Savage News

by Jessica Yellin

  She wanted to hug her sister. “Sarah, you’re such a good person.”

  “You’re going to be great.”

  As soon as they got off the phone, Natalie dialed her Mom, determined to keep her promise to Sarah. She left an apology on Noreen’s voice mail and stayed on the line for a moment before adding, “I love you.”

  She hung up and felt overcome with exhaustion. It’s late, she told herself. You should try to get some sleep.

  Resisting the urge to find a Xanax, she lay back, closed her eyes, and let her mind float. She replayed the events of the last two weeks. McChesty. That crazy decoy yacht. And Karima—her mysterious whispered tips. As she drifted into the memory of Karima’s smile and the scent of custom perfume, she felt a sting of shame.

  The woman had tried to feed her a story and she’d failed to follow up. Failed to make sense of those tips.

  Sallee LLC. What was its meaning? What had she missed? Why was Karima so solicitous?

  Natalie’s eyes snapped open. Who are you kidding? No way she was going to be able to sleep.

  Sitting up on the plaid sofa, she reached for her laptop and Googled who is Karima Sahadi. The site announced twenty-three million search results. There were spreads about the Sahadis’ houses in St. Barts, Oman, Tahiti, Colorado, Palm Beach, the Hamptons, and Sardinia. Interviews about her art collection. Stories about her legendary parties. There were pictures of Karima looking thin and radiant with every living president and recently deceased dictator on the planet.

  Glancing at the clock—just after midnight—Natalie made eye contact with the sad cowboy.

  You lost. You quit. Stop torturing yourself, the cowboy seemed to say.

  “I want to know what I missed,” she replied out loud, pulling her laptop onto the couch. And I’d rather read about Karima’s life than spend the night thinking about mine, she thought.

  Flipping into research mode, she started reading. The first dozen articles identified Karima as the wife of Ambassador Raheem Sahadi. But one piece, a seven-year-old New York Times Magazine profile, described her as a member of the Mifsud family. The Mifsud family? That’s new information. A quick Google search confirmed that the Mifsuds owned controlling shares in GlobalCom, a massive multinational corporation.

  “I definitely missed that,” Natalie murmured.

  Toggling to her email, Natalie pulled up all the EarlyBirds from the last two weeks and double-checked. Yep. GlobalCom had sponsored the newsletter every day. No wonder Karima was their favorite boldface name. There were GlobalCom spots endorsing the oil summit and peace in the Middle East. Also ads for the Union of Latin American Nations and an airline with a flight to Caracas. A Middle Eastern oil corporation is boasting about investments in Venezuela. Am I crazy or is Karima trying to send a message?

  It was a small thing, maybe just a coincidence. But it seemed like an awful lot of these threads led to South America.

  You’re a stairs person, Natalie thought. You can figure this out.

  Natalie assumed that with Karima in the mix, this had to be about oil. With a little digging, she hit on a trove of articles that breathlessly described a “massive new oil field” geologists discovered in northern Colombia. According to the articles, that Magdalena oil field was worth hundreds of billions of dollars to Colombia. Colombia wanted to use something called the Trans-Caribbean Pipeline to move all that oil to the sea for export. But Venezuela controlled the pipeline and insisted on using it for natural gas.

  A cold awareness shimmered through Natalie’s body. Venezuela’s resistance was costing Colombia billions of dollars.

  Is that the real reason Lystra and Venezuela are fueding? If so, why is the US inserting itself in this fight?

  She checked the clock: 2 a.m. It was too early to make calls and too late to admit defeat. She considered the information she’d just learned. It was at least possible that the White House was taking sides in a regional power struggle that would upend the international oil market and destabilize the western hemisphere. She had to know why.

  But it was also possible she was spinning into a conspiracy-theory black hole. A few more hours of this and she’d probably start finding connections between her sad cowboy and Sonia Barbaro’s Venezuelan hairstylist.

