The Devil's Alternative

“PILOT MAAS, Pilot Maas, this is the Freya.”

Captain Thor Larsen’s baritone voice echoed into the main control room at the squat building on the tip of the Hook of Holland. In the first-floor office with its sweeping picture win­dows gazing out over the North Sea, now curtained against the bright morning sun to give clarity to the radar screens, five men sat waiting.

Dijkstra and Schipper were still on duty, thoughts of breakfast forgotten. Dirk Van Gelder stood behind Dijkstra, ready to take over when the call came through. At another console, one of the day-shift men was taking care of the rest of the estuary traffic, bringing ships in and out, but keeping them away from the Freya, whose blip on the radar screen was at the limit of vision but still larger than all the others. The senior maritime safety officer of Maas Control was also present.

When the call came, Dijkstra slipped out of his chair before the speaker, and Van Gelder sat down. He gripped the stem of the table microphone, cleared his throat, and threw the “transmit” switch.

“Freya, this is Pilot Maas. Go ahead, please.”

Beyond the confines of the building, which looked for all the world like a chopped-off air-traffic control tower sitting on the sand, other ears were listening. During the earlier transmission, two other ships had caught part of the conver­sation, and there had been a bit of chitchat between ships’ ra­dio officers in the intervening two hours. Now a dozen were listening keenly.

On the Freya, Larsen knew he could switch to Channel 16, speak to Scheveningen Radio, and ask for a patch-through to Maas Control for greater privacy, but the listeners would soon join him on that channel. So he stayed with Channel 20.

“Freya to Pilot Maas, I wish to speak personally to the chairman of the Port Authority.”

This is Pilot Maas. This is Dirk Van Gelder speaking. I am the chairman of the Port Authority.”

“This is Captain Thor Larsen, master of the Freya.”

“Yes, Captain Larsen, your voice is recognized. What is your problem?”

At the other end, on the bridge of the Freya, Drake ges­tured with the tip of his gun to the written statement in Larsen’s hand. Larsen nodded, flicked his “transmit” switch, and began to read into the telephone.

“I am reading a prepared statement. Please do not inter­rupt and do not pose questions.

“ ‘At three o’clock this morning, the Freya was taken over by armed men. I have already been given ample reason to be­lieve they are in deadly earnest and prepared to carry out all their threats unless their demands are met.’ ”

In the control tower on the sand, there was a hiss of in­drawn breath from behind Van Gelder. He closed his eyes wearily. For years he had been urging that some security measures be taken to protect these floating bombs from a hi­jacking. He had been ignored, and now it had happened at last. The voice from the speaker went on; the tape recorder revolved impassively.

“ ‘My entire crew is presently locked in the lowest portion of the ship, behind steel doors, and cannot escape. So far, no harm has come to them. I myself am held at gunpoint on my own bridge.

“ ‘During the night, explosive charges have been placed at strategic positions at various points inside the Freya’s hull. I have examined these myself, and can corroborate that if ex­ploded they would blast the Freya apart, kill her crew in­stantly, and vent one million tons of crude oil into the North Sea.’ ”

“Oh, my God,” said a voice behind Van Gelder. He waved an impatient hand for the speaker to shut up.

“ ‘These are the immediate demands of the men who hold the Freya prisoner. One: all sea traffic is to be cleared at once from the area inside the arc from a line forty-five degrees south of a bearing due east of the Freya, and forty-five degrees north of the same bearing—that is, inside a ninety-degree arc between the Freya and the Dutch coast. Two: no vessel, surface or submarine, is to attempt to ap­proach the Freya on any other bearing to within five miles. Three: no aircraft is to pass overhead the Freya within a circle of five miles’ radius of her, and below a height of ten thousand feet.’ Is that clear? You may answer.”

Van Gelder gripped the microphone hard.

“Freya, this is Pilot Maas. Dirk Van Gelder speaking. Yes, that is clear. I will have all surface traffic cleared from the area enclosed by a ninety-degree arc between the Freya and the Dutch coast, and from an area five sea miles from the Freya on all other sides. I will instruct Schiphol Airport traf­fic control to ban all air movements within the five-mile-ra­dius area below ten thousand feet. Over.”

There was a pause, and Larsen’s voice came back.

