Why?
They’re heat-seeking projectiles. Suppose one of them missed Craycroft’s plane? It’d head for the nearest crosstown bus, or the incinerator-chimney on an apartment house roof. Christ.
I see what you mean.
Anyhow, we didn’t know how soon Adler might break a wire and try to order those fighters in to attack. Actually we didn’t even know whether he had the authority to order an attack, but we had to assume he did. He was talking real loud about dumping the debris all over central Harlem. He seemed to get a big charge out of that idea. His face was getting very red-he’s a classic case of hard-drinking high blood pressure-and there was no way to know he wouldn’t go berserk. So we were contending not only with Craycroft, but with Adler, too. Things didn’t look very bright. I think it was the Adler threat, more than the Craycroft threat, that persuaded O’Brien and me to put that crazy idea to Grofeld.
Go on, please.
Well, it was past two thirty by then. We didn’t have more than maybe twenty-five minutes before Cray-croft’s deadline, and by that point we knew we couldn’t make the deadline. We buttonholed Grofeld. O’Brien asked him if he had permission to speak. Grofeld said what the hell, of course. O’Brien said we’d come up with a cockeyed scheme that just might work.
You told him the nature of the scheme?
Just in outline. We didn’t have time to spell out the details.
How did Captain Grofeld react?
He didn’t screw around with silly questions. He was just as scared of Adler as we were. Maybe more so. He just looked O’Brien in the eye and said, “That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard in the past hour.”
What happened next?
Grofeld said, “But that’ll take a lot more than twenty minutes.” We agreed it would. Grofeld said, “All right. Let’s try to buy some time.” That sweet gorgeous son of a bitch. He walked right over to Charles Ryterband. Ryterband had calmed down a little by then. He listened very gravely to Grofeld-like a small kid listening to his father explain about the birds and the bees. Ryterband had an expression on his face as hopeless as I’ve ever seen on a human being, but he turned around and picked up the microphone and made contact with Craycroft. I heard Craycroft’s voice on the speaker, repeating the call letters-they were very formal about that kind of thing-and then Ryterband started talking in a subdued monotone, telling him the money was on its way, it would be a half hour or forty-five minutes late, but it was on the way, and please would he hold off with the bombs until the money was delivered.
But you got the same response as before?
Yeah. Craycroft said three words. He said, “Three o’clock. Out.” That was that. In the meantime Maitland was on the phone with the Federal Reserve, but they weren’t reassuring. The money was being packed up even then, some of it was being carried upstairs to the truck, but it would be a lot more than twenty minutes before it got to us.
That was when Captain Grofeld took action?
Damn right he did. It was beautiful. He grabbed the microphone and spoke the call letters. There wasn’t any answer-Craycroft never acknowledged anybody’s voice but Ryterband’s. But we knew he could hear us. Grofeld said if that was the way he wanted to play it, we’d abide by his rules. But we had a right to expect Craycroft to abide by them, too, he said. He said Ryterband had originally given us until ten minutes after five as the deadline. That had been the first understanding and we expected him to honor it, whether or not the ransom was paid by three.
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.