Bob Potter
I was busy for a few days depositing money in safe deposit boxes throughout Miami and Miami Beach. The girls were on official leave, and Sir Harry Flemming had been informed about our delay. He was holding the yacht in St. Thomas, waiting for us. There was a lot of publicity and a number of press interviews and FBI sessions. But in two days it was old news and we were on our own.
The whole thing had been Gaby's idea… smart girl. She worked it all out. We let the hijacker go, after finding out his friends were waiting for him with a float plane to carry him and the money to safety in Brazil. We pushed him out of the airplane with over $31,000 stashed on him. Gabriel said, "Why be greedy? If he has a stake in the thing, then that's a good motivation for him not to get caught… not to squeal, if he were angry enough or crazy enough to do so." We opened one of the chutes and sure enough it did contain a homing device. Assuming that all the chutes did, Smith was making a bad error in tossing them out the plane before he went out, though he couldn't very well toss them out afterwards. The authorities would know that the last chute was his. Simple. So what we did was toss the chutes from the aircraft, after he bailed out. All very close together, in an effort to confuse the time factor just in case the Captain clocked the exact time we showed up on the flight deck to wait out Smith's twenty minute order.
So now we have a lot of money between us. The girls say they are going to wait about six months and then quit. I suggested they stagger the times in order to allay any suspicion. Well, on to St. Thomas and the orgy cruise!