Conspiracy (21 page)

Then Brautigam filed an update to his story on Mr. and Mrs. Bates. The NBC seven o’clock news duly carried the report. Careful to dissociate their own network from gossip-mongering, the anchorman pointed out that another network had made a tape of Alec Conroy that had provoked Derek Bates into going AWOL from his team and becoming involved in a barroom brawl that landed him in jail. 

During that bit of commentary, NBC ran an edited version of the Conroy tape, which, the anchorman said, had “come into possession of NBC.” As a footnote to the tape, he added other details that Brautigam had been able to supply. Bates had been suspended by his team and would be sent home to England on the next flight, with or without his wife. Arrangements with the Spanish police had been worked out. Also, Helen Bates could not be located for comment.

At that time it was 2:30 a.m. in Madrid. Alec had told his story to the police. The waiter had come from the hospital to testify, and both he and the barman supported Alec’s claim that Bates had thrown the first punch, so Alec was released. Now he was in his hotel room with Rachel Quinn, having a none-too-pleasant talk. 

She’d been a fool to turn the tape in to begin with, he said accusingly. The networks were all alike, heartless corporations who thought only of ratings and profits. How could Rachel have turned the tape over to NBC? he asked.

Rachel was surprised to find herself on the defensive. She felt that she had no way to prove she hadn’t turned over the tape to NBC. And by letting Alec stay the week, she seemed more or less to have forfeited her claim to outrage over his infidelity. Also, she wanted him in bed.

She fell back on the argument that had worked best with Alec in the past: she began to take off her clothes.

Alec was aroused quickly. Even though he found Helen more sexually desirable than Rachel, he had not slept with either of them for the past two days. And Helen had not returned his call when he came back from the police station. It was possible she might have gotten wind of the bad publicity, he thought. She might even have left Spain and gone home.

He soon was naked with Rachel under the sheets, having postponed his resolution to become independent of  her for another day.

At the time of the NBC broadcast, it was also 2:20 a.m. in England. The British authorities did not take any action on this affront to their country’s representatives until more than nine hours later. At about noon on Friday, Molly, at the UBC switchboard, received a call from the British Foreign Ministry asking to speak to the person in charge. 

Molly had an intuition as to what the call was about, so she did not put it through to Cantrell. Though she knew the call was important, she remembered too vividly his stormy response when the Madrid police had called about the British athlete the day before. British officials, she sensed, would be calling about the same problem. Further, her boss had not come into the office yet today. That probably meant last night had been a late one. He was usually in a foul humor on the days he started work late. To intrude on him at his hotel suite with a call like this one would be bad judgment.

Molly put the call through to Sharon.

Naturally she listened in.

13

Sharon, meanwhile, had been feeling for the past few days as though her life had come through a kind of sea-change. Normally she was skeptical of people who told her that a promotion, or a new love, really made a big difference. Day-to-day feelings, she had believed ever since losing her husband and children years ago, depended on a person’s inner resolve more than anything else. You could change jobs, apartments, lovers, take vacation trips or what have you, but whether you enjoyed life or not still depended on the face you saw when you looked in the mirror the next morning.

Now, however, she had to admit it: she felt better. Not that she had been suffering; she would never have said that. But lately things seemed to be falling into place. The daily rush of details and conflicts was just as heavy, but it was easier to handle. Instead of rushing from one to the next all day long and then shutting off like a machine for sleep, she had begun to take occasional breaks—to look back, to look ahead, to get things into perspective and see where she was going and what the UBC team, after all the sound and fury, really was doing.

In other words, she guessed, she was beginning to see the big picture. Was that a good point to have reached, after just over a week? She didn’t know and didn’t care. She wasn’t judging herself as much these days, not worrying as much, either—just getting the job done.

Most of the credit for her changed outlook, she thought, belonged to Keith. In their nightly talks on the telephone, each of them relived the day for the other. Telling Keith about the things she had done put them into a different light. He was tired after each of his games—more tired than ever before, he had told her—yet not too tired to listen to his “golden-haired world-beater,” as he now called Sharon. To hear him tell it, Sharon was personally responsible for a boom in soccer that would propel America to the top of world soccer for generations to come. Sharon laughed at such outrageous praise, and looked forward each night to hearing his voice.

Being a producer instead of an associate producer had its points, too. Sharon knew about power-hunger and empire-building from her years of moving up through the ranks, and it was something of a relief for her to discover that once she had power, she wasn’t particularly overawed or impressed with herself. For the first day or two she made it a point not to talk to people any differently than she had before, and then gradually she forgot about how a producer ought to talk and just got things done. 

What exhilarated her, though, was being able to make choices without first having to check with a “superior.” It was a strange kind of freedom, one that she supposed she would become used to before the World Cup was over. After that, maybe Cantrell would keep her on for other projects, if things continued to go well. Or she would have this experience on her record to qualify for a position with another network.

Assuming, of course, that her relationship with Keith would allow for that kind of work. Not that she was expecting to marry and quit working as soon as they got back to the States; she’d want to give both of them plenty of time to get over the enchantment of falling in love in Spain and being kept apart. Though she harbored a secret hope that the feeling would last for years, part of her insisted on not rushing into a wedding— the overcautious part, she thought sometimes. She would be glad when Keith came back to Madrid tonight after the Uruguay game. He would play Tuesday’s game against Brazil here at Bernabeau, and again, a week from tomorrow, here against Australia, and then the second phase of the tournament would be over.

And America would either have made the semifinals or not.

But tonight, she knew, they would not be thinking about soccer. The magic of their two nights together would return.

