The Devil's Alternative

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 Ålesund. 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.