The Gamma Option (13 page)

“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 efforts 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.

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.