The Pure

by Simons, Jake Wallis

  ‘People like getting fucked,’ said Liberty, looking at him like a girl.

  Uzi shook his head and bent over the bath. Abelev was starting to squirm more vigorously; the drugs had all but worn off.

  ‘For a professional, you’re not very professional,’ he said over his shoulder.

  Liberty, inexplicably, laughed. Then she approached the tub. ‘Sit him up and uncover his face. Let’s see what he has to say.’

  Uzi did as she asked, hauling Abelev to a sitting position and peeling the tape back from his face. He screamed, thrashed and fell on to his back; Uzi slapped him hard and propped him up again, a fat caterpillar in the gloom.

  ‘Where am I?’ he said, his voice breaking, his eyes swivelling in their sockets.

  ‘Tell me something, Alexey Mikhailovich Abelev,’ said Liberty in soft Russian. ‘Do you think you are a clever bastard? Do you have a fucking PhD in cleverness or something?’

  The Russian said nothing. His marble eyes slid from side to side in his head, flicked all around. His breathing was shallow and sharp and sweat stippled his moon-like face. Liberty raised her revolver and struck him a resounding blow, startlingly powerful for her size. Abelev’s head bounced off the broken tiles behind him and an X-shaped incision appeared on his forehead, then immediately started to bleed. Within seconds, half his face was black with blood. He moaned, a high-pitched whine, like a cat.

  ‘Tell me who you’re working for,’ she hissed.

  The man evidently knew his end had come and that nothing could be gained from holding out. ‘The Oswald Street Crew.’

  ‘The Oswald Street Crew,’ said Liberty. ‘You fucking double-crossing turncoat.’ She gripped him by the shoulder and his whine became a full-throated, animal scream.

  ‘Just don’t hurt me. Please,’ he moaned.

  ‘Get the fucker up,’ said Liberty. Uzi complied, dragging the man awkwardly to his feet. She grabbed a broken ladder that was leaning against the wall and together they strapped Abelev to it.

  ‘What I want to know,’ said Liberty as they leaned the ladder against the bathtub, ‘is who else in my organisation is a fucking grass like you.’

  ‘Nobody,’ he said. ‘I promise. Nobody. It’s just me.’

  Liberty brought her face close to his. ‘You’re lying,’ she said. His blond eyelashes fluttered, twin moths. ‘I can smell it. Can you taste your own blood? Can you taste it? And now you’re lying to me?’

  She tied a towel around his face and Uzi knew what she was going to do. There was a single muffled shriek. The packing tape crackled horribly, like snapping twigs, as Abelev struggled. Liberty filled a jug with water from the stuttering tap; Uzi tilted Abelev backwards until his head was below the level of his feet. Then Liberty poured water into the towel – once, twice, three times. There was a choking, coughing sound from beneath it, followed by a strangled cry. Liberty repeated it again, and again, until a stream of muffled words started. She gave Uzi a signal and he tilted the Russian back upright.

  Liberty tore the towel from his face. The man was weeping. ‘I’m telling the truth,’ he said, ‘I’m working alone. I’m working alone. I’m working alone.’

  ‘Liar!’ screamed Liberty, suddenly all-powerful and terrifying, and struck him again with her gun. Blood filled his mouth, spilled over his jaw. Despite himself, Uzi shuddered. She tied the towel back around his face, and at her signal Uzi tilted the man back again, an old feeling of discomfort twisting his gut.

  More water. More. And more. Liberty was smiling – was she smiling? Abelev was coughing, choking, spluttering. A gargling moan, then silence. Uzi heaved the man back upright and removed the bloodstained towel. His skin was pale, clammy; his eyes were closed. Vomit threaded in a web across his face. But he was breathing. Liberty paced the room like an animal.

  ‘I’ve never seen anybody hold out against that before,’ said Uzi. ‘Maybe he really is working alone.’

  ‘He isn’t,’ Liberty replied. ‘He’s part of a network, I know it. He’s just a stubborn fuck. Pity he didn’t stay on my side. I can always use stubborn fucks. As you know.’

  ‘But he told you about the Oswald Street Crew. Why would he lie?’

