All of this was at a time when Saturday shoppers, in their cars, were beginning to stream into the parking building.
Quite quickly the supervisor found a key that fitted the Nissan van and opened the driver’s door. It was his final act in the few remaining seconds of his life.
With a roar which someone later described as “like fifty thunderstorms,” the Nissan van disintegrated in an intense, engulfing ball of flame. So did a substantial part of the building and several cars nearby, fortunately unoccupied, though what was left of them burned fiercely. The explosion punched wide holes in the parking building above and below where the Nissan van had been and caused flaming cars to cascade through the holes to the lower floors.
Nor was the effect confined to the parking building. The Center City Mall itself sustained structural damage and, in the mall and beyond, windows and glass doors were shattered. Other debris, initially blown upward, descended on adjoining streets, traffic and people.
The shock effect was total. When the initial roar subsided, apart from the quieter sound of fires and falling objects, there was a measurable silence. Then the screams began, followed by incoherent shouts and curses, hysterical pleas for help, unintelligible orders and, soon after, sirens approaching from all directions.
In the end it seemed extraordinary that the human toll, when added up, was no greater than it was. In addition to the maintenance supervisor’s instant death, two others died soon after from their injuries and four more victims were critically hurt and hovering between life and death. Twenty-two more, including a half-dozen children, were injured and hospitalized.
Overall, the reference to Beirut in the UPI bulletin did not seem inappropriate.
Afterward there would be debate, focusing on the question: Would the explosion have happened if the maintenance supervisor had awaited the arrival of police? The police said no, claiming they would have called the FBI whose forensic experts would have examined the van, discovered the explosive material, and then disarmed it. But others were skeptical, believing the police would have opened the van anyway, either themselves or using the maintenance man’s keys. Eventually, though, the discussion was seen as pointless and petered out.
One thing became self-evident. The destroyed Nissan van had indeed been used by the kidnappers of the Sloane family members two days earlier. The proximity to Larchmont, the van’s recorded appearance in the Center City parking building Thursday and the fact that it was booby-trapped all pointed to that conclusion. So did the license number which, when checked against motor vehicle records, was shown as belonging to a 1983 Oldsmobile sedan. However, the owner name, address and insurance data in official files were quickly discovered to be phony; also the registration and insurance fees had been paid in cash, the payer leaving no true identity behind.
What it all meant was that the Oldsmobile had disappeared, probably junked, but its registration was kept alive for illicit use. Thus the license plates on the Nissan were illegal, though not on any police “hot list.”
A question was raised because a witness at Larchmont had described the Nissan van as having New Jersey plates, whereas those seen in the White Plains parking building were New York’s. But, as investigators later pointed out, it was normal for criminals to switch license plates immediately after a crime was committed.
One other conclusion was expressed by the White Plains police chief at the explosion scene. He told reporters grimly, “This was clearly the work of hardened terrorists.”
When asked if, extending that reasoning, it was foreign terrorists who had abducted the Sloane family trio, the chief answered, “That didn’t happen on my turf, but I would think so.”
“Let’s make that foreign terrorist theory our main focus for this evening’s news,” Harry Partridge told Rita and Iris Everly when he heard about the police chief’s comment.
The CBA contingent had arrived a few minutes ago in two vehicles—the camera crew aboard a Jeep Wagoneer, Partridge, Rita, Iris and Teddy Cooper in a Chevrolet sedan driven by a network courier—both having covered the twenty-five miles from mid-Manhattan in a sizzling thirty minutes. As well as an assemblage of news people at the scene, a growing crowd of spectators was being herded behind police barriers. Minh Van Canh and the sound man, Ken O’Hara, were already getting videotape and natural sound of the wrecked building, the injured who continued to be removed, and of piles of twisted, tortured vehicles, some still burning. They had also joined an impromptu press conference in time to tape the police chief’s statement.
After making a general assessment of the situation, Partridge summoned Minh and O’Hara and began conducting oncamera interviews with some of those involved in rescue efforts as well as several spectators who had witnessed the explosion. It was work that could have been performed by the camera crew alone or with a producer. But it gave Partridge a sense of involvement, being in action, of touching the story directly for the first time.
Touching an ongoing news story was psychologically essential to a correspondent, no matter how well informed he or she might be about that story’s background. Partridge had been working on the Sloane family kidnap for some forty-two hours, but until now without direct contact with any of its elements. At moments he had felt caged, with only a desk, a telephone and a computer monitor connecting him with the reality outside. Going to White Plains, tragic as the circumstances were, fulfilled a need. He knew the same applied to Rita.
The thought of her caused him to seek Rita out and ask, “Has anyone talked with Crawf?”
“I just phoned him at home,” she said. “He was about to come here, but I pleaded with him not to. For one thing, he’d be mobbed. For another, seeing what those bastards are capable of would upset him terribly.”
“Still, he’ll see the pictures.”
“He wants to. He’ll meet us at the network, so will Les, and I have what’s been shot already.” Rita was holding several tape cassettes. She added, “I think you and I should go. Iris and Minh can stay a while longer.”
