The Gamma Option (27 page)

“Very good.”

“Not really. You’re wasting your time if you expect to get something out of him. Man’s lost more marbles than a ten-year-old can sink in a hole. Doesn’t even know who he is most of the time.”

“Guess we’ll have to jog his memory,” McCracken said.

He nodded to Wareagle, who increased his pressure on the deputy’s neck enough to put him to sleep.

“Think we should tie him up, Indian?”

“Not unless we plan on being here past the coming of the moon, Blainey.”

The residence numbered forty-nine was located in the northern sector of the O.K. Corral, set off the path of stores and shops and away from the clutter of old folks loitering the day away in the shade. This and the others clustered around it had the look of hand-built cabins or cottages, the old-west motif still dominant. McCracken noted that although there seemed to be no rules to that effect, most of the residents kept to themselves. He and Wareagle saw scarcely any socializing as they circled about. It seemed the residents still stubbornly clung to the secrets that had brought them there for the last of their days. It was as if holding firm at all costs to those secrets was the only way to maintain even a limited grasp of the past, which fluttered like dust in the wind of their memory. There was hardly a sound in the air, other than the occasional jeep patrolling or the church bells clanging every quarter hour.

Blaine made sure no one was about before he and Wareagle approached the door marked with a forty-nine. They had no idea what to expect inside and could only hope Hans Bechman had enough command of his faculties to provide the final piece of the puzzle that began in 1945 on board the
Indianapolis.
Wareagle remained in the shadows while McCracken eased up to the door and knocked. When no sound or response came from within, he knocked again louder.

At last he heard the squealing of wheels over wood, then a hand fumbling with a knob inside. The door parted halfway to reveal a skeletal shape tucked into a wheelchair with a blanket over his lap.

“Do you have my towels?” Hans Bechman asked.

“Yes,” Blaine replied without hesitation.

“That’s good. I ran out. I called yesterday. You didn’t come.” Puzzlement crossed his face. “I think it was yesterday… .”

The old scientist’s words emerged still laced with a German accent. What little hair he still had hung in unkempt clumps. Blaine heard him muttering to himself in German as he slid back far enough for McCracken to enter with Wareagle just behind.

“Where do you want them?” Blaine asked. “The towels, I mean?”

“Kitchen … no—bathroom … no—kitchen.”

Blaine turned back to Johnny. “Put Dr. Bechman’s towels in the kitchen.”

The old man’s eyes flared to life at that. “My name. You used my name.”

“Of course, Dr. Bechman.”

“I don’t hear it anymore. I don’t hear it at all. Maybe my ears are going. I like hearing it.” His eyes turned quizzical. “Do I know you?”

“No,” McCracken replied flatly. “I’m new.”

“Good. I don’t like the ones I know. They don’t talk to me. They don’t call me by my name.” His eyes glistened hopefully. “Will you talk to me?”

“I’d like that,” Blaine told him.

Chapter 23

THE OLD MAN’S FACE
suddenly took on an agitated expression.

“What time is it?”

“Almost two o’clock.”

“What day?”

“Thursday.”

“What year?”

“199—”

“Did you say
ninety?
It can’t be. Surely it can’t be. Tell me the truth now. Don’t be like the others.”

McCracken gazed at Wareagle, who had taken up a position by the window to watch for the possible approach of Holliday and his men.

“What if it were 1945?” Blaine asked the old man.

The creases of Bechman’s face relaxed. “Then I’d have my work.”

“What was your work, doctor?”

“I was a traitor to my country, you know. I could have given my discovery to them. We would have won the war. But, but … Wait, I know you now. You’re the gestapo! You’ve come to take me away. I won’t go, I tell you, I won’t!”

Bechman’s last words emerged in a shrill scream, and Blaine had to grasp the side of his wheelchair to keep him from rolling it away.

“I’m not the gestapo,” McCracken told him calmly. “Listen to my voice. I’m American. The Americans saved you from the gestapo. We brought you to the United States and gave you a new life.”

Bechman’s face turned quizzical again. “What year did you say it was?”

“1990.”

He shook his head. “What happened to the years? Where did they all go? There is a hole in my mind and the years keep slipping out. What can I do to plug the hole?” he uttered pleadingly. “Tell me what I can do!”

“You can remember.”

“But where to start?”

“In 1945 when the Americans gave you a new life.”

“Not a new life. No, just an extension of the old one. It was my own fault. I was scared. I wanted them to accept me. So I told them the secret I had hidden from the Nazis.”

“What did you tell them?”

“About my experiments. Hitler’s people never realized what I had happened upon. They wouldn’t have understood it even if they had. Years ahead of its time, generations! It was brilliant. Brilliant, I tell you! But I didn’t give it to them.”

“You gave it to the Americans.”

