“The Devil’s Alternative” is a 1979 Cold War thriller novel written by Frederick Forsyth.
The novel, set in 1982, tells the tale of a world crisis caused by converging events.
The Soviet Union is faced with famine when a batch of fungicide is mixed improperly and ends up contaminating most of the Soviet harvest. A schism within the Politburo takes place over how to resolve this crisis, with Soviet president Maxim Rudin and his supporters willing to make concessions to the West in exchange for the needed grain. Opposing them is a faction led by his rival Yefrem Vishnayev who press for the invasion and conquest of Western Europe, disbelieving evidence that the US would resort to nuclear war rather than suffer the long-term decline that would result from losing Europe to the Soviets.
Concurrently a group of Western-born ethnic Ukrainians and Jewish refugees led by Andriy Drach concoct a plan to humiliate the Soviet regime and hopefully trigger anti-Russian rebellions across the Soviets' empire. While the plan succeeds, the two Jews who carried it out are captured in West Berlin after hijacking an airliner and the Soviet government manages to cover up their success. Drach organizes the hijacking of the world's biggest supertanker in the North Sea and threatens to create the largest oil spill in history if the two men are not released to Israel and allowed to give a press conference. Were Drach's demands met, the disgraced Rudin would fall and Vishnayev would take control, leading to World War III.
In the middle of this are two ex-lovers, MI6 agent Adam Munro and KGB secretary Valentina. Valentina provides Munro and his superiors with information directly from the Politburo, giving the US and British governments a first-hand look at the unfolding crisis and the high-stakes involved.
The convergence of the two crisis eventually leaves US President William "Bill" Matthews (a fictionalized Jimmy Carter) facing the titular dilemma: no matter what course he chooses - placating the Soviet government or the terrorists - disaster and massive loss of life is guaranteed.
The novel provides examples of:
- Actually Pretty Funny: After finding out that his true love, Valentina, is actually an agent for Rudin, that she was never in danger from the KGB, and has dumped him now that he is no longer a conduit to British Intelligence, Adam Munro walks in a daze down a Moscow street for a few blocks, then starts laughing his head off. Because it actually is pretty funny: he's been a spy for so long that he's introduced to the reader as an instructor for agents in training, yet he's been suckered by an espionage technique that's older than the Bible (a Honey Trap).
- Ambition Is Evil: Yefrem Vishnayev, Maxim Rudin’s rival. He is willing to begin an invasion of Western Europe for the wealth of that region as a solution to the famine, and not incidentally gaining him the Soviet premiership as a result.
- Red Army Marshal Kerensky and Rudin's other supporters, hoping to secure their own political gains by supporting Rudin's plan regardless of the risk to world peace.
- Arc Words: “No alternative.” The phrase is used by various characters throughout the story, and is even a codeword at one point.
- Berserk Button: Don’t ever talk about Russian patriotism in front of the Ukrainian revolutionary leader Andriy Drach.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Ukrainian revolutionaries are killed, the tanker Freya and its crew are rescued and stable relations between America and the Soviet Union are maintained. But Munro’s career as a spy is blown and he must retire, and he can never see Valentina again, though he is assured that she is safe and rewarded for her role in averting the crisis.
- Likely counts as bittersweet too for Ukrainians and other subject peoples in the Soviet empire, as their chance for freedom from the Communists' iron-fisted rule has been nipped in the bud.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The American and British politicians realize that they need Maxim Rudin in charge of the Soviet Union, due to his support of a non-military solution to the famine.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Lev Mishkin and David Lazareff, as the killers of KGB head Yuri Ivanenko, are the only ones who know the full details that confirms their truth. The hijacking of the Freya tanker takes place to get them out of prison.
- Valentina, codenamed the Nightingale, passes information to Britain and America regarding the Soviet situation.
- Cool Plane: The Blackbird jet used to take Adam Munro from Washington to Moscow and later London.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: If the workers at the plant had been more disciplined and careful in their job, the crops would not have been contaminated.
- Dirty Coward: Komarov, the Minister of Agriculture. He supports Vishnayev to save himself from Rudin for the famine crisis, and at the end when the odds are in Rudin’s favor he switches sides and gives Rudin his vote of confidence. Rudin reflects coldly that his last-minute switch will not save him.
