The Gamma Option

by Jon Land

  “Sounds like we’re getting sprung from jail again, Johnny,” Blaine said to Wareagle. “Where to this time?” he asked the old man.

  “To play some checkers and maybe save the world.”

  Isaac settled himself uneasily behind the driver’s seat of the five-year-old Mercedes. He had parked hastily and the result was that the tires on the car’s passenger side straddled the curb down the street from the beige stone apartment house they had just emerged from. Each motion brought a slight grimace of pain to his features.

  “I’ll drive, if you want,” Blaine offered.

  Isaac waved him off. “Don’t worry, once I get going I’m fine. Besides, you don’t know where we’re headed.” He squinted his eyes for the ignition as he probed the keys forward. His hand was trembling and the keys jangled together. “Just let me get my glasses on… .” When he had done so, he peered back at Blaine. “There, much better. You, I know. But I don’t know your friend,” he added, gazing at Wareagle in the backseat.

  “He’s just my tour guide. He was showing me around Jerusalem when we took a wrong turn.”

  “You would have been in that house a long time if I hadn’t shown up.”

  “I was beginning to get that feeling. But it still doesn’t tell me who you are.”

  “What’s the difference? A little this, a little that, but mostly,” he said with a proud thrust of his finger upward, “a soldier. Since maybe before you were born, Mr. Blaine McCracken.” With that, Isaac screeched the Mercedes into traffic against the protesting horn of the car right behind him.

  “Haganah! You were Haganah!”

  “Not were, Mr. Blaine McCracken, am. The names change but the symbols remain the same.”

  “And your name …”

  “Isaac, as of late. Symbolic again. I’ve been reborn, you see. All of us have.”

  “Plural once more.”

  “Because I’m not in this alone.” Isaac swerved the car suddenly to stay on his side of the road as they banked round a curve. He narrowly missed sideswiping a car parked on McCracken’s side of the narrow Jerusalem street and hunched forward behind the wheel. “And we’ve all been cut off, just like you.”

  “Cut off from what?”

  “Truth,” Wareagle said suddenly before the old man had a chance to respond.

  Isaac gazed back at him and the Mercedes drifted once more across the center line to a chorus of horns.

  “Very astute, Mr. Big Man.”

  “Just obvious.”

  “You mind explaining it to me?” Blaine demanded.

  “Now pay attention,” Isaac told him as he joined the chorus of honking horns caused by the frustrations of an eternal Jerusalem traffic jam that spared not even the sabbath. “The young men in this country are meshuge. We tried to teach them what we knew, help them learn from our mistakes, but no, they’ve got better things to do. Still, we never stop watching, advising. We watched this Hassani plenty. Dangerous man. Stood for all the wrong things. We knew where the path he was on would take him. It was inevitable. So that gives us an idea. You listening?”

  “Just keep on with it … and drive. Traffic’s moving again.”

  A new symphony of horns behind them punctuated McCracken’s impatient suggestion. Isaac eased the car forward. “Stop distracting me, all right? Where was I? Oh yes. Hassani had to be stopped before he could bring the radicals of the Arab world together. We came up with a plan called Operation Firestorm. It’s complicated, but let me summarize it for you this way. We sent several hundred Israeli agents into Tehran to organize the discontented masses and students into a counterrevolutionary force prepared to strike at a predetermined time. Every phase was thought out, every detail accounted for.”

  “A classic strategem.”

  “Especially in the case of Iran. Hassani took over a nation bankrupt in spirit as well as pocketbook. But instead of rebuilding from the bottom up, he chose to do so from the top down, wooing the wealthy and ignoring the poor. The voice of the poor grew louder, but Hassani’s revamped Revolutionary Guard has been able to quell all the disturbances thus far. But with Firestorm, barricades were to be erected throughout the city of Tehran, fires started everywhere as a sign to the people to rise against Hassani and his oppressive, backward regime.”

  “Toppling him before he could accomplish his goal of unifying the militant Arab world,” Blaine completed. “All well and good until you figure Hassani’s got the power to quell this revolution as well.”

  “Don’t worry. We thought of that. At the height of the fighting and confusion, fifteen American Comanche helicopters from Israel were to join the fighting on the rebels’ side.”

  “You mean Apache. Built by McDonnell Douglas. Maybe the finest attack helicopter in the world.”

  “You figure. To me it’s all steel and bullets,” Isaac said, steering the big car farther into the Jerusalem traffic. “The Apaches would strike at the positions of the Revolutionary Guard to keep them at bay long enough for the new revolution to take hold and spread beyond the guards’ ability to control it. The manpower’s there, believe me, and so is the desire. Everything was set, confirmed. And then complications sprang up.”

  “Don’t they always?”

  “Not like this. One after the other, I tell you,” Isaac continued, with his hands digging into the leather of the steering wheel. “It started with a woman who calls herself Evira… .”

  “What?”

  “Yes, we know of your connection to her. Just listen. We got word she was headed to Tehran to kill Hassani. One of our people was part of the counterrevolutionary cell that had agreed to help her.”

  “So she was going to do your work for you.”

