The Devil's Alternative (36 page)

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 Pe- troleum’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.