They drank Cobra and ordered food. Uzi was beginning to need a cigarette. He drank deeply instead. Liberty settled herself in her chair like a cat.
‘So,’ she said, half serious, half in parody, ‘tell me about you.’
‘There are things you don’t know?’
‘Sure.’
‘Like what?’
‘Love life?’
‘That’s usually the first thing the CIA finds out.’
‘I’m not with the Agency any more, remember?’
‘You read their file.’
‘Tell me in your own words.’
Uzi drained his bottle and waved to the waiter for another. ‘I fuck girls from Hungary. Among others.’
Liberty smiled. ‘Fuck buddies, eh? For some reason I knew I’d get a cliché from you.’
‘It’s the truth. I don’t lie any more. I don’t have to.’
‘But it’s all bullshit, isn’t it? Just layers of stories with nothing underneath.’
Uzi shrugged. She cleared her throat. ‘I can’t do love either.’ She paused. ‘It shows too much . . . weakness. Nothing since my husband died.’
‘Killed?’
‘Careless. He was a man with a lot of enemies. But let’s not talk about him.’
‘What do you want to talk about?’ said Uzi.
‘Your wife’s Hungarian?’
‘Please. I’m a nice Jewish boy.’
Liberty laughed. ‘They don’t have Jews in Hungary?’
‘Not any more.’
Uzi’s second beer arrived and he took a long draught. He had known every detail about Nehama: the sound she made when she rolled over in the night, the expression she wore when she was concentrating, the way that her left heel always wore down quicker than her right, the voice she used when she was trying to impress people, her way of laughing – and crying – when you least expected it. How, although she was insecure about her strength of mind, she would fight like a lioness to protect the people she loved. The time she was angry with him and stormed out the house, only to find she had nowhere to go.
Liberty ordered a glass of house red.
‘No Pernod tonight?’ Uzi asked.
‘I hate that shit. It’s just for appearance’s sake. Mystique.’
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘I’m not. It’s the little things, Uzi. They make a difference. The Maybach, the Pernod, the restaurants, the clothes.’
‘The murders.’
‘Like I said, it’s the little things. Actually I hate being called Liberty.’
‘What do you prefer?’
‘My name, for fuck’s sake. My name. Eve Klugman.’
Her wine arrived with the poppadoms, served by an unnecessary number of waiters. She leant over and broke one into quarters. For some reason, the cracking sound made him wince. He spooned some mango chutney on to his plate, tapping the end of the spoon on the china.
‘You see?’ said Liberty, biting into a poppadom. ‘We’re normal people really. Just out for a curry. Just normal.’
‘But we’re not,’ said Uzi. ‘We’re not, are we?’
‘Come on,’ said Liberty, frowning, ‘we can pretend. Just for tonight.’
‘Sure,’ he replied.
There was a pause as the main course arrived.
‘Do you ever wonder,’ said Liberty, ‘what you’d be doing if your life had gone a different way?’
‘A parallel universe?’
‘I guess.’
‘No.’
‘I thought you wouldn’t. I do. I know what I’d be doing. I’d be an attorney or something, living in Manhattan. With kids. Sometimes I wonder what I’d say if I met myself in the street.’
‘Nice thought,’ said Uzi. His curry was good.
‘You’d be a businessman. Travelling the world. The Mile High Club. All that.’
‘I’m already a member,’ said Uzi. ‘Everyone was, in the Office.’
‘Fucking Israelis,’ said Liberty, shaking her head.
They finished their meal and went in search of a local pub. Liberty was casting a pleasant spell over him, and he wanted to leak some more intel, something that would really hurt the government. He had a piece of jumbo connected to the Washington Station in mind, but he knew it wasn’t safe, not out here. It could wait. They found a dimly lit pub on the Whitechapel Road and sat in a secluded corner in a pair of ancient leather armchairs. There they got steadily more drunk; with the alcohol they talked more naturally, more effusively, like old friends. They all but forgot about their guns. From the outside, they began to look like lovers.
‘In our game,’ said Liberty, leaning back into the creaking seat, ‘you know you’re going to be lonely. That’s the nature of the job, right? The secrets. All that.’
