The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth Read Free Book Online Page B

flight down the escarpment took them clear of the lee of the house. They came straight at him, as he crouched behind a fallen olive tree in the shadow of the grove, their legs flying as they sought to keep their balance on the shale. They came nearer, and one of them had what looked like a short black stick in his right hand. Even if he had shouted, he told himself later, they could not have stopped their momentum. But he did not say that to himself at the time. Training took over; he just stood up as they reached a point fifty feet from him, and loosed off two short, lethal bursts.
    The force of the bullets lifted them both, one after the other, stopped their momentum, and slammed them onto the shale at the foot of the slope. As a blue plume of cordite smoke drifted away from the muzzle of his Sten, he moved forward to look down at them. He thought he might feel sick or faint. There was nothing; just a dead curiosity. He looked at the faces. They were boys, younger than himself, and he was eighteen.
    His sergeant came crashing through the olive grove. “Well done, laddie!” he shouted. “You got ’em.”
    Munro looked down at the bodies of the boys who would never marry or have children, never dance to a bouzouki or feel the warmth of sun and wine again. One of them was still clutching the black stick; it was a sausage. A piece of it hung out of the body’s mouth. He had been having breakfast Munro turned on the sergeant.
    “You don’t own me!” he shouted. “You don’t bloody own me! Nobody owns me but me!”
    The sergeant put the outburst down to first-kill nerves and failed to report it. Perhaps that was a mistake. For authority failed to notice that Adam Munro was not completely, not one hundred
    percent, obedient. Not ever again.
    Six months later he was urged to consider himself as potential officer material and extend his time in the Army to three years so as to qualify for a short-service commission. Tired of Cyprus, he did so and was posted back to England, to the Officer Cadet Training Unit at Eaton Hall. Three months later he got his “pip” as a second lieutenant.
    While form-filling at Eaton Hall, he had mentioned that he was fluent in French and German. One day he was casually tested in both languages, and his claim proved to be correct. Just after his commissioning, it was suggested he might like to apply for the Joint Services Russian language course, which in those days was situated at a camp called Little Russia at Bodmin in Cornwall. The alternative was regimental duties at the barracks in Scotland, so he agreed. Within six months he emerged not merely fluent in Russian but virtually able to pass for a Russian.
    In 1957, despite considerable pressure from the regiment to stay on, he left the Army, for he had decided he wanted to be a foreign correspondent. He had seen a few of them in Cyprus and thought he would prefer the job to office work. At the age of twenty-one he joined The Scotsman in his native Edinburgh as a cub reporter, and two years later moved to London, where he was taken on by Reuters, the international news agency with its headquarters at 85 Fleet Street.
    In the summer of 1960 his languages again came to his rescue; he was twenty-four, and he was posted to the Reuters office in West Berlin as second man to the then bureau chief, Alfred Kluehs. That was the summer before the Wall went up, and within three months he had met Valentina, the woman he now realized to have been the only one he had ever really loved in his life. ...
    A man sat down beside him and coughed. Munro jerked himself out of his reverie. Teaching tradecraft to sprogs one week, he told himself, and forgetting the basic rules a fortnight later. Never slacken attention before a meet.
    The Russian looked at him uncomprehendingly, but Munro wore the necessary polka-dot tie. Slowly the Russian put a cigarette in his mouth, eyes on Munro. Corny, but it still worked. Munro took out his lighter and held the flame to the