Target Manhattan

by Brian Garfield

  Did Craycroft reply to that?

  No. Grofeld went on, told him the ransom would be delivered in good faith within the next hour and Ryterband would be turned loose with it. Grofeld said this would be done in good faith so long as the bombs weren’t dropped before the ransom was delivered. After that, he said, it would be up to Graycroft to decide whether he had a right to drop his bombs at five o’clock. Ten after five, whatever.

  And?

  Craycroft still didn’t answer, so Grofeld asked Charles Ryterband to get on the horn and repeat what he’d just said. Ryterband did so. He told Craycroft that we were right—that the bombs shouldn’t be dropped before five ten because those were the terms as he had first stated them. I think Ryterband understood intuitively what Grofeld was trying to do. We had the feeling that Craycroft was using that inflexible rigidity to hang onto what sanity he had left. He must have felt that his plans could work out so long as he didn’t waver—didn’t deviate from the exact plan. He probably felt that if he wavered, everything would fall apart. He clung to that rigidity, and Grofeld was playing on it. Ryterband had originally given us until five ten and Grofeld was asking Craycroft to honor that. Anyhow Ryterband got on the radio and repeated it all, told Craycroft he had to keep to the original bargain and not drop his bombs before five ten.

  Craycroft replied?

  Craycroft said, “Affirmative.” Christ, didn’t we all start breathing again. Grofeld bought us an extra two hours, maybe.

  Maybe?

  Well, we didn’t know what was in Craycroft’s mind. Naturally we hoped Craycroft would go away quietly after the ransom was paid, even if the ransom was late. Grofeld said emphatically several times that no overt action should be taken against Craycroft before the money was delivered to Ryterband. Then we’d try to feel out Craycroft’s intentions, and act accordingly. You see, none of us was sure that Craycroft had his plan worked out in absolute detail for what he’d do if we didn’t pay the ransom. I think he’d taken it for granted we would pay. He was right, of course—he just hadn’t taken into account the snail’s pace of bureaucracy. But I had a feeling—I can’t prove it—that he’d never stopped to think about the timing of it if the ransom wasn’t paid. Whether to drop the bombs at one minute past three or at ten minutes past five. He could have gone either way. Maybe Grofeld didn’t buy us any time we hadn’t had anyway. But none of that’s going to convince me that they shouldn’t build a statue to Henry Grofeld in City Hall square.

  By then you must have realized the danger that Craycroft might drop the bombs anyway, even after the ransom had been paid.

  Of course. We knew he was crazy. We had to include that possibility on the list. That was why Grofeld listened to our crazy scheme.

  O’Brien (Cont’d)

  I said, “Captain, you’ve got to understand this is a wild-hair idea. I wouldn’t give it more than one chance in fifty.” Captain Grofeld said that was a hell of a lot better odds than anything else we had right then. He said we’d better get on with it.

  And then?

  I told him what we’d need. Some of it was technical equipment—radio gear—that would take some mighty fast scrounging. The rest of it—the crop duster and all—was probably easier to get. But I scribbled a list for him.

  Do you have that list, by any chance?

  No, I’m sorry. It got lost in the shuffle somewhere. Probably got thrown out. I could give you a pretty good idea, though. We needed three portable transmitters that could put out taped code signals on the radio-navigation and LORAN bands. We needed a large helicopter—something fast enough to keep up with the bomber. Of course, the bomber wasn’t making much speed. Craycroft was conserving fuel, and in any case he had to keep his speed down to make those tight turns over Manhattan. He wasn’t making more than maybe a hundred and thirty miles an hour—he was throttled right down. We figured a chopper could keep up with that. And a crop duster. Actually my first idea was to use one of those midair-refueling jet tankers the Air Force has. But we’d have played hell trying to find one in time, and Jack Harris pointed out you could do the same job with a little crop duster, and of course he was right.

  By crop duster you mean a small, light airplane equipped to spray chemicals on farm fields.

