The Gamma Option

Chapter 20

“I’d better leave you here,” Kourosh told Evira, and she felt reluctant at this point to go on without him, having become so dependent on the boy these past few days.

She pulled at the wretched clothes draped over the royal palace’s maid’s uniform. “I’m ready.”

“No, you’re not,” the urchin insisted dramatically. “How can you kill the animal Hassani without a weapon? I told you you should have let me try to get one for you.”

“I’ll be searched before being allowed into the palace. If they find a weapon, everything we’ve accomplished will go for naught.”

“But you will kill him.”

“I’ll kill him.”

“I’ll be waiting for you when you come out.”

Kourosh reached out to touch her briefly before he bounded off, looking back once before turning the first corner. Evira was left with only the tiniest hope she could make good on her promise. To start with, her wounds, though somewhat healed, still pained her and would undoubtedly slow down her motions. Beyond that, there was the reality of the style of mission she was about to undertake in the fortress before her. This kind of work had never been her specialty as it had been McCracken’s. Killing was something she loathed. Through the entire course of her exploits, she had killed only in self-defense. She tried to tell herself that tonight was no different, but the convincing came with difficulty.

Evira stripped off her rags to reveal the uniform beneath and emerged from the shadows of the square in front of the royal palace. Her heart thudded with the awareness that the next few moments were the most crucial of all. If her plan failed to provide access to the grounds, nothing else mattered. She slid between a pair of sedans arriving with guests and bypassed the main gate in favor of the private side street that led to the servant’s entrance near the school. She stayed close enough to the huge wall to avoid detection, and if approached would have to go into her charade earlier than she planned.

Any route of entry she chose would face her with Revolutionary Guardsmen who were not about to let her pass through without proper identification unless she appeared as though she belonged. This illusion would be created with the help of her servant’s uniform.

Taking a heavy breath, she veered from the shadow of the security wall toward the Revolutionary Guardsmen who stood at attention before the blocked-off side street delivery vehicles had been using throughout the afternoon.

“That van you just let pass through,” she called to them from several yards away, quickening her step and fixing a look of anxiety on her face, “was it the baker? Tell me if you’ve seen the baker.”

The lead guard swung toward her with a start. “Who are you to ask?”

“I am the server in charge of the dessert table and there will be hell to pay if he does not arrive with the rest of his wares soon.”

“Where is your badge?” he demanded, noticing her empty lapel.

“I took it off so it wouldn’t fall into the punch. Be most embarrassing, wouldn’t you say? Now what of the baker?”

“He wasn’t in the van.”

“Damn! There will be hell to pay for this, hell I say!” She came closer to the guard. “You will summon me as soon as his goods arrive. You will call the kitchen and ask for Manijeh. Yes?”

The guard stiffened. “I will send him through as I have sent the others through. I am nobody’s messenger.”

“As you wish. But if anyone asks me …”

She began to ease by him and past the wary guards who eyed her still, though more amused by the tirade than suspicious.

“Be gone with you!” the lead guard shouted. “Be gone and let me do my job!”

At that instant another delivery vehicle caught his attention long enough to keep her safe from further scrutiny while she moved along the wall. She made her way straight to an entrance two hundred yards down, near a building she recognized from Kourosh’s drawings as the school. The guards here accepted her ruse even more easily, with one insisting on escorting her back to the kitchen in keeping with procedure.

He guided her to the servants’ entrance, which led directly into the kitchen. She recalled the dining room sat between this and the majestic, two-story ballroom.

Passing into the kitchen, the last thing she wanted to do was attract attention, so she simply fell into the long chain of servants picking up trays of glasses and hors d’oeuvres. The door they took out of the kitchen bypassed the dining room altogether and led down through a vestibule into the ballroom. At this point she had no conception of what the next stage of her plan would be and willed herself to stay calm so her thoughts might flow freely.

Just like McCracken would do.

Evira held tight to her tray of hors d’oeuvres and entered the ballroom. She couldn’t help but be impressed once she entered. Even Kourosh’s exaggerated drawings had not done it justice. It was huge and sprawling, nearly sixty yards square, with a hand-sewn Kerman pattern rug covering much of that. The serving tables were placed upon the rug. A number of crystal chandeliers of various sizes dangled from the two-story-high ceiling, which, given the perfect weather conditions, might be opened later to let the stars shine in. Enormous bouquets of flowers and countless potted plants added to the beauty of the room. Furthermore, the ballroom had been constructed in such a way that the mezzanine balcony swept down along one wall so that a truly grand entrance could be made down the spiraling staircase.

Fortunately, though, as far as she could tell General Hassani had yet to make his entrance. Of course. The meal for such an affair would be served late to allow him to make the most fashionable appearance possible and to allow his powerful guests ample time to mingle among themselves prior to this. After all, once he arrived all attention would be centered on him.

Evira’s mind began to work.

She placed the tray of hot hors d’oeuvres on a table and picked up a tray of empty champagne glasses. Iran might have angrily denounced all ties with the West, but the serving procedures here were entirely western. A throwback to the days of the Shah and a testament to Hassani’s all-out efforts to win the support of the wealthy and powerful.

Returning to the kitchen area, Evira was given a fresh tray of filled glasses in return for her tray of empty ones. She was careful to balance the tray on one hand as the other servants were doing, so as to have a hand free to serve with. She had trouble with the process at the outset, and a vision of her tray’s contents tumbling to the rug and drawing the attention of everyone in the room made her even more nervous. But her champagne was much in demand and her load was quickly lightened, allowing her to roam easily about. Her thoughts again turned to the next phase of her strategy.

Since he had yet to make his appearance, Hassani must still be upstairs, either relaxing or dressing. He would be under guard, yes, but would hardly be expecting an attack now and was probably the most accessible to her he would be all evening.

If she could find him.

If she could find a weapon. I should have listened to Kourosh, she thought. As it turned out, I wasn’t searched at all. …

Her eyes turned to focus on the women. They were to a person elegantly dressed in lavish, western-style gowns. She watched them eagerly, not sure yet what she expected to see that might help her.

The answer came to Evira as she was straightening the arrangements of fruit on a table filled with a seemingly endless variety. A number of women disappeared into an alcove off the wall farthest from the kitchen only to return quickly to the ballroom. Evira suspected that what she would find there was the ladies’ room, and with that observation began at last to formulate the plan that would get her to Hassani.

Carrying her nearly empty tray, she eased closer to the alcove, pretending to offer champagne to the ladies as they emerged. When there was a lull in the flow of traffic, Evira ducked into the alcove. As expected, there before her was a heavy wood door leading into a ladies’ room, unoccupied at present unless she badly missed her guess. She propped the tray up against the wall, eased her hand over the knob, turned it, and pushed the door inward. She entered, prepared to pretend she was there to tidy up if approached.

The bathroom was indeed deserted. It, too, was lavish and smelled strongly of lavender. Evira entered one of the stalls and locked the door behind her. There was a crack sufficient for her to peer through, and she agonized through the comings and goings of several small groups of women, knowing she could only execute her plan if one entered alone. At last her patience was rewarded by the sight of a single beautiful woman entering the room. As the woman’s hand pushed open the door to the stall two down from hers, Evira sprang outward and grasped her by the neck. She quickly located the carotid arteries and squeezed off the blood flow to the woman’s brain. Then she dragged her into the stall on the chance that another guest was about to enter.

The woman was unconscious within twenty seconds. Evira’s next task was to get her victim inside what must have been the supply closet located just to the right of the bathroom’s entrance. Evira’s heart was thudding madly as she slid out of the stall and moved quickly for it. She held the woman’s unconscious frame in one arm, while the other reached to grasp the closet door’s knob.

It wouldn’t turn. Locked, damn it, locked!

Immediately Evira’s ears probed for the inevitable clip-clapping of high heels against the hardwood floors where the carpeting ended outside the main door. At most she judged she had another minute, with the chance of considerably less than that. She eased the woman down and grabbed in her pocket for the pair of safety pins Kourosh had gotten for her.

Evira felt sweat starting to form on her brow as she knelt to work one of the pins into the lock. She jerked it too hard and it bent. She withdrew it with care and fingered her second one. Working more carefully, she inserted it into the lock and began to feel for the tumblers. She closed her eyes to better picture its insides and at last felt it give. The knob twisted in her hand and the door opened inward.

She pulled the unconscious woman into the supply closet and managed to get the door closed just before a new group of women entered the bathroom. Evira didn’t make a move or a sound, was careful to keep a hand close to her victim’s mouth just in case she stirred unexpectedly. When this latest group of women had gone, she found the closet’s light switch and went to work on her prisoner.

The woman was just about her size, a blessing indeed. After quickly removing her gown, stockings, and formal shoes, Evira went to work stripping away parts of her undergarments to bind and gag her. As further insurance, she tied the woman’s bound hands and feet to a storage rack well away from the door itself. Confident her captive was secure, Evira removed the maid’s uniform and struggled into the gown, adjusting it as best she could. The stockings were a perfect fit, but the high-heeled shoes presented a problem. Evira grimaced as she squeezed them over her feet. It had been years since she had worn such shoes, and these were at least one size too small.

Evira worked through the sounds of women coming and going in the bathroom, no longer able to afford the luxury of patience. Hassani was sure to make his entrance soon. When the bathroom was next deserted she slipped out of the supply closet and made straight for the mirror. Everything considered, she didn’t look at all bad except for her hair, which simply didn’t match the part she was trying to play. She picked at it as best she could and hoped she could pass a cursory scrutiny when she returned to the ballroom.

The door to the bathroom opened and Evira turned with a start. A pair of women entered but gave her only passing notice. Avoiding their eyes, she slid out the door.

She could tell already the too-tight heels were going to be a real problem if fast motions were required of her. But she would have to put up with them for now. Returning to the ballroom was unthinkable. She could be recognized by another of the servants or, worse, the gown she had donned might be recognized and her entire plan thrown into shambles.

What she needed was to make use of the nearest route upstairs. The problem was the only stairs Kourosh’s drawings had included necessitated her risking an approach through the ballroom, and those would be too heavily guarded in any event. She moved out of the alcove and turned left instead of making the right that would have taken her back into the ballroom.

Her heart pounded excitedly at the sight of another door. She opened it and breathed easier when she saw a staircase climbing upward for the second floor and the royal chambers where Hassani must still be. It was secluded and would give her room to maneuver even if it were guarded. She realized she was wearing a good disguise, because even the guardsmen would approach her with respect and reverence, not wanting to risk the penalties of insulting an honored guest. That would give her the time she needed to deal with them.

She began her ascent of the staircase, starting to consider now the problem of finding a weapon, when she noticed the shape of the single guardsman on duty on the landing. Suddenly the last pieces of her plan were in place, and Evira approached the guard with a wide, disarming smile. Just as she drew close to him, her right hand shot out in a half fist. In the dim light he never saw the blow coming, and it rammed unimpeded into his Adam’s apple, crushing it. The guard pitched to his knees gasping, still with the sense to claw for his weapon. Evira jammed it to the rug with her foot as she leaned far enough over to smash him across the face with the back of her forearm. The guard fluttered into unconsciousness. Death would come soon, and not wanting to risk letting his corpse be found, Evira dragged him into a darkened alcove on the second floor.

A weapon was hers for the choosing now, and she rejected the rifle in favor of the Soviet-made nine-millimeter Greysa pistol. It was bulky and poorly weighted, but it could be concealed in the back of her gown.

Knowing from Kourosh’s drawing exactly where the royal quarters were located, she cut across the corridor to the head of the wall. Evira trembled with the realization that her target was only a single turn away. She reached the wall and peered around it. Before her, three-quarters of the way down the hall, a pair of armed guards stood vigilantly outside the massive door leading into the royal chambers. Evira eyed the men carefully from her position. They were both armed with automatic rifles, obviously formidable and just as obviously guarding the general himself.