“I am informed that if there is any attempt to breach these orders, there will be an immediate riposte without further consultation. Either the Freya will vent twenty thousand tons of crude oil immediately, or one of my seamen will be ... executed. Is that understood? You may answer.”

Dirk Van Gelder turned to his traffic officers.

“Jesus, get the shipping out of that area, fast. Get on to Schiphol and tell them. No commercial flights, no private air­craft, no choppers taking pictures—nothing. Now move.”

To the microphone he said, “Understood, Captain Larsen. Is there anything else?”

“Yes,” said the disembodied voice. “There will be no further radio contact with the Freya until twelve hundred hours. At that time the Freya will call you again. I will wish to speak directly and personally to the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and the West German Ambassador. Both must be present. That is all.”

The microphone went dead. On the bridge of the Freya, Drake removed the handset from Larsen’s hand and replaced it. Then he gestured the Norwegian to return to the day cabin. When they were seated with the seven-foot table be­tween them, Drake laid down his gun and leaned back. As his sweater rode up, Larsen saw the lethal oscillator clipped at his waistband.

“What do we do now?” asked Larsen.

“We wait,” said Drake. “While Europe goes quietly mad.”

“They’ll kill you, you know,” said Larsen. “You’ve got on board, but you’ll never get off. They may have to do what you say, but when they have done it, they’ll be waiting for you.”

“I know,” said Drake. “But you see, I don’t mind if I die. I’ll fight to live, of course, but I’ll die, and I’ll kill, before I’ll see them kill off my project.”

“You want these two men in Germany free, that much?” asked Larsen.

“Yes, that much. I can’t explain why, and if I did, you wouldn’t understand. But for years my land, my people, have been occupied, persecuted, imprisoned, killed. And no one cared a shit. Now I threaten to kill one single man, or hit Western Europe in the pocket, and you’ll see what they do. Suddenly it’s a disaster. But for me, the slavery of my land, that is the disaster.”

“This dream of yours, what is it, exactly?” asked Larsen.

“A free Ukraine,” said Drake simply. “Which cannot be achieved short of a popular uprising by millions of people.”

“In the Soviet Union?” said Larsen. “That’s impossible. That will never happen.”

“It could,” countered Drake. “It could. It happened in East Germany, in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia. But first, the con­viction by those millions that they could never win, that their oppressors are invincible, must be broken. If it once were, the floodgates could open wide.”

“No one will ever believe that,” said Larsen.

“Not in the West, no. But there’s the strange thing. Here in the West, people would say I cannot be right in that calcula­tion. But in the Kremlin they know I am.”

“And for this ... popular uprising, you are prepared to die?” asked Larsen.

“If I must. That is my dream. That land, that people, I love more than life itself. That’s my advantage: within a hundred-mile radius of us here, there is no one else who loves something more than his life.”

A day earlier Thor Larsen might have agreed with the fa­natic. But something was happening inside the big, slow-mov­ing Norwegian that surprised him. For the first time in his life he hated a man enough to kill him. Inside his head a pri­vate voice said, “I don’t care about your Ukrainian dream, Mr. Svoboda. You are not going to kill my crew and my ship.”

At Felixstowe on the coast of Suffolk, the English Coastguard officer walked quickly away from his coastal radio set and picked up the telephone.

“Get me the Department of the Environment in London,” he told the operator.

“By God, those Dutchies have got themselves a problem this time,” said his deputy, who had heard the conversation between the Freya and Maas Control also.

“It’s not just the Dutch,” said the senior coastguardsman. “Look at the map.”

On the wall was a map of the entire southern portion of the North Sea and the northern end of the English Channel. It showed the coast of Suffolk right across to the Maas Es­tuary. In chinagraph pencil the coastguardsman had marked the Freya at her overnight position. It was a little more than two-thirds of the way from England to Holland.

“If she blows, lad, our coasts will also be under a foot of oil from Hull round to Southampton.”

Minutes later he was talking to a civil servant in London, one of the men in the department of the ministry specifically concerned with oil-slick hazards. What he said caused the morning’s first cup of tea in London to go quite cold.

