The Pure

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