The Gamma Option

by Jon Land

  “Even stranger since no one’s heard from you in over a decade now.”

  “No one’s heard from Hiroshi because Hiroshi ceased to exist.”

  “Care to tell me why?”

  “In time, Fudo-san, in time. For now your appearance tells me you need sake and a warm bed. You should have felt it was I as soon as you saw me. Fatigue can do that to a man.”

  Hiroshi rose and McCracken joined him on foot. The two men met in the center of the mat and shook hands warmly. The sensei regarded his former pupil with a knowing grin.

  “You are still Fudo-san, as stubborn and unwilling to change as ever. And you have become stronger in the years since our parting. I can feel that strength.”

  “I’m forty now, sensei. What you feel are my bones calcifying.”

  Hiroshi laughed again. “Dangle a bit of yarn before an old sleeping cat and see how fast he remembers his lessons.”

  “Do you know why I’ve come?” McCracken asked him.

  “I have my suspicions. Let us discuss matters over that sake I promised you. Come.”

  They walked side by side through another set of shoji doors. McCracken recalled that the original dojo where he had trained with Hiroshi had looked much the same, simple and plain, the way a training hall was meant to. Even then Hiroshi’s school had been closed to the public and only pull from officials within the Japanese government won Blaine an interview. Much to his surprise, Hiroshi could recount Blaine’s exploits in Vietnam more clearly than he remembered them himself.

  “There is a great warrior God in Japanese folklore,” the master had told him that day. “He was named Fudo and he carried a sword in one hand and a rope in the other, the tools he used to first subdue evil and then bind it. He would only use his sword to kill when another’s had shed blood already and was about to again. He stood up for the weak and innocent and was feared by all who carried blackness in their hearts. I will call you Fudo-san because you are such a man. I will agree to teach you because you are such a man.”

  McCracken’s views on his life and work jibed almost perfectly with the creed of the samurai, and Hiroshi sensed that Blaine was destined for life as a ronin, or masterless samurai. He would be a protector and lone avenger much as the god Fudo had been himself.

  But the significance of “Fudo-san” extended to a more subtle level. The word fudo can also mean immovable, and this too was a quality Hiroshi sensed in McCracken from the start. He was not a man prone to change easily, nor would he ever be. The times would pass and McCracken would pass with them, though on his own terms.

  They moved down a small narrow corridor into a smaller room lined with more formal tatami mats. Blaine’s nostrils caught the faintly medicinal smell of warming sake and saw the ceramic flasks sitting within a pot of steaming water suspended above an open flame. Hiroshi knelt before them and poured out a pair of cups, handing the first to McCracken.

  “We will drink to old times, Fudo-san.”

  “And speak of newer ones, Hiroshi. Why did you disappear? What happened? Why did you—”

  “Become the Bujin?” Hiroshi completed for him. “The answer is rather long and complicated, tedious, too.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Tradition, Fudo-san, is the curse of our people. It binds us to the past in a way we do not always understand but must accept because it makes us what we are.” He paused long enough to take a healthy sip of his sake. “There was a man, a bully, who made it his business to take money from working people in exchange for not hurting them, their families, or their businesses. The man was backed by a gang, and the few times police were summoned there was no one but the complainant to back up the story, and the complainant conveniently vanished or changed his mind soon after. Such is not unusual in Japan. It wasn’t my business … until this man, this bully, staked a claim in the village where I had been raised. The elders came to me. I had no choice but to intercede.

  “I tried to reason with the man. I went alone, with honor. He laughed in my face, chastised my old ways, and had his men show their guns. He told me I would die if I ever showed my face to him again. He dishonored me, Fudo-san. He left me with no choice, if I had ever really had one. I waited for him one morning in the rice paddy he walked through to reach his office. He walked without fear, for who would dare touch him?” Hiroshi paused again but did not sip any sake. “I touched him. I drew him down into the mud and held him under until he passed out. Then I left him there to drown in the muck like the sewer rat that he was.”

