The Pure

his room, he closed the door and stood listening to the muffled sounds of the party below. He was Uzi. He was Uzi, and he was rich. Just like that, he was rich. He had been calling on all his discipline to stop himself thinking about how he might spend the money, the sort of lifestyle he could buy. All that could wait. He didn’t want to get carried away, he didn’t want to lose himself; his life was in danger, and it would remain that way until his final breath.
    His chest was still heaving from the exertion of the run, and he waited for his breathing to settle. He felt meditative, peaceful, perhaps on account of the endorphins. Tiredness was nowhere near him; these days he rarely went to bed before three. He logged on to the Internet and checked his balance; it was there. The money was there. It felt like a dream. On a whim, he decided to have a soak in the jacuzzi. He had never used one before but knew they were supposed to be beneficial after exercise. Normally he would have turned on the television as a matter of habit, but tonight he didn’t feel like it. He put his R9 in a drawer, peeled off his sodden clothes and flexed his muscles, stretching. He was already starting to stiffen up. In the bathroom he started to run the water, letting the steam float up around his face. When the bath was full he lowered himself in – it was almost too hot to bear – and turned on the jets. The bubbles reminded him of countless diving operations. He lay back in the near-scalding heat.
    You got so lost in the struggle, he thought, you got so lost in the fight. In Israel everyone was struggling: this faction against that, this ideology against the other, races and peoples, tribes and brothers. Everything was enflamed by religion. He had never been inclined towards the spiritual himself, had never been able to understand how people could take superstitious claptrap seriously. But they did; and where he came from, it mattered. The influence of religious groups on the country was deep-seated, with little separation between church and state. The rabbis even gave pep talks before troops went into battle; Uzi had always resented that. They who had no knowledge of sacrifice; they who – on account of their ‘beliefs’ – were exempt from service themselves.
    It was all connected, wasn’t it? The Holocaust, his parents, himself, all the operations he had ever done, the son he had never known. The religion. The winds of history had swept through his land, his people, for years, and he had been drawn into it as inevitably as everyone else. His time, of course, would pass, and history would continue, a relentless juggernaut, raising other people to take his place; this was a war of attrition, a life of no escape, a dead-end hell. He knew that Operation Regime Change would make no real difference. Even if it succeeded in its objectives, it wouldn’t be long before history interfered, sucked up all hope and kick-started the chaos. He was under no illusions. Yet at the same time he knew he could not do nothing; as an Israeli, even doing nothing meant doing something.
    Pink-skinned and warm, Uzi raised himself from the bath and put on a dressing gown, his hair glistening with moisture like steel wool. In the bedroom, he poured himself a large rum cocktail and lay on his bed. He opened his laptop again. Nothing on the Israeli news sites; the story hadn’t broken yet. He was rich. Suddenly he had a feeling that was familiar from his Navy days, the sense that he was sailing in the direction of rough weather, that storm clouds were gathering on the horizon. He put down the laptop and lay on his back for a few minutes. He felt drained and warm, like a freshly bled carcass. He considered rolling a spliff, but changed his mind and sipped his rum cocktail. Then, although he rarely received anything, he decided to check his email.
    There was one new message, from ‘ORC4367’ – Avner. ORC stood for Operation Regime Change; 4367 was his combatant number backwards, and multiplied by two. It had been sent just twenty minutes earlier. Uzi hesitated, then opened it. It read: See attached. It turned up in the end. A bit late, I know. You don’t need to thank me. See you in another life. ORC4367 .
    There was an attachment. Uzi ran it through his de-encryption software, and opened it. His heart missed a beat. It was Liberty’s file. But there was something wrong. As soon as Uzi saw it, his eyes widened and his rum cocktail slipped through his