Official Secrets

by Andrew Raymond

  Novak said, ‘Somehow I don’t think it’ll make the news tonight.’ He looked over to Chang’s office, then to the main conference room ahead, the blinds closed. ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Diane and Henry came in,’ Chang said quietly. ‘They want to talk about the hearing. And your future plans.’

  ‘My future plans?’ Novak knew that was desk-clearing language. His stomach churned. ‘Mark, how worried should I be about this meeting?’

  ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to–’

  Before Chang could finish Novak went into the speech he had been rehearsing in his head for many months, while waiting for planes, or sitting in make-up rooms before yet another cable news interview.

  Novak said, ‘Did you see that picture we ran online last week, about the guys who showed up at Senator Haley’s rally last week with unconcealed guns on their hips? The story made out like this was some kind of racist intimidation because Haley’s black and anti-gun. We then used two thousand words to find different ways of calling these protestors racist. Except what our pictures – which only showed from the waist down – didn’t show was that those intimidating protesters were black! And they all had licences to carry. Of course Bastion ran comparison photos with ours and it went viral as an example of fake news. Don’t you see how we lose credibility with shit like that? Bastion News is not the problem here. We are! What kind of editor approves that?’

  Mark, looking over Novak’s shoulder tried to interrupt. ‘Tom–’

  Novak hadn’t realised his editor-in-chief, Diane Schlesinger, had appeared behind him, and motioned to Chang not to stop Novak, who was in full flight.

  He continued, ‘I’ve had three stories killed because it apparently wasn’t the right time. Well guess what. No one thought Woodward and Bernstein’s timing was right when they started digging around Watergate again.’

  Schlesinger had to look down to stop herself laughing.

  Novak went on, still oblivious. ‘Old news, they said. Done to death. They buried it on page five, but their editor Ben Bradlee let them keep going. Then they won a Pulitzer Prize and never paid for another lunch the rest of their lives. That’s the kind of editor I need. I need–’

  Schlesinger cast the most recent edition of The Republic she had been reading onto Novak’s desk. ‘Tom, I’m going to stop you there.’

  Novak pursed his lips before turning around. ‘Diane.’

  Chang tried not to wince.

  Diane handed him a twenty-dollar note. ‘I had a bet with Mark here how long it would take for you to get to Woodward and Bernstein again. Mark said thirty seconds, I said two minutes. Looks like I lost.’ Schlesinger flicked her long blonde hair behind a heavy, glittering earring. She looked like she’d just walked out of the Chanel shop window down on 57th Street. She had on an elegant black and yellow trouser suit, giving her the look of a queen bee. ‘Did you see the Bastion billboard?’

  ‘Hard to miss,’ Novak said.

  Diane seemed stuck for words. ‘I mean...flipping...heck.’

  ‘Say what you want about them, they’ve got balls.’

  Mark and Diane exchanged a look, wondering since when Novak was so soft on a conservative news website.

  Diane said, ‘Henry and I will be in the conference room in ten minutes. Why don’t you say hello to Stella before you join us.’ She left a trail of a few hundred dollars’ worth of Hermés 24 Faubourg perfume tumbling over her shoulder as she left.

  Novak looked at Chang. ‘Stella who?’

  ‘Stella Mitchell,’ Chang said.

  ‘Stella Mitchell? What’s she doing here?’

  ‘Diane didn’t tell you? She’s our new Foreign Affairs correspondent. She came over from The Guardian last week while you were in DC.’ He pointed to the glass wall of the archive room, where a woman in her early thirties was sitting at a long desk by herself, a desk lamp pointed down on a mass of papers in front of her. ‘Also, did you get back to Walter Sharp?’

  ‘Walter...’

  ‘Sharp.’ Chang sighed. ‘The CIA guy that scared the bejesus out me last night.’

  ‘I don’t know the name. Or that anyone under the age of seventy still says bejesus.’

  ‘I sent you like three texts and four emails about it. You need to get that phone fixed. This guy said it was urgent.’ He flicked the back of his hand against Novak’s arm. ‘I’ll see you in there.’

