by Alan Gold
Two more years with CHAT and he had no doubt that he’d get a call from some giant corporation offering him a VP’s job as head of communication on a salary of a couple of million.
He sipped his coffee and for the tenth time that morning, reread the headline in the New York Post: Rock Star Slays Brit Plan to Crop Birds. Another headline: Wing It—Silvester to UK. The funniest was: Silvester the Puddy Tat to save Tweetie-pies.
All the media had reported the interview between Jay and DeLile on their front pages. All had flown into a rabid frenzy of condemnation of the rapid response team and the British government for even contemplating the mass extinction without definitive proof. They had all come to the same conclusion . . . a massive and hysterical overreaction based on inadequate information. A demand to cease any planned culling of birds until positive and irrefutable proof was available. None had any problems with actually culling the birds, if they were found to be the source of the viral outbreak; they cited the killing of poultry and some wild migratory birds in Asia to stop the spread of bird flu, which had been done scientifically, humanely, and with full knowledge of the circumstances.
Only Tom Pollard, his Washington source, and a handful of others knew the actual content of the rapid response team’s report that said that bats were the probable source of the outbreak but that birds couldn’t be ruled out until further tests had been conducted. But why let facts stand in the way of a great piece of PR?
He couldn’t help smiling as he contemplated the next board meeting. He might even ask for an apology for the way in which they’d rebuked him for the death of the old man in Florida. Maybe now they’d realize just how overwhelmingly important his PR skills were to the organization. And maybe now his new chair, Donna McCabe, might warm to him and not treat him like something off the pavement she’d just trodden in wearing her $2,000 Jimmy Choo’s.
His thoughts were interrupted by the phone. He glanced at the wall clock. He had a conference call with the UK branch in fifteen minutes, but it was too early. He picked up the phone.
“Tom, it’s Maya Almarta for you,” said his secretary.
“You’re kidding.”
“No! Really! She’s on the phone.”
He stabbed the flashing line and immediately recognized the voice of the most beautiful actress in all of Hollywood.
“Tom? I got your number from Jay Silvester. He tells me you’re the go-to guy who’s doing something about this terrible thing with the birds in England.”
“Good to speak with you, Maya. And may I say that in all of New York, I’m your biggest fan. And yes, it’s a terrible thing which the Brits are doing, and I’m working my guts out to try to save these precious birds.”
“What can I do to help?” she asked.
“Where do I start? You’ve got one of the best-known faces in the world. If you could reach out to your media contacts in LA and speak out against this atrocity. I’ll fax you the sheet of talking points so you have all the latest research at your fingertips.”
“Oh, I think I can do better than that, Tom. A media interview lasts a couple of minutes. But we want to stop this insane slaughter, don’t we? So why don’t we do two things which will not just get great media coverage but will make the world sit up and take notice?”
In his mind’s eye, he could see the smile on her face. Intrigued, he asked, “Okay . . . what?”
She paused. It was an actor’s pause. Pure effect. Tom loved it. “What does America do to a dictatorship, say one in the Mideast like Iran, which is doing nutty things?”
He remained silent.
“It creates a boycott,” she said.
Tom Pollard immediately knew where she was going with this and realized that he would have to hand over his PR genius’s crown to Maya.
“I’m going to get every actor and actress that I know in Hollywood and throughout the world to stop buying British products. But that’s not all. Not by a long shot. I’m going to get my fellow thespians to refuse to act in any British movies, television plays, or on the stage until the British government agrees not to kill all its birds.”
He continued to remain silent. He was overwhelmed. Suddenly, this was one of the most manipulable and exciting stories of his life.
“Tom?”
“I love you,” he said softly.
She laughed. Hers was one of the most famous laughs on the screen. People paid money to hear her laugh. “Do you think it’s a good idea? You don’t think I’ll get laughed at, do you?”
“Oh no, Maya. This will be huge. I promise that the headlines will be massive. And international. When can we meet up? We need to work on this together,” he said.
