The Gamma Option (40 page)

“What of the other ten?”

“Sacrifices to a much higher cause. Consider those who the vaccine does not reach to be casualties of a war we alone can win now.”

“And what if we become casualties ourselves before leaving the confines of your … country?” the representative from Saudi Arabia demanded.

“You won’t. The escape route is all prepared. You have nothing to fear.” Before the Saudi could protest he added, “You have provided your subordinates with contact arrangements as I outlined in the event you do not return. If it becomes necessary to utilize them, additional vials will be made available from backup points.”

Hassani waited to see if there was further protest. When none arose, he continued.

“Now, we have already gone over the precise details and agenda. If there are no questions, the …”

“
… time has come for you to take your leave in pursuit of our destiny. My troops will buy you the time you need. I will summon your escort to take you to the escape tunnel… .
”

There was more, but McCracken focused all his attention on opening the latch for the electronic dumbwaiter that had allowed him to reach the second floor library unnoticed. He had found the controls for it in the kitchen, along with the convenient button marked “Library.” Isser had informed him of the meetings that had taken place there over the last few weeks and Blaine knew that’s where Hassani would choose to play his final card. Wareagle had chosen a more direct route through the palace itself, the two of them serving as insurance for one another. One of them had to reach Hassani. The madness had to be stopped here and now, buried in the rubble of the royal palace.

Hidden in the dumbwaiter, McCracken began to make out the voices as he rose toward the library. He couldn’t capture the context of the heated conversation, though, until the dumbwaiter slid to a halt before its slot in the wall. None of it surprised him. The whole scenario was almost as he expected it would be. He managed to get the latch freed and went to work on the slot in the wall. He pried his fingers about to find the handhold needed to slide it open to the library beyond. He had decided to wait until the delegates had gone before making his move. The proper finish for this was just him and Hassani.

“
From the escape tunnel,”
the voice of the general droned on, “
escorts will be waiting for you in the street. They are disguised as beggars and will lead you safely to the airstrip. Clothes for you to blend with the chaos are waiting in the basement. Go with Allah, my friends. Go forth to achieve our destiny.
”

In the dumbwaiter, McCracken heard feet shuffling, farewells exchanged, and then the heavy door being opened and closed. A single pair of feet, belonging surely to Hassani, padded across the lavish carpet toward what McCracken guessed would be the window where he could survey the last stand made by the Revolutionary Guard. The time had come.

The dumbwaiter opened into the room’s large alcove, dominated by books that provided further cover. Blaine slid the freed wall cover up and could see nothing before him other than dark, jammed-full bookcases running from wall to wall, with narrow aisles between and down the middle of them. The alcove was perhaps forty feet square, the bookcases taking up virtually all of that.

With the quick silence of a big jungle cat, McCracken slid out to the floor, kneeling with his pistol in hand since the cumbersome Uzi had been left behind in the basement. He glided forward, using the matched Oriental runners to hide his footsteps. He could tell exactly where the window was from the way the rays of sunshine streamed through. And there was a shadow, Hassani’s shadow.

He reached the edge of the forwardmost bookshelf and spun round it in combat position ready to fire.

“Don’t move!” he screamed.

And found himself facing off against a black marble bust of the Ayahtollah Khomeini that had been placed to cast just the shadow it had. Before he could turn, another voice echoed through the huge library hall.

“Drop your gun, Mr. McCracken,” Hassani ordered.

Blaine obliged and then drew his hands into the air.

“Now turn around. Slowly. And keep your feet spread as well.”

Again McCracken obeyed and found himself standing fifteen feet from General Amir Hassani who was holding a submachine gun.

“You have been quite a nuisance, Mr. McCracken, I must say.”

“We meet at last, General,” Blaine returned icily. “Or should I say we meet again … Yosef Rasin.”

The uniformed figure’s reaction was shock first and then hearty laughter. His free hand edged to his face and tugged a good portion of his beard away to reveal a much tighter growth and lighter shade of hair beneath it. A few more pulls and pinches on the theatrical makeup and the face shown was unmistakably that of Yosef Rasin.

