The Devil's Alternative

SIR NIGEL IRVINE’S personal limousine, bearing Barry Ferndale and Adam Munro, arrived at 10 Downing Street a few seconds before three o’clock. When the pair were shown into the anteroom leading to the Prime Minister’s study, Sir Nigel himself was already there. He greeted Munro coolly.

“I do hope this insistence on delivering your report to the P.M. personally will have been worth all the effort, Munro,” he said.

“I think it will, Sir Nigel,” replied Munro.

The Director General of the SIS regarded his staffer quizzi­cally. The man was evidently exhausted, and had had a rough deal over the Nightingale affair. Still, that was no excuse for breaking discipline. The door to the private study opened and Sir Julian Flannery appeared.

“Do come in, gentlemen,” he said.

Adam Munro had never met the Prime Minister person­ally. Despite not having slept for two days, she appeared fresh and poised. She greeted Sir Nigel first, then shook hands with the two men she had not met before, Barry Ferndale and Adam Munro.

“Mr. Munro,” she said, “let me state at the outset my deep regret that I had to cause you both personal hazard and pos­sible exposure to your agent in Moscow. I had no wish to do so, but the answer to President Matthews’s question was of truly international importance, and I do not use that phrase lightly.”

“Thank you for saying so, ma’am,” replied Munro.

She went on to explain that, even as they talked, the cap­tain of the Freya, Thor Larsen, was landing on the afterdeck of the cruiser Argyll for a conference; and that, scheduled for ten that evening, a team of SBS frogmen was going to attack the Freya in an attempt to wipe out the terrorists and their detonator.

Munro’s face was set like granite when he heard.

“If, ma’am,” he said clearly, “these commandos are suc­cessful, then the hijacking will be over, the two prisoners in Berlin will stay where they are, and the probable exposure of my agent will have been in vain.”

She had the grace to look thoroughly uncomfortable.

“I can only repeat my apology, Mr. Munro. The plan to storm the Freya was only devised in the small hours of this morning, ten hours after Maxim Rudin delivered his ultima­tum to President Matthews. By then you were already con­sulting the Nightingale. It was impossible to call that agent back.”

Sir Julian entered the room and told the Premier, “They’re coming on patch-through now, ma’am.”

The Prime Minister asked her three guests to be seated. A box speaker had been placed in the corner of her office, and wires led from it to a neighboring anteroom.

“Gentlemen, the conference on the Argyll is beginning. Let us listen to it, and then we will learn from Mr. Munro the reason for Maxim Rudin’s extraordinary ultimatum.”

As Thor Larsen stepped from the harness onto the afterdeck of the British cruiser at the end of his dizzying five-mile ride through the sky beneath the Wessex, the roar of the engines above his head was penetrated by the shrill welcome of the bosun’s pipes.

The Argyll’s captain stepped forward, saluted, and held out his hand.

“Richard Preston,” said the Royal Navy captain. Larsen returned the salute and shook hands.

“Welcome aboard, Captain,” said Preston.

“Thank you,” said Larsen.

“Would you care to step down to the wardroom?”

The two captains descended from the fresh air into the largest cabin in the cruiser, the officers’ wardroom. There Captain Preston made the formal introductions.

“The Right Honorable Jan Grayling, Prime Minister of the Netherlands. You have spoken on the telephone already, I believe. ... His Excellency Konrad Voss, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany. Captain Desmoulins of the French Navy, de Jong of the Dutch Navy, Hasselmann of the German Navy, and Manning of the United States Navy.”

Mike Manning put out his hand and stared into the eyes of the bearded Norwegian.

“Good to meet you, Captain.” The words stuck in his throat. Thor Larsen looked into his eyes a fraction longer than he had into those of the other naval commanders, and passed on.

“Finally,” said Captain Preston, “may I present Major Si­mon Fallon of the Royal Marine commandos.”

Larsen looked down at the short, burly Marine and felt the man’s hard fist in his own. So, he thought, Svoboda was right after all.

At Captain Preston’s invitation they all seated themselves at the expansive dining table.

“Captain Larsen, I should make plain that our conversa­tion has to be recorded, and will be transmitted in uninterceptible form directly from this cabin to Whitehall, where the British Prime Minister will be listening.”

Larsen nodded. His gaze kept wandering to the American; everyone else was looking at him with interest; the U.S. Navy man was studying the mahogany table.

“Before we begin, may I offer you anything?” asked Preston. “A drink, perhaps? Food? Tea or coffee?”

“Just a coffee, thank you. Black, no sugar.”

Captain Preston nodded to a steward by the door, who dis­appeared.

