The Pure Page 4

  A girl in an apron approached him as he entered. She was very pretty, and he smiled at her. He thought she reminded him of a woman he could have known long ago, but he wasn’t sure. She spoke with a Polish accent and in a moment of hazy generosity he considered buying her a drink, buying her a house, proposing to her. He pulled himself together again and asked in Russian if Andrzej was there. She asked him if he was Tomislav Kasheyev. He nodded and she gave him another sort of look, as if he might be a policeman. He ordered a Scotch. Then she showed him upstairs to the back room.

  There seemed to be no air and for a moment Uzi thought he would pass out. He was dehydrated. He turned to ask for some water, but the girl had disappeared. He drank his Scotch. The room was square and gloaming, with blacked-out windows and red drapes lining the walls. Incongruous music was playing in the background – Metallica. Three men sat around a table, their amber beer glasses clustered around a candle in the middle. Two were leaning back casually, and one – Squeal’s contact, Andrzej – sat hunched forward, his arms folded into his stomach. Little could be seen of them on account of the shadows; the room was lit only by candles. They looked up, scrutinising Uzi carefully. Then they beckoned him over and he took a seat among them.

  ‘Special delivery,’ he said in Russian.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Andrzej, in the same language but with a strong Polish accent. ‘What excellent service. Wonderful.’

  ‘Party, is it?’ said Uzi, not letting go of his rucksack. ‘Birthday party?’

  ‘Yes,’ Andrzej said, ‘for one of my girlfriends.’ They all laughed and drank.

  Uzi lit a cigarette and nobody said anything. One Metallica song ended and another began. Then Andrzej lit up in the same way, blowing a jet of smoke over Uzi’s shoulder. They all laughed. Sidelong, Uzi sized them up. Well dressed, but in a try-hard sort of way. Small-time. Unsure of themselves. But he knew that amateurs could be more dangerous than professionals; these men could be volatile. They were in a jovial mood, but they clearly had something to prove.

  ‘So, Tomislav, my friend,’ said Andrzej with a smile. ‘Let’s see the goods.’

  ‘Put the money on the table,’ said Uzi.

  ‘Open the bag,’ said Andrzej.

  Uzi reached into his rucksack and pulled out a spliff. Then he tossed it on to the table and sat back.

  ‘Why the hurry?’ he said. ‘Have a puff. Free sample.’

  This seemed to slacken the atmosphere. Andrzej rested his cigarette on the edge of the table and lit the spliff. The Poles handed it around.

  ‘I’m not going to lie to you, Tomislav,’ said Andrzej, ‘this is some good shit you got here. Some good, good shit.’ Evidently, he was the only one who ever spoke.

  ‘Yes,’ said Uzi, ‘you’re going to have a great party.’

  The men eyed him warily as Andrzej produced a thick envelope. Upon seeing it, Uzi removed the stash from his bag and put it on the table, without letting go. He felt strangely relieved to have emptied the rucksack. Andrzej moved to take the stash, but Uzi held fast.

  ‘Not until I’ve counted the money,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you understand.’

  Andrzej pursed his lips and made a generous gesture with the spliff, leaving loops of smoke in the air. Then he dragged on it and exhaled exaggeratedly. The other men laughed. Uzi opened the envelope. It took him a long time with one hand. What an amateur, he thought, what a fucking amateur. Lost my edge.

  ‘Come now, don’t be so wary,’ said Andrzej in flowery Russian. ‘You are amongst friends here, Tomislav.’

  Uzi took his hand away from the stash and counted the money quickly. His head was fuzzy and he had to start again. When he looked up, Andrzej was cradling his stash.

  ‘This is only nine hundred,’ said Uzi. ‘We agreed a thousand.’

  ‘A hundred here, a hundred there,’ said Andrzej casually. ‘We are aiming for a long-term relationship. There’s no need to be petty. Next time we’ll pay you more. When we have full confidence.’

  His companions laughed.

  ‘We agreed a grand,’ said Uzi, knowing that this was a test of his gullibility; if he gave in now, they’d rip him off for ever. ‘A grand or no deal.’

