Star Time (35 page)

"You really
are
a manipulative bastard!" she snapped.

The memory of his conflicted feelings about her broke over Greg with the suddenness of a summer squall. He was dismayed by how powerful the memory still was—as if no time had passed—and how pointless. He put it out of his mind.

The anchor desk had already been repositioned to include much of the newsroom activity behind it. Technicians were repositioning lights on the overhead grid. A new script was being put into the teleprompter. A few minutes later an entirely different version of
This Is FBS News Tonigh
t began to roll.

Greg
Lyall
stood in the back of the control room watching the graphics and music come up on screen and fade into a close-up of Chris, her composure fully restored.
Little seemed to have changed in the intervening decade.
The blond hair still framed a perfect face, a touch older, but more self-possessed. The large eyes could still transfix him, like lasers vibrating out of sapphire. Time seemed only to have made the sincerity she radiated more certain, more dependable. Changes would have to be instituted between now and Monday, and tinkering would continue over time, but only in the presentation, agenda, approach, coverage, newsgathering—not with Chris herself. He realized that the task would be to create a newscast that could approach the skill with which she naturally, effortlessly presented the news.

Instead of a small clique's retreating to a conference room afterward, Greg chose to have the post-broadcast dissection out in the open, with everyone connected with the broadcast sitting informally on chairs and desks. If this news organization was going to become a team, people
would have to feel included. He looked over at Hugo, who was already staring at him.

"What are you thinking?" Greg asked before
stating
his own thoughts.

"Probably the same as you.
Why does this world need one more anchor behind a classroom desk like a schoolteacher?”

Greg nodded. "Why isn’t she out there where the news is happening instead of a New York
studio.
" He turned to Chris. "To the extent we can, not every night, of course, but when we can, let’s broadcast directly from where the news is happening."

The other networks were doing that from time to time when important news broke elsewhere. Greg wanted to do much more of it.

"Viewers would tune us in because if the action is in Cairo, say, you’d be there for them interviewing the top newsmakers. I think over time you'd grab a big chunk of new audience."

Chris's eyes were lit with what her mind's eye was envisioning. "It will take a lot of planning.
And good guesswork."

"And having to work very fast wherever we are," Hugo added.
"And a lot of travel."

Greg's eyes swept the room to take in everyone. "I think Monday, the first night the broadcast is on the air, it should be from Johannesburg. The developing countries are meeting there next week to consider joint action on a lot of major issues. Hillary Clinton will be there for State and, if not Geithner, then his deputy at Treasury.
Our environmental people.
Third World presidents and finance ministers—every nation in Africa and a lot from Asia and Latin America." He focused on Chris. "You report from Johannesburg, and our correspondents in other African countries report on the status in those areas. And we hit the reporting hard. Africa is rich and diverse. There are important stories everywhere. We call it 'Africa Week.' What do you think?"

Chris's eyes were gleaming. "It's terrific. We start off with a bang."

"Okay," Greg declared to the others. "Africa. By tomorrow afternoon a lot of you have to be on a plane. Hugo, see if we can lease one to take everyone and all the equipment. It would stop at one or two cities on the way to let off our people covering other African countries."

Hugo had once done a series of stories in South Africa and knew it well. He was already giving directions to his key producers and the logistics manager: "See about renting a 747. In case we can’t, block out seats on every flight to Johannesburg, Ghana, Nigeria,
Somali
. And Cairo; the President will be stopping off there on the way back."

To another, he said, "Alert the Johannesburg bureau to find us hotel rooms and arrange to shoot inside the conference center and to put a portable anchor booth outside the building."

To a third, "Start notifying these correspondents and producers and cameramen we want to go." He began writing the names down and listing the destinations for each. “And see how many more are available to us over there.”

Within minutes people were on the phone or conferring with staff.
Chris’s first phone call to her husband to explain that she would be in South Africa for the week.
Mobilizing and going off like this was second nature to
newspeople
. That was what their calling was about: A compulsion to be where news was happening.

Greg allowed the familiar rush of adrenalin to slip out of his bloodstream. Control of the broadcast had left his hands; he was the only person in the newsroom with nothing to do. He became keenly aware of how much he would have to rely on others as CEO. He had confidence in Hugo and Chris. But the stakes were infinitely higher than they had been at KFBS. Any failure would be his and absolute. No one noticed him leave.

In the taxi on the way to the restaurant where she was to meet Ken, Chris reviewed all the matters to be arranged if she was to be away for a week and what she should pack. Also on her mind, however, was her recent phone conversation. On the phone he had turned argumentative for no reason she could grasp. She had cut short the call; they would speak further at the restaurant.

As she stepped out of the taxi, two couples also arriving for a late dinner recognized her. One woman immediately began to whisper to the others. Chris was sure the woman had caught Ray
Strock's
final comment.

Ken was already at the table. As she kissed him hello, Chris noted that indeed something was disturbing him.

"You have to call it off."

"The decision's already been made. It's out of my hands."

"Damn it, they wanted you badly enough. They can put off your starting as anchor for another week."

Chris waved off the waitress who was approaching for drink orders and faced Ken directly. "There's a problem here that I'm just not getting. Why do you not want me to go to South Africa? You've already told me you'll be away the early part of next week as it is."

