The Gamma Option (18 page)

The inside of the complex had been constructed with celebrations in mind. The front door opened onto a huge two-story ballroom, complete with skylights. A service entrance on the northern side opened onto the kitchen, with the formal dining room situated between this and the ballroom. The sleeping quarters on the second floor had been divided into separate wings for children and adults, the children’s bedrooms facing the east while the adults’ faced the south.

Nothing in the drawings gave her a notion as to how the palace might be penetrated. For this she would have to rely again on Kourosh, as she would for finding a time when the general was inside.

No longer requiring as much sleep to heal herself during these long hours, Evira found herself bored. She picked up one of Kourosh’s comic books and skimmed through it, amazed at how the same things appealed to children of all cultures. She had finished one and closed it when something caught her eye: a stamp of the bookstore where it had been purchased—Steimatzky, the largest chain in Israel. Strange. The anomaly seemed small, but Evira had learned long before that nothing was small. She inspected his horde of comics and found the same was true for all of them. It was no fluke. Every issue had been purchased at the Steimatzky chain.

Kourosh bounded into the room while she was still inspecting the comics, and she looked up at him embarrassed, as if she had violated his privacy.

“Superman’s my favorite,” he told her, and she noticed he had a tightly wrapped package beneath his arm. “I got a surprise for you.”

“A good one, I hope.”

“Wait until you see it!” He placed it atop a pair of crates and started to undo the string.

“Kourosh,” Evira called to him. “Who was it who taught you how to speak English?’

He turned to her and raised his eyebrows. “The students, like I told you.”

“Were they the same students who gave you the comic books?”

“Yes. Does it matter?”

“No. It’s just that, well, I know English, too. I can pick up where they left off.”

He turned excitedly from his chore of unwrapping her surprise. “Could you really?”

“It would be my pleasure. It’s the least I can do for you after all you’ve done for me.”

He looked suddenly sad. “I miss them.”

“Miss who?”

“The students.”

“The ones who were killed back at the plastics factory?”

“No, the ones who gave me the comic books, who taught me English. They haven’t been around in a while.”

“Say something in English for me,” Evira requested, even more intrigued.

Kourosh’s expression turned suddenly playful. “What do you want to hear?” he said in better English than she would have thought possible.

“Anything.”

The first few lines he spoke were enough to confirm what she suspected but could make no sense of. She was good with languages. Learning them, recognizing tone and intonation, came naturally for her. Which was why she was sure that Kourosh had learned his English from Israelis!

“How many students?” she broke in suddenly.

“Oh, plenty. All haters of injustice and poverty.”

“And you didn’t meet them until …”

“I don’t know. Six months ago, maybe nine. I met them through the others in the plastics factory.”

“But you don’t see them anymore.”

“I go but they are no longer there. They used to meet in a building not far from here, but it’s deserted now. It looks like no one was ever there.”

Evira was barely hearing him. A classic strategem was being employed. The insurgent cells in Teheran had been infiltrated by Israelis.

What have I stumbled upon here? Israelis posing as students in Tehran?

A large group that had settled in the area and then departed, possibly leaving some of their number in place.

“Do you want to see your surprise?” Kourosh was asking.

She nodded, and he went back to tearing the brown bag apart until he could gently lift the contents from inside and hold them out for her to see.

“What do you think?”

She looked at him speechless, for her means of access to the royal palace and Hassani were before her.

Kourosh was holding the uniform of a palace servant.

The two women approached the heavy front door of the stone house in Falmouth, England, unconcerned about being seen. Clearly the house was too isolated for neighbors to be a problem, and if someone had unexpectedly been in the vicinity one of them would have felt their presence earlier.

The smaller of the two led the way, the larger one bringing up the rear with the graceful menace of a jungle cat. She was exceedingly tall for a woman, six inches over six feet not counting the boots she was never without. She moved soundlessly, except for the slight creaking of her skin-tight leather pants and matching waist-length jacket. Her hair was cut close and sharply edged in punk style, with wisps jutting in every direction. The smaller woman had a tomboy haircut but was dressed like a schoolgirl in plaid skirt and green sweater. Her persistent smile seemed as false as the larger one’s ever-present scowl looked natural.

