidable. The only snag was that all the Kidonim – assassination units – were tied up elsewhere in the world. Adam would have to carry it out himself, despite his lack of expertise. The danger was too great; if Khaled reported him to the authorities, or, if he was clever enough, sold the information, the Office’s mission would be compromised and Adam would almost certainly be dead. There was a chance that Khaled was innocent, of course. But Adam had no choice.

This was no time for a signature hit. The Office’s usual brand of audacious, broad daylight attack – a devastating volley of dum-dum bullets in a public place, followed by a single shot to the temple – was out of the question. The operation was in a delicate enough state as it was. So Adam armed himself with a newspaper and a bottle of vodka, and arranged a meeting with Khaled.

He wasted no time. As soon as the labourer drove up in his dust-covered jalopy, Adam slid into the car and forced a Desflurane ether mask over the man’s face. Khaled struggled, but had been taken by surprise. His fingernails scratched Adam’s cheek; that was all. Adam drove north along the coast, with Khaled slumped in the back, until he found a stretch of secluded cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean. He hauled the unconscious labourer into the driver’s seat, rolled the newspaper into a funnel – it was the Lebanese
Daily Star
, the ink rubbed off on his fingers, for some reason he remembered that – and poured half a bottle of vodka through the funnel and down the man’s throat. Vodka, which he knew Khaled drank in secret. Vodka, which burns easily. He poured the rest of the bottle over the front seats, threw in a match and watched it go up. When the fire was raging, he pushed the car over the cliff. Then, after a long hike to the nearest town, he took the train back to Beirut.

It was this kill that floated back into his mind as he dozed; the rough scuff of the newspaper against his fingers, the lolling face of the labourer, vodka darkening his shirt like sweat; the vast, black Mediterranean sky and the indigo ocean, the flap of the flames as they burst into life in the car; the heat; the long, slow-motion tumble of the vehicle on to the rocks; the surf below. The feeling of it. The voice in the back of his mind – which he didn’t allow himself to hear – asking whether there couldn’t have been another way.

He was awoken by a loud buzzing.

‘Tommy? It’s Squeal. Open up, I can smell you’re there. I’ll huff, and I’ll puff . . .’

Uzi yanked the door open.

‘Just coming to see you, my man. To see how you’re doing. You flush now? Sale went well?’

Uzi gripped Squeal by the biceps and brought him into the flat, his milk-coloured dreadlocks rasping as he looked around in bewilderment.

‘Hey man, what gives? What gives?’

‘What gives?’ Uzi repeated, shoving Squeal down on the sofa. ‘This is what gives.’ He showed him the bandages on his arm, his leg. ‘Your friend Andrzej did this. I thought you said he was safe.’

‘What? Tommy, no way. You’re kidding me.’

‘Do I look like I’m fucking kidding you?’

‘Shit, man, shit,’ said Squeal. ‘What happened?’

‘That bastard tried to screw me. I was outnumbered. Butterfly knives.’

‘Jesus, man. Jesus. Do you think he’ll come after me?’

‘I couldn’t give a fuck.’

‘Andrzej’s been jumpy recently,’ said Squeal. ‘I know he’s been jumpy. I should have warned you.’

‘Why has he been jumpy?’

‘He’s had a few run-ins with the Russians, you know? Liberty.’

‘Liberty?’

‘Yeah, Liberty. That American bird.’

Uzi showed no sign that Squeal had got his attention. He started rolling a spliff, keeping his voice casual.

‘American bird?’ he asked.

‘You’ve heard of her, yeah? American woman running a Russian gang. New on the scene, as far as I know. She’s big time. Not just dope and E: crack, smack, the lot. Cross her and she’ll fuck you good and proper.’

‘An American woman running a Russian gang?’ said Uzi, pretending to be one step behind, lighting the spliff.

‘Straight up,’ Squeal replied. ‘Apparently she’s got a way with them. Ruthless as fuck. Like I said, new on the scene. And you know what it’s like with Russians and Poles.’ He mimed a mushroom cloud with his hands and squealed.

Uzi passed the spliff across and closed his eyes. The pain had been dulled into a jangling throb, pulsating through his nervous system at a regular pace. Squeal smoked until half the joint was gone. Uzi didn’t have the energy to ask for it back. Finally, leaving the remaining half smouldering in the ashtray, Squeal disappeared into the kitchen and came back with two strawberry mousses, two plates.

‘Not now, Squeal. Not now. I’ve been cut,’ said Uzi, shielding his eyes from the sight of the mousses.

‘Don’t be a pussy, Tommy. Come on. Pudding wars.’ Squeal peeled back the lids of both tubs and upended them on the plates. They stood there, two pink, quivering sandcastles.

‘I’m not doing it,’ said Uzi.

‘You are,’ said Squeal. He placed the mousses side by side on the table and crouched over one of them, his mouth slightly open, poised an inch from the slippery surface. He looked at Uzi expectantly. Reluctantly Uzi assumed the same position above his mousse.

‘On three,’ said Squeal. He thumped his hand on the table three times and both men slurped loudly. The puddings vanished, as if by magic.