They arranged a time for him to fly out to LA. When he’d said his good-byes, he buzzed through to his personal assistant.
“Cancel my conference call with the UK. Book me on the next flight to LAX.”
“Tom? Are you going to meet Maya?”
“Yep.”
“You know she’s a lesbian, don’t you?”
He didn’t.
It took less than twenty-four hours for Maya to organize to have twenty of Hollywood’s most luminescent men and women actors sit on a podium in the Roosevelt Hotel at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard before dozens of television cameras and over five hundred reporters seated in rows that stretched to the back of the hall. Reporters had come from every newspaper, radio, and television station in California when news of the event was announced. International reporters and camera crews had flown in. The room was packed with hot lights, cables snaking across the floor, microphones like the heads of gorgons on the table that was covered with flowers, and curious hotel staff who hung agog around the walls. The hotel’s staff was used to celebrities but not this number all gathered together in their conference hall.
The twenty actors were world-famous and nobody could remember when so many had come together for a press conference. Seated in the middle of the table was the glorious face and shining blond hair of Maya Almarta, surrounded by Jay Silvester and Tom Pollard. Hung from the curtains at the back of the assembly of actors was a huge banner reading
WANT TO STOP CRUELTY TO ANIMALS?
CHAT TO US AT
CAMPAIGN FOR HUMANE ANIMAL TREATMENT
When Maya moved slightly forward toward the microphone, the buzz in the room came to an instant halt. Tom looked at her and was overwhelmed by a desire to reach out and touch her. She was so utterly, impossibly, flawlessly beautiful. Her skin was translucent, her hair rich and full and perfumed, her eyes vibrant with youth and passion. She was taller than he had imagined, but when they’d met at her house in the Hollywood Hills just yesterday, she made him feel so at ease, so comfortable in her presence. He was lost then, and he was still lost now, despite the frantic preparations.
She gave a delicate smile and said, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I, and my fellow actors you see here today are horrified by the plan of the British government to kill its entire birdlife population. Accordingly, we have decided . . .”
THE OVAL OFFICE
Nathanial Jefferson Thomas was sitting at his desk, going over aspects of a bill that he was considering vetoing, when his chief of staff, Felix Unterman, knocked on the interconnecting door and walked in unannounced.
“You’d better see this,” he said, pacing over to the television monitor in the wall cabinet. He switched it on, and suddenly the gray plasma screen was filled with the stunningly beautiful face of Maya Almarta. President Thomas looked up from his papers and frowned.
They listened to her live press conference for several long moments, and then he heard the line that turned his blood cold.
From three thousand miles away, Maya said, “And so we, the actors of Hollywood, will from now on refuse to act in British movies with British directors or with British crews. We will refuse to purchase British-made goods of all forms. We won’t travel to Britain on work or on pleasure. We will continue our boycott of all things British until the government of Britain comes to
its senses and reverses this immoral plan to kill all the birds in Britain.”
The moment she had finished speaking, there was a cacophony of questions shouted at her. Unterman turned off the television.
“But I thought Jenny Tan’s statement had calmed things down. It couldn’t have been more plain. There’s no plan to kill any birds. Not now and probably not at all. What the hell are these people in Hollywood thinking?” the president asked.
“I have no idea, Mr. President. But truth isn’t playing a very large role in this thing. Right now, we have a disaster in the making on our hands. I can’t overstate how dangerous this is. These Hollywood stars have got a pulling power of unlimited strength,” said Felix Unterman.
The president looked at his chief of staff and shook his head. “Oh, come on, Felix, just because a bunch of stars refuse to buy British, you’re saying that they’ll bring down the British economy? The government? Get real! These are celluloid heroes. Make believe people. Kids might be influenced but not adults. This is just a publicity stunt. Cheap headlines. We overreact, and we’ll give it legs. We ignore it, and it’ll be yesterday’s news.”