  “No! Think, Mr. Blaine McCracken! Hassani was the symbol we needed to destroy with Firestorm. The people had to have something to rise against. Allowing him to be killed would have ruined everything. The revolutionary cells would have splintered and gone their own way. Anarchy would have resulted and the military would have taken over again. Firestorm would’ve died before it even got started. We did what we had to do.”

  “You killed her?” Blaine screeched angrily.

  “We tried, yes, but failed. Of what happened to her in the days after we do not know, only that she is now a prisoner in the basement of the royal palace. What’s important is what brought her to Tehran in the first place.”

  “The same thing that brought you there. The desire to stop a madman from unifying a bunch of madmen against Israel.”

  “But we didn’t know about the imminent invasion plans or about Hassani’s insistence that he had some secret weapon to render Israel defenseless against his attack.”

  “Neither did she. Neither did I, damn it!”

  Now it was Isaac’s turn to look puzzled. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe it does. Don’t tell me, let me guess. Somehow the Israeli government learned the specifics of Hassani’s plan.”

  “The existence and timing of it anyway, yes. But how did you know?”

  “Just a lucky guess.”

  “Not so lucky.” Isaac sighed. “See, Hassani plans to meet next with his people on our Independence Day to provide details of his secret weapon and its employment. From what we can gather, the actual invasion will occur several days later, after his weapon has somehow paralyzed us. Our problem is that Independence Day also marked the start of Firestorm, which is very likely too late to stop Hassani from making use of his weapon. Our cells are not in communication with one another so moving the timetable up was not an option. The government said fine. They didn’t need us anymore anyway, because they had found something better.”

  McCracken didn’t grasp the old man’s meaning until he saw his eyes. “My God, they’re going to use Rasin’s weapon! And I gave it to them. Told them what it was, how it worked. No wonder they had to turn the Indian and me into prisoners. We were the only ones who knew.”

  “Not quite the only ones.”

  “The damn fools! They didn’
t listen to me! The Americans had the weapon and didn’t use it. Something happened at the last minute in 1945. Something changed, and they’re going into this without realizing what it was.”

  “But there’s someone else who does, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, a scientist named—”

  “Martin Eisenstadt,” Isaac finished. “We found him.”

  “We got lucky,” the old man continued. “We arrived just as Rasin’s people were carting him off toward an obvious fate after your work in America rendered him a liability. We had some younger people with us. It ended pleasantly. Not only is Eisenstadt alive, he’s also willing to talk. We’ve got him stashed.”

  They drove through the Arab towns of Azaria and Abudise well into Seadaya, where the Judean Desert began to dominate the landscape. Isaac pulled the Mercedes off the road after a few more miles and they all transferred into a jeep that was waiting for them. Three miles of desert followed before they came to a valley housing a large Bedouin encampment. The Bedouins’ nomadic tendencies were now restrained by the government, which restricted them to settlements. Despite this government ruling, though, the Bedouins retained many features of their old lifestyle. McCracken could see the makeshift tents and tin houses in which they slept on simple blankets over the dirt. Goats and sheep were penned up together on one side of the compound, and chickens walked freely about on the other. Mules and horses drank from a huge trough and a rooster crowed incessantly.

  Getting out of the jeep, Blaine felt he was stepping back in time to a life unchanged for centuries. The Bedouins were a people who respected strength. They had chosen to settle in Israel. The country accepted them and encouraged their men to join the army, where a number excelled as trackers.

  The settlement leader, an old man in white robes and keffiya, greeted Isaac with a hug. Isaac spoke to him in Arabic and the man laughed, then pointed to the largest of the tin houses, which was his home. His eyes fell on McCracken and Wareagle, and Isaac offered some words of explanation. The man nodded approvingly and spoke softly to Isaac.

  “He says you and the large one are the kind of men who are welcome in his village anytime,” the old Haganah fighter related.

  “Tell him many thanks.”

  En route to the tin house where Eisenstadt was waiting for them, Blaine passed a number of women washing clothes by hand in large bowls. Children sneaked peeks at them from hiding places behind adults. The only hint of modernity was a pair of tractors Isaac had presented the settlement as a gift some months ago, perhaps sensing he might need the favor returned soon after.

  “No one will ever look for us here,” he explained as they reached the tin house.

  “Sure,” Blaine answered. “Can’t think of any place where I’d rather spend the rest of my life.”

  They passed through the blanket that formed the door to the leader’s tin house. There, seated in one of four decrepit chairs around a small table, was Bechman’s assistant Dr. Martin Eisenstadt. His features were creased and uncertain. He looked younger than the seventy years he must have been and would have looked better still if not for the pallor of fear that encompassed him. A trio of Isaac’s cohorts had taken the other chairs, the one directly across from Eisenstadt staring forlornly at a checkerboard that had been set up between them. The pieces looked virtually untouched.

  “He wasn’t in the mood to play,” a gaunt old man reported, and left his seat, signaling the others to do the same.

  “I’ve been to see Hans Bechman, Dr. Eisenstadt,” Blaine opened, taking the now-vacant seat across from Eisenstadt and feeling its exposed springs reach up to pinch him. “I know about the Gamma Option. I know the Americans sunk the Indianapolis to keep it a secret, and I know you gave it to Yosef Rasin in spite of that.”

  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 fa
ll 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.