The Pure (23 page)

They waited, drifting, bobbing, for what seemed like an age, hoping they would not be spotted. Listening. Finally a succession of explosions could be heard, and the boat bucked in the shock-waves in the ocean. That was the signal. The Libyan forces had thrown hand grenades into the water to mitigate the risk of hostile frogmen; according to the intel, they did this at two-hourly intervals. Now the grenades had exploded, and the clock was ticking. It was time for the commandos to act.

Adam and his ‘buddy’ pulled down their masks, pressed the regulators into their mouths and slipped into the shadowy water, followed by the other pair. As the new world pressed in on him, and a liquid chill crept across his skin, Adam began to feel safe. The water had always had that effect, ever since he was a child. His feet dragged pleasantly in their fins against the salty weight of the ocean. A torpedo-shaped object plunged over the side of the boat, bejewelled with bubbles and strings of foam. The frogmen swam after it, took hold of it, strapped themselves on. Then the engine fired, the propeller spun and the ‘wet sub’, with its saboteurs, bored through the murky water in the direction of the Libyan port.

To begin with, all went according to plan. It took forty-three minutes to reach the whale-like hulls of the ships, and the target vessel was located in another nineteen. From time to time patrol boats appeared overhead; the Israeli frogmen were using ‘rebreathers’, which recycled the air they exhaled, meaning no giveaway trails of bubbles. So the patrol boats didn’t spot them. Periodically searchlights cut into the water, but still they remained unseen. Luck was on their side tonight. So far.

The plan had been so ingrained into their minds that the frogmen didn’t hesitate for a moment. They spread out along the hull, each pair fitting a limpet-mine: two muffled clunks. Then they regrouped, mounted their wet sub once more, and set about making their escape. As they hummed through the water towards their rendezvous point, Adam was filled with a sense of jubilation. It had all been so easy, so straightforward. He breathed deeply, the sucking sound loud in his ears. Mission accomplished, he thought.

The first sign of trouble was when the pitch of the wet sub’s engine dropped to a throaty groan, and it began to lose speed. Then it cut out altogether. Adam investigated: inexplicably the battery had failed. The sub would have to be abandoned. But it would take over an hour to swim out to the rendezvous point, and they had only thirty minutes of submergence time left. There was no way they could make it to safety before their oxygen ran out.

They sent out a coded distress signal, tied the wet sub to a buoy – another team would retrieve it later – and swam at top speed away from the harbour. Their first priority was to get out of range of the Libyan grenades. The operation was collapsing around him, but Adam’s emotions were under control. His survival instinct had been activated and was being channelled in the most efficient direction. His heartbeat was slowing, not speeding up; his breathing was more regular, not erratic; his senses were heightened but had lost none of their accuracy. He was determined to survive, to win. This was what he had been trained for.

And then the explosions started. Far away at first, they crept closer and closer, and the shock waves spread towards the frogmen, causing them to pitch and roll in the water. The Libyans had started bombing early. Then, suddenly, a grenade exploded nearby and Adam spun over and over, losing all sense of orientation, his regulator ripped from his mouth. Desperately he groped after it, blinded by the sediment that had been kicked up in great clouds around him. His mask was full of water; his eyes were stinging. The night vision, what had happened to the delicate night vision? Breathe out, he had to keep breathing out, or the pressure would destroy his lungs. He forced himself to be disciplined. Thirty seconds was all he had – thirty seconds between him and unconsciousness. He stopped flailing, lay still on his side, allowed himself to be buffeted by the ocean until it began to calm. Ten seconds. The regulator, he hoped, would soon be dangling below him so that he could retrieve it with a sweep of his arm. Unless it had been ripped clean off the tank. Don’t panic, he thought, keep calm. Panic would mean certain death. He waited, waited, breathing out, then arced his arm – and there was the regulator. He gathered it up, activated the ‘purge’ button to clean it, and pressed it into his mouth. The air was sweet. He couldn’t see a thing. He pulled his mask away from his face, blew into it through his nose, clearing it. The night vision flickered, then awoke. He looked around. Where was he? The explosions had stopped but the water was still cloudy. He waited for the sediment to settle, making his breaths as shallow as possible, knowing that his air was in limited supply. Eventually some shadowy silhouettes appeared through the watery gloom; his comrades. The relief was palpable. There was no time to waste. Together they swam out to sea.

