The Devil's Alternative

muted as a roaring invaded his ears. His hand closed around the head of the doll, crushing, cracking, splintering the smiling pink face beneath the lace cap. A salesgirl appeared rapidly at his side.

“You’ve broken it,” she said. That will be four rubles.”

Compared with the whirlwind of public and media concern that had concentrated on the West German Chancellor the previous afternoon, the recriminations that poured upon Bonn that Saturday morning were more like a hurricane.

The Foreign Ministry received a continual stream of re­quests couched in the most urgent terms from the embassies of Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Holland, and Belgium, asking that their ambassadors be received. Each wish was granted, and each ambassador asked in the courteous phraseology of diplomacy the same question: What the hell is going on?

Newspapers, television, and radio operations called in all their staffers from weekend leave and tried to give the affair saturation coverage, which was not easy. There were no pic­tures of the Freya since the hijacking, save those taken by the French free-lance, who was under arrest and his pictures con­fiscated. In fact the same pictures were under study in Paris, but the shots from the successive Nimrods were just as good, and the French government was receiving them, anyway.

For lack of hard news, the papers hunted anything they could go for. Two enterprising Englishmen bribed the Hilton Hotel staff in Rotterdam to lend them their uniforms, and tried to reach the penthouse suite where Harry Wennerstrom and Lisa Larsen were under siege.

Others sought out former prime ministers, cabinet office­holders, and tanker captains for their views. Extraordinary sums were waved in the faces of the wives of the crewmen, almost all of whom had been traced, to be photographed praying for their husbands’ deliverance.

One former mercenary commander offered to storm the Freya alone for a million- dollar fee; four archbishops and seventeen parliamentarians of varying persuasions and ambi­tions offered themselves as hostages in exchange for Captain Larsen and his crew.

“Separately, or in job lots?” snapped Dietrich Busch when he was informed. “I wish William Matthews were on board instead of those good sailors. I’d hold out till Christmas.”

By midmorning, the leaks to the two German stars of press and radio were beginning to have their effect. Their respec­tive comments on German radio and television were picked up by the news agencies and Germany-based correspondents and given wider coverage. The view began to percolate that Dietrich Busch had in fact been acting in the hours before dawn under massive American pressure.

Bonn declined to confirm this, but refused to deny it, ei­ther. The sheer evasiveness of the government spokesman there told the press its own story.

As dawn broke over Washington, five hours behind Eu­rope, the emphasis switched to the White House. By six A.M. in Washington the White House press corps was clamoring for an interview with the President himself. They had to be satisfied, but were not, with a harassed and evasive official spokesman. The spokesman was evasive only because he did not know what to say; his repeated appeals to the Oval Office brought only further instructions that he tell the newshounds the matter was a European affair and the Europeans must do as they thought best. Which threw the affair back into the lap of an increasingly outraged German Chancellor.

“How much longer can this go on?” shouted a thoroughly shaken William Matthews to his advisers as he pushed away a plate of scrambled eggs just after six A.M. Washington time.

The same question was being asked, but not answered, in a score of offices across America and Europe that unquiet Sat­urday morning.

From his office in Texas, the owner of the one million tons of Mubarraq crude lying dormant but dangerous beneath the Freya’s deck was on the line to Washington.

“I don’t care what the hell time of the morning it is,” he shouted to the party campaign manager’s secretary. “You get him on the line and tell him this is Clint Blake, you hear?”

When the campaign manager of the political party to which the President belonged finally came on the line, he was not a happy man. When he put the receiver back in its cradle, he was downright morose. A man who all but controls more than a hundred delegates to the national convention is no small potatoes, and Clint Blake’s threat to do a John Connelly and switch parties was no joke.

It seemed to matter little to Blake that the cargo was fully insured against loss by Lloyd’s. He was one very angry Texan that morning.

Harry Wennerstrom was on the line most of the morning to Stockholm, calling every one of his friends and contacts in shipping, banking, and government to bring pressure on the Swedish Premier. The pressure was effective, and it was passed on to Bonn.

In London, the chairman of Lloyd’s, Sir Murray Kelso, found the Permanent Under Secretary to the Department of the Environment still at his desk in Whitehall. Saturday is not normally a day when the senior members of Britain’s civil service are to be found at their desks, but this was no normal Saturday. Sir Rupert Mossbank had driven hastily back from his country home before dawn when the news came from Downing Street that Mishkin and Lazareff were not to be re­leased. He showed his visitor to a chair.

“Damnable business,” said Sir Murray.

“Perfectly appalling,” agreed Sir Rupert.

He preferred the Butter Osbornes, and the two knights sipped their tea.

“The thing is,” said Sir Murray at length, “the sums in­volved are really quite vast. Close to a billion dollars. Even if the victim countries of the oil spillage if the Freya blows up were to sue West Germany rather than us, we’d still have to carry the loss of the ship, cargo, and crew. That’s about four hundred million dollars.”

“You’d be able to cover it, of course,” said Sir Rupert anx­iously. Lloyd’s was more than just a company, it was an insti­tution, and as Sir Rupert’s department covered merchant shipping, he was concerned.

“Oh, yes, we would cover it. Have to,” said Sir Murray. “Thing is, it’s such a sum it would have to be reflected in the country’s invisible earnings for the year. Probably tip the bal­ance, actually. And what with the new application for an­other International Monetary Fund Loan ...”

“It’s a German question, you know,” said Mossbank. “Not really up to us.”

“Nevertheless, one might press the Germans a bit over this one. Hijackers are bastards, of course, but in this case, why not just let those two blighters in Berlin go? Good riddance to them.”

“Leave it to me,” said Mossbank. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Privately, he knew he could do nothing. The confidential file locked in his safe told him Major Fallon was going in by kayak in eleven hours, and until then the Prime Minister’s or­ders were that the line had to hold.

Chancellor Dietrich Busch received the news of the intended underwater attack in a midmorning face-to-face interview with the British Ambassador. He was slightly mollified.

“So that’s what it’s all about,” he said when he had exam­ined the plan unfolded before him. “Why could I not have been told of this before?”

“We were not sure whether it would work before,” said the Ambassador smoothly. Those were his instructions. “We were working on it through the afternoon of yesterday and last night. By dawn we were certain it was perfectly feasible.”

“What chance of success do you give yourselves?” asked Dietrich Busch.

The Ambassador cleared his throat.

“We estimate the odds at three to one in our favor,” he said. “The sun sets at seven-thirty. Darkness is complete by nine. The men are going in at ten tonight.”

The Chancellor looked at his watch. Twelve hours to go. If the British tried and succeeded, much of the credit would go to their frogmen, but much also to him for keeping his nerve. If they failed, theirs would be the responsibility.

“So it all depends now on this Major Fallon. Very well, Ambassador, I will continue to play my part until ten tonight.”

Apart from her batteries of guided missiles, the U.S.S. Moran was armed with two five-inch Mark 45 naval guns, one for­ward, one aft. They were of the most modern type available, radar-aimed and