  ‘You should be grateful for the money,’ said Andrzej. ‘One thousand is too much. As you know, you could buy a herd of cows for this on the steppe. Maybe two herds.’

  The Poles laughed again.

  ‘Don’t fuck with me,’ Uzi said. ‘I’ve got a business to run.’

  ‘It’s only a hundred pounds.’

  ‘I don’t care. Don’t fuck with me.’

  ‘Don’t be a prick, Tomislav Kasheyev.’

  ‘Fuck your mother.’

  ‘What?’

  With a single movement, Uzi snatched the stash and got to his feet, backing towards the door. The men rose too. One of them spat. Uzi threw the money down and pushed his way into the restaurant. It was busier now, and he almost collided with the waitress as he dashed into the street. His heart was beating and he couldn’t escape the feeling that he needed another spliff. Part of him was relishing the adrenaline. It had been a long time.

  As soon as he turned a corner the Poles were there. They had taken the back exit and doubled back. Bastards, he thought. He had given them back their money, but that was not enough. They walked towards him, illuminated by the bloody sun which was beginning to die behind the houses.

  ‘Tomislav,’ called Andrzej, smiling, ‘there was no need to be impolite.’

  Uzi felt the old coldness spreading through his body, shining out of his eyes, and suddenly he was hyper-alert. They couldn’t allow him to insult them, just as he couldn’t allow them to rip him off. He stepped into the middle of the road, drawing them out where he could see them. In his mind’s eye he saw, from fifteen years before, the mock street with the wooden men that would pop out to be shot; his training was kicking in, and that meant danger. There were no snipers on the roofs, of course there weren’t, why would there be? It felt strange being unarmed, not even a knife. Reckless. No backup, of course not. The streets were strangely deserted. He was ready to die. His shirt was sticking to his body and his eyes tracked the men like an animal. They fanned out, Andrzej walking straight towards him and the others taking the flanks. The way they walked, so brazenly, it was clear they were amateurs. But he was outnumbered, slowed by the dope, and he’d lost his edge. A hundred yards away, some passers-by stopped, staring.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, my friend,’ called Andrzej. ‘Why are you being stupid?’

  Uzi glanced to his left and then bolted to his right, heading for a gap between two cars. One of the men tried to grab at him. Uzi gripped the man’s wrist and landed a heavy punch on his temple. They scuffled as the man went down, and in the process Uzi felt a swipe across his leg. He kicked the Pole hard against a parked car; the man crumpled and something fell from his hand. Uzi turned to run, but it was already too late. He was boxed in: Andrzej on one side, his second accomplice on the other. And both held butterfly knives.

  ‘You’re being stupid, my Russian friend,’ said Andrzej smiling. ‘Take a look at your leg.’ Uzi looked down. His trousers were flapping open and a bloody wound gaped in his thigh. ‘See? Business is business.’

  Uzi did not feel any pain, but the sight of his own blood enraged him. This was stupid, to get cut for the sake of a hundred pounds, to get cut by such amateurs. But still his rage was channelled, kept in check, in the old way. Andrzej’s companion looked away and in that instant Uzi sprang at him, twisting his knife hand away and butting him in the face, his Krav Maga training returning seamlessly to him. The man recoiled and bucked in an unexpected way, breaking free. Then he lunged and Uzi was just able to sidestep, spinning the man into the wall. But his knife caught his shoulder, and another gash appeared. This one Uzi felt. A sharp pain, like a paper cut. And now he felt the pain in his leg as well.

  ‘Your life is about to end here, far from home,’ said Andrzej. ‘Ask yourself if it is worth it. For two herds of cow
s in Russia.’ The other man stood panting, holding his knife at throat height. And now the other was picking himself up painfully from the ground. ‘Give me the bag or we will take it from your fingers when you’re bleeding in the gutter like a pig.’

  Suddenly, from between two parked cars, a figure stepped into view. A woman: elegant and slightly aloof, like an actress from an old film, too striking to be a woman in the street. She looked at Uzi, nodded, then focused on the Russians.

