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  “The photo is easy,” Jake writes back. “San Marino was the closest R&R facility to Edwards [Air Force Base] for contractors who were in route or recovering and couldn’t be sent to a regular hospital or VA facility … very good medical OR staff and equipment. It was a go-to ‘off the books.’ If your guy [Weber] stayed there, guaranteed it was an Ops cover.”

  I press him for the identity of the hijacker.

  “I have no idea who the jumper was, didn’t ask and wasn’t told,” Jake writes. “I can guarantee you he was the most nondescript, unassuming ex-military contractor they could muster. He wasn’t operationally very bright, or he wouldn’t have taken the gig.… Did he get handled into the jump? Without a doubt.”

  I ask him about the gobbledygook message of newsprint that Jo also found in Duane’s wallet. Does he know what “bombproof and crowded with oxygen” means?

  He does. It is code.

  “The first sentence is a one-pad cipher,” he says.

  And what about “terrace, volcallure at casa Cugat, Abbe Wants Cugie Gets”?

  “The second sentence references the House of Cugat, which on first glance seems to refer to an actual casa de familia ‘safe house’ on the outskirts of Havanna [sic], as you may already know.”

  I don’t. But what’s Cugie?

  “ ‘Cugie’ is the cutout’s actual name … that was an actual person, not a company.… So the last sentence seems to be a validation signature.”

  And what about John C. Collins? Ever hear the name?

  “I have heard it, that’s about it, don’t know if he was the same one … some serious people thought he was a legit asset, and brought him to my attention. That’s a long time ago and I never heard anything about him until you brought it up.”

  How can I be sure what he is telling me is true?

  Check the prison records in Walla Walla, Jake says. In the paperwork from his prison sentence, there must be evidence of his “furlough” before the hijacking.

  Using Jake’s real name and Social Security number, I file a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Corrections in the state of Washington. The file I receive is over a hundred pages long. I see his mug shot. Jake has long sideburns. A sharp nose. An intimidating gaze. I check the facts.

  It is true. As a boy, Jake was a runaway. And he did work at a logging camp in Alaska. His timing was also accurate. In the fall of 1971, Jake was in the state prison at Walla Walla. And just like he said, the charges were three counts of forgery. And it’s true: Jake received a “furlough” in November 1971, during Thanksgiving weekend.

  I leaf through more pages. Eventually, I find the furlough forms.

  The documents are not clear. I find one file that claims Jake was approved for a furlough on November 23, 1971, the day before the hijacking. Another document claims he left the prison on November 24, 1971, the day of the hijacking. And yet another claims he left Walla Walla on November 25, the day after the hijacking. Which one was it?

  I confront Jake about these discrepancies. Is the file off? Or is he using his Thanksgiving furlough to feed me another bullshit D.B. Cooper story?

  “I am incredibly surprised there is any record at all,” he says.

  I check my saved phone messages.

  “Geoff, it’s Jo. I need to talk to you.”

  “Geoffrey Gray, this is Jo Weber. I … I don’t know what’s going on. I had some strange communications this week. A man sent me five pictures and of course I recognized two and two others possibly but they could be anybody.”

  “Geoff, Jo. I had a long conversation with a man yesterday. When you asked me if Duane could have been an informant, I always thought he was a Mafia informant for another organization, that he wasn’t CIA, but one of those offbeat kind of groups … I didn’t know what to believe but when he started talking about a priest, it hit me.”

  “Geoff! They stole it! They came in the damn house! They took everything!”

  “Geoff, ignore my other call. I’ve been revealing so much I’ve become totally, totally paranoid. I have to get on a plane. I have to find Tina. I have to bury this thing once and for all.”

  I put down the phone on the kitchen counter. It is winter. I am now living in a cabin. It is located on the top of a mountain in the northern Catskills, upstate New York. I moved here to be alone and focus on the case. I haven’t paid any bills. I have been living out of the same pair of sweatpants since I arrived. I went to the store on Monday for groceries and I don’t know what day it is now and it doesn’t matter because Cooper sleuths do not stop the hunt for weekends.

  I am reading conspiracy theory books about the 1960s and 1970s, the Bay of Pigs, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, John F. Kennedy. I am rereading e-mails Jake sent me.

  There are a lot of other stories out there that aren’t as dangerous as this one.

