The Devil's Alternative

Rover.

“Mr. Munro?”

“Yes.” Munro produced his identification, which the Air Force officer scanned closely.

“There are two gentlemen waiting to see you in the mess, sir.”

The two gentlemen could, if challenged, have proved that they were low-grade civil servants attached to the Ministry of Defense. What neither would have cared to concede was that they were concerned with experimental work in a very se­cluded laboratory, whose findings, when such were made, went immediately into a top-secret classification.

Both men were neatly dressed and carried attache cases. One wore rimless glasses and had medical qualifications, or had had until he and the profession of Hippocrates had parted company. The other was his subordinate, a former male nurse.

“You have the equipment I asked for?” asked Munro with­out preamble.

For an answer, the senior man opened his attache case and extracted a flat box no larger than a cigar case. He opened it and showed Munro what nestled on a bed of cotton inside.

“Ten hours,” he said. “No more.”

“That’s tight,” said Munro. “Very tight.”

It was seven-thirty on a bright, sunny morning.

The Nimrod from Coastal Command still turned and turned fifteen thousand feet above the Freya. Apart from observing the tanker, its duties also included that of watching the oil slick of the previous noon. The gigantic stain was still moving sluggishly on the face of the water, still out of range of the emulsifier-spraying tugs, which were not allowed to enter the area immediately around the Freya herself.

After spillage the slick had drifted gently northeast of the tanker on the one-knot tide toward the northern coast of Holland. But during the night it had halted, the tide had moved to the ebb, and the light breeze had shifted several points. Be­fore dawn the slick had come back, until it had passed the Freya and lay just south of her, two miles away from her side in the direction of Holland and Belgium.

On the tugs and firefighting ships, each loaded with its maximum capacity of emulsifier concentrate, the scientists from Warren Springs prayed the sea would stay calm and the wind light until they could move into operation. A sudden change in wind, a deterioration in the weather, and the giant slick could break up, driven before the storm toward the beaches either of Europe or of Britain.

Meteorologists in Britain and Europe watched with appre­hension the approach of a cold front coming down from the Denmark Strait, bringing cold air to dispel the unseasonable heat wave, and possibly wind and rain. Twenty-four hours of squalls would shatter the calm sea and make the slick uncon­trollable. The ecologists prayed the descending cold snap would bring no more than a sea fog.

On the Freya, as the minutes to eight o’clock ticked away, nerves became even more strained and taut. Andrew Drake, supported by two men with submachine guns to prevent an­other attack from the Norwegian skipper, had allowed Cap­tain Larsen to use his own first-aid box on his hand. Gray-faced with pain, the captain had plucked from the pulped meat of his palm such pieces of glass and plastic as he could, then bandaged the hand and placed it in a rough sling around his neck. Drake watched him from across the cabin, a small adhesive plaster covering the cut on his forehead.

“You’re a brave man, Thor Larsen, I’ll say that for you,” he said. “But nothing has changed. I can still vent every ton of oil on this ship with her own pumps, and before I’m half­way through, the Navy out there will open fire on her and complete the job. If the Germans renege again on their promise, that’s just what I’ll do at nine.”

At precisely seven-thirty the journalists outside Moabit Prison were rewarded for their vigil. The double gates on Klein Moabit Strasse opened for the first time, and the nose of a blank-sided armored van appeared. From apartment windows across the road, the photographers got what pictures they could, which were not very many, and the stream of press cars started up, to follow the van wherever it would go.

Simultaneously, television remote-broadcast units rolled their cameras, and radio reporters chattered excitedly into their microphones. Even as they spoke, their words went straight to the various capital cities from which they hailed, including that of the BBC man. His voice echoed into the day cabin of the Freya, where Andrew Drake, who had started it all, sat listening to his radio.

“They’re on their way,” he said with satisfaction. “Not long to wait now. Time to tell them the final details of their reception in Tel Aviv.”

He left for the bridge; two men remained to cover the Freya’s captain, slumped in his chair at the table, struggling with an exhausted brain against the waves of pain from his bleeding and broken hand.

The armored van, preceded by motorcycle outriders with howling sirens, swept through the twelve-foot-high steel-mesh gates of the British base at Gatow, and the pole barrier de­scended fast as the first car bulging with newsmen tried to follow it through. The car stopped with a squeal of tires. The double gates swung to. Within minutes a crowd of protesting reporters and photographers were at the wire clamoring for admittance.

Gatow contains not only an air base; it has an Army unit as well, and the commandant was an Army brigadier. The men on the gate were from the Military Police, four giants with red-topped caps, peaked down to the bridge of the nose, immovable and immune.

“You cannot do this.” yelled an outraged photographer from Der Spiegel. “We demand to see the prisoners take off.”

“That’s all right, Fritz,” said Staff Sergeant Brian Farrow comfortably. “I’ve got my orders.”

Reporters rushed to public telephones to complain to their editors. They complained to the Governing Mayor, who sym­pathized earnestly and promised to contact the base com­mander at Gatow immediately. When the phone was quiet, he leaned back and lit a cigar.

Inside the base, Adam Munro, accompanied by the wing commander in charge of aircraft maintenance, walked into the hangar where the Dominie stood.

“How is she?” Munro asked of the warrant officer (techni­cal) in charge of the fitters and riggers.

“Hundred percent, sir,” said the veteran mechanic.

“No, she’s not,” said Munro. “I think if you look under one of the engine cowlings, you’ll find an electrical malfunc­tion that needs quite a bit of attention.”

The warrant officer looked at the stranger in amazement, then across to his superior officer.

“Do as he says, Mr. Barker,” said the wing commander. “There has to be a technical delay. The Dominie must not be ready for takeoff for a while. But the German authorities must believe the malfunction is genuine. Open her up and get to work.”

Warrant Officer James Barker had spent thirty years maintaining aircraft for the Royal Air Force. Wing com­ manders’ orders were not to be disobeyed, even if they did originate with a scruffy civilian who ought to be ashamed of the way he was dressed, not to mention that he badly needed a shave.

The prison governor, Alois Bruckner, had arrived in his own car to witness the handover of his prisoners to the British, and their takeoff for Israel. When he heard the air­craft was not yet ready, he was incensed and demanded to see it for himself.

He arrived in the hangar, escorted by the RAF base com­mander, to find Warrant Officer Barker head and shoulders into the starboard engine of the Dominie.

“What is the matter?” he asked in exasperation.

Warrant Officer Barker pulled his head out.

“Electrical short circuit, sir,” he told the official. “Spotted it during a test run of the engines just now. Shouldn’t be too long.”

“These men must take off at eight o’clock, in ten minutes’ time,” said the German. “At nine o’clock the terrorists on the Freya are going to vent a hundred thousand tons of oil.”

“Doing my best, sir. Now, if I could just get on with my job?” said the warrant officer.

The base commander steered Herr Bruckner out of the hangar. He had no idea what the orders from London meant, either, but orders they were, and he intended to obey them.