The door opened just as the two women began ascending the steps.

“What are you two doing here?” It was the puzzled voice of the Arab power broker Mohammed Fett.

“We have come for the boy,” the smaller one said.

“Ah, Tilly,” Fett said, “you are too late. He was moved to the other location two days ago.”

“Other location,” the taller one echoed.

“On whose orders?” Tilly asked.

“Rasin’s, of course.”

Tilly turned behind her to the large figure in black leather. “Lace, did you hear what he said?”

“Regrettable,” Lace said. She stepped forward until she was next to Tilly.

“What’s wrong?” Fett asked.

“Rasin sent us to kill the boy,” Lace told him.

“What?”
the flabbergasted Fett exclaimed, and then he realized what had happened. “Evira! It must have been Evira’s doing. Of course! She must have—But I know where he was taken. I can send you there.”

Lace shook her head. “He won’t be there any longer.”

“You shouldn’t have been so careless,” Tilly added immediately.

“It’s all right,” Fett assured them, stepping out onto the porch. “I’ll alert my people. The boy will be found, I assure you.”

“Yes,” Lace said as her hands darted up from her hips and closed on Fett’s head. “He will.”

With that she lifted Fett effortlessly off the stone until his head was even with hers and his toes were dangling. He was still trying to speak when she twisted his head violently to the right. There was a snap, and his whole body spasmed. Lace pressed him close against her then to feel his final breath against her face as it fled from his dangling body. He was suddenly quite cold.

“Fool,” she said, and tossed him aside. She felt very hot. “Tilly,” she called.

The smaller woman opened the door and passed through ahead of Lace, who dragged Fett’s body behind her. She placed him in a chair and arranged him so he could watch what transpired with his dead eyes. There were only two things Lace enjoyed doing, and it was nice when they could be done in sequence, for that heightened the pleasure of both. She kissed the corpse once on the lips and turned to find Tilly already on the floor with her skirt and panties torn off and fingers stroking her vagina.

“It was beautiful, Lace,” she said to her friend, who was pulling off her leather jacket. “Beautiful.”

“Like you, Tilly. Like you.”

And then Lace was on top of her. Their mouths met in a hot passion as Lace’s hand replaced Tilly’s over her clitoris. The smaller woman’s fingers raked through the stubbly blond hair of her partner, as the dead eyes of Fett looked on.

“Beautiful,” they said almost in unison.

Chapter 15

MCCRACKEN AND PATTY HUNSECKER
spent six miserable hours atop RUSS before the navy search planes out of Guam finally spotted them late Monday afternoon. Blaine greeted their universal drop-wing signal that they’d sighted him with no small degree of relief; he had feared days more would pass before they found him. He also knew that Patty could not go much longer without medical attention. When she failed to come to during their first hours at sea, Blaine feared she had slipped into a coma.

Dusk was fast approaching when a jet-powered helicopter, adorned with navy colors, hovered over them and lowered a line. McCracken sent Patty up ahead of him and found her already being worked on by paramedics when he joined her inside the cabin.

“Guam,” he told the pilot with a healthy smirk. “And step on it.”

Patty Hunsecker regained consciousness in the early hours of Tuesday morning after being hospitalized at the naval base. Blaine was at her side when she awoke, glad for the opportunity to talk before he had to leave the island.

“Managed to save RUSS, though,” he said, after doing his best to apologize for what he had cost her. “Crew on the chopper wasn’t exactly overjoyed.”

“I’m sure you didn’t give them much choice.”

“I was a perfect gentleman about it. Merely threatened to break their fingers one by one.”

“How’d you explain to the Navy what happened?”

“Some double-talk about an explosion. It’ll hold long enough for me to sneak off the island.”

“Probably help if I backed you up.”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Just tell me what you told them.”