  I go over the facts again. What is true? What am I projecting? I scan the documents from the FBI case files. They are dog-eared and coffee-stained.

  I find it! I had overlooked it, all this time.

  The SR-71. The spyplane. It was the fastest, highest, most advanced surveillance vessel the government had built. So why was a CIA spyplane looking for Cooper? Maybe Cooper was a spook after all. Maybe that’s how he knew about the Boeing 727’s aftstairs—built for the CIA’s black ops subcontractor, Air America.

  I call the Pentagon. The media liaison has no idea how to answer my question. I don’t even know if I’m asking a question. I’m ranting about covert ops. He hangs up on me, just like the feds first hung up on Jo Weber when she called in her tip.

  I’m running out of sources. I need ex-Boeing engineers, ex-CIA operatives, SR-71 experts. I write in desperation to the operator of an on-line museum dedicated to the spy plane. I ask if it would be unusual for the Blackbird to be used by law enforcement to hunt for a missing hijacker.

  “VERY unusual … and a poor and highly expensive use of this national asset,” the curator of the site writes back. “The Pentagon, and in some cases much higher authority, provided approval for these missions.” Much higher authority? How much higher?

  I think of Duane L. Weber. I look at more photos that Jo sends me. Weber had a full head of hair. And it was wavy, almost marcelled, like witness Robert Gregory had said. I think of the one-legged man. The man with the cupid lips. The man with the horseshoe-shaped diamond ring. Kissy-Kissy. Reading about the Bay of Pigs and mercs, I see that the characters in the books all wind up the same way: dead.

  I lock my cabin windows. I place a few washed-out tomato cans in the doorways—my own homemade alarm system. I think about hiding a steak knife under my mattress. If the Cooper hijacking was an inside job, and I know about it, whoever was behind it (“the suits,” as Jake call them) will surely come after me too, right?

  In bed one night, I hear footsteps outside my window crunching in the snow.

  Who knows I am here? I sneak down the stairs, careful not to make any noise. I don’t turn the lights on in the cabin—that way I can see them out there, and they can’t see me.

  I put on my boots. I walk outside. The moon lights up the snow as bright as a living room. I circle the house. I look in the snow for footprints. I see them. They are my own.

  The next night, a blast of light fills my bedroom window.

  I look at the clock. It’s after 4:00 a.m. I hear an engine revving. A big engine. I spring out of bed. Where is the steak knife? I run into the bathroom and look out the window.

  A massive pickup is in the driveway. It is moving toward the cabin. What the fuck is going on? Who is driving the pickup? The handlers of John C. Collins? Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. back from the grave? Or maybe it’s Jake, who has traced our clandestine e-mail exchange in the Philippines? Or maybe Jake’s handlers? The suits? Kissy-Kissy?

  I am ready to fight. I won’t be taken alive. I go downstairs for the steak knife.

  I change my mind. Better I hide. Where should I go? Under the bed, in the closet, in
the attic? I feel like a coward. Why can’t I be brave like Dan Cooper the comic book hero? Why can’t I stand up and face them, whoever they are? And isn’t that what Cooper, whoever he was, is all about? To stand on their own feet, to be men, to face their God.… Am I seeing my own face in the Cooper sketch?

  Out the bathroom window I watch the pickup. It eases down the drive and disappears. A wrong turn.

  The next afternoon. Or maybe the one after that. I’m in the kitchen reheating the lunch I made, which started out as breakfast, which was last night’s dinner. The phone rings. I look at the area code.

  “845.”

  Jo Weber again.

  Ugh. I don’t want to pick up. Jo Weber conversations are hour investments, minimum. But I’m lonely up here in the cabin. I wonder, after the thousands of dead-end leads and ideas she has come up with about her ex-husband and the case, at least one has to be true, right?

  I pick up.

  “I’ve found it!” she says.

  She’s panicking. Short of breath.

  Found what?

  She can barely get the words out.

  Found what, Jo? What did you find?

  She is sobbing. She isn’t paying attention. Tears now. Her shrieks are hysterical.

  I scream at her. Get a hold of yourself, Jo, calm down. What did you find?

  “The cookbook,” she says.

  The cookbook?

