Depraved Indifference (3 page)

Stepanovic sprang to his feet and made for the door. He was almost out of the room when Pillman called, “Hey, Stepanovic! Are you a Croatian?”

“No, sir. I'm a Serb,” replied the startled Stepanovic.

“Same goddamn thing, isn't it?” growled his leader.

“You could say that,” said Stepanovic, and shut the door.

Twenty-five minutes later Elmer Pillman received a call from his boss, the assistant director in charge of the New York office, which was hardly ever a pleasant experience for Pillman. Since the FBI office in New York, which accounts for a quarter of all FBI personnel, is the only regional office that rates an assistant director on top, he resented that he even had a local boss. As far as he was concerned, the assistant director was there for public relations—giving awards to Boy Scouts and sitting on the innumerable criminal-justice coordinating committees erected to keep crime and subversion out of the New York metropolitan area. The assistant director had, however, another function, one less innocuous from Pillman's standpoint, which was passing the word from Washington.

The conversation was a short one. The word, to Pillman's surprise, involved the current skyjacking. This was how he learned why the FBI had remained interested in Djordje Karavitch for thirty uneventful years. It was enough to frighten him badly. And he did not frighten easily. And it was not even the real reason.

Later the same afternoon, a New York City police officer armored like a knight in thick Kevlar and a helmet was about to insert a key into locker number 139 in Grand Central Station. Terry Doyle had been out drinking until two the previous morning at a saloon on East Tremont in Throg's Neck. There had been a retirement party for one of the officers in his division, and most of the guys had drunk a lot more than Doyle's couple of beers. That was why the youngest member of the section of the NYPD Arson and Explosion Division, known as the bomb squad, was sweating like a pig under the bright lights trained on the locker.

Doyle was not particularly frightened. Although this was only the second time he had done a job like this, he considered himself well trained and was proud to be part of one of the best bomb-disposal organizations in the world. And the odds were right: the NYPD bomb squad had not lost a single man in over forty years.

“I'm putting the key in the lock,” Doyle said over the telephone built into his helmet. He shook his head to knock off a drop of sweat dangling from his nose. “When you dispose of a bomb,” his class instructor had said, “you tell someone else at the end of the phone line everything you're doing before you do it.” If the thing went up, such information was useful to colleagues in dealing with similar devices. Or so it had proved in World War II, when this doctrine had been developed.

“Key in the lock, check,” Sergeant John Doheny said at the other end of the line, in the bomb squad van. Doheny had been at the same party last night and had all he could do to keep both his stomach and his brain under control. “I'm turning the key,” the voice reported. “I'm opening the door.”

“Sarge, there's a pot in the locker. Looks like a pressure cooker. There's a six-volt taped to the side with black friction tape, a red and a black wire going from the battery terminals to a—it looks like a black plastic box about three by two, taped to the top of the pot. There's a blue wire and a yellow wire running from that into a hole in the lid of the pot. There's also a manila envelope leaning against the pot.”

“Check, Terry,” Doheny said. “You going to move it out now?”

“Right. OK, I'm moving the envelope away from the pot.”

Doyle backed off from the locker and used a pole to move the envelope away from the pot. Then he carefully ran a canvas belt clamp around the middle of the pot, snugged it down, and clipped it to a pole.

“I'm moving it, Sarge.”

“Check.”

He backed away to the length of the pole and jiggled the pot. Then he lifted it clear off the floor of the locker and let it drop about two inches. It made a discordant rumble, like stage thunder.

“Looks good, Sarge. Let's get it in the bomb carrier.”

“Check, Terry. Why don't you wait ten? I'll send D'Amato up.”

Doheny rubbed his eyes and staggered slightly as he walked out of the van. This was not the right day for this to have happened. He blinked in the watery autumn sunlight and looked out on a scene of near chaos. The threat of explosion had excised one of Manhattan's principal ganglia. Vanderbilt Avenue and the side streets bordering Grand Central Terminal had been sealed off and were full of police cars, fire engines, and their associated personnel. Park Avenue, where it ran on top of the Terminal, had of course been closed, and the Pan Am Building, perched atop Grand Central, had been evacuated. Doheny could hear the honks and rumbles of stalled traffic blocks away and the mutter of displaced office workers by the thousands across the gray police barriers. In a sense, an unexploded bomb, with its burden of the catastrophic unknown, caused more disruption than a bomb that had already done its worst.

