Depraved Indifference Read online

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  “OK, LET’S HEAR it again,” Elmer Pillman said. He was a special agent in the FBI’s New York office, with responsibility for skyjacks and counterterrorism. The two other FBI agents in his office were his deputy and a junior agent named Joseph Stepanovic. The senior man was grave and solemn; Stepanovic was mainly scared.

  The switch was hit on the tape recorder. Once again the voice of Djordje Karavitch filled the corner office, clear and powerful through the radio static:

  “Today the Croatian people have struck the first blow in their crusade for freedom and independence. Shock troops of the Croatian National Freedom Party under the command of General Djordje Karavitch have seized control of an American airliner by means of a powerful bomb, which we have on the plane. The United States has deserved this from the support and money it has given to the terrorist communist regime in Belgrade, whose troops are even now crushing the Croatian people in their bloody grip. The worldwide offensive by the Croatian National Freedom Party will not spare any nation that supports the usurper Belgrade regime in its suppression of the legitimate national aspirations of the great Croatian people: democracy, independence and freedom to worship in their historic faith.

  “We do not fear death. The freedom fighters of Croatia have never feared death, not against the Romans, the Serbs, the Turks, the Hungarians, or the communists. If our demands are not met, I warn you seriously, we will not hesitate one instant to destroy this airplane and everyone aboard it. And there are other bombs, many other bombs. There is one in locker number 139 in Grand Central Station.

  “As our demands are met, we will reveal the location of the other bombs, perhaps before they explode, perhaps not. It will be unfortunate if innocent people are harmed, but this is a war we are fighting. Tens of thousands of innocent Croatians have been butchered by the communists and their jackals, and the world has ignored their cries. No longer! With this offensive we move Croatia once again into her rightful place among the nations. The world will pay attention, or blood will run in every city, in every country.

  “I have given orders that this airplane fly to Montreal for refueling. It would be foolish of anyone to try to stop this. At that time, we will issue further demands.

  “Long live Croatia. Victory to the Croatian National Freedom Party!”

  Then there was the sound of static, followed by the hiss of blank tape. One of the agents thumbed the machine off. Pillman rolled his eyes and scowled. He was a squat, frog-faced man with a gray crew cut, and his expression made it seem as if the frog had just missed a fat bug. He said, “Ah, crap! Croatia, my ass! OK, let’s get a copy of this tape over to NYPD, or the assholes’ll claim we’re not cooperating on a matter of grave danger to the public. Offer them our bomb people, whatever, not that they’ll accept. And make sure we’re covered on the Canadian side too.” The deputy got on the phone and spoke softly, relaying the orders.

  Pillman spoke in a loud voice to no one in particular, “Who the hell are these jokers?”

  Joe Stepanovic coughed nervously, fiddling with the folder on his lap. He was responsible for keeping watch on the dozens of Eastern European emigré political groups active in New York, a shadowy activity that the FBI did not advertise. These groups, after all, considered themselves to be part of the great anti-communist crusade. More important, any number of conservative American political figures agreed with that assessment. Or pretended to. Thus the FBI had to exercise a certain caution in watching them. It fed them money—not enough to invade Hungary, but enough to keep them solvent—and attended (in the person of Joe Stepanovic) their numerous meetings, rallies, and parades. Stepanovic took pictures with his miniature camera and took down names in his notebook. The point of this was ostensibly to spot the occasional ringer or provocateur, or better yet, uncover some ringer with connections to the CIA. But the Bureau did not consider these groups a threat. Their members were aging, their numbers were thinning with the years, and they were, of course, safely on the right side of the political spectrum.

  So ordinarily Stepanovic had an easy, low-profile task. With his fluency in several Slavic languages, farmboy looks, and ready purse, he had no difficulty in gaining entry to even clandestine councils of East European emigrés.

  Now he was high-profile and not liking it.

  “Joe,” said Pillman, remembering why Stepanovic was in the room, “you know this guy, Karawhatsis?”

  “Yes sir, Karavitch. Yes sir, umm …” He opened his file, shuffling the papers. “Djordje Karavitch, born 1907, Zagreb, now Yugoslavia, father a minor Austrian official, mother from a small land-owning family, Jesuit education, dropped out of University of Zagreb after two years, member of Eagles, a Catholic youth organization, political involvement with Croatian Peasants Party. After the German invasion he—”

  Pillman broke in, “Could you put it on fast-forward, Joe? What’s he been doing recently?”

  “Oh, sure,” Stepanovic said, shuffling papers again. “Recently? I would say, recently, he’s been doing … well, nothing.”

  “Nothing? What do you mean? What about this organization, this Croatian National Freedom bullshit? Where are they coming from? Are you inside there, or what?”

  Stepanovic’s prominent Adam’s apple rippled as he swallowed hard. “Ah, what I mean is, sir, that as far as I can tell, there is no such organization. That tape was the first time I ever heard of it. Karavitch is not what you would call a leader in the Croatian community here. He’s not on the politically active list, I mean, so how could I …” His voice trailed off as he gestured with his sheaf of papers.

  “OK, Joe, just fill us in, whatever you know,” said the deputy.

  “Well, it’s not much. Entered the country in ’48, from Trieste, under the Displaced Person’s Act, got a job as a building superintendent in Brooklyn, which he still does, and also manages some buildings in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. U.S. citizenship, 1955. In 1956, sponsored immigration of a Pavle Macek, also from Trieste. In 1964, married Cindy Wilson, American, age 23. Member of the usual Croat fraternal organizations, active in St. Gregory Catholic church. Nothing much else. Oh, yeah, last year, 1975, sponsored immigration of Milovan Rukovina and Vlatko Raditch, Yugoslav nationals. That’s it.”

  Pillman lit a Tiparillo and leaned back in his leather swivel chair, regarding Stepanovic through the acrid smoke. “So tell us, Joe, this guy is such a good citizen, how come the taxpayers want you to watch him at all? What’s his angle?”

  Stepanovic essayed a slight smile. “He doesn’t need an angle, sir. He was on a watch list when he came over, which is standard for people who were political on the other side.”

  “Yeah, in ’48 maybe. But, hell, you know damn well we can’t keep tabs on every Eastern European who gets into the country. What I want to know is how come he’s on a watch list now?”

  “Um, that I don’t know, sir.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, sir. Anyway, it’s not like he’s under surveillance. We just sort of keep tabs, where he’s living, who he hangs out with, political activity, contacts with known agents. Like that.”

  Pillman brought forth a particularly hideous scowl. “Like that, huh? Well, since this son of a bitch has just hijacked an airplane and planted Christ knows how many bombs, maybe you should make it your business to find out why the FBI has been interested in him for almost thirty years. How about that? And how about getting a look at his place before the cops arrive and screw things around?”

  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 Bruckne
r, 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.