Their air ran out just as they were leaving the harbour, and they agreed – through sign language – to perform the ‘sunflower’ manoeuvre. At the press of a button their buoyancy control devices inflated and their wetsuits ballooned, providing buoyancy and thermal retention. They floated to the surface, removed their regulators, breathed deeply the cool night air. The SAAR could be anywhere by now; it was in stealth mode and they had missed the rendezvous. This was dangerous. They were visible above water, and could be spotted at any moment. But there was nothing for it. The most important thing was to keep as still as possible. They tied themselves to a length of rope and slept, changing lookouts every fifteen minutes, trying to conserve their energy for whatever lay ahead, hoping that they would be rescued before the limpet-mines went off and all hell, inevitably, broke loose.

‘It’s always like that on your first operation, my son. The first ones never go smoothly.’ Haim Feldman took a bottle from under his seat and twisted it open. ‘It’s when they go smoothly that you have something to worry about. Arak?’

Adam nodded. He hated the stuff, but always accepted it when his father offered. Haim handed him a cigarette and they sat in the shade of a lemon tree, watching the sun go down over the distant Mediterranean, smoking and sipping on the aniseed liquor.

‘It bothers me,’ Adam replied. ‘That was the first time I lost a comrade.’

‘Lost a comrade? But I thought you all escaped?’

‘That’s what I told Mother.’

‘What happened?’

‘We waited in the water for ninety minutes. Then a dinghy came to pick us up. Just as it arrived, the limpet-mines went off and the weapons boat exploded. The Libyans started firing indiscriminately in all directions, and Avi was caught by a stray bullet. It went in behind his ear, came out of his forehead. His face opened like a fruit.’

‘Did you know him well?’

‘We were minutes away from safety. Minutes. We weren’t killing anybody. We were just blowing up illegal weapons.’

Adam sipped his Arak, smoked his cigarette, and gazed into the branches of the lemon tree. An expression of concern clouded his father’s face. He took his son’s hand for a moment then, awkwardly, released it.

‘It reminds me of my first commando operation,’ he said. Adam came out of his reverie immediately. His father rarely talked about his own combat experience.

‘When was that?’ said Adam.

‘1973, during the Yom Kippur War. I had just been assigned to Arik’s unit.’

‘You mean Sharon? Ariel Sharon?’

‘Who else?’

‘You served under Arik? And you never told me?’

‘There is a time and a place to talk about such things. I think now is the time. And here, beneath this lemon tree, is the place.’

‘You should have told me earlier.’

‘I’m telling you now.’

‘What was Arik like?’

‘Different to how you might imagine. A very learned person. He studied for many years at Hebrew University. And his courage – I’d never before seen such courage in a man. And never since.’

Adam shifted uncomfortably in his chair, suddenly doubting the extent of his own bravery. ‘Were you part of the operation that split the Egyptian forces?’

‘I was. By that point in the war, Israel was at breaking-point. We had been caught completely unawares on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Many of us had been fasting when war broke out, and within hours we were fighting for our lives, and the lives of our families. Arik was called out of retirement. He begged to be allowed to charge the Egyptian forces, guns blazing. David against Goliath.’

‘He was refused?’

‘The commanders had a better use for him, something more covert. Only a man of his courage could have pulled it off. I was privileged to join him. Under cover of darkness, we left our own army behind and crossed the Suez Canal with bridging equipment. Then we mounted a surprise attack through the Tasa corridor, pierced the Egyptian frontline at the weak point between two of their armies, and came around behind them. The fighting – I’d never known such fighting. The casualties were great. When the route was cleared, Bren Adan’s division followed us over the bridgehead and encircled the whole of Suez, trapping the entire Egyptian Third Army. Then we pressed deep into Egypt. By the end of the war, our forces were only a hundred kilometres from Cairo.’

‘And in the north, Israeli paratroopers were only sixty kilometres from Damascus.’

‘That’s right.’

‘You were part of a legend. I never knew,’ said Adam.

‘If it hadn’t been for Arik, Israel would have fallen,’ Haim continued, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘There would have been a genocide. Another genocide.’ He drained his glass and leaned towards his son. ‘I still have nightmares about that war, even today. The bodies, the flames, the screaming faces. But to me, that is part of my sacrifice. The moment the guns fall silent is only the beginning of the battle.’

‘But it was all so much simpler in your day. Our unit lost a comrade, father. For what? This was an operation to blow up a ship, not a war like yours. We weren’t defending our homes, our families.’