Evira’s heart leaped with expectation. The fact that she had come this far and was so close to the completion of her task, made her almost forget that not only did she have to overcome the guards, but that she must do so without attracting the attention of Hassani within the chambers. The slightest misjudgment or mistake on her part and he would trigger an alarm that would summon the whole of the palace’s security force to this very spot.

Accordingly, her next thought was simply to wait for the general to emerge and to shoot him as he headed for the main staircase. But that plan was fraught with risk, a shot from anything but point blank range with the Greysa not being totally reliable. Moreover, the guards might spot her and prevent her from taking action. No, she had to spring on Hassani where he felt the safest. Wasting no further time, Evira steadied herself and headed around the corner.

She did not bother trying to disguise her presence from the guards; there was no sense in that. Instead she lurched drunkenly down the hallway, wavering from side to side.

“My general,” she called flippantly. “Where is my general? I have come as you told me….”

She walked straight toward the two guards.

“He sent for me,” she announced to them, tottering on her high heels.

The two guards gazed at each other but neither moved or spoke.

“Tell him I’m here, please,” she requested, as if assuming they knew who she was and had been given notification of her expected arrival. “You’d best hurry. The guests downstairs are growing impatient.”

The next moment was one of doubt, and Evira seized it. The Greysa pistol was in her hand before either guard could notice the motion; not to fire, since that would have given her away to the target within. Instead Evira rammed the heavy pistol’s butt into the bridge of the closest guard’s nose. The man had barely even slumped when she whipped around and struck the second guard across the face with the barrel, opening a nasty gash. He was stunned, but still able to start for his rifle when Evira grasped his head in her free hand. She pinned it long enough to pound his skull twice with the Greysa. She felt him go limp.

Sensing movement, Evira swung back toward the first guard. His face was a sea of blood as he struggled to bring his rifle up, and his mouth was starting to form a warning to the man inside the room. Before any sound could emerge, Evira drove the point of her heel straight into the soft flesh of his throat. The guard was jolted backward, eyes bulging, when she cracked the pistol with all her might into his temple. His body kicked once and then spasmed over on the floor.

Concerned over the sounds of the commotion, Evira hesitated not at all. She steadied the Greysa pistol in one hand as she reached for the door knob with the other.

Chapter 21

The knob wouldn’t turn, the door locked from the inside. Not surprising by any means, but still something she had failed to consider. In her mind she had seen herself plunging straight inside and shooting Hassani on sight, emptying her clip into him. She would have to think of something else now.

The door, like the wall around it, was made of rich, ancient wood. It would be impossible to kick or shoulder through without alerting Hassani to the impending attack. Certainly she could not wait for him to emerge on his own. Evira thought fast. She wiped the sweat from her palm, re-gripped the Greysa, and knocked lightly on the door.

“Message for you, General,” she said, lowering her voice to disguise it as a man’s.

She waited, heard nothing. A dread fear filled her that she had walked into a trap, that either the chambers beyond the heavy door were empty or a host of Revolutionary Guardsmen lay in wait behind it. Still she knocked again.

“General?”

She heard the footsteps first, then an impatient voice from within.

“Coming.” The sounds of locks being turned now. “There better be good reason for this interruption. I was just ready to—”

Evira watched the double doors being pulled back.

“—come down. Now what is—”

She didn’t hesitate. All she saw was a glimpse of Hassani’s face and the bold black-green uniform beneath it. The Greysa came up, and before she knew what she was doing, it was erupting in her hand. The first bullet took the general in the face, obliterating his features. The next pounded his chest as he reeled helplessly backward. Evira pumped a third into his head and a final one dead on line with his heart. She stood over him with the gun still smoking in her hand and knew he was dead, felt the warmth of satisfaction surge through her. In that instant, her life meant nothing, but only that instant, for in the next her ears caught the sounds of guards alerted by the Greysa’s resounding reports.

Her cold resolve had blotted out just how loud the explosions had been. A regiment of guards was already en route in her direction. Evira bolted for the door, still clinging to the Greysa although clearly it could be of little use. Escape was the thing now, the warm rush caused by her successful execution of Hassani cooling under its consideration. Shouts and screams from all levels of the palace echoed through her ears as she passed back into the corridor.

She swung left outside the master chambers instead of right, hoping for a private stairway on this side of the corridor as well. Sure enough there it was, a virtual twin of the one she had ascended to reach Hassani in the first place. Evira bolted toward it and got there just in time to hear the flood of footsteps pouring up it. She had the instant she needed to duck behind the door and keep herself pinned there after it flew open to allow a dozen guardsmen to rush by for the general’s chambers. She planned her next move for the moment they had all passed inside, planned it perfectly, and plunged around the door and onto the steps without being seen.

In seconds more, guards would be posted at all levels, the presence of a killer obvious. For now, though, the steps were hers. She descended fast after pulling off her high heels to quicken her pace. She almost discarded them, then realized their presence would alert the guards that it was a woman they were after. So she held on to the shoes, at least until an opportune time for disposal came about. If she encountered no further guards en route, there was a chance, just a chance, she could find a way out of this. But how? Hiding in the labyrinth of the palace’s design was a possibility. Yet with the building certain to be sealed and an all-out search conducted, that seemed to be only delaying the inevitable. What she needed was a way out of this building.

First off, there was the blood splattered over the front of her gown to consider. She had to get back to the supply closet in the bathroom and redon her maid’s uniform. Her only chance of survival under the circumstances seemed to lie in getting out of the palace in much the same way she had gotten in. If she were spotted by anyone as she was now she was finished.

She followed this set of steps as far as they went, to a basement area, she guessed, which ran directly beneath the first level. She passed through a doorway into a musty damp space built as a vast play area for the royal children. The sole light came from the meager rays shed from the area of the stairway, and with this well behind her, Evira embraced the darkness. She knew it would hinder pursuit, and she flirted with the notion of hiding down here until a better strategy availed itself. If only she had committed to memory the underground escape tunnel Kourosh had alluded to. If only …

Evira slid on through the darkness as quickly as she could, having to feel her way now. At last a light shining dimly from beneath a door grabbed her attention and she passed inside to find a storage room lined with various food supplies and assorted kitchen necessities. A pungent smell she recognized from her initial entry into the kitchen found her nose and she realized this storeroom must have been located directly beneath the kitchen. She was on the wrong side of the palace to reclaim her servant’s uniform, and there was no way she could make it back unseen to the bathroom from this vantage point anyway. It was also possible the woman she had gagged and bound had been found by now so the Revolutionary Guardsmen knew just what to look for.

What then?

Make use of what you have, would be the advice of Blaine McCracken. And what she had was the kitchen directly above her.

The stairs upward led into the vestibule that permitted access to the dining room as well as the kitchen and ballroom. She chose to enter the dining room straightaway in the hope of finding a single servant to overcome. But the room was deserted, the first course of dolmas, or grape leaves, and cheese portioned out at the individual settings. That left her with only the kitchen as an alternative, and she eased toward the swinging doors that led directly into it from the dining room. She eased one open enough to see chefs arguing with guardsmen over the fate of the meal being prepared. As near as she could tell, the kitchen’s orders were to proceed with the preparations.

That was crazy! The anomaly made no sense. A festive meal with the bullet-ravaged corpse of the nation’s leader upstairs? What was going on?

Evira turned her attention back to escaping. She moved through the door, careful to still its swinging, and concealed herself between parallel stacks of pots and pans, eyeing the kitchen before her. The stoves were of the gas variety, many of them cluttered with simmering food which emanated sharp, pungent odors. The smoke rising formed her next strategy.

Though the gas stoves were safe, open flames could mean extreme danger if the proper conditions were created. Evira eased herself a little forward. On a shelf just before her rested two glass jugs full of cooking oil and a box of wooden matches.

She emerged from her hiding place for the brief moment it took to jump up and grab one of the jugs of cooking oil and the matches from the shelf, all in the same motion. The jug was heavier than expected, and nearly toppled from her grasp as she brought it down with her next to the nearest stove, all its burners busy with pots.

She twisted the top of the jug off and eased it over until the thick oil began to ooze out. She poured it under and around the hot stove and then slid back away from the stove with a trail of the oil left before her. Watching its thick shine begin to widen, she struck a single match and tossed it slightly ahead.

The flames caught instantly and spread in a fast, straight line toward the pool of oil collected under the stove. There was a poof! followed by an expulsion of black smoke as the burners caught fire and flames reached out from the stove. Pots spewed their boiling contents about in all directions and the flames engulfed the white frame of the stove, spreading in bursts to the ones on either side of it.

One of the kitchen workers pulled the fire alarm and old-fashioned bells chimed through the palace. A pair of chefs came forward with fire extinguishers in hand but were blown back when flames spurted outward. The sprinkler system was activated by then, but another explosion rocketed more flames into another section of the kitchen and quickly the fire spread beyond the ability of the sprinklers to contain it. The bells continued to sound and Evira saw the kitchen workers rushing toward the nearest emergency exit. But the Revolutionary Guard had closed them off with the killer still at large, which forced the throng to head for the ballroom instead.

In the darkness and smoke Evira stalked toward a servant whose coughs had slowed her down. Evira grabbed her from behind, and before she could scream for help Evira had knocked her out and dragged her unconscious form into the shadows.

Evira struggled to remove the uniform from the woman, then removed her own gown. She donned the uniform in its place and moved into the vestibule that led into the ballroom.

She entered it among a host of coughing kitchen personnel who were collectively struggling for breath or wiping grime from their faces. Around her all was bedlam. The Revolutionary Guards had closed off all exits in a concerted attempt to keep those present inside until order was restored. No one was allowed to leave. But in the next moment there was a huge gas explosion in the kitchen that shook the palace walls. A secondary explosion immediately afterward was punctuated by thick black smoke filling the first floor.

Pandemonium ensued. Instantly all the main doors were jammed with desperate shapes fleeing into the night, guests mixing with servants as they passed out of the palace onto the sprawling grounds. To the commoners gathered in the streets beyond the royal palace, it made for entertaining viewing indeed, the sight of all those in charred formal dress reduced to a desperate mass. A few of the commoners cheered. Others jeered. There were few guardsmen about to silence them.

The main gates had to be opened to allow the fire apparatus to pass into the complex, and it was through these in the confusion that Evira managed to slide off unseen into the night.

A pair of men dressed as commoners viewed the fire raging from within the palace with as much confusion as delight.

“What do you think?” the bearded one asked of the other, who was clean shaven. In times like this they always resorted to Hebrew, keeping their voices soft.

“It’s not us,” the clean shaven one replied. “It couldn’t be.”

“Unless there’s something the old men didn’t tell us. Unless this was a part of the operation we were not made privy to.”

“Relax. It’s just coincidence. Nothing more.”

But the bearded one continued to watch as the black smoke billowed from the windows ruptured by the blasts or by firemen.

“I’m just worried Firestorm may have started without us.”

“How could it, my friend? After all, we and the others are Firestorm.”

“Three days?” the bearded one asked.

“Three days,” the other acknowledged.

Kourosh was waiting for Evira in the small room that had become her home and refuge. He grabbed her arms when she entered, bouncing buoyantly about.

“I saw the flames from around the corner. I ran when I heard the sirens coming. I knew it was you! I knew it!”

“I got lucky,” Evira said, tussling his hair.

“Did you do it? Did you kill him?”

The hate in his voice disturbed her, but she nodded.

“How? Gun? Knife? The fire?”

His morbid curiosity should have revolted her but didn’t. She had come to understand that he had grown up knowing no different. Besides, he had a right to know.

“Gun,” was all she said.

“Are they chasing you? Might they come here?”

“I don’t think so.”

