The Final, Terrible Voyage of the Nautilus
On August 10, a Thursday, Wall and Stobbe were preparing to throw a goodbye party. In the late afternoon, just as they were setting up for a barbecue on the quay along the water in Refshaleøen, Wall got the text she had been waiting for: Madsen was inviting her for tea at his workshop. Madsen’s hangar was not far, so she set off. About half an hour later, she returned to let Stobbe know that Madsen had offered to take her out on his submarine. She decided to forgo her own goodbye party for the interview. She asked Stobbe if he wanted to come. Stobbe was “insanely close to saying yes,” he told me, had it not been for the group he had assembled. Because she was going out to sea, Stobbe gave Wall a bigger kiss than he would have had she gone out for, say, ice or lemons. Wall promised to be back in a few hours.
Just before boarding the submarine around 7 pm, Wall texted Stobbe a photo of the Nautilus. A little later, she sent a photo of windmills in the water, and then another of herself at the steering wheel. A while later, Stobbe was tending to a quayside fire when a friend told him to look up. He saw the setting sun and Wall aboard the submarine in the distance, waving toward him.
By most public accounts, Madsen was a charismatic rebel. He had a weathered face with the prominent features of a toy troll. His habitual uniform was coveralls and hiking boots. Fox, the filmmaker, calls him a “modern-day Clumsy Hans,” for the seemingly dimwitted suitor in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale who wins the princess’s favor over his more intelligent brothers. Wall was in the early stages of her reporting, and she would not have known much more about Madsen than what had already been published. It was only later, after everything that happened, that the details of his private life would become important.
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