The sergeant gestured to a dark young man in bomb armor who was hanging around outside the van. “Luke, go help the kid with the carrier. I want to get out of this whorehouse before my head falls off. I'm dying!”

“Yeah, you look it, Sarge,” laughed D'Amato, though he knew he looked just as haggard. He picked up his helmet and checked his phone line, then headed through the polished brass doors and into the echoing, deserted station.

Working efficiently in the wordless cooperation of good technicians, Doyle and D'Amato placed the pot and the envelope in a large steel and Kevlar bucket. This they closed with a heavy lid and hoisted between them on a pole, like Chinese coolies carrying a water jar.

Once out in the street, they carried the bucket over to the bomb transporter, a heavy flatbed truck mounted with what looked like a diving bell. As Doheny supervised the securing of the bucket within the huge safety vessel, he reflected for the hundredth time on what would happen if a major bomb ever did explode in the glass-lined canyons of midtown Manhattan.

With the bomb thus enclosed, Doyle and D'Amato removed their helmets and had a smoke. They were both dripping sweat, and Doyle's damp blond curls were nearly as dark as D'Amato's thin black hair. Kevlar, despite its many virtues, such as the ability to stop bullets and flying shrapnel, does not breathe like your natural fibers.

D'Amato was a round-faced man of about thirty-five. He was puffing hard, coughing around his Kent, and his face was flushed and blotchy. “Too many damned beers last night,” he grumbled. As he began removing his armor, Doheny spotted him from the doorway of his van, where he had been making arrangements to clear the route for the bomb-transport convoy. “Hey, Luke! You gonna get out and back in again when we get to the range?” Somebody had to take the bomb out to the bunker and handle the deactivation. This would have been D'Amato's job today.

Doyle spoke up. “I'll do it, Sarge. Luke don't look so hot.”

Doheny could appreciate that. “Oh, yeah? The kid's right, D'Amato. You look like I feel. Hell of a party, hey?”

Everybody agreed that it had been a hell of a party. The phone in the van buzzed, and Doheny received word that the route clearance had been set up. He turned back to his squad. “Whaddya say, Luke? You really crapped out?”

“Yeah, well, I could still do it, but you know, I think the heat's getting to me, or something—”

“I'll do it, Sarge,” Doyle said cheerfully.

“Yeah?”

“Sure, let old Luke fuck the dog for a while. Old fart like him's about worn out anyway.”

D'Amato had peeled off the armor, which lay about him in sections on the pavement like the shed carapace of an immense beetle. The air blowing against his sodden sweatsuit felt delightful, and he was not inclined to argue with Doyle for the privilege of crouching for perhaps hours in the armor.

“OK for you, Doyle,” he said with a smile. “Just wait. You'll be old and tired someday.”

Doyle laughed. “I'll never be as old as you, baby.”

Doheny winced at another pang from his stomach. He wanted this day to be over. “OK, people. Let's clear up our shit and get rolling.”

The sirens screamed. Two patrol cars, lights flashing, pulled past the barriers up Vanderbilt, followed by the bomb squad van and the bomb transporter and an ambulance. At 42nd Street one of the patrol cars pulled aside and slid back in behind the ambulance. The convoy, now complete, sped toward FDR Drive, the Triboro Bridge, the Bruckner, Pelham Bay Park, and the police weapons and bomb ranges on Rodman Neck.

On Flight 501 lunch had been served. Macek and Rukovina took turns holding the bomb while they ate. Macek, Rukovina, and Raditch each had a beer, which they paid for, although if they had refused to pay, Alice Springer was not sure what she would have done.

The young one smiled at her when she brought the beers. Instinctively she smiled back. “
Najlepshe hvala
,” he said. The other two said, “
Hvala, hvala.
”

“Pardon?” she said.

“Is mean, ‘thank you,'” the young one replied. “Now you must say, ‘
Nema na cemu.
' This mean, ‘you welcome.'”