“Because I wanted no more wars, no more innocent people to die. The Americans could wield the weapon with judgment, with prudence. Yes, I gave it to them. All my research was completed. It was a simple matter of production, just a few additional tests from that point.”

Blaine posed his next question calmly. “What exactly was produced?”

“When?”

“In 1945, Dr. Bechman. By the Americans.”

The old man’s features turned mad again. “How do you know my name? I don’t know you. I’m sure I don’t know you.”

“I’m here to help you.”

“Did you bring my towels?”

“Already put them away.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“To listen to you. You like to talk, don’t you, doctor? You like to speak of your past.”

Bechman’s expression grew dreamlike. “Yes, I suppose.”

“What was the weapon you gave the Americans, Dr. Bechman?”

The old man’s eyes focused suddenly again. “They didn’t believe me at first you know. Thought I was crazy to insist such a thing could exist. But I knew it existed because I created it.”

“In Germany. During those last months of the war.”

“Yes! Yes! Hitler was obsessed with the United States, had been from the beginning. He hoped to delay their entry into the war long enough for the team I was part of to finish a weapon that could destroy them, wipe out their entire nation suddenly and swiftly.”

“And your research was on the genetic level.”

Bechman gazed at him condescendingly from his wheelchair. “Of course it was. Before anyone else even knew the terms, we were splitting cells, working with the DNA itself.”

“You found something.”

“Yes, but purely by accident, believe it or not. A chance coincidence arrived at from all our tinkering. We were working with viruses in pursuit of the ideal form of germ warfare. We wanted to alter the DNA of the virus so it would behave in a different way. But the altered DNA produced an enzyme which had properties that were terrifying, awesome in their implications.”

“An enzyme?” Blaine asked, embarrassed for his lack of scientific knowledge.

“An enzyme is the biological catalyst for a reaction. We were working at the cellular level. All human life is based on cells dividing, reproducing, splitting. How? How?”

“I—”

“Glucose!” Bechman blared, a scientist again. “Sugar metabolism is the basis of life at the cellular level and thus life in general. Cells digest glucose at metabolic level to supply the most basic function of life. The process is called phosphorylation. Picture this now. Once introduced into the system through the virus, our enzyme penetrates and alters the DNA of the stem cells from which all other cells originate. The enzyme produces a more efficient pathway to metabolize sugar and produce life, the DNA of the stem cells altered to the point where they can no longer utilize their usual pathway. The cells immediately become dependent on this new pathway and can no longer metabolize without it. All because of our enzyme.
My
enzyme!”

McCracken found himself going cold, his limited scientific knowledge no longer insulating him from the impact of what he was hearing. “You’re saying whoever became exposed to your virus would become dependent on it to survive, wouldn’t be able to live without being exposed further to it.”

“Precisely! One exposure was all it would take to produce total dependence. The process becomes irreversible after that. If exposure to more of the virus containing my enzyme is not maintained, life degenerates at its most basic level. All bodily functions cease because phosphorylation cannot occur within the stem cells.”

“The ultimate form of biological warfare,” Blaine muttered, looking at Wareagle, starting to grasp what the gamma cannisters Bart Joyce had seen loaded onto the
Indianapolis
had contained. “The virus invades the body and the host dies if he doesn’t get more of the enzyme it contains.”

“A disease that breaks the spirit as well as the body, Blainey. Worse than death. The ultimate form of control as well.”

“You can see why I couldn’t let Hitler have it,” Bechman broke in. “Imagine him able to destroy the military capacity of the United States while retaining its vast production capabilities and resources for
his own use!
Slavery is what it would have come down to.”

“But how would you contain it, doctor? Stop it from spreading beyond the borders of your enemy?”

“Many means were discussed. Aerosol release into the air was ruled out as too uncontrollable, as was the ethnic factor of infecting a specific food or finding a virus that attacks a single ethnicity. We settled on infecting a nation’s water supply. The virus containing the enzyme would live in water for two or three days, programmed to survive for only that many generations. By then the cells of the victim would be dependent at the DNA level, and more of the enzyme would have to be introduced to avoid certain death. The effects would show up after only a few days. My estimates indicated that five hundred German agents could accomplish the entire task quite adequately. Germany or another attacking country could then issue its ultimatum: surrender or die.”

“Listen to what he’s saying, Indian,” McCracken urged Wareagle. “That’s what Rasin has in his possession. That’s what he’s going to release into the Arab world.”

“To deny them death is a worse fate than death itself, Blainey.”

“Right up Rasin’s alley.” And Blaine felt suddenly chilled. “But we had this enzyme in our possession and didn’t use it. And then we sunk the
Indianapolis
because the cannisters containing it had to be buried forever. Why, doctor, why?”

Bechman looked confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Remember, you’ve got to remember!”

“Remember… . remember
what?
”

“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.