‘So,’ said Liberty at last, ‘what about you? Did you abandon your country or did your country abandon you?’
‘I’ve never told anyone that.’
‘Not even Avner Golan?’
‘What do you know about Avner Golan?’
‘I’ve read your files, remember? I couldn’t avoid your old comrade-in-arms. He was all over the place.’
‘Avner and I both fell from grace, in our different ways. He’s lucky he was only demoted.’
‘You call falling from Katsa to Bodel lucky?’
‘You really do know everything, don’t you?’
‘The CIA keep me happy. I’ve seen a lot of sensitive things and they don’t want me spilling my guts to WikiLeaks. So they help me with my business from time to time. Of course, I hate those bastards, but it doesn’t mean I can’t use them now and again.’
‘So you used your CIA connections to put me under surveillance?’
‘Come on, Uzi. You’ve been under surveillance anyway.’
‘Fuck.’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘I knew. I just didn’t want to be told.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said gently, patting the back of his hand. ‘You’re not being watched any more. Nobody knows where you are. Even the Mossad don’t know where you are. You’re with me now.’
The food arrived and they began to eat, sliding oysters off shells, cracking lobster claws, washing their fingers in fingerbowls. Uzi tasted the ocean on his tongue, and marvelled at the passage of time, how things had changed.
‘My organisation didn’t expel me,’ he said suddenly. ‘I left. I’d had enough, so I upped and left. It was after . . . a difficult operation.’
Liberty looked up. ‘Difficult?’
‘I’m not going to talk about it.’
‘Good for you,’ she said.
‘I probably would have been kicked out anyway. If I’d stayed any longer.’
‘Why?’
‘Simple. I challenged the chain of command. I was a free thinker. I thought the unthinkable. And once – just once – I spoke the unspeakable. I was bugged in the privacy of my own home. But I was thinking aloud, nothing more.’
‘So you said something controversial?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I’ll tell you from the beginning,’ Uzi said, and stopped. He collected his thoughts. Could he really do this? He took a breath and let it out. Then he took another. And let it out. Then a third. ‘Have you heard of Nahal Sorek?’ he asked. There. It was done. His blood ran hot, then cold, then hot again.
‘I’m not sure I have,’ said Liberty.
‘You’ve heard of Dimona?’
‘The Israeli nuclear facility. Of course.’
‘But you haven’t heard of Nahal Sorek,’ said Uzi.
‘No.’
‘Exactly.’
A pause.
‘So?’
‘The truth is that Israel has twice as many nuclear weapons as you think we do. At two different locations.’
Liberty swayed back, very slightly, in her seat. But her face remained inscrutable. ‘What has this information got to do with anything?’ she said.
‘Call it a gesture of goodwill,’ said Uzi. ‘You could use it as a bargaining chip when you want to get something out of the CIA. For example.’
‘It’s worth a lot, that information.’
‘Use it. I don’t owe my organisation anything. They owe me. During my last year at the Office . . .’
‘The Office?’
‘That’s the code word for the organisation.’ He swallowed, took a breath. ‘The Mossad.’ Hot, cold, hot again. His mouth was dry. ‘I made a lot of enemies at the Office. Well, not enemies. Not on a personal level. But there were people – people higher than me – who disapproved of my views.’
‘Sounds familiar,’ said Liberty, taking a sip of wine.
‘When I was recruited, my ideology was the same as everyone else’s. But over the years, when the new director came in . . .’
‘ROM? He’s pretty tough.’
‘That’s right. When ROM came in, when I saw how he wanted us to operate, and what his decisions were based on, and what sort of methods he expected us to use – and how little it resembled the dream we all shared since childhood – I began to feel differently.’
‘Go on.’
‘Look, I’m a free thinker. That’s what made me good at my job. I wouldn’t take anyone else’s word for anything. I would judge things for myself and come up with strategies that nobody else would have thought of. Exactly what is needed in a commando.’
‘And a Mossad Katsa.’
‘And a Mossad Katsa.’ He heard himself sigh. ‘War,’ he said suddenly. ‘It does things to a man. You know? It changes you forever.’
A pause.
‘What did it do to you?’ said Liberty.
‘It opened my fucking eyes.’ Without really intending to, Uzi got to his feet and crossed to the window. He looked out at the city, seeing nothing, lost in the past.
‘You were telling me about Nahal Sorek,’ said Liberty. At the sound of her voice, Uzi’s attention returned to the room. Typical spy, he thought. Hears a name once and never forgets it. Even in a foreign language. He returned to the table and sat down.
‘KAMG, heard of it?’ he said brusquely.
‘Of course. Israel’s nuclear programme, Kure Garni leMachar.’
‘You speak Hebrew?’
‘Not really. I went to Sunday school for a few years as a kid. I can pronounce it OK, nothing more. We were pretty irreligious, I guess. Jewish only by name.’