  She felt eyes on her and reluctantly looked over at the cowboy. “I know,” she said to his challenging gaze. “I can’t find a White House connection, and I don’t work at ATN, so it doesn’t matter anyway,” she murmured and lay back on the couch imagining how she could break this story—without a job—when she passed out, laptop open on her chest.

  * * *

  The sound of a ringing phone jolted her awake. Bleary-eyed, she reached for her cell and, squinting against the morning sun, checked the caller ID. James.

  “Oh god,” she moaned out loud.

  She’d forgotten about James.

  Remembering that he still had Cronkite, she briefly wondered if maybe she should just convince James to keep her dog. They’d be so happy together.

  “Hi there, sorry I haven’t been in touch,” she answered, launching right in. “It’s been kind of a crazy twenty-four hours.”

  “I can imagine. I saw the reports,” he said.

  Great. She cringed. “I appreciate you keeping Cronkite overnight. When should I come get him?”

  “I was thinking maybe we could all go for a walk. You, me, Colin Powell, Cronkite. Have you been on the Washington Mall since you’ve been here? It’s very relaxing.”

  She blanched. She had to admit that she really liked him, but since she was moving back to New York, there was no point in getting attached.

  “That’s such a great offer but I’m afraid I’m not in any shape to leave the apartment,” she said, glancing down at the orange flannel PJs she was still wearing.

  “How about dinner?” James asked. “I bet you could use some friendly company. Tonight’s family night at the Hardings’. My folks are coming over. Bet you haven’t eaten a good meal all day.”

  “Oh, James, I don’t know—”

  She was interrupted by an aggressive buzzing.

  “Maybe we...” She trailed off, distracted as the buzzing continued.

  “Why don’t you think it over?” James said.

  The buzz was coming from the wall and she remembered when she’d heard that sound before. Last week, the intercom. Was it possible that, after tanking her career, Hal thought he could worm his way into her place?

  Indignant, she promised James she’d get back to him as soon as possible and marched to the intercom.

  “Please go away,” she barked into the receiver.

  “Well, someone’s been busy at charm school. C’mon, let me up.”

  It was Matt, not Hal.

  “I don’t want to see you,” she said, meaning it.

  “I know who set us up,” Matt singsonged over the line. “It’s not who you think.”

  Natalie considered this. She had no time for Matt and his sanctimonious I told you so’s. Publicly, she’d taken full responsibility for the mistake, but privately, they both knew that he’d pushed her to go live with one source. On the other hand, he had information she wanted. Relenting, she hit the buzzer.

  “Jesus, this place is terrible,” he said as he sauntered in, his eyes darting from the breakfast bar to the sad cowboy as he sucked on the remains of a venti Starbucks something-or-other.

  She studied her ex-producer with cold eyes. “Spare me your gloating. What do you know?”

  “I’m not here to gloat.” He gestured to a chair opposite the couch. “You mind?” he asked and dropped into it without waiting for a reply. Leaning forward, he rested his chin on one hand and looked over at Natalie with sad puppy eyes.

  “This isn’t easy for me.”

  “You have my sympathy,” she said, glaring at him impatiently.

  “Can’t you b
e nice? I’m here to apologize!” He sat back and looked at the wall. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to go on air,” he said as if he was reciting something he had rehearsed more than once. “I feel bad. You were right. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  Natalie stared at him.

  “I’m, um, not close to many people, and it sucks that I screwed over someone I care about.” He inhaled, as if gathering the courage to say something else, then turned to look her in the eye. “Honestly, Natalie, I’d hate to lose your friendship.”

  Friendship. He considered her a friend? She appraised him. He was making eye contact and indicating remorse. Apparently Matt had a conscience. Who would have guessed?

  “And if that’s not enough,” he added, “Dasha’s so angry that she’s threatening to put polonium in my coffee if I don’t find you and fix this. I’m pretty sure she’s kidding around but I don’t want to risk it.”

