God, I thought, what a circus all this was turning the agency into, but I could see no escape. In the weeks after the merger, I’d done my best not to be drawn into this time-consuming and damaging personal struggle, but I’d learned very quickly that the price of not playing Paul’s game was to have him erode the structures of the agency around me.
As we approached the gate, I spotted the place where the scene was taking place. About fifty yards from the main gates, along the perimeter road, a mobile TV van was parked close to the fence. It had a rooftop camera platform and a full rig of relay aerials, but, unusually, there was no logo on the side to indicate which channel or network it belonged to. Around it was a small crowd of people, and in the middle I could just glimpse Cox. He seemed to be faced off in a toe-to-toe argument with a tall, lanky man in an oatmeal-colored safari jacket and a chartreuse neck scarf. The man appeared to be the leader of the TV crew and I could see he was angry enough to hit Cox but he seemed to be holding back, probably, I thought wryly, because he was afraid of being charged with assault on a juvenile.
Cox’s appearance is, to put it mildly, misleading. He is thirty-two years old but looks about fifteen, and a fragile, boney fifteen at that. There is nothing about him to suggest someone whose collected reporting on Vietnam has become a standard text for understanding the war or who had just come back from four months of playing tag with Soviet troops in the mountains of Afghanistan.
When I’d assessed the situation, I wasn’t worried about Cox and I decided to deal with Paul first. His car had drawn up behind mine and I hurried back and put myself in front of the chauffeur before he could open the door.
‘Paul, I think it’s better if you don’t get out,’ I said.
‘What!’
‘I don’t think we’d better be seen disagreeing in public,’ I said pointedly. My eyes carried the message to him. Paul knew there were times when I would not be pushed and if he didn’t want to be put in his place in front of strangers, he’d be wise to stay on the sidelines.
I walked back toward the crowd and a WN security guard pushed his way out to meet me.
‘What’s happening here?’ I said. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
The security guard gestured helplessly toward Cox. ‘I think he’d better explain it, sir.’ The guard made a passage through the TV crew and introduced me to the man in the safari suit.
‘Marvin. Ray Marvin,’ he replied. ‘ATL-TV Enterprises.’
I turned to Cox. ‘What’s happening?’ I said.
‘What’s happening, Mr. Railton,’ Marvin interrupted angrily, ‘is that this kid here is preventing us from setting up and he’s damaged some of our equipment.’
Cox gave me a quick grin. ‘Nothing’s damaged, Marvin. I just pulled out a few cable leads to give us time to discuss the issues here.’
‘The issue here is that we’ve got written authorization to film inside the grounds, and if you don’t get the hell out of my hair I’ll use the leads to string you up on that goddamn fence.’
‘Chief, I’m sorry to get you involved in this,’ Cox said, ‘but you’d better look at the authorization.’
He handed me a letter which had become tattered and crumpled in the struggling, but I knew before reading it what I would find. It was on board stationery, from Sellinger’s office and over his signature.
‘What are you here to film?’ I said to Marvin.
‘We’re making a TV documentary about the centenary celebrations.’
‘Chief, it’s a setup,’ Cox interrupted. ‘They’re Sellinger Corporation flacks.’
Marvin whirled on Cox. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’ he said angrily. ‘ATL is an independent television newsfilm company.’
‘They’re Sellinger Corporation flacks,’ Cox repeated, unperturbed. ‘They’re waiting for Big Brother.’
Big Brother was the house nickname for Paul’s elder brother Robert, the president of the Sellinger Corporation.
‘When Robert arrives, they’re going to interview him at the gates. Robert’s got a speech prepared. Here are the camera notes.’
Marvin made a try to grab them from Cox’s hand, but Cox was too quick for him.
He handed me a TV cue sheet which laid out the main points of Sellinger’s speech. Robert was currently being talked about as a potential Secretary of Defense and he had already begun to take soundings about a political career that the Family fully intended might one day end in the White House. The speech laid out his current line: Starburst was the weapon to make America strong again; the Sellingers were giving America that strength.