Dirk Van Gelder managed to catch the Prime Minister at his residence, just about to leave for his office. The urgency of the Port Authority chairman finally persuaded the young aide from the Cabinet Office to pass the phone to the Premier.

“Jan Grayling,” he said into the speaker. As he listened to Van Gelder his face tightened.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“We don’t know,” said Van Gelder. “Captain Larsen was reading from a prepared statement. He was not allowed to deviate from it, nor answer questions.”

“If he was under duress, perhaps he had no choice but to confirm the placing of the explosives. Perhaps that’s a bluff,” said Grayling.

“I don’t think so, sir,” said Van Gelder. “Would you like me to bring the tape to you?”

“Yes, at once, in your own car,” said the Premier. “Straight to the Cabinet Office.”

He put the phone down and walked to his limousine, his mind racing. If what was threatened was indeed true, the bright summer morning had brought the worst crisis of his term of office. As his car left the curb, followed by the inevi­table police vehicle, he leaned back and tried to think out some of the first priorities. An immediate emergency cabinet meeting, of course. The press—they would not be long. Many ears must have listened to the ship-to-shore conversation; someone would tell the press before noon.

He would have to inform a variety of foreign governments through their embassies. And authorize the setting up of an immediate crisis management committee of experts. Fortu­nately he had access to a number of such experts since the hi­jacks by the South Moluccans several years earlier. As he drew up in front of the prime ministerial office building, he glanced at his watch. It was half past nine.

The phrase “crisis management committee” was already being thought, albeit as yet unspoken, in London. Sir Rupert Moss-bank, Permanent Under Secretary to the Department of the Environment, was on the phone to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Julian Flannery.

“It’s early days yet, of course,” said Sir Rupert. “We don’t know who they are, how many, if they’re serious, or whether there are really any bombs on board. But if that amount of crude oil did get spilt, it really would be rather messy.”

Sir Julian thought for a moment, gazing out through his first-floor windows onto Whitehall.

“Good of you to call so promptly, Rupert,” he said. “I think I’d better inform the P.M. at once. In the meantime, just as a precaution, could you ask a couple of your best minds to put together a memo on the prospective conse­quences if she does blow up? Question of spillage, area of ocean covered, tide flow, speed, area of our coastline likely to be affected. That sort of thing. I’m pretty sure she’ll ask for it.”

“I have it in hand all ready, old boy.”

“Good,” said Sir Julian. “Excellent. Fast as possible. I sus­pect she’ll want to know. She always does.”

He had worked under three prime ministers, and the latest was far and away the toughest and most decisive. For years it had been a standing joke that the government party was full of old women of both sexes, but fortunately was led by a real man. The name of the latter was Joan Carpenter. The Cabi­net Secretary had his appointment within minutes and walked through the bright morning sunshine across the lawn to No. 10, with purpose but without hurry, as was his wont.

When he entered the Prime Minister’s private office she was at her desk, where she had been since eight o’clock. A coffee set of bone china lay on a side table, and three red dispatch boxes lay open on the floor. Sir Julian was admiring; the woman went through documentation like a paper shredder, and the papers were already finished by ten A.M., either agreed to, rejected, or bearing a crisp request for fur­ther information, or a series of pertinent questions.

“Good morning, Prime Minister.”

“Good morning, Sir Julian, a beautiful day.”

“Indeed, ma’am. Unfortunately it has brought a piece of unpleasantness with it.”

He took a seat at her gesture and accurately sketched in the details of the affair in the North Sea, as well as he knew them. She was alert, absorbed.

“If it is true, then this ship, the Freya, could cause an envi­ronmental disaster,” she said flatly.

“Indeed, though we do not know yet the exact feasibility of sinking such a gigantic vessel with what are presumably in­dustrial explosives. There are men who would be able to give an assessment, of course.”

“In the event that it is true,” said the Prime Minister, “I believe we should form a crisis management committee to consider the implications. If it is not, then we have the oppor­tunity for a realistic exercise.”

Sir Julian raised an eyebrow. The idea of putting a thunderflash down the trousers of a dozen ministerial departments as an exercise had not occurred to him. He supposed it had a certain charm.

For thirty minutes the Prime Minister and her Cabinet Secretary listed the areas in which they would need profes­sional expertise if they were to be accurately informed of the options in a major tanker hijacking in the North Sea.