  “No one saw you?”

  “It didn’t matter. I was bound by the oath I had sworn as an officer in the service of Japan to report my crime. There was an uproar when I did, a public outcry in which some supported my actions and some condemned them. The dead man’s friends vowed vengeance. The government was helpless to support me. I had placed them in an impossible position. So I made the rest easy for all concerned. I disappeared. I became someone else.”

  “A ronin, masterless in your own right. Hiring yourself out.”

  “To gain money to support the kind of people the man I killed had bullied. It was my way of making up for the disgrace I had committed to maintain honor. Such a dichotomy, so difficult to resolve. I chose a means of escape by which I could live with myself. I began training warriors as they were trained in days lost. Four of them escorted you into my dojo.”

  “Oh yeah. Tough hombres.”

  “To be sure, Fudo-san. They and dozens of others have trained as men were trained in a time long past. They live and work here in the dojo as uchideshi. Their life is their training.”

  “And is your life to be their sensei or to be the Bujin, Hiroshi?”

  “It is to be both, and it is their lot to serve me in both respects. A man does what he must to survive and find meaning in his life. Our paths are not much different. I seek to be of service to those who have been turned away at more traditional stations.”

  “With one crucial distinction, sensei: I don’t keep time with men like Yosef Rasin—a recent client of yours.”

  Hiroshi noticed Blaine hadn’t touched his sake and didn’t press him about it. He nodded. “Just as I thought. I had my suspicions about Rasin from the beginning, but he was most convincing and offered to pay handsomely for a small service on my part.”

  “Let me be the judge of how small.”

  “He needed a salvage operation conducted. He wanted me to arrange and front it for him so there would be no traces leading back to him or to Israel.”

  “And did you agree?”

  “No. The risk of exposure would have been too great and it was not something I dabbled in ordinarily. I merely pointed him in the direction of a salvage specialist and reluctantly agreed to act as go-between.”

  “What was it that he wanted to salvage?”

  “I never desired to find out. It was big, though. The kind of equipment he required was proof of this.”

  “And was the salvage completed successfully?”

  Hiroshi went back to his sake.

  “Sensei?”

  “I … don’t know. There was an accident. The salvage vessel exploded at sea. There were no survivors.”

  “An accident …”

  “I had no reason to suspect anything else.”

  “But your feelings told you otherwise. Rasin had the men killed and all evidence of his operation eliminated after he had what he came for.”

  Hiroshi nodded very slowly. “He dishonored me, Fudo-san. He betrayed my trust. When he killed those men, I was a party to it. Someday I will have the chance to repay him for that. Meanwhile, I have vowed never to meet with someone again who comes without references.”

  “But you let me through.”

  Hiroshi smiled. “I saw it was you before giving my men their orders. I wanted to see how you would react to my little game.”

  “And were you pleased? We’re talking teacher to student again, sensei.”

  Hiroshi’s gaze was noncommittal. “You have
the feeling of a great volcano when it is ready to erupt after years of inactivity.”

  “Physically?”

  “More mentally, perhaps even spiritually. You have been away from your training for too long. You think instead of feel. Each thought is a risk for the time it takes to complete it.”

  “But risk is part of life, and you took one when you agreed to work with Rasin. You risked your honor, Hiroshi. You risked all the good you have tried to do in a single move.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if I told you I’m here because Rasin’s got a weapon capable of wiping out the entire Arab world while leaving Israel unscathed? What if I told you all indications point to the fact that that’s what your salvage team pulled out of the sea for him?”

  Hiroshi refilled his own sake cup emotionlessly. “And just who is it the ronin McCracken has chosen to work for on this pursuit?”

  “Not chosen, been forced. I haven’t told you everything. There’s a boy I recently learned was my son. The Arabs have him.”

