by Lynn Ames
“Kate, Jay, have a seat.” Dara pointed to the chairs next to which they’d placed their stuff. “I’ll just let the pilot know we’re ready to go—”
“Go? Where are we going?” Kate asked.
“That’s ultimately up to you,” Dara answered. “But for now, in terms of privacy, we’re better off in the air than we are sitting here, so the crew assures me we can spend a little while flying around in the friendly skies before we select a destination.”
“Don’t Kate and I have to show our ID to anyone? We’re not on your manifest, are we?”
“The beauty of flying privately. The crew only needs to report the number of passengers, not their identities.” Dara retreated to the cockpit to talk to the two pilots and the flight attendant.
“And they sign a confidentiality agreement preventing them from disclosing who the passengers are, and any details of what happens on board,” Rebecca added. “We thought, given the increased level of scrutiny, an airborne conference room would be most advantageous.”
Dara returned. “We’re all set. They’re going to get us out of the hangar, then it will take them another fifteen or twenty minutes to get all of the systems up to speed before we can be cleared for takeoff.”
“And we can just fly around with no destination and no flight plan? I didn’t think that was even possible,” Jay said.
“We can,” Trevor piped in. “It’s called a VFR departure—visual flight rules.”
“Snore,” Richard joked. “Don’t mind Trevor, he has his own plane and likes to talk about flying ad nauseam.”
“Hey. The lady asked a question, didn’t you?” Trevor winked at Jay.
“I did.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Juanita said.
Kate crossed her legs, got comfortable, and observed the interaction. All of the actors seemed not only to know each other well, but also to genuinely like each other. She smiled to herself. Hopefully, that camaraderie would serve them well if the going got tough.
The co-pilot closed the door and sealed it shut. “You all might want to sit down. We’re about to get our push out of here. As soon as we’re outside on the ramp, we’ll turn on the auxiliary power unit and get the air circulating in here so you’ll be nice and comfortable.”
Everyone took a seat.
The flight attendant came by. “I’m Nancy.” She indicated Kate and Jay’s luggage. “Can I take your bags, please? I’ll stow your briefcases in the overhead compartment. Would you all like me to lower the shades so you have more privacy?”
“Yes, thank you, for all that, Nancy. That would be lovely.” After all of the shades were down and Nancy had stowed the bags and returned to her seat, Dara turned to Kate and Jay. “You’ve both told me in the past that you don’t believe in coincidences. Neither do I. So let me add up a few recent developments.
“One. The FBI questioned Jay about her manuscript. Two. The FBI tried to interview me about the movie through my attorney. Three. Suddenly, after giving us full cooperation and a wonderful incentive package, the Brits have withdrawn all permission for us to shoot at our primary location, where our crew already was building the sets and prepping the site. And four, the IRS has mysteriously decided to audit me.”
“At least all they’re doing is auditing you,” Jay mumbled.
Kate put a restraining hand on Jay’s arm and gave a subtle shake of her head. It would serve no useful purpose to mention the trumped up Swiss bank account and investigation.
“As I’ve said many times, I don’t much care for bullies,” Dara continued. “I think our best course of action is to confront them. Bullies invariably back down when challenged.”
“Let me get this straight—you want to take on two governments to see if they’ll blink?” Trevor asked.
“This isn’t some backyard pool game of chicken you’re talking about,” Laura said. “This is the government of the United States of America. The FBI, the IRS.”
“And don’t forget the British government,” Richard added.
Kate watched everyone’s body language. George sat back, calm, comfortable, and seemingly without a care in the world. Rebecca was focused on Dara, clearly being supportive. Richard, Laura, and Trevor displayed serious cases of nerves. Jay, of course, was intrigued.
“May I?” Kate asked.
Dara looked relieved. “Please.” She addressed the group. “For those of you who don’t know, Kate is the former Press Secretary to the President of the United States. Public relations, government, and dealing with the media are her areas of expertise.”
“And you should hear her sing,” Jay threw in.
She winked at Kate, and Kate understood that Jay was trying to loosen up the crowd.
“I’ll keep it in mind in case we add a musical number,” George deadpanned.
Kate smiled at him. “If you two are done joking around, I’ll give you my best professional advice and judgment.”
“Please,” Juanita said. Trevor, Richard, and Laura nodded in agreement.
“Okay. I’m not sure if any of you had a chance to see Former First Lady Mimi Hyland’s press conference yesterday…”
Dara and Rebecca nodded.
“I saw something on the evening news about it,” Richard said.
Trevor, Juanita, and Laura mumbled something about being otherwise occupied and not paying attention to the news.
“All-righty then,” Kate said. “The former first lady held a press conference in which she blasted the media, and indirectly went after the Feds, for investigating Jay with regard to the manuscript and the leak of classified information to Time magazine.” She made eye contact with all of the actors and George. “Are you with me so far?”
Everyone grunted an affirmative.
