The Gamma Option (7 page)

“Then we both know he told me nothing.”

“He told you what he knew. Evira don’t trust him. Evira trust no one but you. You only man who can stop weapon from being used.”

“
What
weapon?”

“What you know of Yosef Rasin?” she asked him instead of answering.

“Fanatic from the Meir Kahane school, only a hundred times more fanatical. Hates all Arabs and encourages turmoil in the occupied zones. On one occasion he publicly demanded forced birth control for all Arabs living in Israel. I think castration was the word he used. Even so, his fanaticism has found a following. With half the government willing to concede a Palestinian state on the West Bank, there are plenty in this country who are starting to take his side because they’ve got nowhere else to go.”

“What is ‘his side’?”

“That Israel—and the world—would be better off if no Arab was left alive.”

The hag looked at him with her one good eye. “Fett told you of weapon that can wipe out the whole Arab world?”

“Yes.”

“Rasin has it.”

And out of the madness of the past sixteen hours, Blaine saw sense starting to form. No wonder the Arabs were desperate. If they even suspected Rasin possessed such a weapon, they’d pull out all the stops.

“Wait a minute,” Blaine said, following his own thoughts. “Why don’t you just kill him? You wouldn’t need me for that.”

A sudden breeze flapped the curtain and blew through the half-open window. Straying strands of the crone’s gray hair blew across her face. “Can’t. Rasin gone. Disappeared underground with his weapon. Trail there but need you to follow it.”

“Why can’t Evira follow it herself?”

“I not know.”

“I think you do. And I think we’re gonna sit here until you tell me.”

“Your son be no closer to safety as long as we do.”

Blaine’s anger flared. The deep scar that ran down his forehead through his left eyebrow turned milk white against the red flush of his face. His beard bristled. He leaned menacingly across the table.

“You know something, old woman? I believe that you don’t know a thing about the boy. But I know Evira does since she set this whole thing up. So here’s how we’re going to play it: you contact her and set up a meeting between us or the deal’s off. I won’t lift a finger for you and your people, and I don’t think Evira would be pleased with that after all she went through to recruit me.”

“No,” the hag acknowledged, “Evira wouldn’t.”

Blaine watched her as her left hand probed to the dead tissue around her left eye. The skin peeled back in her hand and took a hefty measure of the wrinkles on her cheek with it. The left hand continued to peel and tear while the right stripped off the gray wig to reveal a bun of dark black hair. She stared across the desk at Blaine with both eyes now, as the age of her face lay in strips on the table before them.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. McCracken,” said Evira.

“Come in, Colonel Ben-Neser!”

From his position in a shabby apartment, overlooking the market from above a furniture store, Yuri Ben-Neser lifted the walkie-talkie to his lips. “Have you got her, Ari?”

“Yes,” Ari told him. “Far edge of the market on the corner. Leather handbags hanging outside the entrance.”

Ben-Neser moved to the window. “I can see it! I can see it!” he said thankfully, propping the walkie-talkie upon his shoulder so he could use his single arm to mop his brow. He’d lost the other in the Yom Kippur War of ’73.

Ben-Neser had spent the last two years searching for the elusive Evira. He had heard all the stories, all the legends. Some said she had killed every agent who got even remotely close. Others claimed she had not once taken up arms within the state of Israel, that she was in fact an Israeli citizen. Another legend claimed she directed each and every terrorist attack that took place within the country. Ben-Neser preferred to accept the most secure intelligence on her, which had it that she was committed to organizing Israel’s Arabs into a force that could someday take over the country from the inside. Even this conservative analysis stated that she had agents placed in every sphere of Israeli life, including the cabinet itself. For this reason, cabinet meetings of late had been held in absolute secrecy. Ben-Neser himself favored neither the views of Kahane, nor the far more radical position of Rasin. But the notion of a legion of Arabs and those loyal to them spying on the state from within was terrifying. It certainly justified for him the risk he was taking by conducting this unauthorized mission.

“She’s meeting with someone, sir,” Ari was saying.

Ben-Neser felt the phantom pain of his missing arm as he always did when he was nervous. If anything went wrong, the ramification would be catastrophic. He had to bring this off without a hitch.

