The Gamma Option (36 page)

Chapter 29

EVIRA LAY ON THE
floor in her cell in the palace basement. Time had lost all meaning to her; she slept, she woke. There was little else to do. Kourosh lay against her, using her shoulder as a pillow. Occasionally in his sleep, the urchin would whimper and grab for her. Evira was more than happy to hug and soothe him, her own desperation eased in the process.

How long had it been since Hassani had finished with them, since the reports of McCracken’s death? At least one day, perhaps two or more. Evira didn’t know why they were being left alive, unless it was to let them starve slowly to death. In all the hours they had been there, no one had come with food or water. She had long gone beyond being hungry, even thirsty. Her strength had depleted, and with it her resolve. Hassani had won, Rasin too. McCracken was dead and she was here. How idealistic she had been to believe the two of them were capable of defeating the plans of two madmen on their own.

By her side, Kourosh whimpered again, long hair matted to his forehead by the sweat caused by the unremitting heat of the air about them. This boy had become her burden. Watching him die would be her punishment for how she had involved Blaine McCracken. The gods worked in strange ways, but always with method and purpose. She knew another day without food or water would bring severe pains and cramps to the boy. Such an awful way to die, feeling yourself wasting away. She had resolved that before her own strength ebbed too far she would end the urchin’s pain by killing him. It would be the last act of her suddenly feeble life and the hardest to fulfill.

Evira felt herself nodding off again and hoped for a long, dream-filled sleep this time. She wrapped her arm around the boy and held him close to her. Her eyes slid closed.

A sound from somewhere jarred her. How long had she been out, if at all? A dream, it must have been a dream that reached her in the state between consciousness and sleep.

No, the sound came again, that of metal being worked; a scratching, grating sound. Her ears tried to focus in, eyes useless in the near-total darkness of the basement prison.

Suddenly there was a loud echo of metal being forced aside. A wide beam of light darted haphazardly across the far wall. Men were entering through some secret passageway or tunnel. She remembered Kourosh describing it to her. But who were they? Why had they come?

The single beam became four. The beams were joined by voices exchanged in a whisper, someone giving instructions, a search underway.

They were looking for her!

Over here,
Evira tried to say, but her mouth was too dry to push the words out. She forced up some saliva and cleared the refuse from her throat.

“Over here,” she managed hoarsely. “Over here.”

Instantly a pair of the flashlights turned in the direction of her cell.

“Yakov, we’ve found her!” a voice followed in an excited whisper.

“Alive?”

The light found her, blinded her, and she shrank back to shield her eyes.

“Yes. Quite.”

A third flashlight joined the first two. Evira struggled to gaze past the beams at the men who held them.

“Can you hear me?” came the voice of the one called Yakov.

“Yes.”

“I’m going to blow the lock on your cell. Back up as far as you can in the corner.”

She did as she was told and dragged Kourosh along with her. The boy started to stir, barely awake.

“It’s okay,” she soothed. “We’re being rescued.”

She held him close to her as a fizzle came, followed by a flash, and a
poof!
One of the men kicked at the cell door and it reeled inward to allow the group to enter.

“How long since you’ve had anything to eat or drink?” Yakov asked her.

“Two days, I think. Maybe three.”

“Then that’s our first priority,” he said, helping her to her feet, while another of the men supported the urchin. “I assume the boy is with you.”

“He is. Who are you? What brought you here?”

“A long story. For now I’ve got a message from Blaine McCracken. He says you should have stayed an old hag in Jaffa.”

“What?” Isser blared at McCracken’s assertion of the final piece in the mad plan of Yosef Rasin. “That’s
insane!
”

“Of course it is,” Blaine told him. “It’s Rasin.”

“But if what you say is true …”

“Then everything makes sense. Everything becomes clear.”

“How could he have pulled it off, though? Think of the logistics.”

“Forget logic. It doesn’t matter anymore; it never did. We’ve got to think like him if we’re still going to have a chance to win.”

They were seated in Isser’s office in the squat, innocuous complex of buildings outside Tel Aviv near the Hebrew Country Club that formed the permanent headquarters of Mossad.

“You know, Isser,” Isaac started, “I think he’s got a point.”

