The Devil's Alternative

IF THE REACTION of the media to the 0900 transmission had been muted and speculative, due to the uncertainty of the reliability of their informants, the reaction to the 1200 broad­cast was frantic.

From twelve o’clock onward there was no doubt whatever what had happened to the Freya, or what had been said by Captain Larsen on his radiotelephone to Maas Control. Too many people had been listening.

Banner headlines that had been available for the noon edi­tions of the evening papers, prepared at ten A.M., were swept away. Those that went to press at twelve-thirty were stronger in tone and size. There were no more question marks at the ends of sentences. Editorial columns were hastily prepared, specialist correspondents in matters of shipping and the envi­ronment required to produce instant assessments within the hour.

Radio and television programs were interrupted throughout Europe’s Friday lunch hour to beam the news to listeners and viewers.

On the dot of five past twelve, a man in a motorcyclist’s helmet, with goggles and scarf drawn around the lower part of the face, had walked calmly into the lobby of 85 Fleet Street and deposited an envelope addressed to the news editor of the Press Association. No one later recalled the man; dozens of such messengers walk into that lobby every day.

By twelve-fifteen the news editor was opening the envelope. It contained a transcript of the statement read by Captain Larsen fifteen minutes earlier, though it must have been prepared well before that. The news editor reported the de­livery to his editor in chief, who told the Metropolitan Police. That did not stop the text from going straight onto the wires, both of the PA and their cousins upstairs, Reuters, who put out the text across the world.

Leaving Fleet Street, Miroslav Kaminsky dumped his hel­met, goggles, and scarf in a garbage can, took a taxi to Heathrow Airport, and boarded the two-fifteen plane for Tel Aviv.

By two P.M. the editorial pressure on both the Dutch and West German governments was beginning to build up. Nei­ther had had any time to consider in peace and quiet the reactions they should make to the demands. Both govern­ments began to receive a flood of phone calls urging them to agree to release Mishkin and Lazareff rather than face the disaster promised by the destruction of the Freya off their coasts.

By one o’clock the West German Ambassador to The Hague was speaking directly to his Foreign Minister in Bonn, Klaus Hagowitz, who interrupted the Chancellor at his desk lunch. The text of the 1200 broadcast was already in Bonn, once from the BND intelligence service and once on the Reuters teleprinter. Every newspaper office in Germany also had the text from Reuters, and the telephone lines to the Chancellery Press Office were jammed with calls.

At one-forty-five the Chancellery put out a statement to the effect that an emergency cabinet meeting had been called for three o’clock to consider the entire situation. Ministers canceled their plans to leave Bonn for the weekend. Lunches were ill-digested.

The governor of Tegel Jail put down his telephone at two minutes past two with a certain deference. It was not often the Federal Republic’s Justice Minister cut clean through the protocol of communicating with the Governing Mayor of West Berlin and called him personally.

He picked up the internal phone and gave an order to his secretary. Doubtless the Berlin Senate would be in contact in due course with the same request, but so long as the Govern­ing Mayor was out of touch at lunch somewhere, he would not refuse the Minister from Bonn.

Three minutes later, one of his senior prison officers en­tered the office.

“Have you heard the two o’clock news?” asked the gover­nor.

It was only five past two. The officer pointed out that he had been on his rounds when the Weeper in his breast pocket buzzed, requiring him to go straight to a wall phone and check in. No, he had not heard the news. The governor told him of the noon demand of the terrorists on board the Freya. The officer’s jaw dropped open.

“One for the book, isn’t it?” said the governor. “It looks as if we shall be in the news within minutes. So, batten down the hatches. I’ve given orders to the main gate: no admissions by anyone other than staff. All press inquiries to the authori­ties at City Hall.

“Now, as regards Mishkin and Lazareff. I want the guard on that floor, and particularly in that corridor, trebled. Cancel free periods to raise enough staff. Transfer all other prisoners in that corridor to other cells or other levels. Seal the place. A group of intelligence people are flying in from Bonn to ask them who their friends in the North Sea are. Any questions?”

The prison officer swallowed and shook his head.

“Now,” resumed the governor, “we don’t know how long this emergency will last. When were you due off duty?”

“Six o’clock tonight, sir.”

“Returning on Monday morning at eight?”

“No, sir. On Sunday night at midnight. I go on the night shift next week.”

“I’ll have to ask you to work right on through,” said the governor. “Of course, well make up the time to you later with a generous bonus. But I’d like you right on top of the job from here on. Agreed?”

“Yes, sir. Whatever you say. I’ll get on with it now.”

The governor, who liked to adopt a comradely attitude with his staff, came around the desk and clapped the man on the shoulder.

“You’re a good fellow, Jahn. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Squadron Leader Mark Latham stared down the runway, heard his takeoff clearance from the control tower, and nodded to his copilot. The younger man’s gloved hand eased the four throttles slowly open; in the wing roots, four Rolls-Royce Spey engines rose in pitch to push out forty-five thou­sand pounds of thrust, and the Nimrod Mark 2 climbed away from the RAF station at Kinross and turned southeast from Scotland toward the North Sea and the Channel.