“Recognize him?” he asked Ari.

“Big. Rugged with a beard. Looks American.”

American?
Ben-Neser wondered to himself. The last thing he needed here was just that sort of complication.

“Do we move in?” Ari asked.

“No,” Ben-Neser said from his position by the window of the apartment, choking down the urge to rub the arm that was no longer there. “Where are you?”

“Shop featuring plumbing fixtures diagonally across the street from Evira.”

“Hold your position. I’m coming down.”

McCracken continued to gaze across the table at the woman whose age had shrunk by upwards of forty years. She returned his gawking stare with an admiring one of her own while she continued to pick at the stray patches of theatrical makeup stuck on her flesh.

“I’m sorry this was necessary,” she said.

“And just what are you referring to, the disguise or the taking of my son?”

“Both, I guess. The boy’s fine. Better than fine. He’s safe.”

“Safe from whom?”

“My enemies are now your enemies.”

“Arab?”

“As well as Israeli. What we’re facing here doesn’t discriminate. You’ll find we have extraordinarily few allies, perhaps just each other.”

“Then how about you deliver Matthew back to Reading School to prove your good faith?”

She looked at him almost sadly. “I can’t do that. You know I can’t.”

“Look, lady, the hag I was talking to a few minutes ago and Fett built a pretty good case. If this bit about Rasin and his weapon are true, then I’m on your side already.”

“Like you were on the side of the French, of the British, even the Americans?” she shot back at him. “I know you better than you think. The side you start out on may not be the side you end up on, depending on the dictates of your conscience. You think I don’t approve of those traits?” she added, more softly, voice laced with admiration. “They are precisely what persuaded me that you were the only one left for me to work with now that my own network has been compromised.”

“Then you also know my word is my bond. Let the boy go. I’ll work with you.”

“I can’t. I made promises, gave assurances. Can’t you see that?”

“What I see every time I close my eyes is what a pair of killers did to John Neville.”

“I don’t condone the actions of butchers.”

“But you used them, didn’t you? Cut the bullshit, lady. If you’re so fond of the way I operate, you must have figured out you’re already working in a bigger ballgame.”

She looked hurt. What little light reached her face told Blaine she was thirty at most and probably younger. Her features were more European than Arabic. She had skin that was soft and smooth, and high cheekbones that complemented an angular chin and large round eyes. Her complexion looked more tanned than naturally bronze.

“Let’s get to the point, Evira,” Blaine resumed. “Let’s get to Rasin. How’d you find out about the existence of this superweapon?”

“I’ve had agents planted within his group for sometime.”

“Arabs?”

“Seventeen percent of Israel’s citizens are Arabs, but they’re Israelis first. This is their nation, too. And as their numbers have grown they have been accepted as part of the nation.” She paused. “By most of the nation anyway. Rasin has seized upon the reality of their growing influence, along with the possible formation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, and used them to spread his message of hate. His cause has fostered a dangerous, militant faction. He has become enamored of the power it has provided him. Fanaticism is a powerful voice, Blaine McCracken, one the Arabs of Israel find impossible to silence. He seeks to propel himself into power by creating a climate of fear fanatics thrive in. He has his hardcore followers, along with those afraid to oppose him.”

She leaned farther across the table. “Some months ago, he began holding meetings in secret. Representatives of his movement in Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the settlements were all briefed on his discovery of a means to eliminate the Arab problem forever, to destroy the entire Arab world. An agent I planted within Rasin’s camp was present at those briefings. He reported to me what he had heard. That was the last we heard from him. That was just about a month ago, near the time Rasin himself disappeared. He hasn’t been seen since. That’s what made me try to contact you.”

“Destroy the Arab world,” Blaine repeated. “Your contact’s words or Rasin’s?”

“Rasin’s expoundings were bolder, yet vague. Perhaps obliterate would be a better word than destroy. Rasin didn’t state it that way, but what else could we be facing?”

“How did he state it?”

“In shadows and riddles. The Arab peoples both nearest and farthest would be put down in a way that would make it impossible for them to ever rise up again.”