  ‘OK,’ she said slowly, ‘that’s enough.’ She slipped her hand into her Versace bag and a pistol glinted. Uzi recognised it at once; an American-made Taurus .22 snub-nosed revolver, two-inch barrel, nine-shot cylinder, optimal penetrating power. Just the weapon for a woman: compact and powerful. And she held it comfortably, like a professional. ‘Put the weapons down,’ said Eve. ‘Then fuck off. I’m only telling you once.’ It was only then that Uzi noticed a gang of five men standing in the shadows behind her.

  An odd expression came over Andrzej’s face, somewhere between admiration and fear. For a moment he caught Uzi’s eye, giving him a glance that penetrated to his soul. After what seemed like an age he dropped his knife to the ground and slipped off into the darkness, followed by his accomplices. Eve pursued them at a slow pace, holding the pistol, shepherding them away; her men followed too, in the shadows. Uzi saw his chance – he only had a split second – and bolted. He didn’t think Eve would follow him; he didn’t care who she was or what she wanted. Death was close now, and some ancient instinct was driving him on. He ran hard, veering around corners, as police sirens began to wail in the distance.

  6

  Fifteen years ago, when the Office first approached Uzi – or Adam, as he was known then – it had come at the right time. His parents had been dead for exactly a year, and the storm that ripped through his life thereafter had abated, leaving behind a landscape of desolation. Everything was ruined in him; everything had collapsed in the split second it took the bomber on bus 23 to pull the cord on his suicide vest.

  The phone call had been like an aircraft crashing into the ocean. The voice was soft, telling him only the basic details, and instantly he had known. He had gone under. The voice had sounded like the surf. His breath had been knocked noiselessly out of him and he found himself sitting on the floor, the telephone dangling on its wire before his face. He was a member of Shayetet 13, Israel’s most elite naval commando unit; renowned for their psychological resilience, they could function under levels of combat stress and fear that would have been debilitating to any other soldiers. The training had lasted twenty months. But it hadn’t prepared him for this. Over the next year he learned to adapt, to function in a state of devastation, perhaps more effectively than before. But he would never again come to the surface.

  When he was growing up, in a nondescript suburb of Tel Aviv where the summers were unbearably hot and the winters made a mockery of the sun-baked apartment blocks, the ocean was always present. He would go there most days with the kids from his class; they would have barbecues, eye up girls, play guitar, tumble in the waves, and on Friday evenings, on a spit of rock with hundreds of others, they would play drums, a great tribal pulse. Somehow his parents were in everything: the rocks, the sky, the ocean. His father, a squat, grizzled Special Forces officer, with battle scars from ’67, and half deaf from the bombs of ’73, had taught him to swim and to fish; they had played beach football and drunk beer together into the evenings. His mother; well, his mother. A painter who painted the seascape.

  It was like being told you will never see the ocean again.

  He had gone back to Atlit – the secret naval commando base on a fortified island in the Mediterranean – the following morning. But his commanding officer had turned him away, forced him to take a week’s compassionate leave, to see a Navy psychiatrist. It was during this time, as the days and nights blurred in endless cycles of numb insomnia, that two men from his unit – two of his friends, his brothers – were killed during a kidnap operation on the coast of Lebanon, their blood mingling with the shingle and the surf.

  Nehama had stayed by his side throughout. She had loved his parents, and buried her own grief as best she could in order to support him through his. That, perhaps, was where the trap-door opened. While she encased herself in rock for his sake, he sank to the ocean bed, and there would never be any way back. Over the months a distance grew between them; they slept spooned in opposite directions, they could no longer hold each other’s gaze. Their expressions of love became occasional and hollow. He no longer turned to her, the girl he had loved since childhood. He was still submerged, still drowning, and when she reached out to him, through her stone walls, through the water, the distance was simply too great.

  So when, a year on, Uzi’s – Adam’s – commanding officer took him aside and ordered him to report to the Shalishut military base on the outskirts of Ramat Gan and not to mention it to anybody, including Nehama, Adam knew intuitively that this was the change he needed. That Nehama needed. He shut his M-4 in a secure locker – it was too cumbersome, and he had his Glock – and, uncomfortable in the early summer humidity, with heat raging through him, caught two buses and arrived at Shalishut in good time.

