The Gamma Option

by Jon Land

  His mother wasn’t there. No one knew where she was.

  Kourosh returned to the streets, and the streets became his only parents. He stole what he had to in order to eat. He found the empty room to which he later brought Evira and moved in. From spaces between the boards over his window he could see the plastics factory and thus observe who came and went there. Many a night he heard the faint rush of footsteps heading toward it and came to recognize the regulars who frequented the building. He judged they were counterrevolutionaries drawn from frustrated students, the heroes of the poor, and wished he were old enough to join them. In his imagination they became his friends and companions, the only ones he had.

  One night, he noticed that a guard was lingering around the plastics building. When the guardsman departed, Kourosh didn’t hesitate at all. He rushed from his room across the street and through the door he had seen entered so many times. Inside he found the students in a large conference room. At first they regarded his rantings as a playful nuisance, but Kourosh got enough of their attention to convince them a raid was coming. All underground movements learn to move quickly and cover their tracks, and by the time the raid occurred less than an hour later all evidence of their presence had been erased. As a result, the boy became a fixture in their midst, asking nothing in return, though a few of the students kept him as clean as they could, kept him well fed, and endeavored to teach him English, using the comic books, he explained, as tools.

  “You really think you can get me into the palace when Hassani is there?” she asked him when he was finished.

  “I told you I could, didn’t I?”

  “Then why don’t you tell me how. Let’s start with a map.”

  The four old men sat at the shaded table in the backyard of the spacious home in the city of Hertzelia, the posh suburb a half hour outside of Tel Aviv. The two directly across from one another were huddled in deep concentration over a checkerboard with nearly the same number of black pieces remaining as red. The paler of the two, a gaunt man with three days stubble upon his cheeks, jumped a black with his red.

  “King me!” he demanded triumphantly.

  His slightly older opponent, a short pudgy man with only the remnants of his hair, humphed in response and slammed a captured red back into the game.

  “Damn you, Abraham. You play meshuge.”

  “Go ahead, damn me, Isaac. Damn me all you want. This time I’m winning.”

  “The two of you should be ashamed of yourselves, whining on the sabbath,” chastised a man with a glass eye that refused to look in the same direction as his real one. “I’ve got winners.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “What you’ve got is hemorrhoids, Saul,” Isaac told him.

  “Yes, from sitting in the same place too long watching the two of you.”

  The fourth man’s reaction to all this was to blow his monstrous nose into a handkerchief.

  “Do you have to do that in front of all of us, Joshua?” Abraham wanted to know.

  “What, then? I should take a walk in the woods every time I have to blow?”

  “No,” Saul said, “you’d scare away all the birds.”

  Now it was Joshua who humphed. In point of fact, none of the men were going by the names given them at birth. They had gone by so many different names in their lifetimes, what difference did another make, especially if it was by their own choosing? The four men had taken the names of four kings and warriors. The names fit well with the project they had undertaken.

  It was Isaac’s move again and he huddled close enough to the board pieces to lick them before making it. To the four old men, life was very much like a game of checkers. Forget chess with all its complications. Life was most easily endured when reduced to its simplest elements. They had learned that credo forty years before and had continued to practice it ever since.

  Joshua considered blowing his nose again, then thought better of it.

  “Still no further word from Tehran?” he asked.

  “You were expecting maybe a miracle?” Saul answered.

  “We shouldn’t have needed a miracle. It was all planned. That woman, what was her name again?”

  “Evira.”

  “She should have died in Tehran. We were assured there wouldn’t be a problem. What went wrong?”

  “How should I know?” asked Isaac, who was growing increasingly impatient with Abraham’s refusal to move. His hand kept sneaking out only to jump back before committing himself. “We made sure word of her coming was leaked to the Revolutionary Guard, but the soldiers dispatched were killed, all of them, and she disappeared. End of story.”

  Abraham laughed humorlessly and at last made his move. “Not if she is still at large.”

  “Go ahead,” Isaac blared. “You’re going to repeat the same thing you said this morning. ‘Why don’t we find her and finish the job?’ She’s gone, that’s why. Someone helped her and that someone is still helping her.”

  “Not one of ours.”

  “Surely not. Perhaps one of nobody’s. It has been known to happen.”

  “Not in Tehran it hasn’t.”

  “The point,” Saul said, “is that she is probably on the run and thus no longer poses a threat to our plans.”

  “Don’t underestimate her,” Isaac urged, watching Abraham contemplate a counter to his latest move. “We know what she went to Tehran to accomplish and we also know we cannot allow her to be successful.”

  “She has little time left.”

  “She has enough.”

  “How many days is it now?” Joshua asked of himself, tucking his hanky into his fist in order to count fingers. “Depends on whether you count today or not… .”

  “Putz,” Saul muttered. “You can’t remember May fourteenth, Independence Day, after how hard we fought to win it?”

  “Eight days,” Joshua said finally. “Counting today.”

  “Putz.”

  And on the game board Abraham had pounced on Isaac’s apparently ill-conceived move by lodging a double jump and seizing one of his opponent’s kings. “Sometimes, old friend, you make a simple game more complicated than it was meant to be.”

