Conspiracy (19 page)

Groves looked around the nearly empty terminal parking area to decide on his next move. The bus was nosed in toward one right-hand spur of the U-shaped terminal building; the FBI pair and the driver would see him if he tried to come around to the entry door the other passengers were using, or if he tried to walk out the parking lot into the street. 

That meant he would have to find another door, or wait until they had gone. Groves disliked the idea of walking away from the cover of the bus, but any minute another Greyhound might come roaring in and decide to park right where he was standing, or the FBI men would count the last passenger and come up one person short of the driver’s tally, and start looking around.

He crossed the parking lot to the storage terminal, feeling the sun on his back and expecting at any moment to hear a shouted command to halt. The first door he tried was locked. So was the next. He walked faster, trying door after door, moving rapidly to those in the center wing of the terminal. All were locked. If he went any farther, he would be past the front corner of the bus, and would be visible to the men who stood at its doorway.

But if he stayed where he was, they would see him from inside the bus as soon as they climbed aboard and looked out the window. Son of a bitch, he thought. He had been in some damned tight spots before, during a career of American industrial espionage that had first led him into working for the
Patrón
, but this one was a real kick in the balls. If he ever got out of this bus station, he vowed, he would make this his last job,
Patrón
or no
Patrón
.

Moving quickly, one eye on the bus, he extracted the cash from the salesman’s wallet and then from the engineer’s. He pocketed the money, fifty-five dollars, and dumped the wallets, ID’s and all, into the nearest litter basket, then headed for the inside corner of the terminal building. There, in the shade of the portico overhang, he crouched and took off his jacket. He removed the pint of whiskey from the inside pocket, broke open the seal, and rinsed his mouth out with a healthy swig, dribbling whiskey and spit onto his shirt front. He poured the remainder of the whiskey on the ground, then tore the paper with the Missouri State seal away from the neck and cap of the bottle, and stuffed it into his mouth. He sat down in the puddle of whiskey, set the bottle between his legs, spread his coat over him like a blanket, and pillowed his head on the suitcase.

His eyes were closed, but he was far from asleep when he heard a voice. “Hey, you there!”

He lay still, forcing his breathing to remain slow and regular. The voice came again, closer now, almost on top of him. “You! Get up out of there!”

Something prodded him in the thigh, the toe of a boot, most likely. He yawned and opened one eye, squinting. Above him stood one of the FBI men.

His luck was holding. One FBI man would be less thorough than two, and far better than the bus driver, who might easily have recognized him after those hundreds of glances into the rearview mirror. “Time ’sit?” he said sleepily.

“One-fifteen. What are you doing there?”

“One-fifteen day?” He repeated the words in a tone of distress. “One-fifteen day?” He struggled to his feet, breathing whiskey fumes into the man’s face. “When’s ticket open?”

The man recoiled slightly. When he caught sight of the puddle where Groves had been sitting, his expression of disgust deepened. “Where are you going?”

“Wheeling,” said Groves. He ran the back of his hand across his mouth, scratching at his two-day stubble of beard. “Sister.” He blinked as though remembering something important, and then turned away, bending down to retrieve the empty pint bottle. Getting up again, he reached for the man’s hand, as though expecting help. The man lifted him with obvious reluctance, and then wiped his hand on the side of his pants.

“Wheeling, is it? Got any ID?”

Groves shook his head, staring at the empty bottle in his hand. “Got money, though. Tha’s all ya need on a bus, ’s money.” He reached into his pants pocket as though he were checking his roll of bills. When his hand reached the wet fabric in his pants, his face fell. “Aw, no,” he said softly, as though to himself. “Aw, no.” He stared at the moisture on his hand and then looked up at the man, shame in his eyes. He coughed more whiskey breath and drew himself up like a man trying not to lose his last remaining shred of dignity. “Mister, would you ’scuse me for a minute? I gotta go to the men’s room.”

“Yeah,” said the man, moving away. “You better clean up the act or they won’t sell you any ticket today. What time did you get here?”

“They were closed,” said Groves. He shuffled after the man. “Fella said I couldn’t drink in there. You know which way’s a men’s room?”