“Mr. President, you have no idea what we’ve just witnessed. This is a boycott that could spread around the world. Okay, it’s not going to bring Britain to its knees, but it’ll be a disaster for Prime Minister Blain’s government. And imagine what reaction it’ll have on Third World governments when they get a viral outbreak. Nobody’s going to call in the rapid response team in case Hollywood gets its collective knickers in a twist.”
Unterman walked over and sat in front of the presidential desk.
“What do you advise?” asked the president.
“You call a press conference immediately to refute what Maya Almarta has just said. Don’t ridicule her . . . tell the world that she’s got guts and courage and that sort of pandering bullshit but that she’s misguided because she hasn’t got the facts. Then get Jenny Tan over here from England. Get the head of the rapid response team over here immediately. With them, we’ll get a second bite at this cherry. We’ll hold another joint press conference and give the very latest and most up-to-date facts on how we’re dealing with this virus outbreak. I’ll contact the secretary-general and encourage him to say how misguided these Hollywood types are.”
“And that’ll do it?” asked the president.
“No, but it’ll hold it until hopefully we find the source. Mr. President, this Maya person has just lit a powder keg. We have to stop it exploding in our faces.”
***
In a coordinated exercise between CHAT in the States and the UK, within hours of Maya Almarta’s globally publicized appearance on television, huge posters began to appear on highways and in city centers in both countries. The Hollywood megastar’s billboard-sized face took up half the space beside a more distant drawing of the countryside in which dozens of sharpshooters in army fatigues were taking potshots at multicolored birds flying away to save their lives. The caption read: SHOOT DOWN THIS EVIL LAW . . . NOT OUR BIRDS.
And the phones, faxes, and emails began to arrive at the offices of congressional representatives and senators and members of the British Parliament. An avalanche of correspondence. So much that the Department of Health’s email server was overwhelmed and crashed, pumping out tens of thousands of phatic apologies. Frustrated bird lovers were forced to contain their rage.
Alistair Blain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, looked at his entire cabinet, gathered at Number 10 to address a series of circumstances that had erupted over a matter of days and looked set to damage severely the standing of his government, despite it being one of the most popular since polling began. More than anybody in the room, the politically savvy Blain knew how quickly public approbation could turn to loathing on an emotive issue.
For an hour, debate had flowed freely. Nobody was accusing anybody. Nobody was forced into a demeaning apology. Rather, as a body mandated to govern the nation, the cabinet had come together to seek out a way of handling the immediate crisis, to deal with a mounting national frenzy against a bird cull that wasn’t going to happen anyway.
Minister of Defence Doug Francis said softly, “A denial won’t do it, Prime Minister. Not with this tsunami of anger thanks to this Maya woman. You just won’t be believed. Anyway, Jenny Tan has already spoken out and denied that there are any definitive plans to cull the birds, and she wasn’t believed. I’m afraid that you have to assail this CHAT group. Not softly, gently. You have to go for their jugular. Secretary Tan tried to be politic and it patently didn’t work. You’ve got to go for their balls.”
“If I attack this Maya Almarta woman, I’ll have every movie lover going for my balls.”
“Not her,” insisted Doug Francis. “CHAT. Go for CHAT. Say that this Maya person is misguided. She’s a wonderful role model for young people, but she’s been fed inaccurate information and there’s no plan whatsoever for culling birds.”
“But I can’t say that, Doug,” insisted the prime minister. “The fucking report from this rapid response team is public, and it doesn’t specifically deny that all our birds will have to be slaughtered. It specifies bats as the most likely source, but it also specifically says that birds could be a reservoir.”
“I know, but you can come out and say that you’ll never, ever allow the culling of birds.”
“And what if birds are found to be the source? I’ll be forced to admit that I lied and I’ll have to order their butchering, and it’ll be the end of our government,” he said.