Uzi shrugged in agreement and took a single gulp from his pint.
‘But what they don’t tell you,’ Liberty went on, ‘is that this is a life sentence. You can’t escape. Even when you quit the service, you can’t get away. You’re branded. For life.’
‘You didn’t think about that in the beginning?’ asked Uzi.
‘You did?’
‘That was the reason I joined,’ said Uzi wryly.
A man walked past them in the direction of the toilet; they fell silent until he had passed.
‘But don’t you get tired?’ said Liberty in an undertone, once they were alone again. ‘Isn’t it exhausting being alone? Just you against everyone else?’
‘I don’t know what it means to be tired. I’ve never known what it means to sleep.’
‘Oh come on, Uzi. You can’t have been always like this.’
‘As far back as I can remember.’
‘Well, I haven’t. I remember the person I used to be.’
‘And what would you say to her now?’
Liberty paused. ‘I would say I was sorry.’ She looked down at the table, tracing a small circle with a fingertip. Uzi watched his hand moving across the table and cupping hers. The spell was working. Two hands, so much blood. Their eyes met, their fingers tightened. Uzi hesitated, tried to pull his hand away, but she held on to it. She smiled, and his fingers relaxed. ‘Have another drink,’ she said. He shrugged, then nodded.
At closing time, they got a cab back to Home House. He still didn’t know where she lived. Liberty walked him to the door of his room, holding his arm, her breasts still touching his biceps; now he wanted to press her against the wall and fuck her. She thanked him, and he thought it was genuine. She said it had been the most normal evening she had had in a long time. Nobody was around. Both of them were light-headed, happy. Below them, music pounded. He wanted to give her the intel he had been mulling over all day; the words kept bubbling in his head to ask her into his room. But he didn’t trust himself. He was drunk. There was something seductive about her, in her hoodie and trainers. He had to protect himself. But on the other hand – there they were, they had had a normal evening, perhaps they should end it the way normal people would. Anyway, he was losing his self-control. His body was a Frankenstein’s monster, and this woman seemed suddenly vulnerable. He was drunk, he was happy. She had him.
30
The curtains were drawn against the day. A watery light filtered through a tiny chink in the curtains. The people in the bed didn’t care. Neither of them was asleep. Uzi, who had just had a hushed conversation with the Kol in the bathroom, lay with his arm behind his head, smoking a cigarette as if it were a golden hookah. The orange point of light glowed as he inhaled. Liberty was standing by the minibar, in a pair of black briefs.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I feel like we’ve got something to celebrate.’ She held up a bottle of Moët, condensation beading on its dark green skin.
‘Bring it here,’ said Uzi. ‘I have something to tell you before you suck my dick again.’
Liberty laughed and slipped into bed beside him, scooping her hair over one shoulder, exposing the side of her neck as if she were offering herself as a sacrifice. Uzi popped the cor
k and dropped it, spinning, on top of the coffee table. He drank from the steaming bottle, then she did. Then he drank again.
‘So?’ she said. ‘Are you going to propose to me?’
‘I’m going to propose we do some business.’
Liberty sighed. ‘No work. That’s for tomorrow. We’re on holiday today. We agreed.’
‘Fine. I just wanted to give you some more intel, that’s all. Make you some money.’
Liberty raised herself on her elbows and the sheets fell away from her breasts. ‘You’ve persuaded me,’ she said. ‘Give it here. Then no more work.’
Uzi felt a frisson of excitement. When he gave her jumbo, saw the expression of admiration and excitement on her face, he felt like the most powerful man in the world. He leaned over to the bedside table, pulled out the top drawer and turned it upside down. Underneath was a pad of brown tape; he peeled it away to reveal a USB stick.
‘What’s this?’ she said.
‘You can’t wait?’ said Uzi playfully.
‘Just tell me.’
‘It’s a list of the Office’s secret unit in the Playground. I haven’t encrypted it so you can read it at your leisure.’
‘The Playground?’
‘Mossad’s codename for Washington.’
‘What?’
‘Washington. The Playground. You didn’t know?’
‘Fuck,’ said Liberty, ‘that says it all.’