Alice smiled and said the phrase. They all chuckled and the young one clapped his hands and said “
Fantastichno!
”

There were introductions. The young one said, in phrasebook English, “Allow me to present …” and gave the names of his two companions and himself. The woman was not introduced. She had declined the meal. Instead she drank black coffee and chain-smoked Salems.

Alice gave her own name, surprised to hear it on her lips. It sounded like the name of a stranger. They drank their beers and chatted in Croatian. Alice smiled harder and concentrated on not looking at the bomb. She kept smiling and didn't move away, even when the one on the aisle, Macek, ran his hand up between her legs and squeezed her inner thigh gently, possessively, in the manner of an old lover.

Karavitch had moved to an empty seat in first class, which he had demanded so that he could be near the flight deck. He got first-class service too, including unlimited free drinks. He pushed his tray away and contemplated the line of Haig pinch-bottle miniatures lined up on the tray table of the empty seat to his right. There were seven of them. He arranged them in two rows of three, with one out in front, like a military parade.

He had a good head for liquor. In the war he had been famous for being able to drink anyone under the table, and the
ustashi
brigades had boasted some powerful drinkers. He had once drunk an entire bottle of plum brandy standing up on the hood of a truck climbing a mountain road near Bihac, while the men cheered him on. Pavle had been on that ride as well, he recalled. He also remembered that later that day Pavle had tried to imitate the trick, and had fallen off and nearly cracked his skull. Pavle had no head for drinking, which was why Karavitch had ordered him to lay off for the duration of the hijack. Karavitch stretched his cramped body and smiled. He could still drink. Even after seven scotches his head was clear.

He looked at his watch, then pressed the button for the stewardess. In a few moments Daphne West was by his side.

“We should be landing very soon. I wish the pilot to make the announcement we agreed on.”

West murmured assent and went forward to relay the message to Captain Gunn. Karavitch watched her go. Power was better than scotch, even this good scotch. Idly he flicked over the leading bottle. It tumbled against the others and all but one fell over. Karavitch watched as it wobbled in circles and then stood upright again. Always one survives, he thought.

Daphne ducked and entered the flight deck. “How're things back there?” Gunn asked. He was flying the aircraft while his copilot exchanged cryptic bursts of letters and numerals with Montreal air-traffic control.

“All right,” she said. “A lot better than they're going to be after you tell the folks where we're landing. I bring orders from the chief bastard. You're supposed to make your speech.” Her voice was tight.

Gunn caught her tone and swiveled around to look at her. “How about you? You holding up?”

Daphne shrugged and threw up her hands, the gesture of futility. “Oh, sure. You know me, the old pro. I'm just pissed off is all. If that's a real bomb, I'm a chimpanzee.”

“Come on, Daphne, it doesn't do any good to think like that. You know the rules. Guy flashes a teddy bear and says there's a grenade in it and he wants to go to Cuba, it's next stop Havana, no questions asked.”

Daphne sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

“What about the others?”

“Oh, Jerry's fine. Alice, not so good.”

“Oh? What's happening with her?”

“Concrete smile, but watch the eyes. This is scaring the piss out of her, poor kid. Good thing it's not a bunch of Ay-rabs with machine guns. Getting chummy with the boys in the back, too. Hand and foot service.”

“Stockholm syndrome.”

“Looks like it.”

“You can handle it, Daphne,” said Gunn, hoping it were so.

Daphne laughed, a low throaty sound. “Hell, yes. Count on that tough nut Daphne!” She left the flight deck, closing the door behind her.

Connelly finished his conversation and turned to Gunn. “Montreal has us cleared to land. They've diverted traffic and have emergency and tankers standing by on D-19.”

Rodman Neck, the southernmost extension of Hunter Island, looks from the air like the head of a retriever emerging from the Bronx to sniff the waters of Eastchester Bay. Where the dog's nose would be, the New York City Police Department has fenced off a large chunk of real estate to serve as its outdoor shooting range. Besides the half dozen firing ranges there is a mock city street where cops are taught to shoot cardboard silhouettes of armed criminals and not silhouettes of moms pushing strollers, as well as the kennels for the department's dope- and explosive-sniffing dogs. In the approximate center of this compound is the bomb range.