Evening News

1

At CBA Television News headquarters in New York, the initial report of a stricken Airbus A300, on fire and approaching Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, came only minutes before the network's first feed of the National Evening News.

It was 6:21 P.M. eastern daylight time when CBA's bureau chief at Dallas told a producer on the New York Horseshoe through a speakerphone, "We're expecting a big aircraft crash at DFW any moment. There's been a midair collision—a small plane and an Airbus with a full passenger load. The small plane went down. The Airbus is on fire and trying to make it in. The police and ambulance radios are going wild.”

"Jesus!”another Horseshoe producer said.”What's our chance of getting pictures?”

The Horseshoe, an outsize desk with seating for twelve people, was where the network's flagship news broadcast was planned and nurtured from early each weekday morning until the last second of air time every night. Over at rival CBS they called it the Fishbowl, at ABC the Rim, at NBC the Desk. But whichever name was used, the meaning was the same.

Here, reputedly, were the network's best brains when it came to making judgments and decisions about news: executive producer, anchorman, senior producers, director, editors, writers, graphics chief and their ranking aides. There were also, like the instruments of an orchestra, a half-dozen computer terminals, wire news service printers, a phalanx of state-of-the-art telephones, and TV monitors on which could be called up instantly anything from unedited tape, through a prepared news segment ready for broadcast, to competitors' transmissions.

The Horseshoe was on the fourth floor of the CBA News Building, in a central open area with offices on one side—those of the National Evening News senior staff members who, at various times of day, would retreat from the often frenzied Horseshoe to their more private work quarters.

Today, as on most days, presiding at the Horseshoe's head was Chuck Insen, executive producer. Lean and peppery, he was a veteran newsman with a print press background in his early years and, even now, a parochial preference for domestic news over international. At age fifty-two Insen was elderly by TV standards, though he showed no sign of diminished energy, even after four years in a job that often burned people out in two. Chuck Insen could be curt and often was; he never suffered fools or small talk. One reason: under the pressures of his job there wasn't time.

At this moment—it was a Wednesday in mid-September the pressures were at maximum intensity. Through the entire day, since early morning, the lineup of the National Evening News, the selection of subjects and their emphasis, had been reviewed, debated, amended and decided. Correspondents and producers around the world had contributed ideas, received instructions and responded. In the whole process the day's news had been whittled down to eight correspondent reports averaging a minute and a half to two minutes each, plus two voice-overs and four "tell stories.” A voice-over was the anchorman speaking over pictures, a "tell story,” the anchorman without pictures; for both the average was twenty seconds.

Now, suddenly, because of the breaking story from Dallas and with less than eight minutes remaining before broadcast air time, it had become necessary to reshape the entire news lineup. Though no one knew how much more information would come in or whether pictures would be available, to include the Dallas story at least one intended item had to be dropped, others shortened. Because of balance and timing the sequence of stories would be changed. The broadcast would start while rearrangement was continuing. It often happened that way.

”A fresh lineup, everybody.” The crisp order came from Insen.”We'll go with Dallas at the top. Crawf will do a tell story. Do we have wire copy yet?”

"AP just in. I have it.” The answer was from Crawford Sloane, the anchorman. He was reading an Associated Press bulletin printout handed to him moments earlier.

Sloane, whose familiar craggy features, gray-flecked hair, jutting jaw and authoritative yet reassuring manner were watched by some seventeen million people almost every weeknight, was at the Horseshoe in his usual privileged seat on the executive producer's right. Crawf Sloane, too, was a news veteran and had climbed the promotion ladder steadily, especially after exposure as a CBA correspondent in Vietnam. Now, after a stint of reporting from the White House followed by three years in the nightly anchor slot, he was a national institution, one of the media elite.

In a few minutes Sloane would leave for the broadcast studio. Meanwhile, for his tell story he would draw on what had already come from Dallas over the speakerphone, plus some additional facts in the AP report. He would compose the story himself. Not every anchor wrote his own material but Sloane, when possible, liked to write most of what he spoke. But he had to do it fast.

Insen's raised voice could be heard again. The executive producer, consulting the original broadcast lineup, told one of his three senior producers, "Kill Saudi Arabia. Take fifteen seconds out of Nicaragua . . .”

Mentally, Sloane winced on hearing the decision to remove the Saudi story. It was important news and a well-crafted two and a half minutes by CBA's Middle East correspondent about the Saudis' future marketing plans for oil. But by tomorrow the story would be dead because they knew that other networks had it and would go with it tonight.

Sloane didn't question the decision to put the Dallas story first, but his own choice for a deletion would have been a Capitol Hill piece about a U.S. senator's malfeasance. The legislator had quietly slipped eight million dollars into a gargantuan appropriations bill, the money to oblige a campaign contributor and personal friend. Only through a reporter's diligent scrutiny had the matter come to light.

While more colorful, the Washington item was less important, a corrupt member of Congress being nothing out of the ordinary. But the decision, the anchorman thought sourly, was typical of Chuck Insen: once more an item of foreign news, whose emphasis Sloane favored, had gone into the discard.

The relationship between the two—executive producer and anchorman—had never been good, and had worsened recently because of disagreements of that kind. Increasingly, it seemed, their basic ideas were growing further apart, not only about the kind of news that should have priority each evening, but also how it should be dealt with. Sloane, for example, favored in depth treatment of a few major subjects, while Insen wanted as much of that day's news as could be crammed in, even if—as he was apt to express it—"we deal with some of the news in shorthand.”

In other circumstances Sloane would have argued against dropping the Saudi piece, perhaps with positive effect because the anchorman was also executive editor and entitled to some input—except right now there wasn't time.

Hurriedly, Sloane braced his heels against the floor, maneuvering his swivel chair backward and sideways with practiced skill so that he confronted a computer keyboard. Concentrating, mentally shutting out the commotion around him, he tapped out what would be the opening sentences of tonight's broadcast.

From Dallas-Fort Worth, this word just in on what may be a tragedy in the making. We know that minutes ago there was a midair collision between two passenger planes, one a heavily loaded Airbus of Muskegon Airlines. It happened over the town of Gainesville, Texas, north of Dallas, and Associated Press reports the other plane—a small one, it's believed—went down. There is no word at this moment on its fate or of casualties on the ground The Airbus is still in the air, but on fire as its pilots attempt to reach Dallas Fort Worth Airport for a landing. On the ground, fire fighters and ambulance crews are standing by . . .

While his fingers raced across the keyboard, Sloane reflected in a corner of his mind that few, if any, viewers would switch off until tonight's news was concluded. He added a sentence to the tell story about staying tuned for further developments, then hit a key for printout. Over at Teleprompter they would get a printout too, so that by the time he reached the broadcast studio, one floor below, it would be ready for him to read from the prompter screen.

As Sloane, a sheaf of papers in hand, quickly headed for the stairs to the third floor, Insen was demanding of a senior producer, "Dammit, what about pictures from DFW?”

"Chuck, it doesn't look good.”The producer, a phone cradled in his shoulder, was talking to the national editor in the main newsroom.”The burning airplane is getting near the airport but our camera crew is twenty miles away. They won't make it in time.”

Insen swore in frustration.”Shit!”

* * *

If medals were awarded for dangerous service in the field of television, Ernie LaSalle, the national editor, would have had a chestful. Although only twenty-nine, he had served with distinction and frequent peril as a CBA field producer in Lebanon, Iran, Angola, the Falklands, Nicaragua and other messy places while ugly situations were erupting. Though the same kind of situations were still happening, nowadays LaSalle viewed the domestic American scene, which could be equally messy at times, from a comfortable upholstered chair in a glass-paneled office overlooking the main newsroom.

LaSalle was compact and small-boned, energetic, neatly bearded and carefully dressed—a yuppie type, some said. As national editor his responsibilities were large and he was one of two senior functionaries in the newsroom. The other was the foreign editor. Both had newsroom desks which they occupied when any particular story became hot and either was closely involved. The Dallas-Fort Worth Airport story was hot—ergo, LaSalle had rushed to his newsroom desk.

The newsroom was one floor below the Horseshoe. So was the news broadcast studio, which used the bustling newsroom as its visual backdrop. A control room, where a director put the technical components of each broadcast together, was in the News Building basement.

It was now seven minutes since the Dallas bureau chief had first reported the wounded Airbus approaching DFW. LaSalle slammed down one phone and picked up another, at the same time reading a computer screen alongside him on which a new AP report had just appeared. He was continuing to do everything he could to ensure coverage of the story, at the same time keeping the Horseshoe advised of developments.

It was LaSalle who reported the dispiriting news about CBA's nearest camera crew—though now rushing toward DFW and ignoring speed limits en route, still twenty miles from the scene of action. The reason was that it had been a busy day at the Dallas bureau, with all camera crews, field producers and correspondents out on assignment, and by sheer bad luck all of the assignments were a long way from the airport.

Of course, there would be some pictures forthcoming shortly, but they would be after the fact and not of the critical Airbus landing, which was certain to be spectacular and perhaps disastrous. It was also unlikely that pictures of any kind would be available for the first feed of the National Evening News, which went via satellite to most of the eastern seaboard and parts of the Midwest.

The only consolation was that the Dallas bureau chief had learned that no other network or local station had a camera crew at the airport either, though like CBA's others were on the way.

From his newsroom desk Ernie LaSalle, still busy with telephones, could see the usual pre-broadcast action in the brightly lit news studio as Crawford Sloane came in. Television viewers watching Sloane during a broadcast had the illusion that the anchorman was in, and part of, the newsroom. But in fact there was thick soundproof glass between the two so that no newsroom noises intruded, except when deliberately faded in as an audio effect.

The time was 6:28 P.m., two minutes before first-feed air.

* * *

As Sloane slipped into the anchor desk chair, his back to the newsroom and facing the center camera of three, a makeup girl moved in. Ten minutes earlier Sloane had had makeup applied in a small private room adjoining his office, but since then he had been sweating. Now the girl mopped his forehead, dabbed on powder, ran a comb through his hair and applied a touch of hair spray.

With a hint of impatience Sloane murmured, "Thanks, Nina,” then glanced over his papers, checking that the opening words of his tell story on top corresponded with those displayed in large letters on the Teleprompter in front of him, from which he would read while appearing to look directly at viewers. The papers which news readers were often seen to shuffle were a precaution, for use only if the Teleprompter failed.

The studio stage manager called out loudly, "One minute!”

* * *

In the newsroom, Ernie LaSalle suddenly sat up straight, attentive, startled.

About a minute earlier, the Dallas bureau chief had excused himself from the line on which he had been talking with LaSalle to take another phone call, Waiting, LaSalle could hear the bureau chief's voice but not what was being said. Now the bureau man returned and what he reported caused the national editor to smile broadly.

LaSalle picked up a red reporting telephone on his desk which connected him, through amplified speakers, to every section of the news operation.

”National desk. LaSalle. Good news. We now have immediate coverage at DFW airport. In the terminal building, waiting for flight connections, are Partridge, Abrams, Van Canh. Abrams just reported to Dallas bureau—they are onto the story and running. More: A mobile satellite van has abandoned another assignment and is en route to DFW, expected soonest. Satellite feed time, Dallas to New York, is booked. We expect pictures in time for inclusion in the first-feed news.”

Though he tried to sound laconic, LaSalle found it hard to keep the satisfaction from his voice. As if in response, a muffled cheer drifted down the open stairway from the Horseshoe above. Crawford Sloane, in the studio, also swung around and gave LaSalle a cheerful thumbs up.

An aide put a paper in front of the national editor who glanced at it, then continued on the speakerphone, "Also from Abrams, this report: On board Airbus in distress are 286 passengers, eleven crew. Second plane in collision, a private Piper Cheyenne, crashed in Gainesville, no survivors. There are other casualties on ground, no details, numbers or seriousness. Airbus has one engine ripped off, is attempting landing on remaining engine. Air Traffic Control reportsfire isfrom the location of missing engine. Report ends.”

LaSalle thought: Everything that had come from Dallas in the past few minutes was totally professional. But then, it was not surprising because the team of Abrams, Partridge and Van Canh was one of the crack combinations of CBA News. Rita Abrams, once a correspondent and now a senior field producer, was noted for her quick assessment of situations and a resourcefulness in getting stories back, even under difficult conditions. Harry Partridge was one of the. best correspondents in the business. He normally specialized in war stories and, like Crawford Sloane, had reported from Vietnam, but could be relied on to do an exceptional job in any situation. And cameraman Minh Van Canh, once a Vietnamese and now an American citizen, was noted for his fine pictures sometimes shot in dangerous situations with disregard for his own safety. The fact that the three of them were onto the Dallas story guaranteed that it would be well handled.

By now it was a minute past the half hour and the first-feed National Evening News had begun. Reaching for a control beside his desk, LaSalle turned up the audio of an overhead monitor and heard Crawford Sloane doing the top-of-the-news tell story about DFW. On camera, a hand—it was a writer's slipped a paper in front of him. Clearly it contained the additional report LaSalle had just dictated and, glancing down and ad-libbing, Sloane incorporated it into his prepared text. It was the kind of thing the anchorman did superbly.

* * *

Upstairs at the Horseshoe since LaSalle's announcement, the mood had changed. Now, though pressure and urgency remained, there was cheerful optimism with the knowledge that the Dallas situation was well in hand and pictures and a fuller report would be forthcoming. Chuck Insen and others were huddled, watching monitors, arguing, making decisions, squeezing out seconds, doing still more cutting and rearranging to leave the needed space. It looked as if the report about the corrupt senator would fall by the way after all. There was a sense of everyone doing what they did best—coping in a time confined, exigency situation.

Swift exchanges, jargon—loaded, flowed back and forth.

”This piece is picture-poor.”

"Make that copy shorter, pithy.”

"Tape room: We're killing '16: Corruption.' But it may come back in if we don't get Dallas.”

"The last fifteen seconds of that piece is deadly. We'll be telling people what they already know.”

"The old lady in Omaha doesn't know.”

"Then she never will. Drop it.”

"First segment just finished. Have gone to commercial. We're forty seconds heavy.”

"What did the competition have from Dallas?”

"A tell story, same as us.”

"I need a bumper and cutline fast for 'Drug Bust.' "Take out that sequence. It does nothing.”

"What we're trying to do here is put twelve pounds of shit into a ten-pound bag.”

* * *

An observer unfamiliar with the scene might wonder: Are these people human? Don't they care? Have they no emotion, no feelings of involvement, not an ounce of grief? Have any of them spared a thought for the nearly three hundred terrified souls on that airplane approaching DFW who may shortly die? Isn't there anyone here to whom that matters?

And someone knowledgeable about news would answer: Yes, there are people here to whom it matters, and they will care, maybe right after the broadcast. Or, when some have reached home, the horror of it all will touch them, and depending on how it all turns out, a few may weep. At this moment, though, no one has the time. These are news people. Their job is to record the passing parade, the bad with the good, and to do it swiftly, efficiently, plainly so that—in a news phrase from an older time"he who runs may read.

”Therefore at 6:40 P.m., ten minutes into the National Evening News half hour, the key remaining question for those around the Horseshoe and others in the newsroom, studio and control room was: Will there or won't there be a story soon, with pictures, from DFW?

2

For the group of five journalists at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, the sequence of events had begun a couple of hours earlier and reached a high point at about 5:10 P.m., central daylight time.

The five were Harry Partridge, Rita Abrams, Minh Van Canh, Ken O'Hara, the CBA crew's sound man, and Graham Broderick, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. That same morning, in predawn darkness, they had left El Salvador and flown to Mexico City, then, after delay and a flight change, traveled onward to DFW. Now they were awaiting other flight connections, some to differing destinations.

All were weary, not just from today's long journey, but from two months or more of rough and dangerous living while reporting on several nasty wars in unpleasant parts of Latin America.

While waiting for their flights, they were in a bar in Terminal 2E, one of twenty-four busy bars in the airport. The bar's d6cor was modutilitarian. Surrounded by an imitation garden wall containing plants, it sported hanging fabric panels overhead in pale blue plaid, lit by concealed pink lighting. The Timesman said it reminded him of a whorehouse he had once been in in Mandalay.

From their table near a window they could see the aircraft ramp and Gate 20. It was from that gate Harry Partridge had expected to leave, a few minutes from now, on an American Airlines flight to Toronto. But this evening the flight was late and an hour's delay had just been announced.

Partridge, a tall and lanky figure, had an untidy shock of fair hair that had always made him look boyish and still did, despite his forty-odd years and the fact that the hair was graying. At this moment he was relaxed and not much caring about flight delays or anything else. He had ahead of him three weeks of R&R, and rest and relaxation were what he sorely needed.

Rita Abrams' connecting flight would be to MinneapolisSt. Paul, from where she was headed for a holiday on a friend's farm in Minnesota. She also had a weekend rendezvous planned there with a married senior CBA official, a piece of information she was keeping to herself. Minh Van Canh and Ken O'Hara were going home to New York. So was Graham Broderick.

The trio of Partridge, Rita and Minh was a frequent working combination. On their most recent trip, O'Hara had been with them, as sound recordist, for the first time. He was young, pale, pencil-thin, and spent most of his spare time absorbed in electronics magazines; be had one open now.

Broderick was the odd man out, though he and the TV-ers often covered the same assignments and mostly were on good terms. At this moment, however, the Timesman-rotund, dignified and slightly pompous—was being antagonistic.

Three of the group had had a little too much to drink. The exceptions were Van Canh, who drank only club soda, and the sound man, who had nursed a beer for a long time and declined more.

”Listen, you affluent son of a bitch,” Broderick said to Partridge, who had pulled a billfold from his pocket, "I said I'd pay for this round, and so I will.” He put two bills, a twenty and a five, on a waiter's tray on which three double scotches and a club soda had been delivered.”Just because you pull down twice as much as I do for half the work is no reason to hand the print press charity.”

"Oh, for chrissakes!”

Rita said.”Brod, why don't you throw away that old cracked record.”

Rita had spoken loudly, as she sometimes did. Two uniformed officers from the airport's Department of Public Safety force, which policed DFW, had been walking through the bar; they turned their heads curiously. Observing them, Rita smiled and waved a hand. The officers' eyes took in the group and, around them, the assortment of cameras and equipment on which the CBA logo was prominent. Both DPS men returned the smile and moved on.

Harry Partridge, who had been watching, thought: Rita was showing her age today. Even though she exuded a strong sexuality which had drawn many men to her, there were telltale lines on her face; also, the toughness which made her as demanding of herself as of those she worked with came through in imperious little mannerisms, not always attractively. There was recent reason, of course—the strain and heavy work load which she, Harry and the other two had shared through the past two months.

Rita was forty-three, and six years ago was still appearing on camera as a news correspondent, though far less often than when she was younger and more glamorous. Everyone knew it was a rotten, unfair system that allowed men to continue as correspondents, to keep on facing the camera even when their faces revealed them to be growing older, whereas women couldn't and were shunted aside like discarded concubines. A few women had tried to fight and beat the system—Christine Craft, a reporter and anchor-woman, pursued the issue through the courts, but had not succeeded.

But Rita, instead of starting a fight she knew she wouldn't win, had switched to producing and, behind the camera instead of in front of it, had been triumphantly successful. Along the way she had badgered senior producers into giving her some of the tough foreign assignments which almost always went to men. For a while her male bosses had resisted, then they had given in, and soon Rita was sent automatically—along with Harry—to where the fighting was fiercest and the living hardest.

Broderick, who had been pondering Rita's last remark, now said, "It isn't as if your glamour gang is doing anything important. Every night that tiny news hole has only tooth pickings of all that's happened in the world. How long is it—nineteen minutes?”

"If you're shooting at us sitting ducks,” Partridge said amiably, "at least the print press should get its facts straight. It's twenty-one and a half.”

"Leaving seven minutes for commercials,” Rita added, "which, among other things, pay Harry's excessive salary which turns you green with jealousy.”

Rita, with her usual bluntness, was on the nose about jealousy, Partridge thought. With print press people, the difference between their own and TV news pay was always a sore point. In contrast with Partridge's earnings, which were $250,000 a year, Broderick, a first-class, highly competent reporter, probably got $85,000.

As if his train of thought had not been interrupted, the Timesman continued, "What your entire network news department produces in a day would only fill half of one of our paper's pages.”

"A dumb comparison,” Rita shot back, "because everyone knows a picture is worth a thousand words. We have hundreds of pictures and we take people to where the news is so they can see it for themselves. No newspaper in history ever did that.”

Broderick, holding in one hand the fresh double scotch he had been sipping, waved the other hand dismissingly.”'S not relevant.” The last word gave him trouble; he pronounced it "revelant.”

It was Minh Van Canh, not usually a great talker, who asked, "Why not?”

"Because you people are dodos. TV network news is dying. All you ever were was a headline service and now the local stations are taking over even that, using technology to bring in outside news themselves, picking off pieces of you like vultures at a carcass.”

"Well,” Partridge said, still agreeably relaxed, "there are some who've been saying that for years. But look at us. We're still around, and still strong, because people watch network news for quality.”

"You're goddamn right,” Rita said.”And something else you have wrong, Brod, is the notion that local TV news is getting better. It isn't. It's getting worse. Some of the people who left networks with high hopes to work in local news have gone back to the networks in disgust.”

Broderick asked, "Why so?”

"Because local station managements see news as hype, promotion, massive revenue. They use that new technology you talk about to pander to the lowest viewer tastes. And when they send someone from their news department on a big outside story, it's usually a kid, out of his depth, who can't compete with a network reporter's know-how and backup.”

Harry Partridge yawned. The thing about this conversation, he realized, was that it was a retread, a game that filled vacant time but required no intellectual effort, and they had indulged in the game many times before.

Then he became aware of some activity nearby.

The two DPS officers were still in the bar through which they had moved casually, but had suddenly become attentive and were listening to their walkie-talkies. An announcement was being transmitted. Partridge caught the words, ". . . condition Alert Two . . . midair collision . . . approaching runway one-seven left . . . all DPS personnel report..." Abruptly, hurrying, the officers left the bar.

The others in the group had heard too.”Hey!” Minh Van Canh said.”Maybe . . .”

Rita jumped up.”I'll find out what's happening. She left the bar hurriedly.

Van Canh and O'Hara began to gather together their camera and sound ' gear. Partridge and Broderick did the same with their belongings.

One of the DPS officers was still in sight. Rita caught up with him near an American Airlines check-in counter, noting that he was youthfully handsome with the physique of a football player.

”I'm from CBA News.” She showed her network press card.

His eyes were frankly appraising.”Yes, I know.”

In other circumstances, she thought briefly, she might have introduced him to the pleasures of an older woman. Unfortunately there wasn't time. She asked, "What's going on?”

The officer hesitated.”You're supposed to call the Public Information Office—”Rita said impatiently, "I'll do that later. It's urgent, isn't it? So tell me.”

"Muskegon Airlines is in trouble. One of their Airbuses had a midair. It's coming in on fire. We're on Alert Two, which means all the emergency stuff is rolling, heading for runway one-seven left.” His voice was serious.”Looks pretty bad.”

"I want my camera crew out there. Now and fast. Which way do we go?”

The DPS man shook his head.”If you try it unescorted, you won't get beyond the ramp. You'll be arrested.”

Rita remembered something she had once been told, that DFW airport prided itself on cooperating with the press. She pointed to the officer's walkie-talkie.”Can you call Public Information on that?”

"I could.”

"Do it. Please!”

Her persuasion worked. The officer called and was answered. Taking Rita's press card, he read from it, explaining her request.

A reply came back.”Tell them they must first come to public safety station number one to sign in and get media badges.”

Rita groaned. She gestured to the walkie-talkie.”Let me speak.”

The DPS officer pressed a transmit button. He held the radio out.

She spoke urgently into the built-in mike: "There isn't time; you must know that. We're network. We have every kind of credential. We'll do any paperwork you want afterward. But please, please, get us to the scene now.”

"Stand by.” A pause, then a new voice with crisp authority.”Okay, get to gate nineteen fast. Ask someone there to direct you to the ramp. Look for a station wagon with flashing lights. I'm on my way to you.”

Rita squeezed the officer's arm.”Thanks, pal!”

Then she was hurrying back toward Partridge and the others who were leaving the bar. Broderick was last. As he left, the New York Times man cast a regretful glance back at the unconsumed drinks for which he had paid.

Briskly, Rita related what she had learned, telling Partridge, Minh and O'Hara, "This can be big. Go out on the airfield. Don't waste time. I'll do some phoning, then come to find you.” She glanced at her watch: 5:20 P.m., 6:20 in New York.”If we're fast we can make the first feed.” But privately she doubted it.

Partridge nodded, accepting Rita's orders. At any time, the relationship between a correspondent and producer was an imprecise one. Officially, a field producer such as Rita Abrams was in charge of an entire crew, including the correspondent, and if anything went wrong on an assignment the producer got the blame. If things went right, of course, the correspondent whose face and name were featured received the praise, even though the producer undoubtedly helped shape the story and contributed to the script.

However, in the case of a "Big Foot”senior correspondent like Harry Partridge, the official pecking order sometimes got turned around, with the correspondent taking charge and a producer being overawed and sometimes overruled, But when Partridge and Rita worked together, neither gave a damn about status. They simply wanted to send back the best reports that the two of them, in harness, could produce.

While Rita hurried to a pay phone, Partridge, Minh and O'Hara moved quickly toward gate 19, looking for an exit to the air traffic ramp below. Graham Broderick, quickly sobered by what was happening, was close behind.

Near the gate was a doorway marked:

RAMP-RESTRICTED AREA

EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY

ALARM WILL SOUND

No official person was in sight and without hesitation Partridge pushed his way through, the others following. As they clattered down a metal stairway, a loud alarm bell sounded behind them. They ignored it and emerged onto the ramp.

It was a busy time of day and the ramp was crowded with aircraft and airline vehicles. Suddenly a station wagon appeared, traveling fast, with roof lights flashing. Its tires screeched as it halted at gate 19.

Minh, who was nearest, opened a door and jumped inside. The others piled in after him. The driver, a slim young black man in a brown business suit, pulled away, driving as swiftly as he had come. Without looking back he said, "Hiya, guys! I'm Vemon—Public Info.”

Partridge introduced himself and the others.

Reaching down to the seat beside him, Vernon came up with three green media badges. He passed them back.”These are temp; better clip them on. I already broke some rules, but like your girlfriend said, we ain't burdened with time.”