“It has been agreed that, to begin with, I shall ask the questions that interest and concern all our governments,” continued Captain Preston. “Mr. Grayling and Mr. Voss have graciously conceded to this. Of course, anyone may pose a question that I may have overlooked. Firstly, may we ask you, Captain Larsen, what happened in the small hours of yesterday morning.”

Was it only yesterday? Larsen thought. Yes, three A.M. in the small hours of Friday morning; and it was now five past three on Saturday afternoon. Just thirty-six hours. It seemed like a week.

Briefly and clearly he described the takeover of the Freya during the night watch, how the attackers came so effortlessly aboard and herded the crew down to the paint locker.

“So there are seven of them?” asked the Marine major. “You are quite certain there are no more?”

“Quite certain,” said Larsen. “Just seven.”

“And do you know who they are?” asked Preston. “Jews? Arabs? Red Brigades?”

Larsen stared at the ring of faces in surprise. He had for­gotten that outside the Freya no one knew who the hijackers were.

“No,” he said. They’re Ukrainians. Ukrainian nationalists. The leader calls himself simply Svoboda. He said it means ‘freedom’ in Ukrainian. They always talk to each other in what must be Ukrainian. Certainly, it’s Slavic.”

“Then why the hell are they seeking the liberation of two Russian Jews in Berlin?” asked Jan Grayling in exasperation.

“I don’t know,” said Larsen. “The leader claims they are friends of his.”

“One moment,” said Ambassador Voss. “We have all been mesmerized by the fact that Mishkin and Lazareff are Jews and wish to go to Israel. But of course they both come from the Ukraine, the city of Lvov. It did not occur to my govern­ment that they could be Ukrainian partisan fighters as well.”

“Why do they think the liberation of Mishkin and Lazareff will help their Ukrainian nationalist cause?” asked Preston.

“I don’t know,” said Larsen. “Svoboda won’t say. I asked him; he nearly told me, but then shut up. He would say only that the liberation of those two men would cause such a blow to the Kremlin, it could start a widespread popular uprising.”

There was blank incomprehension on the faces of the men around him. The final questions about the layout of the ship, where Svoboda and Larsen stayed, the deployment of the ter­rorists, took a further ten minutes. Finally, Preston looked around at the other captains and the representatives of Hol­land and Germany. The men nodded. Preston leaned for­ward.

“Now, Captain Larsen, I think it is time to tell you. Tonight, Major Fallon here and a group of his colleagues are going to approach the Freya underwater, scale her sides, and wipe out Svoboda and his men.”

He sat back to watch the effect.

“No,” said Thor Larsen slowly, “they are not.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“There will be no underwater attack unless you wish to have the Freya blown up and sunk. That is what Svoboda sent me here to tell you.”

Item by item, Captain Larsen spelled out Svoboda’s message to the West. Before sundown every single floodlight on the Freya would be switched on. The man in the fo’c’sle would be withdrawn; the entire foredeck from the bow to the base of the superstructure would be bathed in light.

Inside the superstructure, every door leading outside would be locked and bolted on the inside. Every interior door would also be locked, to prevent access via a window.

Svoboda himself, with his detonator, would remain inside the superstructure, but would select one of the more than fifty cabins to occupy. Every light in every cabin would be switched on, and every curtain drawn.

One terrorist would remain on the bridge, in walkie-talkie contact with the man atop the funnel. The other four men would ceaselessly patrol the taffrail around the entire stern area of the Freya with powerful flashlights, scanning the sur­face of the sea. At the first trace of a stream of bubbles, or someone climbing the vessel’s side, the patrol would fire a shot. The man atop the funnel would alert the bridge watch, who would shout a warning on the telephone to the cabin where Svoboda hid. This telephone line would be kept open all night. On hearing the word of alarm, Svoboda would press his red button.

When Larsen had finished, there was silence around the table.

“Bastard,” said Captain Preston with feeling. The group’s eyes swiveled to Major Fallon, who stared unblinkingly at Larsen.

“Well, Major?” asked Grayling.

“We could come aboard at the bow instead,” said Fallon.

Larsen shook his head.

“The bridge watch would see you in the floodlights,” he said. “You wouldn’t get halfway down the foredeck.”

“We’ll have to booby-trap their escape launch, anyway,” said Fallon.

“Svoboda thought of that, too,” said Larsen. “They are go­ing to pull it around to the stern, where it will be in the glare of the deck lights.”

Fallon shrugged.

“That just leaves a frontal assault,” he said. “Come out of the water firing, use more men, come aboard against the op­position, beat in the door, and move through the cabins one by one.”

