Frederick Forsyth - The Devil's Alternative

“I suppose we should have expected it,” said the President wearily, “but that makes it no easier to take.”

“Do you think he’ll really do it, whoever he is?” asked Secretary of State David Lawrence.

“He’s done everything else he’s promised so far, damn him,” replied Stanislaw Poklewski.

“I assume Mishkin and Lazareff are under extra-heavy guard in Tegel,” said Lawrence.

“They’re not in Tegel anymore,” replied Benson. “They were moved just before midnight, Berlin time, to Moabit. It’s more modern and more secure.”

“How do you know, Bob?” asked Poklewski.

“I’ve had Tegel and Moabit under surveillance since the Freya’s noon broadcast,” said Benson.

Lawrence, the old-style diplomat, looked exasperated.

“Is it the new policy to spy even on our allies?” he snapped.

“Not quite,” replied Benson. “We’ve always done it.”

“Why the change of jail, Bob?” asked Matthews. “Does Dietrich Busch think the Russians would try to get at Mishkin and Lazareff?”

“No, Mr. President He thinks I will,” said Benson.

“There seems to me a possibility here that maybe we hadn’t thought of,” interposed Poklewski. “If the terrorists on the Freya go ahead and vent twenty thousand tons of crude, and, say, threaten to vent a further fifty thousand tons later in the day, the pressures on Busch could become over­whelming. ...”

“No doubt they will,” observed Lawrence.

“What I mean is, Busch might simply decide to go it alone and release the hijackers unilaterally. Remember, he doesn’t know that the price of such an action would be the destruc­tion of the Treaty of Dublin.”

There was silence for several seconds.

“There’s nothing I can do to stop him,” said President Matthews quietly.

“There is, actually,” said Benson. He had the instant atten­tion of the other three. When he described what it was, the faces of Matthews, Lawrence, and Poklewski showed disgust.

“I couldn’t give that order,” said the President.

“It’s a pretty terrible thing to do,” agreed Benson, “but it’s the only way to preempt Chancellor Busch. And we will know if he tries to make secret plans to release the pair pre­maturely. Never mind how; we will know. Let’s face it; the alternative would be the destruction of the treaty, and the consequences in terms of a resumed arms race that this must bring. If the treaty is destroyed, presumably we will not go ahead with the grain shipments to Russia. In that event, Rudin may fall. ...”

“Which makes his reaction over this business so crazy,” Lawrence pointed out.

“Maybe so, but that is his reaction, and until we know why, we can’t judge how crazy he is,” Benson resumed. “Un­til we do know, Chancellor Busch’s private knowledge of the proposal I have just made should hold him in check awhile longer.”

“You mean we could just use it as something to hold over Busch’s head?” asked Matthews hopefully. “We might never actually have to do it?”

At that moment a personal message arrived for the President from Prime Minister Carpenter in London.

“That’s some woman,” he said when he had read it. “The British think they can cope with the first oil slick of twenty thousand tons, but no more. They’re preparing a plan to storm the Freya with specialist frogmen after sundown and silence the man with the detonator. They give themselves a better than even chance.”

“So we only have to hold the German Chancellor in line for another twelve hours,” said Benson. “Mr. President, I urge you to order what I have just proposed. The chances are it will never have to be activated.”

“But if it must be, Bob? If it must be?”

“Then it must be.”

William Matthews placed the palms of his hands over his face and rubbed tired eyes with his fingertips.

“Dear God, no man should be asked to give orders like that,” he said. “But if it must ... Bob, give the order.”

The sun was just clear of the horizon, away to the east over the Dutch coast. On the afterdeck of the cruiser Argyll , now turned broadside to where the Freya lay, Major Fallon stood and looked down at the three fast assault craft tethered to her lee side. From the lookout on the Freda’s funnel top, all three would be out of vision. So, too, the activity on their decks, where Fallon’s team of Marine commandos were preparing their kayaks and unpacking their unusual pieces of equip­ment. It was a bright, clear sunrise, giving promise of another warm and sunny day. The sea was a flat calm. Fallon was joined by the Argyll’s skipper, Captain Richard Preston.

They stood side by side, looking down at the three sleek sea greyhounds that had brought the men and equipment from Poole in eight hours. The boats rocked in the swell of a warship passing several cables to the west of them. Fallon looked up.

“Who’s that?” he asked, nodding toward the gray warship flying the Stars and Stripes that was moving to the south.

“The American Navy has sent an observer,” said Captain Preston. “The U.S.S. Moran . She’ll take up station between us and the Montcalm .” He glanced at his watch. “Seven-thirty. Breakfast is being served in the wardroom, if you’d care to join us.”

It was seven-fifty when there was a knock at the door of the cabin of Captain Michael Manning, commanding the Moran.

She was at anchor after her race through the night, and Manning, who’d been on the bridge throughout the night, was running a razor over the stubble on his chin. When the radio­man entered. Manning took the proffered message and gave it a glance, still shaving. He stopped and turned to the sailor.

“It’s still in code,” he said.

“Yes, sir. It’s tagged for your eyes only, sir.”

Manning dismissed the man, went to his wall safe and took out his personal decoder. Such an occurrence was unusual, but not unheard of. He began to run a pencil down columns of figures, seeking the groups on the message in front of him and their corresponding letter combinations. When he had finished decoding, he just sat at his table and stared at the message, searching for any error. He rechecked the beginning of the message, hoping it was a practical joke. But there was no joke. It was for him, via STANFORLANT through the Navy Department, Washington. And it was a presidential or­der, personal to him from the Commander in Chief, U.S. Armed Forces, White House, Washington.

“He can’t ask me to do that,” he breathed. “No man can ask a sailor to do that.”

But the message did, and it was unequivocal: “In the event the West German government seeks to release the hijackers in Berlin unilaterally, the U.S.S. Moran is to sink the super­tanker Freya by shellfire, using all possible measures to ignite cargo and minimize environmental damage. This action will be taken on receipt by U.S.S. Moran of the signal THUNDERBOLT repeat THUNDERBOLT. Destroy message.”

Mike Manning was forty-three years old, married, with four children who lived with their mother outside Norfolk, Virginia. He had been an officer in the United States Navy for twenty-one years and had never yet thought to question a superior’s order.

He walked to the porthole and looked across the five miles of ocean to the low outline between himself and the climbing sun. He thought of his magnesium-based starshells slamming into her unprotected skin, penetrating the volatile crude oil beneath. He thought of twenty-eight men, crouched deep beneath the waterline, eighty feet beneath the waves, in a steel coffin, waiting for rescue, thinking of their own families. He crumpled the paper in his hand.