He gripped her arms tighter, the perpetual grime on his cheeks seeming darker than ever. “I know other places we can hide. They’ll never find us. You’ll see!”

Evira shook her head. “Don’t worry. There’s an escape route. You need only get me to the airport tomorrow.”

“Escape route?”

“Yes.”

“For … you?”

She nodded. “And you, my young friend. You saved my life. I could never leave this country without you.”

The boy threw himself into her arms and Evira hugged him tight, never remembering a time when an embrace felt more special.

Evira approached the Iran Air ticket counter at six o’clock the next morning. Since many of the international flights originating in Tehran departed even before this, she would have preferred to have come earlier. But the contact who would get her on her way with tickets on the first available flight out of the country didn’t come on duty until six. Evira got in line at her station and resigned herself to waiting. Strangely, none of the newspapers or the state television station had said anything about Hassani’s assassination. There was mention of the fire and a statement supposedly from the general was read. She wondered how and when the news of his death would be announced and why it was being concealed.

Evira never considered for a second leaving Kourosh in Tehran. She realized there would be a problem since the original escape plan was for one, not two, and Kourosh had no passport in any event. Still she remained adamant. He would come with her or she would stay until she could come up with a way to get him out as well. She clung to the hope her contact would be able to resolve the problem in a matter of minutes.

At last her turn came and she stepped up to the counter. The woman smiled at her perfunctorily and Evira handed her over a passport. The clerk reached under the counter and came up with an envelope.

“Cairo,” she said simply. “Gate fifteen.”

“Complications,” Evira returned. “I’ll need two.”

The clerk’s expression changed a bit. “It will take time.”

“I have it.”

“A passport?”

“My problem. Just get me another ticket.”

The woman disappeared through a door behind the long service counter and Evira had settled herself to waiting patiently when she heard a commotion behind her. Turning, she saw a half-dozen Revolutionary Guardsmen making their way through the terminal in her general direction. Evira turned back, heart leaping in her chest. But such appearances were not uncommon. She needed only to remain calm. The clerk would take care of her.

“Cairo is much too hot this time of year, I’m afraid,” came a voice from almost directly behind her, a voice she recognized but realized couldn’t be. “Yes, Evira, I’m talking to you.”

She turned at that and froze. There, standing slightly ahead of six Revolutionary Guardsmen, with bystanders clustering about, was General Amir Hassani, alive and in the flesh. Another pair of soldiers closed in on her from either side, rifles at the ready.

You’re dead! Evira wanted to scream at Hassani but her eyes locked on the boy who stood transfixed in rage behind the soldiers.

“Run!” she screamed at him. “Run!”

And to distract the soldiers she made a feeble lunge toward Hassani, Evira feeling the rifle blow to the back of her head only briefly before oblivion welcomed her.

Chapter 22

“Well, Indian, for better or for worse, here we are,” McCracken said, easing their car off to the shoulder.

Wareagle nodded in the direction of a sign ahead which stated its message with crystal clarity.

Hank Belgrade had explained it all to Blaine on the phone the previous evening, how the gunnery range which ran between Arizona’s Sierra Estrella and Maricopa Mountains was an elaborate hoax meant to disguise the existence of the O.K. Corral. Belgrade couldn’t be much more specific in his directions than to say the retirement community for aging government personnel was situated between Phoenix and Casa Grande, before Route 85 reached the southern part of the state.

After obtaining that information, Blaine and Johnny had driven to Boston’s Logan Airport and taken the next flight out bound for Phoenix. There were two stopovers and a long delay en route. The Thursday morning dawn was breaking by the time they finally landed.

“What now, Blainey?” Wareagle wondered, with the letters of the warning sign before them seeming to slide in the sun.

“We drive on like we’re not supposed to and see what we find. It’s tough country. Can’t be the first time somebody strayed off the road and got themselves stuck.”

“You plan to drive straight up to their front door?”

“That’s the idea for now, Indian. Just make sure those spirits of yours fasten their seatbelts.”

“They’ve been quiet today, Blainey.”

“Too busy watching us maybe.”

“Too busy laughing more likely.”

The area they were crossing was basically desert, and Blaine was forced to turn the rental car’s air conditioning off when the temperature needle flirted dangerously with the high zone. They opened all four windows in the sedan, which proved a blessing when they were perhaps five miles in.

“I hear something, Blainey,” Wareagle said suddenly.

“Not me.”

“Coming from the west, a little more than a mile off.”

“What is it, a chopper?”

Wareagle tilted his head from the window as if the air might tell him. “Hughes Thunderhawk, overhauled from its time in the hellfire.”

“Kind of like us, eh, Indian?”

“It’s closing, Blainey.”

“I figured they’d spot us before long. Must have sensors laid through the ground. Or maybe it’s just a routine patrol.”

“Too fast for routine.”

“Then what do you say we meet them on our own terms?”

McCracken had the sedan pulled over, the hood popped and his head beneath it, when his ears finally picked up what Johnny Wareagle’s had well ahead of him. The steady wop-wop-wop sifted through the wind at an ever-increasing volume until the dust started to kick up around him announcing the chopper’s arrival. Blaine gazed upward and feigned absolute shock over the black chopper’s appearance. He began to wave his arms frantically to signal it, as a motorist in grave trouble would have.

In his mind he could hear the pilot issuing a report back to the command center of the O.K. Corral, perhaps speaking to base leader Doc Holliday himself. A car had wandered into their territory and overheated. No sense making a big fuss. Just send some help fast or call the nearest Triple A. Wareagle had stayed hunched in the backseat the whole time the chopper was overhead. That way the report would mention only one man present, which was what they had to think if Blaine’s plan was going to work.

“You have entered an air force gunnery range area and are in extreme danger,” came the obligatory call over the chopper’s PA system. “Please leave with your vehicle immediately. Repeat, please leave with your vehicle immediately.”

McCracken threw up his arms helplessly once more and then pointed in frustration at the engine. He made sure they could see him shrug. He saw the pilot’s hand signal before the chopper swung round and headed back to the west and the O.K. Corral.

“How long you figure it’ll be before they can get help to us, Indian?” he asked when Wareagle had emerged from the backseat.

“My guess would be ten minutes, maybe fifteen. We’re close, Blainey.”

“Spirits tell you anything specific about the Corral we’ll soon be heading for?”

“A prison, Blainey, where the souls of the past loiter in the present without regard for the future.”

“So what else is new?”

As Wareagle had predicted, the jeep came kicking dust down the single unpaved road inside of fifteen minutes later. Blaine made a show of stepping away from his still-open hood and waving his arms again as is if to attract the driver. The jeep was marked in the colors and symbols of the air force, but the two men inside were dressed in civilian clothes.

“Am I glad to see you!” he shouted out when they pulled their jeep up not far from him.

They stepped down wordlessly, facial features obscured by the dark-tinted goggles each wore to keep the desert dust from their eyes while riding in the open jeep.

“What’s the problem?” one of them asked.

“Bastard overheated. Should’ve known not to trust a rental in these parts.”

One of the men pulled off his goggles to reveal a pair of expressionless eyes. He nodded to the other who headed back to the jeep.

“I really appreciate your help,” Blaine said. “Hey, you boys air force, or what?”

The man said nothing, just stood there.

“Well, thank the boys in the chopper for me, too.”

At the jeep, the second man had just reached into the back for a water jug when Johnny Wareagle rose from behind it and latched a hand over his wrist so he wouldn’t foolishly try for a weapon. Meanwhile, McCracken more crudely rammed a fist into the stomach of the man nearest him. The man doubled over and Blaine followed the blow up by slamming him hard under the chin. His head snapped back in whiplash and he passed out instantly. Blaine turned to see Wareagle approaching with a slight grin etched over his leathery face and the man he’d downed hoisted effortlessly over his shoulder.

“You must learn to be subtle, Blainey.”

“You know what they say about an old dog, Indian.”

“Perhaps. But the teeth remain sharp and dangerous still.”

“So long as he doesn’t try and change his bite.”

They drove the rental car a short way off the single dirt road and camouflaged it as best they could with brush. By the time they climbed into the purloined jeep, its previous two occupants had been bound, gagged, and stored in the sedan’s back and front seats. Blaine had left the windows partway down to make sure they’d have air. He drove the jeep with Johnny Wareagle in the seat next to him. They had donned the large tinted goggles worn by the other men both to shut out the spray of desert dust and to mask their features. Since the men from the O.K. Corral were dressed in civilian clothes, they didn’t feel their own garb would be a problem.

“Rover One, this is Holliday,” a voice squawked over a mobile radio beneath the dash when they were six minutes into their drive west. “You boys plan on making a report anytime soon?”

Blaine made sure to hold the mike well away from his lips when he responded. “Assistance rendered. On our way in.”

“No reason to be so formal about it. See ya for lunch, boys,” Holliday said, and signed off.

The tall steel fence came into view a bit under ten minutes later, just before they swung up the last of a rise that descended quickly into a valley at the foot of Arizona’s Maricopa Mountains.

“I don’t see a checkpoint,” Blaine noted. “No guards to concern ourselves with.”

“Electronic surveillance,” Wareagle put forth. “Cameras mounted on or near the fence. The gate will be opened from a monitoring station if we’re permitted to pass through.”

As they drew closer to the fence, more signs alerting them to the presence of an air force gunnery range were visible, plastered all over the steel link.

“Wish I could,” Blaine said out loud in response to the boldest sign of them all, one ordering all newcomers to TURN BACK NOW!

They reached the gate and could do nothing but wait. When it did not slide open immediately, McCracken inspected it from the driver’s seat to see if he could ram the jeep right through and up the last of the rise. Probably could have, but it was a bad idea. If they couldn’t gain legitimate access to the O.K. Corral, the thing to do would be to circle round from the side on foot and make their entry at night. But the gate slid sideways at last and Blaine drove through it after a glance at Wareagle. He continued the uphill climb and saw in the rearview mirror that the gate had closed behind them.

“Once we get there, we’ll still have to find Bechman,” he said.

“The spirits would not have let us come this far if that was not their intention,” Johnny told him.

“Let’s hope so.”

The early afternoon sun beat down on them and Blaine felt his flesh seeming to wilt. The dry desert heat had his mouth tasting like dust, and he was about to reach back for one of the jeep’s water jugs when the rise suddenly leveled off to reveal the valley beneath them. Blaine’s eyes bulged behind his goggles.

“Jesus Christ, is that a mirage, Indian, or am I crazy?”

“It is indeed an illusion, Blainey, but not meant for us.”

In the valley before them, a perfect town had been built with unpainted wood. The only tall structure was a church steeple on the outskirts, and Blaine distinguished freshly sodded parks and even a bubbling stream around which the entire secret retirement community had been constructed.

“Certainly has all the comforts of home,” Blaine commented, and he started the jeep downward.

As they drew closer they could see that virtually all the structures were one-story in design, and all were equipped with wheelchair ramps as well as steps for easy entry. Everything had been built in consideration of the O.K. Corral’s residents, many of them old or infirm.

He slowed the jeep briefly at a sign posted off the road where it turned to pavement, a sign painted far less professionally than the previous ones and bearing a wholly different message:

“Guess we should take them up on the offer, Indian.”

“Why not?” Wareagle shrugged.

And McCracken headed the jeep on into the makeshift town. They kept their goggles on, ready now to abandon the jeep at the first opportunity. Everywhere they looked were indications of time gone wrong. The place was laid out like an old-style western town. Each of the small shops had its own hand-carved or painted sign above its doorway, which furthered the illusion still more. There was an ice cream shop and even a small movie house featuring posters of coming attractions and a marquee boldly advertising the latest bill. They drove the jeep past a parklike setting lined with canopied tables around the pond. Many of the tables were occupied by figures snoozing, staring, or reading a book or newspaper.