When he was finished, Blaine’s tone turned apologetic. “When all this is over I’ll make sure the government picks up the tab to re-outfit you.”

“How do you plan on managing that?” she asked, skeptically.

“Let’s just say they owe me lots of favors. In the meantime, why don’t you rest up at Bel Air? Get reacquainted with your family. They really are concerned.”

“You spoke with them?”

“In your condition I thought next of kin should be advised.”

“You’re a bastard, McCracken.”

“Go home, Patty.”

“Stop running, you mean.”

He took her hand. “I have to go.”

“But you waited until I regained consciousness.”

“It was the proper thing to do.”

“And if it had taken another day?”

Blaine shrugged.

“You’re a strange man, McCracken.”

“I do my best.”

The Mossad chief, Isser, conferred with the prime minister of Israel at least once a day and often more frequently than that. Seldom, though, did they meet in person because of the security problems posed by Isser’s secret identity. The head of Mossad needed anonymity to perform his duties and never compromised that if it was at all possible.

Today it wasn’t. Isser had requested an in-person meeting and the prime minister was wise enough not to ask why. They met in the older man’s private study in his home. He had feigned illness earlier in the day to establish the ruse, and Isser was waiting for him when he stepped through the door, white hair flung wildly across his scalp and still wearing his bathrobe. The sickness might have been a ruse, but Isser felt saddened by how stooped his shoulders had become, how frail and old he looked.

“You’d better sit down,” the Mossad chief advised.

“I’m not really sick, remember? This is just a costume for the benefit of anyone who might be sneaking a peek.”

“That doesn’t mean you won’t be sick after I’m finished.”

The prime minister settled himself in a leather chair and Isser placed a cassette tape player on the table closest to him. He pushed the
play
button and spoke as he waited for the voices from Tehran to replace his. “This reached me from our team covering Hassani just hours ago. It speaks for itself.”

As if on cue, the voice of General Amir Hassani came on. He greeted the delegates seated around him, and Isser fast-forwarded to the spot where the discussion got interesting. The prime minister sat transfixed through it all, mouth dropping at the intent of the words. Near the end of General Hassani’s final speech, Isser switched it off.

“The ‘delegates’ were never named but I recognize their voices. I know them, don’t I, Isser?”

“Seven of our nation’s greatest enemies.”

“And they have come together to plan our destruction.”

Isser nodded. “Hassani has turned their fanaticism into ambition. Ambition makes a much more potent foe.”

The prime minister rose from his chair and paced nervously to the window, then started back. “My God, could this truly be?”

“You heard the tape, sir. We have no choice but to believe it can.”

“A mass invasion preceded by the employment of this … weapon. What weapon, Isser?”

“My men have no idea. You heard the tape. This was apparently the first mention even the delegates had heard of it.” Isser hesitated as if to catch his thoughts. “Hassani’s movements since he came to power have been strange. He disappears for days on end, weeks sometimes. We can only assume now that those disappearances are directly related to his unification of the militant Arab world and this mysterious superweapon he refers to.”

“A collection of madmen!”

“Poised along our very borders.”

“Any conventional attack we can put down, but obviously General Hassani has something more in store for us.”

“Most certainly,” Isser agreed. “And you are correct in limiting our problem to the general himself.”

The prime minister returned to his chair and sank into it, appearing to have been swallowed. “Go on.”

“The tape says their next meeting will be held on our Independence Day. Accordingly, I suggest we activate Operation Firestorm ahead of schedule.”

“The old bastards would never go for it.”

“Then we won’t give them a choice. We agreed to underwrite their bizarre plan on the condition that final control was left in our hands. I suggest we exercise it.”

“Easier said than done. The old men have planned everything to the minute. And you forget, my friend, that part of what attracted us to Operation Firestorm was the fact that traditional lines of communication were bypassed. The old men’s soldiers are divided into individual insurgent cells that will not connect with each other until the hour of Firestorm is upon us. Before that time, reaching them all to move up the timetable is not feasible.”