Terror at sea.(Book Review)

The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime By William Langewiesche North Point Press, 256 pages, $23

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Italian maritime authorities stumbled upon a suspicious stowaway holed up in the bowels of a Maersk Sealand container ship docked at a southern Italian port. The stowaway had outfitted a room size box in the ship's cargo deck with a laptop, cell phone, drinking water, heater, a bed and a toilet--and airline tickets; false security passes for Canadian, Thai, and Egyptian airports; maps; and an aircraft technician certificate. He caused suspicion by drilling airholes noisily into his box.

Upon discovery, the stowaway was identified as Amid Farid Rizk, a naturalized Canadian citizen born in Egypt carrying a valid Canadian passport. Was he a terrorist?

Italian investigators feared the worst. Rizk claimed he was a convert to Christianity, and had been fleeing an overbearing brother-in-law in Cairo who objected to his conversion. He had spirited himself away in the ship to avoid detection. The appliances? He had planned to bring them to his mother in Montreal, he said. But the phone number he told authorities was his mother's turned out to be false. What about the bogus security passes and certificates? Rizk claimed he had once worked for Thai Airways and Olympic Airways. But neither firm had ever heard of him, the Toronto Star reported. "This man has things to hide" an Italian official told journalists. Then, when Rizk was released on bail in November, he slipped away, to the consternation of U.S. officials.

Rizk is the emblematic terrorist case in William Langewiesche's The Outlaw Sea, a book that claims that the oceans--not the skies, land frontiers, or water supply--are our greatest vulnerability. As Rizk's case demonstrates, finding a possible maritime terrorist is something of a coup. Rizk turned up only because several unusual factors converged: a heightened post-September 11 security climate, rare alertness on the part of generally overworked, unambitious port officials, and the noise of Mr. Rizk's airhole-drilling at the precise moment the officials passed through. Without these, Rizk almost certainly would have entered Canada undetected. He was but one small part of the massive commercial exchange taking place on the high seas. And given that the United States is both the most active maritime commercial nation ...