by Harold Coyle
Still, there was no denying that luck did play a part. June 29 was to be the last day of shooting. After an interview with the president in the morning, Jan and her Austin-based camera crew had been scheduled to leave for Texas. The death of the president, however, changed all that.
The morning started when her "fixer," a Mexican hired to make arrangements for hotels and transportation, as well as to deal with government bureaucrats, called her at 6:30 and told her that the president was dead. With rumors of a coup, he warned her that it was important to leave the city immediately. Naturally, Jan would hear nothing of that. Instead, she insisted that the fixer, an elderly man named Juan, arrange for an interview with a spokesman from the new government. Juan, not wanting to leave his home, let alone become involved with the new government, tried to talk her out of it. Jan, however, hung tough and demanded he try or lose his commission. Reluctantly, Juan agreed.
No sooner had she hung up the phone and turned to begin dressing, than it rang again. Without waiting for Jan to respond, a male voice, in impeccable English, identified himself as a captain in the Mexican Army calling on behalf of a Mexican Army colonel Jan had never heard of. In a very crisp yet polite voice, he informed Jan that in reviewing the president's daily schedule, his colonel had discovered that Jan was listed for an interview at the Palacio Nacional later that morning with the president. Jan, a little leery about where this conversation was going, paused before answering. Caution, however, was not one of her strong points. "Yes," she responded, "that's right. I am, I mean, I was scheduled for thirty minutes." Then, as an afterthought, she decided to push her luck and see what she could get the captain to confirm. After all, he didn't know how much she knew. "Is there something wrong with the time or the length of the interview, Captain? I have a very flexible schedule and can easily change it in order to accommodate the president."
Now
the hesitation was on the other end of the line, while the captain thought before responding to Jan's probing questions. Finally, in a hushed voice, he informed Jan that President Carlos Montalvo's plane was missing and that an assassination attempt was suspected. He then went on, stating that, in order to ensure public safety and internal security, as of five o'clock that morning the Mexican Army had declared a state of emergency and imposed martial law.
Jan was becoming excited. She had confirmation, from an official source, of Montalvo's death. Furthermore, she knew that an Army captain, representing a colonel, wouldn't be calling her at a time like this if there weren't something that they wanted. Deciding to push a little further, she asked, in a soft voice preceded with a slightly audible sigh,
"Oh, how tragic. I don't know what to say." Then, before the captain could respond, Jan added. "I guess that means there is no point in my coming to the Palacio Nacional."
Jan's ploy worked. When the captain responded, he spoke quickly in order to soothe her fears. "Oh no, Miss Fields. On the contrary. My colonel has instructed me to advise you that it would be his pleasure to meet with you at noon, if that time is suitable for you. He will provide you with a summary of the past twelve hours and actions being taken by the Mexican Army to deal with the current crisis."
Pausing for dramatic effect before responding, Jan informed the captain that it would be a pleasure to meet with his colonel at noon. After a few pleasantries, they both hung up. Jan, excited by the manner in which the morning was developing, smiled and leaned over, pumping her right arm up and down and shouting, "Yes, yes." Fame and fortune, she knew, belonged to the lucky.
Once she was off the phone, Jan roused her crew, informing them of the news and getting them ready to go out into the street to shoot whatever they came across. There was no sense, she thought, of wasting the valuable time before her interview with the colonel. Next she called World News Network, her employer. When she informed them that she was still in Mexico City and had been contacted by people who claimed to be in charge, they were all ears. Though WNN already had two camera crews and a full production team, with direct feed capabilities, preparing to fly in from Dallas, Jan knew it would be hours before they were there and longer before they were ready to start covering the story. With some deft negotiating, she managed to get them to agree that she would be their chief correspondent in Mexico for the duration of the current crisis, with the right to edit her own material before beaming it back to Washington.
With that settled, Jan called back to Juan to check on his progress. His news, presented in a rather unconvincing manner, was discouraging.
According to him, he was unable to contact anyone who knew what was going on. "Everything is in chaos, Senorita Fields. Everyone is very uncooperative. No one knows who's in charge."
Without hesitation, Jan fired back. "Then I guess we need to go down to-the government offices and find someone who is in charge."
"No! No! We can't do that, Senorita Fields. This is a coup, a revolution.
There may be trouble. That is no place for a woman to be."
Juan's last comment tripped a harsh response. "Listen, mister, that's what I'm paying you for. Either you take me down there and do your job, or kiss your commission, and your reputation, goodbye."
There was a moment's pause while Juan pondered his choices. Jan wondered which threat was more damaging, the loss of money or the loss of prestige. Not that it mattered much to her. All that mattered right then was getting a story, any story, shot and on the air.
Finally, Juan answered, "Si, yes. I will take you. But we must discuss my salary. Things have changed. This is now a very dangerous time, senorita. You understand."
Softening her tone, Jan responded. "Yes, Juan, I understand. What would be fair pay for a man of your talents in the current crisis?"
