The Devil's Alternative (25 page)

“But we don’t have them,” said Kerensky, “and are not likely to. The KGB will get them first.” “Probably, but we have to try,” said Vishnayev. “Let’s be plain about this, Nikolai. We are not

fighting for the control of the Soviet Union anymore. We are fighting for our lives, like Rudin and Petrov. First the wheat, now Ivanenko. One more scandal, Nikolai, one more. Whoever is responsible—let me make that clear, whoever is responsible—Rudin will fall. There must be one more scandal. We must ensure that there is.”

Thor Larsen, dressed in overalls and a safety helmet, stood on a gantry crane high above the dry dock at the center of the Ishikawajima-Harima shipyard and gazed down at the mass of the vessel that would one day be the
Freya.

Even three days after his first sight, the size of her took his breath away. In his apprenticeship days, tankers had never gone beyond 30,000 tons, and it was not until 1956 that the world’s first over that tonnage took the sea. They had to create a new class for such vessels, and called them supertankers. When someone broke the 50,000-ton ceiling, there was another new class, the VLCC, or Very Large Crude Carrier. As the 200,000-ton barrier was broken in the late sixties, the new class of Ultra Large Crude Carrier, or ULCC, came into being.

Once, at sea, Larsen had seen one of the French leviathans, weighing in at 550,000 tons, move past him. His crew had poured out on deck to watch her. What lay below him now was twice that size. As Wennerstrom had said, the world had never seen the like of her, nor ever would again.

She was 515 meters long, or 1,689 feet, or ten city blocks. She was 90 meters broad, or 295 feet from scupper to scupper, and her superstructure reared five stories into the air above her deck. Far below what he could see of her deck area, her keel plunged 36 meters, or 118 feet, toward the floor of the dry dock. Each of her sixty holds was bigger than a neighborhood cinema. Deep in her bowels below the superstructure, the four steam turbines mustering a total of 90,000 shaft horsepower were already installed, ready to drive her twin screws, whose 40-foot-diameter bronze propellers could be vaguely seen glinting below her stern.

From end to end she teemed with antlike figures, the workers preparing to leave her temporarily while the dock was filled. For twelve months, almost to the day, they had cut and burned, bolted, sawed, riveted, hacked, plated, and hammered the hull of her together. Great modules of high- tensile steel had swung in from the overhead gantries to drop into preassigned places and form her shape. As the men cleared away the ropes and chains, lines and cables that hung about her, she

lay exposed at last, her sides clean of encumbrances, painted twenty coats of rustproof paint, waiting for the water.

At last, only the blocks that cradled her remained. The men who had built this, the biggest dry dock in the world, at Chita, near Nagoya on Ise Bay, had never thought to see their handiwork put to such use. It was the only dry dock that could take a million-tonner, and it was the first and last it would ever hold. Some of the veterans came to peer across the barriers to see the ceremony.

The religious ceremony took half an hour as the Shinto priest called down the blessings of the divine ones on those who had built her, those who would work on her yet, and those who would sail her one day, that they should enjoy safe labor and safe sailing. Thor Larsen attended, barefoot, with his chief engineer and first officer, the owner’s chief superintendent (marine architect), who had been there from the start, and the yard’s equivalent architect. The latter were the two men who had really designed and built her.

Shortly before noon the sluices were opened, and with a thundering roar the western Pacific began to flow in.

There was a formal lunch in the chairman’s office, but when it was over, Thor Larsen went back to the dock. He was joined by his first officer, Stig Lundquist, and his chief engineer, Björn Erikson, both from Sweden.

“She’s something else,” said Lundquist as the water climbed her sides.

Shortly before sunset the
Freya
groaned like an awaking giant, moved half an inch, groaned again, then came free of her underwater supports and rode the tide. Around the dock, four thousand Japanese workers broke their studied silence and burst into cheering. Scores of white helmets were thrown into the air; the half-dozen Europeans from Scandinavia joined in, pumping hands and thumping backs. Below them the giant waited patiently, seemingly aware her turn would come.

The next day, she was towed out of the dock to the commissioning quay, where for three months she would once again play host to thousands of small figures working like demons to prepare her for the sea beyond the bay.