  Once Chang was gone, Novak fished the sticky note out the bin and put it in his pocket. Sidling over to the archive room he knocked on the open door.

  Stella didn’t respond.

  ‘Hey. I’m Tom, we haven’t met.’ The only reason he said his name was in hoping Stella would say with reverence, ‘I know who you are.’

  Instead she said in an impeccable English accent, ‘So let me get this straight. Your name is Tom Novak.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Novak replied, a little confused, feeling like he’d walked in halfway through his own conversation.

  ‘But you used to publish under Tom Seymour Novak.’

  ‘That was five years ago. How did you know that?’

  She lifted a handful of papers. ‘Research.’

  Novak noticed a pile of Republic back issues sitting on the floor under the desk. What looked like every copy since he’d worked there. A few were open at Novak articles, with grammatical errors or certain phrases circled in red pen. ‘What is all that?’

  ‘Everything you’ve ever had published. It’s taken a week, but I needed to know what I was dealing with.’ She held her pen up a second. ‘Also, I’ve been eager to ask: are you sleeping with your copyeditor?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It was the only explanation I could think of for why they would let you away with such appalling misuse of the word “comprise”. Second of August, twenty thirteen issue: “the bill is comprised of...”’ She broke off, dismayed at the error.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Novak asked.

  Stella sighed as if it were glaringly obvious. ‘Parts compose the whole. The whole comprises the parts. It should be “the Bill is composed of”.’

  Novak shook his head and turned to leave. ‘I have a meeting.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ she said without laughing. She looked up cheerfully. ‘So do I.’

  Novak set off towards the conference room with Stella trying to catch up.

  What struck him about her was her voice. She made every sentence sound like an emergency, and if you were stupid enough to interrupt her you’d miss out on something crucial. On the surface, everything about her was functional: versatile grey suit that could have been the office or out for dinner, and she kept her hair up so it didn’t fall forward while typing at her desk. But Novak knew plenty about her reporting back in London. You didn’t make waves the way Stella did without having some serious talent. Not to mention bravery.

  As they passed the copy desk an editor called to Stella, ‘You put a U in colour again!’

  Stella replied, ‘The Queen once said that there is no such thing as American English: there is the English language and then there are mistakes. Who’s wrong: you or the Queen of England?’

  ‘Hey, Kate Winslet!’ The editor held her pen aloft. ‘This is the only royalty in this office.’

  Stella smiled back at her. ‘No U in colour. Got it.’

  Up ahead Novak stopped by the tech correspondent’s desk. He handed him his phone. ‘Kurt, this thing’s acting weird.’

  ‘Acting weird,’ Kurt parroted back in his usual bone dry manner. ‘Hang on, let me Google “phone acting weird” and get back to you.’

  ‘Could you take a look? I’ve tried everything I know.’

  Kurt surveyed the battered-looking phone. ‘By everything, do you mean throwing it repeatedly and angrily on the ground?’

  Novak winced. ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Give me an hour,’ he said.

  As Novak set off again Stella caught up to him. ‘So you don’t think you’re worthy of using your dad’s name, is that it?’ she asked.
<
br />   Novak said, ‘I stopped using it after he died. It’s so readers don’t get confused.’

  ‘What’s confusing about it?’

  ‘Ask Frank Sinatra Jnr and Hank Williams Jnr how easy it is to make a dinner reservation without getting a comment in return.’

  ‘Do you think people assume your dad landed you a reporting gig? Because changing your name is never going to convince people like them. Is that why you want to go to jail over your NSA story? I watched your hearing on C-SPAN. Didn’t your lawyer warn you not to bait Brenner like that? Was that what the note he passed you said? I bet it was. I bet you twenty...wait, I don’t have cash on me–’

  Jesus, Novak thought, does she ever come up for air?

  He paused when they reached the conference room door. ‘My dad was watched by two million viewers every night. How the hell do you live up to that?’

  Stella pushed past him and knocked loudly on the door. ‘You don’t, Novak. You live up to yourself.’

  As he opened the door he realised Stella was coming in too. ‘I don’t understand. This is my meeting.’

  ‘This is my meeting too. How about that?’ She gave a genuinely delighted smile as she squeezed past him.