The phone rang in the studio truck, where she was watching possible documentary tapes for tonight’s broadcast. When Molly told her it was the British Foreign Ministry, she felt the pleasure of anticipation. Other countries had been calling to buy rebroadcast rights to a number of UBC features that their representatives in America had seen. This World Cup was drawing the largest worldwide TV audience ever; many countries were expanding their coverage and needed new material. Sharon assumed that the British had liked Rachel Quinn’s feature on some of their “Women in Waiting,” which had aired the night before.

What she heard made her too surprised to react immediately: an ascerbic voice dripping with hauteur, informing her that neither British nor Scottish players or associates would be cooperating with UBC for the duration of the tournament, and that a protest had already been filed with the U.S. State Department through the American embassy in London. When Sharon asked why, the man’s tone turned sharper still as he told her he’d assumed that Americans with broadcasting equipment, who called themselves networks, knew what they did with the material they collected, even if that material was libelous in intent. It was then that Sharon had her first inkling that the tape of Alec Conroy had somehow gotten out of the archives.

Later that afternoon, when it was morning across the Atlantic, the calls started coming in from America. And the reporters started coming around the UBC truck, asking for more background. Was it true UBC had hidden a camera inside hotel room 702 and were holding back that tape for a higher bid? Were they hiding Helen Bates until they had released the rest of the story? And so on. Sharon decided that the time had come to tell Ross Cantrell the bad news. She made the appointment through Molly, and after telling Maria to guard the fort, she left the studio truck for the walk into the stadium and the elevator ride up to Cantrell’s penthouse office.

Molly couldn’t listen in on that one, but Lynnette, the receptionist, could, because she could hear Cantrell thundering through the sheetrock wall that separated her cubicle from his office. She also heard Sharon defending her people. No harm had been done until the tape had gotten out, Sharon said, and that was her own fault as much as anyone’s for not having it erased at the beginning. So until whoever gave it to NBC stepped forward, she would accept the responsibility. If Cantrell wanted her to clear out now, she would. It was Lynnette’s repeating of this conversation later on that caused many to blame Sharon’s losing her job on what came to be called “the Conroy tape.”

When Sharon arrived back at the studio truck, she was still producer, and determined not to let the flap over something another network had done interfere with tonight’s broadcast. There were highlights to capture from the U.S.-Uruguay game—which would not be hard-played, since both teams were qualified for the second phase and would not want to risk injuries. Also playing today were the Soviet Union against Mexico and Australia against Finland. The Soviets had qualified too, but the game would provide yet another chance to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the team that many were predicting would reach the finals undefeated.

So Sharon didn’t call in Rachel and Walter J. and Max and give them a talking-to. She did, however, say something to Wayne Taggart as they were settling in to take the signal from the Soviet game at La Coruna. Someone had leaked the Conroy tape, and Taggart was at the top of her list of candidates.

“Bill Brautigam’s in town,” she said, watching his face.

He reddened and his eyes darted first away and then back to meet hers. “So?” He chewed the ends of his mustache, waiting, and she knew that he had been the one.

But she also knew that she couldn’t prove it without disrupting the operation worse than it already had been. “I remembered you worked with him before,” she said. “Maybe you’d like to again.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means three strikes and you’re out, Wayne.”

He gave a little laugh and looked over his shoulder to see if anyone else was watching before turning back to her. “Why, Sharon, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind?”

Somehow, she thought, there ought to be a way to talk to the Wayne Taggarts of the world without feeling frustrated. She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “Somebody made a copy of the Conroy tape for Bill Brautigam. If I find out who, or if I find somebody doing the same thing again, that person’s fired. Do I have to spell it out any plainer?”

He leaned back in his chair and tilted his cowboy hat over his eyes. “You want to fire Cindy Ling,” he said, “that’s your business. Just don’t go turning this company into some kind of police state.”

That night the U.S. team beat Uruguay two to one on a last-minute goal. Two hours after the game, Sharon was in the editing room with Cindy, going over changes in a twenty-minute feature on the Saudi Arabian team. The Saudis were a surprise qualifier for the second phase, and while Sharon was fairly sure they would be demolished by Spain and West Germany, the teams they were slated to go against next week, she also knew that the American audience would like to see more of them. The Saudis were America’s friends, still backing American dollars for oil trade.

“You’re making this a real snow job,” Cindy commented, as Sharon cut the last reference to “the best team that petrodollars could buy” from the soundtrack.

“I’m going political. After what happened with the British, I’m not going to offend any more allies. Promised the State Department faithfully.”

Cindy looked up. “It was Taggart, you know.”

“Oh? Got any proof?”

Cindy shook her head. “Nothing real. When I came in Monday, though, I noticed that the power switch to the copying deck had been left on—and he’s always forgetting to turn it off when he’s in here fooling around with his own stuff. Nothing beyond that, except that I hear he’s blaming me.” Her voice faltered a little. “Like I’m the sinister oriental, you know?”

Sharon told her she wasn’t to worry. Taggart would hang himself if they gave him enough rope. Cindy should just keep an eye out for other signs of tampering with UBC property. Then she gave Cindy fifteen dollars’ worth of pesetas to buy locks for the archives cabinets.

Dan Richards came in while they were still working. Just off the plane from Seville, he looked as if he had come from a final fitting at his tailor’s. “I want to see you when you’re done,” he said, after exchanging greetings with Sharon and Cindy and swapping a few recollections of the U.S.-Uruguay game he had been covering on location.

“Me?” Cindy said innocently. “Oh, Mr. Richards, I’d love to. I haven’t been to a really good restaurant in weeks.”

Dan grinned. “My pleasure, Miss Ling.” Then he turned to Sharon. “Where do you find such good-looking ladies of such intelligence and taste? But  speaking of those rare commodities, dear Sharon, there’s a matter I’d like to discuss with you.”

She took him into the front end of the studio truck, thinking, with the romantic’s preoccupation she had recently acquired, that he had come from Seville with news of Keith.