They had left the ramp area, crossed two taxiways and were traveling east on a parallel access road. Two runways were ahead and to the right. Alongside the farther runway, emergency vehicles were assembling.

* * *

Rita Abrams, in the terminal, was talking on a pay phone with CRA's Dallas bureau. The bureau chief, she had discovered, already knew of the airport emergency and had been trying to get a local CBA crew to the scene. He learned with delight of the presence of Rita and the others.

She told him to advise New York, then asked, "What's our satellite feed situation?”

"Good. There's a mobile satellite van on the way from Arlington.”

Arlington, she learned, was only thirteen miles away. The van, which belonged to a CBA affiliate station, KDLS-TV, had been setting up for a sports broadcast from Arlington Stadium, but now that story had been abandoned and the van dispatched to DFW. The driver and technician would be advised by cellular phone to cooperate with Rita, Partridge and the others.

The news excited and elated her. There was, she realized, now a good possibility of getting a story and pictures to New York in time for the first-feed National Evening News.

* * *

The station wagon carrying the CBA trio and the Timesman was nearing runway 17L—the figures denoted a magnetic heading of 170 degrees, almost due south; the L showed it to be the left runway of two that were parallel. As at all airports, the designation was in large white characters on the runway surface.

Still driving fast, Vernon explained, "A pilot in distress gets to choose the runway he wants. Here it's usually one-seven left. That baby is two hundred feet wide and closest to emergency help.”

The station wagon halted on a taxiway that intersected 17L and from where the incoming aircraft's approach and landing would be seen.

”This will be the on-site command post,” Vernon said.

Emergency vehicles were still arriving, some converging around them. From the airport's fire-fighting force were seven yellow trucks—four mammoth Oshkosh M 15 foam vehicles, an aerial ladder truck and two smaller Rapid Intervention Vehicles. The foam trucks, riding on giant tires nearly six feet high, with two engines, front and rear, and high-pressure projection nozzles, were like self-contained fire stations. The RIV's, fast and manoeuvrable, were designed to go in close and quickly to a burning aircraft.

A half-dozen blue-and-white police cruisers disgorged officers who opened the cars' trunks, pulled out silver fire suits and climbed into them. Airport police were cross-trained in fire fighting, Vernon explained. On the station wagon's DPS radio a stream of orders could be heard.

The fire trucks, supervised by a lieutenant in a yellow sedan, were taking positions on ramps at intervals down the runway's length. Ambulances summoned from nearby communities were streaming into the airport and assembling nearby, but clear of the runway area.

Partridge had been the first to jump from the station wagon and, standing beside it, was scribbling notes. Broderick, less hurriedly, was doing the same. Minh Van Canh had clambered to the station wagon's roof and now, standing, his camera ready, was scanning the sky to the north. Behind him was Ken O'Hara, trailing wires and a sound recorder.

Almost at once the stricken inbound flight was visible, about five miles out, with heavy black smoke behind it. Minh raised his camera, holding it steady, one eye tight against the viewfinder.

He was a sturdy, stocky figure, not much more than five feet tall, but with broad shoulders and long, muscular arms. His squarish dark face, pockmarked from a childhood bout with smallpox, held wide brown eyes which looked out impassively, unrevealing of what thoughts might lie behind them. Those who were close to Minh said it took a long time to get to know him.

About some things, though, there was consensus—namely, that Minh was industrious, reliable, honest, and one of the best TV cameramen in the business. His pictures were more than good; they were invariably attention—getting and oftentimes artistic. He had worked for CBA first in Vietnam, as a local recruit who learned his trade from an American cameraman for whom Minh carried equipment amid the jungle fighting. When his mentor was killed after stepping on a land mine, Minh, unaided, carried his body back for burial, then returned with the camera into the jungle where he continued filming. No one at CBA could ever remember hiring him. His employment simply became a fait accompli.

In 1975, with the fall of Saigon imminent, Minh, his wife and two children were among the all-too-few lucky ones airlifted from the U.S. Embassy courtyard by CH-53 military helicopter to the safety of the American Seventh Fleet at sea. Even then Minh filmed it all, and much of his footage was used on the National Evening News.

Now he was filming another aerial story, different but dramatic, whose ending had yet to be determined.

In the viewfinder the shape of the approaching Airbus was becoming clearer. Also clearer was a halo of bright flame on the right side with smoke continuing to stream behind. It was possible to see the fire coming from where an engine had been, and where now only a part of the engine pylon remained. To Minh and others watching, it seemed amazing that the entire airplane had not yet been engulfed.

Inside the station wagon, Vernon had switched on an aviation band radio. Air Traffic Control could be heard speaking with the Airbus pilots. The calm voice of a controller, monitoring their approach by radar, cautioned, "You are slightly below glide path . . . drifting left of center line . . . Now on glide path, on center line . . .”

But the Airbus pilots were clearly having trouble holding altitude and an even course. The plane seemed to be crabbing in, the damaged right wing lower than the left. At moments the plane's nose veered away; then, as if from urgent efforts in the cockpit, swung back toward the runway. There was an uneven up-and-down movement as at one moment too much height was lost, at the next retrieved, but barely. Those on the ground were asking themselves the tense, unspoken question: Having come this far, would the Airbus make it all the way in? The answer seemed in doubt.

On the radio, the voice of one of the pilots could be heard.”Tower, we have landing-gear problems . . . hydraulic failure.” A pause.”We are trying the gear down 'free fall' now.”

A fire captain, also listening, had stopped beside them. Partridge asked him, "What does that mean?”

"On big passenger planes there's an emergency system to get the landing wheels down if hydraulic power is out. The pilots release all hydraulic power so the gear, which is heavy, should fall under its own weight, then lock. But once it's down they can't get it up again, even if they want to.”

As the fireman spoke, the Airbus landing gear could be seen slowly coming down.

Moments later, once more the calm voice of an air traffic controller: "Muskegon, we see your gear down. Be advised that flames are close to the right front gear.”

It was obvious that if the right front tires were consumed by fire, as seemed probable, that side of the landing gear might collapse on impact, skewing the airplane to the right at high speed.

Minh, fondling a zoom lens, had his camera running. He too could see the flames which had now reached the tires. The Airbus was floating over the airport boundary . . . Then it was closer in, barely a quarter mile from the runway . . . It was going to make it to the ground, but the fire was greater, more intense, clearly being fed by fuel, and two of the four right-side tires were burning, the rubber melting . . . There was a flash as one of the tires exploded.

Now the burning Airbus was over the runway, its landing speed 150 mph. As the aircraft passed the waiting emergency vehicles, one by one they swung onto the runway, following at top speed, tires screaming. Two yellow foam trucks were the first to move, the other fire trucks close behind.

On the runway, as the airplane's landing gear made contact with the ground, another right-side tire exploded, then another. Suddenly all right tires disintegrated . . . the wheels were down to their rims. Simultaneously there was a banshee screech of metal, a shower of sparks, and a cloud of dust and cement fragments rose into the air . . . Somehow, miraculously, the pilots managed to hold the Airbus on the runway . . . It seemed to continue a long way and for a long time . . . At last it stopped. As it did, the fire flared up.

Still moving fast, the fire trucks closed in, within seconds pumping foam. Gigantic whorls of it piled up with incredible speed, like a mountain of shave cream.

On the airplane, several passenger doors were opening, escape slides tumbling out. The forward door was open on the right side, but on that side fire was blocking the mid-fuselage exits. On the left side, away from the fire, another forward door and a mid-fuselage door were open. Some passengers were already coming down the slides.

But at the rear, where there were two escape doors on each side, none had so far opened.

Through the three open doors, smoke from inside the airplane was pouring out. Some passengers were already on the ground. The latest ones emerged coughing, many vomiting, all gasping for fresh air.

By now the exterior fire was dying down under a mass of foam on one side of the airplane.

Firemen from the RIV's, wearing silver protective clothing and breathing apparatus, had swiftly moved in and rigged ladders to the unopened rear doors. As the doors were opened manually from outside, more smoke poured out. The firemen hurried inside, intent on extinguishing any interior fire. Other firemen, entering the wrecked Airbus through the forward doors, helped passengers to leave, some of them dazed and weak.

Noticeably, the outward flow of passengers slowed. Harry Partridge made a quick estimate that nearly two hundred people had emerged from the plane's interior, though from the information he had gathered he knew that 297, including crew, were reportedly aboard. Firemen began to carry some who appeared badly burned—among them two women flight attendants. Smoke was still drifting from inside, though less of it than earlier.

Minh Van Canh continued to videotape the action around him, thinking only professionally, excluding other thoughts, though aware that he was the only cameraman on the scene and in his camera he had something special and unique. Probably not since the Hindenburg airship disaster had a major air crash been recorded visually in such detail, while it happened.

Ambulances had been summoned to the on-site command post. A dozen were already there, with more arriving. Paramedics worked on the injured, loading them onto numbered backboards. Within minutes the crash victims would be on their way to area hospitals alerted to receive them. With the arrival of a helicopter bringing doctors and nurses, the command post near the Airbus was becoming an improvised field hospital with a functioning triage system.

The speed with which everything was happening spoke well, Partridge thought, of the airport's emergency planning. He overheard the fire captain report that a hundred and ninety passengers, more or less, were out of the Airbus and alive. At the same time that left nearly a hundred unaccounted for.

A fireman, pulling off his respirator to wipe the sweat from his face, was heard to say, "Oh Christ! The back seats are chock full of dead. It must have been where the smoke was thickest.” It also explained why the four rear escape doors had not been opened from inside.

As always with an aircraft accident, the dead would be left where they were until a National Transportation Safety Board field officer, reportedly on the way, gave authority to move them after approving identification procedures.

The flight-deck crew emerged from the Airbus, pointedly declining help. The captain, a grizzled four-striper, looking around him at the injured and already knowing of the many dead, was openly crying. Guessing that despite the casualties the pilots would be acclaimed for bringing the airplane in, Minh held the captain's grief-stricken face in closeup. It proved to be Minh's final shot as a voice called, "Harry! Minh! Ken! Stop now. Hurry! Bring what you've got and come with me. We're feeding to New York by satellite.”

The voice belonged to Rita Abrams, who had arrived on a Public Information shuttle bus. Some distance away, the promised mobile satellite van could be seen. The van's satellite dish, which folded like a fan for travel, was being opened and aimed skyward.

Accepting the order, Minh lowered his camera. Two other TV crews had arrived on the same shuttle bus as Rita—one from KDLS, the CBA affiliate—along with print press reporters and photographers. They and others, Minh knew, would carry the story on. But only Minh had the real thing, the crash exclusive pictures, and he knew with inward pride that today and in days to come, his pictures would be seen around the world and would remain a piece of history.

* * *

They went with Vernon in the PIO station wagon to the satellite van. On the way Partridge began drafting the words he would shortly speak. Rita told him, "Make your script a minute forty-five. As soon as you're ready, cut a sound track, do a closing standup. Meanwhile, I'll feed quick and dirty to New York.”

As Partridge nodded acknowledgment, Rita glanced at her watch: 5:43 P.m., 6:43 in New York. For the first-feed National Evening News, there was barely fifteen minutes left of broadcast time.

Partridge was continuing to write, mouthing words silently, changing what he had already written. Minh handed two precious tape cassettes to Rita, then put a fresh cassette in the camera, ready for Partridge's audio track and standup close.

Vernon dropped them immediately alongside the satellite van. Broderick, who had come too, was going on to the terminal to phone his own report to New York. His parting words were, "Thanks, guys. Remember, if you want the in-depth dope tomorrow, buy the Times."

“O'Hara, the high-technology buff, regarded the equipmentpacked satellite van admiringly.”How I love these babies!”

The fifteen-foot-wide dish mounted on the van's platform body was now fully open and elevated with a 20-kilowatt generator running. Inside, in a small control room with editing and transmitting equipment tightly packed in tiers, a technician from the two-man crew was aligning the van's uplink transmitter with a Kuband satellite 22,300 miles above them — Spacenet 2. Whatever they transmitted would go to transponder 21 on the satellite, then instantly by downlink to New York to be rerecorded.

Inside the van, working alongside the technician, Rita expertly ran Minh's tape cassettes through an editing machine, viewing them on a TV monitor. Not surprisingly, she thought, the pictures were superb.

On normal assignments, and working with an editor as an extra team member, producer and editor together would select portions of the tapes, then, over a sound track of a correspondent's comments, put all components together as a fully edited piece. But that took forty-five minutes, sometimes longer, and today there wasn't time. So, making fast decisions, Rita chose several of the most dramatic scenes which the technician transmitted as they were—in TV jargon, "quick and dirty.”

Outside the satellite van, seated on some metal steps, Partridge completed his script and, after conferring briefly with Minh and the sound man, recorded a sound track.

Having allowed for the anchorman's introduction, which would be written in New York and have the story's up-front facts, Partridge began:

"Pilots in a long-ago war called it comin'in on a wing and a prayer. There was a song with that name . . . It's unlikely anyone will write a song about today.”

"The Muskegon Airlines Airbus was sixty miles out from Dallas-Fort Worth . . . with a near-full passenger load . . . having comefrom Chicago . . . when the mid-air collision happened..."

As always, when an experienced correspondent wrote for TV news, Partridge had written "slightly off the pictures.” It was a specialized art form, difficult to learn, and some in television never quite succeeded. Even among professional writers the talent did not receive the recognition it deserved, because the words were written to accompany pictures and seldom read well alone.

The trick, as Harry Partridge and others like him knew, was not to describe the pictures. A television viewer would be seeing, visually, what was happening on the screen and did not need verbal description. Yet the spoken words must not be so far removed from the pictures as to split the viewer's consciousness. It was a literary balancing act, much of it instinctive.

Something else TV news people recognized: The best news writing was not in neat sentences and paragraphs. Fragments of sentences worked better. Facts must be taut, verbs strong and active; a script should crackle. Finally, by manner and intonation the correspondent should convey a meaning too. Yes, he or she had to be an excellent reporter, but an actor also. At all those things Partridge was expert, though today he had a handicap: he had not seen the pictures, as a correspondent normally did. But he knew, more or less, what they would be.

Partridge concluded with a standup—himself, head and shoulders, speaking directly to the camera. Behind him, activity was continuing around the wrecked Airbus.

”There is more of this story to come . . . tragic details, the toll of dead and injured. But what is clear, even now, is that collision dangers are multiplying . . . on the airways, in our crowded skies . . . Harry Partridge, CBA News, Dallas-Fort Worth.”

The cassette with the narration and standup was passed to Rita inside the van. Still trusting Partridge, knowing him too well to waste precious time checking, she ordered it sent to New York without review. Moments later, watching and listening as the technician transmitted, she was admiring. Remembering the discussion half an hour earlier in the terminal bar she reflected: with his multitalents, Partridge was demonstrating why his pay was so much higher than that of the reporter for the New York Times.

Outside, Partridge was performing still one more of a correspondent's duties—an audio report, spoken from notes and largely ad-libbed, for CBA Radio News. When the TV transmission was finished, that would go to New York by satellite too.

3

The CBA News headquarters building in New York was a plain and unimpressive eight-story brownstone on the east side of upper Manhattan. Formerly a furniture factory, now only the shell of the original structure remained, the interior having been remodeled and refurbished many times by an assortment of contractors. Out of this piecemeal work had come a maze of intersecting corridors in which unescorted visitors got lost.

Despite the drab domicile of CBA News, the place contained a sultan's fortune in electronic wizardry, a considerable portion of it in technicians' country, two floors below street level, sometimes referred to as the catacombs. And here, among a multitude of functions, was a vital department with a prosaic name—the One-inch-tape Room.

All news reports from CBA crews around the world came in, via satellite and occasionally by landline, to the One-inch-tape Room. From there, too, all taped recordings of finished news went out to viewers, via a broadcast control room and again by satellite.

Endemic to the One-inch-tape Room were enormous pressures, taut nerves, tension, instant decision making and urgent commands, especially just before and during broadcasts of the National Evening News.

At such times, someone unaware of what was happening might consider the scene disorganized bedlam, a technological nightmare. The impression would be heightened by surrounding semi-darkness, necessary for watching a forest of TV screens.

But in fact the operation functioned smoothly, quickly and with skill. Mistakes here could he disastrous. They rarely happened.

A half-dozen large and sophisticated reel-to-reel tape machines, built into consoles and with TV monitors above, dominated the activity; the machines used one-inch magnetic tape, the highest-quality and most reliable. At each tape machine and console sat a skilled operator receiving, editing and transmitting tapes swiftly, according to instructions. The operators, older than most workers in the building, were a motley group who seemed to take pride in dressing shabbily and behaving boisterously. Because of this, a commentator once described them as the "fighter pilots”of TV broadcasting.

Every weekday, an hour or so before National Evening News broadcast time, a senior news producer moved down five floors from his seat at the Horseshoe to preside over the One-inch-tape Room and its operators. There, acting as a maestro, shouting instructions while sernaphoring with his arms, he viewed incoming material for that night's news, ordered further editing if necessary, and kept colleagues at the Horseshoe informed of which expected items were now in-house and how, at first glance, each looked.

Everything, it always seemed, arrived at the One-inch-tape Room in haste and late. It was a tradition that producers, correspondents and editors working in the field polished and repolished their pieces until the last possible moment, so that most came in during the half hour before the broadcast and some after the broadcast had begun. There were even nail-biting occasions when the front half of a report was going out from one tape recorder and being broadcast while the back portion was still feeding into another machine. During those moments nervous, sweating operators pushed themselves to the limit of their skills.

The senior producer most often in charge was Will Kazazis, Brooklyn-born of an excitable Greek family, a trait he had inherited. His excitability, though, seemed to fit the job and despite it he never lost control. Thus it was Kazazis who received Rita Abrams' satellite transmission from DFW—first Minh Van Canh's pictures sent "quick and dirty,” then Harry Partridge's audio track, concluding with his standup.

The time was 6:48 . . . ten minutes of news remaining. A commercial break had just begun.

Kazazis told the operator who had taken the feed in, "Slap it together fast. Use all of Partridge's track. Put the best pictures over it. I trust you. Now move, move, move!”

Through an aide, Kazazis had already let the Horseshoe know that the Dallas tape was coming in. Now, by phone, Chuck Insen, who was in the broadcast control room, demanded, "How is it?”

Kazazis told the executive producer, "Fantastic! Beautiful! Exactly what you'd expect of Harry and Minh.”

Knowing there wasn't time to view the piece himself, and trusting Kazazis, Insen ordered, "We'll go with it after this commercial. Stand by.”

With less than a minute to go, the tape operator, perspiring in his air-conditioned work space, was continuing to edit, hurriedly combining pictures, commentary and natural sound.

* * *

Insen's command was repeated to the anchorman and a writer seated near him. A lead—in was already prepared and the writer passed the single sheet to Crawford Sloane who skimmed it, quickly changed a word or two, and nodded thanks. A moment later on the anchor's Teleprompter, what were to have been the next segment's opening words switched over to the DFW story. In the broadcast studio as the commercial break neared its conclusion, the stage manager called, "Ten seconds . five . . . four . . . two . . .”

At a hand signal Sloane began, his expression grave.”Earlier in this broadcast we reported a midair collision near Dallas between a Muskegon Airlines Airbus and a private plane. The private plane crashed There are no survivors. The Airbus, on fire, crash-landed at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport a few minutes ago and there are heavy casualties. On the scene is CBA News correspondent Harry Partridge who has just filed this report.”

Only seconds before had the frantic editing in the One-inch-tape Room been completed. Now, on monitors throughout the building and on millions of TV sets in the Eastern and Midwestern United States and across the Canadian border, a dramatic picture of an approaching, burning Airbus filled the screen and Partridge's voice began, "Pilots in a long-ago war called it comin' in on a wing and a prayer . . .”

The exclusive report and pictures had, as the final item, made the first-feed National Evening News.

* * *

There would be a second feed of the National Evening News immediately after the first. There always was and it would be broadcast—in the East by affiliate stations who did not take the first feed, widely in the Midwest, and most Western stations would record the second feed for broadcast later.

The Partridge report from DFW would, of course, lead the second feed and while competing networks might, by now, have after-the-fact pictures for their second feeds, CBA's while—it happened pictures remained a world exclusive and would be repeated many times in the days to follow.

There were two minutes between the end of the first feed and the beginning of the second and Crawford Sloane used them to telephone Chuck Insen.

”Listen,” Sloane said, "I think we ought to put the Saudi piece back in.”

Insen said sarcastically, "I know you have a lot of pull. Can you arrange an extra five minutes' air time?”

"Don't play games. That piece is important.”

"It's also dull as oil. I say no.”

"Does it matter that I say yes?”

"Sure it matters. Which is why we'll talk about it tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here with certain responsibilities.”

"Which include—or ought to—sound judgments about foreign news.”

"We each have our jobs,” Insen said, "and the clock is creeping up on yours. Oh, by the way, you handled the Dallas thing—at both ends—nicely.”

Without answering, Sloane hung up the telephone at the broadcast desk. As an afterthought he told the writer beside him, "Ask someone to get Harry Partridge on the phone at Dallas. I'll talk with him during the next break. I want to congratulate him and the others.”

The stage manager called out, "Fifteen seconds!”

Yes, Sloane decided, there would be a discussion between himself and Insen tomorrow and it would be a showdown. Perhaps Insen had outlived his usefulness and it was time for him to go.

* * *

Chuck Insen was tight-lipped and unsmiling when, after the end of the second feed and before going home, he returned to his office to gather up a dozen magazines for later reading.

Reading, reading, reading, to keep informed on a multitude of fronts, was a news executive producer's burden. Wherever he was and no matter what the hour, Insen felt obliged to reach for a newspaper, a magazine, a newsletter, a nonfiction booksometimes obscure publications in all categories—the way others might reach for a cup of coffee, a handkerchief, a cigarette. Often he awoke in the night and read, or listened to overseas news on short-wave broadcasts. At home, through his personal computer, he had access to the major news wire services and each morning, at 5 A.M., reviewed them all. Driving in to work, he listened to radio news—mainly to CBS whose radio network news he, like many professionals, acknowledged as the finest.

It was, as Insen saw it, this widest possible view of the ingredients of news, and of subjects which interested ordinary people that made his own news judgments superior to those of Crawford Sloane, who thought too often in elitist terms.

Insen had a philosophy about those millions out there who watched the National Evening News. What most viewers wanted, he believed, was the answers to three basic questions: Is the world safe? Are my home and family safe? Did anything happen today that was interesting? Above all else, Insen tried to ensure that the news each evening supplied those answers.

He was sick and tired, Insen thought angrily, of the anchorman's I-know-best, holier-than-thou attitude about news selection, which was why tomorrow the two of them would have a slam-bang confrontation during which Insen would say exactly what he was thinking now, and to hell with consequences.

What were those consequences likely to be? Well, in the past, in any kind of contest between a network news anchorman and his executive producer, the anchor had invariably won, with the producer having to look for work elsewhere. But a lot of things were changing in network news. There was a different climate nowadays, and there could always be a first, with an anchor departing and a producer staying on.

With just that possibility in mind, a few days ago Insen had had an exploratory, strictly confidential phone talk with Harry Partridge. Would Partridge, the executive producer wanted to know, be interested in coming in from the cold, settling down in New York, and becoming anchor of the National Evening News? When he chose to, Harry could radiate authority and would fit the part—as he had demonstrated several times by filling in while Sloane was on vacation.

Partridge's response had been a mixture of surprise and uncertainty, but at least he hadn't said no. Crawf Sloane, of course, knew nothing of that conversation.

Either way, concerning himself and Sloane, Insen was convinced they couldn't go on feuding without some kind of a resolution soon.

4

It was 7:40 P.M. when Crawford Sloane, driving a Buick Somerset, left the garage at CBA News headquarters. As usual, he was using a CBA car; one was always available as part of his employment contract and he could have a driver if he wanted, though most of the time he didn't. A few minutes later, as he turned onto Fifty-ninth Street from Third Avenue, heading east toward the FDR Drive, he continued thinking about the broadcast just concluded.

At first his thoughts had gone in the direction of Insen, then he decided to put the executive producer out of his mind until tomorrow. Sloane had not the slightest doubt of his ability to cope with Insen and send him on his way—perhaps to a network vice presidency which, despite the high-sounding title, would be a demotion after the National Evening News. It did not occur to Sloane for a moment that the reverse of that process could possibly happen. Had it been suggested fto him, he would undoubtedly have laughed.

Instead, he turned his thoughts to Harry Partridge.

For Partridge, Sloane recognized, the hasty but excellent reporting job from Dallas had been one more solid performance in an outstanding professional career. Through DFW's airport paging system Sloane had been successful in reaching Partridge by phone and had congratulated him, asking him to pass on the same message to Rita, Minh and O'Hara. From an anchorman that kind of thing was expected—a matter of noblesse obligeeven though, where Partridge was concerned, Sloane did it without any great enthusiasm. That underlying feeling was why, on Sloane's part, the conversation had a touch of awkwardness, as conversations with Partridge often did. Partridge had seemed at ease, though he sounded tired.

Within the moving car, in a moment of silent, private honesty, Sloane asked himself— How do I feel about Harry Partridge? The answer, with equal honesty, came back: He makes me feel insecure.

Both question and answer had their roots in recent history.

* * *

The two of them had known each other for more than twenty years, the same length of time they had been with CBA News, having joined the network almost simultaneously. From the beginning they were successful professionally, yet opposites in personality.

Sloane was precise, fastidious, impeccable in dress and speech; he enjoyed having authority and wore it naturally. Juniors were apt to address him as "sir”and let him go through doorways first. He could be cool, slightly distant with people he did not know well, though in any human contact there was almost nothing his sharp mind missed, either spoken or inferred.

Partridge, in contrast, was casual in behavior, his appearance rumpled; he favored old tweed jackets and seldom wore a suit. He had an easygoing manner which made people he met feel comfortable, his equal, and sometimes he gave the impression of not caring much about anything, though that was a contrived deception. Partridge had learned early as a journalist that he could discover more by not seeming to have authority and by concealing his keen, exceptional intelligence.

They had differences in background too.

Crawford Sloane, from a middle-class Cleveland family, had done his early television training in that city. Harry Partridge served his main TV news apprenticeship in Toronto with the CDC—Canadian Broadcasting Corporation—and before that had worked as an announcer—newscaster—weatherman for small radio and TV stations in Western Canada. He had been born in Alberta, not far from Calgary, in a hamlet called De Winton where his father was a farmer.

