The Devil's Alternative (53 page)

“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.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

2100 to 0600

WHEN THE HELICOPTER rose from the White House lawn, the Secret Service agents were left behind. An amazed pilot found himself bearing the mysterious Englishman in the rumpled clothes, and the Director of the CIA. To their right, as they rose above Washington, the Potomac River glittered in the late-afternoon sun. The pilot headed due southeast for Andrews Air Force Base.

Inside the Oval Office, Stanislaw Poklewski, invoking the personal authority of President Matthews in every sentence, was speaking to the base commander there. That officer’s pro- testations died slowly away. Finally, the national security adviser handed the phone to William Matthews.

“Yes, General, this is William Matthews and those are my orders. You will inform Colonel O’Sullivan that he is to prepare a flight plan immediately for a polar route direct from Washington to Moscow. Clearance to enter Soviet airspace unharmed will be radioed to him before he quits Greenland.”

The President went back to his other telephone, the red machine on which he was trying to speak directly to Maxim Rudin in Moscow.

At Andrews, the commander himself met the helicopter as it touched down. Without the presence of Robert Benson, whom the Air Force general knew by sight, it was unlikely he would have accepted the unknown Englishman as a passenger on the world’s fastest reconnaissance jet, let alone his orders to allow that jet to take off for Moscow. Ten years after it entered service, it was still on the secret list, so sophisticated were its components and systems.

“Very well, Mr. Director,” he said finally, “but I have to tell you that in Colonel O’Sullivan we have one very angry Arizonan.”

He was right. While Adam Munro was taken to the pilot clothing store to be issued with a g-suit, boots, and goldfish-bowl oxygen helmet, Robert Benson found Colonel George T. O’Sullivan in the navigation room, cigar clamped in his teeth, poring over maps of the Arctic and eastern Baltic. The Director of Central Intelligence might outrank him, but he was in no mood to be polite.

“Are you seriously ordering me to fly this bird clean across Greenland and Scandinavia, and into the heart of Rooshia?” he demanded truculently.

“No, Colonel,” said Benson reasonably. “The President of the United States is ordering you to do it.”

“Without my navigator-systems operator? With some goddam Limey sitting in his seat?”

“The ‘goddam Limey’ happens to bear a personal message from President Matthews to President Rudin of the USSR which has to reach him tonight and cannot be discussed in any other way,” said Benson.

The Air Force colonel stared at him for a moment. “Well,” he conceded, “it better be goddam important.”

At twenty minutes before six, Adam Munro was led into the hangar where the aircraft stood, swarming with ground technicians preparing her to fly.

He had heard of the Lockheed SR-71, nicknamed the Blackbird due to its color; he had seen

pictures of it, but never the real thing. It was certainly impressive. On a single, thin nosewheel assembly, the bulletlike nose cone thrust upward at a shallow angle. Far down the fuselage, wafer- thin wings sprouted, delta-shaped, being both wings and tail controls all in one.

Almost at each wing tip, the engines were situated, sleek pods housing the Pratt & Whitney JT- 11-D turbofans, each capable with afterburner of throwing out thirty-two thousand pounds of thrust Two knifelike rudders rose, one from atop each engine, to give directional control. Body and engines resembled three hypodermic syringes, linked only by the wing.

Small white U.S. stars in their white circles indicated its nationality; otherwise the SR-71 was black from nose to tail.

Ground assistants helped him into the narrow confines of the rear seat; he found himself sinking lower and lower until the side walls of the cockpit rose above his ears. When the canopy came down, it would be almost flush with the fuselage to cut down drag effect. Looking out, he would see only directly upward to the stars.

The man who should have occupied that seat would have understood the bewildering array of radar screens, electronic countermeasure systems, and camera controls, for the SR-71 was essentially a spy plane, designed and equipped to cruise at altitudes far beyond the reach of most interceptor fighters and rockets, photographing what it saw below.

Helpful hands linked the tubes sprouting from his suit to the aircraft’s systems: radio, oxygen, anti-g-force. He watched Colonel O’Sullivan lower himself into the seat in front of him and begin attaching his own life-support systems with accustomed ease. When the radio was connected, the Arizonan’s voice boomed in his ears.

“You Scotch, Mr. Munro?”

“Scottish, yes,” said Munro into his helmet.

“I’m Irish,” said the voice in his ears. “You a Catholic?” “A what?”

“A Catholic, for chrissake.”

Munro thought for a moment. He was not really religious at all. “No,” he said, “Church of Scotland.”

There was evident disgust up front.

“Jesus, twenty years in the United States Air Force and I get to chauffeur a Scotch Protestant.”

The triple-perspex canopy capable of withstanding the tremendous air-pressure differences of ultra-high-altitude flight was closed upon them. A hiss indicated the cabin was now fully pressurized. Drawn by a tractor somewhere ahead of the nosewheel, the SR-71 emerged from the hangar into the evening light.

Heard from inside the aircraft, the engines, once started, seemed to make only a low, whistling sound. Outside, the ground crew shuddered even in their earmuffs as the boom echoed through the hangars.

Colonel O’Sullivan secured immediate clearance for takeoff even while he was running through his seemingly innumerable pre-takeoff checks. At the start of the main runway, the Blackbird paused, rocked on its wheels as the colonel lined her up; then Munro heard his voice:

“Whatever God you pray to, start now, and hold tight.”

Something like a runaway train hit Munro squarely across the broad of the back; it was the molded seat in which he was strapped. He could see no buildings to judge his speed, just the pale blue sky above. When the jet reached 150 knots, the nose left the tarmac; half a second later the main wheels parted company, and O’Sullivan lifted the undercarriage into its bay.

Clean of encumbrances, the SR-71 tilted back until its jet efflux pipes were pointing directly down at Maryland, and it climbed. It climbed almost vertically, powering its way to the sky like a

rocket, which was almost what it was. Munro was on his back, feet toward the sky, conscious only of the steady pressure of the seat on his spine as the Blackbird streaked toward a sky that was soon turning to dark blue, to violet, and finally to black.

In the front seat, Colonel O’Sullivan was navigating, which is to say, following the instructions flashed before him in digital display by the aircraft’s on-board computer. It was feeding him altitude, speed, rate of climb, course and heading, external and internal temperatures, engine and jet-pipe temperatures, oxygen flow rates, and approach to the speed of sound.

Somewhere below them, Philadelphia and New York went by like toy towns; over northern New York State they went through the sound barrier, still climbing and still accelerating. At eighty thousand feet, five miles higher than the Concorde flew, Colonel O’Sullivan cut out the afterburners and leveled his flight attitude.

Though it was still not quite sundown, the sky was a deep black, for at these altitudes there are so few air molecules from which the sun’s rays can reflect that there is no light. But there are still enough such molecules to cause skin friction on a plane like the Blackbird. Before the state of Maine and the Canadian frontier had passed beneath them, they had adopted a fast-cruise speed of almost three times the speed of sound. Before Munro’s amazed eyes, the black skin of the SR-71, made of pure titanium, began to glow cherry-red in the heat.