The Devil's Alternative (43 page)

“It will,” said the other. “You better get your mask on and give those clothes back to that Yankee in the paint locker. Then grab some sleep. You’re on watch at six in the morning.”

Sir Julian Flannery reconvened the crisis management committee within an hour of his private talk with the Prime Minister. She had told him the reason why the situation had changed, but he and Sir Nigel Irvine would be the only ones to know, and they would not talk. The members of the committee would simply need to know that, for reasons of state, the release of Mishkin and Lazareff at dawn might be delayed or canceled, depending on the reaction of the German Chancellor.

Elsewhere in Whitehall, page after page of data about the
Freya
, her crew, cargo, and hazard potential were being photographically transmitted direct to Washington.

Sir Julian had been lucky; most of the principal experts from the committee lived within a sixty- minute fast-drive radius of Whitehall. Most were caught over dinner at home, none had left for the countryside; two were traced to restaurants, one to the theater. By nine-thirty the bulk of UNICORNE were seated in conference once again.

Sir Julian explained that their duty now was to assume that the whole affair had passed from the realm of a form of exercise and into the major-crisis category.

“We have to assume that Chancellor Busch will agree to delay the release, pending the clarification of certain other matters. If he does, we have to assume the chance that the terrorists will at least activate their first threat, to vent oil cargo from the
Freya
. Now we have to plan to contain and destroy a possible first slick of twenty thousand tons of crude oil; secondly, to envisage that figure being multiplied fifty-fold.”

The picture that emerged was gloomy. Public indifference over years had led to political neglect; nevertheless, the amounts of crude-oil emulsifier in the hands of the British, and the vehicles for their delivery onto an oil slick, were still greater than those of the rest of Europe combined.

“We have to assume that the main burden of containing the ecological damage will fall to us,” said the man from Warren Springs. “In the
Amoco Cadiz
affair in 1978, the French refused to accept our help, even though we had better emulsifiers and better delivery systems than they did. Their fishermen paid bitterly for that particular stupidity. The old-fashioned detergent they used instead of our emulsifier concentrates caused as much toxic damage as the oil itself. And they had neither enough of it nor the right delivery systems. It was like trying to kill an octopus with a peashooter.” “I have no doubt the Germans, Dutch, and Belgians will not hesitate to ask for a joint allied

operation in this matter,” said the man from the Foreign Office.

“Then we must be ready,” said Sir Julian. “How much have we got?” Dr. Henderson from Warren Springs continued.

“The best emulsifier, in concentrated form, will emulsify—that is, break down into minuscule globules that permit natural bacteria to complete the destruction—twenty times its own volume. One gallon of emulsifier for twenty gallons of crude oil. We have one thousand tons in stock.”

“Enough for one slick of twenty thousand tons of crude oil,” observed Sir Julian. “What about a million tons?”

“Not a chance,” said Henderson grimly. “Not a chance in hell. If we start to produce more now, we can manufacture a thousand tons every four days. For a million tons, we’d need fifty thousand

tons of emulsifier. Frankly, those maniacs in the black helmets could wipe out most marine life in the North Sea and English Channel, and foul up the beaches from Hull to Cornwall on our side, and Bremen to Ushant on the other.”

There was silence for a while.

“Let’s assume the first slick,” said Sir Julian quietly. “The other is beyond belief.”

The committee agreed to issue immediate orders for the procurement during the night of every ton of emulsifier from the store in Hampshire; to commandeer tanker lorries from the petroleum companies through the Energy Ministry; to bring the whole consignment to the esplanade parking lot at Lowestoft on the east coast; and to get under way and divert to Lowestoft every single marine tug with spray equipment, including the Port of London firefighting vessels and the Royal Navy equivalents. By late morning it was hoped to have the entire flotilla in Lowestoft port, tanking up with emulsifier.

“If the sea remains calm,” said Dr. Henderson, “the slick will drift gently northeast of the
Freya
on the tide, heading for North Holland, at about two knots. That gives us time. When the tide changes, it should drift back again. But if the wind rises, it might move faster, in any direction, according to the wind, which will overcome the tide at surface level. We should be able to cope with a twenty-thousand ton slick.”

