The Delta Solution

by Patrick Robinson

  “Yes. I have noticed that in the past,” said Admiral Bradfield. “We’re damn lucky to have him back.”

  BACK IN THE OLYMPIC TOWER, Tom Sowerby took it upon himself to inform the head office of Rotterdam Tankers that their prize VLCC was under the command of a gang of Somali pirates in the middle of the Indian Ocean. He was speaking only to the night duty officer, but the man reacted as if the assault was the responsibility of Sowerby himself.

  He was plainly young, and he kept saying in the quasi-American accent the Dutch are inclined to adopt when speaking English, “This is down to you, my friend . . . this is nothing to do with us . . . she’s your charter . . . it’s your insurance . . . not ours.”

  Tom Sowerby, who had forgotten more about shipping rules than this Dutch hysteric would ever know, snapped back, “If these fuckers blow up the goddamned ship, the oil is our loss. Our insurance. And we are covered for the charter costs. But the ship’s still yours. That’s why you carry insurance on her. I have a copy of the document right here.”

  “Rotterdam Tankers makes no insurance claims for this kind of thing,” said the Dutch-American voice. “No claims whatsoever. The ship is in your care. If she’s lost, it’s your problem. Trust me.”

  “Well, it seems no shipping company in the world is immune to the activities of the Somali pirates,” replied Sowerby. “And right now, under the rules of the European Union, we’re not allowed to have armed guards and certainly not permitted to open fire on the assault parties.”

  “I know,” replied Rotterdam. “Only the Americans reserve the right to defend their ships by force of arms. As members of the EU, both the Dutch and the Greeks are bound by the rules governing human rights.”

  Sowerby relayed the GPS position of the Queen Beatrix. He supplied the times and dates as best he could and confirmed the number of crew members and that there were no casualties. He also reported that his chairman, Constantine Livanos, had come to an arrangement with the pirate’s senior commander and that a ransom had been agreed upon.

  He added that the Greek ambassador in Washington was talking to the Americans about a warship escort for the cash handover, and that Athena Shipping expected Rotterdam Tankers to make a $2 million contribution to the overall sum demanded by the pirates.

  “That’s out of the question,” said the voice from the Netherlands, predictably. “The issue here is cargo. And so far as we are concerned, that’s all down to you.”

  “So it may be,” replied Sowerby. “Although that would depend upon how many times in the future you would like us to charter big ships from you. Think about it.”

  Outmaneuvered and outgunned by this rude bastard from New York, young Hans Cruyf, the twenty-five-year-old son of the tanker corporation’s managing director, decided to make a name for himself. So he called the offices of Netherlands 3 Television and asked to speak to the news desk.

  He identified himself as a director of Rotterdam Tankers and said he wished to provide an exclusive report concerning the capture of one of the biggest oil tankers in the world by Somali pirates. He provided as much detail as possible and confirmed that his family corporation owned the massive ship and that his father would be taking charge of the investigation.

  He told the reporters that he believed a ransom had been worked out and that the Americans had agreed to assist his father with a warship on station next to the Queen Beatrix. By the time Hans had finished, his father, Jorgen Cruyf, sounded like the new ruler of all the oceans with Hans as his very obvious right-hand man.

  But the grandiose family picture the young Dutchman painted did not affect the guts of the story. The 300,000-ton Beatrix had been commandeered by pirates, and this was the first news of the action on the Indian Ocean.

  Netherlands 3 came out with the exclusive story on their 10:00 p.m. television news bulletin. The Reuters man in Rotterdam, Jack Hardy spotted it in a city bar and called his London office. In turn they called their man in New York, who checked in with their office in Riyadh. No one knew a single thing about such a maritime outrage.

  Either the Dutch TV station knew something no one else did or there was a major hoax taking place. The trouble was the news bulletin did not name the tanker’s owner, only that it believed it to be Dutch on charter to a Greek shipping corporation.