“My regrets that you were not named minister of defense,” Blaine taunted.

“I suppose I have you to blame for that, Mr. McCracken. But don’t fret. There’ll be plenty of other ceremonies I’ll be attending before long.”

“Funerals, Rasin, all of them your doing.”

“Hardly. I’m going to be a hero. The people of Israel will rally to me once the truth of what I’ve done becomes obvious.”

“Millions of deaths?”

“Perhaps.”

“You’ll be likened to Hitler, not Moses.”

Rasin stood there and tried very hard to show no emotion. McCracken had to keep the madman distracted any way he could. While the two had been talking he had begun stealthily to close the distance between them. He’d already made up one yard, and with one more covered he’d almost be within lunging distance. If he could only keep the exchange going a little longer …

“Lace,” Rasin called toward the door.

The double doors parted and the biggest woman McCracken had ever seen entered. A half foot over six feet at least. She was decked out in black leather beneath a pale face and stubbly blond hairdo.

“
You!”
Blaine exclaimed, recognizing her from Boston and Masada, realizing in that same instant this was the woman who had killed John Neville, Henri Dejourner, and Hiroshi, and kidnapped Matthew.

Lace’s reaction to him was to stand to the rear and right of Rasin and fold her arms. A variety of weapons worn through her belt clanged together for an instant after she stopped moving. Blaine recognized one of them as a scimitar.

Hiroshi had been killed by just such a blade.

“You bitch,” McCracken muttered under his breath.

The huge woman grinned at him.

“There were two of you, weren’t there?” Blaine spit at her. “What’s the matter, the other one getting it from someone else on the side?”

Lace’s smile grew taut. The leather jacket worn over her midsection was tight enough to reveal long, hard bands of muscle bred from years of bodybuilding. Rasin might be a slouch, but this woman was anything but. McCracken was going to have to rethink his strategy, especially since the bruises inflicted by bullets pounding the Kevlar body armor at the barricade promised to steal some of his strength and quickness.

Go ahead, make your move,
Lace’s eyes told him, but Blaine fought to keep his hate for her down. Improperly channeled, hate could make you respond the wrong way at the wrong time. Stick to the subject, he urged himself, stick to the subject!

“How’d you do it, Rasin?” he asked. “How’d you pull off the greatest hoax in history since Elvis got himself embalmed just to fool his fans?”

“It was quite simple, really. The real Hassani contacted my people in search of asylum in the closing days of the lost war effort. Figured he might as well sample the good life now that his country was falling, and my hatred for Arabs had him thinking he had plenty to trade in return.”

“And he did, didn’t he? Far more than he ever suspected.”

“He told me everything I needed to know to take his place. Days, weeks of interrogation. Early on, the plot was just a fantasy, but the more I listened the more I started to believe with the proper preparations it could work. The military coup in the wake of Khomeini’s death became an incredible stroke of fortune. When the Revolutionary Guard called to Hassani to return from exile, it was I who appeared.” His face glowed with triumph. “Imagine having Hassani contact me barely a month after Eisenstadt came to me about Gamma.”

“You saw the connection immediately, of course,” Blaine said, but his eyes lingered on Lace, who was still standing there, huge and menacing.

“Certainly. Gamma was indeed a tremendous find, but to accomplish my true goal of leading the next generation of Israel, I needed a rationale to employ it.”

“You wanted to be a hero, so you worked up a means to make yourself one.”

“If you choose to put it that way, yes. Hassani and I were the same height and build. A professional makeup artist did the rest. Once I went into self-imposed exile four months ago, the impersonation was simple. Before then, and often even since, a double was utilized. The woman who drew you into this killed him.” He laughed again. “I might say she was quite shocked when I apprehended her at the airport on the verge of her escape. She didn’t recognize me. I didn’t realize how effective my disguise truly was until I interrogated her.”

“But it all worked out, didn’t it? You had the militants of the Arab world eating out of your hand and begging for seconds. Must’ve been a hell of an acting job.”

