The Pure

the most famed and feared intelligence service in the world. And he had just been accepted into it.
    In the glaring sunlight, he looked about him. Several identical cars were parking alongside in the formation of a fan, and from each a new recruit emerged, accompanied by their recruiters. They were ushered in past the guards, through metal detectors, past the retina scanners, past more guards, and into the atrium of the Midrasha – the Academy.
    The atmosphere was silent, almost sacrosanct. Everything was white: the walls, the ceiling, the stairs. The floor was pale marble. A staircase spiralled upwards, constructed to look as if it were suspended in thin air. A glass wall faced an inner garden full of trees heavy with figs and dates. On either side two long corridors stretched into the distance. On the walls, fully two metres tall, were aerial photographs of the land of Israel. And prominently displayed above the main entrance was the motto of the Academy, embossed in gilt upon stone: ‘By way of deception thou shalt make war’.
    The new recruits were shown into an airy classroom of butter-coloured stone. They settled into their seats. The initiation process had made them guarded, ready for anything; they dared not speak. Around the edge of the room sat the recruiters, murmuring to each other in confidential tones. Then a hush fell in the room and everyone got to their feet. Adam turned to see a bear-like man prowling to the front as if intent on something immensely practical. Behind him was a smartly dressed woman, in her forties Uzi guessed, with the bearing of someone who has the power to subjugate any level of chaos with ease. The man rested heavily on a lectern and the woman stood behind him, holding a leather folder like a breastplate. Everyone sat down, and Adam felt the aversion he normally felt to synagogue rise within him, then disappear.
    ‘Welcome, recruits,’ said the man. ‘I am Ezra Oren, the head of the Midrasha. Congratulations to all of you for passing the tests. You are now theoretically members of the organisation we call “the Office”. It has a real name, and that is well known. I will speak it once now, and you will never hear it from me, or any other member of the Office again. You are now working for HaMossad leModi’in ule Tafkidim Meyuchadim (the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations) – the Mossad. Know this, appreciate it – and forget it.’
    Adam felt as if all his blood had been drained from his body and replaced with ice, which was then pumped out and replaced with boiling water. He wanted to move, to run, to punch, but he couldn’t. The Mossad. He had known, of course; everybody had known. But now it had been declared. And nobody could ever take it away from him.
    ‘You were each chosen above thousands of other candidates,’ Oren continued, ‘because you have the raw material we need. Now we need to mould you into intelligence operatives. I can promise that not all of you will make it through training. In the past we have had groups in which not a single person qualified. We would rather that than risk having one substandard person in the Office. We are like a family; we rely on each other to survive and to defend Jews around the world. So we don’t care about size or quotas. If you want to be part of the best intelligence service in existence – the best family in existence – you need to be the best as well.’
    Part of Adam’s mind felt detached, ironic. But the rest of his mind – most of him – was drinking it all in as the heat passed through his veins.
    ‘The game you are stepping into is dangerous,’ Oren continued. ‘From now on, the highest price is no longer your own life. There are many things more valuable than that.’ He looked coldly from one recruit to the next. ‘You must trust your instructors completely. They are field operatives on sabbatical, not career instructors; afterwards, they will return to the field. They will see you as future partners, future colleagues, not students. That is, apart from myself: I have been in the Office for thirty years, and there are now very few places in Europe that I can still go safely. So I am babysitting you children – for the moment.’ He paused, leaned on the lectern again.
    ‘In short, our methods are based on experience, not on theoretical textbooks and regulations,’ he went on. ‘That’s what we are offering you. And on a personal note, I must tell you that the story from my