The Gamma Option Read online

  Ben-Neser eyed the head of Mossad as he slid an eight-by-ten photograph from the manila folder that had been beneath his forearm.

  “Is this the man who saved your life, the one your men had spotted with Evira previous to that?”

  Ben-Neser focused in the dim light on the half-smiling bearded face and recognized it instantly.

  “Yes, but how did you—”

  “This man was identified entering the country earlier today on an El Al jet out of London. He is a former American operative who in years past worked extremely closely with us on a number of affairs.”

  “Former?”

  “Details unimportant at this time. His name is at the bottom of the photograph.”

  Ben-Neser scanned down and read it aloud. “Blaine McCracken …”

  “You sound as if you know him, Yuri.”

  “I throught I recognized him. Yes, I should have remembered immediately. I worked with him in ’73. I was attached to his unit for a stretch of the Yom Kippur War.”

  “Yes,” Isser droned ironically, “he is a hero to our country in every sense of the word.”

  “Then what was he doing in the company of the most wanted Arab operative at large in Israel?”

  “Interesting question.”

  “You didn’t dwell on his past. Is it possible that he’s turned?”

  “You worked with him, Yuri. What do you think?”

  “I worked with him, Isser. I don’t know him. I remember him being single-minded, ruthless, accustomed to getting what he wants. If he was meeting with Evira, he had his reasons.”

  “An obvious conclusion,” Isser commented, easing his drink to the side. The limes in the glass were starting to sink past the melting ice toward the bottom. “Expand on it.”

  “I … can’t. There’s too much I don’t know.”

  “Let me help you, then. What were your conclusions about the ‘soldiers’ your men encountered in the square.”

  “Imposters there to protect Evira, perhaps dispatched when our presence was betrayed.”

  “They were all Israelis, Yuri,” Isser said flatly. “All dismissed or suspended for some breech of discipline, outcasts perhaps, but Israelis nonetheless.”

  “What? This is madness! Israelis killing Israelis? It makes no sense.”

  “Let us take it a step further. If they did belong to Evira, why would Blaine McCracken, the man she was meeting with, risk his life to save you during the battle?”

  “But if they weren’t Evira’s, then who were they?”

  “That is the crux of our quandary, Colonel.”

  “My God, they must have been sent by someone else to take care of Evira in a much cruder way than we had planned. But who, Isser, who?”

  “Someone with access to such men, Yuri. Someone in our own government. A shadow army, a shadow movement, who for some reason made it their business to go after Evira. We cannot afford to have this possibility spread any farther than it has already.” Isser’s voice hardened as the bands of muscle through his forearms seemed to throb. “That makes you a liability to us, a liability we cannot permit anyone else to gain access to before we have sorted this out. I am forced to reassign you, Colonel, out of necessity as much as punishment… .”

  And as Isser continued Ben-Neser found himself wishing Blaine McCracken hadn’t bothered to save him in the first place.

  Thursday night had given way to the early hours of Friday morning when Moshe Traymir came on duty at the Safari Park and Zoological Center in the Ramat Gan sector of Tel Aviv. His apartment was only a few blocks from the zoo and, as on most nights, he was slightly drunk when he arrived. Drinking was how he coped with his disgrace in the wake of the Beirut massacres. Traymir sat through the token trials and seethed. Not that he wasn’t guilty; he was. But he and the others were scapegoats, and there wasn’t anything they could do or say about it. Traymir had kept his mouth shut and been spared imprisonment as a result. This alternative seemed only the slightly better of two evils, until he was approached and recruited by a man with need of services Traymir was well versed in providing.

  As usual, his steps toward the front entrance of the park were lumbering and labored. It was strange for a man who hated animals to be working at Tel Aviv’s Zoological Center, but the hours suited him well. The hard muscle of his soldier days had been replaced by fat over his large, big-boned frame. His heavy beard was grubby and untrimmed. He seldom bathed. Traymir cared about none of this. He cared only about doing whatever was necessary to rid Israel of the Arabs who were destroying her.

