The Pure

by Simons, Jake Wallis

  ‘Get ready,’ came a voice, ‘he’s almost here, over.’

  ‘Copy that,’ the man said in a thick accent. He pulled his helmet on, flexed his fingers and waited. He was unarmed, and this always made him jumpy. But that was the nature of this assignment; and he was being paid handsomely.

  Seconds later, he heard the roar of an engine and then a low-slung, black motorbike snarled around the corner. Its handlebars were evocative of a Harley but it was longer, more compact, with an oversized back wheel that seemed to be straining to break free. The rider was wearing a black helmet, black leather jacket, jeans and leather gloves; they were, in fact, identical.

  The motorbike skidded to a halt and the rider dismounted hastily, exchanging places with the other man. For a moment they looked at each other as if in the mirror. They were indistinguishable: the same helmet, the same clothes, the same build. A chorus of engines could be heard several streets away, getting louder by the second. The new rider glanced over his shoulder, gunned the engine and sped off.

  In the shadows of the car park, Uzi removed his helmet and slipped behind a pillar. In seconds, he saw the Office hunters speeding past after his imposter: the red rider first, followed by the others. His heart was thumping, and a cold layer of sweat lay on his brow. It had been a close thing – closer than he had intended. The noise of the engines faded. He hurried back towards the steel door. Before he could reach the handle, it opened.

  ‘Uzi,’ said Leila, removing her comms headset. ‘Thank god.’ They fell into a brief embrace. ‘All OK?’

  ‘More or less,’ said Uzi. ‘The main thing is they fell for it.’

  ‘The Mossad is about to be led a merry dance,’ said Leila. ‘I wouldn’t like to be Stefan when they catch up with him, but then again, I’m paying him enough.’ She steeled herself. ‘OK, are you ready to get out of here?’

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  They hurried up the spiral staircase at the back of the building and made their way to Uzi’s room, locking the door behind them. On the bed, two sets of clothes were laid out. For Leila there was a navy-blue suit and blouse, with a blue-and-white neckerchief; for Uzi a matching navy-blue uniform with brass buttons and gold trim around the sleeves, and a cap with a gold-edged peak. This was who they were now; these were their new identities. He was a commercial pilot; she was a senior flight attendant. The uniforms belonged to Turkish Airlines; ever since the flotilla debacle, the Turkish Intelligence Services had been more than willing to cooperate with the Iranians.

  Without a word, they dressed. Uzi transferred his plastic M9 into the pocket of his uniform. Leila took her time applying heavy make-up and pinning up her hair.

  ‘Before we go,’ said Leila, ‘I’m going to have to ask for your weapon. I’m sorry.’

  Uzi, his eyes cast into shadow by the peak of his pilot’s cap, regarded her for a moment. Reluctantly, he reached into his waistband and pulled out his R9.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Leila, slipping it into her handbag. ‘I’m glad you trust me.’

  ‘I don’t trust you,’ said Uzi. ‘I love you.’ They kissed once, briefly, on the lips. Then they took their suitcases and left the room for the last time.

  On the journey to Heathrow they barely spoke. Both stepped effortlessly into the shoes of their characters: Uzi, secretly wondering whether the Office had caught up with his doppelganger, read the Metro, checked his phone, gave up his seat for the elderly; Leila kept her eyes downcast, absorbed – it seemed – in a paperback, shyly acknowledging the lascivious glances she received from occasional men.