  The pair found Chang sitting across from Diane Schlesinger and the magazine’s publisher Henry Self.

  Fresh from his house in the Hamptons, Self sat ominously in the wings as if no one was supposed to notice him. His attempt at dressing down was a pair of Diesel jeans, a New York Mets cap, and a New York Mets baseball jersey under a $4000 Cifonelli blazer.

  Self was by all accounts a playboy, and The Republic was his plaything. His father died of a heart attack shortly before the dotcom bubble burst, leaving behind an eight-figure inheritance for only-child Henry. He set up The Republic as a political boutique, where the most distinctive, passionate voices in America could converge. He recruited the finest journalistic talent he could buy (losing himself $1 million a year in the process), and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. Particularly his dad’s old friends in the Republican Party.

  ‘Diane, Henry, nice to see you,’ Stella said.

  Novak was surprised at Stella’s familiarity with who Novak had always called ‘the enemy’.

  Novak shook Self’s hand – which felt eerily soft – with just a nod and a half smile.

  ‘Mark will get onto London in a moment, Tom,’ Self said. ‘I caught your hearing earlier.’ He rearranged the flaps of his jacket as he sat down. He had the air of someone used to being the most important person in a room. ‘Here’s how it’s going to go: I’ve paid three million dollars to Bruckner Jackson Prowse to keep you out of jail. Your book’s sold well, but it hasn’t sold that well. So unless you have a spare three million sitting around, would you be so kind as to listen to the lawyer they’ve provided you with next time?’

  Chastened, Novak replied, ‘Yes, sir.’

  Self liked the ‘sir’ so he dropped the rest of what he had planned to say. ‘Diane?’

  Diane said, ‘You are no longer covering the NSA papers, Tom. You’re this magazine’s most recognisable reporter. We need you back where you belong: asking tough questions, and building stories. The fallout from this Downing Street thing is going to be unlike anything we’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Diane, I don’t know London. I’ve never even been there,’ said Novak.

  ‘I agree. That’s why Stella here’s going to be your new partner.’

  Novak waited for Diane to relent and admit she was joking. When he realised she wasn’t he just smiled. ‘Diane,’ he said, ‘with respect. I know Stella made a lot of noise in London, but it’s been a while since I–’

  ‘Is this about sharing your byline?’ asked Diane.

  Novak thought for a moment. ‘I work alone, Diane.’

  Stella smiled at the floor.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Novak asked her.

  Stella said, ‘You don’t work alone. You don’t work for Diane. You don’t work for anyone.’

  ‘How do you figure that?’

  ‘OK, then. Could you please list for me what stories you’ve filed in the last six months?’

  Novak turned instead to Self. ‘Henry. You don’t go along with this, do you?’

  Self said, ‘We’ve got a falling readership, Tom. Bastion is growing every quarter. The only thing propping us up is the ad-spend Diane’s bringing in for online. So I ask you: What is it you don’t like? That we’re asking you to do your job? Or that you have to step out the spotlight for a moment in order to do it?’

  Feeling bolshie (but careful to direct it to Diane rather than Henry), Novak said, ‘It’s funny, because I was never told we had to choose a side. And I think we’ve changed. I think we’ve changed because round here we hate Republicans. And we hate this President. But the truth doesn’t care whose side you’re on.’

  Diane laughed. ‘Oh Tom, I could fill a book with all those quotes about the truth I’ve heard down the years. Your father came up with most of them when we were at the Tribune. “You don’t choose the truth: the truth chooses you.” You know why you never hear them now? Because editors back then weren’t trying to run a current affairs magazine in a market that’s competing with Facebook, Twitter and about a million cat videos. We’re competing with clickbait headlines, and ads that are worth more than the...’ she fumbled, about to swear, ‘...fudging story underneath it!’

  Novak let the dust settle, never afraid of a tense silence. ‘Diane,’ he said. ‘I’ve never known someone who goes so out of their way not to swear.’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘It’s a bigger challenge when you’re in the room.’

  With the most pressing news delivered, Self stood up and clapped his hands. ‘Anyway. That’s where we’re at.’ He looked to Stella and Tom. ‘Make big plays, you two. We need to land a big one. And soon.’