In the matter of the supertanker herself, she was insured by Lloyd’s, which would be in possession of a complete plan of her layout. Concerning the structure of tankers, British Pe­troleum’s Marine Division would have an expert in tanker construction who could study those plans and give a precise judgment on feasibility.

In spillage control, they agreed to call on the senior research analyst at the Warren Springs Laboratory at Stevenage, close to London, run jointly by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food.

The Ministry of Defense would be called on for a serving officer in the Royal Engineers, an expert in explosives, to esti­mate that side of things, and the Department of the Environ­ment itself had people who could calculate the scope of the catastrophe to the ecology of the North Sea. Trinity House, head authority of the pilotage services around Britain’s coasts, would be asked to inform on tide flows and speeds. Relations and liaison with foreign governments would fall to the For­eign Office, which would send an observer. By ten-thirty the list seemed complete. Sir Julian prepared to leave.

“Do you think the Dutch government will handle this af­fair?” asked the Prime Minister.

“It’s early days to say, ma’am. At the moment the terror­ists wish to put their demands to Mr. Grayling personally at noon, in ninety minutes. I have no doubt The Hague will feel able to handle the matter. But if the demands cannot be met, or if the ship blows up anyway, then as a coastal nation we are involved in any case.

“Furthermore, our capacity to cope with oil spillage is the most advanced in Europe, so we may be called on to help by our allies across the North Sea.”

“Then all the sooner we are ready, the better,” said the Prime Minister. “One last thing, Sir Julian. It will probably never come to it, but if the demands cannot be met, the con­tingency may have to be considered of storming the vessel to liberate the crew and defuse the charges.”

For the first time Sir Julian was not comfortable. He had been a professional civil servant all his life, since leaving Ox­ford with a Double First. He believed the word, written and spoken, could solve most problems, given time. He abhorred violence.

“Ah, yes, Prime Minister. That would of course be a last resort. I understand it is called ‘the hard option.’ ”

“The Israelis stormed the airliner at Entebbe,” mused the Prime Minister. “The Germans stormed the one at Mogadisho. The Dutch stormed the train at Assen. When they were left with no alternative. Supposing it were to happen again.”

“Well, ma’am, perhaps they would.”

“Could the Dutch Marines carry out such a mission?”

Sir Julian chose his words carefully. He had a vision of burly Marines clumping all over Whitehall. Far better to keep those people playing their lethal games well out of the way on Exmoor.

“If it came to storming a vessel at sea,” he said, “I believe a helicopter landing would not be feasible. It would be spotted by the deck watch, and of course the ship has a radar scanner. Similarly, an approach by surface vessel would also be observed. This is not an airliner on a concrete runway, nor a stationary train, ma’am. This is a ship over twenty-five miles from land.”

That, he hoped, would put a stop to it.

“What about an approach by armed divers or frogmen?” she asked.

Sir Julian closed his eyes. Armed frogmen indeed. He was convinced politicians read too many novels for their own good.

“Armed frogmen, Prime Minister?” The blue eyes across the desk did not leave him.

“I understand,” she said clearly, “that our capacity in this regard is among the most advanced in Europe.”

“I believe it may well be so, ma’am.”

“And who are these underwater experts?”

“The Special Boat Service, Prime Minister.”

“Who, in Whitehall, liaises with our special services?” she asked.

“There is a Royal Marine colonel in Defense,” he conceded, “called Holmes.”

It was going to be bad; he could see it coming. They had used the land-based counterpart of the SUS, the better-known Special Air Service, or SAS, to help the Germans at Mogadisho, and in the Balcombe Street siege. Harold Wilson had always wanted to hear all the details of the lethal games these roughnecks played with their opponents. Now they were go­ing to start another James Bond-style fantasy.

“Ask Colonel Holmes to attend the crisis management committee—in a consultative capacity only, of course.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“And prepare UNICORNE. I shall expect you to take the chair at noon, when the terrorists’ demands are known.”

Three hundred miles across the North Sea, the activity in Holland was already, by midmorning, becoming frenetic.

