The existence of the loft on Great Jones Street was known only to the Castle. Fred, now using the identity of Vincent Chapman, had rented a post office box at Cooper Station on Fourth Avenue where he promptly mailed a short note to Aunt Peggy in Newark. The reply came three days later using a second code with an emergency one-time pad. Chapman took several hours to decrypt the three page message; the information included a second post office box at the Manhattan general post office at 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue rented by a Reverend Father Joseph O’Brien S.J. The contact set up an exchange of documents to take place very quickly, within the next day or two.
Chapman followed instructions and traveled the usual circuitous route to the hotel Latham on 28th Street just off Fifth Avenue to make sure he wasn’t being followed. First a subway ride to Boro Hall in Brooklyn then back to Manhattan to Grand Central Station, and a winding walk downtown through the streets with the usual multiple stops to check his back. Finally two hours later he reached the hotel lobby and told the desk clerk he came to pick up a letter from Mr. Windsor who had checked in that morning. The desk clerk looked into the mailbox of room 1008 and handed over an envelope with a short message, “In twenty minutes in the men’s room at Grand Central, take the last stall on the right as soon as it’s free.”
He sat in the stall as instructed until someone entered the stall next to him. A thick envelope was slipped under the partition but no words were exchanged. Chapman put the envelope into his inside pocket and left the washroom. He never saw his contact and followed another long one-hour itinerary back to Great Jones Street. The message contained instructions for one more delicate operation requiring several weeks and possibly months of preparation. He was to remain underground and not return to the warehouse in Long Island City until the operation was completed and only to scuttle the SLC and any trace of the presence of the “Gamma Group.” After that “Chapman” was to dissolve into thin air and Fred Spada would be traveling back to Italy.
A envelope from “Father J. O’Brien S.J.” arrived a few days later at the Cooper Station post office box containing a key to a locker at Penn Station where he picked up $10,000 in cash in a brown paper bag for expenses. Chapman now had his orders and the means to carry them out.