Frederick Forsyth - The Devil's Alternative

When Andrew Drake returned to the Cavo d’Oro after his second meeting with Captain Thanos, there was a message waiting for him. It was from Azamat Krim, to say he and Kaminsky had just checked into their agreed hotel.

An hour later Drake was with them. The van had come through unscathed. During the night, Drake had the guns and ammunition transferred piece by piece to his own room at the Cavo d’Oro in separate visits from Kaminsky and Krim. When all was safely locked away, he took them both out to dinner. The following morning, Krim flew back to London, to live in Drake’s apartment and await his phone call. Kaminsky stayed on in a small pension in the back streets of Pi­raeus. It was not comfortable, but it was anonymous.

While they were dining, the U.S. Secretary of State was locked in private conference with the Irish Ambassador to Washington.

“If my meeting with Foreign Minister Rykov is to succeed,” said David Lawrence, “we must have privacy. The discretion must be absolute. Reykjavik in Iceland is too obvi­ous; our base at Keflavik there is like U.S. territory. The meeting has to be on neutral territory. Geneva is full of watching eyes; ditto Stockholm and Vienna. Helsinki, like Iceland, would be too obvious. Ireland is halfway between Moscow and Washington, and you still foster the cult of pri­vacy there.”

That night, coded messages passed between Washington and Dublin. Within twenty-four hours, the government in Dublin had agreed to host the meeting and proposed flight plans for both parties. Within hours, President Matthews’s personal and private letter to President Maxim Rudin was on its way to Ambassador Donaldson in Moscow.

Andrew Drake at his third attempt secured a person-to-per­son conversation with Captain Nikos Thanos. There was by then little doubt in the old Greek’s mind that the young En­glishman wanted something from him, but he gave no hint of curiosity. As usual, Drake bought the coffee and ouzo.

“Captain,” said Drake, “I have a problem, and I think you may be able to help me.”

Thanos raised an eyebrow but studied his coffee.

“Sometime near the end of the month the Sanadria will sail from Piraeus for Istanbul and the Black Sea. I believe you will be calling at Odessa.”

Thanos nodded. “We are due to sail on the thirtieth,” he said, “and yes, we will be discharging cargo at Odessa.”

“I want to go to Odessa,” said Drake. “I must reach Odessa.”

“You are an Englishman,” said Thanos. “There are pack­age tours of Odessa. You could fly there. There are cruises by Soviet liners out of Odessa. You could join one.”

Drake shook his head.

“It’s not as easy as that,” he said. “Captain Thanos, I would not receive a visa for Odessa. My application would be dealt with in Moscow, and I would not be allowed in.”

“And why do you want to go?” asked Thanos with suspi­cion.

“I have a girl in Odessa,” said Drake. “My fiancee. I want to get her out.”

Captain Thanos shook his head with finality. He and his ancestors from Chios had been smuggling in the eastern Med­iterranean since Homer was learning to talk, and he knew that a brisk contraband trade went into and out of Odessa, and that his own crew made a tidy living on the side from bringing such luxury items as nylons, perfume, and leather coats to the black market of the Ukrainian port. But smug­gling people was quite different, and he had no intention of getting involved in that.

“I don’t think you understand,” said Drake. “There’s no question of bringing her out on the Sanadria . Let me ex­plain.”

He produced a photograph of himself and a remarkably pretty girl sitting on the balustrade of the Potemkin Stairway, which links the city with the port. Thanos’s interest revived at once, for the girl was definitely worth looking at.

“I am a graduate in Russian studies of the University of Bradford,” said Drake. “Last year I was an exchange student for six months, and spent those six months at Odessa Univer­sity. That was where I met Larissa. We fell in love. We wanted to get married.”

Like most Greeks, Nikos Thanos prided himself on his ro­mantic nature. Drake was talking his language.

“Why didn’t you?” he asked.

“The Soviet authorities would not let us,” said Drake. “Of course, I wanted to bring Larissa back to England and marry her and settle down. She applied for permission to leave and was turned down. I kept reapplying on her behalf from the London end. No luck. Then, last July, I did as you just sug­gested; I went on a package tour to the Ukraine, through Kiev, Ternopol, and Lvov.”

He flicked open his passport and showed Thanos the date stamps at the Kiev airport.

“She came up to Kiev to see me. We made love. Now she has written to me to say she is having our baby. So now I have to marry her more than ever.”

Captain Thanos also knew the rules. They had applied to his society since time began. He looked again at the photo­graph. He was not to know that the girl was a London lady who had posed in a studio not far from King’s Cross station, nor that the background of the Potemkin Stairway was an en­larged detail from a tourist poster obtained at the London of­fice of Intourist.

“So how are you going to get her out?” he asked.

“Next month,” said Drake, “there is a Soviet liner, the Litva , leaving Odessa with a large party from the Soviet youth movement, the Komsomol, for an off-season educa­tional tour of the Mediterranean.”

Thanos nodded; he knew the Litva well.

“Because I made too many scenes over the matter of Lar­issa, the authorities will not let me back in. Larissa would not normally be allowed to go on this tour. But there is an official in the local branch of the Interior Ministry who likes to live well above his income. He will get her onto that cruise with all her papers in order, and when the ship docks at Venice, I will be waiting for her. But the official wants ten thousand American dollars. I have them, but I have to get the package to her.”

It made perfect sense to Captain Thanos. He knew the level of bureaucratic corruption that was endemic to the southern shore of the Ukraine, Crimea, and Georgia—Com­munism or no Communism. That an official should “arrange” a few documents for enough Western currency to improve his life-style substantially was quite normal.

An hour later the deal was concluded. For a further five thousand dollars Thanos would take Drake on as a temporary deckhand for the duration of the voyage.

“We sail on the thirtieth,” he said, “and we should be in Odessa on the tenth or eleventh. Be at the quay where the Sanadria is berthed by six P.M. on the thirtieth. Wait until the agent’s water clerk has left, then come aboard just before the immigration people.”

Four hours later in Drake’s flat in London, Azamat Krim took Drake’s call from Piraeus giving bun the date that Mishkin and Lazareff needed to know.

It was on the twentieth that President Matthews received Maxim Rudin’s reply. It was a personal letter, as his had been to the Soviet leader. In it Rudin agreed to the secret meeting between David Lawrence and Dmitri Rykov in Ire­land, scheduled for the twenty-fourth.

President Matthews pushed the letter across his desk to Lawrence.

“He’s not wasting time,” he remarked.

“He has no time to waste,” returned the Secretary of State. “Everything is being prepared. I have two men in Dublin now, checking out the arrangements. Our Ambassador to Dub­lin will be meeting the Soviet Ambassador tomorrow, as a result of this letter, to finalize details.”

“Well, David, you know what to do,” said the President.

Azamat Krim’s problem was to be able to post a letter or card to Mishkin from inside the Soviet Union, complete with Russian stamps and written in Russian, without going through the necessary delay in waiting for a visa to be granted to him by the Soviet Consulate in London, which could take up to four weeks. With the help of Drake, he had solved it relatively simply.