From his office in the seaside capital of The Hague, the Premier, Jan Grayling, and his staff were putting together the same sort of crisis management committee that Mrs. Carpen­ter in London had in mind. The first requirement was to know the exact perspectives of any conceivable human or en­vironmental tragedy stemming from the damage at sea to a ship like the Freya, and the various options the Dutch gov­ernment faced.

To secure this information the same kinds of experts were being called upon for their specialized knowledge: in ship­ping, oil slicks, tides, speeds, directions, future weather prospects, and even the military option.

Dirk Van Gelder, having delivered the tape recording of the nine o’clock message from the Freya, drove back to Maas Control on the instructions of Jan Grayling to sit by the VHF radiotelephone set in case the Freya called up again before twelve noon.

It was he who at ten-thirty took the call from Harry Wennerstrom. Having finished breakfast in his penthouse suite at the Rotterdam Hilton, the old shipping magnate was still in ignorance of the disaster to his ship. Quite simply, no one had thought to call him.

Wennerstrom was calling to inquire about the progress of the Freya, which by this time, he thought, would be well into the Outer Channel, moving slowly and carefully toward the Inner Channel, several kilometers past Euro Buoy 1 and moving along a precise course of 080.5 degrees. He expected to leave Rotterdam with his convoy of notables to witness the Freya’s coming into sight about lunchtime, as the ride rose to its peak.

Van Gelder apologized for not having called him at the Hilton, and carefully explained what had happened at 0645 and 0900 hours. There was silence from the Hilton end of the line. Wennerstrom’s first reaction could have been to mention that there was $170 million worth of ship being held prisoner out beyond the western horizon, carrying $140 mil­lion worth of crude oil. It was a reflection on the man that he said, at length:

“There are thirty of my seamen out there, Mr. Van Gelder. And starting right now, let me tell you that if anything hap­pens to any one of them because the terrorists’ demands are not met, I shall hold the Dutch authorities personally respon­sible.”

“Mr. Wennerstrom,” said Van Gelder, who had also com­manded a ship in his career, “we are doing everything we can. The requirements of the terrorists regarding the distance of clear water around the Freya are being met, to the letter. Their primary demands have not yet been stated. The Prime Minister is in his office now in The Hague doing what he can, and he will be here at noon for the next message from the Freya.”

Harry Wennerstrom replaced the receiver and stared through the picture windows of the sitting room in the sky toward the west, where his dream ship was lying at anchor on the open sea with armed terrorists aboard her.

“Cancel the convoy to Maas Control,” he said suddenly to one of his secretaries. “Cancel the champagne lunch. Cancel the reception this evening. Cancel the press conference. I’m going.”

“Where, Mr. Wennerstrom?” asked the amazed young woman.

“To Maas Control. Alone. Have my car waiting by the time I reach the garage.”

With that, the old man stumped from the suite and headed for the elevator.

Around the Freya the sea was emptying. Working closely with their British colleagues at Flamborough Head and Felixstowe, the Dutch marine-traffic-control officers diverted shipping into fresh sea-lanes west of the Freya, the nearest being over five miles west of her.

Eastward of the stricken ship, coastal traffic was ordered to stop or turn back, and movements into and out of the Europoort and Rotterdam were halted. Angry sea captains, whose voices poured into Maas Control demanding explana­tions were told simply that an emergency had arisen and they were to avoid at all costs the sea area whose coordinates were read out to them.

It was impossible to keep the press in the dark. A group of several-score journalists from technical and marine publica­tions, as well as the shipping correspondents of the major daily papers from the neighboring countries, were already in Rotterdam for the reception arranged for the Freya's tri­umphal entry that afternoon. By eleven A.M. their curiosity was aroused, partly by the cancellation of the journey to the Hook to witness the Freya come over the horizon into the In­ner Channel, and partly by tips reaching their head offices from those numerous radio hams who like to listen to mari­time radio talk.

Shortly after eleven, calls began to flood into the penthouse suite of their host, Harry Wennerstrom, but he was not there and his secretaries knew nothing. Other calls came to Maas Control, and were referred to The Hague. In the Dutch capi­tal the switchboard operators put the calls through to the Prime Minister’s private press secretary, on Grayling’s orders, and the harassed young man fended them off as best he could.