  Which left the world’s newshounds spinning around in circles. There was no point calling the United States Navy since they were not involved in the actual hijack. The Somali media was close to useless as it made no difference, and the ship had never even been to America.

  The Reuters office in London searched online and checked out all media outlets broadcasting or publishing at night, and no one had a single sentence about the plight of the Queen Beatrix. The only lead the Rotterdam Reuters stringer had was the television station itself, and that was located on the outskirts of Amsterdam, thirty-five miles away.

  So Jack hit the road north and burned rubber all the way up the E-19 highway, past Schipol Airport and into Holland’s capital city. At Netherlands 3, he went in search of the news editor. It was almost midnight and the place was quiet, but they located the reporter on the phone.

  Yes, he did have a note on the owners of the Queen Beatrix. She was owned by Rotterdam Tankers, which had a head office down near the docks. There was a phone number, and the name of the night spokesman was Hans Cruyf.

  Apparently Hans’s father owned the corporation, not to mention the ship, and this was a wild exaggeration for a man who owned a couple of thousand shares in the company and operated on an executive level similar to that enjoyed by Tom Sowerby at Athena Shipping in New York.

  Jack Hardy tried to get Rotterdam Tankers on the phone but he had no private numbers, only the main switchboard. Hans was in there somewhere but it was midnight and he might be sleeping.

  So Jack hit the road again, straight back down the E-19 to Rotterdam, taking the same route as his original night dash in search of the Queen Beatrix. It took him only a half hour to reach the offices of Rotterdam Tanker. There were lights inside but the door was locked. Jack rang the bell hard.

  After five minutes someone answered and agreed to take the man from Reuters up to the office of the night duty officer. And after Jack had shown his press card, Hans Cruyf, plainly flattered to be the subject of international media attention, recounted all that he knew about the hijacked Queen Beatrix.

  He even provided photographs of him and his father standing with the giant tanker. He furnished Jack Hardy with the names and staff photographs of Captain Jan van Marchant and his two senior officers, Johan Nistelroy and Pietr van der Saar. He provided home addresses for all three of them and confirmed the number of crew members.

  Jack Hardy was astonished with gratitude. Because Hans Cruyf held back nothing. He’d provided the name and addresses of the chartering company, Athena Shipping, in New York, and provided a phone number and name for the boss there, Tom Sowerby.

  He’d briefed Jack on the Greek ambassador and the connection with the fabled Livanos family. And when the interview was complete, he explained that the original communication had not come from a member of the pirate gang. It had come from their shore-based Somali commander, though he did not know the location of the base.

  The man from Reuters left wearing a brand-new Rotterdam Tankerman baseball cap. And he went directly back to his office and made some calls. He failed to connect with Tom Sowerby or the Greek ambassador in Washington but he nonetheless filed his story. It was 2:00 a.m. in Holland, 1:00 a.m. in London, and 8:00 p.m. in New York.

  And the Reuters story hit the print and airwaves like a pirate’s RPG. The revered international news agency slugged it:

  WORLD’S BIGGEST TANKER

  SEIZED BY SOMALI PIRATES

  US Navy Answers Desperate

  Appeal by Dutch Government

  There followed a knock-down-drag-out account of the giant tanker being boarded by the machine-gun-toting gang in the dead of night eight hundred miles offshore in the Indian Ocean an
d the crew being held at gunpoint.

  Jack Hardy covered every base: the ransom demand, the threats, the hostages, the phone call to a member of the Livanos family who had the ship on charter. And the possibility that a ransom had been agreed to by the Greeks and the raiders.

  When he’d completed the action part of his story, Jack Hardy filed another six hundred words on the recent history of piracy off the coast of Somalia, pulling up the Internet accounts of the Niagara Falls incident from only a couple of weeks ago.

  He delved into the Reuters archives and pulled out another recent story about the lady who had traded her alimony rocket launcher for shares in two pirate operations and walked out with a $78,000 profit.

  Emboldened by the new organization of the pirate raids, Jack took the opportunity to take a serious lead among journalists covering this murky world. He stepped out of the strict news and recap business and stepped into the speculation game.

