Frederick Forsyth - The Devil's Alternative

“That’s true of my people, too,” agreed David Lawrence of the State Department. “They’re talking here about the KGB’s not being able to hold the line. I don’t think we could have gone that far in our prognosis.”

“So what answer do I give Maxim Rudin to his request to purchase fifty-five million tons of grain?” asked the President.

“Mr. President, tell him ‘No,’ ” urged Poklewski. “We have here an opportunity that has never occurred before and may never occur again. You have Maxim Rudin and the whole Politburo in the palm of your hand. For two decades successive administrations have bailed the Soviets out every time they have gotten into problems with their economy. Ev­ery time, they have come back more aggressive than ever. Every time they have responded by pushing further with their involvement in Africa, Asia, Latin America. Every time, the Third World has been encouraged to believe the Soviets have recovered from their setbacks through their own efforts, that the Marxist economic system works. This time, the world can be shown beyond a doubt that the Marxist economic system does not work and never will. This time, I urge you to screw the lid down tight, real tight. You can demand a concession for every ton of wheat. You can require them to get out of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. And if Rudin won’t, you can bring him down.”

“Would this”—President Matthews tapped the Nightingale report in front of him—“bring Rudin down?”

David Lawrence answered, and no one disagreed with him.

“If what is described in here by the members of the Politburo themselves actually happened inside the Soviet Union, yes, Rudin would fall in disgrace, as Khrushchev fell,” he said.

“Then use the power,” urged Poklewski. “Use it. Rudin has run out of options. He has no alternative but to agree to your terms. If he won’t, topple him.”

“And the successor—” began the President.

“Will have seen what happened to Rudin, and will learn his lesson from that. Any successor will have to agree to the terms we lay down.”

President Matthews sought the views of the rest of the meeting. All but Lawrence and Benson agreed with Pok­lewski. President Matthews made his decision; the hawks had won.

The Soviet Foreign Ministry is one of seven near-identical buildings of the wedding-cake architectural style that Stalin favored: neo-Gothic as put together by a mad patissier in brown sandstone, and standing on Smolensky Boulevard, on the corner of Arbat.

On the penultimate day of the month, the Fleetwood Brougham Cadillac of the American Ambassador to Moscow hissed into the parking bay before the main doors, and Myron Donaldson was escorted to the plush fourth-floor office of Dmitri Rykov, the Soviet Foreign Minister. They knew each other well; before coming to Moscow, Ambassador Don­aldson had done a spell at the United Nations, where Dmitri Rykov was a well-known figure. Frequently they had drunk friendly toasts there together, and here in Moscow also. But today’s meeting was formal. Donaldson was attended by his deputy chief of mission, and Rykov by five senior officials.

Donaldson read his message carefully, word for word, in its original English. Rykov understood and spoke English well, but an aide did a rapid running translation into his right ear.

President Matthew’s message made no reference to his knowledge of the disaster that had struck the Soviet wheat crop, and it expressed no surprise at the Soviet request of ear­lier in the month for the staggering purchase of fifty-five mil­lion tons of grain. In measured terms it expressed regret that the United States of America would not be in a position to make a sale to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the requested tonnage of wheat.

With hardly a pause, Ambassador Donaldson read on, into the second part of the message. This, seemingly unconnected with the first, though following without a break, regretted the lack of success of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks known as SALT III, concluded in the winter of 1980, in lessening world tension, and expressed the hope that SALT IV, scheduled for preliminary discussion that coming autumn and winter, would achieve more, and enable the world to make genuine steps along the road to a just and lasting peace. That was all.

Ambassador Donaldson laid the full text of the message on Rykov’s desk, received the formal, straight-faced thanks of the gray-haired, gray-visaged Soviet Foreign Minister, and left.

Andrew Drake spent most of that day poring over books. Azamat Krim, he knew, was somewhere in the hills of Wales fire-testing the hunting rifle with its new sight mounted above the barrel. Miroslav Kaminsky was still working at his stead­ily improving English. For Drake, the problems centered on the south Ukrainian port of Odessa.

His first work of reference was the red-covered Lloyd’s Loading List , a weekly guide to ships loading in European ports for destinations all over the world. From this he learned that there was no regular service from Northern Europe to Odessa, but there was a small, independent, inter-Mediter­ranean service that also called at several Black Sea ports. It was named the Salonika Line, and listed two vessels.

From there he went to the blue-covered Lloyd’s Shipping Index and scoured the columns until he came to the vessels in question. He smiled. The supposed owners of each vessel trading in the Salonika Line were one-ship companies regis­tered in Panama, which meant beyond much of a doubt that the owning “company” in each case was a single brass plate attached to the wall of a lawyer’s office in Panama City, and no more.

From his third work of reference, a book called the Greek Shipping Directory , he ascertained that the managing agents were listed as a Greek firm and that their offices were in Pi­raeus, the port of Athens. He knew what that meant. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, when one talks to the managing agents of a Panama-flag ship and they are Greek, one is in effect talking to the ship’s owners. They masquerade as “agents only” in order to take advantage of the fact that agents cannot be held legally responsible for the peccadilloes of their principals. Some of these peccadilloes include inferior rates of pay and conditions for the crew, unseaworthy vessels and ill-defined safety standards but well-defined valuations for “total-loss” insurance, and occasionally some very careless habits with crude-oil spillages.

For all that, Drake began to like the Salonika Line for one reason: a Greek-registered vessel would inevitably be allowed to employ only Greek senior officers, but could employ a cos­mopolitan crew with or without official seaman’s books; pass­ports alone would be sufficient And her ships visited Odessa regularly.

Maxim Rudin leaned forward, lay the Russian translation of President Matthews’s negative message as delivered by Am­bassador Donaldson on his coffee table, and surveyed his three guests. It was dark outside, and he liked to keep the lights low in his private study at the north end of the Arsenal Building in the Kremlin.

“Blackmail,” said Petrov angrily.

“Of course,” said Rudin. “What were you expecting? Sym­pathy?”

“That damned Poklewski is behind this,” said Rykov. “But this cannot be Matthews’s final answer. Their own Con­dors and our offer to buy fifty-five million tons of grain must have told them what position we are in.”

“Will they talk eventually? Will they negotiate after all?” asked Ivanenko.

“Oh, yes, they’ll talk eventually,” said Rykov. “But they’ll delay as long as they can, spin things out, wait until the fam­ine begins to bite, then trade the grain against humiliating concessions.”