Frederick Forsyth - The Devil's Alternative

Mishkin stared ahead at the banks of steel-gray winter clouds. He had never been in an airplane before, but what the captain said made sense.

“Very well,” he said, “break silence and tell Tempelhof you are coming in. No requests, just a flat statement.”

Captain Rudenko was playing his last card. He leaned for­ward, adjusted the channel selection dial, and began to speak.

“Tempelhof, West Berlin. Tempelhof, West Berlin. This is Aeroflot flight three-five-one. ...”

He was speaking in English, the international language of air traffic control. Mishkin and Lazareff knew almost none of it, apart from what they had picked up on broadcasts in Ukrainian from the West. Mishkin jabbed his gun into Rudenko’s neck.

“No tricks,” he said in Ukrainian.

In the control tower at East Berlin’s Schonefeld Airport, the two controllers looked at each other in amazement. They were being called on their own frequency but being addressed as Tempelhof. No Aeroflot plane would dream of landing in West Berlin—apart from which, Tempelhof had not been West Berlin’s civil airport for ten years. Tempelhof had revert­ed to a U.S. Air Force base when Tegel took over as the civil airport. One of the East Germans, faster than the other, snatched the microphone.

“Tempelhof to Aeroflot three-five-one, you are cleared to land. Straight run-in,” he said. In the airliner Captain Rudenko swallowed hard and lowered flaps and undercar­riage. The Tupolev let down rapidly to the main airport of Communist East Germany. They broke cloud at a thousand feet and saw the landing lights ahead of them. At five hundred feet Mishkin peered suspiciously through the stream­ing perspex. He had heard of West Berlin, of brilliant lights, packed streets, teeming crowds of shoppers up the Kurfurstendamm, and Tempelhof Airport right in the heart of it all. This airport was right out in the countryside.

“It’s a trick,” he yelled at Lazareff, “it’s the East!” He jabbed his gun into Captain Rudenko’s neck. “Pull out,” he screamed, “pull out or I’ll shoot!”

The Ukrainian captain gritted his teeth and held course for the last hundred meters. Mishkin reached over his shoulder and tried to haul back on the control column. The twin booms, when they came, were so close together that it was impossible to tell which came first. Mishkin claimed the thump of the wheels hitting the tarmac caused the gun to go off; copilot Vatutin maintained Mishkin had fired first. It was too confused for a final and definitive version ever to be es­tablished.

The bullet tore a gaping hole in the neck of Captain Rudenko and killed him instantly. There was blue smoke in the flight deck, Vatutin hauling back on the stick, yelling to his engineer for more power. The jet engines screamed a mite louder than the passengers as the Tupelov, heavy as a wet loaf, bounced twice more on the tarmac, then lifted into the air, rolling, struggling for lift. Vatutin held her, nose high, wallowing, praying for more engine power, as the outer suburbs of East Berlin blurred past beneath them, followed by the Berlin Wall itself.

When the Tupolev came over the perimeter of Tempelhof, it cleared the nearest houses by six feet.

White-faced, the young copilot hammered the plane onto the main runway with Lazareff’s gun in his back. Mishkin held the red-soaked body of Captain Rudenko from falling across the control column. The Tupolev finally came to rest three quarters down the runway, still on all its wheels.

Staff Sergeant Leroy Coker was a patriotic man. He sat huddled against the cold at the wheel of his Security Police Jeep, his fur-trimmed parka drawn tight around the edges of his face, and he thought longingly of the warmth of Ala­bama. But he was on guard duty, and he took it seriously.

When the incoming airliner lurched over the houses be­yond the perimeter fence, engines howling, undercarriage and flaps hanging, he let out a “What the sheee-yit!” and sat bolt upright. He had never been to Russia, nor even across to the East, but he had read all about them over there. He did not know much about the Cold War, but he well knew that an at­tack by the Communists was always imminent unless men like Leroy Coker kept on their guard. He also knew a red star when he saw one, and a hammer and sickle.

When the airliner slithered to a stop, he unslung his car­bine, took a bead, and blew the nosewheel tires out.

Mishkin and Lazareff surrendered three hours later. Their intent had been to keep the crew, release the passengers, take on board three notables from West Berlin, and be flown to Tel Aviv. But a new nosewheel for a Tupolev was out of the question; the Russians would never supply one. And when the news of the killing of Rudenko was made known to the USAF base authorities, they refused to supply a plane of their own. Marksmen ringed the Tupolev; there was no way the two men could herd the others, even at gunpoint, to an alternative aircraft. The sharpshooters would have cut them down. After an hour’s talk with the base commander, they walked out with their hands in the air.

That night, they were formally handed over to the West Berlin authorities for imprisonment and trial.

THE SOVIET AMBASSADOR to Washington was coldly angry when he faced David Lawrence at the State Department on January 2.

The American Secretary of State was receiving him at the Soviet government’s request, though insistence would have been a better word.

The Ambassador read his formal protest in a flat mono­tone. When he had finished, he laid the text on the Ameri­can’s desk. Lawrence, who had known exactly what it would be, had an answer ready, prepared by his legal counselors, three of whom stood flanking him behind his chair.

He conceded that West Berlin was indeed not sovereign territory, but a city under Four Power occupation. Neverthe­less, the Western Allies had long conceded that in matters of jurisprudence the West Berlin authorities should handle all criminal and civil offenses other than those falling within the ambit of the purely military laws of the Western Allies. The hijacking of the airliner, he continued, while a terrible of­fense, was not committed by U.S. citizens against U.S. cit­izens or within the U.S. air base of Tempelhof. It was therefore an affair within civil jurisprudence. In consequence, the United States government maintained, it could not legally have held non-U.S. nationals or non-U.S. material witnesses within the territory of West Berlin, even though the airliner had come to rest on a USAF air base.

He had no recourse, therefore, but to reject the Soviet pro­test.

The Ambassador heard him out in stony silence. He re­joined that he could not accept the American explanation, and rejected it. He would report back to his government in that vein. On this note, he left, to return to his embassy and report to Moscow.

In a small flat in Bayswater, London, three men sat that day and stared at the tangle of newspapers strewn on the floor around them.

“A disaster,” snapped Andrew Drake, “a bloody disaster. By now they should have been in Israel. Within a month they’d have been released and could have given their press conference. What the hell did they have to shoot the captain for?”

“If he was landing at Schonefeld and refused to fly into West Berlin, they were finished, anyway,” observed Azamat Krim.

“They could have clubbed him,” snorted Drake.

“Heat of the moment,” said Kaminsky. “What do we do now?”

“Can those handguns be traced?” asked Drake of Krim.

The small Tatar shook his head.

“To the shop that sold them, perhaps,” he said. “Not to me. I didn’t have to identify myself.”

Drake paced the carpet, deep in thought.

“I don’t think they’ll be extradited back,” he said at length. “The Soviets want them now for hijacking, shooting Rudenko, hitting the KGB man on board, and of course the other one they took the identity card from. But the killing of the captain is the serious offense. Still, I don’t think a West German government will send two Jews back for execution. On the other hand, they’ll be tried and convicted. Probably sentenced to life. Miroslav, will they open their mouths about Ivanenko?”