What the thirty-one-year-old squadron leader of Coastal Command was flying he knew to be about the best aircraft for submarine and shipping surveillance in the world. With its crew of twelve, improved power plants, performance, and surveillance aids, the Nimrod could either skim the waves at low level, slow and steady, listening on electronic ears to the sounds of underwater movement, or cruise at altitude, hour after hour, two engines shut down for fuel economy, observ­ing an enormous area of ocean beneath it.

Its radars would pick up the slightest movement of a metallic substance down there on the water’s surface; its cameras could photograph by day and night; it was unaf­fected by storm or snow, hail or sleet, fog or wind, light or dark. Its Data Link computers could process the received in­formation, identify what it saw for what it was, and transmit the whole picture, in visual or electronic terms, back to base or to a Royal Navy vessel tapped into the Data Link.

His orders, that sunny spring Friday, were to take up sta­tion fifteen thousand feet above the Freya and keep circling until relieved.

“She’s coming on screen, skipper,” Latham’s radar operator called on the intercom. Back in the hull of the Nimrod, the operator was gazing at his scanner screen, picking out the area of traffic-free water around the Freya on its northern side, watching the large blip move from the periphery toward the center of the screen as they approached.

“Cameras on,” said Latham calmly. In the belly of the Nimrod the f/126 daytime camera swiveled like a gun, spotted the Freya, and locked on. Automatically it adjusted range and focus for maximum definition. Like moles in their blind hull, the crew behind him saw the Freya come onto their picture screen. From now on, the aircraft could fly all over the sky, but the cameras would stay locked on the Freya, adjusting for distance and light changes, swiveling in their housings to compensate for the circling of the Nimrod. Even if the Freya began to move, they would still stay on her, like an unblinking eye, until given fresh orders.

“And transmit,” said Latham.

The Data Link began to send the pictures back to Britain, and thence to London. When the Nimrod was over the Freya, she banked to port, and from his left-hand seat Squadron Leader Latham looked down visually. Behind him and below him, the camera zoomed closer, beating the hu­man eye. It picked out the lone figure of the terrorist in the forepeak, masked face staring upward at the silver swallow three miles above him. It picked out the second terrorist on top of the funnel, and zoomed until his black balaclava filled the screen. The man cradled a submachine carbine in his arms in the sunshine far below.

“There they are, the bastards,” called the camera operator. The Nimrod established a gentle, rate 1 turn above the Freya, went over to automatic pilot, closed down the engine, reduced power to maximum endurance setting on the other two, and began to do its job. It circled, watched and waited, reporting everything back to base. Mark Latham ordered his copilot to take over, unbuckled, and left the flight deck. He went aft to the four-man dining area, visited the toilet, washed his hands, and sat down with a vacuum-heated lunch-box. It was, he reflected, really rather a comfortable way to go to war.

The gleaming Volvo of the police chief of alesund ground up the gravel drive of the timber-construction, ranch-style house at Bogneset, twenty minutes out from the town center, and halted by the rough-stone porch.

Trygve Dabi was a contemporary of Thor Larsen. They had grown up together in alesund, and Dahl had entered the force as a police cadet about the time Larsen had joined the merchant marine. He had known Lisa Larsen since his friend had brought the young bride back from Oslo after their mar­riage. His own children knew Kurt and Kristina, played with them at school, sailed with them in the long summer holi­days.

Damn it, he thought as he climbed out of the Volvo, what the hell do I tell her?

There had been no reply on the telephone, which meant she must be out. The children would be at school. If she was shopping, perhaps she had met someone who had told her al­ready. He rang the bell, and when no one answered, walked around to the back.

Lisa Larsen liked to keep a large vegetable garden, and he found her feeding carrot tops to Kristina’s pet rabbit. She looked up and smiled when she saw him coming around the house.

She doesn’t know, he thought. She pushed the remainder of the carrots through the wire of the cage and came over to him, pulling off her gardening gloves.

“Trygve, how nice to see you. What brings you out of town?”

“Lisa, have you listened to the news this morning on the radio?”

She considered the question.

“I listened to the eight o’clock broadcast over breakfast. I’ve been out here since then, in the garden.”

“You didn’t answer the telephone?”

For the first time a shadow came into her bright brown eyes. The smile faded.

“No. I wouldn’t hear it. Has it been ringing?”

“Look, Lisa, be calm. Something has happened. No, not to the children. To Thor.”

She went pale beneath the honey-colored outdoor tan. Carefully, Trygve Dahl told her what had happened since the small hours of the morning, far to the south off Rotterdam.

“So far as we know, he’s perfectly all right. Nothing has happened to him, and nothing will. The Germans are bound to release these two men, and all will be well.”

She did not cry. She stood quite calmly amid the spring lettuce and said, “I want to go to him.”

The police chief was relieved. He could have expected it of her, but he was relieved. Now he could organize things. He was better at that.

“Harald Wennerstrom’s private jet is due at the airport in twenty minutes,” he said. “I’ll run you there. He called me an hour ago. He thought you might want to go to Rotterdam, to be close. Now, don’t worry about the children. I’m having them picked up from school before they hear from the teach­ers. We’ll look after them; they can stay with us, of course.”