"I can't tell you why."

Chris tried not to look exasperated. "It's top-secret government stuff?"

He nodded. Both understood that occasionally matters came up neither could reveal to the other.

She pressed him. "Somebody intends to shoot down airliners flying over Africa?
Communist guerrillas?
Poachers?
Give me a hint."

He shook his head.

"I'm supposed to stop an entire broadcast from going to Africa," Chris said, "and you can't tell me why?"

Ken's normally serene brow clenched as he nodded. "It's very important to me that you not go."

"If you could give me a good reason, maybe I could—"

She waited while he wrestled with the problem. He turned to her.

"You can't repeat to anyone what I'm about to tell you. You never heard it."

She nodded.

Ken glanced about to make sure no one could overhear him before whispering, "The President plans to surprise everyone by flying to the conference on Monday to take part personally in the conference and sign several multilateral treaties. He wants to show his concern for Africa and the Third World. You know what a security risk he faces down there, so the Secret Service has asked the White House to keep the visit secret until he arrives. He'll be taking along several White House reporters and a pool TV crew. They won't know ahead of time where they're going. A few Congressional committee heads who've been working with him on some of the matters up for discussion have also been asked along."

Chris comprehended. "You're one of the senators picked to go."

He nodded. "None of the other TV networks have a clue what's happening.”

She nodded. “They'll have to rely on the pool coverage, but FBS will be right there.”

“It will look as if I tipped you off and
compromised security. The rest of the media will be sure I gave you an edge. The President will be blind-sided."

Chris was deep in thought.

"What I should do is phone the President personally and let him know what's happening," he said.

"So he can alert the other networks in time for them to get down there, too. Our edge will be trashed just because my husband happens to be a senator. Instead of you being compromised, I'll be the one."

"Checkmate," he agreed. "I was afraid this new job was going to create problems for us. But you had your heart set on it."

She laid her hand lovingly on his. "There are husbands and wives who come from different races. This is minor."

"It won't be when that plane lands and you're standing there with a microphone. If I don't go, I'll look even guiltier."

"What if we hadn't told each other any of this?"

"Same thing."

"Then I guess that's the way it will have to be."

Ken was angry. "We're talking about national security here."

"No, we're talking about what claims of national security often turn out to be: embarrassment."

Ken's mouth tightened in frustration. "I can't believe you won't do this for me. Being a United States senator—the responsibilities—aren't exactly insignificant. When do you give in for
my
career?"

"There's no reason either of us should ever have to give in." The question troubled her although she did not say so. The Constitution prescribed no resolution for the conflict between the government and the press. She never suspected it might enter her home. As a reporter and a woman, she had always put her faith in the truth. "Neither of us knew about the other's plans when they were made. People will just have to believe us."

Ken hoped she was right, but despite his personal honesty, he was too savvy a politician to believe in the truth.

The week after meeting Susan
Glendon
was the most hectic and debilitating of Stew
Graushner's
life.

Each morning she would drop him off at the bus stop. She
was very understanding
about "his other projects" and the frustrations of "getting his car repaired." Then, unknown to her, after the bus let him off, he would walk the mile to the offices of
The Guts of the Story.
As he wrote, he privately made mental notes about the oddballs surrounding him: the massive woman video editor
who lifted him overhead in a perfect clean and jerk as a warning she was not be trifled with; the paranoid producer, whose limp turned out to be caused by a snub-nosed rifle strapped to a leg, which everyone discovered when his big toe was accidentally blown away; and the staff's best researcher, who proudly informed the others that she had been hired because her psychoanalyst claimed her sex practices were so bizarre that most had not yet been described in the literature.

Or at least those were the television characters his colleagues evolved into as he and Susan collaborated late into the night on the series.
And later, in bed.

Susan bounced out of the bedroom bright and early every morning. Stew crawled.

By the end of the week, their proposal spelling out the concept for their new show was ready. They set up a meeting on Saturday morning with the head of television for Monumental Productions, Mickey Blinder.

Like many television executives, Mickey had held jobs on
both the
network side and the supplier side, dealing all the while with the same people, who possessed similarly checkered resumes. Their careers were a series of choose-up games, where the same people were reshuffled: Competitors became colleagues became competitors again; suppliers of programming became buyers and then suppliers again. Rarely were any of these power brokers capable themselves of creating a story that would captivate audiences, the final purpose for their employment. Yet they were the ones who decided what would get bought for production and, ultimately, go on the air.

Monumental Productions had hired Mickey Blinder away from a network after his predecessor was hired away from Monumental. The job required him to induce the networks to finance pilots of
Monumental's
proposed series and then buy the shows for broadcast, while Monumental accumulated episodes for syndication, sometimes in partnership with the network.

Last year, his first at Monumental, Mickey sold the networks three pilot shows. One was picked for fall presentation. It had not lasted a month. The only Monumental show still on television was the long-running sitcom
Loving
Luba
. No one seemed to care that it was a rip-off of
I Love Lucy
. This was its fifth year on television, and it was just about the only popular show FBS still had. Yet, his predecessor and not Mickey had sold that show to FBS.