Azamat Krim, assisted by three of his colleagues, shinnied down a rope from the taffrail of the tanker to the sturdy fishing launch that had bobbed beside the hull for the past two and half days. When the four of them were standing in the launch’s open waist, they began preparations for the departure of the group from the Freya.
At six o’clock the chimes of Big Ben rang out from London, and the evening news broadcast began.
“This is the BBC World Service. The time is six o’clock in London, and here is the news, read to you by Peter Chalmers.”
A new voice came on. It was heard in the wardroom of the Argyll, where Captain Preston and most of his officers were grouped around the set. Captain Mike Manning tuned in on the Moran; the same newscast was heard at 10 Downing Street, in The Hague, Washington, Paris, Brussels, Bonn, and Jerusalem. On the Freya. Andrew Drake sat motionless, watching the radio unblinkingly.
“In Jerusalem today. Prime Minister Benyamin Golen said that following the arrival earlier from West Berlin of the two prisoners David Lazareff and Lev Mishkin, he would have no alternative but to abide by his pledge to free the two men, provided the supertanker Freya was freed with her crew unharmed. ...”
“No alternative!” shouted Drake. “That’s the phrase! Miroslav has done it!”
“Done what?” asked Larsen.
“Recognized them. It’s them, all right. No switching has taken place.”
He slumped back in his chair and exhaled a deep sigh.
“It’s over, Captain Larsen. We’re leaving, you’ll be glad to hear.”
The captain’s personal locker contained one set of handcuffs, with keys, in case of the necessity physically to restrain someone on board. Cases of madness have been known on ships. Drake slipped one of the cuffs around Larsen’s right wrist and snapped it shut. The other went around the table leg. The table was bolted to the floor. Drake paused in the doorway and laid the keys to the handcuffs on top of a shelf.
“Good-bye, Captain Larsen. You may not believe this, but I’m sorry about the oil slick. It would never have happened if the fools out there had not tried to trick me. I’m sorry about your hand, but that, too, need not have happened. We’ll not see each other again, so good-bye.”
He closed and locked the cabin door behind him and ran down the three flights of stairs to A deck and outside to where his men were grouped on the afterdeck. He took his transistor radio with him.
“All ready?” he asked Azamat Krim.
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” said the Crimean Tatar.
“Everything okay?” he asked the Ukrainian-American who was an expert on small boats.
The man nodded.
“All systems go,” he replied.
Drake looked at his watch. It was twenty past six.
“Right. Six-forty-five, Azamat hits the ship’s siren, and the launch and the first group leave simultaneously. Azamat and I leave ten minutes later. You’ve all got papers and clothes. After you hit the Dutch coast, everyone scatters. It’s every man for himself.”
He looked over the side. By the fishing launch, two inflatable Zodiac speedboats bobbed in the fog-shrouded water. Each had been dragged out from the fishing launch and inflated in the previous hour. One was the fourteen-foot model, big enough for five men. The smaller, ten-foot model would take two comfortably. With the forty-horsepower out-boards behind them, they would make thirty knots over a calm sea.
“They won’t be long now,” said Major Simon Fallon, standing at the forward rail of the Cutlass.
The three fast patrol boats, long since invisible from the Freya, had been pulled clear of the western side of the Argyll and now lay tethered beneath her stern, noses pointed to where the Freya lay, five miles away through the fog.
The Marines of the SBS were scattered, four to each boat, all armed with submachine carbines, grenades, and knives.
One boat, the Sabre, also carried on board four Royal Navy explosives experts, and this boat would make straight for the Freya to board and liberate her as soon as the circling Nimrod had spotted the terrorist launch leaving the side of the supertanker and achieving a distance of three miles from her. The Cutlass and Scimitar would pursue the terrorists and hunt them down before they could lose themselves in the maze of creeks and islands that make up the Dutch coast south of the Maas.
Major Fallon would head the pursuit group in the Cutlass. Standing beside him, to his considerable disgust, was the man from the Foreign Office, Mr. Munro.
“Just stay well out of the way when we close with them,” Fallon said. “We know they have submachine carbines and handguns, maybe more. Personally, I don’t see why you insist on coming at all.”
“Let’s just say I have a personal interest in these bastards,” said Munro, “especially Mr. Svoboda.”
“So have I,” growled Fallon. “And Svoboda’s mine.”
Aboard the Moran, Mike Manning had heard the news of the safe arrival of Mishkin and Lazareff in Israel with as much relief as Drake on the Freya. For him, as for Thor Larsen, it was the end of a nightmare. There would be no shelling of the Freya now. His only regret was that the fast patrol boats of the Royal Navy would have the pleasure of hunting down the terrorists when they made their break. For Manning the agony he had been through for a day and a half parlayed itself into anger.
“If I could get my hands on Svoboda,” he told his gunnery officer, Lieutenant Commander Olsen, “I’d happily wring the bastard’s neck.”
As on the Argyll, the Brunner, the Breda, and the Montcalm, the Moran’s radar scanners swept the ocean for signs of the launch moving away from the Freya’s side. Six-fifteen came and went, and there was no sign.
In its turret the forward gun of the Moran, still loaded, moved away from the Freya and pointed at the empty sea three miles to the northeast.
At ten past eight Tel Aviv time, Lev Mishkin was standing in his cell beneath the streets of Tel Aviv, when he felt a pain in his chest. Something like a rock seemed to be growing fast in-side him. He opened his mouth to scream, but the air was cut off. He pitched forward, face down, and died on the floor of the cell.
There was an Israeli policeman on permanent guard outside the door of the cell, and he had orders to peer inside at least every two or three minutes. Less than sixty seconds after Mishkin died, his eye was pressed to the judas hole. What he saw caused him to let out a yell of alarm, and he frantically rattled the key in the lock to open the door. Farther up the corridor, a colleague in front of Lazareff’s door heard the yell and ran to his assistance. Together they burst into Mishkin’s cell and bent over the prostrate figure.
“He’s dead,” breathed one of the men. The other rushed into the corridor and hit the alarm button. Then they ran to Lazareff’s cell and hurried inside.
The second prisoner was doubled up on the bed, arms wrapped around himself as the paroxysms struck him.
“What’s the matter?” shouted one of the guards, but he spoke in Hebrew, which Lazareff did not understand. The dying man forced out four words in Russian. Both guards heard him clearly and later repeated the phrase to senior officers, who were able to translate it.
“Head ... of ... KGB ... dead.”
That was all he said. His mouth stopped moving; he lay on his side on the cot, sightless eyes staring at the blue uniforms in front of him.
The ringing bell brought the chief superintendent, a dozen other officers of the station staff, and the doctor, who had been drinking coffee in the police chiefs office.