  Yes, sir, that’s right. I knew where we could lay our hands on one. The New Jersey Mosquito Control Commission uses them to spray the swamps around Hackensack and Secaucus. They’ve got several planes at the Newark and Teterboro airfields.

  So your list included three transmitters, one large helicopter, and a crop-duster plane. Anything else?

  Yes, sir. Two things. A large portable electromagnet—the kind they use for picking scrap metal out of dumps—and several barrels of paint. We even suggested a specific brand of paint that we happened to know was thick and had a tendency to adhere to most surfaces instantly on contact. The color was immaterial.

  Coming on it cold, Captain Grofeld must have thought that was a rather strange list.

  Well, we’d told him what we had in mind, sir. The problem wasn’t in obtaining the things we wanted—they were all fairly common items. The problem was to do it fast and get all of it to the right place at the right time. The biggest headache was the transmitter codes—the tapes that put out the RN and LORAN signals. We had to use battery-powered equipment that put out weak signals, something that wouldn’t foul up all the air traffic in the metropolitan area pattern. Traffic had been diverted and grounded by the Civil Defense and the Port Authority airports, but still there could have been a lot of planes within radio range, using those navigating beacons. It was a headache trying to figure out where we could get low-power transmitters that would put out signals on the right frequencies, and figuring out where we could get RN and LORAN-coded signal tapes to feed into them.

  Wasn’t it Mr. Harris who proposed a solution to that?

  Yes, sir. We were stumped until he pointed out that we didn’t have to actually fool the instruments with fake beacons. All we really had to do was jam them. Put out any kind of signal at all, so long as it was on the right frequency and would interrupt his reception of signals from ground beacons.

  That made it much easier, then.

  Yes, sir. It became possible to do the job with three battery transmitters—any kind of transmitters that had variable frequency controls. We sent a cop down to a ham-radio shop and he had them within fifteen minutes.

  Grofeld (Cont’d)

  Right about then it got to be three o’clock. Everybody stopped talking. In fairness you’d have to call it a hush. Ryterband had got up from his chair and gone over to the window, trying to see the plane, and the rest of us moved that way—we were drawn there. It wasn’t in sight at that point. Somewhere else on its circuit. We stood there waiting for things to start exploding.

  You still weren’t sure whether he would hold off?

  How could we be sure of anything? We stood there and waited. All of us looking at our watches and then trying to spot him through the window and then looking at our watches again.… Nobody moved. It seemed to take forever. Then we heard the drone, and the plane appeared. It circled over us, heading for Brooklyn. The bombs were still in the racks. I guess we stood there for another two or three minutes before we started to breathe again.

  What happened then?

  Maybe we had a reprieve, but we still didn’t have much time. I’m a police captain, a divisional commander. In terms of real authority—a case like this one—that doesn’t mean beans. I believed in this crackpot scheme of Harris and O’Brien’s, but I had to get authority to try it. I knew it was going to take time to get permission. Too much time, probably, but at least we had to try.

  What did you do?

  I went over to Deputy Commissioner Toombes. Got him aside and told him about it.

  Was he agreeable to the idea?

  You have no idea how fast I had to talk. But I sold him. Look, it wasn’t as if we had any reasonable alternatives. Any solution, no matter how wild, was bound to look pre
tty good to a man in his position right about then.

  Then what?

  I told him we needed authorization and equipment. I showed him O’Brien’s list. He just blinked at it. I’m not sure he wasn’t convinced we were crazy, but he probably figured, what the hell. I kept pressing him, telling him we had to try it. It took a little while. I had to explain about the authorizations we’d need, and in circumstances like that you have to explain things several times before anybody understands.

  Yes. You have to penetrate past their confusion.

  Right. Your brain gets pretty numb, times like that.

  What were these authorizations you required?

  Well, first, of course, we needed permission from the highest possible authorities to try the stunt at all. City, FBI, and military. Or at least a couple of them. Then we’d need full cooperation from whoever was in command of those jet fighters circling up there. At that point none of us actually knew who was giving them their orders.