“Think they got their own printing press, too?” Blaine wondered.

“Why not?” Johnny Wareagle responded. “They’ve fabricated their own reality here. They want time to seem frozen, unchanged. The residents will have no means of noting the passage of days that way. They lose touch with what they were before coming here, who they were.”

“Turned docile and quiet, behavior modification taken to a new level. Jesus Christ, Indian, when you think of all the secrets stowed within the minds in residence here….” He slid the jeep on, taking in the sights passed on the way. “Think the library has a preferred reading list?” Blaine asked as they edged past it.

“Of more concern to us now, Blainey, is whether or not the sheriff’s office over there has cells.”

“Whoops.”

Blaine swung the jeep beyond the sheriff’s office and made a left turn, coming to a halt before a bakery featuring the smell of fresh-baked breads and cookies floating through its open doors.

“All the comforts of home, eh, Indian?” Blaine repeated.

“A lie, Blainey, meant to disguise the truths of the past, to bury these truths from the world they were perpetrated on.”

“A graveyard for secrets, in other words.”

“And a resting place for the souls of men before they are ready to join the spirits.”

They climbed from the jeep and headed for cover. Suddenly an old man with a shock of gray hair stormed out the door of the bakery waving his arms and yelling at them.

“How do you expect my customers to get in with your damn machine blocking the door?”

“Huh?”

The man wiped his hands on his stained apron. Blaine thought he looked vaguely familiar.

“Rush starts soon. Get your machine out of the way. Scat now! Scat! Damn law-and-order people never cared a damn for the needs of anyone else. Always taking, always taking. Jesus …”

The old man disappeared back inside the bakery shaking his head.

“We’d do best to move the jeep, Blainey.”

But Blaine’s mind was elsewhere. “I know that man,” he said slowly. “I know I’ve seen him before…. Shit, his name’s Kirkland. He was Allen Dulles’s number one operations man with the old CIA under Kennedy and Johnson. What the hell is this place?”

“Just what we expected it to be.”

They had returned to the jeep now and were backing it into another slot before the bookstore, since it looked closed today.

“They must have given the residents jobs,” McCracken surmised.

“And thus a purpose, aimed at making them forget what their purpose was before they arrived. Their very existences have been redefined.”

“Drugs?”

“For a time, probably. But these men have outlived their eras. With nothing to go back to, they would welcome the new way of looking at themselves.”

“Like us, Indian?”

“I don’t think they have beds ready for us yet.”

“But think about it. In a manner of speaking, we’ve outlived our eras too. Yet instead of coming to a place like this to play checkers and fish, we redefined our lives on our own terms. Not much different than these folks when you look at it that way.”

They were only a few steps away from the jeep when a loud voice rang out from just behind them.

“’Bout time you boys got back. The Doc was startin’ to worry up a storm, I tell ya.”

McCracken, closer than Johnny was to the speaker, turned slowly to find a tobacco-chomping icy-eyed man dressed like a western gunman, albeit without the six-gun. Blaine shrugged and cut the distance between them routinely. The man’s eyes fell on Wareagle.

“Hey, wait a minute, you’re not—”

He had started to go for his walkie-talkie when Blaine was upon him, his grasp harsh and painful. The man looked at him and spat tobacco on the neatly paved road.

“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.

“Ike Clanton, and that there’s my little brother Billy. And unless you’re Wyatt Earp, I’d say you’re in a heap of trouble.”

The man spat again. “This some kind of joke?”

“Oh, yeah. The joke’s called the O.K. Corral, and the punch line’s got to do with some half-assed cowboys running herd on a bunch of old men.”

Blaine started to ease himself and his captive down the road with Wareagle on the deputy’s other side.

“This is a U.S. government installation, mister. I don’t know who or what you are, but you’re in a heap more trouble than you know and it’s getting worse by the second.”

They reached the bookstore, and a quick shoulder from Wareagle had the locked door swinging open. The trio passed inside and Blaine immediately passed the guard to the huge Indian. Wareagle responded in turn by grasping the man around the neck in a death lock that shut off virtually all his air.

“I haven’t had a good day,” Blaine told the man who was straining up on the tips of his toes to lessen the pressure being applied to his throat. “In fact, I’ve had a pretty lousy week, lousy enough to not care much at all if the Indian has to break your neck. ’Less, of course, you tell us what we’ve come to find out.”

The icy-eyed man struggled for air and a stream of chalky brown tobacco juice dropped onto his white cowboy shirt.

“You’ll never get away with this.”

“Interesting cliche. Shame to waste it. We’re looking for a man named Hans Bechman. Used to be a German scientist until he signed up with this nuthouse.”

Wareagle allowed the guard some welcome breath. “No names, not real ones anyway. They never tell us any real names.”

“This one would be in a wheelchair,” Blaine explained further, recalling Bart Joyce’s description of the man he had seen directing the loading of cannisters onto the Indianapolis.

“Lots of people here in wheelchairs, mister.”

“This one would have come in one. Heavy German accent, too. Know the man?”

“No.”

“You’re lying. I can tell by your eyes. Look, friend, there’s a new sheriff in town and he’s about to snap your neck. Last chance. Know him or not?”

Wareagle increased the pressure and lifted the guard off the floor.

“Yes! Yes!”

Again Johnny let up on the pressure and eased him part of the way back down.

“Lives in number forty-nine,” the captive deputy said. “Almost never comes out. Keeps all to himself.”

“Very good.”

“Not really. You’re wasting your time if you expect to get something out of him. Man’s lost more marbles than a ten-year-old can sink in a hole. Doesn’t even know who he is most of the time.”

“Guess we’ll have to jog his memory,” McCracken said.

He nodded to Wareagle, who increased his pressure on the deputy’s neck enough to put him to sleep.

“Think we should tie him up, Indian?”

“Not unless we plan on being here past the coming of the moon, Blainey.”

The residence numbered forty-nine was located in the northern sector of the O.K. Corral, set off the path of stores and shops and away from the clutter of old folks loitering the day away in the shade. This and the others clustered around it had the look of hand-built cabins or cottages, the old-west motif still dominant. McCracken noted that although there seemed to be no rules to that effect, most of the residents kept to themselves. He and Wareagle saw scarcely any socializing as they circled about. It seemed the residents still stubbornly clung to the secrets that had brought them there for the last of their days. It was as if holding firm at all costs to those secrets was the only way to maintain even a limited grasp of the past, which fluttered like dust in the wind of their memory. There was hardly a sound in the air, other than the occasional jeep patrolling or the church bells clanging every quarter hour.

Blaine made sure no one was about before he and Wareagle approached the door marked with a forty-nine. They had no idea what to expect inside and could only hope Hans Bechman had enough command of his faculties to provide the final piece of the puzzle that began in 1945 on board the Indianapolis. Wareagle remained in the shadows while McCracken eased up to the door and knocked. When no sound or response came from within, he knocked again louder.

At last he heard the squealing of wheels over wood, then a hand fumbling with a knob inside. The door parted halfway to reveal a skeletal shape tucked into a wheelchair with a blanket over his lap.

“Do you have my towels?” Hans Bechman asked.

“Yes,” Blaine replied without hesitation.

“That’s good. I ran out. I called yesterday. You didn’t come.” Puzzlement crossed his face. “I think it was yesterday….”

The old scientist’s words emerged still laced with a German accent. What little hair he still had hung in unkempt clumps. Blaine heard him muttering to himself in German as he slid back far enough for McCracken to enter with Wareagle just behind.

“Where do you want them?” Blaine asked. “The towels, I mean?”

“Kitchen … no — bathroom … no — kitchen.”

Blaine turned back to Johnny. “Put Dr. Bechman’s towels in the kitchen.”

The old man’s eyes flared to life at that. “My name. You used my name.”

“Of course, Dr. Bechman.”

“I don’t hear it anymore. I don’t hear it at all. Maybe my ears are going. I like hearing it.” His eyes turned quizzical. “Do I know you?”

“No,” McCracken replied flatly. “I’m new.”

“Good. I don’t like the ones I know. They don’t talk to me. They don’t call me by my name.” His eyes glistened hopefully. “Will you talk to me?”

“I’d like that,” Blaine told him.

Chapter 23

The old man’s face suddenly took on an agitated expression.

“What time is it?”

“Almost two o’clock.”

“What day?”

“Thursday.”

“What year?”

“199—”

“Did you say ninety? It can’t be. Surely it can’t be. Tell me the truth now. Don’t be like the others.”

McCracken gazed at Wareagle, who had taken up a position by the window to watch for the possible approach of Holliday and his men.

“What if it were 1945?” Blaine asked the old man.

The creases of Bechman’s face relaxed. “Then I’d have my work.”

“What was your work, doctor?”

“I was a traitor to my country, you know. I could have given my discovery to them. We would have won the war. But, but … Wait, I know you now. You’re the gestapo! You’ve come to take me away. I won’t go, I tell you, I won’t!”

Bechman’s last words emerged in a shrill scream, and Blaine had to grasp the side of his wheelchair to keep him from rolling it away.

“I’m not the gestapo,” McCracken told him calmly. “Listen to my voice. I’m American. The Americans saved you from the gestapo. We brought you to the United States and gave you a new life.”

Bechman’s face turned quizzical again. “What year did you say it was?”

“1990.”

He shook his head. “What happened to the years? Where did they all go? There is a hole in my mind and the years keep slipping out. What can I do to plug the hole?” he uttered pleadingly. “Tell me what I can do!”

“You can remember.”

“But where to start?”

“In 1945 when the Americans gave you a new life.”

“Not a new life. No, just an extension of the old one. It was my own fault. I was scared. I wanted them to accept me. So I told them the secret I had hidden from the Nazis.”

“What did you tell them?”

“About my experiments. Hitler’s people never realized what I had happened upon. They wouldn’t have understood it even if they had. Years ahead of its time, generations! It was brilliant. Brilliant, I tell you! But I didn’t give it to them.”

“You gave it to the Americans.”

“Because I wanted no more wars, no more innocent people to die. The Americans could wield the weapon with judgment, with prudence. Yes, I gave it to them. All my research was completed. It was a simple matter of production, just a few additional tests from that point.”

Blaine posed his next question calmly. “What exactly was produced?”

“When?”

“In 1945, Dr. Bechman. By the Americans.”

The old man’s features turned mad again. “How do you know my name? I don’t know you. I’m sure I don’t know you.”

“I’m here to help you.”

“Did you bring my towels?”

“Already put them away.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“To listen to you. You like to talk, don’t you, doctor? You like to speak of your past.”

Bechman’s expression grew dreamlike. “Yes, I suppose.”

“What was the weapon you gave the Americans, Dr. Bechman?”

The old man’s eyes focused suddenly again. “They didn’t believe me at first you know. Thought I was crazy to insist such a thing could exist. But I knew it existed because I created it.”

“In Germany. During those last months of the war.”

“Yes! Yes! Hitler was obsessed with the United States, had been from the beginning. He hoped to delay their entry into the war long enough for the team I was part of to finish a weapon that could destroy them, wipe out their entire nation suddenly and swiftly.”

“And your research was on the genetic level.”

Bechman gazed at him condescendingly from his wheelchair. “Of course it was. Before anyone else even knew the terms, we were splitting cells, working with the DNA itself.”

“You found something.”

“Yes, but purely by accident, believe it or not. A chance coincidence arrived at from all our tinkering. We were working with viruses in pursuit of the ideal form of germ warfare. We wanted to alter the DNA of the virus so it would behave in a different way. But the altered DNA produced an enzyme which had properties that were terrifying, awesome in their implications.”

“An enzyme?” Blaine asked, embarrassed for his lack of scientific knowledge.

“An enzyme is the biological catalyst for a reaction. We were working at the cellular level. All human life is based on cells dividing, reproducing, splitting. How? How?”