“Every newspaper headline and every radio and television talk show last night and this morning was abuzz with the story.” Kate drew the imaginary headlines in the air. “‘First Lady Comes Out Swinging.’ As you can imagine, the Feds aren’t too happy with the publicity or with losing the moral high ground.”
Again, Kate tried to gauge whether everyone was following her. They seemed to be. “If some very big, very popular, very influential Hollywood stars were to hold a press conference a day or two after the First Lady’s event grabbed headlines, it would mean another few cycles of very ugly, very bad publicity for the Feds. Trust me when I tell you, they’re not going to want that. In short, yes, I think they will blink, Trevor.”
“Howdy folks, from the flight deck again. You’ll need to buckle up now. We’ve been cleared for taxi and takeoff. It’s a beautiful day for a ride. The air is nice and smooth around 17,500 feet, so we’ll climb up to that altitude and have a look around until you tell us you’re ready to do something else.”
As the engines revved up, everyone buckled in. Kate leaned over to Dara and spoke into her ear. “There’s no point trying to compete with the noise, so let’s wait until we’re airborne to continue the group discussion.”
“Agreed.”
“Am I giving you the advice you were looking for?”
“Honestly, I’m interested in your best judgment, not what you think I want to hear. Am I crazy, or is what I’m suggesting a good idea?”
“What’s your desired outcome? What do you hope to gain by holding the press conference?”
“We need the Brits to back down and give us our shooting location. That’s the biggest hurdle right now. I haven’t done anything wrong, and I trust you and Jay, so I know I’m not in any real trouble with the Feds, and the IRS can kiss my ass. All of my tax returns are in perfect order. Although I’m annoyed as hell, I’m not worried on that front.”
Kate didn’t want to tell Dara what the IRS was capable of—that the agency could make her life a living hell—as they were doing with her and Jay. For now, it was more beneficial to focus on the matter at hand.
“If your primary goal is to be able to move ahead with the film and the location, then bringing public pressure to bear might do the t
rick.”
“Last interruption from the flight deck, folks. Just letting you know we’ve reached our cruising altitude and everything looks beautiful up here. Please enjoy the ride and let Nancy know if you need anything.”
Kate opened the shade. The sky was crystal clear with the sun shining in through the window, refracting the light and creating a rainbow on the cabin wall.
Everyone else followed suit, opening the remaining shades.
When the group was settled again, Dara said, “Listen, we’ve invested a lot of money and work into the sets and the location outside London. Frankly, without an approval to go forward there, we’re going to be hard-pressed to move ahead with the film.”
“Dara, what do you need, specifically, from us? Why are we here?” Laura asked. “Surely, you don’t need us. You’ve got more than enough star power on your own to attract the media’s attention.”
Dara leaned forward and made eye contact with all of the other actors. “Yes. Laura’s right. I could’ve called a press conference in LA by myself and pleaded our case. But here’s the thing. Nothing about this movie-making experience has been conventional. George and I understand that each of you has put something of yourselves on the line in committing to this project. Attaching your names came with risks, as we spelled out to you at the outset.”
“What Dara is trying, very nicely, to say here,” George interrupted, “is that your asses are on the line too. We don’t want to run roughshod over you on this. We’d prefer that we were all in this together. So if you have a problem with standing up for what’s right here, please say so now.”
Trevor and Laura fidgeted in their seats. Richard frowned. Juanita’s knee bounced up and down. She addressed Kate. “What’s the downside if we do this press conference? What could happen?”
“Good questions. Here are some things to consider. Because you all are widely recognizable and popular both in this country and abroad, there will be plenty of press at the event. Neither the US nor the British are going to want this kind of adverse publicity. It’s possible that all you’ll have to do is put out what we call a media advisory announcing your intention to hold a press conference. In the advisory, you’d explain that you want to address intentional obstructionism by these two governments.”
“I don’t understand,” Laura said. “We would telegraph what we wanted to say? Why would the media come if we already told them the punch line?”
“I know this might not make logical sense to you,” Kate said, “but it’s like playing poker or blackjack.”
“Now you’re talking my language,” Trevor broke in.
“How much did you lose to me last week?” Richard asked.
“As I was saying,” Kate shot the guys a glance, “oftentimes if you show enough of your hand—”
“Your opponent folds!”
“Yes, Trevor. Your opponent folds up cards and you win without ever having to play out the entire hand.”
“Do you think that’s what would happen here?” Juanita asked.
Kate weighed the odds. “I think it’s a strong possibility that, at the very least, the British government would back down, and you’d be back on track with your location. They’re going to view this as the US’s problem. They won’t want any part of the fallout for keeping the world from seeing some of its favorite stars on the big screen.”
“If it was your ass on the line, would you do it?” George asked.
Kate decided she liked him for his bluntness. “I would.” She nodded. “The timing is in your favor. As Dara pointed out, you’ve invested significant resources into the project, and if you do nothing, there’s no incentive for either government to make any of your current problems go away.”
“What do you think they could do to us personally for going public?” Laura asked.
Kate smiled at Laura, hoping that by being at ease herself, it would calm the actress’s nerves. Of everyone present, she clearly was the most timid.