The lack of information simply intrigued the press corps more than ever, so they reported to their editors that some­thing serious was afoot with the Freya. The editors dispatched other reporters, who forgathered through the morning outside the Maas Control Building at the Hook where they were firmly kept outside the chain-link fence that surrounds the building. Others grouped in The Hague to pes­ter the various ministries, but most of all the Prime Minister’s office.

The editor of De Telegraaf received a tip from a radio ham that there were terrorists on board the Freya and that they would issue their demands at noon. He at once ordered a radio monitor to be placed on Channel 20 with a tape re­corder to catch the whole message.

Jan Grayling personally telephoned the West German Am­bassador, Konrad Voss, and told him in confidence what had happened. Voss called Bonn at once, and within thirty minutes replied to the Dutch Premier that he would of course accompany him to the Hook for the twelve o’clock contact as the terrorists had demanded. The government of the Federal Republic of Germany, he assured the Dutchman, would do everything it could to help.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry as a matter of courtesy in­formed the ambassadors of all the nations concerned : Sweden, whose flag the Freya flew and whose seamen were on board; Norway, Finland, and Denmark, which also had seamen on board; the United States, because four of those seamen were Scandinavian-Americans with U.S. passports and dual nation­ality; Britain, as a coastal nation and whose institution, Lloyd’s, was insuring both ship and cargo; and Belgium and France as coastal nations.

In nine European capitals the telephones rang between ministry and department, from call box to editorial room, in insurance offices, shipping agencies, and private homes. For those in government, banking, shipping, insurance, the armed forces, and the press, the prospect of a quiet weekend that Friday morning receded into the flat blue ocean, where under a warm spring sun a million-ton bomb called the Freya lay silent and still.

Harry Wennerstrom was halfway from Rotterdam to the Hook when an idea occurred to him. The limousine was pass­ing out of Schiedam on the motorway toward Vlaardingen when he recalled that his private jet was at Schiedam munici­pal airport. He reached for the telephone and called his prin­cipal secretary, still trying to fend off calls from the press in his suite at the Hilton. When he got through to her at the third attempt, he gave her a string of orders for his pilot.

“One last thing,” he said. “I want the name and office phone number of the police chief of alesund. Yes, alesund, in Norway. As soon as you have it, call him up and tell him to stay where he is and await my call back to him.”

Lloyd’s Intelligence Unit had been informed shortly after ten o’clock. A British dry-cargo vessel had been preparing to en­ter the Maas Estuary for Rotterdam when the 0900 call was made from the Freya to Maas Control. The radio officer had heard the whole conversation, noted it verbatim in shorthand, and shown it to his captain. Minutes later, he was dictating it to the ship’s agent in Rotterdam, who passed it to the head office in London. The office had called Colchester, Essex, and repeated the news to Lloyd’s. One of the chairmen of twenty-five separate firms of underwriters had been contacted and informed. The consortium that had put together the $170-million hull insurance on the Freya had to be big; so also was the group of firms covering the million-ton cargo for Clint Blake in his office in Texas. But despite the size of the Freya and her cargo, the biggest single policy was the protection and indemnity insurance, for the persons of the crew and pollution compensation. The P and I policy would be the one to cost the biggest bundle of money if the Freya were blown apart.

Shortly before noon, the chairman of Lloyd’s, in his office high above the City, stared at a few calculations on his jotting pad.

“We’re talking about a billion-dollar loss if worse comes to worst,” he remarked to his personal aide. “Who the hell are these people?”

The leader of “these people” sat at the epicenter of the growing storm and faced a bearded Norwegian captain in the day cabin beneath the starboard wing of the Freya’s bridge. The curtains were drawn back, and the sun shone warmly. From the windows stretched a panoramic view of the silent foredecks, running away a quarter of a mile to the tine fo’c’sle.

The miniature, shrouded figure of a man sat high on the bow apron above the stern, looking out from his perch at the glittering blue sea. On either side of the vessel, the same blue water lay flat and calm, a mild zephyr ruffling its surface. During the morning that breeze had gently blown away the invisible clouds of poisonous inert gases that had welled out from the holds when the inspection hatches were lifted; it was now safe to walk along the deck, or the man on the fo’c’sle would not have been there.

The temperature in the cabin was still stabilized, the air conditioning having taken over from the central heating when the sun became hotter through the double-glazed windows.