“Not a chance,” said Larsen firmly. “You wouldn’t be over the rail before Svoboda had heard you and blown us all to kingdom come.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree with Captain Larsen,” said Jan Grayling. “I don’t believe the Dutch government would agree to a suicide mission.”

“Nor the West German government,” said Voss.

Fallon tried one last move.

“You are alone with Svoboda for much of the time, Cap­tain Larsen. Would you kill him?”

“Willingly,” said Larsen, “but if you are thinking of giving me a weapon, don’t bother. On my return I am to be skin-searched, well out of Svoboda’s reach. Any weapon found, and another of my seamen is executed. I’m not taking any­thing back on board. Not weapons, not poison.”

“I’m afraid it’s over, Major Fallon,” said Captain Preston gently. “The hard option won’t work.”

He rose from the table.

“Well, gentlemen, barring further questions to Captain Lar­sen, I believe there is little more we can do. It now has to be passed back to the concerned governments. Captain Larsen, thank you for your time and your patience. In my personal cabin there is someone who would like to speak with you.”

Thor Larsen was shown from the silent wardroom by a steward. An anguished Mike Manning watched him leave. The destruction of the plan of attack by Major Fallon’s party now brought back to terrible possibility the order he had been given that morning from Washington.

The steward showed the Norwegian captain through the door of Preston’s personal living quarters. Lisa Larsen rose from the edge of the bed where she had been sitting, staring out of the porthole at the dim outline of the Freya.

“Thor,” she said. Larsen kicked back and slammed the door shut. He opened his arms and caught the running woman in a hug.

“Hello, little snow mouse.”

In the Prime Minister’s private office on Downing Street, the transmission from the Argyll was switched off.

“Blast!” said Sir Nigel, expressing the views of them all.

The Prime Minister turned to Munro.

“Now, Mr. Munro, it seems that your news is not so aca­demic after all. If the explanation can in any way assist us to solve this impasse, your risks will not have been run in vain. So, in a sentence, why is Maxim Rudin behaving in this way?”

“Because, ma’am, as we all know, his supremacy in the Po­litburo hangs by a thread and has done so for months. ...”

“But on the question of arms concessions to the Ameri­cans, surely,” said Mrs. Carpenter. “That is the issue on which Vishnayev wishes to bring him down.”

“Ma’am, Yefrem Vishnayev has made his play for supreme power in the Soviet Union and cannot go back now. He will bring Rudin down any way he can, for if he does not, then following the signature of the Treaty of Dublin in eight days’ time, Rudin will destroy him. These two men in Berlin can deliver to Vishnayev the instrument he needs to swing one or two more members of the Politburo to change their votes and join his faction of hawks.”

“How?” asked Sir Nigel.

“By speaking. By opening their mouths. By reaching Israel alive and holding an international press conference. By inflict­ing on the Soviet Union a massive public and international humiliation.”

“Not for killing an airline captain no one had ever heard of?” asked the Prime Minister.

“No. Not for that. The killing of Captain Rudenko in that cockpit was almost certainly an accident. The escape to the West was indispensable if they were to give their real achievement the worldwide publicity it needed. You see, ma’am, on the thirty-first of October last, during the night, in a street in Kiev, Mishkin and Lazareff assassinated Yuri Ivanenko, the head of the KGB.”

Sir Nigel Irvine and Barry Ferndale sat bolt-upright, as if stung.

“So that’s what happened to him,” breathed Ferndale, the Soviet expert. “I thought he must be in disgrace.”

“Not disgrace, a grave,” said Munro. “The Politburo knows it, of course, and at least one, maybe two, of Rudin’s faction have threatened they will change sides if the assassins escape scot-free and humiliate the Soviet Union.”

“Does that make sense in Russian psychology, Mr. Fern-dale?” the Prime Minister asked.

Ferndale’s handkerchief whirled in circles across the lenses of his glasses as he polished them furiously.

“Perfect sense, ma’am,” he said excitedly. “Internally and externally. In times of crisis, such as food shortages, it is im­perative that the KGB inspire awe in the people, especially the non-Russian nationalities, to hold them in check. If that awe were to vanish, if the terrible KGB were to become a laughingstock, the repercussions could be appalling—seen from the Kremlin, of course.

“Externally, and especially in the Third World, the im­pression that the power of the Kremlin is an impenetrable fortress is of paramount importance to Moscow in maintain­ing its hold and its steady advance.

“Yes, those two men are a time bomb for Maxim Rudin. The fuse is lit by the Freya affair, and the time is running out.”

“Then why cannot Chancellor Busch be told of Rudin’s ul­timatum?” asked Munro. “He’d realize that the Treaty of Dublin, which affects his country traumatically, is more important than the Freya.”