Sir Nigel Irvine read the last lines of the Nightingale transcript, closed the file, and leaned back. “Well, Barry, what do you make of it?”

Barry Ferndale had spent most of his working life studying the Soviet Union, its masters and power structure. He breathed once more on his glasses and gave them a final rub.

“It’s one more blow that Maxim Rudin’s going to have to survive,” he said. “Ivanenko was one of his staunchest supporters. And an exceptionally clever one. With him in hospital, Rudin has lost one of his ablest counselors.”

“Will Ivanenko still retain his vote in the Politburo?” asked Sir Nigel.

“It’s possible he can vote by proxy should another vote come,” said Ferndale, “but that’s not really the point. Even at a six-to-six tie on a major issue of policy at Politburo level, the Chairman’s vote swings the issue. The danger is that one or two of the waverers might change sides. Ivanenko upright inspired a lot of fear, even that high up. Ivanenko in an oxygen tent, perhaps less so.”

Sir Nigel handed the folder across the desk to Ferndale.

“Barry, I want you to go over to Washington with this one. Just a courtesy call, of course. But try to have a private dinner with Ben Kahn and compare notes with him. This exercise is becoming too damn much of a close-run thing.”

“The way we see it, Ben,” said Ferndale, two days later, after dinner in Kahn’s Georgetown house, “is that Maxim Rudin is holding on by a thread in the face of a fifty-percent hostile Politburo, and

that thread is getting extremely thin.”

The Deputy Director (Intelligence) of the CIA stretched his feet toward the log fire in his redbrick grate and gazed at the brandy he twirled in his glass.

“I can’t fault you on that, Barry,” he said carefully.

“We also are of the view that if Rudin cannot persuade the Politburo to continue conceding the things he is yielding to you at Castletown, he could fall. That would leave a fight for the succession, to be decided by the full Central Committee. In which, alas, Yefrem Vishnayev has a powerful amount of influence and friends.”

“True,” said Kahn. “But then so does Vassili Petrov. Probably more than Vishnayev.”

“No doubt,” rejoined Ferndale, “and Petrov would probably swing the succession toward himself—if he had the backing of Rudin, who was retiring in his own time and on his own terms, and if he had the support of Ivanenko, whose KGB clout could help offset Marshal Kerensky’s influence through the Red Army.”

Kahn smiled across at his visitor.

“You’re moving a lot of pawns forward, Barry. What’s your gambit?” “Just comparing notes,” said Ferndale.

“All right, just comparing notes. Actually our own views at Langley go along pretty much with yours. David Lawrence at the State Department agrees. Stan Poklewski wants to ride the Soviets hard at Castletown. The President’s in the middle—as usual.”

“Castletown’s pretty important to him, though?” suggested Ferndale.

“Very important. He has only two more years in office. In November 1984, there’ll be a new President-elect. Bill Matthews would like to go out in style, leaving a comprehensive arms- limitation treaty behind him.”

“We were just thinking ...”

“Ah,” said Kahn, “I think you are contemplating bringing your knight forward.”

Ferndale smiled at the oblique reference to his “knight,” the Director General of his service.

“... that Castletown would certainly abort if Rudin fell from control at this juncture. And that he could use something from Castletown, from your side, to convince any waverers among his faction that he was achieving things there and that he was the man to back.”

“Concessions?” asked Kahn. “We got the final analysis of the Soviet grain harvest last week.

They’re over a barrel. At least that’s the way Poklewski put it.”

“He’s right,” said Ferndale. “But the barrel’s on the point of collapsing. And waiting inside it is dear Comrade Vishnayev, with his war plan. And we all know what that would entail.”

“Point taken,” said Kahn. “Actually, my own reading of the combined Nightingale file runs along very similar lines. I’ve got a paper in preparation for the President’s eyes at the moment. He’ll have it next week when he and Benson meet with Lawrence and Poklewski.”

“These figures,” asked President Matthews, “they represent the final aggregate grain crop the Soviet Union brought in a month ago?”

He glanced across at the four men seated in front of his desk. At the far end of the room a log fire crackled in the marble fireplace, adding a touch of visual warmth to the already high temperature assured by the central heating system. Beyond the bulletproof south windows, the sweeping lawns held their first dusting of November morning frost. Being from the South, William Matthews appreciated warmth.