Thor Larsen sat where he had sat all morning, at one end of his main table, with Andrew Drake at the other.

Since the argument between the 0900 radio call and ten o’clock, there had been mainly silence between them. The tension of waiting was beginning to make itself felt. Each knew that across the water in both directions frantic preparations would be taking place: firstly to try to estimate exactly what had happened aboard the Freya during the night, and secondly to estimate what, if anything, could be done about it.

Larson knew no one would do anything, take any initiative, until the noon broadcast of demands. In that sense the in­tense young man facing him was not stupid. He had elected to keep the authorities guessing. By forcing Larsen to speak in his stead, he had given no clue to his identity or his origins. Even his motivations were unknown outside the cabin in which they sat. And the authorities would want to know more, to analyze the tapes of the broadcasts, identify the speech patterns and ethnic origins of the speaker, before tak­ing action. The man who called himself Svoboda was denying them that information, undermining the self-confidence of the men he had challenged to defy him.

He was also giving the press ample time to learn of the disaster, but not the terms; letting them evaluate the scale of the catastrophe if the Freya blew up, so that their head of steam, their capacity to pressure the authorities, would be well prepared ahead of the demands. When the demands came, they would appear mild compared to the alternative, thus subjecting the authorities to press pressure before they had considered the demands.

Larsen, who knew what the demands would be, could not see how the authorities would refuse. The alternative was too terrible for all of them. If Svoboda had simply kidnapped an industrialist or a politician, as the Baader-Meinhof people had kidnapped Hanns-Martin Schleyer, or the Red Brigades Aldo Moro, he might have been refused his friends’ release. But he had elected to destroy five national coastlines, one sea, thirty lives, and hundreds of millions of dollars in property.

“Why are these two men so important to you?” asked Lar­sen suddenly.

The younger man stared back.

“They’re friends,” he said.

“No,” said Larsen. “I recall from last January reading that they were two Jews from Lvov who had been refused permis­sion to emigrate, so they hijacked a Russian airliner and forced it to land in West Berlin. How does that produce your popular uprising?”

“Never mind,” said his captor. “It is five to twelve. We re­turn to the bridge.”

Nothing had changed on the bridge, except that there was an extra terrorist there, curled up asleep in the corner, his gun still clutched in his hand. He was masked, like the one who patrolled the radar and sonar screens. Svoboda asked the man something in the language Larsen now knew to be Ukrainian. The man shook his head and replied in the same language. At a word from Svoboda the masked man turned his gun on Larsen.

Svoboda walked over to the scanners and read them. There was a peripheral ring of clear water around the Freya at least to five miles on the western, southern, and northern sides. To the east, the sea was clear to the Dutch coast. He strode out through the door leading to the bridgewing, turned, and called upward. From high above, Larsen heard the man atop the funnel assembly shout back. Svoboda returned to the bridge.

“Come,” he said to the captain, “your audience is waiting. One attempt at a trick, and I shoot one of your seamen, as promised.”

Larsen took the handset and pressed for transmit.

“Maas Control, Maas Control, this is the Freya.”

Though he could not know it, over fifty different offices re­ceived that call. Five major intelligence services were listen­ing, plucking Channel 20 out of the ether with their sophisticated listeners. The words were heard simultaneously by the National Security Agency in Washington, by the British SIS, the French SDECE, the West German BND, the Soviet KGB, and the various services of Holland, Belgium, and Sweden. There were ships’ radio officers listening, radio hams and journalists as well.

A voice came back from the Hook of Holland.

“Freya, this is Maas Control. Go ahead, please.”

Thor Larsen read from his sheet of paper.

“This is Captain Thor Larsen. I wish to speak personally to the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.”

A new voice, speaking in English, came on the radio from the Hook.

“Captain Larsen, this is Jan Grayling. I am the Prime Min­ister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Are you all right?”

On the Freya, Svoboda clapped his hand over the mouth­piece of the telephone.

“No questions,” he said to Larsen. “Just ask if the West German Ambassador is present, and get his name.”

“Please ask no questions, Prime Minister. I am not permit­ted to answer them. Is the West German Ambassador with you?”