“Because,” cut in Sir Nigel, “even the news that Rudin has made the ultimatum is secret. If even that got out, the world would realize the affair must concern more than just a dead airline captain.”

“Well, gentlemen, this is all very interesting,” said Mrs. Carpenter. “Indeed, fascinating. But it does not help solve the problem. President Matthews faces two alternatives: permit Chancellor Busch to release Mishkin and Lazaren, and lose the treaty. Require these two men to remain in jail, and lose the Freya while gaining the loathing of nearly a dozen European governments and the condemnation of the world.

“So far, he has tried a third alternative, that of asking Prime Minister Golen to return the two men to jail in Ger­many after the release of the Freya. The idea was to seek to satisfy Maxim Rudin. It might have; it might not. In fact, Benyamin Golen refused. So that was that.

“Then we proposed a third alternative, that of storming the Freya and liberating her. Now that has become impossible. I fear there are no more alternatives, short of doing what we suspect the Americans have in mind.”

“And what is that?” asked Munro.

“Blowing her apart by shellfire,” said Sir Nigel Irvine. “We have no proof of it, but the guns of the Moran are trained right on the Freya.”

“Actually, there is a third alternative. It might satisfy Maxim Rudin, and it should work,” suggested Munro.

“Then please explain it,” commanded the Prime Minister.

Munro did so. It took barely five minutes. There was silence.

“I find it utterly repulsive,” said Mrs. Carpenter at last.

“Ma’am, with all respect, so did I when I was forced to expose my agent to the KGB,” Munro replied stonily. Ferndale shot him a warning look.

“Do we have such devilish equipment available?” Mrs. Carpenter asked Sir Nigel.

He studied his fingertips.

“I believe the specialist department may be able to lay its hands on that sort of thing,” he said quietly.

Joan Carpenter inhaled deeply.

“It is not, thank God, a decision I would need to make. It is a decision for President Matthews. I suppose it has to be put to him. But it should be explained person-to-person. Tell me, Mr. Munro, would you be prepared to carry out this plan?”

Munro thought of Valentina walking out into the street, to the waiting men in gray trench coats.

“Yes,” he said, “without a qualm.”

“Time is short,” she said briskly, “if you are to reach Washington tonight. Sir Nigel, have you any ideas?”

“There is the five o’clock Concorde, the new service to Boston,” he said. “It could be diverted to Washington if the President wanted it.”

Mrs. Carpenter glanced at her watch. It read four P.M.

“On your way, Mr. Munro,” she said. “I will inform President Matthews of the news you have brought from Mos­cow, and ask him to receive you. You may explain to him personally your somewhat ... macabre proposal. If he will see you at such short notice.”

Lisa Larsen was still holding her husband five minutes after he entered the cabin. He asked her about home and the chil­dren. She had spoken to them two hours earlier; there was no school on Saturday, so they were staying with the Dahl family. They were fine, she said. They had just come back from feeding the rabbits at Bogneset. The small talk died away.

“Thor, what is going to happen?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand why the Germans will not release those two men. I don’t understand why the Amer­icans will not allow it. I sit with prime ministers and ambas­sadors, and they can’t tell me, either.”

“If they don’t release the men, will that terrorist ... do it?” she asked.

“He may,” said Larsen thoughtfully. “I believe he will try. And if he does, I shall try to stop him. I have to.”

“Those fine captains out there, why won’t they help you?”

“They can’t, snow mouse. No one can help me. I have to do it myself, or no one else will.”

“I don’t trust that American captain,” she whispered. “I saw him when I came on board with Mr. Grayling. He would not look me in the face.”

“No, he cannot. Nor me. You see, he has orders to blow the Freya out of the water.”

She pulled away from him and looked up, eyes wide.

“He couldn’t,” she said. “No man would do that to other men.”

“He will if he has to. I don’t know for certain, but I sus­pect so. The guns of his ship are obviously trained on us. If the Americans thought they had to do it, they would do it Burning up the cargo would lessen the ecological damage, destroy the blackmail weapon.”

She shivered and clung to him. She began to cry.

“I hate him,” she said.

Thor Larsen stroked her hair, his great hand almost Gover­ning her small head.

“Don’t hate him,” he rumbled. “He has his orders. They all have their orders. They will all do what the men far away in the chancelleries of Europe and America tell them to do.”

“I don’t care. I hate them all.”

He laughed as he stroked her, gently reassuring.

“Do something for me, snow mouse.”

“Anything.”

“Go back home. Go back to alesund. Get out of this place. Look after Kurt and Kristina. Keep the house ready for me. When this is over, I am going to come home. You can be­lieve that.”

