The Pure

Liberty.
    ‘You’ve heard of Dimona?’
    ‘The Israeli nuclear facility. Of course.’
    ‘But you haven’t heard of Nahal Sorek,’ said Uzi.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    A pause.
    ‘So?’
    ‘The truth is that Israel has twice as many nuclear weapons as you think we do. At two different locations.’
    Liberty swayed back, very slightly, in her seat. But her face remained inscrutable. ‘What has this information got to do with anything?’ she said.
    ‘Call it a gesture of goodwill,’ said Uzi. ‘You could use it as a bargaining chip when you want to get something out of the CIA. For example.’
    ‘It’s worth a lot, that information.’
    ‘Use it. I don’t owe my organisation anything. They owe me. During my last year at the Office . . .’
    ‘The Office?’
    ‘That’s the code word for the organisation.’ He swallowed, took a breath. ‘The Mossad.’ Hot, cold, hot again. His mouth was dry. ‘I made a lot of enemies at the Office. Well, not enemies. Not on a personal level. But there were people – people higher than me – who disapproved of my views.’
    ‘Sounds familiar,’ said Liberty, taking a sip of wine.
    ‘When I was recruited, my ideology was the same as everyone else’s. But over the years, when the new director came in . . .’
    ‘ROM? He’s pretty tough.’
    ‘That’s right. When ROM came in, when I saw how he wanted us to operate, and what his decisions were based on, and what sort of methods he expected us to use – and how little it resembled the dream we all shared since childhood – I began to feel differently.’
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘Look, I’m a free thinker. That’s what made me good at my job. I wouldn’t take anyone else’s word for anything. I would judge things for myself and come up with strategies that nobody else would have thought of. Exactly what is needed in a commando.’
    ‘And a Mossad Katsa.’
    ‘And a Mossad Katsa.’ He heard himself sigh. ‘War,’ he said suddenly. ‘It does things to a man. You know? It changes you forever.’
    A pause.
    ‘What did it do to you?’ said Liberty.
    ‘It opened my fucking eyes.’ Without really intending to, Uzi got to his feet and crossed to the window. He looked out at the city, seeing nothing, lost in the past.
    ‘You were telling me about Nahal Sorek,’ said Liberty. At the sound of her voice, Uzi’s attention returned to the room. Typical spy, he thought. Hears a name once and never forgets it. Even in a foreign language. He returned to the table and sat down.
    ‘KAMG, heard of it?’ he said brusquely.
    ‘Of course. Israel’s nuclear programme, Kure Garni leMachar.’
    ‘You speak Hebrew?’
    ‘Not really. I went to Sunday school for a few years as a kid. I can pronounce it OK, nothing more. We were pretty irreligious, I guess. Jewish only by name.’
    He laughed once, short, harsh. Then, prompted by Liberty’s silence, he continued. ‘Towards the end of my career at the Office, Avner and I were assigned to counter-espionage operations in Iran. There had been a leak within KAMG, and the Office was worried that the Iranians had found out about Nahal Sorek. We were deployed to go undercover in Tehran and find out what they knew. As it turned out, they knew nothing. But in preparation, we were shown around the Nahal Sorek nuclear facility.’ He leaned forward. ‘It blew my mind,’ he said in a faraway voice. ‘I already knew it existed, of course. But when you see these things with your own eyes, it’s a different matter. The scale of it. The potential. I could stretch out my hand and touch a missile, a single weapon that alone could destroy the human race. One of many. I was in a temple of destruction, face-to-face with a terrible god.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘Nothing was the same after that.’
    ‘So what happened?’
    She’s trying to keep up the momentum, thought Uzi, not giving me time to think. The more I talk, the more I talk, and she knows it. It’s textbook stuff.
    ‘Avner came round for a drink that evening,’ he continued. ‘It was forbidden to discuss work at home, but we all did.’
    ‘We were the same,’ said Liberty, with a little too much enthusiasm.
    ‘We drank and talked for hours,’ said Uzi, ‘decompressing. My guard was down and I shared an idea with him. He changed the subject, and we forgot all about it. But we had been bugged. The Office had been listening.’
    ‘What was the idea?’
    Uzi poured himself another glass of wine. Having started down the