“I—”

“Glucose!” Bechman blared, a scientist again. “Sugar metabolism is the basis of life at the cellular level and thus life in general. Cells digest glucose at metabolic level to supply the most basic function of life. The process is called phosphorylation. Picture this now. Once introduced into the system through the virus, our enzyme penetrates and alters the DNA of the stem cells from which all other cells originate. The enzyme produces a more efficient pathway to metabolize sugar and produce life, the DNA of the stem cells altered to the point where they can no longer utilize their usual pathway. The cells immediately become dependent on this new pathway and can no longer metabolize without it. All because of our enzyme. My enzyme!”

McCracken found himself going cold, his limited scientific knowledge no longer insulating him from the impact of what he was hearing. “You’re saying whoever became exposed to your virus would become dependent on it to survive, wouldn’t be able to live without being exposed further to it.”

“Precisely! One exposure was all it would take to produce total dependence. The process becomes irreversible after that. If exposure to more of the virus containing my enzyme is not maintained, life degenerates at its most basic level. All bodily functions cease because phosphorylation cannot occur within the stem cells.”

“The ultimate form of biological warfare,” Blaine muttered, looking at Wareagle, starting to grasp what the gamma cannisters Bart Joyce had seen loaded onto the Indianapolis had contained. “The virus invades the body and the host dies if he doesn’t get more of the enzyme it contains.”

“A disease that breaks the spirit as well as the body, Blainey. Worse than death. The ultimate form of control as well.”

“You can see why I couldn’t let Hitler have it,” Bechman broke in. “Imagine him able to destroy the military capacity of the United States while retaining its vast production capabilities and resources for his own use! Slavery is what it would have come down to.”

“But how would you contain it, doctor? Stop it from spreading beyond the borders of your enemy?”

“Many means were discussed. Aerosol release into the air was ruled out as too uncontrollable, as was the ethnic factor of infecting a specific food or finding a virus that attacks a single ethnicity. We settled on infecting a nation’s water supply. The virus containing the enzyme would live in water for two or three days, programmed to survive for only that many generations. By then the cells of the victim would be dependent at the DNA level, and more of the enzyme would have to be introduced to avoid certain death. The effects would show up after only a few days. My estimates indicated that five hundred German agents could accomplish the entire task quite adequately. Germany or another attacking country could then issue its ultimatum: surrender or die.”

“Listen to what he’s saying, Indian,” McCracken urged Wareagle. “That’s what Rasin has in his possession. That’s what he’s going to release into the Arab world.”

“To deny them death is a worse fate than death itself, Blainey.”

“Right up Rasin’s alley.” And Blaine felt suddenly chilled. “But we had this enzyme in our possession and didn’t use it. And then we sunk the Indianapolis because the cannisters containing it had to be buried forever. Why, doctor, why?”

Bechman looked confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Remember, you’ve got to remember!”

“Remember…. remember what?”

“It’s 1945 again. You supervised the loading of dozens of cannisters marked with the Greek letter gamma on to the Indianapolis.”

“Yes, cannisters containing the virus. To be used against Japan to end the war.” Bechman’s eyes cleared as his mind regained its sharpness. “They called it the Gamma Option.”

Blaine felt even colder. “But there were atomic bombs on board the Indianapolis as well.”

“They formed the Beta Option, to be employed as a backup in the event something went wrong with Gamma. The Alpha Option was to take Japan by conventional attack. We were working down to the wire. The last tests on Gamma had not been completed when the Indianapolis left San Francisco. It was the perfect weapon, the ultimate weapon!”

“Victory without blood, Blainey,” Wareagle commented. “But hardly without pain, a lingering agony that would persist for generations, for … ever.”

“But we didn’t use it,” Blaine said again. “Why didn’t we use the Gamma Option, doctor? What did those final tests reveal? What made them change their minds?”

Bechman looked perplexed. “They changed their minds?”

“You must remember that!”

He didn’t seem to. “I remember … my work being suspended. My papers, my samples, my equipment, all confiscated and impounded. They made me a prisoner. My assistant would have been made one too, if he hadn’t escaped.”

“You had an assistant?”

The old man nodded. “His name was Eisenstadt, Martin Eisenstadt.”

“Have you heard from him since, seen him?”

“Not in all these years … How many is it now? What year is this?”

“1990. Now look at me. What happened in those last days after the Indianapolis had set out from San Francisco?”

“Nothing …”

“Those last hours before it reached Tinian. What did you uncover?”

“Nothing!”

“The Americans didn’t use the Gamma Option and then we sank the Indianapolis to insure that no trace of it would ever be found. Why, doctor, why? What was worth sacrificing a thousand men at sea for?”

Bechman smiled a mad smile. “I escaped. Would you like me to tell you how? Would you like to hear how I escaped the Nazis while under watch at all times?”

“Sure, but I’d like to hear about the final hours the Indianapolis was at sea en route to Tinian first. I’d like to hear about the last work you did with your designer enzymes.”

“Yes.” Bechman beamed. “I’ve brought all my work with me. Let me help you put it into operation. We must be certain the world will never know another Nazi Germany in another time. I can insure that. My discovery can insure that. Why? You ask me why? I’ll tell you. Listen and you’ll understand. Listen and …”

Bechman droned on but Blaine shut him off. The old man was clearly exhausted. McCracken had pushed him too hard and now he was paying for it. It was conceivable that the last secrets of the Gamma Option were sealed forever, sunk with the Indianapolis. And while Rasin had managed to salvage the cannisters of Bechman’s deadly virus, he had not salvaged those secrets. Possibly they didn’t even exist. Maybe Bechman could recall no more because there was no more. Truman had simply changed his mind after weighing exactly what Gamma would mean for the future of the world. It made a chilling sort of sense.

“Yo, boys,” a new voice came suddenly, “I think you’ve bothered the old guy enough for one day.”

The voice was hoarse and raspy, like that of a man who’d smoked too many cigarettes in his time. McCracken and Wareagle spun together into the center of the room as if to search for it, knowing already it was being broadcast on some hidden speaker.

“Now I’d like you boys to know …” There was a slight laugh. “… Hey, don’t this sound corny…. Anyway, we got you surrounded and I’d be much obliged if you would kindly raise your arms into the air where the camera can pick ’em up.”

Blaine did just that as Wareagle glided toward one of the room’s corners.

“Be a good idea if your rather large friend got ’em up too, boss.” McCracken nodded the Indian’s way. “Yup, that’s better. Now just hold tight for a minute….”

Actually it was considerably less than that when the door to Bechman’s apartment burst open to allow six men armed with shotguns to charge through, half leveling their weapons at Blaine and the other half at Johnny. That remained the situation, frozen for upward of two minutes, before the sound of a Jeep squealing to a halt at the door could be heard. Boots clip-clopped in the apartment’s direction, and from out of the sun stepped in a man decked out in black suit, black vest, and old-fashioned western tie. He had a heavy dark mustache and wavy hair hidden beneath a narrow-brimmed black cowboy hat. In his hands he held a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, so much a part of him as to make it appear he may have slept with it nightly.

“Afternoon, boys,” he greeted formally. “The name’s Holliday, Doc Holliday.”

“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Blaine followed without missing a beat. “And your friends here are the Earp brothers, Bat Masterson, and Wild Bill Hickock.”

Doc Holliday regarded him with a cold stare. “You boys be in a heap of trouble, I’d say.”

“Gonna give us until sundown to ride out of town?”

“Nope.”

“Settle this at dawn then?”

“Sorry.”

“Then let’s you and me go gun to gun at high noon.” Then he added to Wareagle, “Whatever you do, darlin’, don’t forsake me.”

Holliday showed his sawed-off a little higher. “Keep it up, friend. You’re just makin’ my day. Sorry I got to ruin yours by taking you and your injun friend over to my jail.”

“Watch out, Doc. The rest of the boys are certain to bust us out. Have to get yourself a posse and everything, and I wouldn’t want to trust my life to these here tenderfoots.”

Doc Holliday fired a blast from one of his twin barrels that blew a huge chasm in the floor six inches before McCracken and showered him with splinters. Bechman looked on in amazement, waving his arms in protest.

“Was up to me, mister,” Holliday continued, “I’d hang your ass right now, but I’m betting the United States government’ll have its own plans for you and the big fella over there.”

“For a minute there,” Blaine said, “I thought we were in trouble.”

“I know who you are,” Holliday told him, lowering his still-smoking sawed-off gun as his deputies approached and fastened handcuffs around Blaine and Johnny’s wrists. “’Nam, right? The Phoenix Project?”

“You know, Doc, one thing I loved about that country was that they didn’t discriminate over who could get in.”

“I was in Eye-Corps. Bastards like you fucked us up good.”

“For following orders?”

“Or your interpretation of them.”

“I don’t suppose if I say I’m sorry, you’ll let me and the Indian go.”

Doc Holliday stripped off his cowboy hat and mopped his brow with a sleeve. McCracken noticed his hair was as raven dark as his mustache.

“Out of my hands, pal. The line lookin’ for you runs straight around the block.”

The O.K. Corral’s single jail cell was located in the back of the old-fashioned sheriff’s office. There was a plastic toilet and sink and a pair of cots squeezed in across from each other. Holliday’s deputies took the handcuffs off their prisoners, leaving with one guard posted outside the cell and another in view at the end of the corridor. Holliday was taking no chances, even rotated a shift regularly himself and spent it twirling the handlebars of his wide mustache.

“Not polite to wear your hat inside, Doc,” Blaine taunted.

“Always wanted to have a fuck-up like you in my jail, McCrackenballs. Heard about England and France and all your other fucked-up exploits since you’ve been out. People like you give people like me a bad name.”

“Yup, I know just what you mean. Here you are running herd over a bunch of old folks, giving them sponge baths and emptying their bedpans. Maybe call out an occasional bingo game on Sunday nights. You really have reached the top. Hell, I’d never want to give you a bad name.”

Holliday came a little closer to the bars. “Know what I hope? That Washington misplaces the communique about you I sent and I get the privilege of watching you rot right here in my jail….”

Holliday might have been about to go on when one of his deputies appeared with a note. The chief law-enforcement official of the O.K. Corral rose to take his leave and Blaine took a seat next to Johnny Wareagle on one of the cots.

“Is this what our retirement’s gonna be like, Indian? Stashed away at a modified old-folks home under the watchful eye of a cardboard maniac?”

“We are already in the midst of our retirement, Blainey, and have been for several years now.”

“Hasn’t slowed us down much, though.”

“My point exactly,” Wareagle followed with the barest hint of a smile.

“Gonna come a time pretty soon when we’ll have to figure ourselves a way out of here, Indian.”

“The spirits have already revealed several.”

“In one of your secretive moods, are you?”

“It feels like we belong here. For a time.”

Holliday returned just then, looking red-faced and flustered. “Looks like I’m not gonna get my wish, McCrackenballs. Someone’s en route from Washington now to pick you boys up.”

“I knew I could rely on our blessed government to right this wrong.”

“Not our government, pal. Your taxi driver hails from Israel.”

It was six hours later, night having fallen in the Arizona sky, when Doc Holliday escorted a short but powerfully built man down the corridor leading to the single cell. The man’s features were sharp and angular, his hair held in brown waves, and his eyes a strangely crystal shade of blue.

“Was this really necessary?” the man asked of Holliday.

“This is my town, pal.”

“But they’re my prisoners now, aren’t they? Have your man take his leave.”

Holliday gave the order but seemed inclined to stay himself until the short man thrust a powerful forearm in the office’s direction.

“You, too, if you please.”

“I don’t.”

“It wasn’t a request. Just leave me the keys.”

Holliday was steamed. “Pal, you go in there alone with those two and I hear screams, don’t expect me to come running.”

“If they wanted to kill me, there would be no screams.”

