“It’s 1945 again. You supervised the loading of dozens of cannisters marked with the Greek letter gamma on to the Indianapolis.”
“Yes, cannisters containing the virus. To be used against Japan to end the war.” Bechman’s eyes cleared as his mind regained its sharpness. “They called it the Gamma Option.”
Blaine felt even colder. “But there were atomic bombs on board the Indianapolis as well.”
“They formed the Beta Option, to be employed as a backup in the event something went wrong with Gamma. The Alpha Option was to take Japan by conventional attack. We were working down to the wire. The last tests on Gamma had not been completed when the Indianapolis left San Francisco. It was the perfect weapon, the ultimate weapon!”
“Victory without blood, Blainey,” Wareagle commented. “But hardly without pain, a lingering agony that would persist for generations, for … ever.”
“But we didn’t use it,” Blaine said again. “Why didn’t we use the Gamma Option, doctor? What did those final tests reveal? What made them change their minds?”
Bechman looked perplexed. “They changed their minds?”
“You must remember that!”
He didn’t seem to. “I remember … my work being suspended. My papers, my samples, my equipment, all confiscated and impounded. They made me a prisoner. My assistant would have been made one too, if he hadn’t escaped.”
“You had an assistant?”
The old man nodded. “His name was Eisenstadt, Martin Eisenstadt.”
“Have you heard from him since, seen him?”
“Not in all these years … How many is it now? What year is this?”
“1990. Now look at me. What happened in those last days after the Indianapolis had set out from San Francisco?”
“Nothing …”
“Those last hours before it reached Tinian. What did you uncover?”
“Nothing!”
“The Americans didn’t use the Gamma Option and then we sank the Indianapolis to insure that no trace of it would ever be found. Why, doctor, why? What was worth sacrificing a thousand men at sea for?”
Bechman smiled a mad smile. “I escaped. Would you like me to tell you how? Would you like to hear how I escaped the Nazis while under watch at all times?”
“Sure, but I’d like to hear about the final hours the Indianapolis was at sea en route to Tinian first. I’d like to hear about the last work you did with your designer enzymes.”
“Yes.” Bechman beamed. “I’ve brought all my work with me. Let me help you put it into operation. We must be certain the world will never know another Nazi Germany in another time. I can insure that. My discovery can insure that. Why? You ask me why? I’ll tell you. Listen and you’ll understand. Listen and …”
Bechman droned on but Blaine shut him off. The old man was clearly exhausted. McCracken had pushed him too hard and now he was paying for it. It was conceivable that the last secrets of the Gamma Option were sealed forever, sunk with the Indianapolis. And while Rasin had managed to salvage the cannisters of Bechman’s deadly virus, he had not salvaged those secrets. Possibly they didn’t even exist. Maybe Bechman could recall no more because there was no more. Truman had simply changed his mind after weighing exactly what Gamma would mean for the future of the world. It made a chilling sort of sense.
“Yo, boys,” a new voice came suddenly, “I think you’ve bothered the old guy enough for one day.”
The voice was hoarse and raspy, like that of a man who’d smoked too many cigarettes in his time. McCracken and Wareagle spun together into the center of the room as if to search for it, knowing already it was being broadcast on some hidden speaker.
“Now I’d like you boys to know …” There was a slight laugh. “… Hey, don’t this sound corny…. Anyway, we got you surrounded and I’d be much obliged if you would kindly raise your arms into the air where the camera can pick ’em up.”
Blaine did just that as Wareagle glided toward one of the room’s corners.
“Be a good idea if your rather large friend got ’em up too, boss.” McCracken nodded the Indian’s way. “Yup, that’s better. Now just hold tight for a minute….”
Actually it was considerably less than that when the door to Bechman’s apartment burst open to allow six men armed with shotguns to charge through, half leveling their weapons at Blaine and the other half at Johnny. That remained the situation, frozen for upward of two minutes, before the sound of a Jeep squealing to a halt at the door could be heard. Boots clip-clopped in the apartment’s direction, and from out of the sun stepped in a man decked out in black suit, black vest, and old-fashioned western tie. He had a heavy dark mustache and wavy hair hidden beneath a narrow-brimmed black cowboy hat. In his hands he held a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, so much a part of him as to make it appear he may have slept with it nightly.
“Afternoon, boys,” he greeted formally. “The name’s Holliday, Doc Holliday.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Blaine followed without missing a beat. “And your friends here are the Earp brothers, Bat Masterson, and Wild Bill Hickock.”
Doc Holliday regarded him with a cold stare. “You boys be in a heap of trouble, I’d say.”
“Gonna give us until sundown to ride out of town?”
“Nope.”
“Settle this at dawn then?”
“Sorry.”
“Then let’s you and me go gun to gun at high noon.” Then he added to Wareagle, “Whatever you do, darlin’, don’t forsake me.”
Holliday showed his sawed-off a little higher. “Keep it up, friend. You’re just makin’ my day. Sorry I got to ruin yours by taking you and your injun friend over to my jail.”
“Watch out, Doc. The rest of the boys are certain to bust us out. Have to get yourself a posse and everything, and I wouldn’t want to trust my life to these here tenderfoots.”
Doc Holliday fired a blast from one of his twin barrels that blew a huge chasm in the floor six inches before McCracken and showered him with splinters. Bechman looked on in amazement, waving his arms in protest.
“Was up to me, mister,” Holliday continued, “I’d hang your ass right now, but I’m betting the United States government’ll have its own plans for you and the big fella over there.”
“For a minute there,” Blaine said, “I thought we were in trouble.”
“I know who you are,” Holliday told him, lowering his still-smoking sawed-off gun as his deputies approached and fastened handcuffs around Blaine and Johnny’s wrists. “’Nam, right? The Phoenix Project?”
“You know, Doc, one thing I loved about that country was that they didn’t discriminate over who could get in.”
“I was in Eye-Corps. Bastards like you fucked us up good.”
“For following orders?”
“Or your interpretation of them.”
“I don’t suppose if I say I’m sorry, you’ll let me and the Indian go.”
Doc Holliday stripped off his cowboy hat and mopped his brow with a sleeve. McCracken noticed his hair was as raven dark as his mustache.
“Out of my hands, pal. The line lookin’ for you runs straight around the block.”
The O.K. Corral’s single jail cell was located in the back of the old-fashioned sheriff’s office. There was a plastic toilet and sink and a pair of cots squeezed in across from each other. Holliday’s deputies took the handcuffs off their prisoners, leaving with one guard posted outside the cell and another in view at the end of the corridor. Holliday was taking no chances, even rotated a shift regularly himself and spent it twirling the handlebars of his wide mustache.