“We can’t move ships into the area five miles round the
Freya
on three sides, or anywhere between her and the Dutch coast,” the Vice Chief of Defense Staff pointed out.

“But we can watch the slick from the Nimrod,” said the group captain from the RAF. “If it moves out of range of the
Freya
, your Navy chaps can start squirting.”

“So far, so good, for the threatened twenty-thousand-ton spillage,” said the Foreign Office man. “What happens after that?”

“Nothing,” said Dr. Henderson. “After that, we’re finished, expended.”

“Well, that’s it, then. An enormous administrative task awaits us,” said Sir Julian.

“There is one other option,” said Colonel Holmes of the Royal Marines. “The hard option.”

There was an uncomfortable silence around the table. The vice admiral and the group captain did not share the discomfort; they were interested. The scientists and bureaucrats were accustomed to technical and administrative problems, their countermeasures and solutions. Each suspected the rawboned colonel in civilian clothes was talking about shooting holes in people.

“You may not like the option,” said Holmes reasonably, “but these terrorists have killed one sailor in cold blood. They may well kill another twenty-nine. The ship costs one hundred seventy million dollars, the cargo one hundred forty million dollars, the clean-up operation treble that. If, for whatever reason, Chancellor Busch cannot or will not release the men in Berlin, we may be left with no alternative but to try to storm the ship and knock off the man with the detonator before he can use it.”

“What exactly do you propose, Colonel Holmes?” asked Sir Julian.

“I propose that we ask Major Fallon to drive up from Dorset and that we listen to him,” said Holmes.

It was agreed, and on that note the meeting adjourned until three A.M. It was ten minutes before ten o’clock.

During the meeting, not far away from the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister had received Sir Nigel Irvine.

“That, then, is the position, Sir Nigel,” she concluded. “If we cannot come up with a third alternative, either the men go free and Maxim Rudin tears up the Treaty of Dublin, or they stay in jail and their friends tear up the
Freya
. In the second case, they might stay their hand and not do it,

but we can entertain no hopes of that. It might be possible to storm it, but chances of success are slim. In order to have a chance of perceiving the third alternative, we have to know why Maxim Rudin is taking this course. Is he, for example, overplaying his hand? Is he trying to bluff the West into sustaining enormous economic damage in order to offset his own embarrassment over his grain problems? Will he really go through with his threat? We have to know.”

“How long have you got, Prime Minister? How long has President Matthews got?” asked the Director General of the SIS.

“One must assume, if the hijackers are not released at dawn, we will have to stall the terrorists, play for time. But I would hope to have something for the President by afternoon tomorrow.”

“As a rather long-serving officer, I would have thought that was impossible, ma’am. It is the middle of the night in Moscow. The Nightingale is virtually unapproachable, except at meetings planned well ahead. To attempt an instant rendezvous might well blow that agent sky-high.”

“I know your rules, Sir Nigel, and I understand them. The safety of the agent out in the cold is paramount. But so are matters of state. The destruction of the treaty, or the destruction of the
Freya
,
is
a matter of state. The first could jeopardize peace for years, perhaps put Yefrem Vishnayev in power, with all its consequences. The financial losses alone sustained by Lloyd’s, and through Lloyd’s the British economy, if the
Freya
destroyed herself and the North Sea, would be disastrous, not to mention the deaths of the remaining twenty-nine seamen. I make no flat order, Sir Nigel. I ask you to put the certain alternatives against the putative hazard to one single Russian agent.”

“Ma’am, I will do what I can. You have my word on it,” said Sir Nigel, and left to return to his headquarters.

From an office in the Defense Ministry, Colonel Holmes was on the telephone to Poole, Dorset, headquarters of the Special Boat Service, or SBS. Major Simon Fallon was found befriending a pint of beer in the officers’ mess and brought to the telephone. The two Marines knew each other well.

“You’ve been following the
Freya
affair?” asked Holmes from London. There was a dry chuckle from the other end.

“I thought you’d come shopping here eventually,” said Fallon. “What do they want?”

“Things are turning sour,” said Holmes. “The Germans may have to change their minds and keep those two jokers in Berlin after all. I’ve just spent an hour with the reconvened CMC. They don’t like it, but they may have to consider our way. Got any ideas?”