“You know who I am,” the Israeli said to McCracken after Holliday was gone. “I can tell by your eyes.”

“Only one Israeli I know of would come here on his own. You’re Isser, chief of Mossad.”

The smaller man nodded. “Your government has been kind enough to place you in my custody. We’ve been looking for you for days.”

“The ones at my home. Yours?”

Isser nodded again. “Ours. I imagine they ended up warning you off. It was a foolish undertaking, I suppose, but they were desperate, just as I am.”

“You don’t know the whole of it.”

Isser’s expression relaxed. “Precisely why I’ve exhausted considerable resources to track you down ever since you were identified in the Jaffa market.”

“You want to know what made me work for the Arabs.”

“With, not for. That much is already obvious.”

“There’s plenty more that isn’t, Isser. We’re running out of time and I can’t think of a better man to talk to.” Blaine thought briefly. “Unfortunately, there’s something I have to do before we talk.”

“What’s that?”

“I have to die.”

The bearded man watched them from the chair, head pressed high and tight against its back, arranged so his eyes could not leave the bed.

“Please,” Tilly muttered, squirming so she was directly beneath Lace.

Their mouths met again as Lace’s hand slid down Tilly’s belly for her vagina, feeling the slit and slipping her fingers inside it. Tilly moaned. Lace was working the hand feverishly now, sliding and probing.

The bearded man bore silent witness to it all; silent because he was dead and had been for some hours now. Their failure in Boston had upset the women gravely. Failure was rare for them indeed, especially on the scale of Wednesday’s debacle. Tilly and Lace took their passion from their killing, the ultimate intermixture of life and death. Neither saw anything cosmic in this; it was merely a means to extend pleasure beyond its momentary rush.

But there had been no pleasure after Blaine McCracken had first escaped and then turned the tables on them in Boston. The passion was stripped away and the women were left empty. The fact that he was by far the most competent adversary they had ever faced served only to heighten their expectations. The passion that would follow his killing would bring them to new levels of ecstasy. Yet the potential of that anticipated high made the low they experienced even greater in depth. Blaine McCracken would die at their hands. Soon. Very soon. But in the meantime, in the meantime …

It had taken forays into three bars for them to find a bearded man who looked enough like McCracken to serve as surrogate. Luring him to their hotel room had not been difficult. Barely inside the door, Lace had grasped his shoulders and, lowering her head, pressed her mouth against his.

Tilly slithered around to his rear.

Lace became more ardent, forced her tongue against his and felt his bristly McCracken beard scrape at her cheeks.

Tilly plucked up a length of twine and raised it for his head.

Lace pulled her mouth away in perfect rhythm with the smaller woman’s looping of the twine over the man’s head. She closed it around his throat and yanked out the slack, thrusting her leg against the back of his knees to pull him down to provide leverage. The bearded man whipped his hands wildly about, clawing for her — for anything — dying eyes locked on Lace.

Lace stood there smiling, letting Tilly have the kill.

At last he stopped flailing. His arms flapped to his side and twitched. A raspy gurgle pushed its way up his throat past the protruding tongue, all of it over faster than either of the women would have preferred.

They put him in the chair before the bed, and in the near dark of the room he could almost have passed for McCracken. Passion again. Pleasure again. Both, though, would be fleeting. With the return of light, the fantasy would die. The women could squirm in the dark with McCracken on their minds, but McCracken was still out there, the corpse in the chair a mere proxy.

We’ve got a chair waiting for you, Blaine McCracken, Lace thought, while beneath her Tilly arched her hips upward and screamed in ecstasy, the task of her fingers completed.

The bearded corpse looked on.

Chapter 24

“At last we have a chance to speak,” General Amir Hassani said.

Evira gazed out at him from her cell deep in the bowels of the royal palace. She had been taken there directly from the airport the previous morning, and had spent almost twenty-four hours with a cup of water as her only nourishment. The construction of the complex might have been relatively recent, but the Shah had been a man who liked to consider all eventualities. Hence the fully equipped prison hidden away in his grandest home.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“At least a comment about how surprised you are to see I’m still alive.”

“Or how sorry.”

Hassani waved a disparaging finger at her. “You disappoint me, Evira.”

“I killed a double. But why would you need one?”

“You still haven’t figured it out, have you?”

“Figured what out?”

“Telling you would eliminate the fun. I would have thought it would all be as obvious to you now as it would certainly have been to …” His eyes sharpened here. “… McCracken.”

She came forward until she could smell the steel of the bars. “How do you know about McCracken?”

“No pointless denials. That is a good start.”

“No start at all. His involvement in this couldn’t possibly mean anything to you,” Evira insisted, perplexed by the direction Hassani’s interest was taking.

“Then you won’t mind telling me what he knows.”

“I have no idea.”

His eyes scolded her. “Evira …”

“We haven’t been in contact. I retained him to—”

“To what?”

“It doesn’t matter to you.”

“Doesn’t matter to me that you coerced McCracken into finding Yosef Rasin for you and stopping him from employing a weapon that could destroy my world? Come now, give me more credit than that, please. You were helping me from the beginning. Why not help me some more?”

Evira felt numb. “You knew. How could you know?”

“It doesn’t matter to you,” the general shot back, using her own words against her.

“You’re asking questions you already know the answers to.”

“Then don’t bother holding the rest back. Where can I find McCracken? What system of contact did you set up for him?”

“None,” Evira insisted, trying to collect her thoughts while keeping her calm. How Hassani had learned of McCracken’s involvement wasn’t as pressing as why it seemed so important to him. If anything, as he had noted, the two men were allies in a twisted sort of way. Thanks to her.

“I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt, Evira. But only if you provide the answer to a question I’m sure you do know the answer to: where is McCracken’s son stashed?”

Evira’s response was to stare at Hassani in confused helplessness.

“You do know that, don’t you?”

“Why is it important to you?”

“It is. That is all you need to know.”

“The boy cannot possibly be of service to you.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“McCracken has nothing to do with you!”

Hassani grew still calmer. “I expected far more of you, Evira. You have let me down. But I will give you one more chance to answer my questions.”

“Then what? Torture? Drugs?”

He looked genuinely insulted. “A gentleman would never treat a lady so. However …”

With that, the general gazed back toward the staircase and signaled his guards. Seconds later a pair of them approached, dragging someone between them.

“I believe you know this boy,” Hassani said.

Kourosh writhed and kicked between the guards dragging him along. His lips were bloody and the edges of his long auburn hair were wet with blood from a cut on his forehead.

“No!” Evira screamed.

The guards stopped just to the general’s right. Evira’s eyes met the boy’s.

“Now you will tell me where I can find Blaine McCracken’s son, won’t you?”

A nod from Hassani brought one of the guard’s revolvers from its holster, barrel pressed solidly against Kourosh’s head as the second guard held the boy in place.

“I will ask you again, and if you fail to answer, my man will pull the trigger.”

“You … animal!”

“Where can I find Blaine McCracken’s son?”

A thousand thoughts swam through Evira’s head. The problem she faced was impossible, death for herself a better alternative than choosing.

“Kill me instead!” she begged.

“But then who would tell me what I want to know?”

“I can’t! I can’t!”

“How unfortunate,” Hassani said, and nodded to the guard holding the gun.

The man pulled the trigger.

“Insurance,” Blaine had replied to Isser’s question of why the fabrication of his death was necessary prior to their leaving the O.K. Corral. “Before we parted in Jaffa, Evira assured me she could get my son away from Fett — and thus Rasin. But if she failed and he’s still alive, his best bet to stay that way is if we put the word out that I’m dead.”

“Because then Rasin would have no reason to kill him,” Isser added.

Blaine nodded. “That pair of female killers who went after me in Boston were his from the beginning. He only let Evira reach me so I would lead him to her. And I almost did.”

“Yes,” Isser had recalled. “Ben-Neser in Jaffa. You saved his life.”

“He saved mine first without realizing it.”

In Washington they transferred from the small private jet into a larger one for the flight to Tel Aviv. Precautions insured no one saw Blaine at any point, so the fabricated tale of his death at the hands of Holliday and his deputies was left intact.

“Incredible,” Isser commented when they were again off the ground. “This whole affair is incredible. This Gamma Option,” he continued, putting it together for himself, “you claim it has as its basis the takeover of a country by exposing it to an enzyme contained in a virus the population becomes instantly addicted to?”

“For the sustenance of their very lives, yes. But takeover is a poor choice of words. We’re talking about something infinitely more terrifying. Invasion without ever setting foot on foreign soil. Surrender without ever being faced with a conventional weapon. In a scant few days, an enemy country gets transformed into a massive prison camp, the whole of their population’s DNA-altered and in need of more of Bechman’s enzyme in order to survive.”

“But with such technology available, why not just kill everyone in the enemy country instead?”

“To begin with you’ve got the Indian over there’s theory,” Blaine said, nodding at Wareagle, “that this is truly a fate worse than death for any proud nation. There’s substance in that and practicality as well. To begin with, a poison potent enough to kill might show up by connection in the water supply early enough for the system to be shut down. And if you risked releasing the killer poison into the air, there’d be no way to control it. Think of it from the American viewpoint. Not only would Japan have been rendered impotent and our virtual industrial slave, but due warning would have been served on the Russians, as well. Hell, that’s what dropping the bombs was all about anyway. Sounds tempting, doesn’t it? In a twisted way, it might have solved all our problems.”

“Which is the very way Rasin sees it in terms of Israel. But how did he learn of Gamma’s existence?”

“We can rule Bechman out, which leaves his assistant Eisenstadt. Others might have known about Gamma being out there, but only a scientist working closely with the project could furnish sufficient details and supply the expertise required to meet Rasin’s needs.”

“And you’re quite sure those needs have been met?”

“Everything points in that direction. Trouble is, Isser, we’re forgetting that in spite of all this the Americans didn’t use Gamma when they had the chance. I’ve got to figure that something was uncovered at the last minute, except Bechman couldn’t recall anything of the kind.”

“And would Eisenstadt have known, as well?”

“Assume he didn’t. Assume he handed Gamma over to Rasin unaware himself of the whole story.”

Isser wasn’t convinced. “We have no way of knowing there is any more to the story. Truman could simply have changed his mind.”

“It’s possible, but in my mind the sinking of the Indianapolis indicates more was involved than that. The question is what, and Rasin has no better idea of the answer than we do. Hell, he doesn’t even know the question.”

“So what do you suggest we do under the circumstances?”

“All we can do is take one step at a time. For now that means finding Eisenstadt and rounding up Rasin before he can unleash the Gamma Option forty-five years late.”

“That’s two steps, my friend, not one.”

“Math was never my best subject. Besides, the third step’s the most important one of all.”

“I’m listening.”

“We bury whatever’s left of Gamma so deep that nobody will ever be able to dig it up again.”

During the last leg of the flight to Tel Aviv, Isser at last managed to drift off to sleep, leaving Blaine and Johnny Wareagle awake facing each other.

“You gotta make me a promise, Indian.”

“If the spirits allow, Blainey.”

“It’s like this. We might walk the same path, but we do it with different steps. I’ve always relied on luck and God knows I’ve had plenty, while you, well, I don’t know, I just think the odds of you getting out of this are better than me. Luck’s gotta run out sometime, right?”

“There are those who don’t believe in luck. There are those who call it fate instead, and fate is ruled by the spirits. It was what guided us through the hellfire and reunited us those few years ago when we at last relented to the truth of our souls.”

“Then look at it this way, Indian. I’ve got a bad feeling; that’s all. Maybe I’m hearing the words of your spirits at last and I don’t like what they’re saying. What matters is the boy, Johnny. If things don’t work out, you’ve got to get him back. You’ve got to handle things just the way I would have.”

“It will be done, Blainey.”