  He was met by a young soldier who showed him to a nondescript door in the bowels of the base. Before knocking, the soldier asked Adam for his sidearm; Adam refused, but the soldier was adamant, so in the end Adam drew the weapon and handed it over, butt first. He always felt nervous unarmed, but it was a military base, after all. The soldier knocked, and opened the door for Adam as if he were important. Then he left, closing the door behind him.

  In the room Adam saluted reflexively, only to be surprised by a middle-aged man in civilian dress: open-necked shirt, polyester trousers, something of the kibbutznik about him. Another man was sitting silently in the corner, peering over his spectacles, taking notes.

  ‘Welcome, Colonel,’ said the first man.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Adam replied.

  ‘I am sorry about your parents.’

  ‘It has been a year, sir.’

  ‘A year is not very long.’

  ‘It will be longer.’

  The man smiled and gestured for Adam to sit down. ‘I can see from your file that you have been promoted quickly, Colonel. You are serving your country well. Would you say that is correct?’

  ‘Shayetet 13 is not a holiday camp, sir,’ said Adam, suddenly rather irritated.

  ‘Of course,’ said the man, ‘but I am going to tell you how you can serve your country better. Would you be open to suggestions?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Yigal.’

  ‘From where? NID? Shabak?’

  Yigal waved away his questions like smoke. ‘So, would you be open to suggestions?’

  ‘I might, sir,’ said Adam.

  ‘What about Nehama?’

  ‘Nehama, my wife?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘What about my wife?’

  ‘Would she be open to suggestions?’

  ‘What kind of suggestions?’

  Yigal sighed.

  ‘Try to relax, Colonel,’ he said slowly, as if to a child. ‘Do you want a coffee? Cigarette perhaps?’

  Adam shook his head, although he wanted both. There was a pause. He thought about getting up, walking out, but he didn’t. The man in the corner was writing in pencil, the scratching was loud in the room.

  ‘The computer picked out your name,’ said Yigal. ‘Your profile fits our criteria. You were selected out of fifteen thousand possible candidates.’ He looked up as if gauging the impact of this on his interviewee, then continued. ‘Our primary objective is to defend Jews all over the world. We’re like a family, and we think you might fit in. Of course, if you are interested, this would only be the beginning. You would need to go through our tests and so on. Not many people succeed.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Adam, failing to keep the customary irony out of his voice.

  Yigal looked up shar
ply, then continued. ‘Training would be in Israel, but you wouldn’t be able to live at home. You would be given leave to see your family every three weeks. If – if – you pass all the tests and complete the training, you may have to work abroad. Your family would not accompany you. You would see them every other month.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘A weekend, sometimes longer.’

  ‘The pay?’

  ‘A little more than you presently receive.’

  ‘How much more?’

  ‘A little more, Colonel.’

  More scratching from the man in the corner.

  ‘So tell me,’ said Yigal, placing a pen carefully, in parallel, on the desk. ‘Based on what I’ve told you so far, are you interested?’

  ‘Based on what you have told me so far? I might be, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  Suddenly shouts could be heard, men’s voices, outside the room. Adam looked from Yigal to the man in the corner; their eyes were fixed on the door behind him. As he turned, following their gaze, the door burst open and he was knocked from his chair to the floor. Everything went into slow motion. He saw it all in exquisite detail, a moving tableau. Maybe this was his time; if it was, he didn’t care. Shots rang out and he caught a glimpse of Yigal, half-standing, shuddering as several bullets hit him in the chest. Three masked figures were whirling like dancers, their submachine guns flashing. Adam turned to see the man in the corner being shot in the chest as well, and slumping over. A slim figure in a black ski mask, fragile hands – woman’s hands – aimed a weapon at Adam. He rolled to the side and scrabbled to his knees, groping for his Glock. The holster was empty. The woman kicked Adam hard against the wall. He had no chance. His head struck concrete and he was dazed. As quickly as they had appeared, the attackers were gone.