Mystery of the Missing Freighter

Did you catch the news about the good ship Arctic Sea after it disappeared following our coastguards waving it through the English Channel long after Interpol issued a piracy alert after the ship was seized in the far-off Baltic Sea?  All week a very strange story got more and more bizarre,

 

A week ago it was reported to be boarded by armed men off cunningly disguised as Swedish Police on the hunt for drugs off the Swedish coast.   Nobody, least of all HM Customs seemed to pay much attention, until the Finnish-owned cargo vessel quietly disappeared – apparently with its original crew still on board as hostages.

 

It reads a bit like a second rate thriller – and now apparently even the Russian Navy has muscled in on the act – sending warships and Nuclear Submarines out to find the ship and secure the release of the 15 man Russian clue.

 

If the Sunday Times is to be believed, a £1 million ransom has now been demanded. Although a slight note of comedy and suspicion must be raised as the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation is apparently called Markku Ranta-Abo.

 

More than 30 countries have now been drawn into this maritime mystery.  “This is real cloak and dagger stuff, like a Carré novel” said a perceptive Russian shipping expert called Michael Boytenko.  Just to add spice to the plot, some experts believe the tracking device may have been cast overboard in a small dinghy just to confuse everybody still further. 

 

It does seem odd in an age when we are asked to believed that the Americans can see what dirty magazines we are reading in the privacy of our back garden through satellite technology that a ship can not only disappear it can sail with impunity from the Baltic to somewhere near Algeria via the busiest shipping lane in the world.

 

I rather like the theory that the reason behind the ship’s disappearance is that it is carrying something a little more interesting or sinister than timber.    However, if it did have a hold full of deadly nerve toxin or an assortment of nuclear bombs – I suppose the arch criminal behins this scheme would ask for more than £1million.  Unless of course it is another master plan of Doctor Evil!