“And if you’re too late, if the boy is—”

“The balance will be preserved,” Johnny Wareagle broke in assuredly. “Those who took the gift of the spirits will lose whatever they hold most precious.”

“So long as it hurts, Indian. So long as it hurts.”

Click …

The harmless strike of the pistol hammer sent a whooossssh of air through Evira. She could barely recover her breath.

“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Hassani taunted. “The revolver has six chambers, but only one has a bullet. Your odds are one in five now, decreasing all the time, Evira. Or should I say the boy’s odds? If you just tell me where I can find McCracken’s son, I promise to let the boy live. Simple as that.”

“Why does it matter to you? Why does McCracken matter to you at all? He’s helping you, goddamn it, you said so yourself.”

“It’s you who does not see, Evira. You are missing the big picture. It’s right before you and you’re missing it.”

Something struck her. “Somehow you and Rasin are working together. Why? How?”

Hassani almost laughed. “I’m waiting.”

“Don’t force me to make such a choice. You can’t!”

“Life is full of choices. I’ve made my share, plenty of them painful. You too. Now both of us must make another. You first. Tell me where I can find McCracken’s son or this boy dies.”

She looked through the bars of her cell at Kourosh, who was so desperately trying to stay brave. Their eyes met and locked, his telling her so much.

It’s okay. I understand….

But it wasn’t okay, not in any sense.

“Kill him and you’ll get nothing from me,” she spit at Hassani. “You know that.”

“My dear lady, if you make me kill him, your punishment will be done. I would not dare kill you and put you out of your misery. Make your choice and live with it. McCracken’s son or this boy. Choose!”

“I can’t!”

“This is your last chance.”

“No!”

Distressed, Hassani turned and nodded once again to the guard holding the pistol against Kourosh’s head. Evira’s face contorted in agony as he began to squeeze the trigger.

“General!” a voice called from the area of the stairs.

A quick hand signal from Hassani and the guard eased his pressure off the trigger.

“I have a message for you, General!” a guard announced as he made his way purposefully toward Hassani.

Reaching him, the guard handed over a piece of paper which the general read quickly, crumbling it in his hands with a smile when he was finished.

“It seems you have been spared the necessity of choosing,” he announced to Evira. “Blaine McCracken was killed while following the trail of Rasin’s weapon. I no longer require his son.” Then he said to his guards, “Put this boy in the cell with her. Let them die together.” He turned back toward Evira. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m afraid my presence is required elsewhere….”

The prime minister heard Isser’s entire report without interruption while standing by his bay window. When the Mossad chief finished, the prime minister made no sound or move, just stood as if transfixed by the day as it began over Jerusalem.

“Rasin has this weapon. You’re convinced of that?” he responded at last.

“McCracken’s convinced. That’s good enough for me, sir.”

“So we are surrounded by madmen on all sides. One would destroy everything we are from the outside. Another would destroy everything we stand for from within. The lesser of two evils is what it comes down to, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t under—”

“Yes, you do, Isser. It was in your voice as you relayed the story to me. McCracken knew nothing of the immediacy of Hassani’s plot or of his apparent possession of a superweapon of his own, did he?”

“I told him nothing.”

“Then he has no reason to suspect.”

Isser grasped the intent of the prime minister’s words and returned to his feet. “Operation Firestorm is barely twenty-four hours away.”

“And so is the first stage of Hassani’s strike, and given what we know we can’t trust Firestorm to prevent it, can we?” Isser remained silent. “Answer me, Isser.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Then have your people put out the word. I want to meet Rasin. His terms. Anything.”

The chief of Mossad just looked at him. “What have we become, sir?”

“We become what we have to, Isser. In the end we become whatever it takes to survive.”

“Would you like me to repeat my terms again?” Yosef Rasin asked as the sun’s warmth burned away in the afternoon sky.

“No,” the prime minister replied to the younger man. “I believe I understand them.”

Rasin leaned forward and dabbed the sweat from his bronzed face with a napkin. He smiled slightly and poured a glass of fresh orange juice from a glass pitcher before him. He had agreed to this meeting on the condition that it be held between only the two of them on his kibbutz in the Negev. Rasin liked the symbolism of that. Without asking, he refilled the old man’s glass and then drained his own in a single gulp, leaving a pulpy residue behind from bottom to rim. Around him, the trees of the orange grove blew in the wind. To Rasin it sounded like the applause of an approving people. His people.

“But do you accept them?”

“Accept you as my minister of defense and my heir apparent? I’m not sure which fate is the worse for Israel.”

The prime minister had expected a reaction of anger. What he got was a strangely closed smile.

“You have nothing to bargain with, Mr. Prime Minister. Your hand is folded before you. I hold all the cards.”

“Not cards, Rasin, lives! Do you hear me? Lives!”

“You came to me. You came to beg me to unleash my weapon under your direction, with your charter.”

“And I hate myself for it.”

“It is done my way or not at all!”

“Madness! Listen to what you’re saying!”

“I’m listening to you instead. Words of desperation, of futility, of failure. They are the same words I have heard for years, decades. We are an island surrounded by a vast sea of sharks. Instead of learning to control those sharks, you have allowed them to multiply and grow stronger until they are in a position to control our island as well as their sea. There is to be no compromise.”

“Not compromise, merely redefinition,” the prime minister implored. “Our major problem is Hassani, so all I’m urging is that you limit the initial release of Gamma to Iran. The rest of the nations will fall in line as soon as they see the results. We can prevent the use of his superweapon and thus the invasion will be stemmed.”

“This invasion, yes. But what about the next and the one after? You, all of you, are so shortsighted. You accept a war every ten years so long as there is what you call peace in the interim. Releasing Gamma over a single country will make the others more militant, even more prone to the terror tactics that have torn us apart. Our enemy does not fear death, he cherishes it. All he requires is a reason to die, and your ‘redefinition’ would supply it. The moderates and radicals will join forces. We will accomplish ourselves what Hassani himself would have been hard-pressed to do.” He calmed himself. “So it must be all the nations where the murderers hide behind the guise of politicians and diplomats. It must be made clear that any threat to destroy us means they destroy themselves and their only chance for the continued survival we allow them.”

“You’re forgetting the Indianapolis,” Isser grasped. “The Americans sunk it to hide Gamma forever. They must have had their reasons, and now you’re going to release it in spite of that.”

“A risk I’m willing to take, just like you, as your presence here today indicates, Mr. Prime Minister. Our entire way of life has been at risk since our very inception. Only this time we are in a position to control our own destiny and destroy the Arab radicals who would otherwise destroy us.”

“And if they still continue their fight after you open your cannisters, what then, Rasin? Do you let half a country die for every hundred of us they kill? A whole country for every thousand?”

“If necessary, yes. Absolutely.”

“You’re playing God, Rasin.”

“As someone clearly must, as you have failed in your wisdom to dare. My terms are nonnegotiable. All my terms, including where and how my appointment to the cabinet will be announced to the country as Independence Day dawns.”

“As insurance, no doubt.”

“Precisely. Insurance against you changing you mind once I’ve done your dirty work for you. Rest easy, Mr. Prime Minister. I won’t need you long. The people will rally to me. They will embrace what I represent. I speak for the masses who are sick of living in fear, of living amidst the constant threat of death.”

“Better to live in hell, Rasin?”

“Better to live period.”

Chapter 25

“It’s about fucking time,” McCracken said to Wareagle when he heard the sound of a key being turned.

When they had arrived in Israel over twelve hours before, they were driven by Isser to a cluster of apartments in the Bayet-Gan section of Jerusalem that in actuality formed a Mossad safehouse. Blaine and Wareagle were stowed in a windowless basement apartment with a promise that Isser would return as soon as he sorted things out with the prime minister. They had begun to worry after six hours. After twelve had passed, the unseen Saturday morning sun was rising and the worry had evolved into a certainty that something had gone wrong.

Now at last they stood before the door. It swung open to reveal a stoop-shouldered, wizened old man.

“What’s the matter?” Isaac asked, noting their surprise. “You were expecting maybe Moses?”

“No,” McCracken answered. “Just the prime minister. Or the head of Mossad, at the very least.”

The old man waved a knobby hand before him. “Ach, you don’t exist to them anymore. Neither do we.”

“We?”

“I’m one of four. There’ll be plenty of time to tell you about it on the drive. Come,” the old man beckoned, “we’d better get going before your guards think twice about the story I gave them.”

“Sounds like we’re getting sprung from jail again, Johnny,” Blaine said to Wareagle. “Where to this time?” he asked the old man.

“To play some checkers and maybe save the world.”

Isaac settled himself uneasily behind the driver’s seat of the five-year-old Mercedes. He had parked hastily and the result was that the tires on the car’s passenger side straddled the curb down the street from the beige stone apartment house they had just emerged from. Each motion brought a slight grimace of pain to his features.

“I’ll drive, if you want,” Blaine offered.

Isaac waved him off. “Don’t worry, once I get going I’m fine. Besides, you don’t know where we’re headed.” He squinted his eyes for the ignition as he probed the keys forward. His hand was trembling and the keys jangled together. “Just let me get my glasses on….” When he had done so, he peered back at Blaine. “There, much better. You, I know. But I don’t know your friend,” he added, gazing at Wareagle in the backseat.

“He’s just my tour guide. He was showing me around Jerusalem when we took a wrong turn.”

“You would have been in that house a long time if I hadn’t shown up.”

“I was beginning to get that feeling. But it still doesn’t tell me who you are.”

“What’s the difference? A little this, a little that, but mostly,” he said with a proud thrust of his finger upward, “a soldier. Since maybe before you were born, Mr. Blaine McCracken.” With that, Isaac screeched the Mercedes into traffic against the protesting horn of the car right behind him.

“Haganah! You were Haganah!”

“Not were, Mr. Blaine McCracken, am. The names change but the symbols remain the same.”

“And your name …”

“Isaac, as of late. Symbolic again. I’ve been reborn, you see. All of us have.”

“Plural once more.”

“Because I’m not in this alone.” Isaac swerved the car suddenly to stay on his side of the road as they banked round a curve. He narrowly missed sideswiping a car parked on McCracken’s side of the narrow Jerusalem street and hunched forward behind the wheel. “And we’ve all been cut off, just like you.”

“Cut off from what?”

“Truth,” Wareagle said suddenly before the old man had a chance to respond.

Isaac gazed back at him and the Mercedes drifted once more across the center line to a chorus of horns.

“Very astute, Mr. Big Man.”

“Just obvious.”

“You mind explaining it to me?” Blaine demanded.

“Now pay attention,” Isaac told him as he joined the chorus of honking horns caused by the frustrations of an eternal Jerusalem traffic jam that spared not even the sabbath. “The young men in this country are meshuge. We tried to teach them what we knew, help them learn from our mistakes, but no, they’ve got better things to do. Still, we never stop watching, advising. We watched this Hassani plenty. Dangerous man. Stood for all the wrong things. We knew where the path he was on would take him. It was inevitable. So that gives us an idea. You listening?”

“Just keep on with it … and drive. Traffic’s moving again.”

A new symphony of horns behind them punctuated McCracken’s impatient suggestion. Isaac eased the car forward. “Stop distracting me, all right? Where was I? Oh yes. Hassani had to be stopped before he could bring the radicals of the Arab world together. We came up with a plan called Operation Firestorm. It’s complicated, but let me summarize it for you this way. We sent several hundred Israeli agents into Tehran to organize the discontented masses and students into a counterrevolutionary force prepared to strike at a predetermined time. Every phase was thought out, every detail accounted for.”

“A classic strategem.”