Sloane had a degree from Columbia University. Partridge hadn't even finished high school, but in the working world of news his de facto education expanded rapidly.

For a long time at CBA their careers were parallel; as a result they came to be looked on as competitors. Sloane himself considered Partridge a competitor, even a threat to his own progress. He was not sure, though, if Partridge ever felt the same way.

The competition between the two had seemed strongest when both were reporting the war in Vietnam. They were sent there by the network in late 1967, supposedly to work as a team, and in a sense they did. Sloane, though, viewed the war as a golden opportunity to advance his own career; even then he had the anchor desk of the National Evening News clearly in his sights.

One essential in his advancement, Sloane knew, was to appear on the evening news as often as possible. Therefore, soon after arriving in Saigon he decided it was important not to stray too far from "Pentagon East"—headquarters of the United States Military Assistance Command for Vietnam (MACV) at Tan Son Nhut air base, five miles outside Saigon—and, when he did travel, not to be away too long.

He remembered, even after all these years, a conversation between himself and Partridge, who had remarked, "Crawf, you'll never get to understand this war by attending the Saigon Follies or hanging around the Caravelle.” The first was the name the press corps gave to military briefings; the second, a hotel that was a popular watering hole for the international press, senior military and U.S. Embassy civilians.

”If you're talking about risks,” Sloane had answered huffily, "I'm willing to take as many as you are.”

"Forget risks. We'll all be taking them. I'm talking about coverage in depth. I want to get deep into this country and understand it. Some of the time I want to be free from the military, not just tagging along on fire fights, reporting bangbang the way they'd like us to. That's too easy. And when I do military stuff I want it to be in forward areas so I can find out if what the USIS flacks say is happning really is.”

"To do all that,” Sloane pointed out, "you'll have to be away for days, maybe weeks at a time.”

Partridge had seemed amused.”I thought you'd catch onto that quickly. I'm sure you've also figured that the way I plan to work will make it possible for you to get your face on the news almost every night.”

Sloane had been uncomfortable at having his mind read so easily, though in the end that was how it worked out.

No one could ever say about his time in Vietnam that Sloane didn't work hard. He did, and he also took risks. On occasion he went along on missions to where the Viet Cong were operating, was sometimes in the midst of firefights, and in dangerous moments wondered, with normal fear, whether he would make it back alive.

As it turned out, he always did and was seldom away more than twenty-four hours. Also, when he came back it was invariably with dramatic combat pictures plus human interest stories about young Americans in battle, the kind of fare that New York wanted.

Following his plan shrewdly, Sloane didn't overdo the dangerous exploits and was usually available in Saigon for military and diplomatic briefings which, at the time, were newsworthy. Only much later would it be realized how superficial Sloane's kind of coverage had been and how—for television—dramatic pictures were a first priority, with thoughtful analysis and sometimes truth trailing far behind. But by the time that became apparent, to Crawford Sloane it didn't matter.

Sloane's overall ploy worked. He had always been impressive on camera and was even more so in Vietnam. He became a favorite with the New York Horseshoe producers and was frequently on the evening news, sometimes three or four times a week, which was how a correspondent built up a following, not only among viewers but with senior decision makers at CBA headquarters.

Harry Partridge, on the other hand, stayed with his own game plan and operated differently. He sought out deeper stories which required longer investigation and which took him, with a cameraman, to more distant parts of Vietnam. He made himself knowledgeable about military tactics, American and Viet Cong, and why sometimes those of both sides didn't work. He studied the balance of forces, stayed in forward areas gathering facts on ground— and air—attack effectiveness, casualties and logistics. Some of his reports contradicted official military statements in Saigon, others confirmed them, and it was that second kind of reporting—faimess to the U.S. military—that separated Partridge and a handful of others from the majority of correspondents reporting out of Vietnam.

The bulk of reportage on the Vietnam war was, by that time, negative and adversary. A generation of young journalists —some of them sympathetic to anti-war protesters at homedistrusted, at times despised, the U.S. military, and most media coverage reflected that conviction. An example was the enemy's Tet offensive. The media proclaimed Tet as a total, smashing communist victory, a claim which calmer research two decades later showed to be untrue.

Harry Partridge was one who, at the time, reported that U.S. forces at Tet were doing much better than they were being giver! credit for; also that the enemy was doing less well than generally reported and had failed in some of its objectives. At first senior Horseshoe producers queried those reports and wanted to delay them. But after discussion, Partridge's record of solid accuracy won out and most were aired.

One Partridge report which was not aired involved a criticism of negative personal opinion presented in a news context by the venerable Walter Cronkite, then anchorman for CBS. Cronkite, reporting from Vietnam, declared during a CBS "post—Tet special”that "the bloody experience of Vietnam”would "end in stalemate,” and "for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us . . .”

He continued, "To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe . . . the optimists who have been wrong in the past.” Therefore, Cronkite urged, America should "negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”

Because of its source, this strong editorializing—intertwined with honest news—had tremendous effect and gave, as a commentator put it, "strength and legitimacy to the anti-war movement.” President Lyndon Johnson was reported as saying that if he had lost Walter Cronkite, he had lost the country.

Partridge, through interviews with a series of people on the scene, managed to suggest that not only might Cronkite be wrong but that, well aware of his power and influence, the CBS anchorman had behaved, in one interviewee's words, "like an unelected President and contrary to his own vaunted tenets of impartial journalism.”

When Partridge's piece reached New York it was discussed for hours and went to the highest CBA levels before a consensus was reached that to attack the national father figure of "Walter”would be a no-win gambit. However, unofficial copies of the Partridge report were made and circulated privately among TV news insiders.

Partridge's excursions into areas of heavy fighting usually kept him away from Saigon for a week, sometimes longer. Once, when he went underground into Cambodia, he was out of touch for nearly a month.

Every time, though, he returned with a strong story, and after the war some were still remembered for their insights. No one, including Crawford Sloane, ever disputed that Partridge was a superb journalist.

Unfortunately, because his reports were fewer and therefore less frequent than Sloane's, Partridge didn't get noticed nearly as much. Something else in Vietnam affected the future of Partridge and Sloane. She was Jessica Castillo.

Jessica . . .

* * *

Crawford Sloane, driving almost automatically over a route he traveled twice each working day, had by now turned off Fifty-ninth Street onto York Avenue. After a few blocks he swung right to the northbound ramp of the FDR Drive. Moments later, alongside the East River and free from intersections and traffic lights, he allowed his speed to increase. His home in Larchmont, north of the city on Long Island Sound, was now half an hour's driving time away.

Behind him, a blue Ford Tempo increased its speed also.

Sloane was relaxed, as he usually was at this time of day, and as his thoughts drifted they returned to Jessica . . . who, in Saigon, had been Harry Partridge's girlfriend . . . but in the end had married Crawford Sloane.

* * *

In those days, in Vietnam, Jessica had been twenty-six, slim, with long brown hair, a lively mind and, on occasion, a sharp tongue. She took no nonsensefrom thejournalists with whom she dealt as a junior information officer at the United States Information Agency (known as USIS overseas).

The agency had its headquarters on Le Qui Don Street, in the tree-shrouded 'Eincoln Library”which used to be the Rex Theater, and the old theater sign remained in place throughout the USIS tenure. Members of the press went to the agency sometimes more than they needed, bringing queries that they hoped might allow them time with Jessica.

Jessica played along with the attention, which amused her. But in her affections when Crawford Sloane first knew her, Harry Partridge was firmly number one.

* * *

Even now, Sloane thought, there were areas in that early relationship between Partridge and Jessica of which he had no knowledge, some things he had never asked about and now would never know. But the fact that certain doors had been closed more than twenty years ago, and had remained closed ever since, never had . . . never would . . . stop him wondering about the details and intimacies of those times.

5

Jessica Castillo and Harry Partridge were drawn instinctually to each other the first time they met in Vietnam—even though the meeting was antagonistic. Partridge had gone to USIS seeking information that he knew existed but that had been refused him by the United States military. It concerned the widespread drug addiction of American troops in Vietnam.

Partridge had seen plenty of evidence of addiction during his travels through forward areas. The hard drug being used was heroin and it was plentiful. Through Stateside inquiries made at his request by CBA News, he learned that veterans' hospitals back home were filling up alarmingly with addicts sent back from Vietnam. It was becoming a national problem, rather than just military.

The New York Horseshoe had given a green light to pursue the story, but official sources had clammed up tight and would provide no information.

When he entered Jessica's cubicle office and broached the subject, she reacted in the same way.”I'm sorry. That's something I can't talk about.”

Her attitude offended him and he said accusingly, "You mean you won't talk because you've been told to protect somebody. Is it the ambassador, who might be embarrassed by the truth?”

She shook her head "I can't answer that either."

Partridge, growing angry, bored in hard.”So what you're telling me is that you, in this cozy billet, don't give a goddamn about the GIs out in the jungle who are shit-scared, suffering, and then—for an outlet, because they don't know any betterdestroy themselves with drugs, becoming junkies.”

She said indignantly, "I said nothing of the kind.”

Oh, but you said exactly that.”His voice was contemptuous.”You said you won't talk about something rotten and stinking which needs a public airing, needs people to know a problem exists so something can be done. So other green kids coming out here can be warned and maybe saved. Who do you think you're protecting, lady? For sure, not the guys doing the fighting, the ones who count. You call yourself an information officer. I call you a concealment officer.”

Jessica flushed. Unused to being talked to that way, her eyes blazed with anger. A glass paperweight was on her desk and her fingers clenched around it. For a moment Partridge expected her to throw it and prepared to duck. Then, noticeably, the anger diminished and Jessica asked quietly, ""at is it you want to know?”

Partridge moderated his tone to match hers.”Statistics mostly. I know someone has them, that records have been kept, surveys taken.”

She tossed back her brown hair in a gesture he would later become used to and love.”Do you know Rex Talbot?”

"Yes.”Talbot was a young American vice-consul at the Embassy on Thong Nhut Street, a few blocks away.

”I suggest you ask him to tell you about the MACV Project Nostradamus report.”

Despite the seriousness, Partridge smiled, wondering what kind of mind dreamed up that title.

Jessica continued, "There's no need to have Rex know I sent you. You could let him think you know . . .”

He finished the sentence.”. . . a little more than I really do. It's an old journalist's trick “

"The kind of trick you just used on me.”

"Sort of, “he acknowledged with a smile.

"I knew it all the time, “Jessica said.”I just let you get away with it.”

“You're not as soulless as I thought, “he told her.”How about exploring that subject some more over dinner tonight?”

To her own surprise, Jessica accepted.

Later, they discovered how much they enjoyed each other's company and it turned out to be the first of many such meetings. For a surprisingly long time, though, their meetings remained no more than that, which was something Jessica, with her blunt, plain speaking, made clear at the beginning.

”I'd like you to understand that whatever else goes on around here, I am no pushover. If I go to bed with someone it has to mean something special and important to me, and also to the other person, so don't say you weren't warned.”Their relationship also endured long separations, due to Partridge's travels to other parts of Vietnam.

But inevitably a moment came when desire overwhelmed them both.

They had dined together at the Caravelle, where Partridge was staying. Afterward, in the hotel garden, an oasis of quiet amid the discord of Saigon, he had reached for Jessica and she came to him eagerly. As they kissed, she clung tightly, urgently, and through her thin dress he sensed her physical excitement. Years later, Partridge would remember that time as one of those rare and magic moments when all problems and concerns — Vietnam, the war's ugliness, future uncertainties—seemed far away, so all that mattered was the present and themselves.

He asked her softly, "Shall we go to my room?”

Without speaking, Jessica nodded her consent.

Upstairs in the room, with the only lighting from outside and while they continued to hold each other, he undressed her and she helped him where his hands proved awkward.

As he entered her, she told him, "Oh, I love you sol”

Long after, he could never remember if he told her that he truly loved her too, but knew he had and always would.

Partridge was also deeply moved by the discovery that Jessica had been a virgin. Then, as time went by and their lovemaking continued, they found the same delight in each other physically that they had in other ways.

In any other time and place they might have married quickly. Jessica wanted to be married; she also wanted children. But Partridge, for reasons he afterward regretted, held back In Canada he had had one failed marriage and knew that marriages of TV newsmen so often were disastrous. TV news correspondents led peripatetic lives, could be away from home two hundred days a year or more, were unused tofamily responsibilities and encountered sexual temptations on the road which few could permanently resist. As a result, spouses often grew away from each other—intellectually as well as sexually. When reunited after long absences, they met as strangers.

Combined with all that was Vietnam. Partridge knew his life was at risk each time he left Saigon and, though luck had been with him so far, the odds were against that luck enduring. So it wasn't fair, he reasoned, to burden someone else—in this case Jessica—with persistent worry, and the likelihood of heartbreak later on.

He confided some of this to Jessica early one morning after they had spent the night together, and he could not have picked a worse occasion. Jessica was shocked and jolted by what she perceived as a puerile cop—out by a man to whom she had already given her heart and body. She told Partridge coldly that their relationship was at an end.

Only much later did Jessica realize she had misread what, in reality, was kindness and deep caring. Partridge left Saigon a few hours afterward, and that was the time he went into Cambodia and was away a month.

Crawford Sloane had met Jessica several times while she was in Harry Partridge's company, and saw her occasionally in the USIS offices when he had queries that took him there. On all occasions Sloane was strongly attracted to Jessica and longed to know her better. But recognizing she was Partridge's girl, and being punctilious in such matters, he had never asked her for a date, as others often did.

But when Sloane learned, from Jessica herself that she and Partridge had "split up, “he promptly asked Jessica to dine with him. She agreed to, and they went on seeing each other. Two weeks later, confiding that he had loved herfor a long timefrom a distance and now with closer knowledge adored her, Sloane proposed marriage.

Jessica, taken by surprise, asked for time to think.

Her mind was a tumult of emotions. Jessica's love for Harry had been passionate and all-consuming. No man had ever swept her away as he had done; she doubted if anyone ever would again. Instinct told her that what she and Harry had shared was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And she still loved him, she was sure of that. Even now Jessica missed him desperately; if he came back and asked her to marry him she would probably say yes. But, clearly, Harry wasn't going to ask He had rejected her and Jessica's bitterness and anger lingered A part of her wanted to . . . just show him! So there!

On the other hand, there was Crawf. Jessica liked Crawford Sloane . . . No—more than that! . . . She felt a strong affectionfor him. He was kind andgentle, loving, intelligent, interesting to be with. And Crawf was solid. He possessed—Jessica had to admit—a stability that Harry, while an exciting person, sometimes lacked But for a lifetime, which was how Jessica saw marriage, which of the two loves on different levels—one with excitement, the other with stability—was more important? She wished she could be positive about the answer.

Jessica might also have asked herself the question, but did not: Why make a decision at all? Why not wait? She was still young . . .

Unacknowledged, but implicit in her thinking, was the presence of all of them in Vietnam. The fervor of war surrounded them; it was all-pervading like the air they breathed There was a sense of time being compressed and accelerated, as if clocks and calendars were running at extra speed Each day of life seemed to spill in a precipitous torrent through the open floodgates of a dam. Who among them knew how many days remained? Which of them would ever resume a normal pace of living?

In every war, throughout all human experience, it had been ever thus.

After weighing everything as best she could, the next day Jessica accepted Crawford Sloane's proposal.

They were married at once, in the U.S. Embassy by an army chaplain. The ambassador attended the ceremony and afterward gave a reception in his private suite.

Sloane was ecstatically happy. Jessica assured herself that she was too; determinedly she matched Crawf's mood.

Partridge did not learn of the marriage until his return to Saigon and only then did it dawn on him, with overpowering sadness, how much he had lost When he met Jessica and Sloane to congratulate them, he tried to conceal his emotions. With Jessica, who knew him so well, he did not wholly succeed.

But if Jessica shared some of Partridge's feelings, she kept them to herself and also put them behind her. She reasoned that she had made her choice and was determined to be a good wife to Sloane which, across the years, she was. As in any normal marriage there were some midway conflicts and disruptions, but they healed Now—incredibly, it seemed to all concerned—Jessica and Crawford's silver wedding anniversary was less than five years distant.

6

At the wheel of the Buick Somerset, Crawford Sloane was midpoint in his journey home. The Triboro Bridge behind him, he was on the Bruckner Expressway and would shortly join Interstate 95, the New England Thruway, exiting at Larchmont.

The same Ford Tempo that had followed him from CBA News headquarters was still behind.

It was not surprising that Sloane had failed to notice the other car, either tonight or on other occasions during the past several weeks when it had followed him. One reason was that the driver—a young, thin-lipped, cold-eyed Colombian currently using the code name Carlos—was expert at stalking any quarry.

Carlos, who had entered the United States two months earlier using a forged passport, had been involved in this stealthy surveillance for almost four weeks, along with six others from Colombia—five men and a woman. Like Carlos, the others were identified only by fictitious first names, which in most cases covered criminal records. Until their present task began, the members of the group were unknown to one another. Even now, only Miguel, the leader, who tonight was several miles away, was aware of real identities.

The Ford Tempo had been repainted twice during the short period of its use. Also, it was just one of several vehicles available, the objective being not to create a detectable pattern.

What had accumulated from the surveillance was a precise and detailed study of Crawford Sloane's movements and those of his family.

In the fast-moving expressway traffic, Carlos allowed three other cars to move up between himself and Sloane, though keeping the tailed Buick still in sight. Beside Carlos, another man noted the time and made an entry in a log. This was Julio —swarthy, argumentative and bad-tempered, with an ugly scar from a knifing down the left side of his face. He was the group's communications specialist. Behind them, in the back seat, was a mobile cellular phone, one of six that linked vehicles and a hidden temporary headquarters.

Both Carlos and Julio were ruthless, trained marksmen and were armed.

* * *

After slowing down and negotiating a traffic diversion caused by a multiple rear-end collision in the Thruway's left lane, Sloane resumed his speed and also his thoughts about Vietnam, Jessica, Partridge and himself.

Despite his own great success in Vietnam and since, Crawford Sloane had continued to worry about Partridge, just a little. It was why he was slightly uncomfortable in Partridge's company. And on a personal level he occasionally wondered did Jessica ever think about Harry, remembering the privileged, private moments there must have been between them?

Sloane had never asked his wife any truly intimate questions about her long-ago relationship with Harry. He could have done so many times, including at the beginning of their marriage, and Jessica, being Jessica, would probably have answered frankly. But posing that kind of question was simply not Sloane's style. Nor, he supposed, did he really want to know the answers. Yet, paradoxically, after all these years those old thoughts came back to him at times with newer questions: Did Jessica still care about Harry? Did the two of them ever communicate? Did Jessica, even now, have residual regrets?

And professionally . . . Guilt was not a word that preoccupied Sloane in relation to himself, but down in some private corner of his soul he knew that Partridge had been the better journalist in Vietnam, though he himself gained more acclaim and on top of that married Partridge's girl . . . All of it illogical, he knew, an insecurity that need not be . . . but the visceral unease persisted.

The Ford Tempo had now switched places and was several vehicles ahead of Sloane. The Larchmont exit from the Thruway was only a few miles farther on and Carlos and Julio, by this time knowing Sloane's habits, were aware that he would exit there. Getting ahead of a quarry on occasion was an old trick of tailing. Now the Ford would take the Larchmont exit first, be waiting for Sloane when he turned off, then would fall in behind him once more.

Some ten minutes later, as the CBA anchorman entered the streets of Larchmont, the Ford Tempo followed discreetly at a distance, stopping well short of the Sloane house which was located on Park Avenue, facing Long Island Sound.

The house, befitting someone with Sloane's substantial income, was large and imposing. Painted white under a gray slate roof, it was set in a sculptured garden with a circular driveway. Twin pine trees marked the entrance. A wrought-iron lantern hung over double front doors.

Sloane used a remote control in the car to open the door of a three-car garage, then drove in, the door closing behind him.

The Ford moved forward and, from a discreet distance, the surveillance continued.

7

Sloane could hear voices and laughter as he walked through a short, closed corridor between the garage and the house. They stopped as he opened a door and entered the carpeted hallway onto which most of the downstairs rooms opened. He heard Jessica call out from the living room, "Is that you, Crawf?”

He made a standard response.”If it isn't, you're in trouble.”

Her melodious laugh came back, "Welcome, whoever you are! Be with you in a minute.”

He heard a clink of glasses, the sound of ice being shaken, and knew that Jessica was mixing martinis, her nightly homecoming ritual to help him unwind from whatever the day had brought.

”Hi, Dad!” the Sloanes' eleven-year-old son, Nicholas, shouted from the stairway. He was tall for his age and slimly built. His intelligent eyes lit up as he ran to hug his father.

Sloane returned the embrace, then ran his fingers through the boy's curly brown hair. It was the kind of greeting he appreciated, and he had Jessica to thank for that. Almost from the time Nicky was born, she had conveyed to him her belief that feelings about loving should be expressed in tactile ways.

At the beginning of their marriage, being demonstrative did not come easily to Sloane. He held back in matters of emotion, left certain things unsaid, to be assumed by the other party. It was part of his built-in reserve, but Jessica would have none of it, had worked hard at smashing the reserve and, for herself, then Nicky, had succeeded.

Sloane recalled her telling him early on, "When you're married, darling, barriers come down. It's why we were 'joined together'—remember those words? So for the rest of our lives, you and I are going to say to each other exactly what we feeland sometimes show it too.”

That final phrase had been about sex, which for a long time after their marriage held surprises and adventure for Sloane. Jessica had acquired several of the explicit, illustrated sex books which were plentiful in the East and loved to experiment, trying new positions. After being slightly shocked and diffident at first, Sloane came around to enjoying it too, though it was always Jessica who took the lead.

(There were times when he couldn't help wondering: Had she owned those sex books when she and Partridge were going together? Had they made use of what was in them? But Sloane had never summoned the nerve to ask, perhaps because he feared both answers might be yes.)

With other people his reserve lived on. Sloane couldn't remember when he had last hugged his own father, though a few times recently he had considered doing so but held back, uncertain how old Angus—stiff, even rigid in his personal behaviour might react.

”Hello, darling!” Jessica appeared wearing a soft green dress, a color he always liked. They embraced warmly, then went into the living room. Nicky came in for a while, as he usually did; he had eaten dinner earlier and would go to bed soon.

Sloane asked his son, "How's everything in the music world?”

"Great, Dad. I'm practicing Gershwin's Prelude Number Two.”

His father said, "I remember that. Didn't Gershwin write it when he was young?”

"Yes, twenty-eight.”

"Near the beginning, I think, it goes dum-de-dah-dum- DEE-da-da-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum.” As he attempted to sing, Nicky and Jessica laughed.

”I know the part you mean, Dad, and maybe why you remember it.” Nicky crossed to a grand piano in the room, then sang in a clear young tenor, accompanying himself.

"In the sky the bright stars glittered

On the bank thepale moon shone

And from Aunt Dinah's quilting party

I was seeing Nellie home.”

Sloane's forehead creased with an effort of memory.”I've heard that before. Isn't it an old song from the Civil War days?”

Nicky beamed.”Right on, Dad!”

"I think I understand,” his father said.”What you're telling me is, some of those notes are the same as in Gershwin's Prelude Two.”

Nicky shook his head.”The other way 'round—the song was first. But no one knows if Gershwin knew the song and used it, or if it was just chance.”

"And we'll never know.” Amused, and impressed with Nicky's knowledge, Sloane exclaimed, "I'll be damned!”

Neither he nor Jessica could remember exactly how old Nicky had been when he began to exhibit an interest in music, but it was in his very early years and now music was Nicky's dominant concern.

Nicky had gravitated to the piano and took lessons from a former concert pianist, an elderly Austrian living in nearby New Rochelle. A few weeks earlier, speaking with a heavy accent, the tutor had told Jessica, "Your son already has a mastery of music unusual for his age. Later he may follow one of several paths—as a performer or composer, or perhaps a scholar and savant. But more important is that for Nicholas, music speaks with the tongues of angels and of joy. It is part of his soul. It will, I predict, be the mainstream of his life.”

Jessica glanced at her watch.”Nicky, it's getting late.”

"Ah, Mom, let me stay up! Tomorrow's a school holiday.”

"And your day will be as full as any other. The answer is no."

Jessica was the family disciplinarian and, after affectionate goodnights, Nicky left. Soon after, they could hear him playing on a portable electronic keyboard in his bedroom which he used when the livingroom piano was unavailable.

In the softly lighted room, Jessica returned to the martinis she had been mixing earlier. Watching her dispense them, Sloane thought, How lucky can you get? It was a feeling he often had about Jessica and the way she looked after more than twenty years of marriage. She no longer wore her hair long and didn't bother to conceal streaks of gray. There were also lines around her eyes. But her figure was slim and shapely and her legs still brought men's eyes back for a second glance. Overall, he thought, she really hadn't changed and he still felt proud to enter a room, any room, with Jessica beside him.

As she handed him a glass she commented, "It sounded like a rough day?”

"It was pretty much that way. You watched the news?”

"Yes. Those poor passengers on that airplane! What a terrible way to die! They must have known for the longest time they didn't have a chance, then just had to sit there, waiting.”

With a pang of conscience, Sloane realized he hadn't thought about that at all. Sometimes as a professional news person you became so preoccupied with gathering the news, you forgot the human beings who made it. He wondered: Was it callousness after long exposure to the news or a necessary insulation, the kind acquired by doctors? He hoped it was the second, not the first.

”If you saw the airplane story,” he said, "you saw Harry. What did you think?”

"He was good.”

Jessica's answer seemed indifferent. Sloane watched her, waiting for more, wondering: In her mind, was the past completely dead?

"Harry was better than good. He did it like that,” Sloane said, snapping his fingers.”Without warning. With hardly any time.” He went on to describe CBA's luck in having the crew in the DFW terminal.”Harry, Rita and Minh all came through. We beat the pants off the other networks.”

"Harry and Rita seem to be working a lot together. Is something going on there?”

"No. They're simply a good working team.”

"How do you know?”

"Because Rita's having an affair with Les Chippingham. The two of them think nobody knows. Of course everybody does.”

Jessica laughed.”My god! You're an incestuous little group.”

Leslie Chippingham was the president of CBA News. It was Chippingham whom Sloane intended to see the next day about the removal of Chuck Insen as executive producer.

