Dangerous Games

by Danielle Steel

  “Funny he didn’t marry her. She would have been great for his career, and given him just the boost he needed to put him over the top,” Felix said thoughtfully.

  “I don’t think she’d have married him. I got the feeling she wants nothing to do with politics anymore. She blames that for her husband’s death. And I can smell that Clark wants the White House, at any price.” He hadn’t admitted it publicly yet, but it was clear.

  “So can I,” Felix said, and popped another antacid into his mouth as he left. What Alix had said to him was all true, that Olympia was a useless source of information and under the spell of Tony Clark, but she was glad to have met Olympia anyway. Alix felt desperately sorry for her. All Olympia had left was the shadow of her former life. And Tony Clark as her only friend.

  Chapter 4

  A week after Alix’s visit with Olympia, she was working on several stories at her desk. A sex scandal involving a congressman who had just resigned, a nuclear threat from North Korea, the Supreme Court reviewing issues surrounding abortion, and one of the Southern states was resisting same-sex marriage again. She and Ben had been in New York for almost two weeks. She glanced at the monitor on her desk, as she always did, and instantly noted a banner with a news flash cross the screen. She stopped writing for a few minutes, and watched scenes of rioting in Tehran. All of the protestors were women.

  An extremist sect had put pressure on the Iranian government to tighten the rules again, after a long period of détente when women had had better jobs and educational opportunities, and conditions in Iran had improved markedly for them. Now the old regulations and ancient traditions were being enforced, and educated women were being pushed out of the workplace and many had recently been fired from their jobs. The women weren’t having it and were staging mass protests. The scenes Alix saw on the screen were of women being dragged away, forced into police vans, and taken to jail. And a young girl had been shot during a demonstration that morning. As soon as the regular broadcast resumed, Alix picked up the phone on her desk and called Felix in his office. He had just seen it too.

  “Things look hot in Tehran,” she said bluntly. They had shown a photograph of the girl who had been killed. She was twenty-two years old, had been a teacher, and was said to be much loved by all. She had become a symbol of the protest and women’s rights the moment she was killed.

  “Looks like it.”

  Things had been relatively calm there for some time, and now there was chaos in the streets. This kind of news was Alix’s stock-in-trade, and the kind of story she did best and gravitated toward.

  “What are we waiting for?” she asked him.

  “I want to see where it goes,” he said quietly. Felix always appeared unruffled and unimpressed, even if his nerves were raw. His wife had left him five years before, after a twenty-year marriage, and said he was married to his job and didn’t need her. She left him for a college professor at Dartmouth she had met on the Internet. They were still living together five years later, and Felix was alone. He had no time for anyone in his life, only news stories about everything that went wrong in the world. He hardly ever saw his kids, the people who worked for him had become his family, and he had an unfailing instinct for which stories mattered, as their ratings showed. Their nightly broadcast was in the lead by a mile, but it came at a heavy price, to all of them in the business. Those who worked hardest had no private lives. It was the nature of their jobs, and a given for all of them. “What are you working on right now?” he asked her.

  “The congressman in the sex scandal. I talked to his wife on the phone yesterday. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about it, you don’t need me to cover that. The Supreme Court reviewing decisions about abortion. Resistance in some Southern states to same-sex marriage, North Korea, but that seems to be calming down, and I’m waiting to hear from a guy at the National Rifle Association who plays golf with Tony Clark.”

  “Anything new there?”

  “For the moment, it looks like Olympia Foster could be right. He just has a lot of friends.”

  “Do you believe that?” Felix sounded surprised, as she heard him crunching the antacids he ate like candy. He had tried them all.

  “No, I don’t, but I’ve got nothing to go on except my gut for the moment,” she said honestly. “I think there’s something there, but maybe not enough.”