‘Check the eighth line,’ Cox said.
I read it and saw that Robert was planning to announce a speeded-up delivery date for the first Starburst to be deployed operationally. It was a front-page news point and would inevitably become the lead to any stories about the WN ceremonies if Paul announced it here. Robert was, in effect, planning to hijack the media coverage of the celebrations, on top of which, World News would be directly linked on coast-to-coast TV with the Sellinger Corporation.
Carefully, I tore the authorization into four pieces, looking straight at Marvin.
‘If any of your crew have guild cards, there’ll be a press conference at 7:30 which they’re welcome to attend. Otherwise, you have five minutes to get this rig off World News premises.’
Before Marvin could reply, I turned my back on him and walked back to Paul’s car.
‘I won’t bother to brief you,’ I said when Paul had lowered the dark-tinted window. ‘I’m sure you’re aware of the situation. But I’d like you to deliver a personal message to your brother from me. Tell him that if he opens his mouth this afternoon to say anything other than hello and goodbye, I’ll shut him up publicly and personally, whatever embarrassment it causes to him or to World News.’
2
I waited until Paul left so that he couldn’t countermand my instructions to Security, then I drove back with Cox, using the perimeter road. I was glad, anyway, of a chance to talk to him; a few minutes in his company was always a welcome break from wrestling with the Sellingers.
In normal circumstances, Cox would have placed 140th or lower on any short list for the post of exec. He was a brilliant correspondent but strictly a loner without enough corporate discipline even to be put in charge of a major bureau. Ideally, he should have been left as a solitary warhorse and paid bonuses never to set foot in the head office, where his irreverence and free and easy ways often shocked the kind of men and women who made up the agency’s ‘ground crew.’ But I liked his humor and I had wanted to use his promotion to encourage the younger correspondents, and most of all I needed a man like Cox—who was about as concerned for his career pattern as a Tibetan monk—as a buffer against Paul, who exerted relentless pressure on my personal staff.
There had been a lot of kicking and screaming about the appointment—much of it from Cox—but since his return, he had complained only humorously. In conversation, he loved outrageous exaggeration and gossip but in his work, he had a puritanical regard for integrity which made him a driven man in pursuit of truth; with Cox around, there was no danger of my becoming the kind of leader who lost touch by hearing only his own views played back to him.
‘By the way,’ I said as we sped along the edge of the complex, ‘how did you get onto Robert’s TV number?’
‘I have a new friend among the meeters and greeters.’
‘Not Sally Anne?’ I said with a grin. ‘She’s only been back from Beirut for two days. Give the poor girl a chance to catch her breath. Anyway, you were head over heels in lust with that research librarian up to this morning.’
‘I have a lot of catching up to do,’ Cox said. ‘Those puritans in Afghanistan have very nasty folk remedies involving sharp knives and sensitive parts of the body, if you mess around with their womenfolk.’
Cox looked at his watch. ‘Five to six,’ he said. ‘Better get a move on. We don’t want to have to start treating the guests for frostbite
.’
It was a standing joke in World News that the building was always too cold, because, it was said, the computer which controlled the air conditioning was in love with the main computer in the news processing division and couldn’t be reached by mere humans. Beneath the joking, there was very real hostility to the building, which was a techno paradise designed by a man whose concern for people was limited to leaving just enough space for them between the computers and the rest of the communication-age toys. The outside, too, was dispiriting. The plain gray facing and tiny arrow-slit windows, which were meant to facilitate temperature control and cut costs, gave the building a secretive and threatening look, even in the brilliant late afternoon sunshine—superb symbolism for an organization dedicated to the free flow of information.
It was exactly six o’clock when we entered the main doors. Bill Marshall, who had been in charge of the welcoming party, was on the steps and he looked relieved. He didn’t say anything but he was slightly out of breath and I guessed that he’d been chasing around the building looking for me.
‘We’re all set,’ Marshall said. ‘The auditorium’s packed. We’re holding the elevator for you.’