  Without warning she raised her gun and fired. Abelev’s head was thrown backwards then he nodded enthusiastically, like a doll. A dark cloud appeared across the mildewed tiles behind him. Fragments of brick and cement spiralled into the air and pattered around their feet, followed by a cloud of dust. There was a silence.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Uzi wearily. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘He wasn’t going to break, the bastard,’ said Liberty, checking the chamber of her weapon.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘Everything matters, Uzi.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me you were going to kill him.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me he was a stubborn bastard.’

  Liberty turned away and took out her phone. Uzi watched the corpse. The mangled head. How easily a man becomes a body. How easy it is to make a ghost. He was doomed, he knew that; he could never again be clean.

  ‘Business is business,’ said Liberty over her shoulder, as if she had read his mind. ‘We had to do it. Are you going to tear your fucking clothes and cover yourself in ashes?’

  ‘What you mean “we”? You did it.’

  She gestured for him to be quiet and spoke into her phone: ‘Get in here. Mr Abelev needs to be disposed of . . . I don’t know, the river. The old Kingsway tram tunnel. I couldn’t give a shit. Just get in here.’ She hung up, shaking her head.

  For a while, they stood side by side in silence. Then the two Russians appeared at the door. Liberty nodded to the corpse and left the room; Uzi followed her into the night air.

  ‘He wasn’t working alone,’ she said without looking at him. ‘Nobody ever works alone. Not even you. Not even me.’

  ‘Then how did he resist?’

  ‘Some people are just made that way. Weak, but stubborn.’

  ‘No. He was telling the truth. Anyway, what’s done is done. He won’t tell us anything now. Do you have any other leads?’

  ‘I have six names, all from one informant.’

  ‘That’s easy, then.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Uzi looked up at the silhouettes of Canary Wharf sparkling against the night sky. Israel was so far away. ‘Let me tell you a story I heard from a friend in the Shabak,’ he said, without looking at Liberty. ‘Once upon a time, when Hamas still roamed freely in Bethlehem, three terrorists arrived in the Duheisha refugee camp carrying a stash of explosives. They were planning to carry out simultaneous suicide attacks in Jerusalem. The Shabak had a stinker – an informant – in Hamas, and he alerted them.’

  Liberty was looking around as if she wasn’t listening; Uzi could tell she was.

  ‘The problem was, the stinker was high-level Hamas, and he was the only person on the West Bank who knew about these attacks. If the Shabak were to arrest the terrorists, the identity of the stinker would have been obvious. Yet at the same time, they couldn’t let the attacks go ahead.’

  ‘So what did they do?’

  ‘Easy. They arrested the three bombers, locked up two and sent the third home with a thousand dollars. Everyone assumed he was the stinker. He was lynched.’

  ‘You Israelis,’ said Liberty, shaking her head, ‘you fucking Israelis.’

  ‘You could do something similar,’ said Uzi, his breath forming clouds of condensation in the blackness. ‘You bring in your six suspects. Then you release one with a big bonus. A car perhaps – I know you like cars. Then you place him under surveillance. As soon as he is threatened, or beaten up, you hunt down his attackers. Then you have your network.’

  Liberty smiled. ‘I like the way you think,’ she said. ‘You’re one clever bastard.’

  The metal door scraped open. They turned to watch the two Russians carrying Abelev’s body to the BMW saloon. A funeral cortege.

  ‘What took those guys so long?’ said Uzi.

>   ‘They were cleaning up.’

  ‘You have them well trained.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Uzi turned, but Liberty pulled him back.

  ‘Look,’ she said, suddenly earnest, ‘do you know what it means to be a woman in this game? A woman at the top? It means you have to be strong. Stronger than any man, more ruthless. As soon as you show any weakness, you’re done for. It’s all about the signals you send. It’s not just your business that depends on it, it’s your life.’

  Uzi curled his lip and turned away. This time she didn’t pull him back. He headed to his car and unlocked it; Liberty walked over to her Maybach. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ she called as she climbed in. ‘Decompress. Back at Home House.’

  ‘Is that an order?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a request.’

  He slid into his Porsche, slammed the door and drove out on to the street. The engine hummed as if it had never been asleep, ebbing and flowing with the pulse of the city.