Haim looked his son in the eye. ‘Yes, you were, Adam,’ he said. ‘Yes, you were.’

They fell silent for a while. The breeze cooled as night approached, and insects could be heard buzzing around them.

‘You need to understand something,’ said Haim at last. ‘We Jews have a right to be here, a right to live in peace. But the Arab countries around us are hungry for our blood. During the war they supported Hitler, and drew up plans to bring the Final Solution to Palestine. Then, the moment Israel was formed, they attacked us in overwhelming numbers. This was before our victories, before the settlements, before anybody here had even heard the word “occupation”. We had to beat them back in 1948, and 1967, and again in 1973, all completely unprovoked. We were faced with an enemy determined to put us all to the sword – men, women and children. Now we need to keep the lessons of the early wars alive. We need to achieve dominance and maintain that dominance. The Arab world is still baying for our blood. If we weaken, even for a moment, the hordes would come pouring through.’

Adam nodded. He had heard this lecture many times before. But now, for the first time, despite his feeling of unease, it seemed to make sense.

‘In some ways things are more complicated now, but in other ways they are simpler,’ his father continued, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘The wars of my day demonstrated to your generation that we cannot talk our way to peace. Fuck what the rest of the world thinks. They are not the ones who would be wiped out if their concessions backfired. We can’t afford to let go of anything. We need the settlements as a buffer zone against Israel proper. We need the mountains of the Golan Heights, or the Syrians would overrun us in a matter of hours.’

He opened the bottle of Arak again and filled their glasses to the brim. ‘To you, my son,’ he said, raising his glass a fraction, ‘and to all your future operations. Everything you do is protecting our people. It makes us all very proud.’

Another night, and Uzi hadn’t slept. The money still hadn’t been deposited. His head had hit the pillow at half past four in the morning, and the darkness had haunted him, hazy figures emerging and disappearing before his eyes. The Kol had a lot to say, most of which he ignored. At eight he got up, red-eyed, and smoked a spliff. All around him he could hear the sounds of the club, the city, awakening. The clink of room service, the breakfast trays in the corridor. The sound of buses outside. Voices. Danger.

The spliff mellowed him, and he tried again to sleep. By now, light was filtering through the curtains and he felt at odds with the world. His mind kept churning, churning; a strong electric current was coursing through him. The usual gallery of images arose, reconfigured, combined, gave way to each other like a tag team: the Office, Liberty, Cinnamon, the people he’d killed; Operation Regime Change, Avner, Gal. Nadim Sam Qaaqour, Ram Shalev. Then, further back, his son, Nehama, his parents. The sun rose in the sky and the sheets wound themselves around his body as he struggled to find release.

And then it was lunchtime. Uzi hauled himself out of bed, ordered room service. Would today be the day? Would Liberty turn up and give him another job? He needed some action, anything to keep his mind off this self-defeating cycle. He ate his lunch while surfing Israeli news sites on his laptop, scratching the back of his neck. Today there was a report on a failed assassination attempt on an Iranian scientist three months before – a scientist who, the newspaper contended, was conducting research in the biological sciences, not the nuclear project. As Avner had said, the death of Ram Shalev was still in the news. There was more analysis of the suicide attack – even more – with animated maps of the Jerusalem hotel and amateur footage of the explosion. There were more tributes – even more – to Shalev. His picture, pictures of his funeral. The stage was set, but where was the money? Not long now, Avner kept saying, not long now. If we don’t have the money in a week, we’ll start being less polite.

After lunch he turned on the television, toyed with the idea of phoning Gal, did not pick up the phone. Action, he really needed some action. He smoked another spliff and slept for an hour. Then he woke up. Two films on cable, back-to-back; a packet of cigarettes. Room service. By the time he had turned off the television, and the room had become silent in a way he had almost forgotten, it was growing dark outside. Days seemed to slip by while his life remained frozen. Too nervous to go out, too tired to sleep, he sat in his room while the days rolled past; one after the other, never stopping, everything advancing around him. This is the sort of life he had been willing to accept when he joined the Office all those years ago. A life of commitment to an ideal, of waiting for the opportunity to act, no matter how long it took. A life of intelligence. But those days were gone. In reality, this half-existence, this half-life in which nobody knew the truth any longer – in which he himself had almost forgotten how to discriminate the truth from lies – was bleaker, more meaningless, lonelier than he could ever have imagined.