a corner behind a barricade of chairs. The old guy looked confused but stubborn. He wasn’t giving an inch. In a strange way I got to admire him a little in the next hour or two. He had a lot of balls, you had to give him that.
Who appeared to be in charge?
That’d be a matter of opinion. In Azzard’s opinion-he’s the FBI muckamuck I know.
In Azzard’s opinion he was in charge. There was a police captain, fellow named Grofeld-damn nice guy, incidentally, not your stereotype beefy cop-he was there, too. He wasn’t running around asserting himself the way the FBI clowns were, but I think you could say if anybody in the room had a semblance of real control, it would be Grofeld. Him and a police sergeant named Billy O’Brien. I’ve known O’Brien off and on for three, four years. He’s one of the best. Quick, practical, brainy-a real take-charge guy. Between him and Grofeld the FBI was left standing in the chocks, if you want my honest opinion.
I do, Mr. Harris, very much. I appreciate your candor.
The rest of them have to cover their asses, Mr. Skinner. I’ve got no boss to brownnose. I’m free to speak my piece. The rest of them may not have it that easy. I’m not taking any kudos-it’s just the position I happen to be in. If I was a civil servant like those poor bastards, I might get a little canny and close-mouthed, too. Or try to pass the buck.
Do you think the buck requires passing, Mr. Harris?
Well, there were goof-ups here and there.
Can you name some?
There was one that could have been pretty hairy. One of the FBI boys had a bright idea. He almost talked Azzard into it.
What was that?
Get some artillery up on a roof somewhere and shoot him down.
You’re kidding.
I was standing right there. I remember I just gave Azzard a pained look. But, so help me, he was taking the clown seriously. How could you figure he’d buy that one? We’d all heard Ryterband, over there in the corner muttering about how those bombs were armed. And here Azzard was seriously thinking about shooting him down.
What happened?
I said a few words. I said, “For Christ’s sake he’s got armed bombs in that airplane.” I mean, you shoot him down, he crashes in Manhattan, you lose six or eight city blocks. Eight thousand pounds of high explosive?
I’m not familiar with the expression “armed bombs.” Is there such a thing as an unarmed bomb?
Sure.
Can you clarify it for me?
Well, there are all kinds of high explosives. But most of them are fairly stable chemicals until they’re ignited by a detonation device. You can play baseball with a normal blasting stick. But if you stick a fuse in it and throw an electric charge into the fuse, then it’ll blow up. You follow? Normally a high-explosive compound won’t explode from simple impact. There has to be a detonation device. Electric, heat, or impact. There are various kinds. With old- fashioned aerial bombs, the usual detonator was an impact device-a pin in the nose of the bomb, like a firing pin, designed to explode a capsule of fulminate-of-mercury, which in turn ignites the main explosive. If you block off that firing pin, the bomb is disarmed-it won’t blow up as a result of an impact. You could drop a disarmed bomb from ten thousand feet and all you’d get would be a dull thud and a little dent in the ground, if the detonator wasn’t armed. The point is, nobody in a bomber wants his whole plane to blow sky-high if his bomb bay happens to get hit by a stray machine-gun bullet from an enemy fighter. You follow? So ordinarily you only pull the switch that arms the warheads when you’re ready to drop them out of the plane. That’s normal safety procedure. Usually the disarming device is simply a metal plate wedged between the firing pin and the detonator. Pull that plate out, and it arms the bomb. But as long as the plate remains in place, the bomb won’t explode.
But the bombs in Craycroft’s plane were armed?
Ryterband said they were. If we believed the rest of his story, we sure as hell had to believe that part, didn’t we? That seemed the whole point of Ryterband’s caterwauling-to make damn sure we knew those bombs were armed.
What did Azzard say when you pointed this out to him?
Not much of anything that I can remember. He was a little miffed. I don’t think he wanted to believe me. But there were a couple of guys from the police bomb squad hanging around, and they agreed with what I told him.
To your knowledge, what was being done at this time to meet the demands of Craycroft and Ryterband?
I was just a spectator, of course. I didn’t hear or see a lot of what was going on. I think they had somebody trying to get the money up. Maitland, the banker, kept getting on the phone with his people.
Was anybody speculating as to whether the money could be got up in time?
Sure. Everybody was.
Where was the emphasis, would you say? On trying to stop Craycroft or on raising the money to pay him off?
I’d have to say both. Everybody was concerned about both. It was Hobson’s choice.
Valkenburg (Cont’d)
Did the Federal Reserve Bank respond with alacrity to your approach?
I don’t know if you could say that.
What could you say?
They got stricken with a damn near terminal case of bureaucracy over there. They always do if there’s anything that smells like a crisis.
And?
I got put on hold.
And then?
In the first place they couldn’t seem to find anybody that was willing to admit he was authorized to talk to anyone about anything. It was about ten after twelve when I made the call, and they’re all civil servants down there. Ergo they were all out to lunch.
And in the second place?
Well, look, in a nutshell what it came down to was this: The federal government gives money away all the time, but they do it after there’s been a Congressional appropriation and a policy authorization from some Cabinet agency, right? Now here we’re talking about five million dollars in cash, and the Fed is the only place in town that happens to stock that particular model, and what it boiled down to was that they didn’t have signatures in quintuplicate authorizing the release of said item.
What did you do about it?
Me? I’m a vice-president of a private bank. I don’t swing much weight at the Fed. I knew one guy down there, I play handball with him, he’s a deputy administrator in the disposal office. But he was out to lunch. The rest of them heard my story, suddenly they no spick English. At first they wouldn’t even tell me where my friend was having lunch. Finally I got the name of the restaurant and put through a call. He came on the line and listened to my yarn and then he just breathed hard for a few minutes. I didn’t want to interrupt that. Then he said he’d run straight back to his office and call me back from there.
What time was it then?
It must have been after twelve thirty by the time I got him at the restaurant, and it was maybe ten minutes to one when he called me back from the Fed.
But there was no progress?
Not right away, no. It was still the bugaboo of authorization. Everybody was out to lunch and everybody at the head office in Washington was out to lunch too.
You must have been a little angry by then.
I didn’t have any doubt at all that this guy was perfectly willing to spray bombs all over the city if we didn’t
