” said the radarman.
“Probably the owner checking on his property,” said the crew’s wit from the radio console.
On the Freya the two lookouts gazed through eyeslits after the tiny sliver of metal high above as it headed east toward the Dutch coast. They did not report it to their leader; it was well above ten thousand feet.
The West German cabinet meeting began just after three P.M. in the Chancellery Office, with Dietrich Busch in the chair as usual. He went straight to the point, as he had a habit of doing.
“Let’s be clear about one thing: this is not Mogadisho all over again. This time we do not have a German plane with a German crew and mainly German passengers on an airstrip whose authorities are prepared to be collaborative toward us. This is a Swedish vessel with a Norwegian captain in international waters; she has crewmen from five countries including the United States, an American-owned cargo insured by a British company, and her destruction would affect at least five coastal nations, including ourselves. Foreign Minister?”
Hagowitz informed his colleagues he had already received polite queries from Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, and Britain regarding the kind of decision the government of the Federal Republic might come to. After all, they held Mishkin and Lazareff.
“They are being courteous enough not to exert any pressure to influence our decision, but I have no doubt they would view a refusal on our part to send Mishkin and Lazareff to Israel with the deepest misgivings,” he said.
“Once you start giving in to this terrorist blackmail, it never ends,” put in the Defense Minister.
“Dietrich, we gave in over the Peter Lorenz affair years ago and paid for it. The very terrorists we freed came back and operated again. We stood up to them over Mogadishu and won; we stood up again over Schleyer and had a corpse on our hands. But at least those were pretty well all-German affairs. This isn’t. The lives at stake aren’t German; the property isn’t German. Moreover, the hijackers in Berlin aren’t from a German terrorist group. They’re Jews who tried to get away from Russia the only way they knew how. Frankly, it puts us in the devil of a spot,” Hagowitz concluded.
“Any chance that it’s a bluff, a confidence trick, that they really can’t destroy the Freya or kill her crew?” someone asked.
The Interior Minister shook his head.
“We can’t bank on that. These pictures the British have just transmitted to us show the armed and masked men are real enough. I’ve sent them along to the leader of GSG-nine to see what he thinks. But the trouble is, approaching a ship with all-around, over-and-under radar and sonar cover is not their area of expertise. It would mean divers or frogmen.”
He was referring by GSG-nine to the ultratough unit of West German commandos drawn from the Border Troops who had stormed the hijacked aircraft at Mogadisho five years earlier.
The argument continued for an hour: whether to accede to the terrorists’ demands in view of the several nationalities of the probable victims of a refusal, and accept the inevitable protests from Moscow; or whether to refuse and call their bluff; or whether to consult with the British allies about the idea of storming the Freya. A compromise view of adopting delaying tactics, stalling for time, testing the determination of the Freya’s captors, seemed to be gaining ground. At four-fifteen, there was a quiet knock on the door. Chancellor Busch frowned; he did not like interruptions.
“Herein,” he called. An aide entered the room and whispered urgently in the Chancellor’s ear. The head of the Federal Republic’s government paled.
“Du lieber Gott,” he breathed.
When the light aircraft, later traced as a privately owned Cessna on charter from Le Touquet airfield on the northern French coast, began to approach, she was spotted by three different air-traffic-control zones: at Heathrow, Brussels, and Amsterdam. She was flying due north, and the radars put her at five thousand feet, on track for the Freya. The ether began to crackle furiously.
“Unidentified light aircraft ... identify yourself and turn back. You are entering a prohibited area. ...”
French and English were used; later, Dutch. They had no effect. Either the pilot had switched off his radio or he was on the wrong channel. The operators on the ground began to weep through the wave bands.
The circling Nimrod picked the aircraft up on radar and tried to contact her.
On board the Cessna, the pilot turned to his passenger in despair.
“They’ll have my license,” he yelled. “They’re going mad down there.”
“Switch off,” the passenger shouted back. “Don’t worry, nothing will happen. You never heard them, okay?”
The passenger gripped his camera and adjusted the telephoto lens. He began to sight up on the approaching supertanker. In the forepeak, the masked lookout stiffened and squinted against the sun, now in the southwest. The plane was coming from due south. After watching for several seconds, he took a walkie-talkie from his anorak and spoke sharply into it.
On the bridge, one of his colleagues heard the message, peered forward through the panoramic screen, and walked hurriedly outside onto the wing. Here he, too, could hear the engine note. He reentered the bridge and shook his sleeping colleague awake, snapping several orders in Ukrainian. The man ran downstairs to the door of the day cabin and knocked.
Inside the cabin, Thor Larsen and Andrew Drake, both looking unshaven and more haggard than twelve hours earlier, were still at the table, the gun by the Ukrainian’s right hand. A foot away from him was his powerful transistor radio, picking up the latest news. The masked man entered on his command and spoke in Ukrainian. His leader scowled and ordered the man to take over in the cabin.
Drake left the cabin quickly, raced up to the bridge and out onto the wing. As he did so, he pulled on his black mask. From the bridge he gazed up as the Cessna, banking at a thousand feet, performed one orbit of the Freya and flew back to the south, climbing steadily. While it turned he had seen the great zoom lens poking down at him.
Inside the aircraft, the free-lance cameraman was exultant.
“Fantastic!” he shouted at the pilot. “Completely exclusive. The magazines will pay their right arms for this.”
Drake returned to the bridge and issued a rapid stream of orders. Over the walkie-talkie he told the man up front to continue his watch. The bridge lookout was sent below to summon two men who were catching sleep. When all three returned, he gave them further instructions. When he returned to the day cabin, he did not dismiss the extra guard.