Twenty minutes later she was in the front seat of the car with Dahl, heading quickly back toward alesund. The police chief used his radio to hold the ferry across to the airfield. Just after three-thirty the Jetstream in the silver and ice-blue livery of the Nordia Line howled down the runway, swept out over the waters of the bay, and climbed toward the south.

Since the sixties, and particularly through the seventies, the growing outbreaks of terrorism had caused the formation of a routine procedure on the part of the British government to facilitate the handling of them. The principal procedure is called the crisis management committee.

When the crisis is serious enough to involve numerous de­partments and sections, the committee, grouping liaison of­ficers from all these departments, meets at a central point close to the heart of government to pool information and cor­relate decisions and actions. This central point is a well-pro­tected chamber two floors below the parquet of the Cabinet Office on Whitehall and a few steps across the lawn from 10 Downing Street. In this room meets the United Cabinet Office Review Group (National Emergency), or UNICORNE.

Surrounding the main meeting room are smaller offices; a separate telephone switchboard, linking UNICORNE with ev­ery department of state through direct lines that cannot be in­terfered with; a teleprinter room fitted with the printers of the main news agencies; a telex room and radio room; and a room for secretaries with typewriters and copiers. There is even a small kitchen where a trusted attendant prepares coffee and light snacks.

The men who grouped under the chairmanship of Cabinet Secretary Sir Julian Flannery just after noon that Friday represented all the departments he adjudged might conceiv­ably be involved.

At this stage, no cabinet ministers were present, though each had sent a representative of at least assistant under secretary level. These included the Foreign Office, Home Of­fice, Defense Ministry, and the departments of the Environ­ment, Trade and Industry, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Energy.

Assisting them were a bevy of specialist experts, including three scientists in various disciplines, notably explosives, ships, and pollution; the Vice Chief of Defense Staff (a vice admiral), someone from Defense Intelligence, from MI5, from the SIS, a Royal Air Force group captain, and a senior Royal Marine colonel named Timothy Holmes.

“Well now, gentlemen,” Sir Julian Flannery began, “we have all had the time to read the transcript of the noon broadcast from Captain Larsen. First I think we ought to have a few indisputable facts. May we begin with this ship, the ... er ... Freya. What do we know about her?”

The shipping expert, coming under the Trade and Industry people, found all eyes on him.

“I’ve been to Lloyd’s this morning and secured the plan of the Freya,” he said briefly. “I have it here. It’s detailed down to the last nut and bolt.”

He went on for ten minutes, the plan spread on the table, describing the size, cargo capacity, and construction of the Freya in clear, layman’s language.

When he had finished, the expert from the Department of Energy was called on. He had an aide bring to the table a five-foot-long model of a supertanker.

“I borrowed this, this morning,” he said, “from British Pe­troleum. It’s a model of their supertanker British Princess, quarter of a million tons. But the design differences are few; the Freya is just bigger, really.”

With the aid of the model of the Princess he went on to point out where the bridge was, where the captain’s cabin would be, where the cargo holds and ballast holds would probably be, adding that the exact locations of these holds would be known when the Nordia Line could pass them over to London.

The surrounding men watched the demonstration and lis­tened with attention. None more than Colonel Holmes; of all those present, he would be the one whose fellow Marines might have to storm the vessel and wipe out her captors. He knew those men would want to know every nook and cranny of the real Freya before they went on board.

“There is one last thing,” said the scientist from Energy. “She’s full of Mubarraq.”

“God!” said one of the other men at the table.

Sir Julian Flannery regarded the speaker benignly.

“Yes, Dr. Henderson?”

The man who had spoken was the scientist from Warren Springs Laboratory who had accompanied the representative of Agriculture and Fisheries.

“What I mean,” said Henderson in his unrecycled Scottish accent, “is that Mubarraq, which is a crude oil from Abu Dhabi, has some of the properties of diesel fuel.”

He went on to explain that when crude oil is spilled on the sea, it contains both “lighter fractions” which evaporate into the air, and “heavier fractions” which cannot evaporate and which are what viewers see washed onto the beaches as thick black sludge.

“What I mean is,” he concluded, “it’ll spread all over the bloody place. It’ll spread from coast to coast before the lighter fractions evaporate. It’ll poison the whole North Sea for weeks, denying the marine life the oxygen it needs to live.”

“I see,” said Sir Julian gravely. “Thank you, Doctor.”

There followed information from other experts. The ex­plosives man from the Royal Engineers explained that, placed in the right areas, industrial dynamite could destroy a ship this size.

“It’s also a question of the sheer latent strength contained in the weight represented by a million tons of oil—or any­thing. If the holes are made in the right places, the unbal­anced mass of her will pull her apart. There’s one last thing; the message read out by Captain Larsen mentioned the phrase ‘at the touch of a button.’ He then repeated that phrase. It seems to me there must be nearly a dozen charges placed. That phrase ‘the touch of a button,’ seems to indicate triggering by radio impulse.”

“Is that possible?” asked Sir Julian.

“Perfectly possible,” said the sapper, and explained how an oscillator worked.

“Surely they could have wires to each charge, linked to a plunger?” asked Sir Julian.

