“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.