Target Manhattan

I think I understand. He had to keep the diameter of his turn well inland from the shore, because otherwise, if he’d dropped his bombs, they’d have been dragged out past the shoreline by centripetal force.

Right. He was making a one hundred eighty-degree turn with a radius of something like three-quarters of a mile-a very tight turn for a big airplane; he wasn’t going very fast, of course, but he still had to bank steeply in those turns. The point is, it was a delicate and precise maneuver. The slightest miscalculation and he goes too far-and we’ve got him.

Then, you decided the thing to do was find a way to make him miscalculate.

Easier said than done, I can assure you. That’s why it would have been beautiful if we’d had low clouds drifting through up there. He flies into a cloud, you deflect his compasses and he wouldn’t know where the hell he was. Hit him at the right moment and even if he panicked and hit the bombs-away button, all he’d do would be to blow a few holes in the Hudson River.

But there weren’t any clouds at that altitude, were there?

Nope. That stumped us.

What about the matter of deflecting his compasses? That’s not easy either, is it?

Not easy, no. But possible.

At what time did you and Sergeant O’Brien propose the idea of the crop duster?

Must have been about two thirty.

Grofeld (Cont’d)

A little while ago you mentioned that the call from the Federal Reserve saying the money would be at least forty-five minutes late arriving came at two seventeen. What was done then?

I reported this information to the room at large. Then I went over to Charles Ryterband and talked to him. I explained, as reasonably as I could under the circumstances, that we were doing our damnedest to comply with his demands-their demands. I said he could see that we had every reason to do so, and no reason not to. I said we were doing everything in our power, and that we were acting in good faith. I told him there would be a delay, but that it was completely beyond our control. The money would be delivered by three forty-five at the very latest, I told him. I went on like that, trying to impress the truth on him, trying to get through to the poor confused bastard. After a while I could see it was sinking in. Mr. Toombes and I-and even Mr. Azzard-all implored him to explain this development to his partner and do everything in his power to persuade his partner to grant us the extra time.

And did Ryterband do as you asked?

Yes. And, believe me, his heart was in it. I have a suspicion that he was overwhelmed, himself, by the magnitude of the crime. That he walked into the damned thing only half-awake, only half-aware of what he was doing, and that he was coming to his senses somehow. Actually it was only a few minutes after that that he broke down completely and wept.

But before that he talked to Craycroft, didn’t he?

Yes.

And got no response?

He got a response. It was negative, like all the previous ones.

Craycroft just wouldn’t budge at all?

Three o’clock was the deadline. That was that, as far as he was concerned.

What happened then?

First there was an interruption. General Adler. He came thundering across the room. He said if the son of a bitch was going to drop his bombs anyway, we might as well go ahead and shoot him down. He said that way at least we could make the choice as to where the bombs would fall.

He said that, did he?

He said we should hit the plane when it was making the turn from Central Park across upper Manhattan. That way, he said, either the bombs would swing out into the river, or if worst came to worst-these are his words-he said, “At least they’ll only hit Harlem.”

That’s verbatim?

He seemed to think some of us are more expendable than others.

I see. Well, let’s get on, shall we, to what happened after General Adler’s interruption.

Well, that was when Ryterband broke down.

Describe that, if you would?

Well, I’ve tried to sort it out in retrospect, with the aid of the backgrounding I’ve done on the two men. I can’t say I can explain it in such a way that it makes complete sense. He seemed to fall apart all of a sudden. He’d been on the verge of hysterics all afternoon, but this was something else, this was different. He was involved in something daring, something of tremendous risk-naturally he’d be nervous and scared and ready to hit the ceiling at the slightest provocation. Anybody would, especially a basically nonviolent type like Ryterband, who had no experience of crime or dealing with people on a basis of threats and extortion. It’s become apparent that Craycroft had only sprung the whole thing on him a few hours earlier that same day.

Well, they’d discussed the plan for months…

Only in theory. Only as a make-believe fantasy. You’ve talked with Mrs. Ryterband?

Yes.

Then you know Craycroft only revealed that same morning his intention to put the theory into practice. That’s what she claims, anyhow, and I see no compelling reason to disbelieve it. I think the idea must have galvanized Ryterband at first. They’d spent months rationalizing it, of course-the motives, the evil of the New York businessmen villains, the righteousness of their cause, even the peculiarly fitting use of that antique airplane.

All right, we’ll accept that as a basis.

The point is I think when Craycroft got him out of bed that morning and sprang it on him, Ryterband must have been excited as hell. It must have got his adrenaline pumping at a hell of a rate. Pure excitement carried him for quite a while. But then, up there in that crowded office with all of us trying to reason with him at once, something happened to him. I don’t know what it was. Maybe remorse. Maybe he realized Craycroft was-loony. Maybe he began to see that his love and loyalty had taken him much too far-and that it was much too late to turn back even if he wanted to. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I just don’t know for sure.

But he broke down, you say. In what way?

A lot of it was incoherent. He burst into tears. A real crying jag.

Did he say anything you could understand?

I honestly can’t remember. Nothing memorable.

But he did go into a form of hysterics? Is that a fair statement?

Yes. Of course, it terrified most of us.

Why?

He was our only contact with the guy in the airplane with the bombs. If Ryterband lost his marbles, that was the end of it.

But in the end he didn’t lose his marbles. Not in an obvious way.

No. He made an extraordinary effort of will. You could see it physically when he made this extreme attempt to pull himself together.

And succeeded.

In a way. It took quite a while. Oh, perhaps not in clock time-maybe not more than three or four minutes. But standing there, it was like watching the restoration of a statue from shattered fragments. He literally put himself back together. I’ve never quite seen anything like it. Finally he did a strange thing. He lifted his head up-he was sitting in an armchair beside the two-way radio set-and he put his hands out, very wide. And he begged our forgiveness.

Forgiveness for what?

He didn’t say.

I see.

He didn’t make any excuses for himself. He didn’t even try.

I see. Wasn’t that an abrupt change of heart?

Yes. Don’t ask me to explain it.

What happened next?

Well, it was then about two thirty. We had no more than half an hour before the money was supposed to appear, according to Craycroft’s schedule. According to ours we had an hour and a quarter, but I don’t think any of us were very sure we’d live that long. He was making a pass directly over the bank every nine minutes. I think most of us assumed he’d use the bank for one of his targets.

Even with Ryterband in the bank?

We didn’t know very much about Harold Craycroft at that juncture, Mr. Ski