The Pure

contrived. Perhaps it was paranoia; maybe Avner was right, maybe he was suffering from spy syndrome. But it all felt too well planned. Believe in yourself, Uzi, he thought. Don’t forget who you are. Believe.
    There was a tap at the door of the shed. Through the window he could see the outline of a schoolgirl. He opened the door.
    ‘You’ve been expecting me,’ said Gal.
    ‘I didn’t recognise you. What have you done to your hair?’
    ‘Dyed it. Ever heard of that?’ She nudged past him and into the shed. He closed the door behind her. Her hair was now raven-black and swept across her forehead. It made her eyes look as vivid as sapphires. Around one of her wrists was a stack of black bracelets. They were new as well. ‘Have you found my iPhone?’ she said. Again, her shirt was being pulled to the side by her rucksack. Again, the sliver of underwear. Again, the little swell of breast, but now a heart had been drawn on to the skin with felt-tip pen.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘I’m thinking of getting a tattoo,’ said Gal. ‘I’m updating myself while my parents are away in Israel.’ She pulled her shirt a little lower to reveal more of her breast, fading from bronze to white. Again, the rush of electricity to his groin. She pointed to the felt-tip heart. ‘What do you think?’
    ‘Updating yourself?’
    ‘Yeah. You should think about it once in a while.’
    He shrugged, waiting for the question that he knew would come.
    ‘So did you bring the stuff?’
    ‘No. I forgot,’ he said.
    ‘What do you mean, you forgot? You forgot I saw you with drugs on school premises? Or you forgot to keep your side of the deal?’
    ‘You’re full of shit, you know that?’ he said.
    ‘I want my stuff.’
    ‘Fine, kid. Fine. I’ll bring it tomorrow.’
    ‘Where do you live?’
    ‘Kilburn.’
    ‘OK. Let’s drive there after school, OK? Pick up my stuff.’
    ‘I don’t have a car.’
    ‘I do.’ She gave him a withering look and headed for the door. ‘Three thirty.’ She sniffed, turned and was gone.
    The phone rang. It was Avner. As soon as he heard his voice, Uzi hung up. He needed to think. He checked his two-way radio was working, went across the road and had a cigarette. The nicotine gave him a buzz, calmed him. He smoked another. Then he returned to the shed. When he got there, the phone was ringing again.
    ‘Look, Avner . . .’ The line went dead.
    For the rest of the day, Uzi was alone with his thoughts. He dwelled on how effectively the Office turned people from idealistic, open-minded recruits into cold-blooded, self-serving operatives. He remembered the sociometric sessions, where trainees were encouraged to rate each other’s performances in front of their peers, brutally and openly, no holds barred. Several times people broke down, and fights sometimes erupted. At the time it seemed like just another challenge. It was only later that he realised how the Office was moulding his character, and the characters of those around him. The recruits responded to the pressure by forming allegiances and gangs. They started to double-cross each other. Any sense of trust was wiped permanently from their psyches; they had become different people, harder people, and there was no way back.
    After the assassination of Anne-Marie, he had made an appointment to see Yigal. To share his burden of guilt. To seek reassurance that his first hit had been justified. Instead, he was ordered, in no uncertain terms, not to ‘become a man who thinks too much’, or he ‘wouldn’t be around very long’. This memory, which marked the first step on his journey to disillusionment, caused everything to come back to him in a rapid succession of images, voices, memories: the drug smuggling, the arms deals, the money laundering, the corruption, the sex, the assassinations, the double-deals, the disregard for life, the money, the coldness of the money. The advancement of Israel at all costs. As if awakening from a slumber, he had gradually become a man who thinks too much. And some years later, after Operation Cinnamon, he had finally made the decision to escape. Too late.
    Ram Shalev. The picture of him in the garden, his wife, his two children. Trees, blue sky, button-down shirt. Uzi had known him a little, and he had always come across as a decent man. One of the few, perhaps, who had been drawn to politics for the right reasons – it wasn’t impossible. Killed because he had found out that his government was scheming to