  Traymir whistled softly to himself as he started his rounds. The Zoological Center was unique for the many hundreds of animals in dozens of species which roamed free about the grounds, forming territories and respecting those of others. Traymir hated them all because all of them appeared to hate him. Many of the animals had got used to the other guards, even formed a kinship with them. But they refused to so much as approach Traymir. Most of the animals were sleeping now, but the long-necked ostriches were still prowling about and he could see a number of zebras munching on the grass under the moon as he passed them. He could never tell whether the rhinos and hippos were sleeping or not, big stupid beasts that they were. Traymir had once tossed stones at a rhino to see how many had to hit it before the beast would bother to move.

  He belched and continued drunkenly to follow the sweeping road that cut through the first half of the safari park en route to the more traditional zoo. Despite his drunkenness, he began to sense that something was amiss. It wasn’t so much what he saw, as what he didn’t see. Not a single other guard was making his rounds. They should have been easily visible under the full moon. Strange. In spite himself, he grasped for his walkie-talkie.

  “Yo, anybody home?”

  Silence.

  “This is Traymir. Anyone read me?”

  Static.

  He was beginning to wonder what was up when one of the security-handler four-door jeeps caught his eye. One of its back doors was partially open. He approached warily.

  “Hello?” he called. “Anybody there?”

  Traymir had just reached down for the open door’s handle when the sound of footsteps rushing at him forced a turn. His eyes had time only to regard a heavy hand surging forward. There was a burst of pain to his chest and then a numbing over his head as he slumped. He was never sure if he lost total consciousness or not, only that the assailant had shoved him into the backseat. Next he felt a splash and something thick and warm oozed over him, almost making him gag. Through the daze, he heard himself moan. Next he felt the jeep moving and struggled to lift himself from semiconsciousness, but his head ached and his breaths hurt him.

  Inside of a minute later, he had come alert enough to realize the huge steel gate mechanically sliding open before them belonged to the high-fenced home of the lions.

  “Hey,” Traymir muttered.

  But by then the driver had already passed through. The first gate started its slide back across and as soon as it locked home a second gate before them opened. The double gate system assured against the possibility of the lions wandering off when someone drove into their territory. Suddenly Traymir felt scared. The thick ooze coated his clothes and face. He wiped it away and his fingers came away smeared with something that felt and smelled like blood.

  “Hey!” Louder.

  The driver passed through the second gate and Traymir heard it clang closed behind them. Since the jeep was sometimes used to transport animals, a steel grating separated the front seat from the back, and the door locks were controlled from the front as well.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” he demanded, trying to sound brave.

  “I think I’d better do the asking, Traymir,” the driver answered, and slid the Jeep to a halt. “It’s your own time we’re wasting. I’m here about Yosef Rasin. I want to know where I can find him.”

  Traymir stiffened as bravely as he could manage. As of yet he could see none of the lions, but in the darkness shapes s
tirred and he thought he heard a soft, rumbling growl.

  “You are from the government. I should have known. Go ahead, shoot me. I won’t talk.”

  McCracken didn’t show him a gun. “Sorry to disappoint you, Traymir. It really would be easier for you if you told me where I could find Rasin.”

  The lions appeared out of nowhere, a half dozen at first with at least that many stalking behind them. They circled the jeep as if it were an animal they had chosen for a kill. Traymir’s eyes darted fearfully from them back at the stone-faced bearded man in the front seat.

  “What did you—”

  “Toss on you? Deer’s blood, Traymir. I’m told the scent of it drives lions crazy. Really whets their appetite.”

  Blaine eased his hand to the power window switch and slid the rear right window down ever so slightly. Immediately the lions’ growls turned to roars. Their faces twisted angrily and a pair of females rose to stick their forepaws toward the cracked window.

