The boat had to meet certain requirements. It had to have both sailing masts and fairly powerful engines. To increase its possible range of operation, you see. It didn’t have to be particularly fast, because we weren’t expecting to have to outrun anyone in it, but it did have to be seaworthy in terms of the open ocean, and it had to be fairly small and simple to operate because Harold was never interested in sailing, and that would leave most of the operation of the boat up to Charles and myself. Charles became an accomplished sailor, of course, during his days in Alaska and on the California coast. Until last year, in fact, we had our own twenty-four-footer on Long Island, but we were forced to sell it.
I see. This boat was to have been rented and tied up at a dock in Hempstead Harbor, was it? And Mr. Ryterband would take the money aboard the boat?
Yes. According to our plan it would then be nearly five o’clock, allowing for the time taken by traffic en route and the time used in evading pursuit and changing cars. So Charles would actually be on board the boat at some time between four thirty and four fifty. He would cast off and make for Long Island Sound under engine power, and as soon as he was out of Hempstead Harbor, he would put up sail if the wind was with him. Otherwise he’d use engine power; there wouldn’t be time for tacking against the wind.
I see. Were you supposed to be on board with him?
According to the make-believe plan, yes, I was. As it actually turned out I didn’t even know they were putting the plan into action, so of course I had no idea there was a real boat, let alone that I should be there aboard it. I believe I know what actually happened in their minds, however.
Yes?
It was a perilous voyage they had in mind. I believe Harold intended from the beginning to leave me behind until they had reached their final destination. Then, I think, he hoped that he and Charles would be able to get a secret message to me, and that I would be able to join them.
All right. Let’s leave that subject for the moment and get back to their escape plan. You’ve placed Mr. Ryterband, with the money, aboard this boat in Long Island Sound. Now, what is Mr. Craycroft’s part in it? How do the two men make a rendezvous?
We had worked out the exact compass coordinates on the charts. At five ten-a bit more than two hours after the money was paid-Harold would discontinue circling over Manhattan Island. He would cross the East River above the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges as if he were going to make another circuit in his pattern, but once over Brooklyn he would continue to fly east and then northeast across the heavily populated areas of Long Island.
The idea being that there would be no point along his route where he could be shot down without risking the destruction of a populated area?
Yes. Exactly.
And then?
You have to understand that we’d made certain assumptions about the way the authorities would react to all this. If we were wrong, of course, it didn’t matter, but if we were right we had to be prepared for their countermeasures.
Can you explain that a bit more, please?
We expected the Air Force or the Navy to have armed planes in the air, ready to shoot Harold down at the first opportunity. If they didn’t put up such planes, of course, it simply made our scheme easier to carry out. But we had to assume they would have planes up.
I see.
That was why we’d decided that the key to the plan was to pick a day when there would be clouds over, Long Island Sound. And a degree of mist on the water.
Go on, please.
Flying eastward-northeastward-across Long Island, Harold would seek these clouds. He had an unlimited number of places to go into the clouds-he could do that at any point where the clouds overhung both the shore and the waters of the sound. The point was he had to leave land behind at a point where he wasn’t visible.
What about radar? Pursuit planes would be tracking on radar, wouldn’t they?
That was what the window was for.
You mentioned a window before. I confess it baffles me.
“Window” is a word used by air people to describe strips of aluminum foil which are dropped from an airplane to confuse radar. I have no idea what the derivation of the word is. But in any case our plan called for bundles of foil to be secured in the spare bomb racks of the airplane so that they could be released by my brother the moment he flew into the concealment of clouds above Long Island Sound. This wouldn’t prevent them from following him, of course, but it would prevent them from getting an accurate enough fix on him to shoot him down immediately. All he needed was a few minutes. In any case we assumed by this point that the pursuit wouldn’t be eager to shoot him down. Their objective would be simply to follow him, see where he landed the plane, and then arrest him on the ground. Once he’d flown away from the populated areas he was no longer a threat to them, you see? So we assumed they wouldn’t shoot him-just track him.
I don’t see how that helped your plans to get away.
Well, we were perfectly willing to have them follow the Flying Fortress. That was a diversion, you see.
A diversion?
That was why we needed the cloud cover. As soon as he was concealed inside a bank of cloud above the waters of the sound, Harold was to drop an inflatable emergency raft out of the plane, and then he was to jump out of the airplane and parachute into the water. The strips of window would confuse the radar of pursuing planes, and they wouldn’t know he had jumped out of the plane. Naturally they would think he was still flying it. The plane would be set on automatic pilot, and would continue to fly a northeasterly course out over the Atlantic Ocean until ultimately it would run out of fuel and crash in the ocean. That wouldn’t happen until more than three hours later, of course, which gave us at least three hours before any suspicions could be raised.
Remarkable.
Yes, it was really very ingenious, I think. Harold would parachute into the water, climb into the rubber life raft and paddle to the rendezvous on the middle of the sound, where he would meet our fishing boat and climb aboard. We hoped to have a ground mist to at least partly conceal this part of the plan, but it wasn’t absolutely essential; the only vital part of the weather requirement was that he had to bail out in clouds, so that he couldn’t be seen when he left the airplane.
The boat would then take them where?
By stages down the coast to Florida and then ultimately to Mexico, where we understood it was possible to obtain new false papers for a price.
And then?
To South Africa, where we intended to set ourselves up in the aircraft business under new names.
It was an incredible plan, Mrs. Ryterband. There’s one detail that puzzles me just a little. If Mr. Craycroft phoned the bank on Monday, how did he know the weather conditions on Wednesday would be suitable?
I can only imagine that he had studied the extended forecast, which as I recall called for partly cloudy conditions throughout most of that week. If the weather had not obliged-if there’d been an important change by Wednesday morning-I’m sure he’d simply have called the bank, canceled the appointment and waited for another opportunity.
Was the Merchants Trust Bank a particular target for any special reason?
No. Any of the major banks would have done as well. We chose the Merchants Trust mainly because it wasn’t too far from the lower East Side Highway, which meant that Charles wouldn’t have far to drive before he could get across the bridge into Brooklyn and away on the expressway.
Did it occur to any of you how bulky five million dollars in cash would be?
We worked it out very carefully, Mr. Skinner. Assuming there would be a random selection of bills in denominations from one hundred dollars down to ten dollars, we calculated a total of approximately thirty-five thousand bank notes. They would be used bills-we specified that. We actually went to the bank and cashed a check for two hundred dollars and changed it into one-dollar bills. Then we weighed the two hundred bills on a postal scale. It was almost exactly eight ounces-half a pound. I’m not sure our scale was exactly accurate-it was quite old-but at least it gave us a working figure. Four hundred bills to the pound. That meant the total would weigh about ninety pounds. Not more than one hundred pounds, in any case. Wrapped in banded stacks of five hundred bills each-about two inches thick, each stack-we calculated seventy stacks. You could fit it all into one large