“Off to your right.” The man nodded at a doorway, and then walked away from Groves toward the bus, presumably to rejoin his partner and wait for the next bus to arrive. The driver, Groves hoped, would have long since gone.

Once through the door, Groves wasted no time. Moving with as much speed as would be credible for a just-awakened drunk—in case the FBI man was watching through the window—he headed for the men’s room. Inside he found an empty stall, opened the suitcase, removed the dead engineer’s shaving kit, and shaved at the lavatory stand.

Hair combed, tie tied, and coat on to cover the rapidly drying whiskey on his pants, Groves marched to the ticket counter and paid for a round-trip fare to Wheeling. A good thing too, because while he was at the coin-and-key baggage locker, stowing the suitcase, he saw the man from the parking lot push past the person at the head of that ticket line and talk briefly to the clerk on duty. Groves watched the man walk away, apparently satisfied. Now, for the time being, Groves was in the clear. The bus northbound for Wheeling was not due to leave for another hour and fifteen minutes.

That was another lucky break, for if the bus had been just about to depart, Groves would have had no choice but to ride it north at least one or two stops. As it was, he was free to check his bag and mosey around for a while.

He took a cab to the train station five blocks east, where he handed a claim-check he had been carrying for nearly three weeks now to a gray-faced baggage-claim attendant, and obtained a small valise containing a wallet, a Louisiana driver’s license and credit cards, a passport, four thousand dollars in fifty-dollar bills, and two other baggage-claim checks. He used one of those to recover a large suitcase, which he took into the men’s room. There he changed clothes, donning a tan summer weight cotton-cord suit, tie, shoes, and shirt to match, and a neat-looking straw businessman’s hat with a wide band. Into the now-empty suitcase he put his used clothing. 

Then he emerged from the lavatory stall, rinsed his mouth, and strode purposefully over to the baggage-claim counter. The attendant took his last check and matched it with the number on a third suitcase, this one a large gray Samsonite two-suiter. Groves gave him a five-dollar tip. The man did not seem to notice that the crumpled bill smelled faintly of whiskey.

Using the Louisiana driver’s license, he rented a car at the Hertz counter and drove back to the bus station. He bought a Sunday Times-Picayune at the newsstand and settled down on one of the benches to read. When he saw that no one was paying attention to the baggage locker, he put in his key, lifted out the Cobor suitcase, and made for the exit without looking back. So great was his urge to get away that he swung the suitcase up onto the front seat of his rented Oldsmobile, forgetting that if he had to stop suddenly it would lurch forward onto the floor. He remedied that oversight at the first stop sign he came to.

10

When Sharon made her decision not to use the tape of Alec Conroy’s exit from Helen Bates’s hotel room, she did so for a variety of reasons.

To begin with, seeing the tape Sunday night had depressed her. When the tape was run, Sharon had seen hurt and fear on Alec’s face in the monitor. In the pit of her stomach, she felt as though she were watching someone kicking a pet dog.

Also on Sharon’s mind were political factors—something she had become sensitized to after the Russian documentary. To run the tape would look like an attempt to throw Derek Bates off his game. Sharon envisioned newspaper columns and magazine editorials decrying an American attempt at emotional sabotage, and felt her reluctance increase.

A third reason, Sharon decided on Monday morning, was to avoid lawsuits against UBC. Alec Conroy had threatened to take legal action even if the tape was not aired. Rachel Quinn was keeping him pacified—claiming that Max had set up the camera outside the wrong door on the seventh floor, where four wives were staying who had agreed to participate in the documentary.

Some people at UBC wanted the tape to be aired. Some on the crew—Max especially—saw the piece as a live-action drama that was rarely filmed. Wayne Taggart and several others pushed the ratings angle. The tape would get Americans excited about more than just the U.S. team—so they’d tune in UBS on nights other than those following a U.S. game. To this argument, Taggart also added a final touch: Alec’s presence, he said, would add that air of continental decadence that the folks in Podunk loved to feel smug about. 

“Sure-fire box office,” he kept repeating. 

In the end it was Taggart’s enthusiasm that made Sharon decide to scrap the tape. She knew that was as unprofessional a basis for judgment as her own personal response had been, but she really didn’t care.

