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 wh
ose 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 Ålesund. Yes, Ålesund, 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.