The Devil's Alternative

“You’re a good fellow, Jahn. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

Squadron Leader Mark Latham stared down the runway, heard his takeoff clearance from the control tower, and nodded to his copilot. The younger man’s gloved hand eased the four throttles slowly open; in the wing roots, four Rolls-Royce Spey engines rose in pitch to push out forty-five thou­sand pounds of thrust, and the Nimrod Mark 2 climbed away from the RAF station at Kinross and turned southeast from Scotland toward the North Sea and the Channel.

What the thirty-one-year-old squadron leader of Coastal Command was flying he knew to be about the best aircraft for submarine and shipping surveillance in the world. With its crew of twelve, improved power plants, performance, and surveillance aids, the Nimrod could either skim the waves at low level, slow and steady, listening on electronic ears to the sounds of underwater movement, or cruise at altitude, hour after hour, two engines shut down for fuel economy, observ­ing an enormous area of ocean beneath it.

Its radars would pick up the slightest movement of a metallic substance down there on the water’s surface; its cameras could photograph by day and night; it was unaf­fected by storm or snow, hail or sleet, fog or wind, light or dark. Its Data Link computers could process the received in­formation, identify what it saw for what it was, and transmit the whole picture, in visual or electronic terms, back to base or to a Royal Navy vessel tapped into the Data Link.

His orders, that sunny spring Friday, were to take up sta­tion fifteen thousand feet above the Freya and keep circling until relieved.

“She’s coming on screen, skipper,” Latham’s radar operator called on the intercom. Back in the hull of the Nimrod, the operator was gazing at his scanner screen, picking out the area of traffic-free water around the Freya on its northern side, watching the large blip move from the periphery toward the center of the screen as they approached.

“Cameras on,” said Latham calmly. In the belly of the Nimrod the f/126 daytime camera swiveled like a gun, spotted the Freya, and locked on. Automatically it adjusted range and focus for maximum definition. Like moles in their blind hull, the crew behind him saw the Freya come onto their picture screen. From now on, the aircraft could fly all over the sky, but the cameras would stay locked on the Freya, adjusting for distance and light changes, swiveling in their housings to compensate for the circling of the Nimrod. Even if the Freya began to move, they would still stay on her, like an unblinking eye, until given fresh orders.

“And transmit,” said Latham.

The Data Link began to send the pictures back to Britain, and thence to London. When the Nimrod was over the Freya, she banked to port, and from his left-hand seat Squadron Leader Latham looked down visually. Behind him and below him, the camera zoomed closer, beating the hu­man eye. It picked out the lone figure of the terrorist in the forepeak, masked face staring upward at the silver swallow three miles above him. It picked out the second terrorist on top of the funnel, and zoomed until his black balaclava filled the screen. The man cradled a submachine carbine in his arms in the sunshine far below.

“There they are, the bastards,” called the camera operator. The Nimrod established a gentle, rate 1 turn above the Freya, went over to automatic pilot, closed down the engine, reduced power to maximum endurance setting on the other two, and began to do its job. It circled, watched and waited, reporting everything back to base. Mark Latham ordered his copilot to take over, unbuckled, and left the flight deck. He went aft to the four-man dining area, visited the toilet, washed his hands, and sat down with a vacuum-heated lunch-box. It was, he reflected, really rather a comfortable way to go to war.

The gleaming Volvo of the police chief of alesund ground up the gravel drive of the timber-construction, ranch- style house at Bogneset, twenty minutes out from the town center, and halted by the rough-stone porch.

Trygve Dabi was a contemporary of Thor Larsen. They had grown up together in alesund, and Dahl had entered the force as a police cadet about the time Larsen had joined the merchant marine. He had known Lisa Larsen since his friend had brought the young bride back from Oslo after their mar­riage. His own children knew Kurt and Kristina, played with them at school, sailed with them in the long summer holi­days.

Damn it, he thought as he climbed out of the Volvo, what the hell do I tell her?

There had been no reply on the telephone, which meant she must be out. The children would be at school. If she was shopping, perhaps she had met someone who had told her al­ready. He rang the bell, and when no one answered, walked around to the back.

Lisa Larsen liked to keep a large vegetable garden, and he found her feeding carrot tops to Kristina’s pet rabbit. She looked up and smiled when she saw him coming around the house.

She doesn’t know, he thought. She pushed the remainder of the carrots through the wire of the cage and came over to him, pulling off her gardening gloves.

“Trygve, how nice to see you. What brings you out of town?”

“Lisa, have you listened to the news this morning on the radio?”

She considered the question.

“I listened to the eight o’clock broadcast over breakfast. I’ve been out here since then, in the garden.”

“You didn’t answer the telephone?”

For the first time a shadow came into her bright brown eyes. The smile faded.

“No. I wouldn’t hear it. Has it been ringing?”

“Look, Lisa, be calm. Something has happened. No, not to the children. To Thor.”

She went pale beneath the honey-colored outdoor tan. Carefully, Trygve Dahl told her what had happened since the small hours of the morning, far to the south off Rotterdam.

“So far as we know, he’s perfectly all right. Nothing has happened to him, and nothing will. The Germans are bound to release these two men, and all will be well.”

She did not cry. She stood quite calmly amid the spring lettuce and said, “I want to go to him.”

The police chief was relieved. He could have expected it of her, but he was relieved. Now he could organize things. He was better at that.

“Harald Wennerstrom’s private jet is due at the airport in twenty minutes,” he said. “I’ll run you there. He called me an hour ago. He thought you might want to go to Rotterdam, to be close. Now, don’t worry about the children. I’m having them picked up from school before they hear from the teach­ers. We’ll look after them; they can stay with us, of course.”

Twenty minutes later she was in the front seat of the car with Dahl, heading quickly back toward alesund. The police chief used his radio to hold the ferry across to the airfield. Just after three-thirty the Jetstream in the silver and ice-blue livery of the Nordia Line howled down the runway, swept out over the waters of the bay, and climbed toward the south.

Since the sixties, and particularly through the seventies, the growing outbreaks of terrorism had caused the formation of a routine procedure on the part of the British government to facilitate the handling of them. The principal procedure is called the crisis management committee.

When the crisis is serious enough to involve numerous de­partments and sections, the committee, grouping liaison of­ficers from all these departments, meets at a central point close to the heart of government to pool information and cor­relate decisions and actions. This central point is a well-pro­tected chamber two floors below the parquet of the Cabinet Office on Whitehall and a few steps across the lawn from 10 Downing Street. In this room meets the United Cabinet Office Review Group (National Emergency), or UNICORNE.

Surrounding the main meeting room are smaller offices; a separate telephone switchboard, linking UNICORNE with ev­ery department of state through direct lines that cannot be in­terfered with; a teleprinter room fitted with the printers of the main news agencies; a telex room and radio room; and a room for secretaries with typewriters and copiers. There is even a small kitchen where a trusted attendant prepares coffee and light snacks.

The men who grouped under the chairmanship of Cabinet Secretary Sir Julian Flannery just after noon that Friday represented all the departments he adjudged might conceiv­ably be involved.

At this stage, no cabinet ministers were present, though each had sent a representative of at least assistant under secretary level. These included the Foreign Office, Home Of­fice, Defense Ministry, and the departments of the Environ­ment, Trade and Industry, Agriculture and Fisheries, and Energy.