“If birds are the cause, that’ll happen anyway, whether or not you go on television in an hour’s time and say that our birds are safe. If we do have to order a cull, history will call this government ‘the bird murderers.’ And that’s regardless of what this filthy virus epidemic is doing. Our bird-watcher friends, our bird lovers, don’t seem to care if a thousand of their fellow citizens drop dead of some deadly disease, but harm one feather of the little flying fuckers, and you’re worse than Hitler,” said Francis.
The minister of health said, “Let’s just pray to God that it’s not birds but bats. That’s the likelihood, anyway. Bats are far more liable than birds to be the reservoir. And fortunately, very few Englishmen go weak at the knees over bats. Most people hate them or are terrified of the disgusting little bastards.”
“What’s the latest?” asked the prime minister.
“We’ve got thousands of people in woods and forests and fields and copses looking for this fucking colony that came from the school. We’ve gone into every barn and church steeple and other places where bats roost. But once we’ve found the colony and can do autopsies on the corpses, we’ll identify the virus in their blood and then panic over. Let’s see this Maya bitch shed crocodile tears and cuddle some fucking vampire bat and beg people to boycott us. She’ll be laughed off the planet.”
***
Debra Hart had never been in the first-class cabin of a passenger aircraft; the most luxury in which she’d ever traveled was in business class. And she’d certainly never flown aboard any aircraft even remotely resembling Air Force Two, the vice president’s Boeing C-32, a modified 757.
The steward had just served her the best piña colada she’d ever tasted in preparation for her meal of lobster thermidor, kipfler potato salad, and a vintage chardonnay. She watched as Jenny Tan, sitting two tables away with three advisors, talked in hushed terms about a report that had just been delivered by the communications officer on the flight deck.
Yep, she thought—this is a life I could easily get used to. Except that in four hours, she would land at Andrews Air Force Base just southeast of Washington, DC. From there, Marine Two, a White Hawk helicopter, would take them directly to the lawns of the White House where they would be escorted into the Oval Office for a face-to-face meeting with the president.
Debra didn’t normally drink, except for the occasional glass of red to accompany a friend over dinner, but her nerves were on the edge from the rapidity of events
during the past twelve hours. The secretary of state had been quite insistent once she’d heard about the amazing press conference by this Hollywood publicity-seeking rabble-rousing actress that had caused a call from the president. He insisted that they both come over to the White House and make a joint press conference on the lawns of the Rose Garden, explaining why the recent broadcasts and news media beat-ups about the mass culling of Britain’s birds was so very wrong.
Debra had insisted on staying with her team and not entering into the political dynamic. She’d told Jenny Tan that as a scientist commissioned by the United Nations, it was inappropriate for her to speak at a press conference with the president of the United States; but Secretary Tan had been equally insistent that science had to take a backseat to the imperatives of calming the British people down, and that could only be done by some very persuasive PR. She’d called Professor Lord Soames who had spoken to the minister of health who had phoned the prime minister, and word had come down the line that she should make a quick trip to the States to hose things down. Just to check, Debra had phoned the WHO and the office of the secretary-general of the United Nations, and they had been equally supportive of the necessity of her making the trip.
So here she was, treated like some high-powered diplomat on board Air Force Two, luxuriating in the glory of high power, even if it was only illusionary and very, very temporary. She mischievously thought about picking up the phone next to her seat, pressing the numbers to speak to the pilot, and direct him to land in Martinique so she could spend a couple of weeks on the beach. But she was pretty sure that a number of first-timers on Air Force Two had done precisely that, and she didn’t want to hear groans coming from the flight deck.
Maybe she could phone her mother and stepfather in Maryland, tell them where she was and that within half a day, they’d see their daughter standing next to the president of the United States, making a major statement of public policy. They would be so proud and would invite all the neighbors in to watch their daughter on television, standing shoulder to shoulder with the world’s most powerful man . . . and it was then that she suddenly became hot and sweaty . . . and icy cold all at the same moment.