“It’s a question of the weight again,” said the engineer. “The wires would have to be waterproof, plastic-coated. The weight of that number of miles of electric cable would nearly sink the launch on which these terrorists arrived.”

There was more information about the destructive capacity of the oil by pollution, the few chances of rescuing the trapped crewmen, and the SIS admitted they had no informa­tion that might help identify the terrorists from among for­eign groups of such people.

The man from MI5, who was actually the deputy chief of C4 Department within that body, the section dealing exclu­sively with terrorism as it affected Britain, underlined the strange nature of the demands of the captors of the Freya.

“These men, Mishkin and Lazareff,” he pointed out, “are Jewish. Hijackers who tried to escape from the USSR and ended up shooting a flight captain. One has to assume that those seeking to free them are their friends or admirers. That tends to indicate fellow Jews. The only ones who fit into that category are those of the Jewish Defense League. But so far they’ve just demonstrated and thrown things. In our files we haven’t had Jews threatening to blow people to pieces to free their friends since the Irgun and the Stern Gang.”

“Oh dear, one hopes they don’t start that again,” observed Sir Julian. “If not them, then who else?”

The man from C4 shrugged.

“We don’t know,” he admitted. “We can notice no one in our files conspicuous by being missing, nor do we have a trace from what Captain Larsen has broadcast to indicate their origins. This morning I thought of Arabs, even Irish. But neither would lift a finger for imprisoned Jews. It’s a blank wall.”

Still photographs were brought in, taken by the Nimrod an hour earlier, some showing the masked men on lookout. They were keenly examined.

“MAT-forty-nine,” said Colonel Hohnes briefly, studying the submachine gun one of the men cradled in his arms. “It’s French.”

“Ah,” said Sir Julian, “now perhaps we have something. These blighters could be French?”

“Not necessarily,” said Holmes. “You can buy these things in the underworld. The Paris underworld is famous for its taste for submachine guns.”

At three-thirty, Sir Julian Flannery brought the meeting into recess. It was agreed to keep the Nimrod circling above the Freya until further notice. The Vice Chief of Defense Staff put forward and had accepted his proposal to divert a naval warship to take up station Just over five miles west of the Freya to watch her also, in case of an attempt by the ter­rorists to leave under cover of darkness. The Nimrod would spot them and pass their position to the Navy. The warship would easily overhaul the fishing launch still tied by the Freyda’s side.

The Foreign Office agreed to ask to be informed of any de­cision by West Germany and Israel on the terrorists’ de­mands.

“There does not, after all, appear much that Her Majesty’s government can do at the present moment,” Sir Julian pointed out. The decision is up to the Israeli Prime Minister and the West German Chancellor. Personally I cannot see what else they can do except to let these wretched young men go to Israel, repugnant though the idea of yielding to black­mail must be.”

When the men left the room, only Colonel Holmes of the Royal Marines stayed behind. He sat down again and stared at the model of the quarter-million-ton British Petroleum tanker in front of him.

“Supposing they don’t?” He said to himself.

Carefully he began to measure the distance in feet from the sea to the stern taffrail.

The Swedish pilot of the Jetstream was at fifteen thousand feet off the West Frisian Islands, preparing to let down into Schiedam airfield outside Rotterdam. He turned around and called something to the petite woman who was his passenger. She unbuckled and came forward to where he sat.

“I asked if you wanted to see the Freya,” the pilot re­peated. The woman nodded.

The Jetstream banked away to the sea, and five minutes later tilted gently onto one wing. From her seat, face pressed to the tiny porthole, Lisa Larsen looked down. Far below in a blue sea, like a gray sardine nailed to the water, the Freya lay at anchor. There were no ships around her; she was quite alone in her captivity.

Even from fifteen thousand feet, through the clear spring air, Lisa Larsen could make out where the bridge would be, where the starboard side of that bridge was; below it she knew her husband was facing a man with a gun pointed straight at his chest, with explosive beneath his feet. She did not know whether the man with the gun was mad, brutal, or reckless. That he must be a fanatic, she knew.

Two tears welled out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. When she whispered, her breath misted the perspex disk in front of her.

“Thor, my darling, please come out of there alive.”

The Jetstream banked again and began its long drop toward Schiedam. The Nimrod, miles away across the sky, watched it go.

“Who was that?” asked the radar operator of no one in par­ticular.

“Who was what?” replied a sonar operator, having nothing to do.

“Small executive jet just banked over the Freya, had a look, and went off to Rotterdam,” said the radarman.

“Probably the owner checking on his property,” said the crew’s wit from the radio console.

On the Freya the two lookouts gazed through eyeslits after the tiny sliver of metal high above as it headed east toward the Dutch coast. They did not report it to their leader; it was well above ten thousand feet.

The West German cabinet meeting began just after three P.M. in the Chancellery Office, with Dietrich Busch in the chair as usual. He went straight to the point, as he had a habit of doing.

“Let’s be clear about one thing: this is not Mogadisho all over again. This time we do not have a German plane with a German crew and mainly German passengers on an air­strip whose authorities are prepared to be collaborative toward us. This is a Swedish vessel with a Norwegian captain in in­ternational waters; she has crewmen from five countries in­cluding the United States, an American-owned cargo insured by a British company, and her destruction would affect at least five coastal nations, including ourselves. Foreign Minister?”