  “My God …”

  “I haven’t got a choice, Hiroshi, any more than you had one when that animal began terrorizing your village. The moderate Arabs want me to stop Rasin and his weapon, while they work toward stopping a mad Iranian from uniting the militant forces against Israel.”

  “So complicated.”

  “Less so if we can learn what the salvage team pulled out of the sea before Rasin killed them.”

  Hiroshi sipped at his sake as McCracken swirled the cooling contents of his cup.

  “I know the coordinates of the salvage. That is all.”

  “Then give them to me, sensei, and I’ll be on my way and out of yours.”

  Hiroshi shook his head. “No, there must be something more I can do. Please let me help. You spoke of your son. I have an army of warriors I can dispatch to—”

  “No, sensei. This is one I’ve got to go alone. Believe me, I have to.”

  Hiroshi regarded him sternly. “There is a saying in zen, Fudo-san, that a man who tries to shoulder the weight of the world will be crushed by his burden before he can lift it.”

  “It’s not the entire world this time, sensei. It’s just my little part of it.”

  Chapter 11

  EVIRA’S MIND FLIRTED WITH consciousness, languishing between dreams and reality. She felt the sting of cold liquid at her lips, felt her head being lifted.

  “You’ve got to drink this,” a voice told her. “The doctor said so.”

  Her eyes had been open but now she found herself able to see. By her side, half-behind her as he eased her head up from the pillow, was a young boy. His age was shrouded in the blurriness of her vision, but eleven or twelve years old seemed a fair estimate. His auburn hair hung shaggily over his forehead and ears, dangling to his shoulders. His eyes of the same color shone wide and bright, trusting in a way that only a child’s can be. His clothes were formed of mere rags; a man’s shirt too big for him and pinned at the back; a pair of pants that might have been burlap sacks, somehow cut and sewn in the shape of trousers. Evira glimpsed splotches of dirt coating his face and turned her eyes back to the water he had placed before her lips. The hand holding the cup was black with grime that turned the water sooty when it rolled over his flesh.

  “Where … am I?” Evira managed.

  “Safe.”

  She felt the last of the drops of water sliding down the corners of her mouth. She was too weak to wipe them. “Who are you?”

  “Kourosh,” the boy responded.

  Slowly memories began to unfold in her mind, forming themselves in sequence. She remembered resigning herself to death with the last of the Revolutionary Guards standing over her in the plastics factory. She remembered a pipe crashing into him and her savior dropping down from the rafters. She remembered her savior’s face—the boy Kourosh’s face. From there everything became hazy. A man who smelled like alcohol had asked her questions Evira lacked the strength to answer. There had been fresh pain to her wounds and now, as she rested on what seemed to be an ancient mattress placed atop squeezed-together crates, she could feel the well wrapped bandages binding her torn tissue. Beyond that there were only recollections of the boy coming with water, always around her.

  Kourosh had backed slightly away and sat himself atop a crate of his own that sagged in the center from his meager weight. His build was surprisingly sturdy, considering the obvious effects of malnutrition. Evira noted most of the color on his face came from the permanently painted grime. He seemed comfortable in his vigil as she glanced over at him.

  “My wounds, how bad are they?”

  “The doctor said if you could speak within two days, you’d live. It’s been barely one.”

  “I’m remembering now. The doctor, he was a young man, very young.”

  Kourosh smiled fully. He had a complete set of teeth, though the front ones were yellowed.

  “Oh, he’s not really a doctor. We just call him that since he was studying to be one when he was a student.”

  “We?”

  “The people,” Kourosh told her.

  “You’re with the underground,” Evira said.

  “And proud of it.”

  She tried to stir, fresh thoughts racing through her. “Who else knows I’m here?”

  “No one. Just the doctor and he won’t talk.” Kourosh thrust a thumb back at himself. “He owes me.”

  At last Evira gazed about her. They were in a single room which featured a partially boarded-up window not far from her perch. The room had only the assorted crates and a single battered chair for furniture. A large collection of American comic books was gathered on the floor with several selections pinned to the wall as a kind of wallpaper.