  Natalie had to hold back a laugh. “Dasha doesn’t really joke,” she said finally.

  “Yes, so you see that I’m appealing to you as a humanitarian.” He seemed to relax. “I should have come sooner,” he continued. “But the whole thing threw me. And I wanted to figure out who was behind it. It wasn’t Bibb. I was wrong about that, too.”

  Natalie pursed her lips, not surprised. “It was Hal and Bibb together, right?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Andrea. Well, she carried it out anyway.”

  Natalie couldn’t make sense of what he said. “What do you mean it was Andrea?”

  “Her dad died and the Chief told her that he’d give her a few days off for the funeral, but she had to pass you the tip first.”

  “The Chief?” She felt ice fill her veins. “Why would the Chief do this?”

  Matt, who had been scanning the papers on the table, now gave Natalie his undivided attention. “Because he wanted Ryan to win.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t he just give him the job?” Natalie was confounded. “He’s the boss. He’s literally the Chief.”

  “Hello? Because he created that idiotic competition, and you were way better than he expected.” Matt was speaking in the tone of a wise older sibling. “Then you actually started winning. There’s no way he could take the job from the more competent female and give it to the hot dumb white dude.”

  Natalie turned over Matt’s bombshell information in her head. All this time she’d thought Hal had been sabotaging her because she’d rejected him. But the truth was so much worse.

  The whole thing had been rigged? She’d never had a shot? It’d been a setup all along.

  “I can’t believe Andrea did this,” she said, dumbfounded. “I can’t believe she didn’t care about putting bad reporting on air.”

  “Andrea didn’t know the story was BS. She thought she was hooking you up with a big story and she seems to feel awful,” Matt said. “Not that it helps to hear that.”

  Actually it did. It wasn’t Andrea’s fault. It was the system they worked in. Pitting people against each other. Making it seem normal to betray a colleague or traffic in unconfirmed information in order to please the boss.

  Which reminded her.

  “Hey, what do you know about Jazzmyn?” Natalie asked anxiously. “I tried to reach her, but the email bounced back.”

  “Gone,” Matt said and made a loud noise slurping from his almost empty Starbucks. “Like packed up and outta the bureau.”

  “Oh god,” Natalie whispered, hit by a wave of guilt. “Do you think they paid her to go away?”

  “I hope it was a lot.” Matt nodded vigorously. “For sure they made her sign an NDA.”

  Natalie felt the weight of Jazzmyn’s fate in her chest.

  Matt surveyed the coffee table in front of Natalie’s couch, littered with notes she’d taken during her reporting frenzy the night before, and held up a paper covered in especially erratic handwriting. “What’s doing with the paper chase?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She looked at the papers and shrugged. “I went full conspiracy theory, trying to figure out what I missed.”

  “And?”

  She explained about the pipeline and the oil field. How there was real money at stake and the US was taking sides for no discernable reason. “It could explain what’s really behind the tensions between Venezuela and the Lystras. Though I’m still trying to figure out why the White House is lining up with the Colombians,” she said finally. “We need Venezuela for oil. Why alienate them?”

  “Interesting,” Matt said. “Too bad you don’t have a place to report all this.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” she said.

  He reached another one of the papers on the coffee table. Natalie had written Karima across the top. “And what’s this?”

  “I got a few tips from Karima I was trying to piece together.”

  “What, like never eat your calories when you can drink them?”

  “No,” Natalie laughed and recited from memory all Karima’s tips. “For one thing, she said women help women. Hah. Also she told me to look into a company called Sallee LLC. And third, she said it’s never too late to be wise.” Natalie sighed. “That last thing I figured out. According to Wikiquote, ‘it’s never too late to be wise’ is a quote from Robinson Crusoe, the book. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean.”

  Matt scoffed. “I had a section on that book in tenth grade. Actually...” he took out his iPhone and started typing “...did you say that company was called Sallee, spelled S-A-L-L-E-E?” Matt asked, now all business.