  25

  ‘You know we’re doing the right thing, don’t you?’ said Avner, his words slurred. ‘I mean, you know we’re on the side of the righteous.’ He looked at his watch, struggling to read it. The bar was dark, the music battling with his words. ‘Now, right now. There’s been a delay with the transfer of funds, but it’s got to be only a matter of days until we get our money and all hell breaks loose in the Holy Land. It might even happen tomorrow.’ He laughed, drained his glass, smacked his lips.

  Uzi sat brooding. Fragmented – he felt fragmented. Since he had taken up with Liberty, his life had become nocturnal. He would get up in the early evening and go to bed at dawn. His plan had worked like a dream; Liberty had uprooted a network of twelve men now, and that seemed to be the last of them. Now she was giving him only the occasional job, saving him for ‘something big’. In the meantime he was doing nothing but smoking, watching television and going for aimless drives in his car – he knew the Porsche was a magnet for attention, but he couldn’t stop himself. The voice in his head was becoming bolder, appearing when he least expected it, criticising his relationship with Liberty as if it were jealous. He was constantly on edge. Public places had taken on a sinister nature. Who knew where his enemies may be lurking? Who knew who might see him, by chance, and report him? And who knew how careful Liberty was in protecting her sources? At any moment, he knew, the shadows could become flesh and he would be done for. The CIA must have bought the information from Liberty by now. It was only a matter of time before the leak was traced to him. The strain was beginning to have an effect; the cushioning effect of his recklessness was starting to wear thin.

  ‘What?’ he said. Avner had been saying something.

  ‘The Avenue of the Righteous. You know, at the Holocaust Centre, Yad Vashem. It’ll be like that. You’ll be a true hero. Like, like Yitzhak Rabin. Enough of blood and tears. You know? You’ll have prevented a war with Iran. You want another drink?’

  Uzi nodded and returned to his thoughts. He knew all about spy syndrome, of course he did. The Office had trained him thoroughly in psychology. He knew that to get someone to do what you wanted, you needed a lever, a hook. You had to identify their weak point, be it sex, money, the desire for revenge or the desire to escape. And he knew how to read his own psychology, too. He knew how to listen both to his mind and to his gut, how to cut through the white noise of panic and grip the hard facts. He knew how to keep the Kol in check, how to hold on to his sanity even when hearing voices in his head. But now it was all becoming hazy. Of course, from one point of view, he had never had it so good. He had no financial concerns. He lived rent-free in luxury. He had the sort of car men would kill for, and a lifestyle of leisure and ease. But it was in his head that the storm was brewing. The little bone bowl of his skull contained an entire universe of paranoia. He continuously tried to dispel it with rational thought, but that was as useless as fighting off darkness with a knife.

  ‘What about you? Aren’t you concerned?’ he said as Avner returned with their drinks.

  ‘Concerned about what?’

  ‘You still work for the Office, for fuck’s sake. If they knew you were meeting me – planning what we’re planning – you’d be fucked.’

  ‘Sure, I work for the Office. For the moment. That’s why I can meet you. I know what our operatives are doing, where the eyes and ears are.’ He leaned closer, his breath whisky-hot. ‘And they’re not here.’ He threw his head back and laughed. Then he was talking about something else.

  As Avner came out with strings of words he could barely hear, let alone understand, Uzi scanned the drinkers around them, as surreptitiously as he could, looking for some sign, some giveaway, something to make him kick over the table and swing draw. Nothing; so far, nothing. He drank whisky, thought about the words ‘fire water’. Avner was still talking, his long arms draped across the back of the sofa. Avner, who he had known for so many years, who he had seen mature, fill out, grow a little fat. Compulsively Uzi slid his hand on to the butt of his R9, pretending to be looking for his phone; for the sake of form he took it out, checked for messages, put it back in his pocket.

  ‘You’ve got to start following the news in Israel,’ Avner was saying. For some reason, he was speaking in French. ‘The polls are in favour of the government, but only by half a percentage point. People are getting sick of being held hostage to the settlers. When our story breaks, it will be game over. I have some big contacts in politics . . .’