  “You brought me here? By yourself?”

  “We’re not that far from the factory. Just a few blocks.”

  “You live here.”

  “I live here,” the boy said, and lowered his face. Then it brightened. “It’s my home, better than lots have got, too.”

  “You were in the factory when the soldiers came.”

  Kourosh nodded.

  “You saw what happened before I arrived?”

  Another nod, then a sigh. “They sent me on an errand. I always come and go through the basement because there’s less chance of being seen. I had just come back when I heard the shooting. I could tell they weren’t our guns. I know the sounds.”

  “But you didn’t run. You stayed.”

  “Because I knew you were coming. I wanted to warn you, but I had to hide when more of the soldiers came. I hid in the basement, in the rafters.”

  “Lucky for me …”

  Kourosh smiled at her, and in that moment Evira saw him as the boy he should have been but in this world was not allowed to be. He was a creature of a society that no longer knew or understood youth and so refused to permit it.

  “You should rest,” he told her.

  “I’ve rested enough.”

  “You must get your strength back.”

  “Can you bring the others to me?”

  Kourosh shrugged his small and weary shoulders. “There are no others.”

  “But the underground …”

  “The ones I know—rounded up, gone, or dead back at the factory.”

  “The doctor?”

  “I looked for him this morning. He’s gone too.”

  Damn, Evira thought, I’m alone here… .

  “I know why you came,” Kourosh said suddenly. “You came to kill the animal Hassani and the underground was going to help you.”

  Evira forced herself part way up through the pain.

  “You don’t need them,” the boy continued. “I can help you. I know the city and I know where you can find him.”

  “Where?”

  “He’s moved into the royal palace that the Shah built in Niavarin. I can get you in there. I’ve got a way. When you’re ready.”

  She found her shoulders slumping back to the tattered mattress in spite of her eff
orts to keep them upright. “That might be quite awhile.”

  “You’re strong. I saw what you did in the factory basement. A few more days, that’s all.”

  “With you taking care of me, I don’t doubt it.”

  “I know how to change your bandages. The doctor, he showed me. I already changed them once while you were asleep.”

  “Well,” she said, “if we’re going to be partners I’d better know more about you than your name.”

  Evira forgot her pain while she listened to his story. Kourosh was an orphan, as she suspected. He had been born nearly twelve years before. There had been little good about his life at the start and things got rapidly worse. The war with Iraq took his father by conscription and returned him in a box. With no means of support, his mother placed seven-year-old Kourosh in a school supported by the Revolutionary Council, and it was from there just over two years later that he too was conscripted into the army.

  With soldiers falling to Iraq at a frightening clip, the decision was made to utilize children on the front lines. Initially they were given some training and armed. But as armaments began to grow scarce, they were simply sent with clubs and sticks into Iraqi strongholds or used to clear mine fields. Each life lost by a boy meant one kept by a man who could thus continue fighting for the true Islamic destiny. The Revolutionary Council needed no further justifications because no one was pressing for any.

  Kourosh was meant to die in one of the attack waves. They trimmed his hair short and dressed him like a soldier. Then he and the others were packed into trucks and transported west on a rain-swept day. Several of the trucks ran off the muddy roads and the boys were sent off to sit amongst the trees while the still-functional trucks were used to drag the others back on to the road. There were soldiers watching them, of course, but they couldn’t watch everybody. When the children were herded over to help push one of the trucks from a ditch, Kourosh escaped into the woods with several other boys.

  For a time it was a great adventure. The boys were older than he and they let him tag along until they reached Tehran, where they were determined to become criminals and rob women of their money and groceries. Kourosh couldn’t accept that. Each woman they accosted reminded him of his mother, vague as she was in his memory, and he strayed from the others and eventually went out on his own. It had been years since he had been home, but he remembered his address and returned to it.