At Maas Control, the microphone was passed to Konrad Voss.

On the bridge of the Freya, Svoboda nodded at Larsen.

“That’s right,” he said, “go ahead and read it out.”

The six men grouped around the console in Maas Control listened in silence. One premier, one ambassador, one psychi­atrist, a radio engineer in case of a transmission breakdown, Van Gelder of the Port Authority, and the duty officer. All other shipping traffic had now been diverted to a spare chan­nel. The two tape recorders whirled silently. Volume was switched high; Thor Larsen’s voice echoed in the room.

“ ‘I repeat what I told you at nine this morning. The Freya is in the hands of partisans. Explosive devices have been placed that would, if detonated, blow her apart. These devices can be detonated at the touch of a button. I repeat, at the touch of a button. No attempt whatever must be made to approach her, board her, or attack her in any way. In such an event the detonator button will be pressed instantly. The men concerned have convinced me they are prepared to die rather than give in.’

“I continue. ‘If any approach at all is made, by surface craft or light aircraft, one of my seamen will be executed, or twenty thousand tons of crude oil vented, or both. Here are the demands of the partisans:

“ ‘The two prisoners of conscience, David Lazareff and Lev Mishkin, presently in jail at Tegel in West Berlin, are to be liberated. They are to be flown by a West German civilian jet from West Berlin to Israel. Prior to this, the Prime Minister of the State of Israel is to give a public guarantee that they will be neither repatriated to the Soviet Union, nor extradited back to West Germany, nor reimprisoned in Israel.

“ ‘Their liberation must take place at dawn tomorrow. The Israeli guarantee of safe conduct and freedom must be given by midnight tonight. Failure to comply will place the entire responsibility for the outcome on the shoulders of West Ger­many and Israel. That is all. There will be no more contact until the demands have been met.’ ”

The radiotelephone went dead with a click. The silence persisted inside the control building. Jan Grayling looked at Konrad Voss. The West German envoy shrugged.

“I must contact Bonn urgently,” Voss said.

“I can tell you that Captain Larsen is under some strain,” said the psychiatrist.

“Thank you very much,” said Grayling. “So am I. Gentlemen, what has just been said cannot fail to be made public within the hour. I suggest we return to our offices. I shall prepare a statement for the one o’clock news. Mr. Ambassa­dor, I fear the pressure will now begin to swing toward Bonn.”

“Indeed it will,” said Voss. “I must be back inside the em­bassy as soon as possible.”

“Then accompany me to The Hague,” said Grayling. “I have police outriders, and we can talk in the car.”

Aides brought the two tapes, and the group left for The Hague, fifteen minutes up the coast. When they were gone, Dirk Van Gelder walked up to the flat roof where Harry Wennerstrom would have held his lunch with Van Gelder’s permission, the other guests looking eagerly to seaward, as they supped on champagne and salmon sandwiches, to catch the first glimpse of the leviathan.

Now perhaps she would never come, thought Van Gelder, staring out at the blue water. He, too, had his master’s ticket, having served as a Dutch merchant navy captain until he was offered the shore job with the promise of a regular life with his wife and children. As a seaman he thought of the Freya’s crew, locked far beneath the waves, waiting helplessly for res­cue or death. But as a seaman he would not be in charge of negotiations. It was out of his hands now. Smoother men, cal­culating in political rather than human terms, would take over. He thought of the towering Norwegian skipper, whose pic­ture he had seen but whom he had never met, now facing madmen armed with guns and dynamite, and wondered how he would have reacted had it ever happened to him. He had warned that this could happen one day, that the supertankers were too unprotected and highly dangerous. But money had spoken louder; the more powerful argument had been the ex­tra cost of installing the necessary devices to make tankers like banks and explosive stores, both of which in a way they were. No one had listened, and no one ever would. People were concerned about airliners because they could crash on houses, but not about tankers, which traveled out of sight of land. So the politicians had not insisted, and the merchants had not volunteered. Now, because supertankers could be taken as easily as piggy banks, a captain and his crew of twenty-nine might die like rats in a swirl of oil and water.

He ground a cigarette under his heel into the tar of the roof, and looked again at the empty horizon.

“You poor bastards,” he said, “you poor bloody bastards. If only they’d listened.”