Feeling that he had regained a measure of control, Juan pondered the question out loud. "Well, things could become dangerous. They say government troops are all over and that other government police officials across the country are being arrested. There could be fighting."
Jan listened, responding with, "I see," and "Ah-huh," as Juan built a case for a higher salary. When he was finished, Jan repeated her question.
With
the confidence of a man who knew she would never agree to such an outrageous sum, Juan demanded double his current fees. What he had not realized was that Jan was prepared to pay four times the current fee.
Without hesitation, she agreed to double his fee, told him to meet her in the lobby of her hotel in thirty minutes, and hung up before he had the chance to say another word.
Prepared for scenes of chaos and open fighting, Jan was somewhat disappointed as they drove through the deserted streets of the city with her tiny crew consisting of Juan, a cameraman, and a sound technician. After taping ten minutes of empty streetcorners and closed shops, they drove to the main plaza where the Palacio Nacional was located. Again, except for an occasional jeep filled with soldiers, there was nothing. Leaving the van, Jan, followed by the camera crew, began to walk toward the Palacio Nacional in an effort to attract attention or provoke a response from the Army patrols. Again, however, she was quite disappointed as the mounted patrols and guards posted at the doorways of government buildings ignored Jan and the camera.
When they passed the Palacio Nacional, Jan decided to take advantage of her invitation to interview one of the colonels who was supposed to be in charge. She stopped and looked at a knot of soldiers standing about the main entrance. "We had an interview scheduled with the president of Mexico this morning. Now, we have one with his replacement." Then, with a smile on her face, she turned to her sound man, Joe Bob. "So, my loyal friends and crew, that must mean we are welcomed and sanctioned.
Let's take advantage of that welcome and do some serious reporting."
Joe Bob took his cue and pulled the van up to a good place to park.
Without asking or waiting for the opinion of the others with her, Jan turned away and moved with purpose toward the Palacio Nacional. From what she had seen, if there had been a mil
itary coup, it had been efficient, quick, and controlled. If those assumptions were true, there was an organization in charge and operating. And if there was a system, it could be manipulated. Since the news wasn't going to come to them, it was time to dig for it, and what better place to start than at the top?
Juan, however, was shaken by the events of the morning, the presence of so many soldiers, and the brazen attitude of Jan Fields. Never missing a chance, he tried to persuade Jan to return to the hotel until things settled down. Jan would not be put off. Angered by Juan's timidity, Jan turned to him, throwing her arms out and shouting as she did so. "Settled? If things get any more settled, they'll roll up the sidewalk!"
Neither Juan nor Jan took into account that while they were looking at the same situation, each was dealing with it based on an entirely different perspective. For Juan, the sight of vacant streets in Mexico City populated only by armed soldiers was a new and disturbing sight. The Federales and their fat officers, after all, could not be trusted. Jan, on the other hand, who had seen firsthand bloody street fighting and cities choked with tanks and troops, began to wonder if the military was, after all, in charge, let alone behind the coup and the unrest that Juan kept worrying about.
After spinning about and looking at the deserted streets, she turned back to Juan. "Settled? If this place becomes any more settled we'll die from boredom." Dropping her arms, Jan stood there for a moment and thought. Slowly, a wicked smile lit her face. "What we need to do is stir something up." Without waiting for a response, she turned and walked right into the middle of the soldiers.
House Office Building, Washington, D.C.
1000 hours, 29 June
Like clockwork, everyone in Congressman Ed Lewis's outer office dropped what they were doing and turned to the television monitor whenever WNN reviewed the top news stories of the hour. Even the congressman, like a figure on a German cuckoo clock, came out of his own office every half hour to watch the news. Ever since Lewis, a Democratic representative from Tennessee, had been appointed a member of the House Intelligence Committee, both he and his staff took a keen interest in any news that involved foreign crisis or conflicts. An avid reader of just about anything in print and a news junkie, Lewis was capable of absorbing and retaining tremendous amounts of information and storing it away, ready for use. Only partially in jest did his fellow representatives refer to him as the next best thing to the Library of Congress.
Yet no one would think of describing Lewis as being bookish or an intellectual. At forty-two, he looked more like a college basketball coach than a U.S. congressman. His six-foot two-inch frame was lean without being skinny. His brown hair, streaked with stray strands of gray, was cut short, not styled. Though he often wore a warm and friendly smile, it was his eyes, more than any other feature, that expressed his moods and betrayed his thoughts. They could be warm and inviting to a new acquaintance, cold and cutting to an opponent, and friendly and mischievous to a friend. His eyes told everything and, like the college basketball coach, missed nothing. More than one witness who appeared before a panel on which Lewis sat commented on the manner in which Lewis used his eyes to unnerve them. An interdepartmental memo circulated within the CIA to members of that agency slated to appear before Lewis, advised that its members read or pretend to read notes and avoid eye contact with Lewis when answering questions.
As he stood in his doorway watching the news on the situation in Mexico, Lewis compared the story to the information he already had.
That, unfortunately, was not only skimpy, but contradictory. Official statements and contacts he had cultivated at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, and the National Security Agency, or NSA, provided only bits and pieces of the story, bits and pieces that didn't fit together.