“Once you step out in front of those cameras and say that the federal government is intimidating you, they can’t very well go after you and prove you right, now, can they? You’ll be fine.”
“Shine light, heal away darkness,” Jay muttered, as much to herself as anyone else.
Kate heard her and gave her hand a quick squeeze. Heaven knew Jay was paying a high price for doing just that.
“So,” Dara said, “I’ll take a show of hands. Who’s willing to do this?”
Each of the actors looked at the others. Kate wondered which of them would take the lead. She didn’t have to wonder long.
“I’m in,” Juanita said.
“Me too.” Richard held up his hand.
“Me three,” Trevor said.
Laura shrugged. “I guess so.”
Dara’s eyes shone with gratitude. “Excellent. Kate?”
“Mmm?”
“If this were you, where would you hold such an event?”
“You mean we’re going to do this right now?” Laura asked, a hint of panic in her voice.
“No time like the present,” Dara answered. “As Kate indicated, now is the time to strike, on the heels of the former first lady’s event.”
Kate drummed her fingers on her leg, calculating. “If you hold the press conference in LA, you’ll get the entertainment reporters to come out for sure. But what you really want here is to get as close as possible to the lion’s den. I’d schedule the press conference in Washington, D.C.” She checked her watch. “You want to be sure that your remarks will get the widest play in papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, and on all the major news shows. That means you want to hold it either between 10:30 and 11:30 in the morning, or 2:30 and 3:30 in the afternoon.”
“We’ve already missed those windows,” Rebecca said.
“That’s fine.” Kate pulled out her laptop. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
“So, we’re going to fly around until tomorrow?” Laura’s voice went up an octave.
“No,” Dara said. “We’re going to ask the pilot nicely to take us to the nation’s capital, where we’re going to spend the night at a lovely hotel I’ll be happy to book for us. And we’ll plan to hold the press conference tomorrow at whatever time Kate thinks is most advantageous to us.”
Kate chimed in, “I’d prefer to schedule it for tomorrow afternoon. That will give me time to secure a venue for the news conference, write the advisory, and have it disseminated to all of the appropriate news outlets.”
“You can do all that from here?” Rebecca asked.
“You forget, I spent a lot of time flying around on Air Force One using much more antiquated technology than we have available to us today. You’d be amazed at what you can accomplish at 20,000 feet.”
Kate extended the desk from the wall, set the laptop on it, and booted it up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sabastien hunched over in his chair, squinting at the tiny code crawling across the laptop screen. In the background, Veronique was running a larger query that he hoped would yield the specifics of the Commission’s plot.
“What are you doing sitting like that? Your back must be killing you,” Lorraine said. She handed him a cup of fresh espresso, which he sniffed appreciatively.
“I am determined to solve our encryption issue so that we can communicate securely with your husband via e-mail. I am almost there. One more string of code, and I believe I shall have it.”
“How are you going to know if you got it right without risking our exposure?”
“I set up a dummy account to which to send a nonsense e-mail for the testing.”
“You’re brilliant.”
“You doubted this before?” Sabastien gave Lorraine a toothy grin.
“Not for a second.” She pointed at the large monitor on the desk. “What’s Veronique up to?”
“Ah, she is searching for trap doors…” Sabastien stopped talking when Veronique dinged. He stroked the keyboard lightly with his fingertips. “I love you
so very much, beautiful Veronique. You never disappoint.”
“What’s going on?”
Sabastien’s eyes darted left to right as he read across the screen. “Fantastique.”
“What’s so wonderful?”
“First, my girlfriend was able to disable a series of trip wires so that we would not alert any bad guys.”
“Excellent.”
“I am not finished. After that, she examined every piece of code Vector Research installed within each system they touched.”
“You mean as part of their contracted work with Homeland Security?”
“I mean any command they inputted anywhere within your government’s network, period. Not just Homeland Security, but anywhere.”
“You could do that?”
“I am Sabastien Vaupaul. There is not anything involving technology that I cannot do. If I cannot do it, it cannot be done.”
“I love how modest you are.”
“When you are the best at what you do, there is no reason to hide under a tree, yes?”
“Under a bushel. The expression is, don’t hide your light under a bushel.”
“You say bushel, I say tree. Is the same, yes?”
Lorraine laughed. “If I say yes, will you be happy?”
“Very.”
“Then, yes.”
“Okay, good. Anyway, where was I?”
“You were about to dazzle me with what you and Veronique discovered.”
“Ah, just so. Let us be dazzled together, okay?”
“Sure.”
Sabastien clicked the mouse, hovered, clicked again, rearranged the data on the screen, and whistled.
“What is it?”
“Holy…”
“Sabastien. I love you, but if you don’t explain what you see in that mess of symbols, I’m going to strangle you.”
“Oh. Of course. Veronique and I, we have hit the jackpot.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, we have proof that Vector was using their access to the system to embed tracking capability that would give them unlimited access to all of your government’s most sensitive data.”
“Such as…?”