  You found out, though?

  Toombes went over and asked General Adler. Adler told him the planes had been launched by order of Major General Bradford Hawley of the Air National Guard.

  Adler had phoned Hawley earlier, I take it?

  Yes. Launching the planes had been Adler’s idea, but the authority was Hawley’s. Incidentally, when I called Hawley, the first thing I asked him was whether the fighters were really armed with live ammunition.

  And were they?

  Yes. Twenty-millimeter cannon and air-to-air missiles.

  Sidewinder missiles.

  That’s right.

  Now, at this time—what was it, about ten past three?

  About that, yes.

  At this time you began to seek authorization from the various departments?

  Yes. Both Mr. Toombes and I spent a lot of time on telephones.

  And ultimately you received these authorizations?

  Most of them, yes. We figured we could live without the rest of them.

  Which were denied you?

  The FBI, for one. They’re great buck passers. Azzard didn’t want to take the responsibility, and his next superior is in Washington and was somehow unavailable through all our attempts to reach him.

  But you decided to go ahead without FBI permission?

  What choice did we have?

  I don’t know, Captain. That’s what we’re here to determine.

  We got a pretty snappy go-ahead from Mr. Swarthout, the Assistant Deputy Mayor. That covered us with the Mayor’s office. We’d established an open line to General Hawley—he was in a National Guard office at Floyd Bennett Field—we got that line and held it open after about three thirty. Hawley wanted a crack at that bomber any way he could get one, and it looked as if we might give him one, so he seemed willing to play along with us. He’d somehow gotten Pentagon clearance. He had direct radio communication with the three Starfighters. In the meantime Mr. Swarthout, who was still in his office at City Hall, established contact with the headquarters of the Port Authority and began to clear us for the helicopter and the crop duster that O’Brien and Harris had asked for.

  How much time did all this take?

  It was nearly four o’clock before we had it all nailed down and had the channels of communication open.

  Still, under the circumstances that was fast work.

  We had a crisis on our hands, Mr. Skinner.

  That doesn’t always grease the skids under the bureaucracy.

  Well, there’s a certain amount of interaction. I mean, each of us had contacts among people who could help us. I knew Mr. Toombes. He knew Mr. Swarthout. Swarthout knew the people at Port Authority. I mean, relationships like that are inevitable in governmental structures. We were able to get lines of communication opened, and that was the key to it. I don’t think there was anything unusual about that. The apparatus is clumsy, but if you know how to deal with it, you can function pretty fast.

  I see. And Mr. Toombes had called in General Adler.…

  I don’t have much sympathy for General Adler, I admit. But the fact is it’s a good thing he was there. We might have had an easier time with some other Air Force officer, but we had to work with what we had.

  I thought you regarded him as a worse threat than Craycroft.

  In a way we did. But I’m a cop, and O’Brien’s a cop, and if Adler had really busted a fuse, we had him right there in the room and we could have neutralized him. Put him under arrest, shut him up. No, the real threat was always Craycroft, although I’ve got to admit Adler scared the hell out of us. We had to keep a damn close eye on him—you couldn’t be sure when he might get on the phone and tell General Hawley it was time to go to war.

  Now, while you were seeking authorizations and opening channels, what was being done about the requisitions on O’Brien’s list?

  Frankly I skipped the chain of command on most of those. I just gave orders to some cops to go get the stuff. The radio transmitters, the paint. Mr. Toombes, through Mr. Swarthout, got us the Port Authority helicopter—the biggest one they had, one of those twin-rotor banana jobs. I sent a squad from the precinct down to one of the construction outfits to requisition one of those big junkpile electromagnets with a battery-pack power supply. And we got the crop duster from the Jersey mosquito-control people, again through the Port Authority by way of a request from the Deputy Mayor’s office.