Partridge nodded. “Okay, but give me a minute.”
They were on the third floor of the parking garage. Leaving Rita, he walked to an unoccupied, undamaged corner. It provided a view of White Plains and the city going about its regular business. In the distance was the highway to New England and, beyond, the green hills of Westchester—all scenes of normalcy in contrast to the devastation close at hand.
He had walked away from that chaos, wanting a quiet moment to think, to ask and answer a tormenting question: Having accepted a commitment to somehow find and perhaps free Jessica, her son and Crawford’s father, was there any hope … the slightest hope … of his succeeding? At this moment Partridge feared the answer would be no.
What had happened here today, observing what his adversaries were capable of, had been a chastening encounter. It raised still more questions: Could such merciless savagery be matched? Now that a terrorist connection was virtually confirmed, were any civilized resources capable of tracking and outwitting so evil an enemy? And even if the answer happened to be yes, and despite initial optimism at CBA News headquarters, wasn’t it an empty conceit to believe that an unarmed news reporting cadre could succeed where police, governments, intelligence and military so often failed?
As to himself, Partridge thought, this was no open battle, the kind of warfare which, perversely or not, excited him and set his juices flowing. This was furtive and filthy, the enemy unknown, the victims innocent, the contest sickening …
But personal feelings aside, should he advise for pragmatic reasons the abandonment of active engagement by CBA, advocate their return to a standard role of news observing or, failing that, at least pass on responsibility to someone else?
He was conscious of movement behind him. Turning, he saw that it was Rita. She asked, “Can I help?”
He told her, “We’ve never had one quite like this before, with so much depending not just on what we report, but what we do.”
“I know,” she sa
id. “Were you thinking of turning it in, handing the burden back?”
Rita had surprised him before with her perceptiveness. He nodded. “Yes, I was.”
“Don’t do it, Harry,” she urged. “Don’t give up! Because if you do, there isn’t anyone else that’s half as good as you.”
12
Partridge, Rita and Teddy Cooper rode back to Manhattan together—at a pace considerably less frantic than their drive out. Partridge was in the front seat with the network driver, Teddy and Rita in the rear.
Cooper, whose decision to go to White Plains had been made at the last moment, had stayed in the background there, observing; then and now he appeared preoccupied, as if concentrating on a problem. Partridge and Rita, too, at first seemed disinclined to talk. For both, this morning’s experience had been portentous. While they had witnessed, many times, the effects of terrorism overseas, to observe its invasion of American suburbia was traumatic. It was as if barbarian madness had at last arrived, poisoning an environment which, if not calm, had until now possessed a base of reason. The erosion of that base begun today, they suspected, would be extensive and perhaps irreversible.
After a while Partridge turned in his seat, facing the other two, and said, “The British were convinced that imported terrorism couldn’t happen in their country, but it did. A good many believed the same thing here.”
“They were wrong from the beginning,” Rita said. “It was always inevitable, never if but when?”
Both assumed with some certainty—acknowledged by the White Plains police chief—that the Sloane kidnapping had been a foreign terrorist act.
“So who the hell are they?” Partridge pounded a fist into his palm. “That’s what we must concentrate on. Who?”
It was clear to Rita that Harry had put behind him the notion of abdicating the leadership of CBA’s task force. She answered, “It’s natural to think first of the Mideast—Iran, Lebanon, Libya … the religious lineup: Hezbollah, Amal, Shiites, Islamic Jihad, FARL, PLO, you name it.”
Partridge acknowledged, “I’ve been thinking that way too. Then I ask myself, Why would they? Why would they bother extending their reach so far, taking the risks of operating here, with so many easier targets close to home?”
“To make an impression, perhaps. To convince the ‘great Satan’ there’s no safety anywhere.”
Partridge nodded slowly. “You might be right.” He looked at Cooper. “Teddy, should we consider the IRA as possibles?”
The researcher snapped out of his reverie. “I don’t think so. The IRA are scum who’ll do anything, though not in America because there are still idiot Irish-Americans who feed them money. If they went active here, they’d cut that payola off.”
“Any other thoughts?”
“I agree with what you say, Harry, about the Mideast mob. Maybe you should be looking south.”
“Latin America,” Rita said. “It makes sense. Nicaragua’s the most likely, Honduras or Mexico possibilities, even Colombia.”
They continued to theorize but had reached no conclusion when Partridge said to Teddy, “I know something’s at work in that convoluted mind of yours. Are you ready to share it with us?”
“I guess so.” Cooper considered, then began, “I reckon they’ve left this country.”
“The kidnappers?”
The researcher nodded. “And taken Mr. S’s family. What happened back there this morning”—he inclined his head toward White Plains—“was like a signature. To let us know the kind of people they are, how rough they play. It’s a reminder for later on, for anyone who has to deal with them.”
“Let’s be sure I read you,” Partridge said. “You believe they estimated how long it would take for the van to be discovered and blow up, and planned to have it happen after they had gone?”
“That’s the size of it.”
Partridge objected, “You’re simply guessing. You could be wrong.”