  ‘Oh you do?’

  ‘I do. And they’re keeping Ram Shalev’s death on the media’s agenda, ready for our entrance to the stage.’ He laughed, coughed, laughed again. ‘One week, no more than that. They promised me. One week and we’ll be out of here. We’ll be whipping up a storm in Israel without even lifting a finger. We’ll be sipping piña coladas somewhere watching a beautiful sunset while peace explodes at home and the Office is shaken by an earthquake.’

  Uzi drank. He needed a cigarette. ‘This plan of yours had better work, or I’m fucked.’

  ‘Just run,’ said Avner. ‘Disappear. You can come with me if you want. Anywhere you want: South America, Thailand, Africa – there’s money to be made in Africa.’

  ‘You know what?’ said Uzi. ‘Maybe I will.’

  He saw Avner laugh, felt his hand on his shoulder, raised his glass for Avner to clink. He remembered the clink of a glass in his hand following the birth of his son at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. But it had not been Avner holding the drink up in congratulations that time. It had been his father. He remembered now the way the glass sat dwarfed in his father’s palm, the tips of his fingers like pebbles. He remembered the heat of the alcohol filling his mouth, tracing a line down into his belly, burning in his throat. He remembered the smiles they exchanged. He remembered the words: L’Chaim. To life. Yes, Abba, to life. He remembered looking down at Nehama lying smiling in the bed, Noam feeding at her breast. He remembered his father saying Mazal tov both of you – you have brought into the world a boy, another soldier to defend our people. Yes, he remembered all this. But he could not remember the face of his son.

  ‘What?’ said Uzi. Avner had asked him a question and was sitting there, a silly smile on his face, awaiting a response.

  ‘I said have you fucked her yet?’ said Avner.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who do you think? Your boss.’

  ‘No, if you must know,’ said Uzi.

  Avner shook his head. ‘I could tell she was going to be trouble. I’ve never laid eyes on her but I always knew she was going to be trouble. And now you’ve fallen for her.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Look, my brother. Let’s go and get some girl. How about it?’ He was speaking Hebrew now. Some girl, get some girl, get some girl. Uzi got to his feet and Avner grinned broadly. ‘I knew you couldn’t say no, my brother. It’s exactly what you need to unwind. To forget about things a little. That American woman is turning you into even more of a psycho than you were already.’

&nbs
p; The two men walked out into the cold night air, their ears ringing from the music.

  ‘Come on,’ said Avner, ‘we can take a taxi and pick up our cars later.’ He stepped into the street, waving at a black cab, pedestrians streaming around him. All at once, Uzi was overcome with a feeling of dread. Visiting brothels, paying hookers? Things like that made a man vulnerable. At a time like this, it was too risky.

  ‘I’m going,’ he said, and headed for his car. Avner called after him, but Uzi couldn’t hear what he was saying. He slipped behind the wheel and steered out into the traffic.

  26

  As the Porsche cut through London, and the city swept past its windows like a pageant, Uzi settled in the womb-like seat and his mind reduced itself to a single Hebrew word, appearing in black spray paint: nekama. Revenge. For years this had been his personal barometer, the way he judged the political climate of his country. But nekama, that ugly word, was a failsafe indicator. Every so often, the Old City of Jerusalem would awake to find that during the night the word had been scrawled many times across the ancient cream-coloured stone, on doorways, on walls, even on the time-smoothed paving slabs. Nobody knew who was responsible for it. Uzi used to imagine it was a ghost informing the city of impending doom. Revenge. When he had first noticed the graffiti, almost two decades ago, it had never lasted long. The local people would clean it off within the hour. As the country lurched to the right, however, they lost their enthusiasm to erase it; these days, it was a permanent fixture.

  Uzi waited for the Kol to speak up, but it did not make an appearance. Suddenly he knew who he was going to call. His fingers hovered over the phone in its cradle on the dashboard – hovered but did not dial. They found their way back to the steering wheel, then to the butt of his R9, then to the packet of cigarettes in his inside pocket. He lit one, inhaled hungrily. Then he moved his fingers again, and this time they were successful.

  ‘Hello?’ came a voice – a girl’s voice.