How are the Pirate getting their ransom money?

And when the payday comes, the money sometimes literally falls from the sky.

Pirates say the ransom arrives in burlap sacks, sometimes dropped from buzzing helicopters, or in waterproof suitcases loaded onto tiny skiffs in the roiling, shark-infested sea.

"The oldest man on the ship always takes the responsibility of collecting the money, because we see it as very risky, and he gets some extra payment for his service later," Aden Yusuf, a pirate in Eyl, told AP over VHF radio.

The pirates use money-counting machines — the same technology seen at foreign exchange bureaus worldwide — to ensure the cash is real. All payments are done in cash because Somalia, a failed state, has no functioning banking system.

"Getting this equipment is easy for us, we have business connections with people in Dubai, Nairobi, Djibouti and other areas," Yusuf said. "So we send them money and they send us what we want."

Stolberg, convinced that he was approaching a breakthrough, encountered an unexpected obstacle in Germany. The state bank in Bremen did not have enough dollars on hand. Bank notes had to be brought in from Hamburg, and because the state bank there could only pay out a portion of the large sum in $20 bills instead of $100 bills, the shipping company needed two large pilot suitcases to accommodate all of the money. It was then flown to the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where it was loaded onto a helicopter and taken to a small tugboat in the port city of Mombasa. From there, the English security firm took the ransom money to Somalia. After seven days, the tugboat had reached the "BBC Trinidad."

On Thursday morning of last week, two boots were moored to the Beluga freighter, the hijackers' speedboat on one side and the tugboat from Mombasa on the other. A doctor examined the crew and the pirates counted the money. Martin, the head of the security firm, recognized the pirates. He had handed over a similar sum of money a few weeks earlier to secure the release of the German ship "Lehmann Timber." The pirates divided up the money and placed it into 18 bags, presumably to pay 18 different clans. Then they left the ship, and the "BBC Trinidad" was allowed continue its voyage to Muscat.