Hagowitz informed his colleagues he had already received polite queries from Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, and Britain regarding the kind of decision the government of the Federal Republic might come to. After all, they held Mishkin and Lazareff.

“They are being courteous enough not to exert any pressure to influence our decision, but I have no doubt they would view a refusal on our part to send Mishkin and Laz­areff to Israel with the deepest misgivings,” he said.

“Once you start giving in to this terrorist blackmail, it never ends,” put in the Defense Minister.

“Dietrich, we gave in over the Peter Lorenz affair years ago and paid for it. The very terrorists we freed came back and operated again. We stood up to them over Mogadishu and won; we stood up again over Schleyer and had a corpse on our hands. But at least those were pretty well all-German affairs. This isn’t. The lives at stake aren’t German; the property isn’t German. Moreover, the hijackers in Berlin aren’t from a German terrorist group. They’re Jews who tried to get away from Russia the only way they knew how. Frankly, it puts us in the devil of a spot,” Hagowitz con­cluded.

“Any chance that it’s a bluff, a confidence trick, that they really can’t destroy the Freya or kill her crew?” someone asked.

The Interior Minister shook his head.

“We can’t bank on that. These pictures the British have just transmitted to us show the armed and masked men are real enough. I’ve sent them along to the leader of GSG-nine to see what he thinks. But the trouble is, approaching a ship with all-around, over-and-under radar and sonar cover is not their area of expertise. It would mean divers or frogmen.”

He was referring by GSG-nine to the ultratough unit of West German commandos drawn from the Border Troops who had stormed the hijacked aircraft at Mogadisho five years earlier.

The argument continued for an hour: whether to accede to the terrorists’ demands in view of the several nationalities of the probable victims of a refusal, and accept the inevitable protests from Moscow; or whether to refuse and call their bluff; or whether to consult with the British allies about the idea of storming the Freya. A compromise view of adopting delaying tactics, stalling for time, testing the determination of the Freya’s captors, seemed to be gaining ground. At four-fif­teen, there was a quiet knock on the door. Chancellor Busch frowned; he did not like interruptions.

“Herein,” he called. An aide entered the room and whis­pered urgently in the Chancellor’s ear. The head of the Fed­eral Republic’s government paled.

“Du lieber Gott,” he breathed.

When the light aircraft, later traced as a privately owned Cessna on charter from Le Touquet airfield on the northern French coast, began to approach, she was spotted by three different air-traffic-control zones: at Heathrow, Brussels, and Amsterdam. She was flying due north, and the radars put her at five thousand feet, on track for the Freya. The ether began to crackle furiously.

“Unidentified light aircraft ... identify yourself and turn back. You are entering a prohibited area. ...”

French and English were used; later, Dutch. They had no effect. Either the pilot had switched off his radio or he was on the wrong channel. The operators on the ground began to weep through the wave bands.

The circling Nimrod picked the aircraft up on radar and tried to contact her.

On board the Cessna, the pilot turned to his passenger in despair.

“They’ll have my license,” he yelled. “They’re going mad down there.”

“Switch off,” the passenger shouted back. “Don’t worry, nothing will happen. You never heard them, okay?”

The passenger gripped his camera and adjusted the telephoto lens. He began to sight up on the approaching super­tanker. In the forepeak, the masked lookout stiffened and squinted against the sun, now in the southwest. The plane was coming from due south. After watching for several seconds, he took a walkie-talkie from his anorak and spoke shar­ply into it.

On the bridge, one of his colleagues heard the message, peered forward through the panoramic screen, and walked hurriedly outside onto the wing. Here he, too, could hear the engine note. He reentered the bridge and shook his sleeping colleague awake, snapping several orders in Ukrainian. The man ran downstairs to the door of the day cabin and knocked.

Inside the cabin, Thor Larsen and Andrew Drake, both looking unshaven and more haggard than twelve hours ear­lier, were still at the table, the gun by the Ukrainian’s right hand. A foot away from him was his powerful transistor ra­dio, picking up the latest news. The masked man entered on his command and spoke in Ukrainian. His leader scowled and ordered the man to take over in the cabin.

Drake left the cabin quickly, raced up to the bridge and out onto the wing. As he did so, he pulled on his black mask. From the bridge he gazed up as the Cessna, banking at a thousand feet, performed one orbit of the Freya and flew back to the south, climbing steadily. While it turned he had seen the great zoom lens poking down at him.

Inside the aircraft, the free-lance cameraman was exultant.

“Fantastic!” he shouted at the pilot. “Completely exclusive. The magazines will pay their right arms for this.”

Drake returned to the bridge and issued a rapid stream of orders. Over the walkie-talkie he told the man up front to continue his watch. The bridge lookout was sent below to summon two men who were catching sleep. When all three returned, he gave them further instructions. When he re­turned to the day cabin, he did not dismiss the extra guard.

“I think it’s time I told those stupid bastards over there in Europe that I am not joking,” he told Thor Larsen.