“Come back with me. Now.”

“You know I have to go. The time is up.”

“Don’t go back to the ship,” she begged him. “They’ll kill you there.”

She was sniffing furiously, trying not to cry, trying not to hurt him.

“It’s my ship,” he said gently. “It’s my crew. You know I have to go.”

He left her in Captain Preston’s armchair.

As he did so, the car bearing Adam Munro swung out of Downing Street, past the crowd of sightseers who hoped to catch a glimpse of the high and the mighty at this moment of crisis, and turned through Parliament Square for the Crom­well Road and the highway to Heathrow.

Five minutes later Thor Larsen was buckled by two Royal Navy seamen, their hair awash from the rotors of the Wessex above them, into the harness.

Captain Preston, with six of his officers and the four NATO captains, stood in a line a few yards away. The Wessex began to lift.

“Gentlemen,” said Captain Preston. Five hands rose to five braided caps in simultaneous salute.

Mike Manning watched the bearded sailor in the harness being borne away from him. From a hundred feet up, the Norwegian seemed to be looking down, straight at him.

He knows, thought Manning with horror. Oh, Jesus and Mary, he knows.

Thor Larsen walked into the day cabin of his own suite on the Freya with a submachine carbine at his back. The man he knew as Svoboda was in his usual chair. Larsen was di­rected into the one at the far end of the table.

“Did they believe you?” asked the Ukrainian.

“Yes,” said Larsen. “They believed me. And you were right. They were preparing an attack by frogmen after dark. It’s been called off.”

Drake snorted.

“Just as well,” he said. “If they had tried it, I’d have pressed this button without hesitation, suicide or no suicide. They’d have left me no alternative.”

At ten minutes before noon, President William Matthews laid down the telephone that had joined him for fifteen minutes to the British Premier in London, and looked at his three ad­visers. They had each heard the conversation on the Ampli-Vox.

“So that’s it,” he said. “The British are not going ahead with their night attack. Another of our options gone. That just about leaves us with the alternative of blowing the Freya to pieces ourselves. Is the warship on station?”

“In position, gun laid and loaded,” confirmed Stanislaw Poklewski.

“Unless this man Munro has some idea that would work,” suggested Robert Benson. “Will you agree to see him, Mr. President?”

“Bob, I’ll see the devil himself if he can propose some way of getting me off this hook,” said Matthews.

“One thing at least we may now be certain of,” said David Lawrence. “Maxim Rudin was not overreacting. He could do nothing other than what he has done, after all. In his fight with Yefrem Vishnayev, he, too, has no aces left. How the hell did those two in Moabit Prison ever get to shoot Yuri Ivanenko?”

“We have to assume the one who leads that group on the Freya helped them,” said Benson. “I’d dearly love to get my hands on that Svoboda.”

“No doubt you’d kill him,” said Lawrence with distaste.

“Wrong,” said Benson. “I’d enlist him. He’s tough, inge­nious, and ruthless. He’s taken ten European governments and made them dance like puppets.”

It was noon in Washington, five P.M. in London, as the late-afternoon Concorde hoisted its stiltlike legs over the concrete of Heathrow, lifted its drooping spear of a nose toward the western sky, and climbed through the sound barrier toward the sunset.

The normal rules about not creating the sonic boom until well out over the sea had been overruled by orders from Downing Street. The pencil-slim dart pushed its four scream­ing Olympus engines to full power just after takeoff, and a hundred fifty thousand pounds of thrust flung the airliner toward the stratosphere.

The captain had estimated three hours to Washington, two hours ahead of the sun. Halfway across the Atlantic he told his Boston-bound passengers with deep regret that the Con­corde would make a stopover of a few moments at Dulles In­ternational Airport, Washington, before heading back to Boston, for “operational reasons.”

It was seven P.M. in Western Europe but nine in Moscow when Yefrem Vishnayev finally got the personal and highly unusual Saturday evening meeting with Maxim Rudin for which he had been clamoring all day.

The old director of Soviet Russia agreed to meet his Party theoretician in the Politburo meeting room on the third floor of the Arsenal building.

When he arrived, Vishnayev was backed by Marshal Niko­lai Kerensky, but he found Rudin supported by his allies, Dmitri Rykov and Vassili Petrov.

“I note that few appear to be enjoying this brilliant spring weekend in the countryside,” he said acidly.

Rudin shrugged. “I was in the midst of enjoying a private dinner with two friends,” he said. “What brings you, Com­rades Vishnayev and Kerensky, to the Kremlin at this hour?”

The room was bare of secretaries and guards; it contained just the five power bosses of the Soviet Union in angry con­frontation beneath the globe lights in the high ceiling.

