With his left hand, the man pulled the black balaclava helmet from his head. Larsen found himself staring at a man in his early thirties, with brown eyes and medium-brown hair. He puzzled Larsen. The man spoke like an Englishman, behaved like one. But Englishmen did not hijack tankers, surely. Irish, perhaps? IRA? But he had referred to friends of his in prison in Germany. Arab, perhaps? There were PLO terrorists in prison in Germany. And he spoke a strange language to his companions. Not Arabic by the sound of it, yet there were scores of different dialects in Arabic, and Larsen knew only the Gulf Arabs. Again, Irish perhaps.
“What do I call you?” he asked the man whom he would never know as Andriy Drach or Andrew Drake. The man thought for a moment as he ate.
“You can call me ‘Svoboda,’ ” he said at length. “It is a common name in my language. But it is also a word. It means freedom.’ ”
“That’s not Arabic,” said Larsen.
The man smiled for the first time.
“Certainly not. We are not Arabs. We are Ukrainian freedom fighters, and proud of it.”
“And you think the authorities will free your friends in prison?” asked Larsen.
“They will have to,” said Drake confidently. “They have no alternative. Come, it is almost nine o’clock.”
“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.”