‘The unit,’ said Uzi, ‘is called the Neshek – the weapon. It’s top secret. Most of the guys at the Washington Station don’t even know it exists.’
‘Dare I ask what it does?’
‘It focuses on the Dog.’
‘The who?’
‘The President.’
‘You call him the Dog?’
‘That’s right. And his inner circle is monitored too. The Lizard, the Rat, the Chameleon.’
‘The Chameleon?’
‘Secretary of State.’
‘Come on. This is just hocus-pocus. This isn’t serious intel.’
‘You think so? Take a look at the list. You’ll be surprised who is working for us. We reach right into the Oval Office.’
‘I refuse to believe that.’
‘Take a look at the list, and open the file called Scenarios.’
‘Scenarios?’
‘Assassination plans. All up-to-date, all fully operational. Any one of them could be executed in a matter of minutes by the Neshek. Depending on the President’s movements, of course.’
‘Don’t tell me . . .’
‘The whole inner sanctum has been provided for. On a contingency basis.’
Liberty searched his face and saw that he meant what he was saying. Gradually her face clouded over. ‘This – this is worth a fortune,’ she said at last. ‘But it would seriously fuck the Mossad. And Israel. Diplomatically speaking.’
‘Be my guest.’
‘Why don’t you just sell it to the Agency yourself? Keep the money?’
‘Too dangerous. I’m a marked man. I’m happy to get a bonus from you. We’re together now.’
Liberty sat up in bed and gathered the sheets around her. A chink of light from between the curtains fell across her face.
‘Uzi,’ she said girlishly, ‘there’s something you’re not telling me.’
‘What do you mean?’ he replied, drinking from the bottle of champagne.
‘The damage you’re doing to the Mossad. I mean, I don’t care or anything. But what is going on in your head? You’re making yourself into Israel’s public enemy number one. You’re doing everything you can to fuck your own country.’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Uzi. ‘I’m doing everything I can to fuck the Mossad, this government. There’s a difference.’
‘Is there?’
‘I don’t have to tell you. You know what the current regime is doing to the peace process. To the region. The Israeli political elite is dominated by people hell-bent on setting the Middle East alight.’
‘How so?’
‘How so? What sort of a question is that? Isn’t it obvious?’
‘No. Not to me. Not to the Agency, either.’
‘Put it this way. The Palestinians have quietly been offering us concessions for years. East Jerusalem, the Settlements, the Right of Return. They’ve been offering to sell their grandmothers, and we’re still no closer to peace. This fucking government is quite happy with war. Like you said, war equals money. I’ve got the intel on that too. Thousands of documents.’
‘Conclusive? Genuine?’
Uzi didn’t reply. Instead, he began to roll a spliff.
‘So, what you’re trying to tell me is that your only motivation is your principles? That you’re some sort of whistle-blowing white knight? A Jewish Robin Hood? Come on, Uzi.’
‘Look, I’m not going to pretend this isn’t personal. I gave my life for the Office, my family, everything. My son – I haven’t seen him in years. And my parents were taken from me by a suicide bomber. The way I see it, the bomb wasn’t created by Hamas. It was created by our government’s obsession with fucking the Palestinians. My parents, you know? My parents. Nobody should die like that.’
Liberty looked at him for a moment.
‘I started by believing in the Office,’ Uzi replied wearily, ‘and was disillusioned again and again until I couldn’t take it any more. Like I told you, I had it coming. I was the only one in the Office who actually cared about peace. Or at least I was the only one who had the balls to say so. My views would have been my downfall, if I hadn’t decided to leave before they could fuck me.’
‘The Doctrine of the Status Quo?’
‘It would work. An extreme problem demands an extreme solution. Israel’s nuclear deterrent balanced by Iran, or Syria, gaining an equal deterrent. Israel will start behaving itself, and there you have it. Nuke-imposed peace. Look at Russia and the US. There’s a precedent there.’
‘Now you sound like you believe it.’