“Treason,” snapped Vishnayev. “Treason, Comrade Secre­tary-General.”

The silence was ominous, menacing.

“Whose treason?” asked Rudin.

Vishnayev leaned across the table and spoke two feet from Rudin’s face.

“The treason of two filthy Jews from Lvov,” he hissed. “The treason of two men now in jail in Berlin. Two men whose freedom is being sought by a gang of murderers on a tanker in the North Sea. The treason of Mishkin and Lazareff.”

“It is true,” said Rudin carefully, “that the murder last De­cember by these two of Captain Rudenko of Aeroflot consti­tutes—”

“Is it not also true,” asked Vishnayev menacingly, “that these two murderers also killed Yuri Ivanenko?”

Maxim Rudin would dearly have liked to shoot a sideways glance at Vassili Petrov by his side. Something had gone wrong. There had been a leak.

Petrov’s lips set in a hard, straight line. He, too, now con­trolling the KGB through General Abrassov, knew that the circle of men aware of the real truth was small, very small. The man who had spoken, he was sure, was Colonel Kukushkin, who had first failed to protest his master, and then failed to liquidate his master’s killers. He was trying to buy his career, perhaps even his life, by changing camps and confiding to Vishnayev.

“It is certainly suspected,” said Rudin carefully. “Not a proven fact.”

“I understand it is a proven fact,” snapped Vishnayev. “These two men have been positively identified as the killers of our dear comrade, Yuri Ivanenko.”

Rudin reflected on how intensely Vishnayev had loathed Ivanenko and wished him dead and gone.

“The point is academic,” said Rudin. “Even for the killing of Captain Rudenko, the two murderers are destined to be liquidated inside their Berlin jail.”

“Perhaps not,” said Vishnayev with well-simulated outrage. “It appears they may be released by West Germany and sent to Israel. The West is weak; it cannot hold out for long against the terrorists on the Freya. If those two reach Israel alive, they will talk. I think, my friends—oh, yes, I truly think we all know what they will say.”

“What are you asking for?” said Rudin.

Vishnayev rose. Taking his example, Kerensky rose, too.

“I am demanding,” said Vishnayev, “an extraordinary plenary meeting of the full Politburo here in this room to­morrow night at this hour, nine o’clock. On a matter of ex­ceptional national urgency. That is my right, Comrade Secretary-General?”

Rudin nodded slowly. He looked up at Vishnayev from un­der his eyebrows.

“Yes,” he growled, “that is your right.”

“Then until this hour tomorrow,” snapped the Party theo­retician, and stalked from the chamber.

Rudin turned to Petrov.

“Colonel Kukushkin?” he asked.

“It looks like it. Either way, Vishnayev knows.”

“Any possibility of eliminating Mishkin and Lazareff inside Moabit?”

Petrov shook his head.

“Not by tomorrow. No chance of mounting a fresh oper­ation under a new man in that time. Is there any way of pressuring the West not to release them at all?”

“No,” said Rudin shortly. “I have brought every pressure on Matthews that I know how. There is nothing more I can bring to bear on him. It is up to him now, him and that damned German Chancellor in Bonn.”

“Tomorrow,” said Rykov soberly, “Vishnayev and his people will produce Kukushkin and demand that we hear him out. And if by then Mishkin and Lazareff are in Israel ...”

At eight P.M. European time, Andrew Drake, speaking through Captain Thor Larsen from the Freya, issued his final ultimatum.

At nine A.M. the following morning, in thirteen hours, the Freya would vent one hundred thousand tons of crude oil into the North Sea unless Mishkin and Lazareff were airborne and on their way to Tel Aviv. At eight P.M., unless they were in Israel and identified as genuine, the Freya would blow her­self apart.

“That’s positively the last straw!” shouted Dietrich Busch when he heard the ultimatum ten minutes after it was broad­cast from the Freya. “Who does William Matthews think he is? No one—absolutely no one—is going to force the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany to carry on with this charade. It is over!”

At twenty past eight, the West German government an­nounced that it was unilaterally releasing Mishkin and Lazareff the following morning at eight A.M.

At eight-thirty, a personal coded message arrived on the U.S.S. Moran for Captain Mike Manning. When decoded, it read simply: “Prepare for fire order seven A.M. tomorrow.”

He screwed it into a ball in his fist and looked out through the porthole toward the Freya. She was lit like a Christmas tree, flood and arc lights bathing her towering superstructure in a glare of white light. She sat on the ocean five miles away, doomed, helpless; waiting for one of her two execu­tioners to finish her off.