“And yet here we have Israel sitting square in the center of all these Arab peoples. How can this weapon Rasin claims he has destroy one without the other?”

“His briefings were quite clear about this result. ‘An oasis in the middle of the desert of destruction’ were his exact words.”

“Then we must be talking about some kind of selective destruction. What he seems to be talking about is a weapon that can’t possibly exist.”

“Only within the parameters our reason permits us to consider.”

“Your reason, Evira, and your fight. I’ve read the files on you, and if there’s any truth to them at all, then I’ve got to figure you’re just as able to track Rasin down as I am.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps. We’ll never know for sure because I have my own target to pursue: Amir Hassani.”

“An Ar—”

“Go ahead. Finish. You were about to say ‘Arab,’ weren’t you?” She didn’t let him answer. “Yes, I am an Arab, Mr. Blaine McCracken, but my birth place was annexed, which makes me an Israeli, too. My loyalty may be divided, but on both counts Hassani is as much my enemy as Rasin. He is against everything I stand for.”

“And just what is that?”

“Peace. Does that surprise you?”

“Coming from a woman who kidnaps children to further her ends, frankly it does.”

“Not just my ends, Mr. Blaine McCracken, the
world’s
ends. What do you know of Hassani?”

“No more than anyone else, I suppose. He’s a real enigma, installed as military strongman of a beaten and impoverished Iran in a coup after the war was finally settled with Iraq and Khomeini passed on to the nuthouse in the sky. He came back from exile, à la Khomeini, and promised to return national pride and prosperity to a country sorely lacking in both.”

“And has he?”

“In the past six months things have gotten steadily worse. He woos the wealthy and powerful like the Shah did while giving limitless power to the Revolutionary Guard like Khomeini.”

“And caught in the middle are the Iranian masses who mean nothing to him. But you left out one thing. Hassani has used his position to rally other militant Arab leaders, and he has convinced them that with the Iran-Iraq war no longer serving as a distraction, they can turn all their attention toward a common enemy.”

“Israel,” Blaine surmised.

“Of course. Hassani has brought together a collection of madmen who want nothing more than to see Israel destroyed and collectively are in possession of the means to assure it happens.”

“Then we’re facing two madmen, each of which is poised to destroy the world of the other.”

“And they’ll succeed unless we are successful in stopping them.”

“Stop or kill?”

“One and the same.”

Blaine shook his head mockingly. “This really isn’t your game, is it? Why don’t you just come out and say what you mean: you plan to kill Hassani while I kill Rasin.”

Evira’s eyes were cold. “Whatever is necessary.”

“How did you learn so much about Hassani? You work in Israel, not Iran.”

She just looked at him, and might have been about to speak when Blaine suddenly answered his own question.

“Unless … unless you found out about Hassani’s plans through the agents you planted with Rasin. Of course!”

“You see what I mean now.”

“What I see is an Israeli fanatic with a weapon he intends to use because of what a militant Iranian is planning. In Rasin’s mind, what he’s doing is self-defense, a preventive strike.”

“But it cuts both ways,” Evira explained. “Part of the reason why Hassani has been able at last to unite the various militant factions of the Arab world is the symbol Rasin and his rising popularity presents. His following is no longer limited or hidden away. It is thriving in Israel and it is powerful. Can you imagine the kind of concessions he’ll demand, and the price Israel will be forced to pay, once he and his party capture enough seats in parliament for Rasin to become kingmaker? Hassani and the other madmen cannot wait to find out. They feel Israel must be destroyed before the tide becomes too strong to turn… .”

“Which, accordingly, provides Rasin with the perfect rationale to utilize his superweapon. My God, it’s almost as if Hassani and the others had played right into his hands.”

“In any case he has the weapon and the justification to unleash it.” Her eyes became pleading. “I couldn’t trust anyone else, don’t you see? Hassani’s people have penetrated my organization, and Rasin’s people are onto me. You were my only hope. Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing if our positions were reversed!”

“I wouldn’t. There’s a code that must not have made it to your part of the world yet. We don’t involve family. We never involve family.”