The Pure

cigarettes. Representatives from the different intelligence agencies would be vying with each other to have an influence on the operation and to catch the attention of the PM, who would be seated, brooding, at the head of the table, in his high-backed leather swivel chair, making occasional cutting remarks and drinking carbonated water. All available resources would be focused on Operation Desert Rain; after all, if the MOIS sources were accurate – and he had no reason to believe they weren’t – there were only eighteen hours until the attack commenced.
    Departure time arrived, and they boarded along with the rest of the crew. While Leila took care of her duties with the passengers, Uzi strapped himself into his seat alongside the pilot – an undercover operative from the MIT, the Turkish secret service – and went through the final checks. The aircraft was a Boeing 737, relatively straightforward to handle, and even though Uzi had not revisited his Mossad flight training for several years, he felt comfortable enough as co-pilot. Leila made the announcements in Turkish and English over the intercom, then she joined them in the cockpit. They taxied to the runway, exchanging good-natured remarks over the roar of the engine, and lined themselves up for take-off. Then the jet engines fired, the plane leapt forwards, the runway shortened rapidly in front of them, the nose of the plane lifted as if on a thermal current, and they were airborne, one metre, two metres, ten, fifteen. Clean air between them and the strife-ridden earth. London diminished below them, turning into a map before their eyes; the pilot banked then steered into the open blueness. They had done it. They had evaded the clutches of the Mossad.

 
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    When the 737 reached its cruising altitude on automatic pilot, Uzi and Leila said they wanted to speak in confidence. The Turkish operative nodded and left the cockpit. The comms were off, the door was locked, and there was no way they could be overheard. This was perhaps the most secure place they could ever be, ten thousand miles in the air in the cockpit of a commercial aeroplane.
    For a moment they looked at each other in silence, both adjusting to the fact that it was safe to drop their cover. It was almost a physical experience; the pilot falling away from Uzi, the flight attendant from Leila, peeling off like the skin of a snake.
    ‘Well,’ said Leila, ‘that was easy.’
    ‘It had to be,’ said Uzi, ‘after that motorcycle chase. There were a couple of times where I thought I was taking my last breath.’
    ‘But it worked, didn’t it?’
    ‘Sure, it worked. We’ve made it.’
    ‘Poor Stefan,’ said Leila with a laugh, ‘I hope the Mossad don’t rough him up too much.’
    Uzi looked out of the window at the endless blueness, at the carpet of cloud below them. There they were, just the two of them, thousands of miles up, the dashboard, with its hundreds of buttons, lights and switches, curved in a semi-circle around them.
    ‘You make a great flight attendant, by the way,’ said Uzi.
    ‘You think?’ she replied, piqued. ‘Well, you make a great co-pilot.’
    ‘Can I smoke in here?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘Even as the man who is about to bring peace to the Middle East?’
    Leila shrugged. ‘Even for the Messiah himself.’
    ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you. Why are we heading to Syria? Why not Iran?’
    ‘If the Mossad were to pick up our trail, a destination in Iran would give us away. So we’re heading to Syria. Iran and Syria support each other’s nuclear weapons programmes. So if you help us protect our yellowcake, you’ll be helping the Syrians as well.’
    Uzi nodded and looked out of the window again. All he could see was clouds and empty space. It was as if the world didn’t exist.
    ‘So,’ he said, ‘this is where you give me the briefing?’ He removed his headset and placed it on the dashboard.
    ‘This is where I give you the briefing,’ Leila confirmed, untying her neckerchief. She paused to gather her thoughts. ‘As you know, after a stopover in Istanbul, we’ll land in Damascus. There we’ll liaise with two Syrian agents who will drive us to the port town of Al L ā dhiq ī yah. There’s a villa complex on the coast which the President of Syria gave to the MOIS as their base of operations in his country. We call it “Little Tehran”. It’s low-profile, completely secure, and offers a delightful view of the ocean.’
    ‘We might as