“Sure,” said Fallon. “Been thinking about it all day. Need a model, though, and a plan. And the gear.”

“Right,” said Holmes. “I have the plan here, and a pretty good model of another but similar ship. Get the boys together. Get all the gear out of stores: underwater magnets, all the types of hardware, stun grenades—you name it. The lot. What you don’t need can be returned. I’m asking the Navy to come round from Portland and pick up the lot: the gear and the team. When you’ve left a good man in charge, jump into the car and get up to London. Report at my office as soon as you can.”

“Don’t worry,” said Fallon. “I’ve got the gear sorted and bagged already. Get the transport here as fast as you can. I’m on my way.”

When the hard, chunky major returned to the bar, there was silence. His men knew he had taken a call from London. Within minutes they were rousing the NCOs and Marines from their barracks, changing rapidly out of the plain clothes they had been wearing in the mess into the black webbing and green berets of their unit. Before midnight they were waiting on the stone jetty tucked away in their cordoned section of the Marine base; waiting for the arrival of the Navy to take their equipment to where it was needed.

There was a bright moon rising over Portland Bill to the west of them as the three fast patrol boats
Sabre
,
Cutlass
and
Scimitar
came out of the harbor, heading east for Poole. When the throttles were open, the three prows rose, the sterns buried in the foaming water, and the thunder echoed across the bay.

The same moon illuminated the long track of the Hampshire motorway as Major Fallon’s Rover sedan burned up the miles to London.

“Now, what the hell do I tell Chancellor Busch?” President Matthews asked his advisers.

It was five in the afternoon in Washington; though night had long settled on Europe, the late- afternoon sun was still on the Rose Garden beyond the French windows where the first buds were responding to the spring warmth.

“I don’t believe you can reveal to him the real message received from Kirov,” said Robert Benson.

“Why the devil not? I told Joan Carpenter, and no doubt she’ll have had to tell Nigel Irvine.” “There’s a difference,” pointed out the CIA chief. “The British can take the necessary precautions

to cope with an ecological problem in the sea off their coasts by calling on their technical experts. It’s a technical problem; Joan Carpenter did not need to call a full cabinet meeting. Dietrich Busch is going to be asked to hold onto Mishkin and Lazareff at the risk of provoking a catastrophe for his European neighbors. For that he’ll almost certainly consult his cabinet—”

“He’s an honorable man,” cut in Lawrence. “If he knows that the price is the Treaty of Dublin, he’ll feel bound to share that knowledge with his cabinet.”

“And there’s the problem,” concluded Benson. “That a minimum of fifteen more people would learn of it. Some of them would confide in their wives, their aides. We still haven’t forgotten the Günter Guillaume affair. There are just too damn many leaks in Bonn. If it got out, the Dublin Treaty would be finished in any case, regardless of what happened in the North Sea.”

His call went through in a minute. “What the hell do I tell him?” repeated Matthews.

“Tell him you have information that simply cannot be divulged on any telephone line, even a secure transatlantic line,” suggested Poklewski. “Tell him the release of Mishkin and Lazareff would provoke a greater disaster than even frustrating the terrorists on the
Freya
for a few more hours. Ask him at this stage simply to give you a little time.”

“How long?” asked the President. “As long as possible,” said Benson.

“And when the time runs out?” asked the President.

The call to Bonn came through. Chancellor Busch had been contacted at his home. The top- security call was patched through to him there. There was no need of translators on the line; Dietrich Busch spoke fluent English. President Matthews spoke to him for ten minutes while the Bonn government chief listened with growing amazement.

“But why?” he asked at length. “Surely the matter hardly affects the United States.” Matthews was tempted. At the Washington end, Robert Benson wagged a warning finger.

“Mr. Chancellor, please. Believe me. I’m asking you to trust me. On this line, on any line across the Atlantic, I can’t be as frank as I’d like to be. Something has cropped up, something of enormous dimensions. Look, I’ll be as plain as I can. Over here we have discovered something about these two men; their release would be disastrous at this stage, for the next few hours. I’m asking for time, my friend, just time. A delay until certain things can be taken care of.”