- Eagleland: Clint Blake, the Texan oil baron, and the Blackbird pilot.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: KGB Chairman Yuri Ivanenko has an elderly mother. She ends up as bait by Mishkin and Lazareff to get to Ivanenko.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Vishnayev’s solution to the Soviet famine is to invade and conquer Western Europe. A devout Marxist-Leninist with zero real exposure to the West, he is blithely dismissive of the possibility of US intervention, claiming that the decadent Americans would not risk their cities being nuked for the sake of foreigners. The horrified foreign minister, who has much more experience dealing with the USA, bluntly contradicts him with a more realistic assessment.
- Gray-and-Black Morality: The deaths of Mishkin and Lazareff are arranged and countenanced by the American, British and Russian leaders, as it's the only way to keep world stability.
- Gray-and-Gray Morality: The Russians and Americans are not too fond of each other, and are only cooperating to avoid world war.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: The death of the KGB head would be a great triumph in other circumstances, but with it putting the world on the brink of war this event and its perpetrators have to be silenced.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Andriy vents a million gallons of oil into the ocean. When he flees on a boat through the fog, it ends up getting stuck in the oil and makes him a sitting duck.
- Honey Trap: Valentina, whom Munro thought was his Forbidden Love, is revealed to have been an operative for Rudin all along, allowing him to pass vital information to the Western powers and avoid war, without the knowledge of his cabinet. Rudin assures Munro that Valentina is "very fond" of him, just not in love with him, and certainly not in love enough to leave her home country and be a housewife in Scotland.
- Let's You and Him Fight: One Soviet minister, who sides with Vishnayev's war proposal, is of Turkish origin. Rudin believes he is counting on the war between the superpowers to weaken/destroy them both so that the Asians will take over the world in their stead.
-
Magnificent Bastard: One of the Americans expresses respect for Andriy Drach's masterminding the coup to bring down the USSR.- Maxim Rudin is revealed to be this at the end. When Vishnayev proposed war in Europe, he had enlisted Valentina to romance Adam Munro and feed him information about the Soviet political situation.
- Meaningful Name: Andriy Drach takes the codename “Svoboda”, which is Ukrainian for “freedom”.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Mishkin and Lazareff escape Russia by hijacking a Soviet plane headed to West Germany. But their tempers run high, they shoot the pilot and they end up imprisoned in a West German jail.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: the American President William "Bill" Matthews and British Prime Minister Joan Carpenter are obviously fictional versions of Jimmy Carter and Margaret Thatcher. Notably this one of the few occasions Forsyth does this rather than simply include real-life figures in his work.
- Likewise, Matthews' National Security Advisor, "that damned Polack" Stanislaw Poklewski, is an obvious stand-in for Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzeziński.
- Pretext for War: The famine serves as a valid excuse for Vishnayev and Karensky to set up a plan to invade Western Europe. Rudin notes that Vishnayev just wants to be Soviet premier and Kerensky wants a military campaign, but either way the famine makes war a valid option.
- Refuge in Audacity: Andriy Drach will dare any venture to bring down the USSR. His feats include assassinating the head of the Soviet Security Service, and later on hijacking an oil tanker.
- Sadistic Choice: The Freya hijacking puts the USA, with influence on Germany, in this position. If they make the Germans release Mishkin and Lazareff, the Russians will cancel their deal for grain and wheat and will go ahead with invading Western Europe. But if Mishkin and Lazareff aren’t released, the oil tanker will be blown up, the North Sea will be polluted and the USA’s political reputation falls severely AND there will still be war.
- Secretly Dying: Rudin is struck with leukemia and has less than a year. No one outside of his closest associates knows about it.
- Take a Third Option: The Devil's Alternative is this. Adam Munro leads a carefully timed operation to solve the Sadistic Choice above: he drugs Mishkin and Lazareff with slow-acting poison that will keep them alive until their comrades have left the Freya, but will kill them before they open their mouths.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Americans and Russians cooperate awkwardly but out of necessity. The Americans’ relations with the British are less strained, but the British firmly tell the Americans to back off over their information supply.
- Title Drop: British spy Adam Munro to the US President: "It has happened before, and it will happen again. We call it the Devil's Alternative."
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The novel was written in 1979, but is set in 1982.
- Wham Line: Maxim Rudin to Munro, “She asked me to tell you. She will not be a housewife in Edinburgh, she will not be Mrs Munro, she cannot see you again – ever. But she is safe, secure, a patriot among her people. She asked me to tell you not to worry.”