  “Yeah, me too.” He had a feeling the Vice President was dirty, but he wasn’t even sure why he did. He was too close to the money, suddenly too friendly with a number of people in important lobbies, and a few who had dubious reputations, and his public image seemed too picture-perfect to be real. But it was a long shot, guessing that he was taking bribes from any of the major lobbies. Maybe he wasn’t, but something about him never seemed right to Felix. They might never be able to prove it, or come up with the goods on him, if there were any to get. Clark was a clever guy and not likely to leave an incriminating trail. But if he was going to declare his candidacy for the White House in the future, it was important to Felix to turn up whatever they could, if there were illegal activities in his present or past. Alix shared the same view. The public had a right to know. But the immediacy of the riots in Tehran took precedence over all that now. Tony Clark could wait, and since the protestors in Iran were mostly women, and one of them had been killed, Alix was chomping at the bit to go.

  “What do you say?” she asked Felix, and he knew what she meant. He had been pondering whether or not to send her to Tehran when she called. She was quick. The story had broken only in the last hour. Alix never wasted any time. Local reporters on the scene were covering it for now, and they’d been using footage and live feeds from the BBC, which Felix never liked. He wanted his own people there.

  “I’m not sure. They may subdue the protestors while you’re still on the plane.” It was a fine art deciding when to send a crew and when to wait. He didn’t want to miss an important story, nor waste money, manpower, and time. “My gut says let’s give it another night. That’ll tell us more,” he said, hesitating.

  “It’s a long flight, and a lot can happen in one night. Let’s not wait too long,” she said sensibly.

  “We’ll get you an emergency press visa today, so you’re ready to go if things get worse. You can’t leave before that anyway.” It sounded reasonable to her. And she knew they’d get one for Ben too. He showed up in her office that afternoon, looking antsy and bored. They were like firefighters on call, always waiting for flames to erupt somewhere in the world.

  “Think we’ll go?” he asked her, and she shrugged in answer. She’d been tying up loose ends all afternoon, just in case.

  The NRA lobbyist who played golf regularly with Tony Clark had called her and had nothing relevant to say. He’d known the Vice President for a year, and said he was a great guy. He said Tony just wanted to keep his finger on the pulse of what was happening, he wanted to stay informed. There was nothing more to it than that. A lobbyist for the drug companies had said the same the day before. They all liked the Vice President and said they considered him a friend. She wondered if he was just lining up powerful contributors for his next campaign. There was no law against that.

  Some of them didn’t actually qualify legally as lobbyists since they didn’t spend the requisite 20 percent of their time lobbying for a single client, which was the standard for federal lobbyists, according to the law. If they spent less time than that, or didn’t work for a single client, technically they weren’t lobbyists, so weren’t regulated by federal law. There were lots of gray areas as to who was a lobbyist and who wasn’t. And Tony seemed to spend time indiscriminately with the official lobbyists and the informal ones. None of her research about the Vice President had been fruitful so far, and Felix’s hunch had gone nowhere. There was no evidence, or even a hint, that money had changed hands for Clark’s benefit. Maybe they were trading favors, or he was laying the groundwork to cash in later on. For now, she still didn’t know, but her antennae were up.

  She fil
led Ben in on that, while they watched another news bulletin from Tehran. Things were calming down. Another protest had been quashed that afternoon without injury or death.

  “It doesn’t seem to me like we’ll go,” Alix said after the bulletin, Ben looked disappointed and left half an hour later. He was on call, and Alix went back to work.

  She didn’t bother to pack a bag when she went home, and tried to call Faye, who didn’t pick up her phone and sent a text from the library later on. Like her mother, she was diligent about her work. Her strengths were English, history, and economics, and she was thinking now about going for a combined MBA and law degree after she graduated from Duke, and she had time to figure it out. Also like her mother, Faye kept her eye on her goals. She wanted to get her combined MBA/JD at Harvard, if she got in, which didn’t surprise her mother at all.

  Alix went to bed early after watching the news. Nothing had changed, but Felix called and woke her at four A.M.