“Especially in the case of Iran. Hassani took over a nation bankrupt in spirit as well as pocketbook. But instead of rebuilding from the bottom up, he chose to do so from the top down, wooing the wealthy and ignoring the poor. The voice of the poor grew louder, but Hassani’s revamped Revolutionary Guard has been able to quell all the disturbances thus far. But with Firestorm, barricades were to be erected throughout the city of Tehran, fires started everywhere as a sign to the people to rise against Hassani and his oppressive, backward regime.”

“Toppling him before he could accomplish his goal of unifying the militant Arab world,” Blaine completed. “All well and good until you figure Hassani’s got the power to quell this revolution as well.”

“Don’t worry. We thought of that. At the height of the fighting and confusion, fifteen American Comanche helicopters from Israel were to join the fighting on the rebels’ side.”

“You mean Apache. Built by McDonnell Douglas. Maybe the finest attack helicopter in the world.”

“You figure. To me it’s all steel and bullets,” Isaac said, steering the big car farther into the Jerusalem traffic. “The Apaches would strike at the positions of the Revolutionary Guard to keep them at bay long enough for the new revolution to take hold and spread beyond the guards’ ability to control it. The manpower’s there, believe me, and so is the desire. Everything was set, confirmed. And then complications sprang up.”

“Don’t they always?”

“Not like this. One after the other, I tell you,” Isaac continued, with his hands digging into the leather of the steering wheel. “It started with a woman who calls herself Evira….”

“What?”

“Yes, we know of your connection to her. Just listen. We got word she was headed to Tehran to kill Hassani. One of our people was part of the counterrevolutionary cell that had agreed to help her.”

“So she was going to do your work for you.”

“No! Think, Mr. Blaine McCracken! Hassani was the symbol we needed to destroy with Firestorm. The people had to have something to rise against. Allowing him to be killed would have ruined everything. The revolutionary cells would have splintered and gone their own way. Anarchy would have resulted and the military would have taken over again. Firestorm would’ve died before it even got started. We did what we had to do.”

“You killed her?” Blaine screeched angrily.

“We tried, yes, but failed. Of what happened to her in the days after we do not know, only that she is now a prisoner in the basement of the royal palace. What’s important is what brought her to Tehran in the first place.”

“The same thing that brought you there. The desire to stop a madman from unifying a bunch of madmen against Israel.”

“But we didn’t know about the imminent invasion plans or about Hassani’s insistence that he had some secret weapon to render Israel defenseless against his attack.”

“Neither did she. Neither did I, damn it!”

Now it was Isaac’s turn to look puzzled. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe it does. Don’t tell me, let me guess. Somehow the Israeli government learned the specifics of Hassani’s plan.”

“The existence and timing of it anyway, yes. But how did you know?”

“Just a lucky guess.”

“Not so lucky.” Isaac sighed. “See, Hassani plans to meet next with his people on our Independence Day to provide details of his secret weapon and its employment. From what we can gather, the actual invasion will occur several days later, after his weapon has somehow paralyzed us. Our problem is that Independence Day also marked the start of Firestorm, which is very likely too late to stop Hassani from making use of his weapon. Our cells are not in communication with one another so moving the timetable up was not an option. The government said fine. They didn’t need us anymore anyway, because they had found something better.”

McCracken didn’t grasp the old man’s meaning until he saw his eyes. “My God, they’re going to use Rasin’s weapon! And I gave it to them. Told them what it was, how it worked. No wonder they had to turn the Indian and me into prisoners. We were the only ones who knew.”

“Not quite the only ones.”

“The damn fools! They didn’t listen to me! The Americans had the weapon and didn’t use it. Something happened at the last minute in 1945. Something changed, and they’re going into this without realizing what it was.”

“But there’s someone else who does, isn’t there?”

“Yes, a scientist named—”

“Martin Eisenstadt,” Isaac finished. “We found him.”

“We got lucky,” the old man continued. “We arrived just as Rasin’s people were carting him off toward an obvious fate after your work in America rendered him a liability. We had some younger people with us. It ended pleasantly. Not only is Eisenstadt alive, he’s also willing to talk. We’ve got him stashed.”

They drove through the Arab towns of Azaria and Abudise well into Seadaya, where the Judean Desert began to dominate the landscape. Isaac pulled the Mercedes off the road after a few more miles and they all transferred into a jeep that was waiting for them. Three miles of desert followed before they came to a valley housing a large Bedouin encampment. The Bedouins’ nomadic tendencies were now restrained by the government, which restricted them to settlements. Despite this government ruling, though, the Bedouins retained many features of their old lifestyle. McCracken could see the makeshift tents and tin houses in which they slept on simple blankets over the dirt. Goats and sheep were penned up together on one side of the compound, and chickens walked freely about on the other. Mules and horses drank from a huge trough and a rooster crowed incessantly.

Getting out of the jeep, Blaine felt he was stepping back in time to a life unchanged for centuries. The Bedouins were a people who respected strength. They had chosen to settle in Israel. The country accepted them and encouraged their men to join the army, where a number excelled as trackers.

The settlement leader, an old man in white robes and keffiya, greeted Isaac with a hug. Isaac spoke to him in Arabic and the man laughed, then pointed to the largest of the tin houses, which was his home. His eyes fell on McCracken and Wareagle, and Isaac offered some words of explanation. The man nodded approvingly and spoke softly to Isaac.

“He says you and the large one are the kind of men who are welcome in his village anytime,” the old Haganah fighter related.

“Tell him many thanks.”

En route to the tin house where Eisenstadt was waiting for them, Blaine passed a number of women washing clothes by hand in large bowls. Children sneaked peeks at them from hiding places behind adults. The only hint of modernity was a pair of tractors Isaac had presented the settlement as a gift some months ago, perhaps sensing he might need the favor returned soon after.

“No one will ever look for us here,” he explained as they reached the tin house.

“Sure,” Blaine answered. “Can’t think of any place where I’d rather spend the rest of my life.”

They passed through the blanket that formed the door to the leader’s tin house. There, seated in one of four decrepit chairs around a small table, was Bechman’s assistant Dr. Martin Eisenstadt. His features were creased and uncertain. He looked younger than the seventy years he must have been and would have looked better still if not for the pallor of fear that encompassed him. A trio of Isaac’s cohorts had taken the other chairs, the one directly across from Eisenstadt staring forlornly at a checkerboard that had been set up between them. The pieces looked virtually untouched.

“He wasn’t in the mood to play,” a gaunt old man reported, and left his seat, signaling the others to do the same.

“I’ve been to see Hans Bechman, Dr. Eisenstadt,” Blaine opened, taking the now-vacant seat across from Eisenstadt and feeling its exposed springs reach up to pinch him. “I know about the Gamma Option. I know the Americans sunk the Indianapolis to keep it a secret, and I know you gave it to Yosef Rasin in spite of that.”

Eisenstadt’s fearful eyes gazed his way. His shoulders trembled. “It was the noble thing to do. I had to do it to make up for all the errors of my past. Would you like to hear my story, hear about how I, a Jew, survived in Nazi Germany? By renouncing my heritage, by turning against my own people. I survived, but it was a life of hell. You know why? Because I felt no guilt. I was just so glad to be alive.” He stopped for a deep breath. “But then the opportunity came to escape to America. I seized it and the guilt came with me. The war ended. I was faced with my treachery, my deceit. I should have gone to the gas chamber. Any fate would have been better than the one I sentenced myself to.”

“You came to Israel.”

“For salvation, for peace. I became a citizen, a trusted member of the community. But it wasn’t nearly good enough. The guilt, always the guilt!”

“And that brought you to Rasin.”

“I thought God had blessed me with a second chance. Here was my race again facing eventual extinction at the hands of a more numerous enemy. Rasin saw the future just as I did, with Israel perishing to an avalanche of Arab forces, both from the inside and out. A year from now or a decade. It didn’t matter. It was inevitable. I went to him. I sought Rasin out!”

Eisenstadt’s eyes were flaming now, the obsession of his guilt driving him once more. “Did I not possess the means that could render Israel safe forever? If used, the Gamma Option would make it so she would never again have to fear an attack over her borders. She would no longer be dependent on the United States standing up for her.” He looked deeply at McCracken. “I knew where the Indianapolis went down. I knew she still held Gamma within her. And with Gamma the Jewish state would have the security and safety it deserved at last, even if …”

“If what, doctor?”

Eisenstadt sat there trembling.

“Finish it, doctor. What went wrong with Gamma forty-five years ago? What made the Americans pull back from their plans of releasing it in Japan? Why did they sink the Indy?”

“He could have been wrong.”

“Who?”

“Bechman.”

“Wrong about what?”

“It was an isolated mutation. We never had time to double-check the findings….”

“Wrong about what? What findings are you talking about?”

Eisenstadt’s eyes became less certain. “In the last stages of our research, Bechman discovered that Gamma mutates once entrenched in the host’s system. Bechman told you of the virus’s induction through a nation’s water supply?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Infection could be contained that way, because only those who drank the water would become dependent on the enzyme. But after so many generations of gestation within the host, the virus could become airborne. Spread from host to host through the air, not just limited to those exposed to it from drinking infected water.”

“My God, the whole world could become infected.”

“More than could — would eventually. But Bechman was wrong, I tell you!”

“What if he was right?”

“He wasn’t!”

“If he was?” Blaine demanded.

Eisenstadt’s stare was blank. “The mutated form of the Gamma virus carried a more virulent version of the designer enzyme Bechman had created. Instead of creating a new pathway for the stem cells to metabolize sugar, it destroyed the pathway altogether.”

“Life itself destroyed at the most basic level. Everywhere! A killing machine!”

“No!” the scientist screeched.

But Blaine wasn’t finished. “No one would be immune. You’re describing the end of civilization!”

“Listen to me! Bechman went to the government before we could be sure. His findings made them abandon their own plan. They were forced to make sure all reserves of Gamma were lost forever. His claims could turn them into murderers of their own people.”

Eisenstadt stopped to catch his breath, which gave McCracken time to compile what the scientist had said. With the possibility of worldwide infection looming, the Truman administration had opted for Beta in the eleventh hour and had then decided it could not risk having the reserves of Gamma coming back to shore. The truth could not be allowed to leak out and fall into the hands of those who might use it against the government and the country as the cold war dawned. The cannisters had to be buried forever, forgotten forever, along with the lives of more than a thousand crew members if necessary. But now Gamma was back, about to be let loose on an unsuspecting world forty-five years after the fact.

That thought enraged McCracken. He reached across the table and grasped Eisenstadt by the lapels. “You knew all this and you still gave Gamma to Rasin. You knew the chance you were taking and you didn’t even warn him. You didn’t warn him, did you?”

“Y-Y-Yes, I did.”

McCracken eased up on the pressure.

“H-H-He didn’t care. So long as Israel survived, that was all that mattered. The notion even appealed to him: the Jewish race becoming the last bastion of civilization.”

“But with the mutation Israel will be destroyed too.”

“No,” Eisenstadt said softly. “We took … precautions.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’ll tell you because I want you to stop Rasin now. He went back on his word to me. He would have killed me, would have—”

“Talk! What precautions?”

“A vaccine to be released into the air over Israel that will protect against the possibility of any Israeli infection whatsoever, whether the virus mutates or not.”

“Released how?”

“From dozens of points scattered strategically all over the country. Released a few hours before dawn so it will reach all our borders and then be killed by the sun’s ultraviolet rays at dawn before it can stretch to any of the Arab countries, especially over water. We will be insulated!” Eisenstadt ranted.

“What about Rasin?”

“A part of it, a great part. He will release the largest allotment of the vaccine himself.”

“From where?” Blaine demanded.

Eisenstadt’s eyes fell on McCracken’s watch. “It may already be too late.”

“Where? Just tell me where!”

The scientist regarded him quite calmly with a smile born in the depths of a mind lost in the guilt-ridden shadows of the past.

“Where else?” Eisenstadt responded with terrifying matter-of-factness. “Masada.”