”Don't include me in any of that,” he told Jessica.”I'm happy with what I have at home.”

The martini had relaxed him, as it always did, though neither he nor Jessica was a heavy drinker. One martini plus a glass of wine with dinner was their limit, and during the day Sloane never drank at all.

”You're feeling good tonight,” Jessica said, "and you have another reason to.” She got up and from a small bureau across the room brought back an envelope, already opened—a normal procedure since Jessica handled most of their private business.”It's a letter from your publisher and a royalty statement.”

He took the papers out and studied them, his face lighting with a smile.

Crawford Sloane's book The Camera and the Truth had been published several months earlier. Written with a collaborator, it was his third. In terms of sales, the book got off to a slow start. The New York critics savaged it, leaping at the opportunity to humble someone of Crawford Sloane's stature. But in places like Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco and Miami, reviewers liked the book. More important, as weeks passed, certain comments in it gained attention in general news columns—the best kind of publicity any book can have.

In a chapter about terrorism and hostages Sloane had written bluntly of "the shame most Americans felt after the 1986-87 revelations that the U.S. Government bought freedom for a handful of our hostages in the Middle East at the expense of thousands of Iraqi deaths and mutilations, not only on the Iran-Iraq battlefield but among civilians.”

The war casualties, he pointed out, resulted from weaponry supplied by the U.S. to Iran in payment for the hostages' release.”A modem dirty thirty pieces of silver”was how Sloane had described the payment, and he quoted Kipling's Danegeld:

We never pay any-one Dane-geld,

No matter how trifling the cost;

For the end of that game is oppression and shame,

And the nation that plays it is lost!

Other applauded Sloane remarks were:

—No politician anywhere has the guts to say it aloud, but hostages, including American hostages, should be regarded as expendable. Pleas from hostages families should be heard sympathetically, but should not sway government policy.

—The only way to deal with terrorists is by counterterrorism, which means whenever possible seeking out and covertly destroying them—the only language they understand It includes not striking bargains with terrorists or paying ransom, directly or indirectly, ever

—Terrorists who observe no civilized code should not expect, when caught red-handed, to shelter under laws and principles which they despise. The British, in whom respect for law is deeply ingrained, have been forced to bend that law at times in defending themselves from a depraved and ruthless IRA.

—No matter what we do, terrorism will not go away because the governments and organizations backing terrorists don't really want settlements or accommodations. They are fanatics using other fanatics and perverted religions as their weapons.

— We who live in the United States will not remain free from terrorism in our own backyard much longer. But neither mentally nor in other ways are we prepared for this pervasive, ruthless kind of warfare.

When the book came out, some of CBA's brass were nervous about the "hostages should be regarded as expendable”and "covertly destroying”statements, fearing they would create political and public resentment of the network. As it turned out, there was no reason for concern and the executives quickly joined the chorus of approval.

Sloane beamed as he put aside the impressive royalty accounting.

”You deserve what's happened and I'm proud of you,” Jessica said.”Especially because it isn't like you to take chances in being controversial.” She paused.”Oh, by the way, your father phoned. He's arriving early tomorrow and would like to stay a week.”

Sloane grimaced.”That's pretty soon after the last time.”

"He's lonely and he's getting old. Maybe if you're that way someday you'll have a favorite daughter-in-law you'll want to be with.”

They both laughed, knowing how fond Angus Sloane was of Jessica and vice versa, and that in some ways the two were closer than the father and son.

Angus had been living alone in Florida since the death of Crawford's mother several years earlier.

”I enjoy having him around the house,” Jessica said.”So does Nicky.”

"Okay then, that's fine. But while Dad's here, try to use your great influence to stop him sounding off so much about honor, patriotism and all the rest.”

"I know what you mean. I'll do what I can.”

Behind the exchange was the fact that the elder Sloane could never quite let go of his World War 11 hero status—as an Army Air Forces lead bombardier who won a Silver Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war he had been a certified public accountant—not a spectacular career, though on retirement it provided him a reasonable pension and independence. But the military years continued to dominate Angus's thoughts.

While Crawford respected his father's war record, he knew the old man could be tedious when launched on one of his favorite themes—"the disappearance nowadays of integrity and moral values,” as he was apt to put it. Jessica, though, managed to let her father-in-law's preachments flow over her.

Talk between Sloane and Jessica continued over dinner, always a favorite time. Jessica had a maid come in daily but prepared dinner herself, managing to be organized so that she spent minimal time in the kitchen after her husband's arrival for the evening.

Sloane said thoughtfully, "I know what you meant back there, that it isn't like me to venture out on limbs. I guess, in my life, I haven't taken chances as often as I might. But I felt strongly about some things in the book. Still do.”

"The terrorism part?”

He nodded.”Since that was written I've done some thinking about how terrorism might, how it could, affect you and me. It's why I've taken some special precautions. Until now I haven't told you, but you ought to know.”

While Jessica regarded him curiously, he went on.”Have you ever thought that someone like me could be kidnapped, become a hostage?”

"I have when you've been overseas.”

He shook his head.”It could happen here. There's always a first and I, like some others on television, work in a goldfish bowl. If terrorists begin operating in the U.S.—and you know I believe they will, quite soon—people like me will be attractive bait because anything we do, or is done to us, gets noticed in a big way.”

"What about families? Could they be targets too?”

"That's highly unlikely. Terrorists would be after a name. Someone everybody knows.”

Jessica said uneasily, "You spoke of precautions. What kind?”

"The kind that would be effective after I'd been taken hostage—if it happened. I've worked it out with a lawyer I know, Sy Dreeland. He has all the details, and authority to make them public if and when that's needed.”

"I don't much like this conversation,” Jessica said.”You're making me nervous, and how can precautions be any good after something bad has already happened?”

"Before it happens,” he said, "I have to trust the network to provide some kind of security protection, and they do that now, more or less. But afterward, just as I said in the book, I wouldn't want any kind of ransom to be paid by anyone, including from our own money. So one thing I've done is make a solemn declaration—it's all in legal form—to that effect.”

"Are you telling me all our money would be tied up, frozen?”

He shook his head.”No. I couldn't do that, even if I wanted. Almost everything we have—this house, bank accounts, stocks, gold, foreign currencies—you and I own jointly and you could do whatever you wanted with them, just as you can now. But after that solemn declaration was made public and everybody knew the way I felt, I'd like to think you wouldn't go some other route.”

Jessica protested, "You'd rob me of the right to make a decision!”

He said gently, "No, dearest. I'd relieve you of a terrible responsibility and a dilemma.”

"But supposing the network were willing to pay a ransom?”

"I doubt they would be, but certainly not against my wishes which are on record in the book and repeated in the declaration.”

"You said the network is giving you some kind of security protection. It's the first I've heard of it. Just what kind?”

"When there are telephoned threats, or screwball letters which sound a certain way, or a rumor of some kind of possible attack—it happens at all networks and especially to anchor people—then private security men are called in. They hang around the CBA News Building, wherever I'm working, doing whatever security people are supposed to. It's happened with me a few times.”

"You've never told me.”

"No, I guess I never have,” he conceded.

”What else haven't you told me?” There was an edge to Jessica's voice, though clearly she had not made up her mind whether to be angry at the concealment or just anxious.

”Nothing else at the network, but there are some other things I've arranged with Dreeland.”

"Would it be too much to let me know about those too?”

"It's important that you know.” Sloane ignored the sarcasm which his wife sometimes resorted to when emotional.”When someone is kidnapped, no matter where in the world, nowadays it's a certainty they will make, or be compelled to make, videotape recordings. Then those recordings turn up, sometimes are played on television, but no one knows for sure whether they were voluntary or forced and, if forced, to what extent. But if there's a prearrangement of signals, someone who is taken hostage has a good chance of getting a message back that is clearly understood. Incidentally, more and more people who might one day be hostages are doing that, leaving instructions with their lawyers and establishing a signal code.”

"If this weren't so serious, it would sound like a spy novel,” Jessica said.”So what kind of signals have you arranged?”

"Licking my lips with my tongue, which is something anyone might do without its being noticed, would mean, 'I am doing this against my will. Do not believe anything I am saying.' Scratching or touching my right earlobe would mean, 'My captors are well organized and strongly armed.' Doing the same thing to my left earlobe would mean, 'Security here is sometimes lax. An attack from outside might succeed' There are some others, but we'll leave it for now. I don't want all this to distress you.”

"Well, it does distress me,” Jessica said. She wondered: Could it happen? Could Crawf be kidnapped and spirited away? It seemed unbelievable, but almost every day unbelievable things did happen.

”Apart from fear,” she said thoughtfully, "I have to admit some of this fascinates me, because it's a side of you I don't believe I've ever seen before. But I do wonder why you haven't taken that security course we talked about.”

It was an anti-terrorism course put on by a British company, Paladin Security, that had been featured on several American news programs. The course lasted a week, and in part was intended to prepare people for just the possibility Sloane had raised—how to behave as a victim in a hostage situation. Also taught was unarmed self defense—something Jessica had urged her husband to learn after a savage attack on the CBS anchorman Dan Rather on a New York street in 1986. The unprovoked attack by two unknown men had sent Rather to a hospital; the assailants were never found.

”Finding time for that course is the problem,” Sloane said.”Speaking of that, are you still taking CQB lessons?”

CQB was shorthand for close quarters battle, a specialized version of unarmed combat practiced by the elite British Army SAS. The instruction was given by a retired British brigadier now living in New York, and that was something else Jessica had wanted Crawford to do. But when he simply couldn't find time she took the lessons herself.

”I'm not taking them regularly anymore,” she answered.”Though I do an hour every month or two to keep refreshed, and Brigadier Wade sometimes gives lectures which I go to.”

Sloane nodded.”Good.”

That night, still troubled by what had passed between them, Jessica found it difficult to sleep.

Outside, the occupants of the Ford Tempo watched as one by one the lights in the house went off. Then they made a report by cellular phone and, ending that day's vigil, drove away.

8

Shortly after 6:30 A.M. the surveillance of the Sloanes' Larchmont house resumed. A Chevrolet Celebrity was being used this morning, and slouched down in the car's front seats—a standard observation technique so the occupants would not be noticed by other passing vehicles—were the Colombians, Carlos and Julio. The Chevy was parked beyond the Sloane house on a convenient side street, the observation being carried on through side and rearview mirrors.

Both men in the car were feeling tense, knowing that this would be a day of action, the culmination of long and careful planning.

At 7:30 A.m. an unforeseen event occurred when a taxi arrived at the Sloane house. From the taxi an elderly man carrying a suitcase emerged. He went into the house and remained there. The newcomer's unexpected presence meant a complication and prompted a call by cellular phone to the watchers' temporary headquarters some twenty miles away.

Their efficient communications and ample transport typified an operation on which expense had not been spared. The conspirators who had inspired and organized the surveillance and what was to follow were expert, resourceful and had access to plenty of money.

They were associates of Colombia's Medellin cartel, a coalition of vicious, criminal, fabulously wealthy drug lords. Operating with bestial savagery, the cartel had been responsible for countless violent, bloody murders including the 1989 assassination of Colombian presidential candidate Senator Luis Carlos Gal6n. Since 19 81 more than 220 judges and court officials had been murdered, plus police, journalists and others. In 1986, a Medellin alliance with the socialist—guerrilla faction M-19 resulted in a killing orgy of ninety deaths, including half the members of Colombia's Supreme Court.

Despite the Medellin cartel's repulsive record, it enjoyed close ties with the Roman Catholic Church. Several cartel bosses boasted private chapels. A cardinal spoke favorably of Medellin's people and a bishop blandly admitted taking money from drug traffickers.

Murder was not the only process by which the cartel ruled. Large-scale bribery and corruption financed by the drug lords ran like a massive cancer through Colombia's government, judiciary, police and military, beginning at topmost levels and filtering to the lowest. A cynical description of the drug trade's standard offer to officialdom was plata o plomo—silver or lead.

For a while, through 1989 and 1990 during a wave of horror following the Galin assassination, cartel leaders were inconvenienced by law enforcement efforts against them, including some modest intervention by the United States. A retaliatory response, accurately described by the drug conspirators as "total war,” involved massive violence, bombings and still more killings, a process which seemed certain to continue. But survival of the cartel and its ubiquitous drug trade—perhaps. with fresh leaders and bases—was never in doubt.

In the present instance, while operating undercover in the United States, Medellin was working not for itself but for the Peruvian Maoist-terrorist organization Sendero Luminoso, or "Shining Path.” Recently in Peru, Sendero Luminoso had grown more powerful while the official government became increasingly inept and weak. Where once Sendero's domain had been limited to the Andes Mountains, Huallaga Valley and centers like Ayacucho and Cuzco, nowadays its bombing teams and assassination squads roamed the capital city, Lima.

Two strong reasons existed for linkages between Sendero Luminoso and the Medellin cartel. First, Sendero customarily employed outside criminals to conduct kidnappings which were frequent in Peru, though not widely reported by the American media. Second, Sendero Luminoso controlled most of Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley where sixty percent of the world's coca crop was grown. The coca, in leaf form, was converted to coca paste—the basis of cocaine—and afterward flown from remote airstrips to the Colombian cartels.

In the whole process drug money contributed heavily to Sendero finances, the group exacting a substantial tribute both from coca growers and traffickers—the Medellin connection among them.

Now, in the surveillance Chevrolet, the two Colombian hoodlums were searching through a collection of Polaroid photos which Carlos, an adept photographer, had taken of all persons seen to have entered the Sloane house during the past four weeks. The elderly man who had just arrived was not among them.

Julio, on the telephone, spoke in code phrases.

”A blue package has arrived. Delivery number two. The package is in storage. We cannot trace the order.” Translated: A man has arrived. Delivered by 4 He has gone into the house. We do not know who he is; there is no Polaroid of him.

The sharp-edged voice of Miguel, the project's leader, snapped back through the phone, "What is the docket number?”

Julio, not comfortable with codes, swore softly as he leafed through a notebook to decipher the question. It asked him: "at age is this person? He looked to Carlos for help.”Un viejo. How old?”

Carlos took the book and read the question.”Tell him, docket seventy-five.”

Julio did, producing another terse question.”Is anything special about the blue package?”

Abandoning code, Julio lapsed into plain language.”He carried a suitcase in. Looks like he plans to stay.”

* * *

South of Hackensack, New Jersey, in a dilapidated rented house, the man whose code name was Miguel silently cursed Julio's carelessness. Those pendejos he wasforced to work withl In the code book was a phrase that would have answered the question, and he had warned all of them, over and over, that on nidio phones anyone could be listening. Scanning devices that could eavesdrop on cellular phone conversations were available in stores. Miguel had heard of a radio station that used a scanner and boasted of foiling several criminal plots.

Estzipidosl He simply could not get through to the idiots assigned to him—when the success of their mission, plus all their lives and freedoms were at stake—the importance of being vigilant, cautious, on guard, not just most of the time, but all of it.

Miguel himself had been obsessively cautious for as long as he could remember. It was why he had never been arrested, even though he was on "most wanted”lists of police forces in North and South America and some in Europe too, including Interpol. In the Western Hemisphere he was becoming as keenly sought after as his brother-in-terrorism Abu Nidal, on the other side of the Atlantic. About that, Miguel permitted himself a certain pride, though never failing to remember that pride could beget overconfidence, and that was something else he guarded against.

Despite all the turmoil he had been a part of, he was still a young man—in his late thirties. In appearance he had always been unremarkable, with average good looks but no more; anyone passing him on a street might think he was a bank clerk or, at best, manager of a small store. In part, this was because he worked hard at seeming unimportant. He also made a habit of being polite to strangers, but not to the point of creating a memorable impression; most who met him casually, not knowing who he was, tended to forget having done so.

In the past, this ordinariness had been Miguel's great good fortune, as was the fact that he did not radiate authority. His power of command remained hidden except to those on whom he exercised it, and then it was unmistakable.

An advantage to Miguel in his present enterprise was that, although Colombian, he could appear and sound American. In the late-1960s and early '70s he had attended the University of California at Berkeley as a foreign student, majoring in English and patiently learning to speak the language without an accent.

In those days he was using his real name, Ulises Rodriguez.

His well-to-do parents had provided the Berkeley education. Miguel's father, a Bogotd neurosurgeon, hoped his only son would follow him into medicine, a prospect in which Miguel had no interest, even then. Instead, as the 1970s neared, the son foresaw basic changes ahead for Colombia—conversion from a prosperous democratic country with an honest legal base to a lawless, unbelievably rich mobsters' haven ruled through dictatorship, savagery and fear. The pharaoh's gold of the new Colombia was marijuana; it would later be cocaine.

Such was Miguel's nature that the coming transition did not faze him. What he coveted was part of the action.

Meanwhile he indulged in some action of his own at Berkeley where he discovered himself to be totally devoid of conscience and able to kill other human beings, swiftly and decisively, without compunction or unpleasant aftertaste.

The first time it happened was after a sexual session with a young woman he had met earlier on a Berkeley street while both were getting off a bus. Walking from the bus stop, they got into conversation and discovered they were both freshmen. She seemed to like him and invited him to her apartment, which was at the seedy Oakland end of Telegraph Avenue. It was at a time when such encounters were normal, long before the AIDS-anxiety era.

After some energetic sex he fell asleep, then awakened to find the girl quietly looking through the contents of his wallet. In it were several identification cards in fictitious names; even then he was practicing for his international beyond-the-law future. The girl was too interested in the cards for her own good; perhaps she was some kind of informant, though he never found out.

What he did was spring from the bed, seize and strangle her. He still remembered her look of unbelief as she thrashed around, trying to release herself; then she looked up at him with desperate, silent pleading just before consciousness ebbed. He was interested, in a clinical way, to discover that killing her did not trouble him at all.

Instead, with icy calm he calculated his chances of being caught, which he assessed as nil. While on the bus the two of them had not sat together; in fact they had not known each other. It was unlikely that anyone observed them walking away from the bus stop. On entering the apartment building, and in an elevator going to the fourth floor, they encountered no one.

Taking his time, he used a cloth to wipe the few surfaces where he might have left fingerprints. Then, using a handkerchief to cover his right hand, he turned out all lights and left the apartment, allowing the door to lock behind him.

He avoided the elevator and went down by the emergency stairs, checking that the lobby was empty before passing through it to the street outside.

The next day, and for several days after, he watched local newspapers for any item about the dead girl. But it was nearly a week before her partially decomposed body was discovered, then after two or three days more, with no developments and apparently no clues, the newspapers lost interest and the story disappeared.

Whatever investigation there was had not connected him with the girl's murder.

During Miguel's remaining years at Berkeley he killed on two other occasions. Those were across the Bay in San Francisco—what he supposed could be called "thrill killings”of total strangers, though he considered both as serving a need to hone his developing mercenary skills. He must have honed them well because in neither case was he a suspect, or even questioned by police.

After Berkeley, and home in Colombia, Miguel flirted with the developing alliance of mad-dog drug lords. He had a pilot's license and made several flights conveying coca paste from Peru to Colombia for processing. Soon a developing friendship with the infamous but influential Ochoa family helped move him on to larger things. Then came M-19 with its orgy of murders and the Medellin cartel's "total war,” beginning in late 1989. Miguel participated in all the major killings, many minor ones, and had long since lost count of the corpses in his wake. Inevitably his name became known internationally, but due to his meticulous precautions there was little else on record.

Miguel's—or Ulises Rodriguez's—connections with the Medellin cartel, M-19 and, more recently, Sendero Luminoso, expanded as the years went by. Through it all, though, he maintained his independence, becoming an international outlaw, a gun-for-hire terrorist who was, because of his efficiency, constantly in demand.

Of course, politics was supposedly a part of it all. Miguel was by instinct a socialist, hated capitalism passionately and despised what he thought of as the hypocritical, decadent United States. But he was also skeptical about politics of any kind and simply enjoyed, as one might an aphrodisiac, the danger, risk and action of the life he led.

It was that kind of life which had brought him to the United States a month and a half ago, to work undercover, preparing for what would happen today, which the entire world would shortly learn of.

The route he had originally planned to the U.S. was roundabout but safe—from Bogotd, Colombia, through Rio de Janeiro to Miami. In Rio he would change passports and identities, appearing in Miami as a Brazilian publisher en route to a New York book fair. But an undercover contact in the American State Department had warned Medellin that U.S. Immigration at Miami had urgently requested all available information on Miguel, especially about identities he was known to have used in the past.

Miguel had, in fact, used the Brazilian publisher identity once before and although he believed it was still unexposed, it seemed wiser to avoid Miami altogether. Therefore, even though it meant some delay, he flew from Rio to London where he acquired an entirely new identity and a brand-new, official British passport.

The process was easy.

Ah, the innocent democracies! How stupid and naive they were! How simple it was to subvert their vaunted freedoms and open systems to advance the purposes of those who, like Miguel, believed in neither! He had been briefed, before reaching London, on how it was done.

* * *

First he went to St. Catherine's House, at the junction of Kingsway and Aldwych, where births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales are recorded There Miguel applied for three birth certificates.

Whose birth certificates? Those of anyone whose date of birth was the same as, or close to, his own.

Without speaking to anyone or being questioned, he picked up five blank birth certificate applications, then walked to where a series of large volumes were on shelves, identified under various years. Miguel—chose 1951. The volumes were divided into quarters of the year. He selected M to R, October—December.

His own birth date was November 14 that year. Leafing through pages, he came across the name "Dudley Martin”who had been born in Keighley, Yorkshire, on November 13. The name seemed suitable; it was neither too distinctive nor as obviously common as Smith. Perfecto! Miguel copied the details onto one of the red-printed application forms.

Now he needed two other names. It was his intention to apply for three passports; the second and third applications would be backups in case anything went wrong with the first. It was always possible that a current passport had already been issued to the same Dudley Martin. In that case a new one would be refused.

He copied the remaining names onto two more forms. Deliberately, he had selected surnames whose initial letters were widely spaced from the "M”of Martin; one began with "B, “the other "Y “That was because, at the Passport Office, different clerks handled different letter groups of applications. The spread ensured that the three applications would be dealt with by separate persons, so any similarity would not be noticed

At all points Miguel was careful not to touch any of theforms on which he wrote. That was why he had picked up five forms, the two outside ones were to protect the others from his fingerprints and he would destroy those later. He had learned since Berkeley that nothing could take away fingerprints totally, not even careful wiping—new high-tech fingerprint tests the Ninhydrin and ion—argon laser, would reveal them.

Next was a short walk to a cashier's window. There he presented the three applications, still managing not to touch any of those he would leave. A male cashier asked him for a fee of five pounds for each certificate, which he paid in cash. He was told the birth certificates would be ready in two days' time.

During those intervening days he arranged to use three accommodation addresses.

From Kelly's London Business Directory he noted several secretarial agencies to whose unembellished street addresses mail could be sent and then collected Going to one of the agencies, he pa id a fee of fifty pounds, again cash. He had a cover story ready —that he was starting a small business but could not yet afford an office or secretary. As it turned out, no questions were asked He repeated the process at two other agencies which were equally incurious. He now had three separate addresses for the trio of passport applications, none of them traceable to himself.

Then, making use of automatic photography machines, he obtained three sets ofpassport photographs, each time varying his appearance. For one picture he applied a neat mustache and beard, in another he was clean-shaven and changed his hair parting, for the third he wore heavy, distinctive glasses.

Next day he collected the three birth certificates from St. Catherine's House. As before, no one was in the least interested as to why he wanted them.

He had already obtained passport applications from a post office, again being careful not to touch them. Now, wearing disposable plastic gloves, he completed the forms. On each, as the applicant's address he used one of the accommodation addresses already arranged.

Two photographs had to accompany each passport application. One photo was required to have on it a statement by a “Professionally qualified person, “such as a doctor, engineer or lawyer, identifying the applicant; also the same person affirmed that he or she had known the applicant for at least two years. Based on advice he had received, Miguel wrote and signed the statements himself, disguising his handwriting and using names and addresses selected at random from a phone book. He had also bought a rubber stamp set which he used to make the names and addresses more convincing.

Despite a warning on the passport form that checks of support signatories were made, in fact they rarely were, and the chance of a false statement's being discovered was extremely remote. There were simply too many applications and too small a staff.

Finally, Miguel dealt with the three "identified”photos those that had writing on them and therefore would not appear in any of the passports he was applying for, but were destined for Passport Office file & Using a soft sponge, he applied a weak solution of Domestos, a household bleach similar to the North American product Clorox. This ensured that within two or three months the photographs on file wouldfade and blur, and thus no picture would exist of Miguel, alias Dudley Martin or the other names.

Now Miguel mailed the three applications, each with a postal order for fifteen pounds, knowing it would take at least four weeks for the passports to be processed and sent back. It was a tedious wait but, for safety's sake, worthwhile.

During this hiatus he mailed several letters to himself at the accommodation addresses. In each instance, after waiting a day or two he telephoned to inquire whether mail was there, and when the answer was 'yes”stated that a messenger would make the collection. He then used unknown youths from the street for the pickups, paying them a few pounds and, before revealing himself afterward, watching carefully to ensure that none was followed. It was Miguel's intention to collect the passports when delivered, in the same way.

All three passports arrived within a few days of each other during the fifth week and were collected without a hitch. When the third was in his hands, Miguel smiled to himself. Excelente! He would use the Dudley Martin passport now, retaining the other twoforfuture use.

One final step remained—to buy a round trip ticket to the United States. Miguel did so that same day.

Before 1988, all holders of British passports required a visa to enter the U.S. Now a visa was not needed, provided the intended visit would not exceed ninety days and the traveler possessed a return ticket. Though Miguel had no intention of using his return portion and later would destroy it, its cost was trifling compared with the risk of another sally through bureaucracy. As to the ninety-day rule, it made no difference to him either way. While he did not expect to stay that long in the U.S., when he left it would be either secretly or with another identity, the Dudley Martin passport having been discarded.

America's rule change about visas had delighted Miguel. Once more those convenient open systems were being helpful to his kind!

The next morning he flew to New York and, at John F Kennedy Airport, was admitted without hindrance.

* * *

After reaching New York, Miguel went immediately to where a sizable Colombian community lived in the borough of Queens and where a safe house had been arranged by a Medellin cartel agent.

