The Pure

intended to purchase a Bohemian glass chandelier for his underground headquarters in Damascus. Everyone at the Paris Station was busy gaining intel on the substance of the meeting itself, but to Tel Aviv the shopping spree was an opportunity too good to miss. So the chandelier mission was given to Uzi, to carry out quietly while everyone was looking elsewhere.
    Uzi, at the time, was positioned as a ‘hopper’. This meant that he was based in Tel Aviv and could be dispatched at short notice anywhere in the world to carry out swift, one-off operations. Being a hopper was not a popular role, and Uzi loathed it. He wanted to be outside Israel; he wanted to forget. Everything about the place reminded him of his parents, everything reminded him of Nehama, whom he hadn’t seen for two years. And everything reminded him of his son – his faceless son. So when the opportunity came to leave the country and go undercover again, he jumped at it.
    Under the alias of David Moreau, a French businessman, Uzi departed Tel Aviv on an Air France flight and landed in Paris in the early morning. He spent the flight reading a file about luxury chandeliers that had been prepared for him by the research department. Nobody met him at the airport; contact with operatives from the Paris Station would be minimal, as they couldn’t risk being directly linked to an operation as audacious as Uzi’s. So he made his way, alone, to Le Meurice hotel on the rue de Rivoli in the centre of the city.
    The Office planners in Tel Aviv had identified two key personnel who would prove vital to the success of Uzi’s mission. The first was Reem Al-Zou’bi, an aide to the Syrian Mukhabarat chief, whose responsibility it was to oversee the purchase of the chandelier. According to his Office file, he was a dedicated family man who, unusually, was faithful to his wife: no leverage there. But there was a glimmer of hope. Al-Zou’bi was sending his children to private schools, and his mother required expensive medical treatment. As a consequence, he had fallen badly into debt. To the Office psychologists, this presented an obvious weak point: avarice.
    The second person was a man by the name of Pierre Tannenbaum, a red-headed interior designer who lived and worked in the trendy La Madeleine quartier of Paris. Tannenbaum was a dyed-in-the-wool Zionist and a trusted Sayan, who had proven his mettle several times in providing loans to Katsas at short notice. According to the Office psychologists, Tannenbaum would relish the opportunity to become more involved in an operation. Uzi invited him to the hotel, where together, over coffee, they devised a plan.
    Within twenty-four hours Uzi and Tannenbaum had set up Lüp, a front company specialising in luxury interior lighting. The Office designers in Tel Aviv created a brochure and business cards, and Tannenbaum organised business premises with a young female Sayan posing as a secretary to answer enquiries. The stage was set. The Syrian delegation landed in Paris, and the eyes of the entire intelligence community in France, from all nationalities, turned towards the meeting. Uzi and Tannenbaum, meanwhile, focused their attention on Al-Zou’bi and his task of procuring a chandelier.
    After twelve hours of surveillance, the time had come to make their move. Through tapping his phone line, they learned that Al-Zou’bi had an appointment at Perrin Antiques on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, not far from Tannenbaum’s penthouse. They also discovered that he had been given a budget of €35,000 for the purchase; that was the crack in which Uzi planned to insert his lever. He followed Al-Zou’bi to the antiques shop and sat in the window of a nearby brasserie, sipping black coffee; Tannenbaum, who knew the owner of the antiques shop, Monsieur Perrin, was sitting in his car around the corner, waiting for Uzi’s signal. Uzi watched as Al-Zou’bi got into conversation with Perrin and they went from chandelier to chandelier. After several minutes, when Al-Zou’bi seemed to be focusing on one chandelier in particular, Uzi dialled Tannenbaum’s number, allowed it to ring twice, and hung up.
    He didn’t have to wait long. Within seconds Tannenbaum could be seen sauntering down the street and entering the antique shop. Uzi turned on his earpiece and listened as Tannenbaum greeted Perrin and fell easily into a conversation. They talked business for a while, and out of politeness Perrin introduced him to Al-Zou’bi.