  They arrived at the airport in good time, and instantly blended in. Like all the other cabin crew, their passage through check-in and customs was cursory and without incident. They even found time for a little duty-free shopping; Leila bought herself a small bottle of perfume, and Uzi contemplated – but did not purchase – a box of expensive cigars. They made little eye contact, not wanting to give away the fact that they were romantically involved. They were colleagues, nothing more than that. In the quiet minutes, as they sat in the departure lounge sipping last-minute coffees, Leila apparently still absorbed in her book, Uzi found himself imagining the final stages of planning that would have been underway in Tel Aviv at that very moment. He knew the level of care and attention to detail that preceded an operation like Operation Desert Rain. This was a ‘no zero’ operation if ever there was one. If a pinpoint attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities went wrong, the repercussions would be instant – and dire. Not only would there be a political maelstrom both at home and abroad, but it would give the Islamic Republic an indisputable casus belli. Should they choose to take it, it would mean regional – even worldwide – conflagration. So at that moment the Tel Aviv planners would be hunched over their planning tables, referring to overhead computerised maps and running endless simulations, looking at contingency plan after contingency plan. The atmosphere would be tense, charged with the importance of the mission, and the participants would be wired on caffeine, smoking endless cigarettes. Representatives from the different intelligence agencies would be vying with each other to have an influence on the operation and to catch the attention of the PM, who would be seated, brooding, at the head of the table, in his high-backed leather swivel chair, making occasional cutting remarks and drinking carbonated water. All available resources would be focused on Operation Desert Rain; after all, if the MOIS sources were accurate – and he had no reason to believe they weren’t – there were only eighteen hours until the attack commenced.

  Departure time arrived, and they boarded along with the rest of the crew. While Leila took care of her duties with the passengers, Uzi strapped himself into his seat alongside the pilot – an undercover operative from the MIT, the Turkish secret service – and went through the final checks. The aircraft was a Boeing 737, relatively straightforward to handle, and even though Uzi had not revisited his Mossad flight training for several years, he felt comfortable enough as co-pilot. Leila made the announcements in Turkish and English over the intercom, then she joined them in the cockpit. They taxied to the runway, exchanging good-natured remarks over the roar of the engine, and lined themselves up for take-off. Then the jet engines fired, the plane leapt forwards, the runway shortened rapidly in front of them, the nose of the plane lifted as if on a thermal current, and they were airborne, one metre, two metres, ten, fifteen. Clean air between them and the strife-ridden earth. London diminished below them, turning into a map before their eyes; the pilot banked then steered into the open blueness. They had done it. They had evaded the clutches of the Mossad.

  39

  When the 737 reached its cruising altitude on automatic pilot, Uzi and Leila said they wanted to speak in confidence. The Turkish operative nodded and left the cockpit. The comms were off, the door was locked, and there was no way they could be overheard. This was perhaps the most secure place they could ever be, ten thousand miles in the air in the cockpit of a commercial aeroplane.

  For a moment they looked at each other in silence, both adjusting to the fact that it was safe to drop their cover. It was almost a physical experience; the pilot falling away from Uzi, the flight attendant from Leila, peeling off like the skin of a snake.

  ‘Well,’ said Leila, ‘that was easy.’

  ‘It had to be,’ said Uzi, ‘after that motorcycle chase. There were a couple of times where I thought I was taking my last breath.’

  ‘But it worked, didn’t it?’

  ‘Sure, it worked. We’ve made it.’

  ‘Poor Stefan,’ said Leila with a laugh, ‘I hope the Mossad don’t rough him up too much.’

  Uzi looked out of the window at the endless blueness, at the carpet of cloud below them. There they were, just the two of them, thousands of miles up, the dashboard, with its hundreds of buttons, lights and switches, curved in a semi-circle around them.

  ‘You make a great flight attendant, by the way,’ said Uzi.

  ‘You think?’ she replied, piqued. ‘Well, you make a gr
eat co-pilot.’

  ‘Can I smoke in here?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Even as the man who is about to bring peace to the Middle East?’

  Leila shrugged. ‘Even for the Messiah himself.’

  ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you. Why are we heading to Syria? Why not Iran?’

  ‘If the Mossad were to pick up our trail, a destination in Iran would give us away. So we’re heading to Syria. Iran and Syria support each other’s nuclear weapons programmes. So if you help us protect our yellowcake, you’ll be helping the Syrians as well.’

  Uzi nodded and looked out of the window again. All he could see was clouds and empty space. It was as if the world didn’t exist.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘this is where you give me the briefing?’ He removed his headset and placed it on the dashboard.

