The Gamma Option (23 page)

“
What?
”

“Joyce saw the sub that did it. The story about the Japs being responsible was a cover. It explains why no escort was ordered, why the distress signal was ignored, why everything possible was done to make sure the survivors weren’t rescued.”

“Holy shit …”

“Now Yosef Rasin is in possession of the superweapon we sunk the
Indianapolis
to keep secret, and I’ve got to ask myself what happens if he doesn’t know what stopped us from using it when we had the chance. That clear enough for ya, Hank?”

“Crystal. Now get off the phone so I can make some calls.”

“Stay away from the window,” the man advised, reaching for the boy’s shoulder.

“Why?” Matthew demanded as he twisted from the man’s grasp.

The man pulled away as if his hand had been burned. After removing Matthew from Fett’s charge, he and the two others assigned to the boy had expected a response on his part of fear, obedience, submissiveness. What they had gotten was obstinance and rebelliousness.

“It’s safer,” the man said. “That’s all.”

“From who?”

“People who want to hurt you.”

“I don’t have to look out the window to see
them,
”
the boy shot back. He continued to gaze stubbornly outward.

“We’re not your enemy.”

“That’s what the man you took me from said.”

“He was lying.”

“And you’re not?”

The man reached across him and yanked down the shade.

“Why don’t you just let me go?” the boy asked matter-of-factly.

“It’s for your own good.”

“The other man said that too.”

“This time it’s the truth.”

Matthew tilted his head back toward the covered window. “He’ll find me, you know.”

The man smiled, glad at last his reassurance might mean something. “I promise you he won’t. You don’t have to be scared.”

“Not the Arab,” the boy snapped disparagingly. “Blaine McCracken. When he finds out what you’ve done, he’ll find me. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when he gets here.”

The man looked at him dumbfounded. He had not had much experience with children, and if this was any indication of what they were like, he had no desire to have any experience with them again. He watched the boy swing arrogantly back to the window, and with a quick flick of his hand the shade spun from the glass again.

“He’ll be coming,” Matthew assured. “And it won’t be long now either.”

“You cheated! I take my eye off the board for one second and you make an extra move!”

“Putz,” Abraham snapped back at Joshua, waving an arm before his face.

“You took three of my men with one jump from a spot you shouldn’t have been in.”

“You forgot I moved there move before last. You forgot and you want to blame me because you’re going soft in the brains.”

“Putz,” Joshua snarled this time.

Sitting in the shade outside the house in Hertzelia, not far from where the two old men were playing checkers, Isaac and Isser caught pieces of the argument.

“Are they always like this?” the head of Mossad wanted to know.

“You want them—we—should change after all these years? We’re soldiers, Isser, and nothing frustrates soldiers more than age.” He cocked an eye back toward the deck. “They fight with each other mostly to remember. Believe me, I’m no better, and someday neither will you be.”

“Will there be a ‘someday’ for me, Isaac, for my children?”

“There has been one these past forty-five years and there always will be. We were there at the start, don’t forget. We’ve seen it all.”

“You mean you
had
seen it all. You haven’t seen Hassani.”

“I’ve seen others like him. Plenty.”

“So you’re not worried.”

“Worried? Of course I’m worried. I was worried in ’48 and ’67 and in ’73 too. And I’m worried today after what you’ve told me. But you learn after awhile that if God wasn’t resigned to taking care of us, we wouldn’t have survived this long.”

“God might need some help this time. I’ve laid out the scenario of what we may be facing. I want you to consider moving up the timetable for Operation Firestorm.”

Isaac just looked at him, wisps of his stray white hair blowing in the breeze.

“You don’t seem surprised by my request.”

“I didn’t think you came here to discuss history.”

“Can you do it?”

“You knew the answer to that even before you came, Isser. You know the logistics. Our people are too spread out, they’re not in contact with each other. We all agreed it was the safest setup on the chance that one of the cells was penetrated. No trail, remember?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“For a year now we have planned everything toward a single day. Thousands of people are involved,
hundreds
of thousands. Firestorm can’t be moved up. Not by a week, not by a day, not even by an hour. All was finalized when we received those Comanches from the Americans.”

“Apaches, Isaac. They’re called Apaches.”

“Whatever they are called, I can do nothing to move up the timetable.”

“Even if it means Hassani’s forces beat us to the punch?”

Before Isaac could respond, red and black game pieces flew wildly off the deck, followed by the checkerboard itself as Saul fought to position himself between Abraham and Joshua.

“You can’t plan for everything,” the old man told the chief of Mossad, “but you do the best you can.” A grimace stretched across his face as his eyes found the ruined checkerboard halfway between their chairs and the deck. “The problem is sometimes no matter what you do, nobody wins.”

It was past midnight when Blaine called Hank Belgrade at a second number, as arranged at the end of their last conversation.

“I found your Nazi for you, MacNuts,” Belgrade said.

“He’s alive?”

“Yes and no.”

“I don’t like the sound of that, Hank.”

“Wait until you hear the details. Dr. Hans Bechman was the charter member of something called the Paperclip Club. Ring any bells?”

“Nazis who we wanted to salvage from the war were identified by a paperclip attached to their files. Right?”

“On the money. Except Bechman came over so early he didn’t even have a file. I haven’t got a clue as to what he was working on for us in 1945, but as near as I can make it out, his specialty for the Reich was genetic engineering.”

“Gene splicing, recombinant DNA, and the like?”

“Yup. Man was way ahead of his time. Fortunately, Hitler didn’t think much of his work when compared to the nerve gases those Nazis were creating, so his project never really found an audience. It if had …”

“You still haven’t told me if he’s alive or not.”

“Yes, he’s alive, or at least what I’ve been able to dig up indicates he is. Over eighty now and who knows in what condition, but alive. Trouble is you can’t get to him.”

“Try me,” Blaine said.

“Look, MacNuts, this is out of even your league.”

“Just tell me where to go, Hank.”

“It’s not that simple. Men like Bechman aren’t allowed to retire to beachfront property in Florida for obvious reasons. Government takes care of them a different way and my balls are on the line for merely mentioning this to you.”

“You haven’t mentioned anything yet.”

Hank Belgrade took a deep breath. “Senior citizens who fall into the know-too-much category require special care. Think about it, MacNuts, all those deep dark secrets stored in a mind going soft. Our enemies could have a field day picking those minds apart.”

“So no gin rummy in South Beach. What, then?”

“Permanent residence at a very secret retirement community known only as the O.K. Corral.”

“And don’t tell me when I get there I’m supposed to ask for Wyatt Earp.”

“Not quite. The official in charge of the community calls himself Doc Holliday.”

Part Four
The O.K. Corral

Tehran: Thursday, May 11; eight
P.M
.

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.