"Little Colombia”in Jackson Heights extended from Sixtyninth to Eighty-ninth streets. A thriving narcotics center, it was one of New York's most dangerous high-crime areas where violence was a hiccup and murder commonplace. Uniformed police officers seldom ventured there alone, and even in pairs did not move around on foot at night.

The district's reputation did not bother Miguel at all; in fact, he thought of it as protection while he began his planning, drew on money made secretly available, and assembled the small force he would lead. That force's seven members, including Miguel, had been selected in Bogota.

Julio, at this moment on surveillance duty, and Socorro, the only woman in the group, were Colombians who had been "sleeping agents”of Medellin. Several years ago both were sent to the United States, ostensibly as immigrants, their only instructions to establish themselves and wait until such time as their services were needed for drug-related activity or some other criminal purpose. That time had now arrived.

Julio was a communications specialist. Socorro, during her waiting period, had trained and qualified as a nursing aide.

Socorro had an additional affiliation. Through friends in Peru she had become a sympathizer and part-time U.S. agent for the revolutionary Sendero Luminoso. Among Latin Americans such crossovers between politically motivated and profitmotivated crime were common and now, because of her dual connection, Socorro held a watching role also on Sendero's behalf.

Of the remaining four, three others were Colombians, who had been assigned the code names Rafael, Luis and Carlos. Rafael was a mechanic and general handyman. Luis had been chosen for his driving skills; he was expert at eluding pursuit, especially from crime scenes. Carlos was young, quick-witted and had organized the surveillance of the past four weeks. All three spoke English fluently and had been in the U.S. several times before. On this occasion they had come in unknown to each other and using forged passports with false names. Their instructions were to make themselves known to the same Medellin agent who arranged Miguel's safe house, after which they received orders directly from Miguel.

The final member of the group was an American, his name for this operation, Baudelio. Miguel mistrusted Baudelio totally, yet this man's knowledge and skills were essential to the mission's chances of success.

* * *

Now, in Hackensack at the Colombian group's temporary operating center, thinking about the renegade American, Baudelio, Miguel felt a surge of frustration. It compounded his anger with Julio for the careless lapse into plain language during the telephoned report from outside the Sloane house in Larchmont. Still holding the telephone, disciplining himself to subdue personal feelings, Miguel considered his reply.

The surveillance report had referred to a man aged about seventy-five, who arrived at the Sloane house a few minutes earlier with a suitcase he had carried inside—in Julio's careless words, "like he plans to stay.”

Before leaving Bogoti, Miguel had received extensive intelligence, not all of which he had shared with the others under his command. Included in this dossier was the fact that Crawford Sloane had a father who fitted the description of the new arrival. Miguel reasoned: Well, if the old man had joined his son, expecting to see him for a while, it constituted a nuisance but nothing more. The father would almost certainly have to be killed later that day, but that presented no problem.

Depressing the telephone transmitter, Miguel ordered, "Take no action about the blue package. Report new billing only.” "New billing”meant: if the situation changes.

”Roger,” Julio acknowledged curtly.

Replacing the cellular phone, Miguel glanced at his watch. Almost 7:45 A.M. In two hours all seven members of his group would be in place and ready for action. Everything that would follow had been carefully planned, with problems anticipated, precautions taken. When the action started, some improvisation might be needed, but not much.

And there could be no postponement. Outside the United States, other movements, dovetailing with their own, were already in motion.

9

Angus Sloane gave a contented sigh, put down his coffee cup and patted his mouth and silver-gray mustache with a napkin.”I'll state positively,” he declared, "that no better breakfast has been served this morning in all of New York State.”

"And not one with higher cholesterol either,” his son said from behind an opened New York Times across the table.”Don't you know all those fried eggs are bad for your heart? How many was it you had? Three?”

"Who's counting?” Jessica said.”Besides, you can afford the eggs, Crawf. Angus, would you like another?”

"No thank you, my dear.” The old man, sprightly and cherubic—he had turned seventy-three a few weeks earliersmiled benevolently at Jessica.”Three eggs isn't many,” Nicky said.”I saw a late movie once about a Southern prison. Somebody in it ate fifty eggs.”

Crawford Sloane lowered the Times to say, "The movie you're speaking of was Cool Hand Luke. It starred Paul Newman and came out in 1967. I'm sure, though, that Newman didn't really eat those eggs. He's a fine actor who convinced you that he did.”

"There was a salesman here once from the Britannica,” Jessica said.”He wanted to sell us an encyclopedia. I told him we already had one, living in.”

"Can I help it,” her husband responded, "if some of the news I live with sticks to me? It's like fluff, though. You can never tell which bits will stay in memory and what will blow away.”

They were all seated in the bright and cheerful breakfast room, which adjoined the kitchen. Angus had arrived a half hour earlier, embracing his daughter-in-law and grandson warmly and shaking hands more formally with Crawford.

The constraint between father and son—sometimes translating to irritation on Crawford's part—had existed for a long time. Mainly it had to do with differing ideas and values. Angus had never come to terms with the easing in national and personal moral standards which had been accepted by most Americans from the 1960s onward. Angus ardently believed in "honor, duty and the flag"; further, that his fellow countrymen should still exhibit the uncompromising patriotism that existed during World War II— the high point of Angus's life, about which he reminisced ad infinitum. At the same time he was critical of many of the rationales that his own son, in his news-gathering activities, nowadays accepted as normal and progressive.

Crawford, on the other hand, was intolerant of his father's thinking which, as Crawford saw it, was rooted in antiquity and failed to take into account the greatly expanded knowledge on all fronts—notably scientific and philosophical—in the four plus decades since World War II. There was another factor, too —a conceit on Crawford's part (though he would not have used that word) that having attained the top of his professional tree, his own judgments about world affairs and the human condition were superior to most other people's.

Now, in the early hours of this day, it already appeared that the gap between Crawford and his father had not narrowed.

As Angus had explained on countless other occasions, and did so once again, all his life he had liked to arrive wherever he was going early in the morning. It was why he had flown from Florida to La Guardia yesterday, stayed overnight with an American Legion crony who lived near the airport, then, soon after dawn, came to Larchmont by bus and taxi.

While the familiar recital was proceeding, Crawford had raised his eyes to the ceiling. Jessica, smiling and nodding as if she had never heard the words before, had prepared for Angus his favorite bacon and eggs, and for herself and the other two served a more healthful homemade granola.

"About my heart and eggs,” Angus said—he sometimes took a few minutes to absorb a remark that had been made, and then returned to it—"I figure if my ticker's lasted this long, I shouldn't worry about that cholesterol stuff. Also, my heart and I have been in some tight spots and come through them. I could tell you about a few.”

Crawford Sloane lowered his newspaper enough to catch Jessica's eye and warn her with a glance: Change the subject quick, before he gets launched on reminiscences. Jessica gave the slightest of shrugs, conveying in body language: If that's what you want, do it yourself.

Folding the Times, Sloane said, "They have the casualty figures here from that crash at Dallas yesterday. It's pretty grim. I imagine we'll be doing follow-up stories through next week.”

"I saw that on your news last night,” Angus said.”It was done by that fellow Partridge. I like him. When he does those bits from overseas, especially about our military forces, he makes me feel proud to be American too. Not all your people do that, Crawford.”

"Unfortunately there's a joker in there, Dad,” Sloane said.”Harry Partridge isn't American. He's a Canadian. Also you'll have to do without him for a while. Today he starts a long vacation.” Then he asked curiously, "Who, of our people, doesn't make you feel proud?”

"Just about all the others. It's the way almost all you TV news folk have of denigrating everything, especially our own government, quarreling with authority, always trying to make the President look small. No one seems to be proud of anything anymore. Doesn't that ever bother you?”

When Sloane didn't answer, Jessica told him, sotto voce, "Your father answered your question. Now you should answer his.”

"Dad,” Sloane said, "you and I have been over this ground before, and I don't think we'll ever have a meeting of the minds. What you call 'denigrating everything' we in the news business think of as legitimate questioning, the public's right to know. It's become a function of news reporting to challenge the politicians and bureaucrats, to question whatever we're toldand a good thing too. The fact is, governments lie and cheatDemocrat, Republican, liberal, socialist, conservative. Once in office they all do it.

”Sure we who seek out the news get tough at times and occasionally—I admit it—go too far. But because of what we do, a lot of crookedness and hypocrisy gets exposed, which in older days those in power got away with. So because of sharper news coverage, which TV pioneered, our society is a little better, slightly cleaner, and the principles of this country nudged nearer what they should be.

”As to presidents, Dad, if some of them look small, and most of them have, they've accomplished that themselves. Oh sure, we news guys help the process now and then, and that's because we're skeptics, sometimes cynics, and often don't believe the soothing syrup that presidents hand out. But skulduggery in high places, all high places, gives us plenty of reason to be the way we are.”

"I wish the President sort of belonged to everybody, not one party,” Nicky said. He added thoughtfully, "Wouldn't it have been better if the Founding Fathers had made Washington the king, and Franklin or Jefferson the President? Then Washington's kids and their children and grandchildren could have been kings and queens, so we'd have a head of state to feel proud of and a President to blame for things, the way the British do with their prime minister.”

"America's great loss, Nicky,” his father said, "is that you weren't at the Constitutional Convention to push that idea. Despite Washington's kids being adopted, it's more sensible than a lot else that happened then and since.”

They all laughed, then becoming serious Angus said, "The reporting in my war—that's World War II to you, Nicky—was different from what it is today. We had the feeling then that those who wrote about it, talked on the radio, were always on our side. It's not that way anymore.”

"It was a different war,” Crawford said, "and a different time. Just as there are new ways of gathering news, concepts about news change too. A lot of us don't believe anymore in 'My country right or wrong.'“

Angus complained, "I never thought I'd hear a son of mine say that.”

Sloane shrugged.”Well, you're hearing it now. Those of us who aim at truth in news want to be sure our country's right, that we're not being fed hocus-pocus by whoever is in charge. The only way you can find out about that is to ask tough, probing questions.”

"Don't you believe there were tough questions asked in my war?”

"Not tough enough,” Sloane said. He paused, wondering whether to go farther, then decided he would.”Weren't you one of those who went on the first B- 17 bombing raid to Schweinfurt?”

"Yes.” Then to Nicholas: "That was deep in Germany, Nicky. At the time, not a nice place to go.”

With a touch of ruthlessness, Crawford persisted.”You told me once that the objective at Schweinfurt was to destroy ballbearing factories, that those in charge of the bombing believed they could bring Germany's war machine to a halt because it had to have ball bearings.”

Angus nodded slowly, knowing what was coming.”That's what they told us.”

"Then you also know that after the war it was discovered that it didn't work. Despite that raid and others, which cost so many American lives, Germany never was short of ball bearings. The policy, the plans, were wrong. Well, I'm not saying that the press in those days could have stopped that awful waste. But nowadays questions would be asked—not after it was over, but while it was happening, so the questioning and public knowledge would be a restraint and probably lessen the loss of life.”

As his son spoke, the old man's face was working, creased by memory and pain. With the others' eyes upon him he seemed to diminish, to sink into himself, suddenly to become older. He said, his voice quavering, "At Schweinfurt we lost fifty B-17s. There were ten people in a crew. That's five hundred fliers lost that single day. And in that same week of October '43, we lost another eighty-eight B-17s—near enough nine hundred people.” His voice dropped to a whisper.”I was on those raids. The worst thing afterward was at night being surrounded by so many empty beds—of people who didn't come back. In the night, waking up, looking around me, I used to wonder, Why me? Why did I get back—in that week and others after—when so many didn't?”

The effect was salutary and moving, causing Sloane to wish he had not spoken, hadn't tried to score a debater's point against his father. He said, "I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't realize how much I was opening an old wound.”

As if he had not heard, his father went on, "They were good men. So many good men. So many of my friends.”

Sloane shook his head.”Let's leave it. As I said, I'm sorry.”

"Gramps,” Nicky said. He had been listening intently.”When you were in the war, doing those things, were you frightened very much?”

"Oh god, Nicky! Frightened? I was terrified. When the flak was exploding all around, throwing out razor-sharp hunks of steel that could cut you into slices . . . when the German fighters swarmed in, with guns and cannon firing and you always thought they were aiming just at you . . . when other B- 17s went down, sometimes in flames or in tight spirals so you knew the crews could never get out to use their parachutes . . . all of it at 27,000 feet, in air so cold and thin that if the fear made you sweat it froze, and even with oxygen you could hardly breathe . . . Well, my heart was in my mouth and sometimes, it seemed, my guts too.”

Angus paused. There was silence in the breakfast room; somehow this was different from his usual reminiscing. Then he went on, speaking only to Nicky who was following every word, so there seemed a communion between the two, the old man and the boy.

”I'll tell you something, Nicky, and it's something I've never told a soul before, not anybody in this world. One time I was so scared, I...” He glanced around as if appealing for understanding.”...I was so scared, I messed my pants.”

Nicky asked, "What did you do then?”

Jessica, concerned for Angus, seemed about to interrupt but Crawford gestured her to silence.

The old man's voice strengthened. Visibly, a little of his pride returned.”What could I do? I didn't like it, but I was there, so I got on with what I'd been sent for. I was the group bombardier. When the group commander—he was our pilot reached the IP and set us on our target course, he told me over the intercom, 'It's yours, Angus. Take it.' Well, I was stretched out over the Norden bombsight and I steadied myself and took my time. For those few minutes, Nicky, the bombardier flew the airplane. I got the target exactly in the cross hairs, then the bombs were away. It was the signal to the group to release theirs too.”

Angus went on, "So let me tell you, Nicky, there's nothing wrong with being scared to death. It can happen to the best. What counts is hanging on, somehow staying in control and doing what you know you should.”

"I hear you, Gramps.” Nicky's voice was matter-of-fact and Crawford wondered how much he had understood. Probably a good deal. Nicky was smart and sensitive. Crawford also wondered if he himself, in the past, had taken the trouble to understand as much as he should about his own father.

He glanced at his watch. It was time to leave. Usually he arrived at CBA News at 10:30 A.M.; today though, he would be earlier because he wanted to see the division president about firing Chuck Insen as National Evening News executive producer. The memory of last night's clash with Insen still rankled, and Sloane was as determined as ever to ensure changes in the news selection process.

He rose from the breakfast table and, excusing himself, went upstairs to finish dressing.

Selecting a tie—the same one he would wear on camera that evening—and carefully tying it in a Windsor knot, he thought about his father, envisaging the scenes the old man had described, in the air over Schweinfurt and else here. Angus, at that time, would have been in his early twenties—half Crawford's age now, just a raw kid who had hardly lived and was terrified he was about to die, most likely horribly. Certainly not even during his time as a journalist in Vietnam had Crawford endured anything comparable.

Suddenly he had a pang of conscience for what he had failed to understand sooner, in any deep or caring way.

The trouble was, Crawford thought, he was so caught up professionally in each day's current, breaking news that he tended to dismiss the news of earlier eras as history and therefore irrelevant to the brimming, bustling here and now. That mind-set was an occupational hazard; he had seen it in others. But the older news was not irrelevant, and never would be, to his father.

Crawford was well informed. He had read about the raid on Schweinfurt in a book, Black Thursday. The author, Martin Caidin, compared the attack with the "immortal struggles of Gettysburg, St. Mihiel and the Argonne, of Midway and the Bulge and Pork Chop Hill.”

My father, Crawford reminded himself, was a part of that long saga. He had never viewed that fact before in quite the same perspective as today.

He put on the jacket of his suit, inspected himself in the mirror, then, satisfied with his appearance, returned below.

He said goodbye to Jessica and Nicky, then approached his father and told the old man quietly, "Stand up.”

Angus seemed puzzled. Crawford repeated himself.”Stand up."

Pushing his chair back, Angus slowly rose. Instinctively, as he so often did, he brought his body to the equivalent of military attention.

Crawford moved close to his father, put his arms around him, held him tight, then kissed him on both cheeks.

The old man seemed surprised and flustered.”Hey, hey! What's all this?”

Looking him directly in the eye, Crawford said, "I love you, you old coot.”

At the doorway, on the point of leaving, he glanced back. On Angus's face was a small, seraphic smile. Jessica's eyes, he saw, were moist. Nicky was beaming.

* * *

The surveillance duo of Carlos and Julio were surprised to see Crawford Sloane leaving his home by car earlier than usual. They reported the fact immediately by code to the leader, Miguel.

By now, Miguel had left the Hackensack operating center and, accompanied by others in a Nissan passenger van equipped with a cellular phone, was crossing the George Washington Bridge between New Jersey and New York.

Miguel was unperturbed. He issued, also in code, the order that prearranged plans were now in effect, their time of implementation to be advanced if needed. He reasoned confidently:

What they were about to do was the totally unexpected; it would turn logic upside down, then soon after raise the frantic question, Why?

10

At about the same time Crawford Sloane left his Larchmont home to drive to CBA News headquarters, Harry Partridge awakened in Canada—in Port Credit, near Toronto. He had slept deeply and spent the first few moments of the new day wondering where he was. It was a frequent experience because he was used to waking in so many different places.

As his thoughts arranged themselves he took in familiar landmarks of an apartment bedroom and knew that if he sat up in bed—which he didn't feel like doing yet—he would be able to see, through a window ahead, the broad expanse of Lake Ontario.

The apartment was one Partridge used as his base, a retreat, and the nomadic nature of his work meant that he got to it for only a few brief periods each year. And even though he stored his few possessions here—some clothes, books, framed photographs, and a handful of mementos from other times and places the apartment was not registered in his name. As a card alongside a bell push in the lobby six floors below advised, the official tenant was V. Williams (the V for Vivien), who resided here permanently.

Every month, from wherever in the world Partridge happened to be, he sent Vivien a check sufficient to pay the apartment rent and, in return, she lived here and kept it as his haven. The arrangement, which had other conveniences including casual sex, suited them both.

Vivien was a nurse who worked in the Queensway Hospital nearby, and he could hear her now, moving around in the kitchen. In all probability she was making tea, which she knew he liked each morning, and would bring it to him soon. Meanwhile he let his thoughts drift back to the events of yesterday and the journey the night before on his delayed flight from Dallas to Toronto's Pearson International . . .

The experience at DFW Airport had been a professional one which he took in stride. It was Partridge's job to do what he did, a job for which he was well paid by CBA News. Yet thinking about it last night and again this morning, he was conscious of the tragedy behind the surface of the news. From the latest reports he heard, more than seventy aboard the Muskegon Airlines flight lost their lives, with others critically injured, and all six people died aboard the smaller airplane that had collided with the Airbus in midair. Today, he knew, many grief-stricken families and friends were struggling, amid tears, to cope with their abrupt bereavement.

The thought reminded him that there were times when he wished he could cry too, could shed tears along with others because of things he had witnessed in his professional life, including perhaps the tragedy of yesterday. But it hadn't happened—except on one unparalleled occasion which, as it came to mind, he thrust away. What he did remember was the first time he ever wondered about himself and his apparent inability to cry.

* * *

Early in his reporting career, Harry Partridge was in Britain when a tragedy occurred in Wales. It was in Aberfan, a mining village where a vast pile of coal waste—slurry—slid down a hillside and engulfed a junior school A hundred and sixteen children died.

Partridge was on the scene soon after the disaster, in time to see the dead being pulled out. Each small pathetic body, covered with black, evil-smelling sludge, had to be hosed down before it was carted awayfor identification.

Around him, watching the same scene, other reporters, photographers, police, spectators, were weeping, choking on their tears. Partridge had wanted to cry too, but couldn't. Sickened but dry-eyed, he had done his reporting job and gone away.

Since then there had been countless other witnessed scenes where there was cause for tears, but he hadn't cried there either.

Was there some deficiency, some inner coldness in himself? He asked that question once of a woman psychiatrist friend, after both of them, following an evening of drinking, had been to bed together.

She told him, "There's nothing wrong with you, or you wouldn't care enough to ask the question.”at you have is a defense mechanism which depersonalizes what you feel. You're banking it all, tucking the emotion away inside you somewhere. One day everything will overflow, crack open, and you'll cry. Oh, how you'll cry!”

* * *

Well, his knowledgeable bed partner had been right, and there had come a day . . . But again he didn't want to think about it, and pushed the image away just as Vivien came into the bedroom, carrying a tray with morning tea.

She was in her mid-forties, with angular, strong features and straight black hair, now streaked with gray. While neither beautiful nor conventionally pretty, she was warm, easygoing and generous. Vivien had been widowed before Partridge knew her and he gathered the marriage had not been good, though she rarely talked about it. She had one child, a daughter in Vancouver. The daughter occasionally stayed here, though never when Partridge was expected.

Partridge was fond of Vivien though not in love with her, and had known her long enough to be aware he never would be. He suspected that Vivien was in love with him and would love him more if he encouraged it. But as it was, she accepted the relationship they had.

While he sipped his tea, Vivien regarded Partridge quizzically, noting that his normally lanky figure was thinner than it should be; also, despite a certain boyishness he still retained, his face showed lines of strain and tiredness. His unruly shock of fair hair, now noticeably grayer, was in need of trimming.

Aware of her appraisal, Partridge asked, "Well, what's the verdict?”

Vivien shook her head in mock despair.”Just look at you! I send you off healthy and fit. Two and a half months later you come back looking tired, pale and underfed.”

"I know, Viv.” He grimaced.”It's the life I lead. There's too much pressure, lousy hours, junk food and booze.” Then, with a smile, "So here I am, a mess as usual. What can you do for me?”

She said, with a mixture of affection and firmness, "First I'll give you a good healthful breakfast. You can stay in bed—I'll bring it to you. For other meals you'll have nutritious things like fish and fowl, green vegetables, fresh fruit. Right after breakfast I'm going to trim your hair. Later, I'm taking you for a sauna and massage—I've already made the appointment.”

Partridge lay back and threw up his hands.”I love it!”

Vivien went on, "Tomorrow, I figured you'll want to see your old cronies at the CBC—you usually do. But in the evening I have tickets for an all—Mozart concert in Toronto at Roy Thomson Hall. You can let the music wash over you. I know you like that. Apart from all that, you'll rest or do whatever you wish.” She shrugged.”Maybe in between those other things you'll feel like making love. You tried last night but were too tired. You fell asleep.”

For a moment Partridge felt more gratitude for Vivien than he had ever felt before. She was rock-solid, a refuge. Late last night, when his flight finally arrived at Toronto Airport, she had been patiently waiting, then had brought him here.

He asked, "Don't you have to work?”

"I had some vacation due. I've arranged to take it, starting today. One of the other nurses will fill in for me.”

He told her, "Viv, you're one in a million.”

* * *

When Vivien had gone and he could hear her preparing breakfast, Partridge's thoughts returned to yesterday.

There had been that congratulatory call—they had paged him for it in the DFW terminal—from Crawford Sloane.

Crawf had sounded awkward, as he often was when they talked. There were times when Partridge wanted to say, "Look, Crawf, if you think I have any grudge against you—about Jessica or your job or anything, forget it! I haven't and I never did.” But he knew that kind of remark would strain their relationship even more, and probably Crawf would never believe it anyway.

In Vietnam, Partridge had known perfectly well that Sloane was taking only short air trips so he could hang around Saigon and get on CBA network news as often as possible. But Partridge hadn't cared then, and still didn't. He had his own priorities. One of them could even be called an addiction—the addiction to the sights and sounds of war.

War . . . the bloody bedlam of battle . . . the thunder and flame of big artillery, the whistle scream and awesome crump of falling bombs . . . the stentorian chatter of machine guns when you didn't know who was firing at whom or from where . . . the near-sensuous thrill of being under attack, despite fear that set you trembling . . . all of it fascinated Partridge, set his adrenaline flowing, his other juices running . . .

He discovered the feeling first in 'Nam, his initial war experience. It had been with him ever since. More than once he had told himself, Face it—you love it; then acknowledged, Yes, I do, and a stupid son of a bitch I am.

Stupid or not, he had never objected to being sent to wars by CBA. Partridge knew that among his colleagues he was referred to as a "bang-bang,” the slightly contemptuous name for a TV correspondent addicted to war—a worse addiction, it was sometimes said, than to heroin or cocaine and with a final ending almost as predictable

But they also knew at CBA News headquarters—which was what mattered most—that for that kind of news coverage, Harry Partridge was the best.

Therefore he had not been overly concerned when Sloane won the National Evening News anchor chair. Like every news correspondent, Partridge had had ideas about getting that top-of-the-pile appointment, but by the time it happened to Sloane, Partridge was enjoying himself so much it didn't matter.

Strangely, though, the question of the anchorman's job had come up recently and unexpectedly. Two weeks ago, during what Chuck Insen warned was "a delicate private conversation,” the executive producer confided to Partridge that there might be major changes soon in the National Evening News.”If that happens,” Insen had asked, "would you be interested in coming in from the cold and anchoring? You do it damn well.”

Partridge had been so surprised that he hadn't known how to respond. Then Insen had said, "You don't have to answer now. I just want you to think about it in case I come back to you later.”

Subsequently, through his own inside contacts, Partridge had learned of the ongoing power struggle between Chuck Insen and Crawford Sloane. But even if Insen won, which seemed unlikely, Partridge doubted if permanent anchoring was something he would want or could even endure. Especially, he told himself half mockingly, when in so many places of the world there was still the sound of gunfire to be heard and followed.

Inevitably, when thinking in a personal way about Crawford Sloane, there was always the memory of Jessica, though it was never more than memory because there was nothing between them now, not even occasional communication, and they seldom met socially—perhaps only once or twice a year. Nor had Partridge ever blamed Sloane for his loss of Jessica, having recognized that his own foolish judgment was the cause. When he could have married her, Partridge had decided not to, so Sloane simply stepped in, proving himself the wiser of the two, with a better sense of values at that time . . .

Vivien reappeared in the apartment bedroom, bringing breakfast in stages. It was, as she had promised, a healthful meal: freshly squeezed orange juice, thick hot porridge with brown sugar and milk, followed by poached eggs on whole wheat toast, strong black coffee, the beans freshly ground, and finally more toast and Alberta honey.

The thoughtfulness about the honey especially touched Partridge. It reminded him, as it was intended to, of his native province where he made his start in journalism on local radio. He remembered telling Vivien that he had worked for what was known as a 20/20 radio station; it meant that rock 'n' roll, the staple programming, was interrupted every twenty minutes by a few shouted news headlines ripped from the AP wire. A young Harry Partridge had done the shouting. He smiled at the recollection; it seemed a long time ago.

