The Devil's Alternative (55 page)

Rudin stared back at him, face impassive. Slowly he lifted his glass of milk and took a sip.

“You see, sir, one of those two
has
let something slip already,” said Munro. He was forced, to strengthen his argument, to let Rudin know that he, too, was aware of what had happened to Ivanenko. But he could not indicate he had learned it from someone inside the Kremlin hierarchy, just in case Valentina was still free.

“Fortunately,” he went on, “it was to one of our people, and the matter has been taken care of.” “Your people?” mused Rudin. “Ah, yes, I think I know who your people are. How many others

know?”

“The Director General of my organization, the British Prime Minister, President Matthews, and three of his senior advisers. No one who knows has the slightest intention of revealing this for public consumption. Not the slightest.”

Rudin seemed to ruminate for a while.

“Can the same be said for Mishkin and Lazareff?” he asked.

“That is the problem,” said Munro. “That has always been the problem since the terrorists—who are Ukrainian émigrés, by the way—stepped onto the
Freya
.”

“I told William Matthews, the only way out of this is to destroy the
Freya
. It would cost a handful of lives, but save a lot of trouble.”

“It would have saved a lot of trouble if the airliner in which those two young killers escaped had been shot down,” rejoined Munro.

Rudin looked at him keenly from under beetle eyebrows. “That was a mistake,” he said flatly.

“Like the mistake tonight in which two MIG-twenty-fives almost shot down the plane in which I was flying?”

The old Russian’s head jerked up.

“I did not know,” he said. For the first time, Munro believed him.

“I put it to you, sir, that destroying the
Freya
would not work. That is, it would not solve the problem. Three days ago Mishkin and Lazareff were two insignificant escapees and hijackers, serving fifteen years in jail. Now they are already celebrities. But it is assumed their freedom is being sought for its own sake. We know different.

“If the
Freya
were destroyed,” Munro went on, “the entire world would wonder why it had been

so vital to keep them in jail. So far, no one realizes that it is not their imprisonment that is vital, it is their silence. With the
Freya
, her cargo, and her crew destroyed in order to keep them in jail, they would have no further reason to stay silent. And because of the
Freya
, the world would believe them when they spoke about what they had done. So simply keeping them in jail is no use anymore.”

Rudin nodded slowly.

“You are right, young man,” he said. “The West Germans would give them their audience; they would have their press conference.”

“Precisely,” said Munro. “This, then, Is my suggestion.”

He outlined the same train of events that he had described to Mrs. Carpenter and President Matthews over the previous twelve hours. The Russian showed neither surprise nor horror, just interest.

“Would it work?” he asked at last.

“It has to work,” said Munro. “It is the last alternative. They have to be allowed to go to Israel.”

Rudin looked at the clock on the wall. It was past six-forty-five A.M. Moscow time. In fourteen hours he would have to face Vishnayev and the rest of the Politburo. This time there would be no oblique approach; this time the Party theoretician would put down a formal motion of no confi- dence. His grizzled head nodded.

“Do it, Mr. Munro,” he said. “Do it and make it work. For if it doesn’t, there will be no more Treaty of Dublin, and no more
Freya
, either.”

He pressed the bell push, and the door opened immediately. An immaculate major of the Kremlin praetorian guard stood there.

“I shall need to deliver two signals: one to the Americans, one to my own people,” said Munro. “A representative of each embassy is waiting outside the Kremlin walls.”

Rudin issued his orders to the guard major, who nodded and escorted Munro out. As they were passing through the doorway, Maxim Rudin called:

“Mr. Munro.”

Munro turned. The old man was as he had found him, hands cupped around his glass of milk. “Should you ever need another job, Mr. Munro,” he said grimly, “come and see me. There is

always a place here for men of talent.”

As the Zil limousine left the Kremlin by the Borovitsky Gate at seven A.M., the morning sun was just tipping the spire of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Two long black cars waited by the curb. Munro descended from the Zil and approached each in turn. He passed one message to the American diplomat and one to the British. Before he was airborne for Berlin, the instructions would be in London and Washington.

On the dot of eight o’clock the bullet nose of the SR-71 lifted from the tarmac of Vnukovo II Airport and turned due west for Berlin, a thousand miles away. It was flown by a thoroughly disgusted Colonel O’Sullivan, who had spent three hours watching his precious bird being refueled by a team of Soviet Air Force mechanics.