“It was passion, McCracken, something a man like you should appreciate even if no one else can. I loathed them all so much. They could see the fire in my eyes and mistook it—I made them mistake it—for passion for ‘their’ cause. I’ve lived most of my life coming to terms with who these people are, what makes them tick. Their entire lives are fueled by dreams of destruction. Life to them
is
death. They have no appreciation for simple pleasures and absolutely no desire ever to live in peace. Believe me when I tell you that. There will never be a negotiated settlement, and if there is they would subvert and destroy it. Barbarianism has been their way of life, of death, for five thousand years. That won’t change.”

“So the unified ‘invasion’ ends up helping you on two fronts. First it provides the reason for the Israeli government to embrace you and your weapon. And second it gives you the means to get Gamma released in all the countries at the same time through those vials you gave your ‘delegates.’ ” Blaine took a deep breath before continuing. “You who claim to cherish life so much, how could you go through with this knowing what Bechman’s findings showed and what stopped the Americans from utilizing Gamma when they had the opportunity?”

“Go through with it?” Rasin asked, quite shocked. “My dear, Mr. McCracken, that is precisely what I’m hoping for.”

“The end of humanity?”

“Hardly. Other countries, countries we choose, can be provided with the vaccine too … if they are willing to pay a premium, of course.”

“This isn’t about running Israel, it’s about running the world.”

“
Israel
will be running the world, with me as its leader,” Rasin qualified. “And don’t we have—”

Rasin stopped when Lace turned suddenly toward the door.

“There’s someone in the corridor coming this way,” she told him.

“Tilly perhaps, coming back from escorting our friends to the tunnel.”

“No. Someone … bigger.”

“Check it out.” When she seemed reluctant to leave he added, “I’ll finish with Mr. McCracken myself.”

Johnny Wareagle had lost count of how many guards he had encountered en route to the voices. It hadn’t been necessary to kill any of them, although considering the fate that awaited them once the enraged masses beyond brought their fight within these walls, that fate might have been more merciful by comparison.

He had discarded the Uzis early into his stalk because of the noise they made clacking against each other on his back, but he was hardly weaponless. He had broken off the business end of a thick broom on the second floor, which left him with a shaft handle formed of olive wood nearly five feet long and a weighty inch in diameter. Not the finest staff he had ever wielded, but it would more than do and already had.

Rounding the hallway on the third floor, Wareagle could hear the voices clearly. One of them was McCracken’s, and one was unfamiliar. Beyond the sound of the voices, however, Wareagle sensed an evil presence both cold and ominous, as deadly as any he had ever felt before. He grasped the staff tighter and continued on.

“And assuming Bechman was right in his conclusions and your … plan works as you hope,” McCracken probed, “what then?”

“Civilization rebuilds, virtually from scratch, with proper guidance this time. So long the object of scorn, persecution, and holocaust, the Jew will be in a position to control all. A world without Arabs, Nazis, and with no one to replace them.”

“Not quite,” McCracken followed, his meaning obvious. “I’ll give you credit for this much, Rasin. I’ve met up with a lot of madmen in my time, but your aims seem more genuine than any of the others. A shame they won’t be realized.”

“Don’t be childish. Even you cannot change the inevitable now.” Yet the expression on Blaine’s face indicated assurance and determination. Rasin was suddenly unnerved. “The clothes you’re wearing, I know those clothes.…”

“These? Happened to pick them up at the end of a certain tunnel the Indian and I used to get in here. Figured they had been left there for a number of Arab gentlemen to aid in their escape from the area.”

“No! You’re bluffing!”

Blaine showed the miniature detonator he had pulled from his pocket thirty seconds before. “I figure they’ll be well into the tunnel by now. Don’t worry, I was sure to place my plastic explosives at key structural stress points. Assure an even and fair collapse that way.”

“You can’t press it!
You can’t!
”

“Drop your gun, Rasin.”

“No! … Lace, stop him!”

The leather-clad woman giant lunged back through the double doors at the same time Blaine turned toward them. The gun he had been forced to discard was only a yard away. He dropped for it as she whirled a chain from her belt in his direction.

It can’t be on target. She had no time to aim… .