  ‘This is where I give you the briefing,’ Leila confirmed, untying her neckerchief. She paused to gather her thoughts. ‘As you know, after a stopover in Istanbul, we’ll land in Damascus. There we’ll liaise with two Syrian agents who will drive us to the port town of Al Lādhiqīyah. There’s a villa complex on the coast which the President of Syria gave to the MOIS as their base of operations in his country. We call it “Little Tehran”. It’s low-profile, completely secure, and offers a delightful view of the ocean.’

  ‘We might as well do this in style,’ said Uzi.

  ‘And this is only the beginning. When it’s over, we’ll be able to leave it all behind and live in luxury for the rest of our lives. Together.’ Uzi had a sudden impulse to reach over and kiss her, but Leila was totally focused on the mission; even their relationship was being factored in like an operational concern. ‘The intel we have is as follows. We have an agent codenamed Omid sitting right in the heart of the Tel Aviv regime. He has been delivering an uninterrupted stream of intel about Operation Desert Rain, mainly Mossad cables. It is all highly encrypted; a decoding team based at Little Tehran has been working on the intel round the clock. So far, they have ascertained exactly when – and how – the air strikes are going to take place. At midnight Iranian time, three Israeli fighters will fly in from the north-east, violating Iranian air space. That will be a decoy to draw our attention away from the real target. As soon as the Iranian Air Force has engaged, five Israeli jets armed with American-made GBU bunker-busters will come in under the radar from across the Caspian Sea, hit the target and run. Simple but effective. Or so the Israelis hope.’

  ‘Sounds clear enough. So what is the target?’

  ‘That’s where we need your help. As you know, there are five different nuclear sites in Iran.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Uzi. ‘There’s the heavy water plant at Arak, the secret enrichment plant at Qum, the uranium enrichment centre at Natanz, the uranium conversion centre at Isfahan, and the nuclear power station at Bushehr.’

  ‘Full marks. With your background, I would have expected nothing less,’ said Leila ironically. ‘Now, two of these – Qum and Natanz – have underground bunkers deep enough to store the yellowcake. The problem is that the decoding team at Little Tehran have been unable to figure out which the Israelis are targeting.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘For the last eighteen months, the Mossad has been using a code that has an entirely different system for targets.’

  ‘That would explain it.’

  ‘The MOIS hasn’t worked that out until now?’

  Leila flushed.

  ‘Where is the yellowcake really stored? Natanz or Qum?’ said Uzi directly.

  ‘I can’t tell you that. Not now. The point is, the Israelis might be planning to bomb the wrong place – after all, we’ve gone to some lengths to feed them false intel. On the other hand, they might have the right target.’

  ‘So you need to know which site they’re going to strike.’

  ‘Exactly. Look at it this way. When the Israelis decide to hit a target, they’ll hit it – nothing and nobody will stop them. So if they have the right target, we’ll have to move the yellowcake elsewhere. But transporting it is a dangerous business. For a start, the Israelis will have the target under surveillance – we’d need to get the yellowcake out without arousing their suspicion. Then there’s the question of safety. At the moment it’s stored deep underground, and it will be difficult for the Israelis to destroy it. But once the material is above ground and on the move, in the back of a truck or whatever, it’s much more vulnerable. If the Israelis spotted it, they wouldn’t need bunker-buster bombs – they could just fire a missile and boom. No more yellowcake. Or it could be hijacked by bandits or tribesmen. Or the truck could have an accident. Anything could happen.’

  ‘So what you’re saying is, you don’t want to move it unless you have to.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘So you want me to decode the intel and tell you where the Israelis are going to drop their bunker-busters.’

  ‘That’s right. The intel is from a Mossad source, so the encryption methods should be familiar to you.’

  ‘You don’t think the Israelis might be planning to bomb both?’

  ‘All of our intel points to only one attack.’ She paused, searching his face. ‘Iran needs you, Uzi. I know you’ve got what it takes. I know you’ve got the strength to see this through.’