He laughed once, short, harsh. Then, prompted by Liberty’s silence, he continued. ‘Towards the end of my career at the Office, Avner and I were assigned to counter-espionage operations in Iran. There had been a leak within KAMG, and the Office was worried that the Iranians had found out about Nahal Sorek. We were deployed to go undercover in Tehran and find out what they knew. As it turned out, they knew nothing. But in preparation, we were shown around the Nahal Sorek nuclear facility.’ He leaned forward. ‘It blew my mind,’ he said in a faraway voice. ‘I already knew it existed, of course. But when you see these things with your own eyes, it’s a different matter. The scale of it. The potential. I could stretch out my hand and touch a missile, a single weapon that alone could destroy the human race. One of many. I was in a temple of destruction, face-to-face with a terrible god.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘Nothing was the same after that.’
‘So what happened?’
She’s trying to keep up the momentum, thought Uzi, not giving me time to think. The more I talk, the more I talk, and she knows it. It’s textbook stuff.
‘Avner came round for a drink that evening,’ he continued. ‘It was forbidden to discuss work at home, but we all did.’
‘We were the same,’ said Liberty, with a little too much enthusiasm.
‘We drank and talked for hours,’ said Uzi, ‘decompressing. My guard was down and I shared an idea with him. He changed the subject, and we forgot all about it. But we had been bugged. The Office had been listening.’
‘What was the idea?’
Uzi poured himself another glass of wine. Having started down the road of disclosing classified information, he was feeling strangely calm. It was as if he had been carrying inside him a Gordian knot of secrets, which now was starting to unravel. He felt lighter, intoxicated almost. He drained his glass and poured himself another.
‘We were going over the old debate about whether nuclear weapons are a force for good or evil,’ he continued. ‘On the one hand they have the capacity to kill billions. On the other, they are the ultimate deterrent against war. The world has never known such peace as it has since the dawn of the nuclear age.’
‘So?’
‘Avner’s not interested in that stuff. He’s just in the game for the money, the sex, the excitement. But me – I’m different. It means something to me, you
know? So I started talking about politics. I was disillusioned. The Office knew I wasn’t toeing the line, and they’d overlooked me for promotion. I was angry. We drank a bottle of Scotch and I got carried away. I talked about how Israel is isolating the international community for the sake of protecting a handful of illegal settlers. How Israel puts the Arabs in a pressure cooker, cooks them until they explode, then punishes them mercilessly. How with every act of brutality we create an enemy for ourselves, and then force ourselves into a position where our only option is more brutality. How for more than half a century we’ve been dominating an entire people, expelling them, starving them, disrupting their lives on every level, taking away their freedom. How it’s a perpetual cycle. And how difficult it was to be part of that.’
‘You were brave,’ said Liberty, swirling the wine gently in her glass. ‘We have a lot in common, you know.’
Uzi didn’t hear her. He paused, took a breath, drank wine. ‘For most people, none of this would be controversial. But in the Office, such views are seen as treason.’
‘Was that all you said?’
‘No. That was bad enough, but it wasn’t what really caused the damage.’ He got to his feet again and crossed over to the window. ‘You don’t understand what it means to oppress people. Families. What it does to you as a young soldier, at the age of eighteen . . . To see the nation we’ve become.’
‘So what did they hear you say?’ said Liberty gently.
He sat down, feeling more awkward this time. ‘I said . . . I speculated that the conflict stems from the power imbalance. That’s what allows Israel to throw its weight around. I said that what Israel needs is an existential threat. Something real, something serious. If we weren’t the only regional power to have nuclear weapons it would make us think twice before continuing this oppression. We would go to war less readily. Our neighbours would have less reason to retaliate. Over time it could open the door to peace.’
‘You mean Iran?’
‘Yes, Iran. Or Syria. Though there’s not much chance of that after we bombed their facilities in 2007.’
‘You realise this is crazy, don’t you?’
‘Why?’
‘For Iran, nuclear weapons would be more than a deterrent. They’d try and wipe you off the face of the earth. And the USA would be next.’
‘Typical American answer,’ Uzi retorted, sitting back in an explosion of energy. ‘Typical ignorance. You haven’t worked in Iran, I take it?’
‘I haven’t. Afghanistan, but not Iran.’
‘If you had, you wouldn’t have such a simplistic view of the country. Persia is a proud and ancient civilisation. For centuries they were a dominant force in the world, at the forefront of science, mathematics and culture. Their leader is nothing but a figurehead, a public face. He’s not really pulling the strings. They wouldn’t instigate a nuclear holocaust any more than we would.’
‘But . . .’
‘If they launched a nuclear attack they would bring instant death and destruction on themselves, and they know it. Not even the Iranian leadership would be that stupid. However fanatical they are, they cannot erase their instinct for self-preservation. They want a nuclear weapon because they want a deterrent. They want to be respected by the West. They want to give the Muslim world back its dignity. They want to stand up to the bullies, the USA and Israel. They want to give us a reason to stop and think next time we’re about to launch a drone, or invade a weakling nation, or meddle in Iranian internal affairs. That’s what I told Avner and that’s what the Office heard. I even gave it a name: the Doctrine of the Status Quo. Perhaps unconsciously I knew I was being bugged, I don’t know. Perhaps I wanted them to know what I really thought.’
There was a silence. Liberty waved for the waiters and they glided in with cheese and a bottle of port. They disappeared again. Neither Uzi nor Liberty moved.