Five minutes later the camera operator on the Nimrod called over the intercom to his captain.

“There’s something happening down there, skipper.”

Squadron Leader Latham left the flight deck and walked back to the center section of the hull, where the visual image of what the cameras were photographing was on display. Two men were walking down the deck of the Freya, the great wall of superstructure behind them, the long, lonely deck ahead. One of the men, the one at the rear, was in black from head to foot, with a submachine gun. The one ahead wore sneak­ers, casual slacks, and a nylon-type anorak with three horizontal black stripes across its back. The hood was up against the chill afternoon breeze.

“Looks like a terrorist at the back, but a seaman in front,” said the camera operator. Latham nodded. He could not see the colors; his pictures were monochrome.

“Give me a closer look,” he said, “and transmit.” The camera zoomed down until the frame occupied forty feet of foredeck, both men walking in the center of the pic­ture.

Captain Thor Larsen could see the colors. He gazed through the wide forward windows of his cabin beneath the bridge in disbelief. Behind him the guard with the machine gun stood well back, muzzle trained on the middle of the Norwegian’s white sweater.

Halfway down the foredeck, reduced by distance to match-stick figures, the second man, in black, stopped, raised his machine gun, and aimed at the back in front of him. Even through the glazing the crackle of the one-second burst could be heard. The figure in the pillar-box red anorak arched as if kicked in the spine, threw up its arms, pitched forward, rolled once, and came to rest, half-obscured beneath the inspection catwalk.

Thor Larsen slowly closed his eyes. When the ship had been taken over, his third mate, Danish-American Tom Kel­ler, had been wearing fawn slacks and a light nylon wind-breaker in bright red with three black stripes across the back. Larsen leaned his forehead against the back of his hand on the glass. Then he straightened, turned to the man he knew as Svoboda, and stared at him. Drake stared back.

“I warned them,” he said angrily. “I told them exactly what would happen, and they thought they could play games. Now they know they cant.”

Twenty minutes later the still pictures showing the se­quence of what had happened on the deck of the Freya were coming out of a machine in the heart of London. Twenty minutes after that, the details in verbal terms were rattling off a teleprinter in the Federal Chancellery in Bonn. It was four-thirty P.M.

Chancellor Busch looked at his cabinet.

“I regret to have to inform you,” he said, “that one hour ago a private plane apparently sought to take pictures of the Freya from close range, about a thousand feet. Ten minutes later the terrorists walked one of the crew halfway down the deck and, under the cameras of the British Nimrod above them, executed him. His body now lies half under the cat­walk, half under the sky.”

There was dead silence in the room.

“Can he be identified?” asked one of the ministers in a low voice.

“No, his face was partly covered by the hood of his an­orak.”

“Bastards,” said the Defense Minister. “Now thirty families all over Scandinavia will be in anguish, instead of one. They’re really turning the knife.”

“In the wake of this, so will the four governments of Scan­dinavia, and I shall have to answer their ambassadors,” said Hagowitz. “I really don’t think we have any alternative.”

When the hands were raised, the majority were for Hagowitz’s proposal: that he instruct the German Ambassa­dor to Israel to seek an urgent interview with the Israeli Pre­mier and ask from him, at Germany’s request, the guarantee the terrorists had demanded. Following which, if it was given, the Federal Republic would announce that with regret it had no alternative, in order to spare further misery to innocent men and women outside West Germany, but to release Mishkin and Lazareff to Israel.

“The terrorists have given the Israeli Prime Minister until midnight to offer that guarantee,” said Chancellor Busch. “And ourselves until dawn to put these hijackers on a plane. We’ll hold our announcement until Jerusalem agrees. Without that, there is nothing we can do, anyway.”

By agreement among the NATO allies concerned, the RAF Nimrod remained the only aircraft in the sky above the Freya, circling endlessly, watching and noting, sending pic­tures back to base whenever there was anything to show—pictures that went immediately to London and to the capitals of the concerned countries.

At five P.M. the lookouts were changed, the men from the fo’c’sle and funnel top, who had been there for ten hours, being allowed to return, chilled and stiff, to the crew’s quarters for food, warmth, and sleep. For the night watch, they were replaced by others, equipped with walkie-talkies and powerful flashlights.

But the allied agreement on the Nimrod did not extend to surface ships. Each coastal nation wanted an on-site observer from its own Navy. During the late afternoon the French light cruiser Montcalm stole quietly out of the south and hove lo, just over five nautical miles from the Freya. Out of the north, where she had been cruising off the Frisians, came the Dutch missile frigate Breda, which stopped six nautical miles to the north of the helpless tanker.

She was joined by the German missile frigate Brunner, and the frigates lay five cable lengths away from each other, both watching the dim shape on the southern horizon. From the Scottish port of Leith, where she had been on a courtesy visit, H.M.S. Argyll put to sea, and as the first evening star ap­peared in the cloudless sky, she took up her station due west of the Freya.

She was a guided-missile light cruiser, known as a DLG, of just under six thousand tons, armed with batteries of Exocet missiles. Her modern gas-turbine and steam engines had en­abled her to put to sea at a moment’s notice, and deep in her hull the Data Link computer she carried was tapped into the Data Link of the Nimrod circling fifteen thousand feet above in the darkening sky. Toward her stern, one step up from the afterdeck, she carried her own Westland Wessex helicopter.