Cooper shook his head. “Better than guessing—say an intelligent assessment. Which is probably dead right.”
Rita asked, “Supposing you are right, where does that leave us?”
“It leaves us,” Cooper said, “having to decide if we want to make a big expensive effort to find their hideaway, even though it’s empty when we get there.”
“Why would we care about that if, as you assume, the birds have flown?”
“Because of what Harry said yesterday: Everybody leaves traces. No matter how careful they’ve been, these blokes will have too.”
Their network car was nearing Manhattan. They were on the Major Deegan Expressway, the Third Avenue Bridge ahead, and the driver slowed in increased traffic. Partridge looked out, confirmed his bearings, then returned his attention to the other two.
“Last night,” he reminded Cooper, “you told us you’d try for an idea to locate the gang’s headquarters. Is that ‘big expensive effort’ part of it?”
“It would be. It would also be a long shot.”
Rita said, “Let’s hear about that.”
Cooper consulted a notebook and began, “What I figured on first was the kind of a place this mob would need to do all those things we discussed last night—park at least five vehicles, most likely out of sight, set up a workshop big enough to spray those motors, then have enough living, sleeping and eating quarters for four people and probably a couple more for good measure. They’d want space for storage, then somewhere safe to lock up the three Sloanes after they’d snatched ’em, and—for that size of operation—an office of some kind. So it wouldn’t be anything small, especially not some ordinary house with nosey parker neighbors around.”
“Okay,” Partridge agreed, “I’ll buy that for starters.”
“So what kind of place would it be?” Cooper continued. “Well, the way I see it, it would most likely be one of three things—either a small disused factory, or an empty warehouse, or a big house with outbuildings. But whichever, it would need to be somewhere with not much going on around—isolated, lonely—and as we’ve already agreed, it shouldn’t be more than twenty-five miles from Larchmont.”
“You’ve already agreed,” Rita pointed out. “The rest of us have gone along because we couldn’t think of anything better.”
“The trouble is,” Partridge objected, “even in that twenty-five-mile radius there could be twenty thousand places answering that description.”
Cooper shook his head. “Not that many. After our dinner last night, I talked with some of the others and what we reckoned, when you include the lonely part, was maybe one to three thousand.”
“Even then, how in hell would we find the one we want?”
“I already said it would be a long shot, but there might just be a way.”
As Partridge and Rita listened, Cooper described his plan.
“Start out by mulling this over: When those snatchers got here, wherever they came from, they had to set up base close to Larchmont, but not too close—just the way we said. So how would they most likely find one? First, pick a general area. After that, do what anyone else would, ’specially when they’re short of time—look through the newspaper property ads, and the kind of place they’d need to lease or rent would be in the classifieds. Of course we can’t be certain, but there’s a good chance that’s how they got the setup they used.”
“Sure it’s a possibility,” Partridge said. “It’s also a possibility they had local advance help, with the base set up before they got here.”
Cooper sighed. “Too bloody true! But when all you have to work with is possibles, you go for those you can put your hands on.”
“So I’m being a devil’s advocate, Teddy. Keep going.”
“Okay, moving on … What we should do now is study the estate agents’ ads in every paper, regional and local, published over the last three months inside that twenty-five-mile radius, with Larchmont as the center. Going through those papers, we’d look for ads of certain types—for the kinds of buildings we just talked about—especially any ad that r
an for a while, then suddenly stopped.”
Rita gasped. “Have you any idea how many papers, dailies and weeklies, and how many people—”
Partridge told her, “I’m thinking the same way, but let him finish.”
Cooper shrugged. “Do I know the number of papers? No, not exactly, except it’s a bleedin’ lot. But what we’d do is hire people—bright young kids—to go around and look through them all. I’m told there’s a book …” Cooper paused to check his notes. “Editor and Publisher International Year Book, which lists every paper, big and small. We’d start with that. From there we’d go to libraries which have files of newspapers, some on microfilm. For the others we’d go direct to the papers and ask to look through their back numbers. It’ll take a lot of bodies, and it has to be done fast, before the trail gets cold.”
Partridge said, “And you figure three months of advertising would cover …”
“Look, we know these people were snooping on the Sloanes for about a month and, when it started, you can bet they had their pad set up. So three months is a sane spread.”
“What happens when we find some advertising that fits the kind of place we’re searching for?”
“There should be a big number of ‘possibles,’” Cooper said. “We’d sort them into priorities, then have some of the same people we hired to check the newspapers do the follow-up too. First, by contacting the advertisers and asking the odd question. After that, according to the answers, we’d decide which places we should take a look at.” Cooper shrugged. “Most of the look-sees would be goose eggs, but some might not. I’d expect to do some of the follow-up myself.”
There was a silence as Partridge and Rita weighed what they had heard.
Partridge announced his judgment first. “I salute you for an original idea, Teddy, but you said it was a long shot and it sure as hell is. A long, long shot. Right at this moment, I just can’t see it working.”
“Frankly,” Rita said, “I think what you’d be trying to do is impossible. First, because of the number of papers involved—there’s a multitude! Second, the amount of help you’d need would cost a fortune.”