  These items you obtained yourself—the paint, the radios, and the magnet—you did that on your own authority, Captain?

  I did: I figured I’d argue later about whether I had the right to do it. If the stunt worked, nobody was going to bitch about a little moonlight requisitioning on my part. If it didn’t work, my head was likely to roll anyway. I didn’t see any point wasting time taking that stuff upstairs.

  Now, in the meantime, while all this was going on, the government bankers were trying to expedite the delivery of the ransom money?

  Yes.

  Eastlake (Cont’d)

  Yes, we were going all out. We had the truck loaded by three twenty. That was ten minutes earlier than I’d anticipated. I called Mr. Maitland to tell him the money was on its way. I rode over in the truck myself, with the guards.

  At what time did you arrive at the bank?

  The traffic was fairly heavy, and you know how narrow those streets are. It was only a few blocks, but it took about ten minutes to get across to Beaver Street. We drew up in front of the bank building. A group of men were waiting for us at the curb. Police officers were diverting pedestrian traffic. Mr. Maitland was there, and several officials with him, and a man whom someone pointed out to me as Charles Ryterband.

  This was down at street level? They had come downstairs to meet you?

  Yes. They told me the money was to be transferred directly from our truck to Ryterband’s car. The car was being brought around just then by two policemen, who parked it immediately behind our armored truck. Someone was carrying a large portable radio set of some kind, which they placed inside the car on the passenger seat. Later I was told that was a two-way radio, by which Ryterband kept in contact with his partner in the airplane.

  And you transferred the money into the car?

  Yes, sir. We had packed the money into two cases.

  Suitcases

  Actually they were fiberboard document cases—the handiest things we’d had available—but they were similar to large suitcases, yes. We placed them in the trunk of the car. Ryterband insisted on opening them to make sure they contained the money. Then he locked the trunk lid over them and went around the side of the car to talk to his partner by radio.

  Could you hear what was said between them?

  Yes. It was very brief. He told his partner the money had been delivered, that it was now in the car and that he was preparing to drive away from the bank, alone. He said something like, “They’ve kept their part of the bargain, Harold.”

  Did you hear Harold’s reply?

  First Ryterband said, “I’m leaving now.” Then his partner
on the radio said, “Roger. Out.” Then Ryterband got in the car and drove away.

  What time was that, Mr. Eastlake?

  It was exactly three thirty-five.

  Azzard (Cont’d)

  He was a badly rattled man. Scared to death. I was afraid he was going to drive right into a telephone pole, and that would be that. But he got away to the bridge all right. We had the bleepers on his belt and the money. There was an unmarked convoy on his tail, of course—two triangulation vans and a couple of plainclothes cars to boot. They stayed out of his sight, though.

  You hadn’t had much time to conceal anything in those suitcases, had you?

  Enough. One of our electronics boys had fixed up the cases while they were being loaded over at the Federal Reserve.

  Oh, I see.

  Our trackers followed him across the bridge and onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. He was a little ahead of the rush hour so he made fairly good time, even without speeding.

  He then went onto the Long Island Expressway?

  A few miles out beyond Queens, yes. Then he came to rest. Our vans moved in, triangulating by radio. They stopped about two hundred yards from his beacon. After a little while the beacons split up. They were different frequencies, we could tell which was which. Our agents could, that is. I was still at the Merchants Trust, but I was in radio contact with our field teams.

  I understand that. What happened when the radio devices separated?

  We’d more or less expected something like that. Obviously he’d taken the money out of our containers and transferred them to something else. As it turned out, he also switched cars, but that had no effect because we’d planted the bug on his belt, not his car. That bug—the one on his belt—moved away. The other two bleepers—on the suitcases—stayed put. We let him get some distance away before our men moved. One team followed the moving signal—Ryterband. The other moved in on the stationary signals. They found the empty suitcases in a private two-car garage, along with his car, which he’d left there. Meanwhile the second team of agents followed Ryterband north toward the shore of Long Island Sound.