The Devil's Alternative

“Your chivalry is admirable, your sense of reality deplorable,” said the voice behind the leader’s mask. “No one gets hurt unless you try something stupid. Then there’ll be a bloodbath, and you’ll be right under the taps.”

Lundquist nodded to the seaman.

“Go with him,” he said. “Do what he wants.”

The seaman was escorted back down the stairs. At the D deck level, the terrorist stopped him.

“Apart from the captain, who lives on this deck?” he asked.

“The chief engineer, over there,” said the seaman. “The first officer, over there, but he’s up on the bridge now. And the chief steward, there.”

There was no sign of life behind any of the doors.

“The paint locker, where is it?” asked the terrorist. Without a word the seaman turned and headed down the stairs. They went through C deck and B deck. Once a murmur of voices came to them, from behind the door of the seamen’s messroom, where four men who could not sleep were apparently playing cards over coffee.

At A deck they had reached the level of the base of the superstructure. The seaman opened an exterior door and stepped outside. The terrorist followed nun. The cold night air made them both shiver after the warmth of the interior. They found themselves aft of the superstructure on the poop. To one side of the door from which they emerged, the bulk of the funnel towered a hundred feet up toward the stars.

The seaman led the way across the poop to where a small steel structure stood. It was six feet by six and about the same in height. In one side of it there was a steel door, closed by two great screw bolts with butterfly nuts on the outside.

“Down there,” said the seaman.

“Go on down,” said the terrorist. The boy spun the twin butterfly handles, unscrewing the cleats, and pulled them back. Seizing the door handle, he swung it open. There was a light inside, showing a tiny platform and a steel stairway running down to the bowels of the Freya. At a jerk from the gun, the seaman stepped inside and began to head downward, the terrorist behind him.

Over seventy feet of the stairs led down, past several galleries from which steel doors led off. When they reached the bottom they were well below waterline, only the keel beneath the deck plating under their feet. They were in an enclosure with four steel doors. The terrorist nodded to the one facing aft.

“What’s that lead to?”

“Steering-gear housing.”

“Let’s have a look.”

When the door was open, it showed a great vaulted hall all in metal and painted pale green. It was well lit. Most of the center o

f the deck space was taken up by a mountain of encased machinery the device which, receiving its orders from the computers of the bridge, would move the rudder. The walls of the cavity were curved to the nethermost part of the ship’s hull. Aft of the chamber, beyond the steel, the great rudder of the Freya would be hanging inert in the black waters of the North Sea. The terrorist ordered the door closed again and bolted shut.

Port and starboard of the steering-gear chamber were, respectively, a chemical store and a paint store. The chemical store the terrorist ignored; he was not going to make men prisoners where there was acid to play with. The paint store was better. It was quite large, airy, well ventilated, and its outer wall was the hull of the ship.

“What’s the fourth door?” asked the terrorist. The fourth was the only door with no handles.

“It leads to the rear of the engine room,” said the seaman. “It is bolted on the other side.”

The terrorist pushed against the steel door. It was rock-solid. He seemed satisfied.

“How many men on this ship?” he asked. “Or women. No tricks. If there is one more than the figure you give, we’ll shoot them.”

The boy ran his tongue over dry lips.

“There are no women,” he said. “There might be wives next trip, but not on the maiden voyage. There are thirty men, including Captain Larsen.”

Knowing what he needed to know, the terrorist pushed the frightened young man into the paint locker, swung the door closed, and threw one of the twin bolts into its socket. Then he returned back up the ladder.

Emerging on the poop deck, he avoided the interior stairs and raced back up the outside ladders to the bridge, stepping in from outside where they reached the bridgewing.

He nodded to his five companions, who still held the two officers at gunpoint, and issued a stream of further orders. Minutes later the two bridge officers, joined by the chief steward and chief engineer, roused from their beds on D deck below the bridge, were marched down to the paint locker. Most of the crew were asleep on B deck, where the bulk of the cabins were situated, much smaller than the officers’ accommodations above their heads, on C and D.

There were protests, exclamations, bitter language, as they were herded out and down. But at every stage the leader of the terrorists, the only one who spoke at all, informed them in English that their captain was held in his own cabin and would die in the event of any resistance. The officers and men obeyed their orders.

Down in the paint locker the crew was finally counted: twenty-nine. The first cook and two of the four stewards were allowed to return to the galley on A deck and ferry down to the paint store trays of buns and rolls, along with crates of bottled lemonade and canned beer. Two buckets were provided for toilets.