A Queen's Ransom

A 66,000-ton ship is considerably more difficult to hijack than a 100-ton jet. On the other hand, a 963-ft. ocean liner contains more hiding places for anyone who wants to stow a bomb aboard. Last week the British liner Queen Elizabeth 2 was in mid-ocean when an extortionist telephoned Cunard Lines and demanded a queen's ransom of $350,000. Six bombs were hidden aboard the Queen and ready to detonate, the caller warned. They had been placed there by an ex-convict and a terminal cancer victim who were fatalistically prepared to be blown sky-high along with the ship's 1,481 passengers and 900 crewmen.

Cunard was "99 1/2% sure" that the call was a hoax, Chairman Victor Matthews reported later. Nevertheless the company procured the cash in Manhattan and waited for a second call, which never came. Meanwhile, at an R.A.F. base in Wiltshire, England, a four-man bomb-disposal team climbed aboard a long-range Hercules transport and strapped on parachutes. When the plane made its rendezvous with the liner 1,400 miles west of England in the Atlantic, the men plummeted through the clouds and rain to land close beside a waiting launch.

As the Queen Elizabeth 2 picked up speed again and headed flat out for Cherbourg, the bomb experts commenced an almost impossible assignment. No fewer than 12,000 pieces of passenger baggage, for instance, had been loaded aboard three days earlier during a record seven-hour turnaround in New York. The passengers seemed to be undaunted. Orchestras played, champagne corks popped and a crew member reported that "everyone is drinking and dancing as usual."

The ex-con and the terminal-cancer case were doubtless among the revelers--if indeed they existed. FBI agents last week interviewed a student at Manhattan's Hunter College. One day before the Q.E. 2 was threatened, as it happened, her creative-writing workshop had discussed a short story she had written about a woman cancer victim and her friend, a male proofreader, who sail aboard the Queen and threaten to blow it up unless a famous diamond is surrendered to them. Wondering if life had imitated art with curious proximity, agents began checking out the workshop members.

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