  Isaac followed up with no delay at all, triple jumping Abraham and leaving him with a single doomed piece on the board. “Sometimes you make it too simple.”

  Yosef Rasin stood on the terrace that overlooked the orange orchards of the kibbutz where he had lived as a child. To him the smells carried on the stiff breeze were more than those of citrus; they were the smells of Israel, the nation he had dedicated his life to. Rasin ran a hand through his blowing curls, noticeably thinner than they once were. He was no longer a young man. Where before dreams seemed to have forever to come true, now even tomorrow seemed too much to wait for.

  Not tomorrow anyway. But soon, ever so soon… .

  Rasin gripped the railing tight with both hands. His grip felt weak. The paunch of his belly felt larger. The Israeli sun seemed daily to sap more of his strength. In this respect his fate was that of his nation. Pleading. Desperate. Running out of time. Interesting how they had aged along parallel lines.

  And yet he stood here a prisoner of his own conscience, thanks to the plan he had undertaken. He had come to the kibbutz in the fertile lands en route to the Negev when his enemies began to search for him. These were high stakes they were playing for, and Rasin could afford no chances. The people of his kibbutz thought him a hero. Hiding him was a privilege. They would reveal no information about him and the isolated nature of their kibbutz made it the perfect hiding place. It had not become commercial as so many others had. There was no hotel, outside business, nor any wish for tourist trade. The people here kept to themselves and did not advertise their existence with signs on the highway. Rasin’s flesh crawled at the thought of the commercialism that had beset others.

  He took another deep breath. The scents were of many things but mostly they were of home. He gazed out at the orange trees lined in rows beneath him. In his mind they became a vas
t crowd of people cheering and praising him. He could see them clearly, arms thrusting up and down, chanting his name. Rasin could feel the euphoria. He touched his unshaven face and was glad the people below were not close enough to see how unkempt he was. Involuntarily, he raised his hands from the railing into the air, a gesture for the people to silence themselves. They obliged instantly to heed the command of their hero.

  “My friends,” he called out to them, “a great day is upon us, a holy day, for is this not the first time in our long, oppressed history that we have been truly independent from the hate and ugliness that has surrounded us always?”

  “YES!”

  “And is this not the first time we, the people of Israel, stand together as one and look to our borders without fear? When we can walk the streets, any street, and not worry for our lives or the lives of our children, either now or in the future?”

  “YES!”

  The applause and cheering became tumultuous. Rasin could feel his ears ringing. He found himself having to scream over it into his imaginary microphone.

  “The Arab peoples have been vanquished at last! The Arab peoples have been reduced to the significance of the grains of sand that populate their deserts! Their entire way of life has been reduced to a desert. Was this my choice? Was this something that came easy to me?”

  Silence now, hushed and thick.

  “No, I tell you, no! I have not committed the deed I have done with a light heart. But I accept the responsibility for it. I accept it as I accept the charge of leadership for this great country I love and cherish. Let us not look to the past for what we have been forced to bury. Let us look to the future for what we can now build in peace.”

  The applause thundered over his final words and Rasin raised his hands in triumph, eyes watering, the fulfillment of his greatest dream—

  “Yosef …”

  —before him.

  “Yosef, I’m sorry to bother you.”

  The voice from behind him broke Rasin’s trance. Before him the oranges were oranges again. His hands dug back into the railing. He was disappointed.

  “You know I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m thinking, Daniel.”

  “There are matters that must be addressed, sir. They require your immediate attention.”

  Rasin swung abruptly around. “It is Israel that requires my attention, Daniel. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  “This is what we must speak about, Yosef. Threats. Complications.”

  Rasin’s eyes narrowed into slits of repressed rage. When he spoke Daniel noted his voice was hoarse again.

  “You have my attention.”

  At first Rasin had tried peacefully to prove his points to the Israeli public, to work within the system to affect the changes he felt were so desperately needed. His militant stands began with the signing of the Camp David accords. Giving back the Sinai was a tragic error, not for strategic reasons so much as for the precedent it set. Once the givebacks began, they never stopped. A Palestinian state was closer than ever to existence on the West Bank that belonged to Israel and only to Israel. Did the present leadership think the Arab rabble would be appeased with that? Did they think it would bring peace? Rasin knew it wouldn’t. For him the issue was a simple one: either the Arab world would survive or Israel would. And he had been blessed with the means to ensure the latter. No, not blessed—chosen. And if not by God, then by whom? Everything had been too neat and clean to be anything but predestined. The weapon was his to employ when and how he saw fit.

  The breeze blew his hair and Rasin squinted his eyes into the sun. To the casual observer, he might have looked like a schoolteacher or mundane public official. His face was nothing if not simple, forgettable, and Rasin was glad for that. There was strength in simplicity, and he used it to distill the essence of truth.

  The Arab peoples of the Mideast had to be shown the error of their ways. Plain. Simple. Period. He had the means, though it would not be the ends that provided the justification. That came from the past, from the proven brutality of a culture that had been at war since the dawn of its existence. The barbarians of the modern world, full of inbred hate and a death wish. The names they went by—Al-Fatah, Black September, PLO, PLF, the Islamic Jihad—were all fronts formed in an attempt to legitimize their existence. But Rasin saw through the fronts; the issue in his mind was simple. The Arabs hated the Israelis and would destroy them if given the opportunity. The only way to stop them was to find the opportunity first.

