The Devil's Alternative

hands, pointed straight at the target, and called on the room’s occu­pant to freeze.

Hirsch was a Sabra, born in Israel thirty-four years earlier, the son of two immigrants who had survived the death camps of the Third Reich. Around the house in his childhood the language spoken was always Yiddish or Russian, for both his parents were Russian Jews.

He supposed the man in front of him was Russian; he had no reason to think otherwise. So he called to him in Russian. “Stoi. ...” His voice echoed through the small bedroom.

Miroslav Kaminsky was standing by the bed, the telephone directory in his hand. When the door crashed open, he dropped the book, which closed, preventing any searcher from seeing which page it had been open at, or what number he might have called.

When the cry came, he did not see a hotel bedroom out­side Tel Aviv; he saw a small farmhouse in the foothills of the Carpathians, heard again the shouts of the men with the green insignia closing in on the hideaway of his group. He looked at Avram Hirsch, took in the flash of green from his peaked cap and uniform, and began to move toward the open window.

He could hear them again, coming at him through the bushes shouting their endless cry: “Stoi. ... Stoi. ... Stoi. ...” There was nothing to do but run, run like a fox with the hounds behind him, out through the back door of the farmhouse and into the undergrowth.

He was running backward, through the open glass door to the tiny balcony, when the balcony rail caught him in the small of the back and flipped him over. When he hit the parking lot fifty feet below, his back, pelvis, and skull were shattered. From over the balcony rail, Avram Hirsch looked down at the broken body and muttered to Detective Con­stable Bentsur:

“What the hell did he do that for?”

The service aircraft that had brought the two specialists to Gatow from Britain the previous evening returned westward soon after the takeoff of the Dominie from Berlin for Tel Aviv. Adam Munro hitched a lift on it, but used his clear­ance from the Cabinet Office to require that it drop him off at Amsterdam before going on to England.

He had also ensured that the Wessex helicopter from the Argyll would be at Schiphol to meet him. It was half past four when the Wessex settled back onto the afterdeck of the missile cruiser. The officer who welcomed him aboard glanced with evident disapproval at his appearance, but took him to meet Captain Preston.

All the Navy officer knew was that his visitor was from the Foreign Office and had been in Berlin supervising the depar­ture of the hijackers to Israel.

“Care for a wash and brush-up?” he asked.

“Love one,” said Munro. “Any news of the Dominie?”

“Landed fifteen minutes ago at Ben-Gurion,” said Captain Preston. “I could have my steward press your suit, and I’m sure we could find you a shirt that fits.”

“I’d prefer a nice thick sweater,” said Munro. “It’s turned damn cold out there.”

“Yes, that may prove a bit of a problem,” said Captain Preston. “There’s a belt of cold air moving down from Norway. We could get a spot of sea mist this evening.”

The sea mist, when it descended just after five o’clock, was a rolling bank of fog that drifted out of the north as the cold air followed the heat wave and came in contact with the warm land and sea.

When Adam Munro, washed, shaved, and dressed in bor­rowed thick white Navy sweater and black serge trousers, joined Captain Preston on the bridge just after five, the fog was thickening.

“Damn and blast!” said Preston. “These terrorists seem to be having everything their own way.”

By half past five the fog had blotted out the Freya from vision, and swirled around the stationary warships, none of which could see each other except on radar. The circling Nimrod above could see them all, and the Freya, on its ra­dar, and was still flying in clear air at fifteen thousand feet. But the sea itself had vanished in a blanket of gray cotton. Just after five the tide turned again and began to move back to the northeast, bearing the drifting oil slick with it, some­where between the Freya and the Dutch shore.

The BBC correspondent in Jerusalem was a staffer of long experience in the Israeli capital and had many and good con­tacts. As soon as he learned of the telephone call his secre­tary had taken, he called a friend in one of the security services.

“That’s the message,” he said, “and I’m going to send it to London right now. But I haven’t a clue who telephoned it.”

There was a grunt at the other end.

“Send the message,” said the security man. “As to the man on the telephone, we know. And thanks.”

It was just after four-thirty when the news flash was broad­cast on the Freya that Mishkin and Lazareff had landed at Ben-Gurion.

Andrew Drake threw himself back in his chair with a shout.

“We’ve done it!” he yelled at Thor Larsen. “They’re in Is­rael!”

Larsen nodded slowly. He was trying to close his mind to the steady agony from his wounded hand.

“Congratulations,” he said sardonically. “Now perhaps you can leave my ship and go to hell.”

The telephone from the bridge rang. There was a rapid exchange in Ukrainian, and Larsen heard a whoop of joy from the other end.

“Sooner than you think,” said Drake. “The lookout on the funnel reports a thick bank of fog moving toward the whole area from the north. With luck we won’t even have to wait until dark. The fog will be even better for our purpose. But when we do leave, I’m afraid I’ll have to handcuff you to the table leg. The Navy will rescue you in a couple of hours.”

At five o’clock the main newscast brought a dispatch from Tel Aviv to the effect that the demands of the hijackers of the Freya in the matter of the reception at Ben-Gurion Air­port of Mishkin and Lazareff had been abided by. Mean­while, the Israeli government would keep the two from Berlin in custody until the Freya was released, safe and unharmed. In the event that she was not, the Israeli government would regard its pledges to the terrorists as null and void, and re­turn Mishkin and Lazareff to jail.

In the day cabin on the Freya, Drake laughed.

“They won’t need to,” he told Larsen. “I don’t care what happens to me now. In twenty-four hours those two men are going to hold an international press conference. And when they do, Captain Larsen, when they do, they are going to blow the biggest hole ever made in the walls of the Kremlin.”

Larsen looked out of the windows at the thickening mist.

“The commandos might use this fog to storm the Freya,” he said. “Your lights would be of no use. In a few minutes you won’t be able to see any bubbles from frogmen under­water.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” said Drake. “Nothing matters anymore. Only that Mishkin and Lazareff get their chance to speak. That was what it was all about. That is what makes it all worthwhile.”

The two Jewish-Ukrainians had been taken from Ben-Gurion Airport in a police van to the central police station in Tel Aviv and locked in separate cells. Prime Minister Golen was prepared to abide by his part of the bargain—the exchange of the two men for the safety of the Freya, her crew, and her cargo. But he was not prepared to have Svoboda trick him.

For Mishkin and Lazareff it was the third cell in a day, but both knew it would be the last. As they parted in the cor­ridor, Mishkin winked at his friend and called in Ukrainian, “Not next year in Jerusalem—but tomorrow.”

From an office upstairs, the chief superintendent in charge of the station made a routine call to the police doctor to give the pair a medical examination, and the doctor promised to come at once. It was half past seven Tel Aviv time.

The last thirty minutes before six o’clock dragged by like years on the Freya. In the day cabin, Drake had tuned his ra­dio to the BBC World Service and listened impatiently for the six o’clock