Word: heineken
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...they burst through the hardboard front, members of the 70-man police unit suddenly came upon two soundproof and unheated concrete cells. Inside each one a man, clad only in filthy pajamas, lay shivering on a mattress and manacled to the walls. Three weeks after Beer Tycoon Alfred (Freddie) Heineken, 60, and his chauffeur, Ab Doderer, 57, were spirited into a van by five masked men, one of the largest manhunts in Dutch history had stumbled upon a happy ending...
From the beginning, the case had twisted and turned like the raciest of thrillers. On the evening of the abduction, the criminals left a message on the doorstep of a police station in The Hague giving the Heineken family three days to rustle up a total of about $10 million worth of U.S., French, West German and Dutch currencies. The kidnapers used the code word "eagle" for themselves and "hare" for the policeman who would bring them the booty. Three days later the Amsterdam police placed an ad in a national newspaper declaring their readiness to pay the ransom...
...Heineken, said Friend Sergio Orlandini, president of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, is "just the average Amsterdammer-although with a little money." That was putting it mildly. The portly, quick-witted financial wizard, who is worth an estimated $500 million, may be the wealthiest man in The Netherlands; he is also a full-fledged jet-setter who socializes with Monaco's Prince Rainier as well as Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands, and collects Picassos, mansions and a pride of vintage cars...
...Heineken loyally served the family firm, which was founded by his grandfather in 1864, by peddling beer from bar to bar in New York City, while living in a $3.50-a-night hotel room in Times Square. He returned to Amsterdam two years later with an American wife and a canny sense of how to produce publicity with dignity. Since he became chairman of the company in 1971, its sales have more than quintupled, reaching an annual $1.4 billion, thanks in large part to the serenely elegant ads directed by Heineken himself. What he calls "the Rolls-Royce of beers...
Shady fortune hunters, as Heineken knows, find such figures irresistible. In 1980 three extortionists threatened to poison cans of Heineken beer unless they were paid more than $1 million. Their plot was foiled. Nonetheless, another would-be crook tried the same ploy last August, demanding $3.3 million. Some of the policemen who thwarted him were entertained by Heineken in his office on the day of his disappearance...