  “You’ve got a well stocked infirmary here, Traymir. I found your supply of deer’s blood there after I incapacitated your five fellow guards. Feel like talking yet?”

  Traymir shrunk away. He bit his lip.

  McCracken slid the window down further to allow one of the lionness’s paws to push all the way through.

  “No!” Traymir begged, shoulders pressed against the opposite door and window now.

  “Funny thing,” Blaine went on. “Nobody’s fed them yet tonight. They’re not in the best of moods. Hate to see what they would do to a man who tasted like a deer.”

  “Please, anything! Just ask!” Traymir crimped down in his seat, maneuvering himself as far from the open window as possible.

  “You work for Rasin. Yes or no?”

  “Yes! Since my court-martial.”

  “Your role?”

  “Bodyguard and nothing more. When he traveled mostly.”

  “Traveled where?”

  Traymir hesitated.

  McCracken slid down the window enough for a second lionness to stick both her paws through, steady herself with one, and swipe inside the cab with the other, snarling as she did. Meanwhile, a male leaped atop the roof and clawed at the other window with alternating paws. Traymir reeled into the center of his seat, besieged from both sides now.

  “Japan!” Traymir screeched at last. “But that was a year ago… .”

  “Why did he go there?”

  “To meet with a man known as the Bujin!” Traymir screamed over the roaring of the lions, arms tucked against himself to make as small a target as possible.

  Bujin was Japanese for warrior, and Blaine had heard of the man before. A profiteer, information broker, and arms dealer. A dabbler in many things who had become one of the most pursued men in all of Japan. The Bujin was wanted by government and police authorities along with forces within the Japanese mafia, whom he had apparently dishonored at some point.

  “What did Rasin seek the Bujin out for?”

  “I don’t know. I swear it. They met in private. I merely drove Rasin there and waited with a team of others outside.”

  “Where did they meet?”

  And when Traymir hesitated again, the driver’s side rear window was lowered enough to match the one on the passenger side. The female lions were tearing at the remaining glass on the right with both claws and teeth, while the male on the roof was working on the left. Traymir heard both panes crack and watched them being stripped away piece by piece.

  “Drive out! Please!”

  “Talk!”

  “Outside Tokyo!” Traymir screamed at him. “A building in the woods. Well guarded. We never saw the guards but they were there.”

  “The address!”

  Traymir provided it.

  “What else?”

  One of the lionnesses had managed to wedge her upper torso inside the cab. Traymir lurched away from her flailing claws and felt those of the male on the other side graze his shoulder.

  “Nothing more!”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing! Do you think I wouldn’t tell you? Please get me out of here!”

  Satisfied, Blaine put the jeep into drive and eased it forward slowly enough to allow the lions to extract themselves from the cab. The females scratched at the fender, charging along with him as he slid away, and the male jumped from the roof with a thud. They followed for a time but had given up the chase by the time the jeep reached the double-gated exit route three hundred yards beyond.

  “You really have a way with animals, Traymir,” Blaine said to the shrivelled hunk cowering in the backseat.

  Chapter 9

  THE BUS HEADING FOR South Tehran had been packed all the way from the airport. Evira had boarded early enough to gain a cherished window seat two-thirds of the way back. The old man who had grabbed the seat next to her had drifted quickly off to sleep and been snoring for most of the journey.

  Naziabad had once been a factory district that had now evolved into a slum for Tehran’s poor and forgotten. The outcasts in a city that had become outcast itself, first during the war with Iraq, and now even more so as Iran paid the price for a war that had drained the economy dry. Buildings crumbled and were looted. Few windows remained whole and few families remained in their own homes. Men lived alone or in small groups, sleeping in doorways. The air smelled of crumbling brick and dust, but even this was welcome after the stifling bus ride from just outside Mehrabad Airport where Evira had landed only two hours before.