  And he ended his piece with a flourish:

  Meanwhile out on the dark, hostile waters of the Indian Ocean, the Queen Beatrix and her crew could only await developments.

  But mindful that the charter company Athena Shipping has world headquarters in New York City, US officials last night found themselves being dragged inevitably into the controversy and were considering whether this might be the same gang that captured the Niagara Falls.

  Pentagon insiders believe there were many similarities between the two raids. The US Navy’s top brass were also in conference last night with the CIA chief, Bob Birmingham, and the director of the National Security Agency, Captain James Ramshawe.

  Jack Hardy acquired those names from a government directory on the Web. And altogether they added to a sparkling little cluster of facts with which he rounded off his world scoop.

  Some of the “facts” might even have been true.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, General Zack Lancaster, Admirals Mark Bradfield and Andy Carlow, not to mention Commander Mack Bedford, were as furious as anyone can be without blowing a gasket.

  Military people detest the glare of publicity, and the Queen Beatrix debacle was supposed to be kept strictly under wraps, mostly because the subject was hideously sensitive and the very mention of it riled the public, the politicians, and the media to a degree second only to civil war and mass murder.

  Everyone involved had been hoping for a swift and silent payment of the ransom, which would send the Beatrix peacefully on her way into the Malacca Strait and then China.

  But this suddenly huge story, incontrovertibly linked to the Niagara Falls incident, appeared in almost every news publication in the United States, many of which plastered it on their front page. There were pictures of the crew, pictures and diagrams of the ship, valuations placed on its cargo of crude oil, and quotations from executives.

  Various publications had attempted to force a quote out of the Chinese National Oil Corporation in Shanghai. And one breathtakingly enterprising New York radio reporter had tried to get through to the private residence of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands to find out how upset she was at losing her ship.

  It all had the slightly crazed atmosphere that accompanies news stories when the journalists know only about one-fifth of the facts.

  And now the admirals could expect the roof to fall in, once again finding themselves fielding press demands asking why this was being allowed to happen. That the United States, with the biggest navy in the history of modern warfare, could possibly allow a bunch of half-naked African bandits to run circles around them. Every week.

  A police line was formed outside the Olympic Tower to prevent the media from launching a mass entry to the twentieth floor to find Tom Sowerby, who had been mentioned that morning in newspapers and news broadcasts more often than the president.

  The Fourth Estate attacked from all angles. They stationed men outside the home of Captain van Marchant’s mother in Delft; they ran to ground the families of the captured Johan Nistelroy and Pietr van der Saar outside Rotterdam; they besieged the apartment block in Monte Carlo trying to reach Constantine Livanos; they laid siege to the Greek Embassy in Washington, DC; and they fearlessly tried to smart-talk a whole fleet of lieutenant commanders in the United States Navy Press Office.

  More than one spokesman was moved to ask inquiring reporters, “Why in God’s name are you so excited about this? No one’s in any danger, and we are doing everything possible to solve the problem. It should all be over in another day. What do you want from us?”

  And the answer from all the reporters followed the same lines: “Because it’s in the public interest, our readers/listeners/viewers deserve to know the dangers present on the high seas. If these pirates can take a ship that big, they can take anything. This tanker is managed from New York City, and our readers/listeners/viewers need to know why the US Navy is apparently helpless.”

  By noontime, General Zack Lancaster was being pressured from the White House either to act or make some kind of statement through the DOD Press Office. But action was out of the question until Mack Bedford’s trainees came on line. And any statement would be construed as vacuous.

  The general’s advice never varied: “Everyone keep their heads well down and keep repeating, ‘It’s not even our goddamned ship, and neither the owners, nor the insurance companies, nor the crew, wish us to intervene in any way.”

  Meanwhile he privately ordered Admiral Mark Bradfield to send in the destroyer from Diego Garcia to help the Queen Beatrix, if necessary, during the ransom payment operation. “Because if something goes wrong and people get killed,” he added, “we, sure as hell, are going to get the blame right here in the US.”

