“Is that possible?” asked Sir Julian.

“Perfectly possible,” said the sapper, and explained how an oscillator worked.

“Surely they could have wires to each charge, linked to a plunger?” asked Sir Julian.

“It’s a question of the weight again,” said the engineer. “The wires would have to be waterproof, plastic-coated. The weight of that number of miles of electric cable would nearly sink the launch on which these terrorists arrived.”

There was more information about the destructive capacity of the oil by pollution, the few chances of rescuing the trapped crewmen, and the SIS admitted they had no information that might help identify the terrorists from among foreign groups of such people.

The man from MI5, who was actually the deputy chief of C4 Department within that body, the section dealing exclusively with terrorism as it affected Britain, underlined the strange nature of the demands of the captors of the Freya.

“These men, Mishkin and Lazareff,” he pointed out, “are Jewish. Hijackers who tried to escape from the USSR and ended up shooting a flight captain. One has to assume that those seeking to free them are their friends or admirers. That tends to indicate fellow Jews. The only ones who fit into that category are those of the Jewish Defense League. But so far they’ve just demonstrated and thrown things. In our files we haven’t had Jews threatening to blow people to pieces to free their friends since the Irgun and the Stern Gang.”

“Oh dear, one hopes they don’t start that again,” observed Sir Julian. “If not them, then who else?”

The man from C4 shrugged.

“We don’t know,” he admitted. “We can notice no one in our files conspicuous by being missing, nor do we have a trace from what Captain Larsen has broadcast to indicate their origins. This morning I thought of Arabs, even Irish. But neither would lift a finger for imprisoned Jews. It’s a blank wall.”

Still photographs were brought in, taken by the Nimrod an hour earlier, some showing the masked men on lookout. They were keenly examined.

“MAT-forty-nine,” said Colonel Hohnes briefly, studying the submachine gun one of the men cradled in his arms. “It’s French.”

“Ah,” said Sir Julian, “now perhaps we have something. These blighters could be French?”

“Not necessarily,” said Holmes. “You can buy these things in the underworld. The Paris underworld is famous for its taste for submachine guns.”

At three-thirty, Sir Julian Flannery brought the meeting into recess. It was agreed to keep the Nimrod circling above the Freya until further notice. The Vice Chief of Defense Staff put forward and had accepted his proposal to divert a naval warship to take up station Just over five miles west of the Freya to watch her also, in case of an attempt by the terrorists to leave under cover of darkness. The Nimrod would spot them and pass their position to the Navy. The warship would easily overhaul the fishing launch still tied by the Freyda’s side.

The Foreign Office agreed to ask to be informed of any decision by West Germany and Israel on the terrorists’ demands.

“There does not, after all, appear much that Her Majesty’s government can do at the present moment,” Sir Julian pointed out. The decision is up to the Israeli Prime Minister and the West German Chancellor. Personally I cannot see what else they can do except to let these wretched young men go to Israel, repugnant though the idea of yielding to blackmail must be.”

When the men left the room, only Colonel Holmes of the Royal Marines stayed behind. He sat down again and stared at the model of the quarter-million-ton British Petroleum tanker in front of him.

“Supposing they don’t?” He said to himself.

Carefully he began to measure the distance in feet from the sea to the stern taffrail.

The Swedish pilot of the Jetstream was at fifteen thousand feet off the West Frisian Islands, preparing to let down into Schiedam airfield outside Rotterdam. He turned around and called something to the petite woman who was his passenger. She unbuckled and came forward to where he sat.

“I asked if you wanted to see the Freya,” the pilot repeated. The woman nodded.

The Jetstream banked away to the sea, and five minutes later tilted gently onto one wing. From her seat, face pressed to the tiny porthole, Lisa Larsen looked down. Far below in a blue sea, like a gray sardine nailed to the water, the Freya lay at anchor. There were no ships around her; she was quite alone in her captivity.

Even from fifteen thousand feet, through the clear spring air, Lisa Larsen could make out where the bridge would be, where the starboard side of that bridge was; below it she knew her husband was facing a man with a gun pointed straight at his chest, with explosive beneath his feet. She did not know whether the man with the gun was mad, brutal, or reckless. That he must be a fanatic, she knew.

Two tears welled out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. When she whispered, her breath misted the perspex disk in front of her.

“Thor, my darling, please come out of there alive.”

The Jetstream banked again and began its long drop toward Schiedam. The Nimrod, miles away across the sky, watched it go.

“Who was that?” asked the radar operator of no one in particular.

“Who was what?” replied a sonar operator, having nothing to do.

“Small executive jet just banked over the Freya, had a look, and went off to Rotterdam,

Tags: Frederick Forsyth Thriller
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