The Devil's Alternative (56 page)

The advantage of the British base at Gatow is that it occupies one of the most outlying and isolated sites inside the fenced perimeter of West Berlin, situated on the western side of the broad Havel River, close up against the border with Communist East Germany, which surrounds the beleaguered city on all sides.

Inside the base there had been controlled activity for hours before dawn. Between three and four o’clock an RAF version of the HS-125 executive jet, known as the Dominie, had flown in from Britain. It was fitted with long-range fuel tanks that would extend its range to give it ample reserves to fly from Berlin to Tel Aviv over Munich, “Venice, and Athens without ever entering Communist airspace. Its 500-mile-per-hour cruising speed would enable the Dominie to complete

the 2,200-mile journey in just over four hours.

Since landing, the Dominie had been towed to a quiet hangar, where it had been serviced and refueled.

So keen were the press on watching Moabit and the airport at Tegel that no one noticed a sleek black SR-71 sweep over the East Germany-West Berlin border in the extreme corner of the city and drop onto the main runway at Gatow at just three minutes after seven o’clock. This aircraft, too, was quickly towed to an empty hangar, where a team of mechanics from the U.S. Air Force at Tempelhof hurriedly closed the doors against prying eyes and began to work on it. The SR-71 had done its job. A relieved Colonel O’Sullivan found himself at last surrounded by his fellow countrymen; next destination: his beloved U.S. of A.

His passenger left the hangar and was greeted by a youthful RAF squadron leader waiting with a Land 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 attaché 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 attaché 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 commanders’ 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.

“Why don’t we step across to the officers’ mess for a nice cup of tea?” he suggested.

“I don’t want a nice cup of tea,” said the frustrated Herr Bruckner. “I want a nice takeoff for Tel Aviv. But first I must telephone the Governing Mayor.”

“Then the officers’ mess is just the place,” said the wing commander. “By the way, since the prisoners can’t really remain in that van much longer, I’ve ordered them to the Military Police station cells in Alexander Barracks. They’ll be nice and comfortable there.”

It was five to eight when the BBC radio correspondent was given a personal briefing by the RAF base commander about the technical malfunction in the Dominie, and his report cut clean into the eight A.M. news as a special flash seven minutes later. It was heard on the Freya.

“They’d better hurry up,” said Drake.

Adam Munro and the two civilians entered the Military Police cells just after eight o’clock. It was a small unit, used only for the occasional Army prisoner, and there were four cells in a row. Mishkin was in the first, Lazareff in the fourth. The Junior civilian let Munro and his colleague enter the corridor leading to the cells, then closed the corridor door and stood with his back to it.

“Last-minute interrogation,” he told the outraged MP sergeant in charge. “Intelligence people.” He tapped the side of his nose. The MP sergeant shrugged and went back to the orderly room.

Munro entered the first cell. Lev Mishkin, in civilian clothes, was sitting on the edge of the bunk bed, smoking a cigarette. He had been told he was going to Israel at last, but he was still nervous and uninformed about most of what had been going on these past three days.

Munro stared at him. He had almost dreaded meeting him. But for this man and his crazy schemes to assassinate Yuri Ivaneriko in pursuit of some far-off dream, his beloved Valentina would even now be packing her bags, preparing to leave for Rumania, the Party conference, the

holiday at Mamaia Beach, and the boat that would take her to freedom. He saw again the back of the woman he loved going through the plate-glass doors to the Moscow street, the man in the trench coat straightening up and beginning to follow her.

“I am a doctor,” he said in Russian. “Your friends, the Ukrainians who have demanded your release, have also insisted you be medically fit to travel.”

Mishkin stood up and shrugged. He was unprepared for the four rigid fingertips that jabbed him in the solar plexus, did not expect the small canister held under his nose as he gasped for air, and was unable to prevent himself from inhaling the aerosol vapor that sprayed from the nozzle of the can as he inhaled. When the knockout gas hit the lungs, his legs buckled without a sound, and Munro caught him beneath the armpits before he reached the floor. Carefully he was laid on the bed.

“It’ll act for five minutes, no more,” said the civilian from the Defense Ministry. “Then he’ll wake with a fuzzy head but no ill effects. You’d better move fast.”

Munro opened the attaché case and took out the box containing the hypodermic syringe, the cotton, and a small bottle of alcohol. Soaking the cotton in the alcohol, he swabbed a portion of the prisoner’s right forearm to sterilize the skin, held the syringe to the light and squeezed until a fine jet of liquid rose into the air, expelling the last bubble.

The injection took less than three seconds, and ensured that Lev Mishkin would remain under its effects for almost two hours, longer than necessary but a period that could not be reduced.

The two men closed the cell door behind them and went down to where David Lazareff, who had heard nothing, was pacing up and down, full of nervous energy. The aerosol spray worked with the same instantaneous effect. Two minutes later he had also had his injection.

The civilian accompanying Munro reached into his breast pocket and took out a flat tin box. He held it out.

“I leave you now,” he said coldly. “This isn’t what I am paid for.”

Neither hijacker knew, nor would ever know, what had been injected into them. In fact it was a mixture of two narcotics called pethidine and hyoscine by the British, and meperidine and scopolamine by the Americans. In combination they have remarkable effects.

They cause the patient to remain awake, albeit slightly sleepy, willing and able to be obedient to instructions. They also have the effect of telescoping time, so that coming out from their effects after almost two hours, the patient has the impression of having suffered a dizzy spell for several seconds. Finally, they cause complete amnesia, so that when the effects wear off, the patient has not the slightest recall of anything that happened during the intervening period. Only a reference to a clock will reveal that time has passed at all.