Cox grinned. ‘He means ‘Where the fuck have you been, chief, you’re holding up the show.’ ‘
Marshall looked at me nervously but I laughed too. ‘It’s okay, Bill,’ I said. ‘Something important came up. I’m sorry if I’ve messed you about.’
When we reached the auditorium, most of the people had taken their seats but there were still little knots of guests standing in the aisles chatting and getting each other drinks. In the audience, besides about two hundred WN staff, were the heads of many of the world’s leading media institutions—publishers, editors, owners of TV and radio stations, the chiefs of our rival agencies, together with our big financial clients, the bankers and stockbrokers who really paid our bills by subscribing to WN’s computer-based economic and financial services. Most of them knew each other and many of them were my personal friends, some of them going back ten or twenty years.
In the little corridor at the entrance to the auditorium, I spotted Jean-Jacques Thoraval, the head of the French publishing house, Chebard.
He raised his glass.
‘Salut, John. Welcome to the tiger’s cage.’
He didn’t need to explain. His house had just been taken over by a French conglomerate which was big in defense manufacturing and already he was having to fight off interference with his celebrated children’s encyclopedia; his new bosses said it didn’t adequately reflect French innovations in defense technology—meaning the conglomerate’s products.
I greeted several more guests as I walked down the side aisle to the front row, but almost as a reflex, I scanned the audience to see where Nancy was. I spotted the familiar, slim, blond figure near the back, dressed in an exquisite white dress that had probably cost more than her entire clothes budget for any one year of our marriage.
Never look back, I thought. The folk singers know it so well. Travel on. No regrets. But I did have regrets, as Paul knew well enough, even though our marriage had been unofficially declared over before he had come on the scene. Nancy gave me a brief, rather arch smile of recognition. I expected no more; she was seated next to Robert Sellinger and I knew that members of the Family were always furious at even the faintest signs of lingering intimacy between us.
A British news magazine had once described Robert Sellinger as the acceptable face of corporate capitalism—in unstated contrast to Paul. Robert looked like a slightly deflated copy of his younger brother; similar in shape, but smaller, healthier-looking, and more amiable.
Nancy, I knew, got on well with Robert. He had done a lot— or so I’d heard—to make her welcome in the Family, especially among the rather bitchy womenfolk of the Sellinger tribe.
As well as being president of the Sellinger Corporation, he was also the family diplomat and he gave me a warm, full-toothed smile, even though Paul must already have delivered my message and he would be seething with frustration at having a major PR project undermined.
I glanced around, looking for Paul, but I knew he would appear only at the last moment. He hated having to take a supporting role at the centenary celebrations, in front of people who all knew how much he wanted to be president.
Worse still, most of the guests knew the full story; how my appointment had been intended as a deliberate personal insult to Paul by the British side during the merger negotiations: the last face scratch of a reluctant bride.
The original World News had grown weak under my ineffective predecessor, Milner, and though we still had an unmatched reputation for news integrity, we lacked capital. Global, under Paul, had a lackluster reputation but a strong financial base, and they had seen the chance to buy World News. Paul had assumed that he would automatically head the enlarged agency, but this had been the last sticking point in the negotiations. As their final condition for recommending the merger to their shareholders, the British directors had insisted on naming the first chief executive and I had been given three years, as one unofficial directive put it, ‘to make us rich but honest instead of poor but honest.’ Out of pride, Paul had refused the vice-presidency and taken only the title of senior American director. It didn’t make him any less influential but it did give me a slight maneuvering edge.
Because of the film, the people who were speaking at the ceremony were in the front row facing the screen instead of on stage facing the audience, and Paul’s absence was not particularly noticeable, especially as I had insisted on having no line of guests of honor in order not to create a pecking order among clients and friends. Generally, though, I wasn’t very happy with the centenary arrangements. I had been in Japan when the program had been made final and there were too many signs of the ‘corporate communications expert’ Paul had brought in to advise. The centenary film itself was boring and conventional, full of idiotic sequences showing telex machines being installed to the inspirational sound of violins. I wondered if I should make a joke about it in my welcoming speech but I decided against it; it was intended to be an official WN publicity film and the director was in the audience.
