“No one will ever look for us here,” he explained as they reached the tin house.
“Sure,” Blaine answered. “Can’t think of any place where I’d rather spend the rest of my life.”
They passed through the blanket that formed the door to the leader’s tin house. There, seated in one of four decrepit chairs around a small table, was Bechman’s assistant Dr. Martin Eisenstadt. His features were creased and uncertain. He looked younger than the seventy years he must have been and would have looked better still if not for the pallor of fear that encompassed him. A trio of Isaac’s cohorts had taken the other chairs, the one directly across from Eisenstadt staring forlornly at a checkerboard that had been set up between them. The pieces looked virtually untouched.
“He wasn’t in the mood to play,” a gaunt old man reported, and left his seat, signaling the others to do the same.
“I’ve been to see Hans Bechman, Dr. Eisenstadt,” Blaine opened, taking the now-vacant seat across from Eisenstadt and feeling its exposed springs reach up to pinch him. “I know about the Gamma Option. I know the Americans sunk the Indianapolis to keep it a secret, and I know you gave it to Yosef Rasin in spite of that.”
Eisenstadt’s fearful eyes gazed his way. His shoulders trembled. “It was the noble thing to do. I had to do it to make up for all the errors of my past. Would you like to hear my story, hear about how I, a Jew, survived in Nazi Germany? By renouncing my heritage, by turning against my own people. I survived, but it was a life of hell. You know why? Because I felt no guilt. I was just so glad to be alive.” He stopped for a deep breath. “But then the opportunity came to escape to America. I seized it and the guilt came with me. The war ended. I was faced with my treachery, my deceit. I should have gone to the gas chamber. Any fate would have been better than the one I sentenced myself to.”
“You came to Israel.”
“For salvation, for peace. I became a citizen, a trusted member of the community. But it wasn’t nearly good enough. The guilt, always the guilt!”
“And that brought you to Rasin.”
“I thought God had blessed me with a second chance. Here was my race again facing eventual extinction at the hands of a more numerous enemy. Rasin saw the future just as I did, with Israel perishing to an avalanche of Arab forces, both from the inside and out. A year from now or a decade. It didn’t matter. It was inevitable. I went to him. I sought Rasin out!”
Eisenstadt’s eyes were flaming now, the obsession of his guilt driving him once more. “Did I not possess the means that could render Israel safe forever? If used, the Gamma Option would make it so she would never again have to fear an attack over her borders. She would no longer be dependent on the United States standing up for her.” He looked deeply at McCracken. “I knew where the Indianapolis went down. I knew she still held Gamma within her. And with Gamma the Jewish state would have the security and safety it deserved at last, even if …”
“If what, doctor?”
Eisenstadt sat there trembling.
“Finish it, doctor. What went wrong with Gamma forty-five years ago? What made the Americans pull back from their plans of releasing it in Japan? Why did they sink the Indy?”
“He could have been wrong.”
“Who?”
“Bechman.”
“Wrong about what?”
“It was an isolated mutation. We never had time to double-check the findings….”
“Wrong about what? What findings are you talking about?”
Eisenstadt’s eyes became less certain. “In the last stages of our research, Bechman discovered that Gamma mutates once entrenched in the host’s system. Bechman told you of the virus’s induction through a nation’s water supply?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Infection could be contained that way, because only those who drank the water would become dependent on the enzyme. But after so many generations of gestation within the host, the virus could become airborne. Spread from host to host through the air, not just limited to those exposed to it from drinking infected water.”
“My God, the whole world could become infected.”
“More than could — would eventually. But Bechman was wrong, I tell you!”
“What if he was right?”
“He wasn’t!”
“If he was?” Blaine demanded.
Eisenstadt’s stare was blank. “The mutated form of the Gamma virus carried a more virulent version of the designer enzyme Bechman had created. Instead of creating a new pathway for the stem cells to metabolize sugar, it destroyed the pathway altogether.”
“Life itself destroyed at the most basic level. Everywhere! A killing machine!”
“No!” the scientist screeched.
But Blaine wasn’t finished. “No one would be immune. You’re describing the end of civilization!”
“Listen to me! Bechman went to the government before we could be sure. His findings made them abandon their own plan. They were forced to make sure all reserves of Gamma were lost forever. His claims could turn them into murderers of their own people.”
Eisenstadt stopped to catch his breath, which gave McCracken time to compile what the scientist had said. With the possibility of worldwide infection looming, the Truman administration had opted for Beta in the eleventh hour and had then decided it could not risk having the reserves of Gamma coming back to shore. The truth could not be allowed to leak out and fall into the hands of those who might use it against the government and the country as the cold war dawned. The cannisters had to be buried forever, forgotten forever, along with the lives of more than a thousand crew members if necessary. But now Gamma was back, about to be let loose on an unsuspecting world forty-five years after the fact.
That thought enraged McCracken. He reached across the table and grasped Eisenstadt by the lapels. “You knew all this and you still gave Gamma to Rasin. You knew the chance you were taking and you didn’t even warn him. You didn’t warn him, did you?”
“Y-Y-Yes, I did.”
McCracken eased up on the pressure.
“H-H-He didn’t care. So long as Israel survived, that was all that mattered. The notion even appealed to him: the Jewish race becoming the last bastion of civilization.”
“But with the mutation Israel will be destroyed too.”
“No,” Eisenstadt said softly. “We took … precautions.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’ll tell you because I want you to stop Rasin now. He went back on his word to me. He would have killed me, would have—”
“Talk! What precautions?”
“A vaccine to be released into the air over Israel that will protect against the possibility of any Israeli infection whatsoever, whether the virus mutates or not.”
“Released how?”
“From dozens of points scattered strategically all over the country. Released a few hours before dawn so it will reach all our borders and then be killed by the sun’s ultraviolet rays at dawn before it can stretch to any of the Arab countries, especially over water. We will be insulated!” Eisenstadt ranted.
“What about Rasin?”
“A part of it, a great part. He will release the largest allotment of the vaccine himself.”
“From where?” Blaine demanded.
Eisenstadt’s eyes fell on McCracken’s watch. “It may already be too late.”
“Where? Just tell me where!”