  He held up the screen to show Natalie. It was a plot summary for Robinson Crusoe.

  “In the book, Robinson Crusoe gets taken as a slave to a place called Sallee. Same spelling.” Matt held up a finger, “And you know who escapes with him? A boy named Xury!” Matt looked at her in triumph while Natalie searched her mind for the connection.

  “Don’t you remember the Xury? That’s the name of the yacht we chased in St. Tropez!” Matt said excitedly. “Or Miami, whatever.”

  “All Karima’s tips lead back to Robinson Crusoe?” Natalie asked, befuddled. Then, realization dawning, added, “Isn’t the book about an adventurer who goes to a foreign land to make money? Then he loses his way. Wait, so Robinson Crusoe—”

  “Is President Patrick Crusoe,” finished Matt.

  “I would never have figured that out.”

  “I know,” Matt said smugly. “Clearly Karima thinks you’re way more literate than you are.”

  Her heart rate ticking up, Natalie said, “So what’s her point? Is she saying the president got caught up in chasing money?”

  “Maybe. Oil money? Something to do with his work in Latin America?”

  “I’m not sure I trust Karima’s version of things,” she said. “And how does this connect to the First Lady? Why did she leave the White House?”

  Without asking her permission, Matt reached for Natalie’s laptop and hit a few keys. “Let’s see what’s going on with that pipeline.”

  Matt was quiet as he typed. Looking over his shoulder, Natalie saw an image on the screen that was blue on one side and brown on the other, with lots of little dots on it.

  “That’s a satellite image of the Venezuelan coast,” Matt declared proudly.

  “You know how to read satellite images?” Natalie didn’t even try to hide that she was impressed. “What are we looking at?”

  “I know how to find satellite images. I didn’t say I know how to read them.”

  “Well, how is that helpful?”

  Natalie’s phone on the coffee table started buzzing. They both watched the screen fill with a message.

  JAMES: Cronkite and Colin Powell formally invite you to join us for dinner. Say yes.

  “I’m not sure.” Matt smiled. “But you know a well-connected cartographer who can answer that question.”

  29

>   Patrick’s Republic

  “I can read the images, but I can’t tell you that much,” James said as he studied his computer monitor, which was larger than any TV Natalie had seen in a hotel room the last six months. “It’s not like the movies where you can turn the satellite ninety degrees from your home computer and read some guy’s lips. It’s a fixed transponder and all I can see in that location is what looks like a construction site.”

  Sitting opposite his deck, Natalie watched James appreciatively. He’d been so happy when she’d said yes to dinner, and so enthusiastic when she’d asked if he wouldn’t mind using his cartography skills to help her read a satellite image. “Sounds like a blast,” he’d responded without a hint of irony.

  Of course he was being modest. Already James had made a big discovery. He’d identified the name of a company, LXX, emblazoned across the roof of a construction shed at the Magdalena oil field. Heart pounding, Natalie had texted Matt, asking if he’d try to find out who owned LXX.

  As she was waiting for more morsels of information, James looked up and met her gaze with such warmth she had to look away to avoid blushing. She could have sworn that Colin Powell and Cronkite, lying next to each other on the bed, sighed in agreement. Catching her eye, Cronkite let out a quiet yap, and Natalie remembered the day her father had brought him home after a trip to the hardware store.

  “A rescue. He looked so needy,” her dad had said defensively.

  The dog had been flea-bitten and a little wild-eyed, and her mother had agreed to let him stay on temporarily and only after he’d been bathed.

  Standing outside, soaping him in the driveway with the garden hose, Natalie’s father had started calling him Cronkite. Natalie said she didn’t think Walter Cronkite would approve but her father had disagreed.

  “My dear, Cronkite was dogged in his pursuit of a story. He never backed down and he was willing to go sniffing in places that were dark and forgotten in order to drag the truth to light. He understood that a real democracy needs people unafraid to face up to power.”