After breakfast, prowling around the apartment in pajamas, he observed, "This place is getting tacky. It needs repainting and new furniture.”

"I know,” Vivien acknowledged.”I've been after the building owners about repainting. But they say this apartment isn't due to have money spent on it.”

"Screw 'em! Do it without the owners. You find a painter and order whatever's needed. I'll leave enough money before I go.,,

"You're always generous about that,” she said; then added, "do you still have that wonderful arrangement where you don't pay income tax?”

He grinned.”Sure do.”

"To anybody, anywhere?”

"Not to anyone, and it's perfectly legal and honest. I don't file any income tax return, don't have to. Saves a lot of time and money.”

"I've never understood how you manage it.”

"I don't mind telling you,” he said, "though normally I don't talk about it. People who pay income tax get jealous; that's because misery likes company.”

The critical factor, he explained, was being a Canadian citizen, using a Canadian passport, and working overseas.

”What a lot of people don't realize is that the United States is the only major country in the world that taxes its citizens no matter where they live. Even when Americans reside outside the U.S., they still get taxed by Uncle Sam. Canada doesn't do that. Canadians who move out of the country aren't liable for Canadian taxes, and once the revenue service is satisfied you're gone, they've no further interest in you. The British are the same.”

He continued, "The way it works is that CDA News pays my salary each month into a New York account I have at Chase Manhattan. From there I move the money to accounts in other countries—the Bahamas, Singapore, the Channel Islands, where savings can interest, totally tax-free.”

"What about taxes in countries you go to—those you work in?”

“As a TV correspondent I'm never in one place long enough to be liable for tax. That even includes the U.S., provided I'm there no more than 120 days a year, and you can be sure I never stay that long. As for Canada, I don't have a domicile here, not even this one. This is solely your place, Viv, as we both know.”

Partridge added, "The important thing is not to cheat—tax evasion's not only illegal, it's stupid and not worth the risk. Tax avoidance is quite different He stopped.”Hold it! I have something here.”

Partridge produced a wallet and from it extracted a folded, well-fingered news clipping.”This is from a 1934 decision by Judge Learned Hand, one of America's great jurists. It's been used by other judges many times.”

He read aloud, “'Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. ' “

"I can understand why people envy you,” Vivien said.”Are there others in TV who do the same?”

"You'd be surprised how many. The tax advantages are a reason Canadians like to work overseas for American networks.”

Though he didn't mention them, there were other reasons, including U.S. network pay scales, which were substantially higher. But even more important, to work for an American network was to have made the prestigious "big time”and be on the exciting center stage of world affairs.

For their part, the U.S. networks were delighted to have Canadian correspondents, who came to them well trained by CBC and CTV. They had learned also that American viewers liked a Canadian accent; it was a contributing reason for the popularity of many news figures—Peter Jennings, Robert MacNeil, Morley Safer, Allen Pizzey, Barrie Dunsmore, Peter Kent, John Blackstone, Hilary Bowker, Harry Partridge, others . . .

Continuing to prowl through the apartment, Partridge saw on a sideboard the tickets for the Mozart concert the next day. He knew he would enjoy it and was grateful once more to Vivien for remembering his tastes.

He was grateful too for the three weeks of vacation—restful idleness, as he thought of it—that lay ahead.

11

Jessica went household shopping every Thursday morning and she intended to follow her usual routine today. When Angus learned this, he volunteered to accompany her. Nicky, who was home because of a school holiday, asked to go as well so he could be with his grandfather.

Jessica asked doubtfully, "Don't you have some music to practice?”

"Yes, Mom. But I can do it later. I'll have time.”

Knowing that Nicky was conscientious about practicing, sometimes for as long as six hours a day, Jessica raised no objection.

The three of them left the Park Avenue house in Jessica's Volvo station wagon shortly before I I A.M., about an hour and a quarter after Crawford's departure. It was a beautiful morning, the trees rich with fall colors and sunlight glistening off Long Island Sound.

The Sloanes' day maid, Florence, was in the house at the time and, through a window, watched the trio leave. She also saw a car parked on a side street start up and follow in the same direction as the Volvo. At the time she gave no thought to the second vehicle.

Jessica's first stop was, as usual, the Grand Union supermarket on Chatsworth Avenue. She parked the Volvo in the store lot, then, accompanied by Angus and Nicky, went inside,

The Colombians, Julio and Carlos, in the Chevrolet Celebrity which had trailed the station wagon from a discreet distance, observed their movements. Carlos, who had already reported the departure from the house, now made another cellular phone call, announcing that "the three packages are in container number one.”

This time Julio was driving, and he did not turn into the store parking lot, instead making observations from the street outside. Following instructions given earlier by Miguel, Carlos now left the Chevy and moved on foot to a position near the store. Unlike other days when he had been casually dressed, today he was wearing a neat brown suit and tie.

When Carlos was in place, Julio drove the Chevrolet away, in case it had been noticed, to the safe seclusion of the Hackensack operating center.

* * *

When the first of the two phone messages reached Miguel, he was in the Nissan passenger van, parked near the New Haven Railroad's Larchmont station. The van was inconspicuous, surrounded by other parked vehicles left by New York commuters. With Miguel were Luis, Rafael and Baudelio, though all four occupants were mostly out of sight because of dark, thin plastic sheets covering the side and rear windows. Luis, because of his specialized driving skills, was at the wheel.

When it became known that three people had left the house, Rafael exclaimed, "Damn! That means the viejo's along. He'll be in our goddamn way.”

"Then we'll 'off' the old fart,” Luis said. He touched a bulge in his suede jacket.”One bullet will do.”

Miguel snapped, "You'll follow the orders you have. Do nothing else without my say-so.” He was aware that Rafael and Luis were perpetually aggressive, like smoldering fires likely to burst into angry flame. Rafael, heavily built, had been a professional boxer for a while and bore visible fight scars. Luis had been in the Colombian army—a harsh, rough schooling. There could be a time when the belligerence of both men would be useful, but until then it needed to be curbed.

Miguel was already considering the complication of the third person. Their long-standing plan had involved, at this point, only the Sloane woman and the boy. All along, they —not Crawford Sloane—had been the Sendero Luminoso/Medellin objective. The two were to be seized and held as hostages for as yet unspecified demands.

But now the question was how to handle the old man? Killing him, as Luis suggested, would be easy, but that could create other problems. Most probably Miguel would not make up his mind until the crucial moment, which was coming soon.

One thing was fortunate. The woman and the boy were now together. The several weeks of careful surveillance had shown that the woman always shopped on Thursday mornings. Miguel had also known that the boy had a school holiday today. Carlos, posing on the telephone as a parent, had obtained that information from the Chatsworth Avenue grammar school, which Nicholas attended. What had remained in doubt was how to corral the woman and the boy together. Now, without knowing it, they had solved that problem for him.

When the second message from Carlos came, indicating that all three Sloanes were inside the supermarket, Miguel nodded to Luis.”Okay. Roll!”

Luis put the Nissan van in gear. The next stop, just a halfdozen blocks away, would be the store parking lot.

While they were moving, Miguel turned his head to look at Baudelio, the American in the Medellin group, who continued to be a source of worry.

Baudelio—the name had been chosen for him and, like the others, it was an alias—was in his mid-fifties but looked twenty years older. Gaunt, lantern-jawed, with a sallow skin and a droopy gray mustache he seldom trimmed, he had the appearance of a walking ghost. He had once been a medical doctor, a specialist in anesthesiology practicing in Boston, and a drunk. When left to his own devices he was still a drunk, but no longer a doctor, at least officially. A decade earlier Baudelio's license to practice medicine had been revoked for life because while in an alcoholic haze he had overanesthetized a patient undergoing surgery. There had been similar lapses before and colleagues had covered for him, but in this instance it cost the patient's life and could not be overlooked.

There had been no future for him in the United States, no family ties, no children. Even his wife had left him several years before. He had visited Colombia several times and, for want of a better place, decided to go there. After a while he found he could use his considerable medical skills for shady, sometimes criminal purposes, without arousing any questions. He was in no position to be particular and took whatever came his way. Amid it all he managed, by reading medical journals, to stay up to date in his specialty. This last was why he had been chosen for this assignment by the Medellin cartel, for whom he had worked before.

All of this background had been made known to Miguel in advance, with a warning that while the assignment lasted Baudelio was to be deprived of any alcohol. Antabuse pills would be used to enforce the prohibition, one pill to be taken by the ex-doctor every day. The effect of Antabuse was that anyone drinking liquor afterward became violently ill, a fact of which Baudelio was well aware.

Since it was common practice among alcoholics to spit out the pill secretly if they wanted to cheat, Miguel was cautioned to be sure the Antabuse was always swallowed. While Miguel carried out the instructions, they did not please him. In the comparatively short time available he had a multitude of responsibilities and acting as a "wet nurse”was one he could have done without.

Also in light of Baudelio's weakness, Miguel decided not to trust him with a firearm. Thus he was the only one in the group not armed.

Now, regarding Baudelio warily, Miguel asked, "Are you ready? Do you understand everything that is to be done?”

The ex-doctor nodded. Briefly a vestige of professional pride returned to him. Looking Miguel directly in the eye, he said, "I know precisely what is necessary. When the moment comes, you may rely on me, and concentrate on what you have to do yourself.”

Not entirely reassured, Miguel turned away. The Grand Union supermarket was now directly ahead.

Carlos saw the Nissan passenger van arrive. The parking lot was not crowded and the Nissan entered a conveniently vacant slot alongside Jessica's Volvo station wagon. When Carlos had observed this, he turned into the store.

* * *

Jessica gestured to her partly filled shopping cart and told Angus, "If there's something you especially like, just drop it in."

Nicky said, "Gramps likes caviar.”

"I should have remembered that,” Jessica said.”Let's get some.”

They moved to the gourmet section to discover it was featuring a special caviar assortment. Angus, inspecting prices, said, "It's awfully expensive.”

Jessica said softly, "Have you any idea how much that son of yours earns?”

The old man smiled; he kept his voice low too.”Well, I did read somewhere it was close to three million dollars a year.”

"Close is right.” Jessica laughed; being with Angus always made her feel good.”Let's blow some of it.” She pointed to a seven-ounce can of beluga caviar in a locked display case, priced at $199.95.”We'll have some of this with drinks before dinner tonight.”

It was at that moment that Jessica noticed a young man, slightly built and well dressed, approaching another woman shopper nearby. He appeared to ask a question. The woman shook her head. The young man approached a second shopper. Again an apparent question and a negative reply. Mildly curious, Jessica watched the young man as he approached her.

”Excuse me, ma'am,” Carlos said.”I'm trying to locate someone.” He had been aware of Jessica all the time but deliberately had not gone to her first, instead positioning himself so that she could see him speaking with the other people.

Jessica noticed a Spanish accent, though that was not unusual in New York. She also thought the speaker had cold, hard eyes, but that was none of her business. All she said was, "Oh?”

"It's a Mrs. Crawford Sloane.”

Jessica was startled.”I'm Mrs. Sloane.”

"Oh ma'am, I have some bad news for you.” The facial expression of Carlos was serious; he was playing his part well.”Your husband has been in an accident. He's badly injured. The ambulance took him to Doctors Hospital. I was sent to find you and take you there. The maid at your house told me you would be here.”

Jessica gasped and turned deathly pale. Instinctively her hand went to her throat. Nicky, who had returned in time to hear the last few words, looked stunned.

Angus, though equally shocked, was the first to recover and take charge. He gestured to the shopping cart.”Jessie, leave all this. Just let's go.”

"It's Dad, isn't it?”

Nicky said. Carlos answered gravely, "I'm afraid so.”

Jessica put her arm around Nicky.”Yes, dear. We're going to him now.”

"Please come with me, Mrs. Sloane,” Carlos said. Jessica and Nicky, still dazed by the sudden shattering news, went quickly with the brown-suited young man toward the store's main door. Angus followed. Something was bothering him, though he wasn't quite sure what.

Outside in the parking lot, Carlos preceded the others. He moved toward the Nissan van. Both doors on the side next to the Volvo were open. Carlos could see that the Nissan's engine was running and Luis was in the driver's seat. A shadowy form in the back had to be Baudelio. Rafael and Miguel were out of sight.

Alongside the Nissan, Carlos said, "We'll go in this vehicle, ma'am. It will be—”

"No, no!” Jessica, tense and anxious, was groping in her purse for car keys.”I'll take my car. I know where Doctors Hospital—”

Carlos interposed himself between the Volvo and Jessica. Grasping her arm, he said, "Ma'am, we'd rather you—”

Jessica attempted to withdraw her arm; as she did, Carlos held her more firmly and pushed her forward. She said indignantly, "Stop that! What is this?” For the first time Jessica began to think beyond the impact of the awful news she had been given.

A few feet behind, Angus now realized what had been troubling him. Inside the store the strange young man had said, "He's badly injured. The ambulance took him to Doctors Hospital.”

But Doctors Hospital didn't take emergencies. Angus happened to know because over several months the year before he had visited an old Army Air Forces comrade who was a patient there and got to know the hospital well. Doctors Hospital was big and famous; it was close to Gracie Mansion, the mayor's residence, and alongside the route Crawford used on the way to work. But emergencies were sent to New York Hospital, a few blocks south . . . Every ambulance driver knew it.

So the young man was lying! The setup in the store had been a fakel What was happening out here wasn't right either. Two men—Angus didn't like their looks at all—had just appeared from around the back of the passenger van. One of them, a huge bruiser, had joined the first man; they were forcing Jessica inside! Nicholas, a little way behind, was not yet involved.

Angus shouted, "Jessica, don't go! Nicky, run! Get—”

The sentence was never finished. A pistol butt crashed down on Angus's head. There was a fierce, searing pain, everything around him spun, then he fell to the ground unconscious. It was Luis who had jumped out of the driver's seat, rushed around, and attacked him from behind. In almost the same motion, Luis grabbed Nicholas.

Jessica began screaming and crying out.”Helpl Someone—anyone—please help!”

The burly Rafael, who had joined Carlos in seizing Jessica, now clamped a massive hand across her mouth, set another in her back and flung her inside the van. Then, jumping in himself, he continued to hold her while she screamed and struggled. Jessica's eyes were wild. Rafael snarled at Baudelio, "IApi~rate!”

The ex-doctor, with a medical bag open on the seat beside him, produced a gauze pad which moments earlier he had soaked in ethyl chloride. He slapped the pad over Jessica's nose and mouth and held it there. Instantly Jessica's eyes closed, her body sagged and she became unconscious. Baudelio gave a grunt of satisfaction, though he knew the effect of ethyl chloride would last only five minutes.

By now, Nicholas, struggling too, had been hauled inside. Carlos held him while he received the same treatment.

Baudelio, still working quickly, used scissors to cut the sleeve of Jessica's dress, then injected the contents of a hypodermic syringe intramuscularly into her upper arm. The drug was midazolam, a strong sedative that would ensure continued unconsciousness for at least an hour. He gave the boy a similar injection.

Miguel, meanwhile, had dragged the unconscious Angus over to the van. Rafael, now freed of Jessica, jumped down and pulled out a pistol, a Browning automatic. Clicking the safety off, he urged Miguel, "Let me finish him!”

"No, not here!” The entire operation of seizing the woman and boy had gone with incredible speed, occupying barely a minute. To Miguel's amazement, no one else appeared to have witnessed what had happened. One reason: They had been shielded by the two vehicles; also, fortuitously, there had been no passersby. Miguel, Carlos, Rafael and Luis had all come armed and there was a Beretta submachine gun in the van for use if they had to fight their way out of the parking lot. Now a fighting exit wasn't necessary and they would have a head start on any pursuit. But if they left the old man behind—his head was bleeding profusely, with blood dripping to the ground—animmediate alarm would be raised. Making a decision, Miguel ordered, "Help me get him in.”

It was accomplished in seconds. Then, as he entered the van himself and closed the side door, Miguel saw he had been wrong about no witnesses. An elderly woman, white-haired and leaning on a cane, was watching from between two cars some twenty yards away. She appeared uncertain and puzzled.

As Luis moved the Nissan van forward, Rafael caught sight of the old woman too. In a single swift movement he grabbed the Beretta, raised it, and through a rear window was taking aim. Miguel shouted to him, "No!” He didn't care about the woman, but the chances looked good that they could still get away without raising an alarm. Pushing Rafael aside and making his voice cheerful, Miguel called out, "Don't be alarmed. It's just part of a film we're making.”

He saw relief and the beginning of a smile on the woman's face. Then they left the parking lot and, soon after, Larchmont. Luis was driving skillfully, wasting no time. Within five minutes they were on Interstate 95, the New England Thruway, heading south and moving fast.

12

There had been a time when Priscilla Rhea possessed one of the sharpest minds in Larchmont. She had been a schoolteacher who pounded into several generations of area youngsters the fundamentals of square roots, quadratic equations, and how to discover—she always made it sound like the search for a holy grail—the algebraic values of x or y. Priscilla also urged them to have a sense of civic responsibility and never to shirk their obvious duty.

But all of that was prior to Priscilla's retirement fifteen years earlier, and before the toll of age and illness slowed her body, then her mind. Nowadays, white-haired and frail, she walked slowly, using a cane, and had recently described her thought processes, disgustedly, as "having the speed of a threelegged donkey going uphill.”

Nevertheless Priscilla was exercising her thought processes now, moving them along as best she could.

She had watched two people—a woman and a boy—being taken into what looked like a small bus, apparently against their will. They were certainly struggling and Priscilla thought she'd heard the woman cry out, though about that she wasn't sure, her hearing having deteriorated along with everything else. Then another person, a man who seemed unconscious and hurt, was lifted into the same small bus before it drove away.

Her natural anxiety at seeing this was immediately relieved by the shouted information that it was all part of a film show. That made sense. Film and television crews seemed to be everywhere nowadays, photographing their stories against real backgrounds and even interviewing people for TV news, right on the street.

But then, the moment the little bus had gone Priscilla looked around for the cameras and film crew which should have been recording the action she had watched, and for the life of her she couldn't find any. She reasoned that if there had been a film crew, it couldn't possibly have disappeared that fast.

The whole thing was a worry Priscilla wished she didn't have, in part because she knew that perhaps she was all mixed up in her mind, the way she had been some other times. The sensible thing to do, she told herself, was go into the Grand Union store, do her bit of shopping and mind her own business. Just the same, there was her lifelong credo of not shirking responsibility, and perhaps she shouldn't, even now. She only wished there were someone handy whom she could ask for advice, and just at that moment she saw Erica McLean, one of her old pupils, also on her way into the supermarket.

Erica, now a mother with children of her own, was in a hurry but stopped to ask courteously, "How are you, Miss Rhea?”(No one who had ever been a pupil of Miss Rhea ever presumed to address her by her first name.)

"Slightly bewildered, my dear,” Priscilla said.

"Why, Miss Rhea?”

"Something I just saw ... But I'm not sure what I saw. I'd like to know what you think.” Priscilla then described the scene, which was still remarkably clear in her mind.

”And you're sure there was no film crew?”

"I couldn't see one. Did you, as you came in?”

"No.” Within herself, silently, Erica McLean sighed. She had not the least doubt that dear old Priscilla had been subject to some kind of hallucination and it was Erica's bad luck to have come along just then and be roped in. Well, she couldn't walk away from the old duck, for whom she had a genuine fondness, so she had better forget being in a hurry and do what she could to help.

”Just where did all this happen?” Erica asked.

”Over there.” Priscilla pointed to the still—empty parking slot next to Jessica's Volvo station wagon. They walked to it together.”Here!”Priscilla said.”It happened right here.”

Erica looked around her. She had not expected to see anything significant, and didn't. Then, about to turn away, her attention was caught by a series of small pools of liquid on the ground. Against the blacktop surface of the parking lot the liquid seemed dark brown. It was probably oil. Or was it? Curiously, Erica leaned down to touch it. Seconds later she looked with horror at her fingers. They were covered in what was unmistakably blood, still warm.

* * *

It had been a quiet morning in the Larchmont police department, a small but efficient local force. In a glass cubicle a uniformed desk officer was sipping coffee and glancing through the local Sound View News when the call came in—from a pay phone on the comer of Boston Post Road, a half block from the supermarket.

Erica McLean spoke first. After identifying herself she said, "I have a lady here, Miss Priscilla Rhea . . .”

"I know Miss Rhea,” the desk officer said.

”Well, she thinks she may have seen something criminal, perhaps some kind of abduction. I'd like you to speak to her.”

"I'll do better than that,” the desk officer said.”I'll send an officer in a patrol car and you can tell it to him. Where are you ladies?”

"We'll be outside the Grand Union.”

"Stay there, please. Someone will be with you in a few minutes.”

The desk officer spoke into a radio microphone.”Headquarters to car 423. Respond to Grand Union store. Interview Mrs. McLean and Miss Rhea waiting outside. Code one.”

The answer came back, "Four twenty-three to headquarters. Ten four.”

Eleven minutes had now passed since the passenger van carrying Jessica, Nicholas and Angus had left the supermarket parking lot.

* * *

The young police officer, named Jensen, had listened carefully to Priscilla Rhea who was more confident in reporting for the second time what she had seen. She even remembered two additional details—the color of what she continued to call the "little bus”light tan—and the fact that it had dark windows. But no, she had not noticed a license number, or even if the license plates were New York's or out-of-state.

The officer's first reaction, though he kept it to himself, was of skepticism. Police forces were used to citizens who became alarmed about matters that turned out to be harmless; such incidents happened every day, even in a small community like Larchmont. But the officer was conscientious and listened attentively to all that was said, making careful notes.

His interest began to mount when Erica McLean, who seemed a responsible, rational woman, told him about some splotches on the parking lot that looked like blood. The two of them walked over to inspect. By this time most of the liquid had dried, though there was enough that was moist to reveal it as red to the touch. There was no proof it was human blood, of course. But, Officer Jensen reasoned, it gave more credence to the story, more urgency too.

Hurrying back to where they had left Priscilla, they found her talking with several other people who were curious about what was going on.

One man volunteered, "Officer, I was inside and saw four people leave in a hurry—two men, a woman and a boy. They were in such a hurry that the woman left her shopping cart. It was full, but she just left it.”

"I saw them too,” a woman said.”That was Mrs. Sloane, the TV anchorman's wife. She often shops here. When she left she looked upset—like something bad happened.”

Another woman said.”That's funny. A man came to me and asked if I was Mrs. Sloane. He asked others, too.”

Now several people were talking at once. The police officer raised his voice.”Did anyone see what this lady"—he motioned to Priscilla—"calls a 'small bus,' color light tan?”

"Yes, I saw that,” the first man said.”It pulled into the lot as I was walking to the store. It was a Nissan passenger van.”

"Did you notice the license plate?”

"It was a New Jersey plate, but that's all I saw. Oh, one other thing, it had dark windows—the kind of glass where you can see out, but can't see in.”

"Hold it!” the officer said. He addressed the growing crowd.”Any of you who have more information, and those who've given me some already, please stay. I'll be right back.”

He jumped into the white police cruiser he had parked alongside the supermarket and grabbed the radio mike.

”Car 423 to headquarters. Possible kidnap at Grand Union parking lot. Request help. Description of suspect vehicle: Nissan passenger van, color light tan. New Jersey plates, license unknown. Dark windows, believed one-way glass. Three persons may have been seized by unknown occupants of Nissan van."

The officer's transmission would be heard by all Larchmont police cars as well as those in neighboring Mamaroneck Town and Mamaroneck Village. The headquarters desk officer, through a "hot line”phone, would automatically alert all other police forces in surrounding Westchester County and the New York State Police. The New Jersey State Police would not, at this point, be informed.

Already, at the supermarket, two sirens could be heard rom other approaching police cruisers responding to the request for help.

Nearly twenty minutes had elapsed since the Nissan passenger van's departure.

* * *

Some eight miles away, the Nissan van was about to leave the 1-95 Thruway and enter a maze of streets in the Bronx.

From Larchmont, Luis had made good progress heading south. He had been driving at five miles above the legal speed limit, which most motorists did—a good speed but not fast enough to attract attention from any cruising State Police. Now, Thruway exit 13, an intermediate objective, was ahead. Luis eased into a right-hand lane to take the turn. Both Luis and Miguel had been looking behind for signs of any pursuit. There was none.

Just the same, as they left the 1-95 Miguel urged Luis, "Move it! Move it!” Since the departure from Larchmont, Miguel had been wondering if he had made a mistake in not letting Rafael kill the old woman on the parking lot. She might not have believed the phony story about what she had seen being part of a film. By now she could have spread the alarm. Descriptions could be circulating.

Luis was pushing his speed, going as fast as he could on the roughly paved Bronx streets.

Baudelio, since leaving Larchmont, had several times checked vital signs of their two sedated captives, and all appeared to be well. He estimated that the drug midazolarn which he had administered would keep the woman and boy unconscious for another hour. If it didn't he would give them more, though he preferred not, since it might delay the much more complex medical task needed at the end of this journey.

He had also stanched the bleeding of the older man and applied a dressing to his head. The old man was now stirring, slight moans escaping him as he neared a return to consciousness. Anticipating possible trouble, Baudelio prepared another hypodermic of midazolam and injected it. The stirring and moans subsided. Baudelio had no idea what would happen to the old man. Most likely Miguel would shoot him and dispose of the body in a safe place; during his association with the Medellin cartel, Baudelio had seen it happen often. Not that he cared one way or the other. Caring about other human beings was an emotion he had long since discarded.

Rafael had produced some brown blankets and he and Carlos, with Baudelio watching, wrapped the woman, boy and old man in one each, so that only their heads protruded. In each case sufficient blanket was left folded at the top so it could be turned back to cover the face when the three were removed from the Nissan van. Carlos tied each rolled bundle with a length of cord around the middle so that in transit it would resemble nothing more than a piece of conventional cargo.

Conner Street in the Bronx, which they had reached, was desolate, gray and depressing. Luis knew where he was going; in rehearsals for today they had traveled the route twice before. At a corner with a Texaco station they turned right into a semideserted industrial area. Trucks were parked at intervals, some looking as if they had been there a long time. Few people were in sight.

Luis brought the van to a halt against a long, unbroken wall of an unoccupied warehouse. As he did, a truck that had been waiting on the opposite side of the street pulled across and stopped slightly ahead of the Nissan. The truck was a white GMC with a painted sign, "Superbread,” on either side.