“It’s crazy,” the head of Mossad persisted. “And you want me to risk everything based on this … hunch.”

“Not a hunch and not everything. Just me and Operation Firestorm. I go into Tehran and get Rasin. All you do is let Firestorm proceed as planned.”

“Including the Apaches, of course.”

“More than ever, since one of them’s gonna serve as my taxi in.” He turned back toward Isaac. “So when’s show time?”

The old man turned an empty gaze out the window where the first signs of light were still an hour or so away.

“Dawn,” was all he said.

The Shah’s secret tunnel ran nearly half a mile and ended beneath a street beyond the square that fronted the royal palace.

“You’re Israeli,” Evira said as they made their way forward with flashlights slicing through the darkness.

“Born and raised.” Yakov laughed, taking his turn at carrying Kourosh.

Evira recalled her suspicions brought on by the comic books purchased in Israel. “But what are you doing here?”

“We’re here to start a revolution. Several hundred of us were planted over a year ago amidst the young, the poor, and the students to organize their discontent into rebellion—and to supply them with the means to fight.”

“Weapons …”

“No revolution is complete without them.”

“An
Israeli
-inspired revolution?”

“Supported would be a better choice of words. It is the people’s will. We are merely helping them exercise it.”

“ ‘We.’ Mossad?”

“Let’s say we’re an independent group working with their sanction. Easier to disavow involvement that way. Less likely to have leaks with an operation required to take place over such a long period of time.”

“Jews working with Iranians. Incredible …”

“Not really. People working against oppressive, murderous regimes is never incredible. You must agree. You came here to kill Hassani yourself.”

Evira stopped suddenly, and Yakov’s men bringing up the rear nearly collided with her. “How did you know—”

“Because an order was sent by the mission controllers to insure you failed. With Hassani dead, the people would have lost their symbol to rise against. There would be no Firestorm.”

“No
what
?”

“Code name of this operation.”

“Then it was your people who betrayed that cell in Naziabad.”

“Regretfully,” Yakov acknowledged softly. “This boy, he saved your life?”

Evira nodded. “And to return the favor I’m going to get him out of this country. With your help, of course.”
Thanks to Blaine McCracken,
she almost added but didn’t. The fact that he had somehow arranged this rescue could only mean that he had fulfilled his end of the mission. Whatever happiness she might have felt over that, though, was tempered by the failure she had experienced at her end. But maybe it wasn’t too late… .

“You’ll have to be patient. The hour of Firestorm is upon us.”

“When?”

The other end of the tunnel appeared as a grating in the ground that allowed the first light of the morning to cast a checkerboard pattern downward.

“Dawn.”

“You up for another run, Indian?”

Wareagle’s gaze was noncommittal. “How strange it seems that we spend so much of our lives trying to reconcile ourselves to the hellfire that forged our spirits. And yet each time it beckons we return to it without pause.”

“You once told me the hellfire wasn’t a place, it was a feeling.”

“It is even more than that, Blainey. Our manitous are cleansed by the hellfire. It recharges us, gives us our worth. We lapse from it too long and we become the things we feared it would make us.”

“Kind of like a fix, an addiction.”

“More like an impulse to breathe. We cannot stop ourselves even if we try.”

“This is no time to stop trying,” Blaine said, gritting his teeth. “Someone’s going to answer for killing Hiroshi, and I’ve got to get my son back.”

“Dropping ourselves into a revolution might pose a difficult setting to accomplish either. The palace is our target, but even the spirits cannot lead us into it through the chaos and the crowds. We’re going to need something more this time, Blainey.”

“Precisely why a little present’s going to be waiting for us on the aircraft carrier
Kennedy
when we land to pick up the Apaches.”

The small group climbed out of the tunnel into the street with the first of the light and the first of the chaos. Already people were taking to the streets, haphazardly, with no real sense of purpose yet, as if some word had reached them and they were waiting for further instruction. Evira had been a party to such scenarios before. But the fervor she sensed in the morning air here was almost palpable in its commitment. The Israelis had done their job well.

“It is happening,” said an Iranian student leader named Rashid who had been waiting for them at the escape hatch. “It is truly happening.”

