The Devil's Alternative

“It now ranks as one possible ‘third alternative’ that no longer exists,” remarked David Lawrence, “even if Maxim Rudin had accepted it, which I doubt.”

It was one hour to midnight; lights were burning in five government departments scattered across the capital, as they burned in the Oval Office and a score of other rooms throughout the White House where men and women sat at telephones and teleprinters awaiting the news from Europe. The four men in the Oval Office settled to await the reaction from the Freya.

Doctors say three in the morning is the time when the human spirit is at its lowest ebb; it is the hour of deepest weariness, slowest reactions, and gloomiest depression. Three A.M. marked one complete cycle of the sun and moon for the two men who faced each other in the captain’s cabin of the Freya.

Neither had slept that night or the previous one; each had been forty-four hours without rest; each was drawn and red-eyed.

Thor Larsen, at the epicenter of a whirling storm of international activity, of cabinets and councils, embassies and meetings, plottings and consultations that kept the lights burning on three continents from Jerusalem to Washington, was playing his own game. He was pitting his own capacity to stay awake against the will of the fanatic who faced him, knowing that at stake if he failed were the lives of his crew and his ship.

Larsen knew that the man who called himself Svoboda, younger and consumed by his own inner fire, nerves tightened by a combination of black coffee and the tension of his gamble against the world, could have ordered the Norwegian captain to be tied up while he himself sought rest. So the bearded mariner sat facing the barrel of a gun and played on his captor’s pride, hoping that the man would take his challenge, refuse to back down, and concede defeat in the game of beating sleep.

It was Larsen who proposed the endless cups of strong black coffee, a drink he usually took with milk and sugar only two or three times a day. It was he who talked through the day and the night, provoking the Ukrainian with suggestions of eventual failure, then backing off when the man became too irritable for safety. Long years of experience, nights of yawning, gritty-mouthed training as a sea captain, had taught the bearded giant to stay awake and alert through the night watches, when the cadets drowsed and the deckhands dozed.

So he played his own solitary game, without guns or ammunition, without teleprinters or night-sight cameras, without support and without company. All the superb technology the Japanese had built into his new command was as much use as rusty nails to him now. If he pushed the man across the table too far, he might lose his temper and shoot to kill. If he were provoked too far, he could order the execution of another crewman. If he felt himself becoming too drowsy, he might have himself relieved by another, fitter terrorist while he himself took sleep and undid all that Larsen was trying to do to him.

That Mishkin and Lazareff would be released at dawn, Larsen still had reason to believe. After their safe arrival in Tel Aviv, the terrorists would prepare to quit the Freya. Or would they? Could they? Would the surrounding warships let them go so easily? Even away from the Freya, attacked by the NATO navies, Svoboda could press his button and blow the Freya apart.

But that was not all of it This man in black had killed one of the crew. Thor Larsen wanted him for that, and he wanted him dead. So he talked the night away to the man opposite him, denying them both sleep.

Whitehall was not sleeping, either. The crisis management committee had been in session since three A.M., and by four, the progress reports were complete.

Across southern England the bulk tanker lorries, commandeered from Shell, British Petroleum, and a dozen other sources, were filling up with emulsifier concentrate at the Hampshire depot Bleary-eyed drivers rumbled through the night, empty toward Hampshire or loaded toward Lowestoft, moving hundreds of tons of the concentrate to the Suffolk port. By four A.M. the stocks were empty; all one thousand tons of the national supply were headed east to the coast.

So also were inflatable booms to try to hold the vented oil away from the coast until the chemicals could do their work. The factory that made the emulsifier had been geared for maximum output until further notice.

At half past three the news had come from Washington that the Bonn cabinet had agreed to hold Mishkin and Lazareff for a while longer.

“Does Matthews know what he’s doing?” someone asked.

Sir Julian Flannery’s face was impassive.

“We must assume that he does,” he said smoothly. “We must also assume that a venting by the Freya will probably now take place. The efforts of the night have not been in vain. At least we are now almost ready.”

“We must also assume,” said the civil servant from the Foreign Ministry, “that when the announcement becomes public, France, Belgium, and Holland are going to ask for assistance in fighting any oil slick that may result.”

“Then we shall be ready to do what we can,” said Sir Julian. “Now, what about the spraying and firefighting vessels?”

The report in the UNICORNE room mirrored what was happening at sea. From the Humber estuary, tugs were churning south toward Lowestoft harbor, while from the Thames and even as far around as the Navy base at Lee, other tugs capable of spraying liquid onto the surface of the sea were moving to the rendezvous point on the Suffolk coast. They were not the only things moving around the south coast that night.

Off the towering cliffs of Beachy Head, the Cutlass, Scimitar, and Sabre, carrying the assorted, complex, and lethal hardware of the world’s toughest team of assault frogmen, were pointing their noses north of east to bring them past Sussex and Kent toward where the cruiser Argyll lay at anchor in the North Sea.

The boom of their engines echoed off the chalk battlements of the southern coast, and light sleepers in Eastbourne heard the rumble out to sea.

Twelve Royal Marines of the Special Boat Service clung to the rails of the bucking craft, watching over their precious kayaks and the crates of diving gear, weapons, and unusual explosives that made up the props of their trade. It was all being carried as deck cargo.

“I hope,” shouted the young lieutenant commander who skippered the Cutlass to the Marine beside him, the second-in-command of the team, “that those whizz-bangs you’re carrying back there don’t go off.”

“They won’t,” said the Marine captain with confidence, “not until we use them.”

In a room adjoining the main conference center beneath the Cabinet Office, their commanding officer was poring over photographs of the Freya, taken by night and day. He was comparing the configuration shown by the Nimrod’s pictures with the scale plan provided by Lloyd’s and the model of the supertanker British Princess lent by British Petroleum.

“Gentlemen,” said Colonel Hohnes, joining the assembled men next door, “I think it’s time we considered one of the less palatable choices we may have to face.”

“Ah, yes,” said Sir Julian regretfully, “the hard option.”

“If,” pursued Hohnes, “President Matthews continues to object to the release of Mishkin and Lazareff, and West Germany continues to accede to that demand, the moment may well come when the terrorists will realize the game is up, that their blackmail is not going to work. At that moment they may well refuse to have their bluff called, and blow the Freya to pieces. Personally, it seems to me this will not happen before nightfall, which gives us about sixteen hours.”

“Why nightfall, Colonel?” asked Sir Julian.