The Gamma Option (31 page)

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.”

Part Five
Independence Day

Masada: Saturday, May 13; noon

Chapter 26

THE MOUNTAIN PLATEAU
of Masada rises ominously above the desolation that surrounds it. Standing on the border between the Judean Desert and the Dead Sea Valley, it is 1,400 feet from ground level to a rock-strewn summit that covers five acres. On the summit are reconstructed buildings dating back over two thousand years. The past lives and breathes on the desert wind that swirls the dust.

Israel’s past.

More than any other single symbol, Masada typifies the plight of the Jewish people through history. It was built originally as a royal sanctuary and fortress by King Herod, but it entered history over a half century after his death. Jewish Zealots who had revolted against Rome fled to Masada and held it for three years, the final one against continued onslaught from the entire Tenth Roman Legion. Outnumbered by more than ten to one, the Zealots outlasted the legion until the Romans constructed a ramp up one of the mountain’s sides and seemed on the verge of crashing through the fortress walls. Unable to accept either moral or physical enslavement, the Zealots denied the Romans their victory by taking their own lives. The Romans found nine-hundred-seventy corpses waiting for them inside the walls it had taken three years to penetrate.

Today the flow of natives and tourists to Masada is constant. So too is the army’s tradition of ending the training of soldiers with a charge up the serpentine Snake Path that winds from the mountain’s base to its buffeted summit.

The vast majority of visitors, though, opt for the faster and less tiring route offered by the cable cars that run up the mountain’s eastern side. The pair of vehicles work in perfect tandem, carrying visitors up and down throughout the day.

The twenty-five men who packed into the cable car at the base station on this Saturday had arrived just minutes before on a tour bus. They were dressed in baggy, comfortable clothing well suited for the heat, and many had camera bags slung from their shoulders. No words were exchanged during the five minute trek upward. The khaki-clad tour-group leader emerged first on the unloading platform and approached a young soldier leaning complacently against a steel rail.

“You will evacuate these premises immediately,” Yosef Rasin ordered him.

The soldier stiffened. “Excuse me?”

“You heard what I said. There are three more of your number atop the mountain as we speak. By now they have been approached by my men, as you have.”

“
Your
men?”

With that the soldier’s eyes scrutinized the two dozen men who had just made the trip up in the cable car. Those that he could see all had their hands tucked in their clothes or camera bags, intentions obvious, weapons a grasp away. Then he gazed at the long, winding line of patrons waiting to take the cable car down, disturbed by the sudden halt in its movement.

“Are we being taken hostage?” he asked.

“No, you fool. I want all of you off this mountain! You and the other soldiers will supervise the process but my men will oversee everything. We do not wish to make an issue out of this. Believe me, shedding Israeli blood is not our intention.”

“I … don’t understand.”

“We are not terrorists, we are patriots. At the base of the mountain more of us are waiting to be taken up. There is equipment they will transport upward with each shift. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“You will make no move to intercede. We are not enemies. It might not seem so now, but we are on the same side.”

The soldier looked at Yosef Rasin more closely. “I know you. I’m sure I do… .”

“When you are away from the mountain,” the fanatic continued, “you will tell the Israeli people to look to Masada. You will tell them that the ultimate step to insure the freedom of our people and our nation is about to be taken. A new meaning will be brought to Independence Day when it dawns tomorrow. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“I … think so.”

“Be sure of it. You are blessed, young man, blessed to be the messenger of a holy mission. Go about your business now. Let us keep the people lined up beyond us calm.”

The soldier’s eyes widened suddenly. “I
do
know you. You’re—”

“I’m nobody, young man. But tomorrow will change that.”

“It’s done,” Isser reported to the prime minister, lowering the phone back to its hook. “He’s taken Masada, as planned.”

“What have you told the army?”

“To set up a perimeter but not to interfere in any way. The area must be sealed so Rasin can work his black magic undisturbed on that rock.”

“You sound disturbed.”

“He brought an army with him, Mr. Prime Minister, upward of sixty men. That was not part of the deal you made.”

“But it doesn’t surprise me. It’s a warning to us, another of his symbols. The scene will look much better tomorrow when the television stations arrive at dawn for the announcement of his appointment as minister of defense.” The old man paused. “Unless McCracken has something to say about it.”

“We’ve confirmed it was Isaac who sprang him and the Indian from our safe house in Jerusalem. We’re not trying to track him down. If he wants to walk away from this now, he can.”

“But you know he won’t, don’t you, Isser?”

“You’re probably right, and that’s as good a reason for maintaining a military presence around Masada as any. If McCracken so much as shows his face near the mountain, he’ll be shot on sight.”

It was just after twelve-thirty when Isaac at last gained confirmation of the worst from a government contact.

“Eisenstadt was right,” he reported. “Rasin and over fifty of his soldiers took Masada just after noon.”

“And the army’s supporting him, of course,” McCracken concluded.

“They’ve cordoned off the entire area around Arad. Nobody gets in. The whole Negev’s been closed down. The mountain belongs to Rasin and there’s nothing we can do to change that.”

A stiff wind rattled the walls of the Bedouin tribe leader’s tin house. Outside a rooster crowed incessantly.

McCracken turned his gaze on Wareagle, who had spread out a map of Masada over an ancient crate. “What do you think, Indian, can we succeed in less than a day where ten-thousand Romans failed in three years?”

Wareagle looked up at him. “The army’s presence has less to do with our problem than the fortress itself, Blainey. Slipping past the soldiers might be possible, but that would leave us with only these two routes of approach to Rasin.” With that, Johnny traced a massive finger, first up the serpentine Snake Path which wound up the eastern side of the mountain, and then traced the path the Romans had left up the western slope with the ramp they had used to gain entry at last to the fortress. “Both paths are easily defensible with far less manpower and weapons than Rasin has by all accounts brought with him.”

“Especially when he’s got just the two of us and four Haganah fighters to contend with. No offense, Isaac.”

“Give me a gun. Give all of us guns. We can still shoot.”

“For that you need a target first, and right now we can’t even get close to it. Okay, Indian, so ground approach is out. That would seem to leave us exclusively with air.”

Wareagle frowned in response to that suggestion. “The Israelis know you, Blainey, and they know you will try anything. They will be watching the skies. We’ll never get close.”

“How about a low-altitude drop?”

“Again, it might get us by the Israelis fortifying the mountain base, but unless we could come up with a way to disguise our parachutes, we would be exposed to Rasin’s troops the entire way down.”

“We need cover then.”

“Where cover plainly doesn’t exist.”

“Goddamn it!” Blaine roared. “We’ll climb the rock face if that’s what it takes to get up there. But we’re going to stop Rasin, do you hear me?”