  “In Duane’s things,” she says. “I went through his things—and Duane, you know, was not much of a reader—and I found a cookbook. Why would Duane save a cookbook, and why would he save a cookbook like this one?”

  Well, what kind of cookbook is it?

  “I can’t tell you,” she says.

  Goddamn it, Jo. Stop being so paranoid. Tell me the name.

  “Well, it’s not really a cookbook,” she says. “It’s just recipes put together.”

  Okay, fine. Recipes put together by who?

  She won’t say. She is crying again.

  Pull yourself together, Jo. Out with it.

  “The Dutch Catholic Order of the Amaranth,” she says.

  What? Does the cookbook have a name on it? A date on the back?

  “The publication date is 1960. The inscription inside the cover is ‘Gertrude E. Holmberg.’ I tried to find her. I think she is still alive.”

  Why does she even care?

  “Because of the picture.”

  What picture?

  “Of the little girl.”

  The little girl?

  “I don’t know if it’s Tina but I think it’s Tina. The girl looks like Tina. I found it in the cookbook. Mucklow, now that sounds Dutch. And she became a nun. Now Order of the Amaranth, I think that might be in Pennsylvania … Tina is from Pennsylvania.”

  I’m listening now. The hijacker did develop a bond with Tina Mucklow on the flight.

  Jo thinks Tina had the cookbook with her on the flight, and inside the pages was a picture of herself, mementos to remind her of home. And being the thief he was, Duane couldn’t help but steal the cookbook during the hijacking, just like he had stolen the packets of Kool-Aid he never drank from the Piggly Wiggly.

  “I need to meet Tina,” Jo says. “Face to face. She needs to see I am real. I need to show her the cookbook.”

  Where in the cookbook did Jo find the photo? Where was it placed?

  “Next to the recipe for cherry cheesecake.”

  Cherry cheesecake?

  “The recipe was handwritten.”

  Now that’s something, I think. Maybe the handwritten recipe is a code of a kind, like the gobbledygook newsprint I saw in the crevices of Duane’s ostrich-skin wallet. What if Duane secretly confessed to the crime within the recipe? Ingenious! Or perhaps the recipe itself is another clue that Duane has left for Jo. It could be directions to another safety deposit box—only instead of a Soldier of Fortune magazine, this secret chamber contains dozens of stacks of lost Cooper bills! The treasure is mine at last!

  Jo won’t stop crying.

  I have to get tough with her.

  “Jo, listen to me now. Take a breath. Calm yourself down. And read me the goddamn recipe for cherry cheesecake.”

  NOTES

  The material and narrative of this book are culled from a variety of sources, mostly interviews conducted by the author and information gleaned from hundreds of FBI case files. Other sources are newspapers, magazines, White House tapes, books, and music lyrics from the late 1960s and early 1970s. There have been several other books written on the Cooper case, all of them worth reading, and some which I relied on to re-create the lives of Cooper suspects and Cooper hunters, most notably D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy, by Bernie Rhodes, research by Russell Calame (University of Utah Press, 1991). The others are D.B. Cooper: What Really Happened, by May Gunther (Contemporary Books, 1985); NORJAK, by Ralph Himmelsbach and Thomas K. Worcester (self-published, 1986); The Legend of D.B. Cooper, by Ron and Pat Foreman (self-published, 2008); Into the Blast: The True Story of D.B. Cooper, by Skipp Porteous and Robert Blevins (Adventure Books, 2010), and D.B. Cooper: Dead or Alive? by Richard Tosaw (Tosaw Books, 1984).

  THE JUMP

  Quote: “Bombproof.” Found on newsprint in the wallet of insurance salesman and D.B. Cooper suspect Duane Weber.

  Nixon quote: whitehousetapes.net.

  JULY 6, 2007. NEW YORK, NEW YORK.

  Skipp Porteous, Sherry Hart, and Sherlock Investigations: Jesus Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, by Skipp Porteous; interviews with Skipp Porteous and Sherry Hart.

  Kenneth, Lyle, and Donna Christiansen: interviews with Lyle Christiansen; entries from A Cute as a Bug’s Ear by Donna Christiansen.

  The quote from the sociologist (“He comes off as a kind of curious Robin Hood …”) is from Dr. Otto Larson and appeared in the Seattle Times, “Hijacker of Jetliner Steals Public Fancy Here,” Ross Anderson, November 28, 1971.