Robert Benson and Dr. Myron Fletcher nodded in unison. David Lawrence and Stanislaw Poklewski studied the figures.

“All our sources have been called on for these figures, Mr. President, and all our information has

been correlated extremely carefully,” said Benson. “We could be out by five percent either way, no more.”

“And according to the Nightingale, even the Politburo agrees with us,” interposed the Secretary of State.

“One hundred million tons, total,” mused the President. “It will last them till the end of March, with a lot of belt tightening.”

“They’ll be slaughtering the cattle by January,” said Poklewski. “They have to start making sweeping concessions at Castletown next month if they want to survive.”

The President laid down the Soviet grain report and picked up the presidential briefing prepared by Ben Kahn and presented by his Director of Central Intelligence. It had been read by all four in the room, as well as himself. Benson and Lawrence had agreed with it; Dr. Fletcher was not called upon for an opinion; the hawkish Poklewski dissented.

“We know—and they know—they are in desperate straits,” said Matthews. “The question is, how far do we push them?”

“As you said weeks ago, Mr. President,” said Lawrence, “if we don’t push hard enough, we don’t get the best deal we can for America and the free world. Push too hard and we force Rudin to abort the talks to save himself from his own hawks. It’s a question of balance. At this point, I feel we should make them a gesture.”

“Wheat?”

“Animal feed to help them keep some of their herds alive?” suggested Benson. “Dr. Fletcher?” asked the President.

The man from the Agriculture Department shrugged.

“We have the feed available, Mr. President,” he said. “The Soviets have a large proportion of their own merchant fleet, Sovfrächt, standing by. We know that because with their subsidized freight rates they could all be busy, but they’re not They’re positioned all over the warm-water ports of the Black Sea and down the Soviet Pacific coast. They’ll sail for the United States if they’re given the word from Moscow.”

“What’s the latest we need to give a decision on this one?” asked President Matthews.

“New Year’s Day,” said Benson. “If they know a respite is coming, they can hold off slaughtering the herds.”

“I urge you not to ease up on them,” pleaded Poklewski. “By March they’ll be desperate.” “Desperate enough to concede enough disarmament to assure peace for a decade, or desperate

enough to go to war?” asked Matthews rhetorically. “Gentlemen, you’ll have my decision by Christmas Day. Unlike you, I have to take five chairmen of Senate subcommittees with me on this one: Defense, Agriculture, Foreign Relations, Trade, and Appropriations. And I can’t tell them about the Nightingale, can I, Bob?”

The chief of the CIA shook his head.

“No, Mr. President Not about the Nightingale. There are too many Senate aides, too many leaks.

The effect of a leak of what we really know at this juncture could be disastrous.” “Very well, then. Christmas Day it is.”

On December 15, Professor Ivan Sokolov rose to his feet at Castletown and began to read a prepared paper. The Soviet Union, he said, ever true to its traditions as a country devoted to the unswerving search for world peace, and mindful of its often-reiterated commitment to peaceful coexistence ...

Edwin J. Campbell sat across the table and watched his Soviet opposite number with some fellow feeling. Over two months, working until fatigue overcame both of them, he had developed

a fairly warm relationship with the man from Moscow—as much, at least, as their positions and their duties would allow.

In breaks between the talks, each had visited the other in the opposing delegation’s suite. In the Soviet drawing room, with the Muscovite delegation present and its inevitable complement of KGB agents, the conversation had been agreeable but formal. In the American room, where Sokolov had arrived alone, he had relaxed to the point of showing Campbell pictures of his grandchildren on holiday on the Black Sea coast. As a leading member of the Academy of Sciences, the professor was rewarded for his loyalty to Party and cause with a limousine, chauffeur, city apartment, country dacha, seaside chalet, and access to the Academy’s grocery store and commissary. Campbell had no illusions but that Sokolov was paid for his loyalty, for his ability to devote his talents to the service of a regime that committed tens of thousands to the labor camps of Mordovia; that he was one of the fat cats, the
nachalstvo
. But even the
nachalstvo
had grandchildren.

He sat and listened to the Russian with growing surprise.