  For her, travel within the Arab countries was not a problem. Over the years she had built up a string of identities and passports which listed her as a citizen of each, thus permitting effortless passage between them. After parting with McCracken, she had made her way to Cairo and boarded an Iran Air jet bound for Tehran early Friday morning.

  Evira was breathing hard when the bus came to its last stop in Naziabad. She did not fancy herself a killer but nonetheless was fully committed to assassinating General Amir Hassani. Joined together at last against Israel, the militants he had rallied around him represented a force that could destabilize the entire region beyond repair.

  Hassani himself was an enigma. A Revolutionary Guardsman who rose to general in the last months of the war, he vanished during the cease-fire and was not heard from through much of the peace talks. He reappeared only after Khomeini’s death when the Revolutionary Guard summoned him from exile following the failed attempts by several of the Ayahtolla’s successors to re-unify the country. His stated commitment to rebuild Iran started not surprisingly with the military at the sacrifice of the lower classes. Beyond the military, he wooed the rich and powerful and attempted to solidify his own power by appealing to the mullahs as well.

  But Hassani’s ambitions stretched far beyond Iran. His goal was the unification of Arab radicals all over the Mideast for the ultimate destruction of Israel. And in spite of this he was still only the second most dangerous man in the world. McCracken would stop the first while Evira put an end to Hassani’s reign. She hated herself for what she had done to force McCracken to help her, yet even now could see no other alternative.

  Her thoughts rekindled memories of her own family. Since setting forth on the life she saw as her destiny, she had not once seen her brothers. The one in his twenties had become a guerrilla fighter in Lebanon. Of the two still in their teens, one had been killed by Israeli soldiers during the uprisings in the occupied zone. Of the other, she knew nothing. Often she had been tempted to venture into the West Bank and seek out the remnants of her family, but with so heavy a presence of soldiers, the risks were too great. If the Israelis had managed to pin down her background, all her family members would be under constant watch on the chance she would someday show her face in the area. So she stayed on the move and took up residence under their very noses, mixing with their people, wishing that they would see that they were more alike than different, as she did.

  Help for her in Tehran would come from the growing Iranian underground, made up of the thousands w
ho had become fed up with Khomeini even before the close of the war. But Hassani presented them with an even clearer symbol to rally against. His policies had forced thousands upon thousands into a life in the streets, made beggars by the priorities the general had set for the country. Unorganized, the disenchanted lingered in the murkiness of fear and discontent beneath the shadow of Hassani’s murderous and power-crazed Revolutionary Guardsmen.

  Evira had been able to place an agent within one of the burgeoning underground cells and contact had been initiated on several occasions. They had agreed to help her get close to Hassani and offered to aid her in any way they could. Evira relayed the message that a weapon would be required. As for an escape route, well, she was not unrealistic in appraising the likelihood of this for herself.

  Though it was midday, the streets of Tehran’s Naziabad district were virtually deserted. Where shops, restaurants, and stores had once been there were boarded-up windows and chained doors. Sidewalk vendors had disappeared. In the streets there were not even any Revolutionary Guardsmen to be seen, only urchins and beggars foraging among the trash cans and fighting one another for scraps of food. All the same, Evira kept her head down to avoid being noticed. She had changed into the garb of a poor Iranian woman at the airport, but close inspection of her features or even the meager belongings she toted in a small satchel could reveal the ruse.

  The building she was heading for was a plastics factory that had only in the past six months been closed down by Hassani. Its size and location made it the perfect place for this particular cell to hold meetings. She ducked down a bordering side street and climbed a steep set of steps to a hidden entrance. As promised, the lock on the door was not fastened all the way and needed only to be yanked on to give way. Evira threw back the hasp and shoved her shoulder against the heavy door. It creaked open and she entered, expecting to be met almost immediately by a member of the cell.

  But there was no one. She pushed on warily. In months past this floor had contained offices; the factory itself was contained in the basement. The corridor had already turned dusty and decrepit. Tattered bedrolls lay here and there as testament to the homeless who had never returned to claim them.