While Thor Larsen was speaking on the Freya’s radiotele­phone to Maas Control, the Concorde bearing Adam Munro swept over the perimeter fence at Dulles International Air­port, flaps and undercarriage hanging, nose high, a delta-shaped bird of prey seeking to grip the runway.

The bewildered passengers, like goldfish peering through the tiny windows, noted only that she did not taxi toward the terminal building, but simply hove to, engines running, in a parking bay beside the taxi track. A gangway was waiting, along with a black limousine.

A single passenger, carrying no mackintosh and no hand luggage, rose from near the front, stepped out of the open door, and ran down the steps. Seconds later the gangway was withdrawn, the door closed, and the apologetic captain an­nounced that they would take off at once for Boston.

Adam Munro stepped into the limousine beside the two burly escorts and was immediately relieved of his passport. The two Secret Service agents studied it intently as the car swept across the expanse of tarmac to where a small helicop­ter stood in the lee of a hangar, rotors whirling.

The agents were formal, polite. They had their orders. Be­fore he boarded the helicopter, Munro was exhaustively frisked for hidden weapons. When they were satisfied, they escorted him aboard and the whirlybird lifted off, beading across the Potomac for Washington and the spreading lawns of the White House. It was half an hour after touchdown at Dulles, three-thirty on a warm Washington spring afternoon, when they landed, barely a hundred yards from the Oval Of­fice windows.

The two agents escorted Munro across the lawns to where a narrow street ran between the big gray Executive Office Building, a Victorian monstrosity of porticos and columns in­tersected by a bewildering variety of different types of win­dow, and the much smaller, white West Wing, a squat box partly sunken below ground level.

It was to a small door at the basement level that the two agents led Munro. Inside, they identified themselves and their visitor to a uniformed policeman sitting at a tiny desk. Munro was surprised; this was all a far cry from the sweep­ing facade of the front entrance to the residence on Pennsylvania Avenue, so well-known to tourists and beloved of Americans.

The policeman checked with someone by house phone, and a woman secretary came out of an elevator several minutes later. She led the three past the policeman and down a cor­ridor, at the end of which they mounted a narrow staircase. One floor up, they were at ground level, stepping through a door into a thickly carpeted hallway, where a male aide in a charcoal-gray suit glanced with raised eyebrows at the un­shaven, disheveled Englishman.

“You’re to come straight through, Mr. Munro,” he said, and led the way. The two Secret Service agents stayed with the woman.

Munro was led down the corridor, past a small bust of Abraham Lincoln. Two staffers coming the other way passed in silence. The man leading him veered to the left and con­fronted another uniformed policeman sitting at a desk outside a white, paneled door, set flush with the wall. The policeman examined Munro’s passport again, looked at his appearance with evident disapproval, reached under his desk and pressed a button. A buzzer sounded, and the aide pushed at the door. When it opened, he stepped back and ushered Munro past him. Munro took two paces forward and found himself in the Oval Office. The door clicked shut behind him.

The four men in the room were evidently waiting for him, all four staring toward the curved door now set back in the wall where he stood. He recognized President William Mat­thews, but this was a President as no voter had ever seen him: tired, haggard, ten years older than the smiling, confident, mature but energetic image on the posters.

Robert Benson rose and approached him.

“I’m Bob Benson,” he said. He drew Munro toward the desk. William Matthews leaned across and shook hands. Munro was introduced to David Lawrence and Stanislaw Poklewski, both of whom he recognized from their newspaper pictures.

“So,” said President Matthews, looking with curiosity at the English agent across his desk, “you’re the man who runs the Nightingale.”

“Ran the Nightingale, Mr. President,” said Munro. “As of twelve hours ago, I believe that asset has been blown to the KGB.”

“I’m sorry,” said Matthews. “You know what a hell of an ultimatum Maxim Rudin put to me over this tanker affair, I had to know why he was doing it.”

“Now we know,” said Poklewski, “but it doesn’t seem to change much, except to prove that Rudin is backed right into a corner, as we are here. The explanation is fantastic: the murder of Yuri Ivanenko by two amateur assassins in a street in Kiev. But we are still on that hook. ...”

“We don’t have to explain to Mr. Munro the importance of the Treaty of Dublin, or the likelihood of war if Yefrem Vishnayev comes to power,” said David Lawrence. “You’ve read all those reports of the Politburo discussions that the Nightingale delivered to you, Mr. Munro?”

“Yes, Mr. Secretary,” said Munro. “I read them in the original Russian just after they were handed over. I know what is at stake on both sides.”

“Then how the hell do we get out of it?” asked President Matthews. “Your Prime Minister asked me to receive you be­cause you had some proposal she was not prepared to discuss over the telephone. That’s why you’re here, right?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

At that point, the phone rang. Benson listened for several seconds, then put it down.