As it turned out, I never got the chance anyway.
I saw Paul slip in by a side entrance and I looked at Don Westerman, the head of American Financial Services, expecting he would take it as a signal that it was time to introduce me.
But when the houselights dimmed and spotlights came on, it was Cox who got up to face the audience, even though he had not been scheduled to speak.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I hope you won’t object, there’s been a slight change of program. We were to have shown you the new WN film A Hundred Years in the Life of a Great News Agency, but we figured you’d all be seeing that soon anyway, if our PR people are doing their jobs properly, so we thought we’d give you a little surprise.
‘Many of you know already that this week is the fortieth birthday of our president, John Railton, and the staff has put together a filmed tribute to him. It’s called simply The Correspondent and a lot of you folks out there figure in the film too, which I hope will get me off the hook, if anyone objects.’
Cox smiled in Sellinger’s direction and I saw that he was glowering furiously toward Shelagh Coombes, one of his aides, who should have been in charge of the screening.
Then the spotlight went out and I felt a shock, as though someone had thrown cold water onto the small of my back.
There on the screen was an image that I recognized instantly, even though I had never seen the film before. It showed a figure poised on top of a high wall, looking out over a dusty African square filled with tanks and armored cars. The figure was me, aged twenty-two, during one of the Nigerian coups that had preceded the Biafran war. It was eerie looking at the scene from below, but I recalled instantly how it had looked from the top of the wall. Everything came back: the sounds of the gunfire in the distance along the coast road; the shouting and screaming as police boxed a crowd
of demonstrators into a side street; the bizarre vignette of the panicked police horse kicking in the side of an official car full of politicians scrambling to escape before the news of the change of government was announced.
I had been inside the Prime Minister’s Residence by chance when the coup was launched. I was the only journalist who had seen his assassination. I knew exactly how he had died and who had done it, but if I didn’t get off the top of the wall in the next few seconds, I knew I was going to feel a bullet in my back.
That moment had stayed with me for nearly twenty years. I could still feel the fear, the adrenaline pumping, and the sucking breath from the wall climb, and remember the moment when I had looked down at the armored cars in the square and seen the one sight I hadn’t dared hope for—the little white Volkswagen beetle with Nancy at the wheel.
In the film, I could assess calmly just what a risk she had taken. She had been parked literally under the guns, within feet of the soldiers on the front turrets. When she had seen me, she had fired the engine and swung the car right along the line of tanks and started her dash for the wall. As I had seen her move, I’d tried to find a place to drop safely, but there had been nowhere and I remembered the moment of blind fear as I had launched myself off the wall. On the film, the camera went into freeze frame when I was halfway to the ground, and the audience broke into spontaneous cheering. That was a picture most of them had seen before, on the cover of Life, with the caption ‘Portrait of a World News Correspondent on His Way to the Telex.’
Then the film showed me for the first time just how close Nancy had come to being killed. As she had reached the Residence wall, a machine gunner had opened up and the bullets had swiped alongside the beetle, inches from her side of the car. I hadn’t been able to get the door open and I couldn’t fit through the open window and I’d ridden out, half-jammed against the windshield, scrabbling desperately to keep my feet clear of the speeding ground. As the sequence ended, I turned back to look at Nancy and I saw with pleasure that she was also looking in my direction. I smiled at her in the darkness and she smiled back. There was no attempt to be discreet; it was a grin from the old days and it made me feel a little sick at the back of my throat. I turned back to the screen, remembering the night of the escape, in Dahomey, after we’d managed to cross the border to file the story and secure a worldwide scoop, and how we’d lain in the bedroom of the little French hotel, listening to the sea, locked in frenzied release. I could feel her skin again, slippery in the un-airconditioned heat, and taste the wine and garlic in her mouth.
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