  Once the door closed behind Self, Diane threw her glasses down. ‘What’s your problem with London, Tom?’

  ‘There’s no story there, Diane. It was a suicide bombing. It writes itself.’

  ‘You’re my security correspondent. The centre of British political power has suffered a huge, stunning security failure. Do I need to make the connection on a wall for you with tacks and bits of string?’ Diane rifled through the tower of paper she’d brought with her, and held up a handwritten letter. ‘Subscriptions got this the other day. Some little old man from Iowa. Know what it says? “What’s happened to Tom Novak? Does he still write for you?”’

  ‘My God,’ Novak replied in mock horror. ‘People still write letters?’

  Stella said, ‘I don’t understand your reluctance, Novak. There were rumours on the Hill last week about the new Patriot Act getting a reading soon. And the Republicans are already whipping votes for Bill Rand as new Secretary of Defense, which if it’s true means we should all be out buying canned goods and bottled water right now.’

  Novak laughed with exhaustion. ‘Let’s get one thing straight, Mary Poppins: the only person round here who gets to call me Novak is Martin Fitzhenry. Secondly, you’ll never win any awards reporting on a story the entire Western world is on location for.’

  ‘What about Bob Woodward?’ Stella said. ‘He won a Pulitzer for his coverage of nine eleven, not just Watergate.

  ‘No, you’re right, Stella, because how else would anyone have known nine eleven happened.’

  Diane looked to Chang for some support, but all he could do was shrug. Diane asked Novak, ‘Is this about you and Bastion?’

  It was the first Chang had heard of it. He asked Novak, ‘What about you and Bastion?’

  ‘Forget it,’ Novak said.

  ‘You’re not thinking about going across the street, are you?’ Chang asked.

  Stella waded in. ‘Are you crazy? You can’t go from The Republic to Bastion, Novak. It would be like Jagger leaving the Stones before they recorded Exile on Main Street.’

  Chang said, ‘Nah, it’d be more like Steve Jobs joining Microsoft.’

  N
ovak closed his eyes a moment and felt his temples as if everyone was losing their minds. ‘OK, first of all: if Jobs left before he invented the iPhone no one would have cared if he got a job as a greeter at Home Depot. I don’t know if you’ve looked around here lately, but we are not coming up with the journalistic equivalent of the iPhone. Bastion are at least trying. They’re disrupting the mainstream media. They’re influencing presidential elections. When was the last time The Republic could say that? Yeah, they’ve got some crazies–’

  Diane exclaimed, ‘Ha!’

  ‘But so have we. And Stella, if I was Mick Jagger I wouldn’t feel too shabby about moving on after co-writing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”.’

  Stella said, ‘Novak, the NSA Papers was good, but it wasn’t “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” good. Get over yourself–’

  Diane slammed her hand down on the desk. ‘Enough! Your discomfort is duly noted, Stella.’ She turned to Novak. ‘Tom. You’re not freelance. You have a contract. Or like Henry said, you can resign and pay the rest of your retainer to Bruckner Jackson Prowse on your own.’

  Novak thought of an old saying of his dad’s: “You can have the story you care about, or the story people are interested in. But you can’t have both.”

  ‘I’ll take your frustrated silence as a yes.’ Diane turned to Stella. ‘Are you two going to keep him in line?’

  Chang answered, ‘Sure.’

  Novak said to himself, ‘No, that’s fine. Pretend like I’m not even here...’

  Stella waited until he made eye contact with her again. ‘I have every confidence in him,’ she answered.

  ‘Tom, Stella: you’re on a flight to London tomorrow morning. Heathrow should be open again by then. Let’s aim for three thousand words for dot com by Friday, five thousand for print.’ Schlesinger put her glasses back on and held her phone, waiting to have the room. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have friends in London I need to check are still alive.’

  As Chang, Novak, and Stella reached the door, Diane called out, ‘Tom. A moment.’

  He felt like his high school English teacher was keeping him back after class.

  ‘I know why this Bastion offer appeals to you,’ Diane said. ‘Two-fifty a year isn’t nothing.’