  THE GUARD ON THE BRIDGE of the tanker was down to just two men, Elmi Ahmed, with the heavy machine gun, and a junior pirate called Georgio, age eighteen, who carried only his Kalashnikov. Still in control of the ship, her navigation and propulsion, was Captain van Marchant with his two senior officers, Johan and Pietr.

  Ismael Wolde had permitted the officers to eat in the private dining room on the fifth floor and had made it very clear that he and his commanders would use the same place for their own lunch and dinner. After one day dining in the company of Ahmed and Zenawi, Wolde estimated that he had rarely, if ever, been quite so well served.

  The captain and his staff were never more than five yards from that big machine gun and had accepted there was nothing they could do about their plight. The remaining crew members were kept below in the accommodation block and had their meals in their regular dining area.

  For the cooks and cleaning staff, it made little or no difference whether the Queen Beatrix was under the command of Captain van Marchant or Admiral Wolde. The work was much the same, except for the presence of the Somali Marine guard patrols, who prowled the ship constantly, unsmiling. They were a silent reminder that anyone attempting any kind of a revolt would be shot instantly.

  Admiral Wolde was constantly on the telephone to Mohammed Salat and together they drew up the plans for the collection of the $6 million ransom. There was a spot on the deserted beach ten miles northeast of Haradheere that could be approached by a cart track over the dunes. No problem for a 4 × 4 SUV.

  Rather than risk an ocean drop, possibly in the presence of warships, Salat favored telling the Athena executives to fly the money in, probably from Nairobi, and make a low-level drop onto the beach, where his men would retrieve it. The aircraft could then fly on to ensure an orderly disembarkation by the pirates from the Queen Beatrix and a swift clearance of the datum by all concerned.

  Subject to the availability of a long-range military aircraft, this seemed reasonable to Tom Sowerby, and he cleared the operation with the Greek ambassador before speaking to Livanos in Monte Carlo. The Greek tycoon, however, had bigger things on his mind than a mere $6 million off the bottom line of one of his tanker cargoes en route to China. He ordered Tom Sowerby to make whatever decisions were necessary. But he was gratified to learn that his New York chief executive had just heard that the directors o
f Rotterdam Tankers were prepared to pay 33 percent of the ransom money since it was, after all, their ship. And Athena was, after all, one of their best customers.

  The directors had already had a rather busy morning, having summarily fired Hans Cruyf for indiscretion so appallingly judged that it was unlikely he could ever occupy a position of responsibility in the somewhat reclusive world of international shipping.

  Meanwhile the GPS numbers relayed to Tom Sowerby for the big drop were 4.40N 47.53E. According to the Greek ambassador, his navy was not strong on modern aviation, owning only old Orion aircraft. And he requested that Sowerby check with his friends at Rotterdam Tankers in search of a better aircraft. If not them, then perhaps the Americans, who, unhappily the ambassador guessed, would be seething after this morning’s media blast.

  “Perhaps,” he suggested, smoothly, “we might intimate to the Dutch that they rather stepped on our toes with that unfortunate leak to the press. Inadvertently, of course, and no fault of the directors of the tanker company.

  “But perhaps a word in the right place might urge the very well-equipped Dutch Navy to step in and assist us with the transportation. They might even like it to be known that when one of their great shipping corporations runs into trouble, they are indeed there to help and ensure rescue.

  “I expect the Dutch captain of the ship might be persuaded to express his appreciation to them. Publicly, of course.”

  Tom Sowerby immediately understood that he had just been provided with an abject lesson showing precisely why men like this were awarded sensational jobs in Washington, elegantly representing their nation on the world’s biggest stage.

  Sowerby rang off, called the offices of Rotterdam Tankers, and had a discussion along the lines the ambassador had suggested. They informed him that they were knocking $2 million off the cost of two charters that were about to be contracted, and they were also sure they could prevail upon the Netherlands Navy for a modern aircraft for the long-distance drop on the East African beach.