  “They just shot and killed two young women. The police are claiming that other protestors did it, but someone got it on their cellphone on video. The police killed them. Pack your bags. I just called Ben. We’ve got you on a nine A.M. flight, you have to leave the city at six. Someone from the office will bring you your visa and Ben’s, and some cash for travel, in an hour.” He had taken care of everything. All she had to do was pack and send a text to Faye.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked him. An assistant producer could have done it for him, but Felix was obsessive about the job. His ex-wife hadn’t been wrong.

  “Not if I can help it,” he commented to Alix about his sleeping habits. He treated them all like his children, even though he was only ten years older than Alix, and looked twenty years older. Being bald and overweight didn’t help. He lived on a diet of doughnuts and Chinese food, which contributed to his constant indigestion and heartburn. There were some things even antacids couldn’t help, coupled with the stress of the job. He always felt that their lives were in his hands, and sometimes he was right. “Have a good flight. We’ll bring you up to date when you land, and tell you who we want you to interview. Get as high up in the government as you can, if they’ll talk. And cover your head, we don’t want you in jail, and wear your press badge at all times, Ben too.” It was like getting instructions from a father before she left for camp, and she smiled as she hung up. Ben called two minutes later and sounded excited.

  “We’re on the road again.” It had been obvious to Alix since they started working together that he preferred being anywhere in the world, under any conditions no matter how dangerous, to being at home. It reminded him of being in the SEALs when they were sent on a mission, and he’d been on some tough ones in his day. He thrived on the adrenaline rush he got from it, and at times so did she, and knew it about herself too. She had nothing to stay home for now, with Faye at Duke. She could be gone all the time if she chose. “I’ll meet you at the airport at seven. Felix said they’ll drop off my visa with yours, and our money.”

  “He told me that too.” She was wide awake now, they both were. The two of them were off to war again, covering crimes against humanity, in this case against women. They were the defenders of peace, justice, and human rights, for all. Sometimes it felt like a noble cause and at other times a job.

  “One of those girls they shot last night was sixteen years old,” Ben said, sounding moved by it. He had a soft heart, softer than Alix’s at times. “She was just a kid,” he said emotionally.

  “Not in her world,” Alix said, which they both knew was true.

  She went to pack after that, in her small rolling bag. They had no idea how long they’d be gone, which was usually the case, or where they might be sent afterward. They might be gone for weeks or even months. But at least Alix knew Faye was fine at Duke. She didn’t need to feel guilty about being gone anymore, although she had for years. She was on her own time now, guilt-free, or should have been. It was something Ben didn’t need to think about either, with no girlfriend, no wife, no kids, and a family he never saw, and hadn’t in two years. He was free as a bird.

  One of the assistant producers brought her their visas and cash right before Alix left for the airport with a car and driver. She was ten minutes early for check-in when she got there, and Ben was waiting for her, with a look of excitement in his eyes, and a cappuccino in his hand for her.

  “You’ve got the visas?” She nodded confirmation.

  “And the money.” She handed him an envelope with his, and they checked both their bags in, and went to the lounge to wait for the flight to start boarding. There was a TV on in a small room in the lounge, and they watched the latest news with a cluster of businessmen. The riots in Tehran had gotten worse, and Alix was anxious to get there, and so was Ben. She had a head scarf in her purse that she wore in Muslim countries. Going bareheaded was a mistake she never made, and she had a chador in her suitcase, just in case, to cover her clothing to her ankles, and she knew to put the scarf on when they entered Iranian airspace and not wait till they landed. She’d done it all before many times.

  She wanted to make calls as soon as they heard from Felix when they got there, to set up interviews for the broadcast. In addition, she was going to try to get interviews with the families of the three girls who had died, but her priority was the men in government who were making the decisions that had affected Iranian women severely, reversing an earlier trend toward modernism, which was over now, if they continued to follow the demands from the extremist religious sector. The men in power were claiming they had no choice. The religious faction made the rules, and they had to be followed, and the women protesting would have to comply, just like everyone else, or go to prison or be killed.