What he had heard was not at all satisfactory. From the CIA, he got the impression that the coup in Mexico was a bolt out of the blue. Though he was given few details, the DIA described the coup as an efficient and comprehensive operation that had decapitated the Mexican government.
The NSA, on the other hand, noted that the situation was confused and quite chaotic. Based on his experiences with intelligence people, Lewis knew that, in reality, the situation in Mexico contained all those elements.
The material from the nation's intelligence agencies, after all, was no better than the sources they used and the opinions of the people doing the data analysis. Each agency depended on different sources and used different criteria when determining what was relevant and what could be ignored. While the information they provided was nice, it wasn't what he needed at a time like this. What he and the nation's decision-makers needed was a clear, concise, and comprehensive overview of the situation, a view that brought all the stray pieces together. Unfortunately, Lewis knew it would be days before anyone in the intelligence community would be able, or willing, to commit themselves to such a summary.
So until then, all they would get was raw data and bits and pieces.
Still, Lewis was disturbed that no one had seen the coup coming. It was like the fall of Cuba in 1959, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and of Afghanistan in 1979, the reunification of Germany in 1989, the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the Soviet coup in 1991, and a score of other
"bolts out of the blue": America's leaders were handed a crisis which they had not been prepared to deal with, leaving them no choice but to throw together a policy on the fly. What made this failure even more disturbing was the fact that the U.S. had massive resources deployed in Mexico and along the border as part of the drug-interdiction mission.
Surely, Lewis thought, someone working with the Mexican military or government must have come across something. No one, he knew, could hide an undertaking massive enough to topple the Mexican government in a matter of hours without someone noticing.
As he watched the news, he considered his next move. He would give the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until noon to begin asking questions before he did anything. If, by noon, no one else had, Lewis would throw a few turds in the punch bowl and start hounding people, not only for information bjut for answers. With the amount of money the Congress sank into the intelligence community, there was absolutely no excuse for the nation's depending on a twit like Jan Fields to provide them with their only source of information on world events.
As if by magic, the image of Jan Fields flashed onto the screen across the office. With the Palacio Nacional as a background, the bright-eyed journalist stood reporting from the heart of Mexico City. Ranked by well-armed and grinning soldiers, she casually recapped what she had seen, mentioning that she had arranged an interview with a member of the Council of 13, the organization she described as comprised of Army and Air Force officers who had assumed control of the government.
Lewis could feel his anger building up. Mumbling, he turned away.
"Christ, in a few hours she knows more about what's going on than the CIA. What a farce! What a bloody farce!"
Palacio Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico
1235 hours, 29 June
Sitting across from the Mexican colonel, Jan couldn't be more pleased with herself. In a matter of a few hours, she had shot a piece, made contact with the ruling council, arranged for an interview with a member of that council, and even got the Mexican military to help her transmit her first story to WNN headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Seated across from her was, from what she had been told, one of the architects of the coup that had brought to an end "the corrupt and self serving government of the few," as an official spokesman had called President Montalvo's administration. Although the Mexican colonel's uniform was slightly wrinkled, and specked with dirt and dust, his presence and carriage were commanding. That, coupled with his extraordinary command of English and his position on the Council of 13, provided Jan with an opportunity to create a piece that would be head-and-shoulders above anything the other news agencies could possibly hope to put together for days. Now all she needed was to get this colonel to give her
a few interesting comments that she could add to the framework of the official comments she had in hand.
"So, Colonel Guajardo, what finally convinced you and the other members of the council that the duly elected government of Mexico no longer represented the people?"
Though the question by the American correspondent bothered Guajardo, he didn't show it. Looking straight into Jan Fields's eyes, he framed his response, translating his thoughts from Spanish to English in his mind. When he was ready, Guajardo leaned forward, toward Jan.
"There is no simple answer to that question, I am afraid. In the past few weeks, I have often pondered that same thought." Guajardo paused, allowing himself to settle back in his seat before continuing. When he began to speak, he waved his right hand about, sometimes throwing it out to the side with the palm up and open, other times pointing his index finger at Jan to emphasize a point. "Is such a violent response, I asked myself many times, really necessary? Isn't there a better way? Not a day passed that I didn't say to myself, you are not giving the system a chance.
Perhaps, just perhaps, things will get better." Pausing, Guajardo let out a sigh, letting his right hand come to rest on his right thigh while he let his head drop down as if to study his resting hand. "But, alas, nothing changed. The politicians, they came and went. Programs to solve our debt, create jobs, and remedy our social problems were launched with great fanfare and wonderful speeches. For a while, whatever problem the program was aimed at solving would improve."
In a flash, Guajardo changed. Jan was startled by the sudden transformation.
When their eyes met, she was greeted by eyes that were cold and distant, set in a face contorted in anger. Though she didn't notice, Guajardo's right hand was now clenched into a fist, a fist that he was slowly using to pound his right thigh as he spoke with a harsh, cutting voice.