“Where do you want to go now?” he called through the intercom. “I can’t bring this into Tempelhof, ya know. Not enough room.”

“Make a landing at the British base at Gatow,” said Munro.

“First Rooshians, now Limeys,” grumbled the Arizonan. “Dunno why we don’t put this bird on public display. Seems everyone is entitled to have a good look at her today.”

“If this mission is successful,” said Munro, “the world may not need the Blackbird anymore.” Colonel O’Sullivan, far from being pleased, regarded the suggestion as a disaster.

“Know what I’m going to do if that happens?” he called. “I’m going to become a goddam

cabdriver. I’m sure getting enough practice.”

Far below, the city of Vilnius in Lithuania went by. Flying at twice the speed of the rising sun, they would be in Berlin at seven A.M. local time.

It was half past five on the
Freya
, while Adam Munro was in a car between the Kremlin and the airport, that the intercom from the bridge rang in the day cabin.

Drake answered it, listened for a while, and replied in Ukrainian. From across the table Thor Larsen watched him through half-closed eyes.

Whatever the call was, it perplexed the terrorist leader, who sat with a frown, staring at the table, until one of his men came to relieve him in the guarding of the Norwegian skipper.

Drake left the captain under the barrel of the submachine gun in the hands of his masked subordinate and went up to the bridge. When he returned ten minutes later, he seemed angry.

“What’s the matter?” asked Larsen. “Something gone wrong again?”

“The West German Ambassador on the line from The Hague,” said Drake. “It seems the Russians have refused to allow any West German jet, official or private, to use the air corridors out of West Berlin.”

“That’s logical,” said Larsen. “They’re hardly likely to assist in the escape of the two men who murdered their airline captain.”

Drake dismissed his colleague, who closed the door behind him and returned to the bridge. The Ukrainian resumed his seat.

“The British have offered to assist Chancellor Busch by putting a communications jet from the Royal Air Force at their disposal to fly Mishkin and Lazareff from Berlin to Tel Aviv.”

“I’d accept,” said Larsen. “After all, the Russians aren’t above diverting a German jet, even snooting it down and claiming an accident. They’d never dare fire on an RAF military jet in one of the air corridors. You’re on the threshold of victory; don’t throw it away for a technicality. Accept the offer.”

Bleary-eyed from weariness, slow from lack of sleep, Drake regarded the Norwegian.

“You’re right,” he conceded. “They might shoot down a German plane. In fact, I have accepted.” “Then it’s all over but the shouting,” said Larsen, forcing a smile. “Let’s celebrate.”

He had two cups of coffee in front of him, poured while he was waiting for Drake to return. He pushed one halfway down the long table; the Ukrainian reached for it. In a well-planned operation it was the first mistake he had made. ...

Thor Larsen came at him down the length of the table with all the pent-up rage of the past fifty hours unleashed in the violence of a maddened bear.

The partisan recoiled, reached for his gun, had it in his hand and was about to fire. A fist like a log of cut spruce caught him on the left temple, flung him out of his chair and backward across the cabin floor.

Had he been less fit, he would have been out cold. He was very fit, and younger than the seaman. As he fell, the gun slipped from his hand and skittered across the floor. He came up empty-handed, fighting, to meet the charge of the Norwegian, and the pair of them went down again in a tangle of arms and legs, fragments of a shattered chair, and two broken coffee cups.

Larsen was trying to use his weight and strength, the Ukrainian his youth and speed. The latter won. Evading the grip of the big man’s hands, Drake wriggled free and went for the door. He almost made it; his hand was reaching for the knob when Larsen launched himself across the carpet and brought both his ankles out from under him.

The two men came up again together, a yard apart, the Norwegian between Drake and the door. The Ukrainian lunged with a foot, caught the bigger man in the groin with a kick that doubled him

over. Larsen recovered, rose again, and threw himself at the man who had threatened to destroy his ship.

Drake must have recalled that the cabin was virtually soundproof. He fought in silence, wrestling, biting, gouging, kicking, and the pair rolled over the carpet amid the broken furniture and crockery. Somewhere beneath them was the gun that could have ended it all; in Drake’s belt was the oscillator, which, if the red button on it was pressed, would certainly end it all.