‘Like I said, I’m a free thinker,’ said Uzi suddenly. ‘I don’t take anything as a given. I look at things that nobody questions and work them through for myself.’
‘So Avner didn’t report you?’
‘No, he didn’t. He’s a bastard, but he’s only interested in making life better for himself, not making life worse for anyone else.’
‘Do you believe in your Doctrine of the Status Quo now?’
‘No.’
‘The way you were talking, it sounded like you did.’
‘I always talk like that.’
‘Not in my experience.’
‘You don’t have much experience.’
‘OK, then. So why don’t you believe it now?’
‘It’s too much of a risk. Deep down I’m certain that a nuclear deterrent in the Arab Middle East would be a good thing. But on paper, it’s just too risky.’
‘So you believe it with your heart, but not your head.’
‘You could say that.’
Liberty shook her head and finished her port. ‘So the Mossad didn’t kick you out right away when they heard that drunken speech of yours? I’d have expected them to get rid of you immediately. Or worse.’
‘No. I was lucky enough to have horses in the right place at the right time.’
‘Horses?’
‘It’s a word we use. Powerful allies. Everyone in the Office has at least two: one to look out for your general interests, and the other to get you out of the shit in an emergency.’
‘So this was an emergency.’
‘Too right. I called in a few favours. My horses gave me a hard time, but they contained the damage and I kept my job.’
‘Your horses are still looking after you now?’
‘To some extent,’ Uzi said. ‘When I decided to leave, my horses persuaded the decision makers that I wasn’t a threat. They said I’d gone off the rails – suffering from combat stress but still loyal. So the Office let me run. They stamp me down occasionally and think that’s enough of a deterrent. Anyway, they know they can always pick me up whenever they like.’ He gestured wearily to his bruised face.
‘Let’s step out on to the balcony,’ said Liberty, picking up her drink and handbag. ‘Get some fresh air.’
He followed her out into the night. Side-by-side, they looked over the city. The flame heaters blasted into the vast, empty sky above them. She doesn’t know about Operation Regime Change, or even Operation Cinnamon, thought Uzi. I know in my gut that she doesn’t.
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Liberty, ‘is that if you’re so upset to have left them, why did you join up in the first place?’
Uzi sighed into the blackness. ‘Being Jewish and being Israeli are two different things. Diaspora Jews might talk about Israel a lot, but they can’t understand what it means to live there. In Israel, there’s nowhere to go. If you drive far enough in one direction, you’ll reach a border and be turned back. In another direction you’ll be shot, or stabbed, or lynched. You can’t disappear. You can’t hide. If there was a war and the enemy pushed several miles into Israel, we would be fighting on our doorsteps with our kitchen knives. In Israel everything must be defended, and you know that right down to your core. You have no choice but to fight to protect your mother, your father, your brothers and sisters, your house, your school, your neighbours. I came to hate the Office, but I could never abandon my people.’ He paused to collect his thoughts before continuing. ‘Every man in Israel would have traded places with me when I was a Katsa. I was part of a legend. However flawed the Office is, without it the country would be finished. Do you know how many Katsas are operational worldwide at any one time? A hundred and fifty. A hundred and fifty people strike terror into the hearts of every regime in the world. That’s what I was part of, and even today I’m still proud.’
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Liberty. ‘You’re being inconsistent.’
‘I never said it made sense,’ Uzi replied. ‘I never claimed to be consistent.’ In the distance, the blinking lights of a plane moved in a slow arc above London. Uzi had talked more in the past hour than he had ever
intended. It was a wholly new experience. It was reckless, and he knew it couldn’t last.
‘So,’ he said, ‘we haven’t spoken about business.’
‘Oh that,’ said Liberty. ‘I’d almost forgotten.’ She turned her back to the city and rested her elbows on the railing. Uzi continued to stare into the darkness. ‘It’s simple,’ she said. ‘Since my husband died, I’ve been running his organisation. Russians, all of them. It suits me; I can speak their language, I know their mindset. I keep them at arm’s length – it’s safer that way. The power is in my hands alone. We supply the best stuff wholesale, to the top end of the market. Then we cut it with caffeine and so on, and sell it a bit cheaper to the main pushers on the estates.’
‘What’s your percentage of the market?’
‘Sixty, maybe sixty-five per cent.’
‘Sixty-five per cent?’
‘About that.’
‘Fuck.’
Uzi drained his glass. He was feeling a little drunk. It was difficult to imagine that this sophisticated woman had the ruthlessness to run such a major drugs cartel. But he knew from experience that this only indicated how dangerous a person really was.
‘My sources are ones I picked up while I was working in Afghanistan,’ Liberty went on. ‘I made my husband’s business into an empire. Nobody else has such a good supply line as me. I import the highest-quality substances on the market, by a long way. My problem is, I’ve heard a rumour that some of my employees have been trying to discover the source so they can siphon off the business themselves. I need to know how loyal my people are. That’s what I want you to help me with.’
‘So it’s a one-off thing?’
‘No, no. At the moment, it’s just me at the top. But I could make use of someone like yourself – with your skills – up there with me. Another member of the tribe, you know? This is just to get you started.’
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