“And this is only Niavarin,” Yakov reminded them. Then he added to Evira, “The uprising will be focused in Tehran proper, spreading outward from there.”

“A good strategy, if Hassani’s Revolutionary Guard doesn’t stop you in your tracks.”

“We’re not totally alone here,” he told her. “Fifteen Apache helicopter gunships will strafe the strongest of enemy positions, starting at the estimated height of the battle three hours from now.”

“And in the meantime?”

“The streets will be barricaded to slow the soldiers down, buildings will be burned to bring the people out. Those who have lived in fear and oppression for more than a decade will welcome the chance to rise up and be heard. I have been in this city for a year now. Believe me, I know.”

“Where do we go from here?”

“The starting point for our revolution: Talegahani Street, also known as Takht-e Jamshid.”

“The American Embassy …”

“Fitting, don’t you think?”

During the thirty-minute drive across the city, Kourosh and Evira were able to gulp a restorative meal of bread, cheese, and water. The driver of the car maneuvered skillfully down side streets to avoid the throngs already beginning to spill out with screams of defiance. The Revolutionary Guards were restrained and fearful, unsure of the proper response to make. Clearly, they knew something was brewing. Reinforcements had undoubtedly been called in, but with the streets barricaded and, judging by the smoke spreading in the sky, some already burning, passage would not come easily.

“This is as far as we can go,” Yakov announced when they reached an intersection that was barricaded in all directions. The barricades were constructed of wood, furniture, cinderblocks, abandoned cars, dumpsters, and garbage cans wedged firmly into place. An exultant mass of people was standing atop the heaps, shouting and waving their rifles.

“Soviet Kalashnikovs, American M-16s, and Israeli Galils,” Evira noted. “Impressive.”

“We got them everything we could lay our hands on.”

“Revolution!” a freshly revived Kourosh yelled jubilantly as they exited the car, thrusting a tight fist into the air. “Kill the bastards! Kill them all!”

His long hair danced in the wind, small face taut in its resolve. His feelings mirrored those of a nation frustrated by watching a reconstruction effort that had left the people worse off than ever before. The frustration was rampant now, set to brew by the Israeli plants but boiling over on its own.

“What about McCracken?” Evira asked of Yakov as they shouldered their way through the masses, which grew thicker the closer they got to the former American Embassy. “Did he say anything else, anything about Yosef Rasin?”

“All I know is that he arranged for your rescue.”

“Is he coming? Is he here?”

“I know nothing more than what I’ve told you.”

Evira realized she had lost track of Kourosh and almost panicked. She located the boy rallying with a group of children his own age holding clubs and mallets as weapons. He was cheering them on and might have been all set to join them when Evira arrived to pull him back to her side. She marvelled at the restorative effects a bit of food and water had had on both Kourosh and herself. Of course, the fervor and excitement they were in the midst of deserved a measure of the blame, too.

“It’s wonderful!” The boy beamed. “Isn’t is wonderful?”

She wanted to tell him that war was many things, but it was never wonderful. Innocent people were unquestionably going to die there today. The Israeli plot had as its primary aim the toppling of Hassani from power. The loss of Iranian life to accomplish that end was simply a means, accepted and condoned. The people, the masses Kourosh was cheering for, were mere pawns, sacrifices to a greater end.

These thoughts turned Evira cold. Was it no different for her rallying of the Arabs of Israel, urging them to organize and work toward a greater voice in the government? Yes, her means were nonviolent, but people had similarly been hurt working toward a higher cause they could not wholly grasp. She was using them, just as the Israelis were using the Iranians, to fulfill her own ends and goals.

They continued forcing their way through the swelling mass, more people joining it by the second. The plan would be for those in the street to smother the Revolutionary Guard as best they could by neutralizing the guards’ superior weaponry and keeping them from the strategically placed barricades for as long as possible. It was a numbers game, one of bodies as well as bullets, and success depended on the people wearing the guard down and outlasting it until the Apaches arrived. At that point the powerful attack ships would strafe positions of Revolutionary Guard strongholds in the hope of opening a clear path for the masses to their ultimate target: The royal palace in Niavarin. To be overrun, ransacked, destroyed.