In fact it ended after two minutes; Thor Larsen pulled one hand free, grasped the head of the struggling Ukrainian, and slammed it into the leg of the table. Drake went rigid for half a second, then slumped limply. From just below his hairline a thin trickle of blood seeped down his forehead.

Panting with weariness, Thor Larsen raised himself from the floor and looked at the unconscious man. Carefully he eased the oscillator from the Ukrainian’s belt, held it in his left hand, and crossed to the one window in the starboard side of his cabin that was secured closed with butterfly-headed bolts. One-handed, he began to unwind them. The first one flicked open; he started on the second. A few more seconds, a single long throw, and the oscillator would sail out of the porthole, across the intervening ten feet of steel deck, and into the North Sea.

On the floor behind him, the young terrorist’s hand inched over the carpet to where his discarded gun lay. Larsen had the second bolt undone and was swinging the brass-framed window inward when Drake lined himself painfully onto one shoulder, reached around the table, and fired.

The crash of the gun in the enclosed cabin was earsplitting. Thor Larsen reeled back against the wall by the open window and looked first at his left hand, then at Drake. From the floor the Ukrainian stared back in disbelief.

The single shot had hit the Norwegian captain in the palm of his left hand—the hand that held the oscillator—driving shards of plastic and glass into the flesh. For ten seconds both men stared at each other, waiting for the series of rumbling explosions that would mark the end of the
Freya
.

They never came. The soft-nosed slug had fragmented the detonator device into small pieces, and, in shattering, it had not had time to reach the tonal pitch needed to trigger the detonators in the bombs below decks.

Slowly the Ukrainian climbed to his feet, holding onto the table for support. Thor Larsen looked at the steady stream of blood running from his broken hand down to the carpet. Then he looked across at the panting terrorist.

“I have won, Mr. Svoboda. I have won. You cannot destroy my ship and my crew.”

“You may know that, Captain Larsen,” said the man with the gun, “and I may know that. But they”—he gestured to the open porthole and the lights of the NATO warships in the predawn gloom across the water—“they don’t know that. The game goes on. Mishkin and Lazareff
will
reach Israel.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

0600 to 1600

MOABIT PRISON in West Berlin comprises two sections. The older part predates the Second World War. But during the sixties and early seventies, when the Baader-Meinhof gang spread a wave of terror over Germany, a new section was added. Into it were built ultramodern security systems, the toughest steel and concrete, television scanners, electronically controlled doors and grilles.

On the upper floor, David Lazareff and Lev Mishkin were awakened in their separate cells by the governor of Moabit at six A.M. on the morning of Sunday, April 3, 1983.

“You are being released,” he told them brusquely. “You are being flown to Israel this morning. Takeoff is scheduled for eight o’clock. Get ready to depart; we leave for the airfield at seven- thirty.”

Ten minutes later the military commandant of the British Sector was on the telephone to the Governing Mayor of West Berlin.

“I’m terribly sorry, Herr Burgomeister,” he told the Berliner, “but a takeoff from the civil airport at Tegel is out of the question. For one thing, the aircraft, by agreement between our governments, will be a Royal Air Force jet, and the refueling and maintenance facilities for our aircraft are far better at our own airfield at Gatow. For a second reason, we are trying to avoid the chaos of an invasion by the press, which we can easily prevent at Gatow. It would be hard for you to do this at Tegel Airport.”

Privately, the Governing Mayor was somewhat relieved. If the British took over the whole operation, any possible disasters would be their responsibility.

“So what do you want us to do, General?” he asked.

“London has asked me to suggest to you that these blighters be put in a closed and armored van inside Moabit, and be driven straight into Gatow. Your chaps can hand them over to us in privacy inside the wire, and of course we’ll sign for them.”

The press was less than happy. Over four hundred reporters and cameramen had camped outside Moabit Prison since the announcement from Bonn the previous evening that their release would take place at eight. They desperately wanted pictures of the pair leaving for the airport. Other teams of newsmen were staking out the civil airport at Tegel, seeking vantage points for their telephoto lenses high on the observation terraces of the terminal building. They were all destined to be frustrated.