Beneath the water, the sonar ears of the warships surround­ed the Freya on three sides; above the water, the radar scan­ners swept the ocean constantly. With the Nimrod above, Freya was cocooned in an invisible shroud of electronic sur­veillance. She lay silent and inert as the sun prepared to fall over the English coast.

It was five o’clock in Western Europe but seven in Israel when the West German Ambassador asked for a personal audience with Premier Benyamin Golen. It was pointed out to him at once that the Sabbath had started one hour before and that as a devout Jew the Premier was at rest in his own home. Nevertheless, the message was relayed because neither the Prime Minister’s private office nor he himself was unaware of what was happening in the North Sea. Indeed, since the 0900 broadcast from Thor Larsen, the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, had been keeping Jerusalem informed, and following the demands made at noon concerning Israel, the most copi­ous position papers had been prepared. Before the official start of the Sabbath at six o’clock, Premier Golen had read them all.

“I am not prepared to break Shabbat and drive to the office,” he told his aide, who telephoned him with the news, “even though I am now answering this telephone. And it is rather a long way to walk. Ask the Ambassador to call on me personally.”

Ten minutes later the German Embassy car drew up out­side the Premier’s ascetically modest house in the suburbs of Jerusalem. When the envoy was shown in, he was apologetic.

After the traditional greetings of “Shabbat Shalom,” the Ambassador said:

“Prime Minister, I would not have disturbed you for all the world during the hours of the Sabbath, but I understand it is permitted to break the Sabbath if human life is at stake.”

Premier Golen inclined his head.

“It is permitted if human life is at stake or in danger,” he conceded.

“In this case, that is very much so,” said the Ambassador. “You will be aware, sir, of what has been happening on board the supertanker Freya in the North Sea these past twelve hours.”

The Premier was more than aware; he was deeply con­cerned, for since the noon demands, it had become plain that the terrorists, whoever they were, could not be Palestinian Arabs, and might even be Jewish fanatics. But his own agen­cies, the external Mossad and the internal Sherut Bitachon, called from its initials Shin Bet, had not been able to find any trace of such fanatics being missing from their usual haunts.

“I am aware, Ambassador, and I join in sorrow for the murdered seaman. What is it that the Federal Republic wants of Israel?”

“Prime Minister, my country’s cabinet has considered all the issues for several hours. Though it regards the prospect of acceding to terrorist blackmail with utter repugnance, and though if the affair were a completely internal German mat­ter it might be prepared to resist, in the present case it feels it must yield.

“My government’s request is therefore that the State of Is­rael agree to accept Lev Mishkin and David Lazareff, with the guarantees of nonprosecution and nonextradition that the terrorists demand.”

Premier Golen had in fact been considering the reply he would make to such a request for several hours. It came as no surprise to him. He had prepared his position. His govern­ment was a finely balanced coalition, and privately he was aware that many if not most of his own people were so incensed by the continuing persecution of Jews and the Jewish religion inside the USSR that for them Mishkin and Lazareff were hardly to be considered terrorists in the same class as the Baader-Meinhof gang or the PLO. Indeed, some sympa­thized with them for seeking to escape by hijacking a Soviet airliner, and accepted that the gun in the cockpit had gone off by accident.

“You have to understand two things, Ambassador. One is that although Mishkin and Lazareff may be Jews, the State of Israel had nothing to do with their original offenses, nor with the demand for their freedom now made.”

If the terrorists themselves turn out to be Jewish, how many people are going to believe that? he thought.

“The second thing is that the State of Israel is not directly affected by the plight of the Freya’s crew, nor by the effects of her possible destruction. It is not the State of Israel that is under pressure here, or being blackmailed.”

“That is understood, Prime Minister,” said the German.

“If, therefore, Israel agrees to receive these two men, it must be clearly and publicly understood that she does so at the express and earnest request of the government of the Fed­eral Republic of Germany.”

“That request is being made, sir, by me, now, on behalf of my government.”

Fifteen minutes later the format was arranged. West Ger­many would publicly announce that it had made the request to Israel on its own behalf. Immediately afterward, Israel would announce that she had reluctantly agreed to the re­quest. Following that, West Germany could announce the re­lease of the prisoners at 0800 hours the following morning, European time. The announcements would come from Bonn and Jerusalem, and would be synchronized at ten-minute in­tervals, starting one hour hence. It was seven-thirty in Israel, five-thirty in Europe.

Across the continent the last editions of the afternoon news­papers whirled onto the streets, to be snapped up by a public of three hundred million who had followed the drama since midmorning. The latest headlines gave details of the murder of the unidentified seaman and the arrest of a free-lance French photographer and a pilot at Le Touquet.

Radio bulletins carried the news that the West German Ambassador to Israel had visited Premier Golen in his private house during the Sabbath, and had left thirty-five minutes later. There was no news from the meeting, and speculation was rife. Television had pictures of anyone who would pose for them, and quite a few who preferred not to. The latter were the ones who knew what was going on. No pictures taken by the Nimrod of the seaman’s body were released by the authorities.