At the Monday lunch planning conference, she announced that they would forget the Conroy tape. They would run the documentary on the other women, and just make believe that the incident in the corridor of the Ritz never happened.

It was at this point, many of the UBC people were later to say, that Sharon should have destroyed the tape, while she still had it under her control. At the time, however, no one thought of that; the cassette was filed with others of that day and placed with them in the archives, available later for documentary footage.

The next day, Tuesday, June 22, the United States team won its game with Zaire. Again the victory was a shutout, though this time the game was not as close as the one against the Czechs. The American offense caught fire in the second half and scored three times. Keith Palermo was again a hero, with sixteen saves, some so spectacularly difficult that the stadium crowd in Seville actually fell silent for a few moments before erupting in cheers. 

Immediately following one of those saves in the second half, Jack “Fireball” Farber hurried from the U.S. locker room, where he had been on hand to personally give Keith a cup of Gatorade at halftime. Farber had been watching on the TV inside the locker room, and was elated. He went directly to a pay telephone, where he placed a credit-card call to his public-relations consultant in New York. 

About the contract they were getting ready for Palermo for August 1, Farber said. Make it a three-year instead of a one-year. And triple the cash.

On the same day, Czechoslovakia and Uruguay played to a tie in Malaga’s La Rosaleda Stadium. That outcome left the Czechs with one loss and one tie, Zaire with two losses, and Uruguay with one win and one tie. The American team’s two victories thus placed it at the head of its group, and ensured that whatever the outcome of the game with Uruguay on Friday, the U.S. team would qualify for the second phase of the tournament.

Overnight ratings for Tuesday night’s UBC broadcast were just under twenty-three: 22.8. A fine performance, considering it was up against the baseball All-Star game on one network and a first-rerun James Bond film on another. Everyone at UBC was happy—even Wayne Taggart, though he said the audience share could have been still higher, and worried that if the U.S. team stopped winning, the audience would dry up.

Seeing the 22.8, NBC executives decided it might be a good idea to send a team to cover the World Cup story for the seven o’clock world news program. The team of reporters and technicians arrived in Madrid at ten o’clock Wednesday evening, Madrid time. In order to start with the benefit of an experienced viewpoint, NBC reporter Bill Brautigam decided to try a time-honored ploy on someone he had worked with before, who was now at the games. He called Wayne Taggart and asked him to have a late dinner with him. 

At that meeting, Brautigam mentioned a series he would be doing for NBC’s weekly news-magazine show in the fall and also mentioned that he would be needing a director. Possibly Wayne might like to be considered for that position? Also, possibly, Wayne might have some leads to good stories here at the World Cup?

Not long after that meeting, a copy of the tape of Alec Conroy on the seventh floor of the Ritz Hotel was in Brautigam’s possession.

When inquires were made later, Brautigam followed the journalist’s practice of protecting his source of information. Wayne Taggart, naturally, did not step forward to admit he’d copied the tape. Responsibility for the loss would have fallen on the guard at the UBC studio truck, if there had been a guard. But Larry Noble had decided earlier that the heavy security around the stadium was enough, and Sharon Foster had not amended that decision.

So Sharon took the blame. As producer, she was in charge of overall operations, people said, and so she ought to have seen to it that precautions were taken. In any case, no one else was around at whom to point the finger. And Sharon, being only a newly appointed producer and a woman besides, made a convenient scapegoat.

At the time the tape was copied, however, no one was blaming Sharon. Not until late the following day did anyone at UBC besides Taggart know that the tape had been disturbed.

At about ten Thursday morning Madrid time, Bill Brautigam followed yet another time-honored journalistic practice. He called Derek Bates to get a “reaction story.” Bates’s comments would, he said, accompany excerpts of the tape on the American news.

At about ten-thirty that same morning, Derek Bates left the hotel where the British soccer team was quartered in Alicante, a seacoast resort town on the Mediterranean Costa Blanca. In the hotel parking garage, Bates took unauthorized possession of a team automobile, a Rover sedan. Bates drove north to the Valencia airport. There he paid cash for a one-way ticket to Madrid.