Inquiry would have shown there was no such product as Superbread. The truck was one of a total of six vehicles obtained by Miguel soon after his arrival, employing a fake rental agency as a front. The GMC truck had been used occasionally for the Sloane surveillance duty and otherwise for general use. As with other vehicles in the small fleet, the truck had been repainted several times, the legend on its sides changed too—all of it the handiwork of Rafael. Today the truck was being driven by the remaining member of the group, the woman, Socorro, who jumped down from the driver's seat and went around to open the double rear doors.

At the same time the door of the Nissan van was opened and the rolled bundles, with all three faces covered, were quickly transferred by Rafael and Carlos to the GMC truck. Baudelio, having gathered up his medical equipment, followed.

Miguel and Luis were busy in the Nissan van. Miguel peeled off the dark, thin plastic sheets from the windows; they had been useful for concealment but were now an identifying feature to be disposed of From beneath the driver's seat Luis took a pair of New York State license plates he had put there earlier.

Going outside, and after looking around to make sure he was not observed, Luis removed the Nissan van's New Jersey plates, replacing them with the New York plates. The process took only a few seconds because all of the group's vehicles had special license plate holders, with one side hinged. The hinged portion could be lifted upward while the original plate was slid out and a fresh one put in. The side of the holder was then snapped back and held in place by a spring fastener.

Miguel, soon after his arrival in New York, had arranged through an underworld contact to buy a series of New York and New Jersey plates from vehicles no longer in use but on which license fees had been kept up to date.

The licensing systems of New York, New Jersey and most other states made it possible to get license plates for any vehicle long after it was totally dismantled and all of its parts discarded. All that a state registration agency cared about was receiving a license fee along with evidence—equally easy to obtain—that the nonexistent vehicle was insured. Neither the state agency nor the insurance company, which would renew an old insurance policy by mail as long as the required premium was tendered, ever required the vehicle to be produced.

Consequently in criminal circles a brisk business existed in such plates which, while illegal, were not on any police "hot list”and were for that reason worth many times their actual cost.

Miguel emerged from the Nissan van with the plastic sheets, which he dumped in an overflowing trash container nearby. Luis hurriedly brought the discarded New Jersey plates and stuffed those in too.

Luis then took over the wheel of the GMC truck which now contained the unconscious Jessica, Nicholas and Angus, as wen as Miguel, Rafael, Baudelio and Socorro. After a swift U-turn they headed back to the Thruway and, within less than ten minutes after leaving it, were back on the 1-95 in the new vehicle, continuing south.

Carlos, now driving the empty Nissan passenger van, also made a U-turn. He too went to 1-95, but headed north. With the van's appearance changed by removal of the dark windows and the substitution of New York for New Jersey license plates, it was now like thousands of others in normal use and unlike the description circulated by the Larchmont police.

* * *

Carlos's assignment was to dispose of the Nissan passenger van and that, too, had been carefully planned. After three miles he left the Thruway, then continued north for twelve miles on secondary roads as far as White Plains. There he drove to a public parking garage, a four-story structure adjoining an indoor shopping complex—Center City Mall.

Parking on the third level, Carlos moved with apparent casualness through his next activities. Among shoppers parking nearby and getting in or out of cars, no one seemed remotely interested in him or the Nissan van.

First, Carlos wiped all obvious surfaces to make fingerprint detection difficult. That was in case the van was recovered by law authorities in its present condition. The next step was to ensure it wasn't.

From a locker in the van's interior Carlos withdrew a Styrofoam container. Opened, it contained a formidable quantity of plastic explosive, a small detonator unit with a release pin, two lengths of pliant wire and a roll of adhesive tape. With the tape he fastened the explosive and detonator behind the front seats, low down and out of sight. He ran wires from the detonator release pin to the inside handles of each front door. After fastening a wire to each handle with the door almost closed, he shut each door carefully, then locked it. Now, opening either door would pull the release pin from the detonator.

Peering into the van, Carlos satisfied himself that neither the plastic explosive nor the wires were visible from outside.

Miguel had reasoned that several days would pass before the van was noticed, by which time the kidnappers and their victims would be far away. But when the van was found, a typical terrorist surprise would emphasize that those who had been involved with the kidnap were to be taken very seriously.

Carlos left the parking garage through the shopping mall, then used public transport to head for Hackensack where he would rejoin the others.

* * *

The GMC truck continued south for five miles, as far as the Cross Bronx Expressway where it turned west. About twelve minutes later it crossed the Harlem River and, soon after, the George Washington Bridge spanning the Hudson River.

Halfway across the bridge the truck and its occupants left New York State and entered New Jersey. Now, for Miguel and the others in the Medellin gang, the haven of their Hackensack headquarters was reassuringly close.

13

Bert Fisher lived and worked in a tiny apartment in Larchmont. He was sixty-eight and had been a widower for a decade. His business cards described him as a news reporter, though in the parlance of journalism he was more realistically a stringer.

Like other stringers, Bert was the local representative of several news organizations based in larger centers, some of which paid him a small retainer. He submitted information or written copy and got paid for what was used, if anything. Since small-town local news rarely had national or even area-wide significance, getting something published in a major newspaper or reported on radio or television was difficult, which was why no one ever made a fortune as a stringer and most-like Bert Fisher—barely scraped by.

Still, Bert enjoyed what he was doing. During World War, as an American G. I. in Europe he had worked for the armed forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes. It had put journalism in his bloodstream and ever since he had happily been a modest part of it. Even now, though age had slowed him a little, he still made telephone calls each day to local sources and kept several scanner radios switched on, thus hearing communications of local police, fire departments, ambulances and other public services. He always hoped that something might be worth following up and reporting to a major chronicler of news.

That was how Bert heard the Larchmont police transmission ordering an officer in car 423 to go to the Grand Union supermarket. It seemed like a routine call until, soon after, the officer alerted police headquarters to a possible kidnap. At the word "kidnap,” Bert sat up straight, locked the radio on the Larchmont police frequency, and reached for copy paper to make notes.

By the time the transmission finished, Bert knew he must hurry to the scene of action. First, however, he needed to call New York City television station WCBA.

* * *

At WCBA-TV an assistant news director took Bert Fisher's call.

WCBA, a wholly owned affiliate of the CBA network, was a prestigious local station serving the New York area. It operated out of three floors of a Manhattan office building a mile or so from its network parent. Although a local station, it had an enormous audience; also, because of the amount of news which New York generated, WCBA's news organization was in many ways a microcosm of the network's.

In a bustling, noise-filled newsroom where thirty people worked at closely clustered desks, the assistant news director checked Bert Fisher's name against a list in a loose-leaf binder.”Okay,” he said, "what do you have?”

He listened while the stringer described the police radio message and his intention to go to the Larchmont scene.

”Just a 'possible' kidnap, eh?”

"Yes, sir.”

Although Bert Fisher was almost three times as old as the young man he was addressing, he still observed a deference to rank, carried forward from another age.

”All right, Fisher, get going! Call back immediately if there's anything real.”

"Right, sir. Will do.”

Hanging up, the assistant news director realized the call might be just a false alarm. On the other hand, big-breaking news sometimes tiptoed in through unlikely doorways. For a moment he considered dispatching a camera crew to Larchmont, then decided not. At this point the stringer's report was nebulous. Besides, the available crews were already on assignment, so it would mean pulling one away from an active story. Nor, without more information, was there anything which could be broadcast.

The assistant did, however, walk over to the elevated newsroom desk where the station's woman news director presided, and tell her about the call.

After hearing him out, she confirmed his decision. But afterward a thought occurred to her and she picked up a telephone that connected her directly to CBA network news. She asked for Ernie LaSalle, the national editor with whom she sometimes exchanged information.

”Look,” she said, "this may turn out to be nothing.” Repeating what she had just heard, she added, "But it is Larchmont and I know Crawford Sloane lives there. It's a small place, it might involve someone he knows, so I thought you'd want to tell him.”

"Thanks,” LaSalle said.”Let me know if there's anything more.”

* * *

When he hung up the phone, Ernie LaSalle momentarily weighed the potential importance of the information. The likelihood was, it would amount to zero. Just the same . . .

On instinct and impulse he picked up the red reporting phone.

”National desk. LaSalle. We are advised that at Larchmont, repeat Larchmont, New York, the local police radio reports a possible kidnapping. No other details. Our friends at WCBA are following up and will inform us.”

As always, the national editor's words were carried throughout the CBA News headquarters. Some who heard wondered why LaSalle had put something so insubstantial on the speaker system. Others, unconcerned, returned their attention to whatever else they had been doing. One floor above the newsroom, senior producers at the Horseshoe paused to listen. One of them, pointing to Crawford Sloane who could be seen through the closed glassed doorway to his private office, observed, "If there's a kidnapping let's be thankful it's someone else in Larchmont and not Crawf. Unless that's his double in there.” The others laughed.

Crawford Sloane heard LaSalle's announcement through a speaker on his desk. He had closed the door for a private meeting with the president of CBA News, Leslie Chippingham. While Sloane, in asking for the meeting, had suggested he go to Chippingham's office, the other man had chosen to come here.

Both paused until the national editor's words concluded and Sloane's interest was quickened by the mention of Larchmont. At any other time he would have gone to the newsroom to seek more information. But as it was, he did not want to stop what had suddenly become a no-holds-barred confrontation which, to the anchorman's surprise, was not going at all the way he had expected.

14

"My instinct tells me, Crawf, you have a problem,” the CBA News president said, opening their conversation.

”Your instinct is wrong,” Crawford Sloane responded.”It's you who have the problem. It's readily solvable, but you need to make some structural changes. Quickly.”

Leslie Chippingham sighed. He was a thirty-year veteran of TV news who had begun his career at age nineteen as a messenger at NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report, the premier news show of its day. Even then he had learned that an anchorman must be handled as delicately as a Ming vase and receive the deference accorded heads of state. It was Chippingham's success in doing both which, along with other talents, had raised him to executive producer, then kept him a senior management survivor while other high climbers—including a bevy of network news presidents—were exiled to TV's backwaters or the oblivion of early retirement.

Chippingham had a facility for being at ease with everyone and making others feel the same way. It was once said of him that if he fired you, he made you feel good about it.

”So tell me,” he asked Sloane.”What changes?”

"I can't continue to work with Chuck Insen. He has to go. And when we choose a new exec producer I want the casting vote.”

"Well, well. You're right about there being a problem.” Chippingham chose his words cautiously and added, "Though it's perhaps a different one, Crawf, from what you think.”

Crawford Sloane regarded his nominal superior. What he saw was a towering figure, even seated—Chippingham was six-foot-four and weighed a trim 205 pounds. The face was more rugged than handsome, the eyes bright blue and the hair a forest of tight curls, now mostly gray. Across the years a succession of women had taken pleasure in running their fingers through Chippingham's curls, that particular pleasure invariably preceding others. Women, in fact, had been Les Chippingham's lifelong weakness, their conquest an irresistible hobby. At this moment, because of those indulgences, he was facing marital and financial disaster—a fact unknown to Sloane, though he, like others, was aware of Chippingham's womanizing.

Chippingham, however, knew he must put his own concerns aside to cope with Crawford Sloane. It would be like walking a high wire, as any colloquy with an anchorman always was.

"Let's quit futzing around,” Sloane said, "and come to the point.”

Chippingham agreed, "I was about to. As we both know, many things in network news are changing . . .”

"Oh for chrissakes, Les, of course they are!” Sloane cut in impatiently.”That's why I have problems with Insen. We need to change the shape of our news—with fewer quick headlines and more important stories developed thoroughly.”

"I'm aware of your feelings. We've been over this before. I also know what Chuck believes and, by the way, he came to see me earlier this morning, complaining about you.”

Sloane's eyes widened. He had not expected the executive producer to take the initiative in their dispute; it was not the way things usually happened.”What does he think you can do?” he asked.

Chippingham. hesitated.”Hell, I suppose there's no point in not telling you. He believes the two of you are so far apart that your differences aren't reconcilable. Chuck wants you out.”

The anchorman threw back his head and laughed.”And him stay? That's ridiculous.”

The news president met his gaze directly.”Is it?”

"Of course. And you know it.”

"I knew it once; I'm not sure I do now.” Ahead of them both was untrodden ground. Chippingham eased onto it guardedly.

”What I'm trying to get through to you, Crawf, is that nothing anymore is the way it used to be. Since the networks were bought out, everything's in flux. You know as well as I do there's a good deal of feeling among our new masters—at this network and the others—about the power of the evening anchormen. Those goliaths running the parent companies want to diminish that power; also they're unhappy about some of the big salaries for which they think they're not getting value. Recently there's been talk about private, quiet agreements.”

Sloane said sharply, "What kind of agreements?”

"The way I hear, the kind big entrepreneurs reach in their exclusive clubs and private homes. For example: 'We'll tell our network not to try to hire away your network news people, provided you agree not to go after ours. That way we won't push salaries up all around, and can work on reducing some of the big ones.”

“That's collusion, restraint of trade. It's goddamned illegal!”

"Only if you can prove it happened,” Chippingham pointed out.”How can you, though, if the agreement's made over drinks at the Links Club or the Metropolitan, and no record is kept, nothing ever written down?”

Sloane was silent and Chippingham pressed the message home.”What it amounts to, Crawf, is that this is not the best of times to push too hard.”

Sloane said abruptly, "You said Insen envisaged someone else in my place. Who?”

"He mentioned Harry Partridge.”

Partridge! Once more, Sloane thought, he was looming as a competitor. He wondered if Partridge had planted the idea. As if divining the thought, Chippingham said, "Apparently Chuck mentioned the idea to Harry, who was surprised but didn't think he'd be interested.”

Chippingham added, "Oh, another thing Chuck Insen told me: If it comes to a choice between him and you, he isn't going without a fight. He's threatened to take it personally to the top.”

"Meaning what?”

"Meaning he'll talk to Margot Lloyd-Mason.”

Crawford Sloane exploded.”Go to that bitch! He wouldn't dare!”

"I believe he would. And she may be a bitch, but Margot has the power.”

As Leslie Chippingham well knew.

* * *

CBA had been the last of the major broadcast networks to fall victim to what those in the business privately labeled "the invasion of the Philistines.”That was the description given to the takeover of the networks by industrial conglomerates whose insistence on constantly enlarging profits outweighed their sense of privilege and public duty. This, in contrast to the past when leaders like CBSs Paley, NBCs Sarnoff and ABCs Goldenson, while dedicated capitalists, were consistent demonstrators Of their public obligations too.

Nine months before, after failed attempts to keep CBA independent, the network had been swallowed by Globanic Industries Inc., a corporate giant with worldwide holdings. Like General Electric, which had earlier acquired NBC Globanic was a major defense contractor. Also like GE, Globanic's record included corporate criminality. On one occasion, following grand jury investigations, the company was fined and top-rank executives sentenced to prison terms for rigging bids and price-fixing. On another the company pleaded guilty to defrauding the US. Government by falsifying defense contract accounting records; a million-dollar fine was levied—the maximum under law, though a small amount compared with a single contract's total value. As a commentator wrote at the time of Globanic's takeover, "Globanic has just too many special interestsfor CBA not to have lost some editorial independence. Can you envisage CBA ever again digging deeply into a sensitive area where its parent is involved?”

Since the takeover of CBA, there had been public assurances from the network's new owners that the traditional independence of CBA News would be respected. The view from inside, though, was that such promises were proving hollow.

The transformation of CBA began with the arrival of Margot Lloyd-Mason as the network's new president and chief executive officer. Known to be efficient, ruthless and exceedingly ambitious, she was already a vice president of Globanic Industries. It was rumored that her move to CBA was a trial run to see whether she would demonstrate sufficient toughness to qualify as eventual chairman of the parent company.

Leslie Chippingham first encountered his new chieftain when she sent for him a few days after her arrival. Instead of the usual personal phone call—a courtesy extended by Mrs. Lloyd-Mason's predecessor to divisional president is—he received a peremptory message through a secretary to appear immediately at "Stonehenge, “the colloquial network name for CBA's Third Avenue headquarters. He went there in a chauffeur-driven limousine.

Margot Lloyd-Mason was tall, with upswept blond hair, a high-cheekboned, lightly tanned face and shrewdly appraising eyes. She wore an elegant taupe Chanel suit with a paler-toned silk blouse. Later, Chippingham would describe her as "attractive but formidable.”

The chief executive's manner was both friendly and cool.”You may use my first name, "she told the news president, while making it sound like an order. Then, without wasting time, she got down to business.

”There will be an announcement sometime today about a problem Theo Elliott is having.”

Theodore Elliott was chairman of Globanic Industries.

”The announcement's already been made,” Chippingham said.”By the IRS in Washington, this morning. They claim our king-of-kings has underpaid his personal taxes by some four million dollars.”

By chance, Chippingham had seen the story on the AP wire. The circumstances were that Elliott had made investments in what was now exposed as an illegal tax shelter. The creator of the tax shelter was being criminally prosecuted. Elliott was not, but would be required to pay back taxes plus large amounts in penalties.

”Theo has telephoned, “Margot said, "assuring me he had no idea the arrangement was illegal.”

“I suppose there are some who'll believe that, “Chippingham said, aware of the army of lawyers, accountants and tax advisers which someone like the Globanic chairman would have at his disposal.

Margot said icily, "Don't be flippant about this. I sent for you because I want nothing about Theo and taxes to appear on our news, and I’d like you to ask the other networks not to report it either.”

Chippingham, shocked and scarcely believing what he had just heard, struggled to keep his voice calm.”Margot, if I were to call the other networks with that request, not only would they turn it down, but they would report on the air that CBA News had attempted to arrange a cover-up. And frankly, if something similar happened in reverse, at CBA we'd do the same.”

Even while speaking, he realized that the new network head had demonstrated in a single brief exchange not only her lack of knowledge of the broadcast business, but a total insensitivity to news-gathering ethics. But then, he reminded himself it was public knowledge that neither of those things had brought her here, but instead, her financial acumen and an ability to create profits.

”All right, “she said grudgingly, "I suppose I have to accept what you say about the other networks. But I want nothing on our own news.”

Chippingham sighed inwardly, knowing that from now on his job as news president was going to be monumentally more difficult.”Please believe me, Margot, when I tell you as a certainty that tonight the other networks will use that piece of news about Mr. Elliott and his taxes. And if we don't use it also, it will create more attention by jar than if we do. That's because everyone will be watching to see how fair and impartial we are, especially after the statements by Globanic that the freedom of our News Division will not be interfered with.”

The network president's strong face was set grimly, her lips compressed, but her silence showed she understood the point Chippingham had made. At length she said, "You'll keep it short?”

"That will happen automatically. It's not something that's worth a long report.”

“And I don't want some smart-ass reporter implying that Theo knew about the illegality when he says he didn't.”

“The one thing I'll promise you, “Chippingham said, "is that whatever we do will be fair. I'll see to it myself.”

Margot made no comment and instead picked up a slip of paper on her desk "You came here in a chauffeured limo.”

Chippingham was startled.”Yes, I did.”The car and driver were one of the perks of his job, but the experience of being spied on—which had obviously happened—was new and unsettling.

”In future, use a taxi. I do. So can you. And something else. She fixed him with a steely glance.”The News Division's budget is to be cut by twenty percent immediately. You'll receive a memo from me tomorrow and 'immediately' means just that. I shall expect a report within a week on how economies have been made.”

Chippingham was too dazed for more than a polite, formal leave-taking.

The item about Theodore Elliott and income taxes appeared on the CRA National Evening News and the Globanic chairman's statement about his innocence was left unchallenged. As a Horseshoe producer observed a week later, "If it had been a politician, we'd have poured skepticism on him, then peeled away his skin like an onion As it is, we haven't even done a follow-up."

In fact, a follow-up was considered; there was sufficient new material. But during a discussion at the Horseshoe in which the news president participated, it was decided that other news that day was more important, so the follow-up didn't run. The decision was subtle; few, even to themselves, conceded it to be a copout.

The matter of budget cutting was something else. It was an area where all networks were vulnerable to their conquerors and everyone knew it, including Leslie Chippingham. The News Divisions in particular had become fat, overstaffed and ripe for pruning.

When it happened at CBA News—the result of the demanded cost economies—the process was painful, mainly because more than two hundred lost their jobs.

The firings produced cries of outrage from those left jobless, and their friends. The print press had a bonanza, with newspapers running human interest stories slanted sympathetically toward the economy wave's victims—even though, quite frequently, print publishers exercised the same kind of economies themselves.

A group within CBA News, all of whose members were on long-term contracts, sent a letter of protest to the New York Times. The signatories included Crawford Sloane, four senior correspondents and several producers. Their letter lamented that among those abruptly unemployed were veteran correspondents who had served CBA News for most of their working lives. It also pointed out that CBA overall was in no financial difficulty and that the network's profits comparedfavorably with those of major industrial companies. The published letter was discussed and quoted nationwide.

The letter and the attention accorded it infuriated Margot Lloyd-Mason. Once more she sent for Leslie Chippingham.

With the Times open in front of her she railed, "Those overpaid, conceited bastards are part of management. They should be supporting management decisions, not undermining us by public bellyaching.”

The news president ventured, "I doubt if they consider themselves management. They're news people first and are unhappy about their colleagues. And I may as well tell you, Margot, so am I."

”The network head impaled him with a glare.”I've enough problems without any from you, so forget that brand of garbage. See to it that you ream out the people who signed that letter and let them know I expect no more disloyalty. You may also inform them that their kind of double-dealing will be remembered at contract renewal time which reminds me—some of the amounts we're paying news people are insanely exorbitant, especially for that arrogant son of a bitch Crawford Sloane.

”Subsequently, Leslie Chippingham relayed a softer version of Margot's comments, reasoning that he was the one who had to hold the News Division together, something that was becoming increasingly difficult.

The difficulty was compounded a few weeks later when a new proposal by Mrs. Lloyd-Mason was announced through a CBA internal memo. The intention was to create a political action fund to pay for lobbying in Washington on behalf of CBA network Money for the fund would be contributed "voluntarily” by network executives and deducted from their salaries. Senior personnel in the News Division would be included The announcement pointed out that the arrangement conformed to a similar one within the parent company, Globanic Industries.

The same day the announcement arrived, Chippingham was near the Horseshoe when a producer asked him, "Les, you're going to fight that political action shit for all of us, aren't you?”

From several feet away, Crawford Sloane interjected, "Of course he is. Les would never agree to anything which had the News Division asking for political favors instead of reporting them. We can all rely on him for that.”

The news president found it hard to tell whether or not there was irony in the anchorman's voice. Either way, Chippingham recognized he had another serious problem, originating through Margot's ignorance—or was it plain uncaring?—-about news integrity. Should he go to her and argue against the political action fund? He doubted, though, that it would make any difference since Margot's main objective was clearly to please her Globanic masters and advance her own career.

In the end he solved his problem by leaking the story, along with a copy of the internal CBA memo, to the Washington Post. He had a contact there whom he had used before and who could be trusted not to reveal a source. The resulting Post report, which was picked up by other papers, ridiculed the idea of involving a news organization in political lobbying. Within days the plan was officially abandoned—according to rumors, on the personal orders of Globanic's chairman, Theodore Elliott.

Once more the CBA network president sent for Chippingham.

Coldly, without greeting or preliminaries, she asked, "Who in the News Division gave my memo to the Post?”

"I have no idea, “he lied "

Bullshit! If you don't know for sure, you have a damn good notion.”

Chippingham decided to keep quiet, though noting with relief that it had not occurred to Margot he himself might be responsible for the leak.

She broke the silence between them.”You have been uncooperative ever since I came here.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way because I don't believe it's true. In fact, I've tried to be honest with you.”

Ignoring the disclaimer, Margot continued, "Because of your persistent attitude I've had inquiries made about you and have learned several things. One is that your job is important to you at this moment, because financially you can't afford to lose it.”

“My job has always been important to me As to financially important, isn't that true of most people? Perhaps even of you. Chippingham wondered uneasily what was coming.

With a thin, superior smile the network chief said, "I'm not in the middle of a messy divorce action. You are. Your wife wants a large financial settlement, including most of your joint property and, if she doesn't get it, will produce evidence in court of a half-a-dozen adulterous relationships which you were careless about concealing. You also have debts, including a big personal bank loan, so you desperately need a continuing income; otherwise you'll be a personal bankrupt and the next thing to a pauper.

Raising his voice, he objected, "That's insulting! It's an intrusion on my personal privacy.”

Margot said calmly, "It may be, but it's true."

Despite the protest, he was jolted by the extent of her knowledge. He was in a near-desperate financial bind, in part because he had never been able to manage his personal money and across the years had not only spent his substantial salary as it came in, but had borrowed heavily. He had also never been able to resist the temptations of other women, a weakness that Stasia, his wife of twenty years, had appeared to accept—until three months ago. Then, without warning, Stasia's pent-up rage and stored-up evidence exploded into a ferocious divorce action. Even with that to contend with, he had foolishly started another affair, this time with Rita Abrams, a CBA News producer. He hadn't intended it to happen but it had Now he found it exciting and wanted to go on. But the thought of losing his job frightened him

"Now listen to me carefully, “Margot said.”It isn't hard to replace a News Division president and if I need to, I will Before you even know what's happening, you'll be out on your ass and someone else in. There are plenty of candidates for your job, here and at the other networks. Is that clear?”

Chippingham said resignedly, "Yes, it's clear.”

"However, if you play ball with me, you'll stay on. But News Division policy will be the way I want it. Remember that And one more thing: When I want something done which you don't like, don't waste my time with crap about news ethics and purity. You stopped being pure—if you ever were—when you didn't use those follow-up pieces about Theo Elliott's taxes.”Margot gave her thin smile again.”Oh yes, I know about that. So you've been corrupted already and a few more times won't make any difference. That's all, You can go.”

That conversation had taken place two days before Chuck Insen, and then Crawford Sloane, had come to the news president with their personal problems about the National Evening News. Chippingham knew that their differences must be settled promptly within the News Division. For as long as possible he wanted no more visits to Margot, no more confrontations.

* * *

"I'm telling you, Crawf, just as I told Chuck,” Chippingham said, "right now you'll do the greatest harm to all of us in news if the two of you go public with your infighting. Over at Stonehenge, the News Division is out of favor. As for Chuck's idea of involving Margot Lloyd-Mason, she won't take his side or yours. What she'll probably do is more cost cutting on the grounds that if we have time for internal feuding we're not busy enough, and are therefore overstaffed.”