  Quotes from sheriff and agent in newsclips following hijacking, FBI file.

  Information about D.B. Cooper FBI file: author reporting, FBI agent Larry Carr.

  Near death of treasure hunter John Banks, NORJAK, by Ralph Himmelsbach.

  Journalist’s suicide attempt and electroshock treatments: Son of the Rough South by Karl Fleming (Public Affairs, 2005).

  Charles Manson quote: transcripts of the Manson trial.

  Quote from Richard Nixon (“If I’m assassinated …”): 1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America by Andreas Killen (Bloomsbury, 2006).

  Statistics on American skyjackings: Federal Aviation Administration newsletter, January 24, 1971.

  Passages on psychology of skyjackers: The Skyjacker: His Flights of Fantasy by David G. Hubbard, M.D. (Macmillan, 1971).

  Kenneth Christiansen: military records, interviews with Lyle Christiansen.

  Lyrics: “D.B. Cooper, Where Are You?” by Judy Sword.

  NOVEMBER 24, 1971. ABOARD NORTHWEST 305.

  The description of the events aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 305, and of the FBI’s response on the ground, is drawn from the FBI files, including interviews with Florence Schaffner, Tina Mucklow, Alice Garley Hancock, Harold E. Anderson, William John Rataczak, William A. Scott, Dennis Eugene Lysne, Hal V. Williams, Robert B. Gregory, George R. Labissoniere, Cord Harms Zrim Spreckel, William W. Mitchell, Nancy House, Earl J. Cossey, and others. Conversations between pilots, air traffic controllers, Northwest officials, and FBI agents are quoted from Teletype reports and transcriptions of various radio communications on the night of the hijacking and found in FBI files and NORJAK. In addition, the author conducted interviews with Schaffner, Hancock, passengers Mitchell, Larry Finegold, Floyd Kloepfer, Patrick Minsch, and others, and interviews with retired agents Himmelsbach, Bob Fuhrman, and John Detler and others; the families of passengers Les Pollart, captain William Scott, and detective Owen McKenna.

  Details about Alaska airline jet crash: aviation-safety.net; news clips.

  Fear of flying: from The New York Times—“Pills
, Drinks and Will Power Banish Fear of Flying” by Robert Lindsey, March 5, 1970; “Final Exam for First Afraid-to-Fly Graduating Class: Puerto Rican Flight” by Paul J. C. Friedlander, March 1, 1970; “Pacific Backs Ads on Fear of Flying,” May 9, 1967; “Advertising: Stan Freberg Tackles Fear” by Philip H. Dougherty, April 28, 1967; and “Some of the Best People Are Afraid of Flying” by Diane Ouding, August 12, 1973.

  Northwest stewardess uniform: Northwest Orient (Gallery Books, 1987) by Bill Yenne, Flight to the Top (Viking Press, 1986) by Kenneth D. Ruble, and uniformfreak.com.

  History of stewardesses: Come Fly With Us! (Collector’s Press, 2006) by Johanna Omelia and Michael Waldock; Sex Objects in the Sky (Follett Publishing, 1974) by Paula Kane with Christopher Chandler.

  The United ad (“And someone may get a wife”) appeared in the November 11, 1966, issue of Life magazine; National’s “Fly Me” campaign: Time magazine, “Fly Me,” November 15, 1971; National’s “I’m going to fly you like you’ve never been flown before” commercials: Time magazine, “Fly Me Again,” June 24, 1974.

  National boycott: Working the Skies: The Fast-Paced, Disorienting World of the Flight Attendant by Drew Whitelegg; The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America by Dorothy Sue Cobble.

  Air America: Air-Britain Digest; “The CIA’s Airlines: Logistic Air Support for the War in Laos, 1954 to 1975” by Martin Best, date unknown; and usmcpress.com/heritage/air_america.htm.

  John Little, aviation historian and Museum of Flight Assistant Curator, provided information on the Boeing 727 and the habits of airline pilots in the 1970s.

  Playboy’s Miss October 1971 and Miss November 1971: freeweb.hu/playmate/html/7110.html, and freeweb.hu/playmate/html/7111.html.

  Details on Hump pilots and missions found in The Hump Express, published during World War II.

  Guidelines for stewardesses: reprinted in Come Fly With Us!