  The current government had been moderate till now, and they didn’t seem happy about the changes either, but the religious leaders had to be respected, whether young Iranian women liked it or not. It was always a problem in countries with powerful or extremist factions in the Middle East. The women in rural and more remote areas were even more subjugated to ancient rule than those in the cities, where they knew a freer way of life now and didn’t want to lose it. But Felix had told Alix he wasn’t interested in the broader spectrum, and wanted her to focus on the female protestors in Tehran, which was what she intended to do.

  They boarded the plane at eight-thirty, and they took off on time for the first flight to Frankfurt, where they had a layover for many hours, and finally boarded the flight to Tehran. There were only three movies offered, one of them a Disney film, and the others were PG and of no interest to her or Ben. Alix caught up on research material she’d printed out at home. Ben slept for most of the flight, as he’d gotten too little sleep once Felix woke him, and he had to do his laundry and pack. He was always less organized than Alix when they left on an assignment on short notice. She was the master of fast exits at the drop of a hat. Ben always forgot something vital at home. She used a checklist she had developed over the years, which left nothing to chance, just like her broadcasts. She was meticulous about detail.

  She covered her head with the gray scarf she carried, when they announced they had entered Iranian airspace, and they were among the first off the plane and through customs. Their papers were in order, the officials were pleasant to them, and they had no problem. They took a cab to the Laleh Hotel, and checked in to the small rooms that had been booked for them side by side. They had slept in one room before in emergency situations. Alix didn’t mind and wasn’t shy, you did what you had to in a crisis. But their accommodations were pleasant at the hotel. They called Felix when they got to their rooms, and Alix started making calls as soon as he gave her the list.

  She already had some of the numbers they needed. She got lucky on her third call and learned that government officials had assigned two people to speak to the international press about the situation. It was clear that the government wasn’t pleased with the light the events cast on them. They were proud of having relaxed the rules for women in recent years
, and they weren’t happy to rescind them, nor about the casualties that were mounting in the riots. Another young woman had been killed while they were on the plane, this time trampled by fellow protestors when they ran from the police who threw tear gas at them. The increasing tension and violence were getting worse, and had an ominous feel.

  Ben and Alix showered and changed and ate a light meal before they went to their government appointments. The interviews went well, although Alix was aware that they were being fed the party line, but there was nothing else they could do.

  They met with the families of two of the dead girls later that afternoon. They spoke English, and the interviews were heartbreaking. All had been respectable, educated young women who didn’t want to see their country return to the dark ages, and were willing to lose their lives to protect the freedoms they believed in and felt they deserved. Their families were bereft by what had happened.

  Ben and Alix approached the protest area with caution that night. Ben shot film from the edges of the crowd, and their press badges gave them access, but even Alix was careful as she observed the restless crowd. Things were at a standoff for the moment, with neither side relenting nor on the offensive since that afternoon, but she knew it could change in a minute and become violent again. She gave the protestors a wide berth, after interviewing a few of them with a Farsi translator they’d hired. She and Ben agreed on an escape route if they had to retreat quickly, but he stayed close to her as he always did, at the ready to grab her or protect her if needed. His old military skills were instinctive, and he had assessed the best possible exit plan when they arrived.

  They stayed with the protestors till after midnight, and there were no deaths that night. Alix and Ben went back to the hotel, and returned to the scene early the next morning. She had listened to the call to prayer being chanted at sunrise, and as always was struck by the mysterious beauty of the Islamic world, yet what was happening in Tehran was a terrible step back in time for the women of the country. It was hard to understand the contrast in a land that could be at the same time both so appealing and so harsh. It was a conflict that touched her to the core, and she expressed that in her broadcast, which Ben recognized instantly as an award-winning piece. Alix was always more modest and never saw what he did, she was just doing her job, but what she said on air went straight to the heart of the matter and the key human issues. And she spoke eloquently about it.