  Uzi’s face hardened. ‘Peace can only be made between equals. That’s my guiding principle.’ He sat back, looked out of the window. ‘Maybe it’s the altitude. Everything seems simpler from up here.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘There’s something special about this operation,’ said Leila. ‘We’re changing the lives of millions of people. We’re like a force of nature, a tsunami – that kind of power. I’m filled with . . . I don’t know. It fills me with energy.’ Her voice changed, became softer, lower, almost hypnotic. ‘This is what we were born for,’ she continued. ‘I’ve never been one for religion. But this? This is our time.’ She moved closer and Uzi sat forward to meet her. ‘We’re like gods.’

  For a moment neither of them moved; the sound of the engine filled the space between them. Then Leila grabbed him and pulled his mouth to hers, as if his soul were buried somewhere deep inside him and she was trying to devour it.

  40

  The stopover in Istanbul went smoothly and they were on the final leg of the flight. Everything was quiet. Lulled by the hum of the engine, Uzi tipped back his chair and tried to get some sleep. He was only hours away from the crescendo, yet he felt strangely at peace here at the tip of the aeroplane, with nothing but air and cloud for miles in every direction. The temperature in the cockpit was cool; the air felt fresh and pure. His mind drifted and settled, but did not succumb to sleep completely. Through the haze of semi-consciousness, he found himself winding back through his memories and arriving twenty years before, in the blackness of the pre-dawn night on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. He was eighteen years old, and had just completed his Tironut, basic training. His unit had formed into single file, and each man carried a loaded weapon and backpack with full kit, and held a flaming torch aloft. He glanced up and saw his bolus of flame blazing into the eternity of the night above him, a single point in a chain of thirty torches; thirty soldiers trained and willing to die for their country. Through the darkness they marched hard up the impossibly steep Snake Path, sweat blooming on their foreheads; they were at the peak of physical fitness, both mental and physical, and their minds were set on reaching the top.

  The string of flaming torches wound its way higher and higher up the mountain, every step filled with grinding determination. They were climbing the vast rock plateau of Masada, a place of potent symbolism for Israel. In 72 AD, during the first Jewish–Roman war, a community of Jewish warriors known as the ‘Dagger Men’ had taken refuge in the fortress at the summit. Flavius Silva’s army laid siege, and by constructing a vast ramp of earth and stone they were able to march up to the fortress
walls and penetrate them with a battering ram. But they found nothing but dead bodies. The Jews – 960 of them – had put themselves to the sword rather than fall prey to the enemy. Now every unit in the Israeli Army held a night-time passing-out ceremony in the ancient Masada fortress.

  It was a long march, but Uzi and his comrades were so focused it seemed to pass in no time at all. This was their moment. Chests heaving, they formed into a square; the blue and white flag was raised; and the ceremony began.

  Uzi would never forget the feeling of standing there in the orange flicker of the torches, shoulder-to-shoulder with his fellow men. Now, in the cockpit of the plane, he felt light, unfettered, free. Nothing was pulling him down, nothing was restricting him; his body felt almost translucent, as if it were formed of some sort of rainbow. But that night on the summit of Masada, with his boots on the ground where those Jewish warriors spilled their own blood centuries before, he had felt wholly rooted in the earth. No, not just rooted in the earth – more than that. He felt part of the earth. As if the great boulders and dust and silt of the Holy Land had thrown out a man-shaped Golem; as if the bloodstained earth of his forefathers had come alive in him. His skeleton was made of holy rock, packed over with Dead Sea mud; his eyeballs were crystallised globes of salt, and within the grooves of his veins flowed the lava of Jewish pride. For this was the land of his birthright, this was the substance of his inheritance, in equal parts cursed and blessed. And when the ceremony drew to its final, rousing conclusion, and he opened his mouth alongside all his brothers, their teeth glinting like chips of marble in the gloom, the sound that came out was the thunder of a thousand earthquakes: Masada shall never fall again! Masada shall never fall again!

  Uzi slipped towards the surface of consciousness, and found that the Kol was speaking to him. It was saying something about Qum and Natanz, something about Leila. It was telling him not to stop believing, not to forget who he was. Then he awoke, and found that he had been speaking aloud, saying I wish you would get out of my head, I can’t wait to get you out of my head. He glanced over at the pilot, who was avoiding his eyes, pretending not to have heard.