‘Of course I fucking believe it.’ Uzi got to his feet, lit the spliff, paced over to the window. ‘I’m not going to pretend any more. Fuck it. I’ve already laid down my life for my country. It’s just a matter of time until they come and collect their dues. But it’ll be worth it. Explode the Office, explode the government, and peace will enter the vacuum. It’s as simple as that.’
Liberty got to her feet and stood behind him, slipping her arms around his waist. Almost imperceptibly, his body softened. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you,’ she said, ‘to us.’ She traced a line with her lips across his shoulders. ‘It’s only been a short time, I know, but things have changed. I’m tired of all this. Neither of us needs the money. I just want to be . . . let’s get out of this business. One more job, then away. Start again. Let’s just be normal.’
Uzi turned to face her but found himself afraid to look her in the eyes. ‘I’ve told you. We could play at being normal for a while, for a week or two even, but it would all be a lie.’
‘What are our lives anyway, if not lies?’ said Liberty. ‘Let’s just exchange one lie for another, Adam Feldman.’
Cannabis smoke swirled around them from the spliff smouldering in his fingers. They kissed, their bodies intertwining. All at once, something began to gush through Uzi and didn’t stop. They kissed again and again, bound together as if by a spell; then they rolled back on to the bed. Although neither of them knew it, they were both filled with an identical rage at the unfairness of life. For even as their barriers collapsed, they – like all people – were doomed to separation in the end.
31
Uzi woke up in the late afternoon, smelling of sex and cannabis. The cyst on his shoulder ached. He remembered something Liberty had said during the hazy, half-asleep time after they had made love. Something about how he should get it checked out. The sun was slanting into the room. His head was foggy. Liberty was no longer there, but he hadn’t heard her leave. He was surprised, at first, that he was still breathing, that she hadn’t killed him, and th
at he had no memory of giving away any secrets, or at least none that he had wanted to keep. His defences had been dissolved; she could have reached in and taken anything she wanted. But she had taken nothing. In fact, he felt like he had been given something.
He got up, had a shower, went out, sat in the womb of his Porsche with the engine running. The Kol was silent; it had spoken its mind already, told him to watch himself, remember who he was. On his phone was a text message: ‘last night. dream?’ Impulsively he tried to call her; she didn’t pick up. He read the text again. Maybe his world wasn’t completely submerged after all. Hers too, perhaps. He gripped the steering wheel and noticed, as if for the first time, that he felt alive. The world around him was teeming. He was not alone; at last he had a reason to hope.
He pulled out into the traffic. The paranoia that had plagued him until yesterday had subsided. He was still wary, still on his guard, but no longer jumping at shadows. The spy syndrome had passed. Suddenly it seemed so beautiful, the way it all fitted together. He had given his secrets to WikiLeaks, set the wheels in motion, and soon the genie would be out of the bottle. The government would begin to crack, and he would have his money; and countless people would be gunning for him. And now this comes along, this woman. One job, she had said. One final big job, and then they would cut loose. Together they would be formidable. Two people who needed to escape.
He drove north on the Finchley Road with no destination in mind. He considered going to see Avner, but he knew there would be no fooling his old comrade, and he wasn’t ready to talk about Liberty, not yet. So he forgot about everything and drove, just drove, relishing the throb, the ebb and flow of the traffic, the greyness of the world outside his window. His thoughts, for the first time in a long while, drifted to his son. To Noam. How strange to love somebody you had met only a handful of times, to miss someone you would never recognise. Because he did love him; he did miss him. Even when he wasn’t thinking about him, even when he didn’t enter his mind from one week to the next, Noam was still there, somehow, somewhere in his heart. He was still present; he was still absent. How did the boy look now? How much did he resemble his mother, how much his father? Had Nehama even told the boy about him? Or had she remarried – replaced Uzi seamlessly with another man? Not that it mattered. Uzi had known what he was getting into, that joining the Office would spell the end of his family life, such as it was. The secrets, the long operations away from home, the dedication the job required. He had wanted that. But his son – his son. The innocent victim. Might he have ended up with Uzi’s hair? His broad, square-ended thumbs? His quick eyes, his forehead, his temperament? And was there a gap in the boy’s life, too? Did Noam feel the absence of his father as keenly as Uzi felt the absence of his son?
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