The Devil's Alternative

Sir Julian had been lucky; most of the principal experts from the committee lived within a sixty-minute fast- drive ra­dius of Whitehall. Most were caught over dinner at home, none had left for the countryside; two were traced to restau­rants, one to the theater. By nine-thirty the bulk of UNICORNE were seated in conference once again.

Sir Julian explained that their duty now was to assume that the whole affair had passed from the realm of a form of exer­cise and into the major-crisis category.

“We have to assume that Chancellor Busch will agree to delay the release, pending the clarification of certain other matters. If he does, we have to assume the chance that the terrorists will at least activate their first threat, to vent oil cargo from the Freya. Now we have to plan to contain and destroy a possible first slick of twenty thousand tons of crude oil; secondly, to envisage that figure being multiplied fifty-fold.”

The picture that emerged was gloomy. Public indifference over years had led to political neglect; nevertheless, the amounts of crude-oil emulsifier in the hands of the British, and the vehicles for their delivery onto an oil slick, were still greater than those of the rest of Europe combined.

“We have to assume that the main burden of containing the ecological damage will fall to us,” said the man from Warren Springs. “In the Amoco Cadiz affair in 1978, the French refused to accept our help, even though we had better emulsifiers and better delivery systems than they did. Their fishermen paid bitterly for that particular stupidity. The old-fashioned detergent they used instead of our emulsifier concentrates caused as much toxic damage as the oil itself. And they had neither enough of it nor the right delivery sys­tems. It was like trying to kill an octopus with a peashooter.”

“I have no doubt the Germans, Dutch, and Belgians will not hesitate to ask for a joint allied operation in this matter,” said the man from the Foreign Office.

“Then we must be ready,” said Sir Julian. “How much have we got?”

Dr. Henderson from Warren Springs continued.

“The best emulsifier, in concentrated form, will emulsify—that is, break down into minuscule globules that permit natural bacteria to complete the destruction—twenty times its own volume. One gallon of emulsifier for twenty gallons of crude oil. We have one thousand tons in stock.”

“Enough for one slick of twenty thousand tons of crude oil,” observed Sir Julian. “What about a million tons?”

“Not a chance,” said Henderson grimly. “Not a chance in hell. If we start to produce more now, we can manufacture a thousand tons every four days. For a million tons, we’d need fifty thousand tons of emulsifier. Frankly, those maniacs in the black helmets could wipe out most marine life in the North Sea and English Channel, and foul up the beaches from Hull to Cornwall on our side, and Bremen to Ushant on the other.”

There was silence for a while.

“Let’s assume the first slick,” said Sir Julian quietly. “The other is beyond belief.”

The committee agreed to issue immediate orders for the procurement during the night of every ton of emulsifier from the store in Hampshire; to commandeer tanker lorries from the petroleum companies through the Energy Ministry; to bring the whole consignment to the esplanade parking lot at Lowestoft on the east coast; and to get under way and divert to Lowestoft every single marine tug with spray equipment, including the Port of London firefighting vessels and the Royal Navy equivalents. By late morning it was hoped to have the entire flotilla in Lowestoft port, tanking up with emulsifier.

“If the sea remains calm,” said Dr. Henderson, “the slick will drift gently northeast of the Freya on the tide, heading for North Holland, at about two knots. That gives us time. When the tide changes, it should drift back again. But if the wind rises, it might move faster, in any direction, according to the wind, which will overcome the tide at surface level. We should be able to cope with a twenty-thousand ton slick.”

“We can’t move ships into the area five miles round the Freya on three sides, or anywhere between her and the Dutch coast,” the Vice Chief of Defense Staff pointed out.

“But we can watch the slick from the Nimrod,” said the group captain from the RAF. “If it moves out of range of the Freya, your Navy chaps can start squirting.”

“So far, so good, for the threatened twenty-thousand-ton spillage,” said the Foreign Office man. “What happens after that?”

“Nothing,” said Dr. Henderson. “After that, we’re finished, expended.”

“Well, that’s it, then. An enormous administrative task awaits us,” said Sir Julian.

“There is one other option,” said Colonel Holmes of the Royal Marines. “The hard option.”

There was an uncomfortable silence around the table. The vice admiral and the group captain did not share the discom­fort; they were interested. The scientists and bureaucrats were accustomed to technical and administrative problems, their countermeasures and solutions. Each suspected the rawboned colonel in civilian clothes was talking about shooting holes in people.

“You may not like the option,” said Holmes reasonably, “but these terrorists have killed one sailor in cold blood. They may well kill another twenty-nine. The ship costs one hundred seventy million dollars, the cargo one hundred forty million dollars, the clean-up operation treble that. If, for whatever reason, Chancellor Busch cannot or will not release the men in Berlin, we may be left with no alternative but to try to storm the ship and knock off the man with the deto­nator before he can use it.”

“What exactly do you propose, Colonel Holmes?” asked Sir Julian.

“I propose that we ask Major Fallon to drive up from Dor­set and that we listen to him,” said Holmes.

It was agreed, and on that note the meeting adjourned un­til three A.M. It was ten minutes before ten o’clock.

During the meeting, not far away from the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister had received Sir Nigel Irvine.

“That, then, is the position, Sir Nigel,” she concluded. “If we cannot come up with a third alternative, either the men go free and Maxim Rudin tears up the Treaty of Dublin, or they stay in jail and their friends tear up the Freya. In the second case, they might stay their hand and not do it, but we can entertain no hopes of that. It might be possible to storm it, but chances of success are slim. In order to have a chance of perceiving the third alternative, we have to know why Maxim Rudin is taking this course. Is he, for example, over­ playing his hand? Is he trying to bluff the West into sustain­ing enormous economic damage in order to offset his own embarrassment over his grain problems? Will he really go through with his threat? We have to know.”

“How long have you got, Prime Minister? How long has President Matthews got?” asked the Director General of the SIS.

“One must assume, if the hijackers are not released at dawn, we will have to stall the terrorists, play for time. But I would hope to have something for the President by afternoon tomorrow.”

“As a rather long-serving officer, I would have thought that was impossible, ma’am. It is the middle of the night in Mos­cow. The Nightingale is virtually unapproachable, except at meetings planned well ahead. To attempt an instant rendez­vous might well blow that agent sky-high.”

“I know your rules, Sir Nigel, and I understand them. The safety of the agent out in the cold is paramount. But so are matters of state. The destruction of the treaty, or the destruc­tion of the Freya, is a matter of state. The first could jeop­ardize peace for years, perhaps put Yefrem Vishnayev in power, with all its consequences. The financial losses alone sustained by Lloyd’s, and through Lloyd’s the British economy, if the Freya destroyed herself and the North Sea, would be disastrous, not to mention the deaths of the remain­ing twenty-nine seamen. I make no flat order, Sir Nigel. I ask you to put the certain alternatives against the putative hazard to one single Russian agent.”

“Ma’am, I will do what I can. You have my word on it,” said Sir Nigel, and left to return to his headquarters.

From an office in the Defense Ministry, Colonel Holmes was on the telephone to Poole, Dorset, headquarters of the Special Boat Service, or SBS. Major Simon Fallon was found befriending a pint of beer in the officers’ mess and brought to the telephone. The two Marines knew each other well.

“You’ve been following the Freya affair?” asked Holmes from London.

There was a dry chuckle from the other end.

“I thought you’d come shopping here eventually,” said Fallon. “What do they want?”