"I can fight that,” Sloane said.

”And I guarantee you'll be ignored.” Unusually, Chippingham was becoming angry. At times it was a news president's function to protect his reporting staff, including an anchorman, from the network's top management. But there were limits; for once he decided to be rough.”Something you may as well know is that our new boss doesn't have a lot of time for you. Because of that damn fool letter you and the others wrote to the Times, she described you as arrogant and overpaid.”

Sloane protested, "That letter was on target. I'm entitled to a free opinion and I expressed it.”

"Balls! You had no business putting your name there. In that I agree with Margot. For god's sake, Crawf, grow upl You can't take the kind of money you do from the network and continue being 'one of the boys,' shooting off at the mouth when you feel like it.”

There was no reason, Chippingham thought, why he should take all the flak from the network's new owners. Let other senior staffers, including Sloane and Insen, carry their share! The news president also had a private reason for irritation. Today was Thursday. Tonight he planned to leave for a long, love-filled weekend with Rita Abrams in Minnesota. Rita was already there, having arrived the night before. What he didn't want was to have this stupid brawl fomenting in his absence.

”I still come back to what we started with,” Sloane said.”There need to be changes in our news format.”

"There can be,” Chippingham told him.”I have some ideas myself. We'll work them out here.”

"How?”

"Starting next week I'll hold meetings with you and Chuck Insen—as many as it takes to get agreement. Even if I have to slam your heads together, we'll find an acceptable compromise.”

"We can try it,” Sloane said doubtfully, "but it's not totally satisfactory.”

Chippingham shrugged.”Tell me something that is.”

* * *

When the news president had gone, Sloane sat silently in his office brooding over their discussion. Then he remembered the speakerphone announcement about Larchmont. Curious to know if there was any more information, he left his office and headed for the newsroom.

15

Bert Fisher, the Larchmont stringer, was continuing to pursue a potential news story stemming from the police radio message about a "possible kidnap.” After telephoning WCBA-TV, Bert hurried out of his apartment, hoping that his battered twenty-year-old Volkswagen bug would start. Following an anxious minute of abortive whines and grunts, it did. He kept a scanner radio in the car and set it to the Larchmont police frequency. Then he headed for downtown—the Grand Union supermarket.

Partway there some more police radio exchanges caused him to change direction.

”Car 423 to headquarters. Proceeding to house of possible victims of reported incident. Address, 66 Park Avenue. Request a detective meet me there.”

“Headquarters to 423. Ten four."

A brief pause, then, ”I"Headquarters to car 426 Proceed urgently to 66 Park Avenue. Meet post officer, car 423. Investigate officer's report.

In local police usage, Bert realized, "proceed urgently” meant: with flashing lights and siren. Clearly, the action was heating up and Bert increased his own speed as much as the ancient Volkswagen would allow. Now, heading for Park Avenue, he felt excited about that address number-66. He wasn't sure, but if the house belonged to the person he thought it did, this was really a big story.

* * *

Officer Jensen, who had responded to the original call from the Grand Union supermarket and interviewed the old lady, Priscilla Rhea, now had a feeling he was involved in something serious. In his mind, he went over the situation so far.

During his questioning of others at the supermarket, several witnesses confirmed seeing a fellow shopper—identified by two of them as Mrs. Crawford Sloane—leave the store suddenly, apparently in distress. She was accompanied by her young son and two other men, one about thirty, the other elderly. The thirty-year-old appeared to have come to the store on his own. At first he had asked other shoppers whether they were Mrs. Sloane. Then, when he encountered the real Mrs. Sloane, the hasty exodus ensued.

From that point, the only person claiming to have seen any of those described was Miss Rhea. Her story about an attack, with the victims being carried away in a "little bus,” was increasingly believable. Contributing to the credibility was that Mrs. Sloane's Volvo station wagon—pointed out to Officer Jensen by someone who knew her—was still parked in the supermarket lot, with no sign of Mrs. Sloane or the others with her. There were also those splotches on the ground which possibly were blood. Jensen had asked one of the other officers now on the scene to protect them as evidence, for examination later.

Another onlooker, who lived near the Sloanes, had given Jensen the family's home address. This, coupled with the fact that there was nothing more for him to do at the supermarket, had prompted Jensen's radio message asking for a detective to meet him at 66 Park Avenue. In other circumstances, and because Larchmont police radio conversations were casual compared with those of larger forces, he would have included the Sloane name with the address. But knowing that Larchmont's most famous resident was involved, and being aware that outsiders might be listening, he withheld the name for the time being.

Jensen was on his way to Park Avenue now—a journey of only a few minutes.

He had just entered the driveway of number 66 when a second police car—unmarked, though with a portable flashing roof light and screaming siren—pulled in behind. Detective Ed York, an old-timer on the force whom Jensen knew well, stepped out. York and Jensen conferred briefly, then walked to the house together. The policemen identified themselves to Florence, the Sloanes' day maid, who bad come to the front door at the sound of the siren. She let them in, her face showing a mixture of surprise and alarm.

”There's a possibility, only a possibility,” Detective York informed her, "that something may have happened to Mrs. Sloane.” He began asking questions which Florence answered, her concern mounting as she did.

Yes, she had been in the house when Mrs. Sloane, Nicky, and Mr. Sloane's father left to go shopping. That was about eleven o'clock. Mr. Sloane had left for work just as Florence arrived, which was 9:30. No, she had not heard from anyone in the family since Mrs. Sloane left, though she hadn't expected to. In fact there had been no phone calls at all. No, there had been nothing unusual when Mrs. Sloane and the others drove away. Except . . . well . . .

Florence stopped, then asked anxiously, "What's this all about? What's happened to Mrs. Sloane?”

"Right now there isn't time to explain,” the detective said.”What did you mean by 'except . . . well?'

"Well, when Mrs. Sloane, her father-in-law and Nicky were leaving, I was in there.” Florence motioned toward a sunroom at the front of the house.”I saw them drive away.”

"And?”

"There was a car parked on the side street; you can see it from there. When Mrs. Sloane left, all of a sudden the car started and went the same way she did. I didn't think anything about it at the time.”

"No reason why you should,” Jensen said.”Can you describe the car?”

"It was dark brown, I think. Sort of medium size.”

"Did you see a license plate?”

"No.”

"Did you recognize the make?”

Florence shook her head.”They all look the same to me.”

"Leave that for now,” Detective York told Jensen. Then to Florence, "Think about that car. Try to remember anything else, and we'll come back to you.”

The detective and Jensen returned outside. As they did, two more police cruisers arrived. One brought a uniformed sergeant, another the Larchmont chief of police. The chief, in uniform, was tall and rangy, with a deceptively low-key manner. The four began a hasty conference in the driveway.

Near the end of it the chief asked Detective York, "Do you think this is for real-a kidnap?”

"At this moment,” York said, "everything points that way.”

"Jensen?”

"Yes, sir. It's for real.”

"You said the Nissan van that was seen leaving had New Jersey plates?”

“According to a witness, yes, sir.”

The chief mused.”If it is a kidnap and they cross a state line, it becomes the FBI's jurisdiction. That's the Lindbergh law.”

He added, "Not that that kind of detail worries the FBI.”

The last words came out sourly, reflecting the conviction of many local lawmen that the FBI moved in on any high-profile case they wanted and found reasons to decline the ones they didn't. Then the chief said decisively, "I'm calling in the FBI now.”

He returned to his car and picked up the radio mike.

A minute or two later, rejoining the others, the chief ordered Detective York to go back to the house and stay inside.”The first thing you do, have that maid put you in touch with Mr. Sloane and speak to him yourself. Tell him as much as you know, and that we're doing all we can. After that, answer any incoming phone calls. Keep a note of everything. You'll be getting help soon.”

The sergeant and Jensen were instructed to remain on protective duty outside.”Soon, there'll be more people here than flies around a shithouse. Let no one past the front gate except the FBI. When the press get here with their questions, direct them to headquarters.”

At that moment they heard the sound of a noisy approaching car. Their heads turned. It was a battered white Volkswagen bug and the chief said glumly, "Here's the first.”

* * *

Bert Fisher had no need to check which house on Park Avenue was number 66. The assembled police cars were direction enough.

As he stopped his VW at the curb and climbed out, the police chief had entered his own car and was about to leave. Bert hurried forward.”Chief, can you make a statement?”

"Oh, it's youl”The chief ran down his window on the driver's side; he had encountered the old news stringer many times before.”A statement about what?”

"Oh, come on, Chief! I've heard all the radio buzz, including your instruction just now to call in the FBI.” Bert looked around him, realizing that his hunch was right.”This is Crawford Sloane's home, isn't it?”

"Yes, it is.”

"And is it Mrs. Sloane who's been kidnapped?”

As the chief hesitated, Bert pleaded, "Look, I'm the first here. Why not give a local boy a break?”

The chief who was a reasonable man, thought, Well, why not? He was even a little fond of Fisher, a nuisance at times like a persistent mosquito, though never vicious the way some press people could be.

”If you heard all the messages,” the chief said, "you'll know we aren't certain of anything yet. But yes, we do think Mrs. Sloane may have been abducted, along with the Sloanes' son Nicholas and Mr. Sloane's father.”

Bert, scribbling as the chief spoke, knew this was the most important story of his life and he wanted to be careful.”So what you're telling me is that the Larchmont police are acting on the assumption there have been three kidnappings.”

The chief nodded.”That's an okay quote.”

"Do you have any idea who might have done this?”

"No. Oh, just one thing. Mr. Sloane has not been informed and we're trying to get in touch with him. So before you start sounding off, for god's sake give us time to do that.”

With that, the chief pulled away and Bert dived for his VW. Despite the chief's caveat, he had no intention of waiting for anything. The only question in his mind was: Where was the nearest pay phone?

Moments later, as Bert turned out of Park Avenue, he saw another car turning in and recognized the occupant—the local stringer for WNBC-TV. So the competition was onto the story. Now, if Bert was to stay ahead he had to move fast.

Not far away, on Boston Post Road, he found a pay phone. As he punched out the numbers of WCBA-TV, his hand was trembling.

16

At 11:20 A.M. in the pressure-driven newsroom of WCBA-TV, tension was rising as it always did during the hour preceding the local New York station's News at Noon. Today especially, there was a heavy budget of news with several developing stories competing for the lead position.

A famous evangelist, in New York to receive a religious prize, had been found dead in his Waldorf suite, apparently from a cocaine overdose, and a prostitute who had spent the night with him was being questioned by police. In midtown Manhattan an office building was on fire; people trapped on high floors were being rescued by helicopter. A Wall Street billionaire, terminally ill with cancer, was being wheeled around the Bronx in an invalid chair as he handed out fistfuls of one-hundred-dollar bills. Every few minutes, from a trailing armored car, his supply was replenished.

Amid a scene of near-bedlam, Bert Fisher's phone call was routed to the same assistant news director as before who, on hearing who was calling, snapped, "We're swamped here. Make it short and quick!”

Bert did, at which the young newsman said incredulously, "You're sure? Absolutely sure? Do you have confirmation?”

"From the chief of police.” Bert added proudly, "He gave me an exclusive statement and, to be safe, I had him repeat it.”

The assistant news director was already on his feet, signaling to the news director, shouting urgently, "Line four! Line four!” He told an assignment editor at a desk beside him, "We need a camera crew in Larchmont fast. Don't ask me how to find one, just pull them off something else, anything else, and get them there.”

The woman news director was already listening to Bert Fisher. When she had made notes of the essentials, she asked him, "Who else has the story?”

"I was the first. Still am. But WNBC's man was arriving as I left.”

"Did he have a camera crew?”

"No."

The assistant news director crossed the newsroom to report, "I've a crew on the way, We pulled them from the Bronx.”

The news director spoke into the phone, instructing Bert Fisher, "Stay on the line.” Then to a writer at a desk nearby: "Take line four. It's Fisher, Larchmont. Get everything he has, then write it as our noon lead.”

At the same time the news director picked up a telephone connecting her directly to the network. Ernie LaSalle, CBA's national editor, answered and she told him, "The kidnap in Larchmont is confirmed. Half an hour ago unknown persons violently seized Crawford Sloane's wife, his son, and Crawford's father.”

"Good Christ!”LaSalle's shock and incredulity came down the line.”Has Crawf been told?”

"I don't think so.”

"Are the police involved?”

"Very much so, and they've called in the FBI. Our man Fisher has a statement from the Larchmont chief.” Checking her notes, the news director read aloud the chief's statement, Bert Fisher's query, and the chief's words, "That's an okay quote.”

"Run that past me again.” LaSalle was frantically typing as he spoke.

The WCBA news director did so, adding, "We've heard that WNBC is onto the story, though a tad behind us. Look, we'll go with this at noon anyway, and I'm considering breaking into programming now. But I thought, since this is family . . .”

Before she could finish, LaSalle snapped, "Don't do a damn thing over there. The brass will be in on this. And if anybody breaks it, we will.”

* * *

Taking seconds only, Ernie LaSalle debated his options.

He had several.

One was to take whatever time was necessary to first contact Crawford Sloane, who might or might not be in the building, then personally and gently as possible convey to Crawf the frightening information. A second was to pick up the red reporting phone in front of him and announce to the entire News Division the kidnapping of the Sloane family, after which urgent action to make an on-air report would undoubtedly begin. The third was to issue an order to network master control that CBA News would "take air” in approximately three minutes, interrupting network programming with a special bulletin. LaSalle was one of a half-dozen people who had the power to authorize such intrusion and, in his judgment, the news just received was not only preeminent, but of immense public interest.

He made his decision, opting for the second choice. Influencing his judgment was the knowledge that another New York station, WNBC-TV—owned by NBC network—was on the Larchmont scene. Undoubtedly NBC News would receive a report swiftly from their affiliate, just as CBA had. Therefore there wasn't time for humane niceties. As for going on the air at once, there were plenty of other people around, including the News Division president, Les Chippingham, to make that decision.

I'm sorry as hell to do this to you, Crawf, LaSalle thought, then picked up the red reporting phone.

”National desk. LaSalle. The earlier reported kidnapping at Larchmont, New York, has been confirmed by the local chief of police who has called in the FBI. According to police, the reported victims are Mrs. Crawford Sloane, young Nicholas Sloane and . . .” Despite his resolve and professionalism, LaSalle found his voice breaking. Steeling himself he continued.”. . . and Crawford's father, who were violently seized and driven away by unknown persons. WCBA has reliable on-scene coverage, details available here. NBC is believed to be working on this story, though we have a slight lead. National desk recommends taking network air immediately.”

* * *

Horror and consternation swept through the News Division like a tidal wave. Everyone stopped working. Many looked at each other, asking silently, Did I really hear that? When confirmation was forthcoming, unanswerable questions sprang to lips: How could it happen? Who would do such a thing? Is it a kidnap for ransom? "at do the kidnappers want? What are the chances the police will catch them quickly? Oh god, how must Crawford feel?

One floor above the newsroom, senior staffers at the Horseshoe were equally appalled, though their shock lasted only moments. After it, out of habit and discipline, they were galvanized to action.

Chuck Insen, as senior producer in the building, left his office on the run. All his newsman's instincts told him that the national desk advice to take network air immediately would be followed. When that happened, Insen's appointed place was in the broadcast control room four floors below. Reaching a bank of elevators, he jabbed a down button with his thumb.

Impatiently awaiting for an elevator, Insen's mind overflowed with sympathy for Sloane, their differences for the moment totally erased. He wondered: Where was Crawf? Earlier, Insen had seen him briefly in the distance and knew that he and Les Chippingham had had their heads together in Sloane's office for reasons Insen already knew. Presumably Crawf was somewhere in the building and must have heard the hot-line call. Which raised a crucial question.

When urgent breaking news was deemed significant enough to interrupt the network with a special report, it was the evening news anchorman—in CBA's case, Crawford Sloane—who faced the cameras. If the anchorman wasn't on the scene he would be sent for, with any available correspondent filling in until the anchor arrived. But, Insen realized, there was absolutely no way Sloane could be expected to handle this sudden, harrowing news about his own family.

At that moment a "down”elevator arrived and the business correspondent of CBA News, Don Kettering, prepared to step out. Kettering, middle-aged with a thin mustache and looking like a well-to-do businessman himself, opened his mouth to say something but never got started. This was because Insen shoved him back inside the elevator and hit the B I button for first basement. The elevator doors closed.

Kettering spluttered, "What the—”

“Hold it,” Insen said.”You heard the speakerphone just now?”

"Yes, I'm damn sorry. I was going to tell Crawf—”

“Where you're going,” Insen said, "is on the air. Get to the flash studio and take the hot seat. Crawf can't do this. You're available. I'll talk to you from the control room.”

Kettering, a quick thinker and an experienced general reporter before he became a business specialist, nodded. He even seemed a little pleased at the prospect.”Do I get some briefing?”

"We'll give you all we have so far. You'll get maybe a minute to do a quick study, then ad-lib. More will be fed to you as it comes in.”

"Right.”

As Insen left the elevator, Kettering pressed a button which would take him upward to the broadcast floor.

Elsewhere, other activity was in high gear, some proceeding automatically.

In the newsroom, the Northeast assignment editor was rounding up two network camera crews and correspondents. Their instructions were to proceed post haste to Larchmont and obtain pictures of the kidnap scene as well as interview police and any witnesses. A mobile transmitting van would follow right behind.

In a small research department adjoining the Horseshoe, an offshoot of a larger research library in another building, a half-dozen people were hastily assembling a computer biography of Crawford Sloane and the few known facts about his family, few because Jessica Sloane had always insisted on privacy for herself and Nicholas.

From somewhere, though, main research had acquired a photograph of Jessica which was coming through on a fax machine; a graphics editor hovered over the machine, waiting to remove the picture and convert it to a slide. Printing out from another computer was the war record of Crawford's father, Angus Sloane. There would be a photo of him too. No picture of Nicky had been located so far.

A research assistant grabbed all the material available and ran down a flight of stairs to the flash facility studio where Don Kettering had just arrived. Right behind research, a messenger from the national desk brought a printout of Bert Fisher's Larchmont report, received from WCBA-TV. Kettering sat down at the studio's central desk and, blocking out all else, immersed himself in reading. Around him technicians were arriving, lights coming on. Someone clipped a microphone onto Kettering's jacket. A cameraman framed Kettering in his lens.

The flash facility was the smallest studio in the building, no bigger than a modest living room. It had a single camera and was kept for occasions such as this when it could be activated and ready in rnoments.

Meanwhile, in the darkened control room where Chuck Insen had now established himself, a woman director slid into her central seat facing a bank of TV monitors, some illumined, others black. On her right, an assistant with an open notebook joined her. Operators and technicians were taking their places, a stream of orders flowing.

”Standby camera one. Mike check.”

"Bill, this will be a live announce. 'We interrupt this programming' open and a 'resume programming' close. Okay?”

"Okay. Got it.”

"Do we have a script yet?”

"Negative. Don may go ad-lib.”

"Bring the video up ten units.”

"Camera one, let's see Kettering.”

More monitors were coming alight, among thern one from the flash facility. The face of Don Kettering filled the screen.

The director's assistant was talking with network master control.”This is news. We're expecting to break into the network with a bulletin. Please stand by.”

The director inquired, "Is the special slide ready?”

A voice responded, "Here it is.”

On another monitor, bright red letters filled the screen:

CBA NEWS

SPECIAL

BULLETIN

"Hold it there.” The director turned in her chair to speak to Insen.”Chuck, we're ready as we'll ever be. Do we go or not?”

The executive producer, a telephone cradled in his shoulder, told her, "I'm finding out now.”

He was talking to the News Division president who was in the main newsroom where Crawford Sloane was pleading for delay.

The time was 11:52 A.M.

* * *

When the shattering national desk announcement began, Crawford Sloane was at the head of a stairway on the fourth floor, about to descend to the newsroom. His intention had been to find out more, if he could, about the earlier report from Larchmont.

As the speakerphones went live, he stopped to listen, then, scarcely believing what he had heard, stood briefly, dazed and in a state of shock. His momentary trance was interrupted by one of the Horseshoe secretaries who had seen him leave and now came running after him, calling out breathlessly, "Oh, Mr. Sloane! The Larchmont police are on your line. They want to talk to you urgently.”

He followed the girl back and took the call in his office.

”Mr. Sloane, this is Detective York. I'm at your home and have some unfortunate—'

"I just heard. Tell me what you know.”

"Actually, sir, it's very little. We know that your wife, son and father left for the Grand Union supermarket about fifty minutes ago. Inside the store, according to witnesses, they were approached . . .”

The detective continued his recital of known facts, including the trio's apparently forced departure in a Nissan van. He added, "We've just heard that FBI special agents are on the way here, and someone from FBI is coming over to you. I've been asked to tell you there's concern about your own safety. You'll receive protection, but for the time being you should not leave the building you are in.”

Sloane's mind was whirling. Consumed with anxiety, he asked, "Is there any idea who might have done this?”

"No, sir. It all happened suddenly. We're absolutely in the dark.”

"Do many people know about this—what's happened?”

"As far as I know, not many.” The detective added, "The longer we can keep it that way, the better.”

"Why?”

"With a kidnapping, Mr. Sloane, publicity can be harmful. We may be hearing from the kidnappers—they'll probably try to contact you first. Then we, or more likely the FBI, will want a dialog with them, a start to negotiating. We won't want the whole world in on that. Nor will they because . . “

Sloane interrupted.”Detective, I'll talk to you later. Right now there are things I have to do.”

Aware of activity around the Horseshoe and knowing what it meant, Sloane wanted to curb precipitate action. Hurrying from his office he called out, "Where's Les Chippingham?”

"In the newsroom,” a senior producer said. Then, more gently, "Crawf, we're all damn sorry, but it looks as if we're going on the air.”

Sloane scarcely heard. He raced for the stairs and descended them swiftly. Ahead he could see the news president in hasty conference with several others around the national desk. Chippingham was asking, "How sure are we of that Larchmont stringer?”

Ernie LaSalle answered, "WCBA say he's a little old guy they've had for years—four square, reliable.”

"Then I guess we should go with what we have.”

Sloane broke into the circle.”No, no, no, Les, don't go with it.

We need more time. The police just told me they may hear from the kidnappers. Publicity could harm my family.”

LaSalle said, "Crawf, we know what you're going through. But this is a big story and others have it. They won't hold off. WNBC—”

Sloane shook his head.”I still say no!” He faced the news president directly.”Les, I beg of you—delay!”

There was an embarrassed silence. Everyone knew that in other circumstances, Sloane would be the first to urge going ahead. But no one had the heart to say, Crawf you're not thinking coherently.

Chippingham glanced at the newsroom clock: 11:54.

LaSalle had taken over the phone call from Insen. Now he reported, "Chuck says everyone's set to go. He wants to know: Are we breaking into the network or not?”

Chippingham said, "Tell him I'm still deciding.” He was debating: Should they wait until noon? On monitors overhead he could see the national feeds of all networks. On CBA a popular soap opera was still in progress; when it concluded, commercials would follow. Cutting in now would be a costly disruption. Would less than another six minutes make much difference?

At that moment, simultaneously, several newsroom computers emitted a "beep.” On screens a bright "B”appeared the signal for an urgent press wire bulletin. Someone reading a screen called out, "AP has the Sloane kidnap story.”

On the national desk another phone rang. LaSalle answered, listened, then said quietly, "Thank you for telling us.” Hanging up, he informed the news president, "That was NBC. They called us as a courtesy to say they have the story. They're going with it on the hour.”

The time was fifteen seconds short of 11:55.

Making a decision, Chippingham said, "We go now!” Then to LaSalle, "Tell Chuck to break the network.”

17

In the CBA News headquarters building, two floors below street level in a small, plain room, two male operators sat facing complex switching systems with a galaxy of colored lights and dials, computer terminals and television monitors. Two sides of the room had glass surrounds looking out onto drab corridors. Passersby, if so inclined, could look in. This was network master control, technical command post for the entire CBA national network.

Through here all network programming flowed—entertainment, news, sports, documentaries, presidents' addresses, Capitol Hill follies, assorted live coverage and pre-recordings, and national commercials. Surprisingly, for all its importance as an electronic pulse center, master control's location and appearance were uninspiring.

At master control, each day usually advanced routinely according to a meticulous plan which codified each twenty-four hours of broadcasting in terms of minutes, sometimes seconds. Principally, execution of the plan was by computer, with the two operators overseeing—and occasionally interceding when unexpected events required regular programming to be interrupted.

An interruption was occurring now.

Moments earlier on a direct line from the News Division control room, Chuck Insen had instructed, "We have a news special. It's for the full network. Were taking air—now!”

As Insen spoke, the slide "CBA News Special Bulletin,” fed from the news control room, came up on a master control monitor.

The experienced master control operator who received the call knew the command "now”meant exactly that. In the absence of that word, if a program in progress were within a minute and a half of finishing, he would wait until its conclusion before breaking into the network feed. Similarly, if a commercial were airing, he would allow it to finish.

But "now”meant no delay, no holding. A one-minute commercial was being broadcast and had thirty seconds to go. But moving a switch, the operator cut it, thereby costing CBA in lost revenue some $25,000. With another switch he put the "Special Bulletin”slide on the network video feed. Instantly the bright red words appeared on the screens of more than twelve million television sets.

For five seconds, as he watched a digital clock in front of him, the master control operator kept the audio feed silent. This was to allow control rooms of affiliate stations which had not been broadcasting the network program to interrupt their local programming and take the special bulletin. Most did.

At the end of five seconds the audio feed was opened and an announcer's voice heard.

”We interrupt our regular programming to bring you a special report from CBA News. Now, from New York, here is correspondent Don Kettering.”

In the news control room, the director ordered, "Cue Don!”

Across the nation, the face of CBA's business correspondent filled television screens.

His voice and expression serious, Kettering began, "Police in Larchmont, New York, have reported the apparent kidnapping of the wife, young son and father of CBA News anchorman Crawford Sloane.”

A slide of Sloane's familiar face appeared as Kettering continued, "The kidnapping, by unidentified persons, occurred about forty minutes ago. According to police and a witness at the scene, it was preceded by a violent assault

The time was 11:56 A.M.

Beating out its competitors, CBA News had broken the story first.