  And now to use it.

  “We have completed our interrogation of the traitor Traymir.”

  “And?”

  “Your fears have been confirmed. He sent McCracken to Japan, to the Bujin.”

  “And what have you done?”

  “About Traymir?”

  “No, about McCracken.”

  “The Bujin spirited him away before we could act.”

  “That is hardly a surprise.”

  “His next destination is equally obvious. He could do us irreparable harm if he finds …”

  “Finds what, Daniel? No trace was left, no evidence. That was made sure of.”

  “This is McCracken we are talking about, not an ordinary man. He has skills and resources that defy our comprehension.”

  Rasin came forward and calmly tapped Daniel on both shoulders. “Perhaps you forget, my friend, the circumstances of his employ this time. He has no friends, no government resources behind him, and the life of his son is at stake.”

  “He has brought down operations single-handedly before. Several times.”

  “Then we will deal with him at our convenience. If your information is correct, it should be relatively simple. Relax.”

  But Daniel tensed and pulled away.

  “Speak your mind, my friend,” Rasin bade him.

  “When we learned of his involvement, we should have killed him immediately. I warned you of the consequences of failure.”

  Rasin nodded. Daniel was right, of course. The problems had begun with the discovery that Evira had planted an agent high within their midst, an agent who they could only assume had passed on Rasin’s possession of the superweapon before his capture. When word of the woman’s desperate interest in McCracken surfaced, Rasin took the most logical step available to him: Help Evira play out her cards through Fett, let her retain McCracken’s services so his own people might be led to her in the process. Everything would have gone as planned if not for the presence of the one-armed man and his team who had come after Evira in Jaffa. Even allowing for McCracken’s prowess, the unexpected had hurt more than anything.

  “Your point is well taken,” Rasin conceded. “Now tell me about the woman.”

  “She has vanished.”

  “That is the best you can do?”

  “She is no longer in the country.” Then, eyeing Rasin closely, he continued, “That could be enough. If she even suspects the truth, if that suspicion takes her to—”

  “Enough! She could not possibly suspect the truth, no one could. Do you hear me, Daniel? No one! Every detail of this operation has been thought out to the letter. All we are facing are minor inconveniences. Look at me, Daniel. Look at me!”

  Rasin grasped the younger man at the shoulders and held him there tight. “Do you think I like living in this self-imposed exile? Do you know why I speak to the orange groves? Not out of madness, Daniel, but frustration. It pains me so much to be isolated and alone when I am so needed. But that is going to change soon and nothing, no one!, is going to stop it! We are barely a week from the culmination of my operation. I will be a hero. Israel will be mine, to cherish and lead as I was born to.”

  Rasin steadied himself, released his grip, and backed slightly off.

  “Independence Day, Daniel. May fourteenth. Next Sunday. One week from tomorrow.”

  Daniel’s response was one word:

  “McCracken.”

  “We know where he is going. We will finish him there.”

  “And if we fail?”

/>   Rasin squinted his acknowledgement. “Then perhaps the time has come again to use Evira’s plan against her.” His eyes were cold now, showing no hesitation. “Contact the women. Tell them to go to where McCracken’s son is being held. Tell them to kill the boy.”

  Part Three

  The Indianapolis

  Guam: Monday, May 8; eleven A.M.

  Chapter 12

  “YO!” MCCRACKEN HEARD as a hand jostled him at the shoulder. “Hope you don’t mind me waking you up.”

  “You interrupted a good dream,” he told the woman who was standing over him with her hands on her hips.

  “I am ever so sorry. But I thought you might want to join me on deck now that we’ve reached your goddamn coordinates.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Blaine returned, but Patty Hunsecker was already through the cabin door.

  Blaine threw his legs over the edge of the cot and stretched. They had been at sea for nearly twenty hours now and few of them had been easy. The Pacific was in a mean mood, seas choppy and rough. The only brief calm had come in the first few hours after setting out from Guam. If McCracken had his bearings correct, they were now somewhere around the halfway point between Guam and the island of Leyte with nothing around them but sky and water.

  Thirty-six hours earlier on Saturday, Hiroshi had arranged for a private jet to fly Blaine to Guam’s Tamuning Airport. The country’s strong Pacific military presence included a complete naval air station which very likely contained the equipment he required. Unfortunately, though, under the circumstances he could not approach any legitimate authority for help. Not only had Evira forbidden him to do so, but now Mossad was on his trail and Mossad’s ears were everywhere.

  Again Hiroshi provided the answer. The waters around Guam, including the nearby Marianas, contained a hotbed of research projects, and all those in the area for such purposes had to register with the naval station. Hiroshi’s check found several teams with the necessary equipment, but only one he could pin an immediate location to: a young woman named Patty Hunsecker, who was studying ecological balance in the Marianas Trench. Her boat was docked for the time being so she could assemble data to meet a grant deadline.