The daily papers, preparing for issue starting at midnight, were holding front pages for the chance of a statement from Jerusalem or Bonn, or another transmission from the Freya. The learned articles on the inside pages about the Freya her­self, her cargo, the effects of its spillage, speculation on the identity of the terrorists, and editorials urging the release of the two hijackers, covered many columns of copy.

A mild and balmy dusk was ending a glorious spring day when Sir Julian Flannery completed his report to the Prime Minister in her office at 10 Downing Street. It was com­prehensive and yet succinct, a masterpiece of draftsmanship.

“We have to assume, then, Sir Julian,” she said at length, “that they certainly exist, that they have undoubtedly taken complete possession of the Freya, that they could well be in a position to blow her apart and sink her, that they would not stop at doing so, and that the financial, environmental, and human consequences would constitute a catastrophe of appalling dimensions.”

“That, ma’am, might seem to be the most pessimistic inter­pretation, yet the crisis management committee feels it would be rash to assume a more hopeful tone,” the Secretary to the Cabinet replied. “Only four have been seen: the two lookouts and their replacements. We feel we must assume another on the bridge, one watching the prisoners, and a leader; that makes a minimum of seven. They might be too few to stop an armed boarding party, but we cannot assume so. They might have no dynamite on board, or too little, or have placed it wrongly, but we cannot assume so. Their triggering device might fail, they might have no second device, but we cannot assume so. They might not be prepared to kill any more seamen, but we cannot assume so. Finally, they might not be prepared actually to blow the Freya apart and die with her, but we cannot assume so. Your committee feels it would be wrong to assume less than the possible, which is the worst.”

The telephone from her private staff tinkled, and she answered it. When she replaced the receiver, she gave Sir Julian a fleeting smile.

“It looks as if we may not face the catastrophe after all,” she said. “The West German government has just announced it has made the request to Israel. Israel has replied that she accedes to the German request. Bonn countered by an­nouncing the release of these two men at eight tomorrow morning.”

It was twenty to seven.

The same news came over the transistor radio in the day cabin of Captain Thor Larsen. Keeping him covered all the time, Drake had switched the cabin lights on an hour earlier and drawn the curtains. The cabin was well-lit, warm, almost cheery. The percolator of coffee had been exhausted and re­plenished five times. It was still bubbling. Both men, the mar­iner and the fanatic, were stubbled and tired. But one was filled with grief for the death of a friend, and anger; the other triumphant.

“They’ve agreed,” said Drake. “I knew they would. The odds were too long, the consequences too bad.”

Thor Larsen might have been relieved at the news of the pending reprieve of his ship. But the controlled anger was burning too hot even for this comfort.

“It’s not over yet,” he growled.

“It will be. Soon. If my friends are released at eight, they will be in Tel Aviv by one P.M., or two at the latest. With an hour for identification and the publication of the news by ra­dio, we should know by three or four o’clock tomorrow. Af­ter dark, we will leave you safe and sound.”

“Except Tom Keller out there,” snapped the Norwegian.

“I’m sorry about that. The demonstration of our serious­ness was necessary. They left me no alternative.”

The Soviet Ambassador’s request was unusual, highly so, in that it was repeated, tough, and insistent Although represent­ing a supposedly revolutionary country, Soviet ambassadors are usually meticulous in their observance of diplomatic pro­cedures, originally devised by Western capitalist nations.

David Lawrence repeatedly asked over the telephone whether Ambassador Konstantin Kirov could not talk to him, as U.S. Secretary of State. Kirov replied that his message was for President Matthews personally, extremely urgent, and fi­nally that it concerned matters Chairman Maxim Rudin per­sonally wished to bring to President Matthews’s attention.

The President granted Kirov his face-to-face, and the long black limousine with the hammer-and-sickle emblem swept into the White House grounds during the lunch hour.

It was a quarter to seven in Europe, but only a quarter to two in Washington. The envoy was shown straight to the Oval Room by the Secretary of State, to face a President who was puzzled, intrigued, and curious. The formalities were ob­served, but neither party’s mind was on them.

“Mr. President,” said Kirov, “I am instructed by a personal order from Chairman Maxim Rudin to seek this urgent inter­view with you. I am instructed to relay to you his personal message, without variation. It is:

“In the event that the hijackers and murderers Lev Mishkin and David Lazareff are freed from jail and released from their just deserts, the USSR will not be able to sign the Treaty of Dublin in the week after next, or at any time at all. The Soviet Union will reject the treaty permanently.”

President Matthews stared at the Soviet envoy in stunned amazement. It was several seconds before he spoke.

“You mean, Maxim Rudin will just tear it up?”

Kirov was ramrod-stiff, formal, unbending.

“Mr. President, that is the first part of the message I have been instructed to deliver to you. It goes on to say that if the nature or contents of this message are revealed, the same reaction from the USSR will apply.”

When he was gone, William Matthews turned helplessly to Lawrence.

“David, what the hell is going on? We can’t just bully the West German government into reversing its decision without explaining why.”

“Mr. President, I think you are going to have to. With re­spect, Maxim Rudin has just left you no alternative.”