“We’re moving toward the crunch,” he said. “That man Svoboda on the Freya has just announced he is venting one hundred thousand tons of oil tomorrow morning at nine Eu­ropean time—that’s four A.M. our time. Just over twelve hours from now.”

“So what’s your suggestion, Mr. Munro?” asked President Matthews.

“Mr. President, there are two basic choices here. Either Mishkin and Lazareff are released to fly to Israel, in which case they talk when they arrive there and destroy Maxim Rudin and the Treaty of Dublin; or they stay where they are, in which case the Freya will either destroy herself or will have to be destroyed with all her crew on board her.”

He did not mention the British suspicion concerning the real role of the Moran, but Poklewski shot the impassive Ben­son a sharp glance.

“We know that, Mr. Munro,” said the President.

“But the real fear of Maxim Rudin does not concern the geographical location of Mishkin and Lazareff. His real concern is whether they have the opportunity to address the world on what they did in that street in Kiev five months ago.”

William Matthews sighed.

“We thought of that,” he said. “We have asked Prime Min­ister Golen to accept Mishkin and Lazareff, hold them incom­municado until the Freya is released, then return them to Moabit Prison, even hold them out of sight and sound inside an Israeli jail for another ten years. He refused. He said if he made the public pledge the terrorists demanded, he would not go back on it. And he won’t. Sorry, it’s been a wasted jour­ney, Mr. Munro.”

“That was not what I had in mind,” said Munro. “During the flight, I wrote the suggestion in memorandum form on airline notepaper.”

He withdrew a sheaf of papers from his inner pocket and laid them on the President’s desk.

President Matthews read the memorandum with an ex­pression of increasing horror.

“This is appalling,” he said when he had finished. “I have no choice here. Or rather, whichever option I choose, men are going to die.”

Adam Munro looked across at him with no sympathy. In his time he had learned that, in principle, politicians have little enough objection to loss of life, provided that they per­sonally cannot be seen publicly to have had anything to do with it.

“It has happened before, Mr. President,” he said firmly, “and no doubt it will happen again. In the Firm we call it ‘the Devil’s Alternative.’ ”

Wordlessly, President Matthews passed the memorandum to Robert Benson, who read it quickly.

“Ingenious,” he said. “It might work. Can it be done in time?”

“We have the equipment,” said Munro. “The time is short, but not too short. I would have to be back in Berlin by seven A.M. Berlin time, ten hours from now.”

“But even if we agree, will Maxim Rudin go along with it?” asked the President. “Without his concurrence the Treaty of Dublin would be forfeit.”

“The only way is to ask him,” said Poklewski, who had fin­ished the memorandum and passed it to David Lawrence. The Boston-born Secretary of State put the papers down as if they would soil his fingers.

“I find the idea cold-blooded and repulsive,” Lawrence said. “No United States government could put its imprimatur to such a scheme.”

“Is it worse than sitting back as twenty-nine innocent seamen in the Freya are burned alive?” asked Munro.

The phone rang again. When Benson replaced it he turned to the President.

“I feel we may have no alternative but to seek Maxim Rudin’s agreement,” he said. “Chancellor Busch has just announced Mishkin and Lazareff are being freed at oh-eight-hundred hours, European time. And this time he will not back down.”

“Then we have to try it,” said Matthews. “But I am not taking sole responsibility. Maxim Rudin must agree to permit the plan to go ahead. He must be forewarned. I shall call him personally.”

“Mr. President,” said Munro. “Maxim Rudin did not use the hot line to deliver his ultimatum to you. He is not sure of the loyalties of some of his inner staff inside the Kremlin. In these faction fights, even some of the small fry change sides and support the opposition with classified information. I be­lieve this proposal should be for his ears alone or he will feel bound to refuse it.”

“Surely there is not the time for you to fly to Moscow through the night and be back in Berlin by dawn?” objected Poklewski.

“There is one way,” said Benson. “There is a Blackbird based at Andrews that would cover the distance in the time.”

President Matthews made up his mind.

“Bob, escort Mr. Munro to Andrews Air Force Base. Alert the crew of the Blackbird there to prepare for takeoff in one hour. I will personally call Maxim Rudin and ask him to per­mit the airplane to enter Soviet airspace, and to receive Adam Munro as my personal envoy. Anything else, Mr. Munro?”

Munro took a single sheet from his pocket.

“I would like the Company to get this message urgently to Sir Nigel Irvine so that he can take care of the London and Berlin ends,” he said.

“It will be done,” said the President. “Be on your way, Mr. Munro. And good luck to you.”