Conspiracy (4 page)

A few moments later, seated behind a desk in an office slightly larger than Sharon’s, Zadiev was still the polite host. He reached into his desk drawer, produced a bottle and two small glasses, and set them on the desktop. “Vodka, Miss Foster? Perhaps it will aid in our communication.”

“I’m afraid I don’t usually drink on the job.” Sharon cleared her throat. “But if you have some coffee or tea, or even a glass of water, I’d like that.”

He studied her intently for a moment, still holding the bottle. “Just one won’t hurt, will it? It’s an old Russian custom.”

“What if I offer to make the coffee?” she said. “Or would that be impolite? I really don’t know a thing about Russian customs, so if I say something wrong, please chalk it up to ignorance.” She wondered if she was coming on too agreeably, too much the American stereotype who craved approval, and added, “Or to my basically obnoxious personality, if you’d rather. As long as we can make some kind of truce about this documentary of ours, and reschedule our interview with Katya, it’s perfectly okay with me whatever opinion you decide to form.”

He smiled slightly, and Sharon wondered about his age. He seemed not much over forty, though with his sand-colored hair so closely cropped, he might have been older without its showing. He didn’t look like a heavy drinker; in fact, he looked fit and athletic as he got to his feet.

“You’re much easier to get along with than two of your countrymen I met today.” He lifted a bookcase partition to reveal a Silex of coffee on a hot plate, and a stack of paper cups. “One of them asked for bourbon whiskey. The other was determined to make me admit I worked for the KGB.” He poured a cup of coffee for Sharon and handed it to her as he spoke. “I couldn’t give either of them what he was looking for.”

“To better luck this time,” Sharon said, raising her cup.

“Better luck.” Behind the desk, he poured an ounce of vodka and swallowed it in one gulp. Then he looked at her intently again. “I suppose I don’t know enough about American customs, but I had thought that your Dan Richards would be here to ‘stand up’ for his work. Or does this mean he’s no longer in charge?”

Sharon explained that Dan was in Barcelona now, doing live commentary for the opening game from the press booth at Noucamp Stadium. She was prepared to negotiate whatever objections the Soviets had, and arrive at a fair settlement.

From his desktop Yuri picked up a black videotape cassette cartridge and snapped it into the portable screening unit on the side table. “Let’s run through it. In general, what we don’t like is emphasis on brutality—especially since we supplied most of the footage you used. We can start with the title.”

They watched as the small screen flickered into life, showing an unconscious soccer player being carried off a playing field on a stretcher. A quick succession of other injured players from different teams and games followed, some limping, some twisted in agony, and others, like the first player, dead to the world. As the camera followed one stretcher-borne player right up to the closing doors of an ambulance, the title appeared: REMEMBER WHAT THEY DID FOR ROULETTE?

“Most of those men never played against our team,” said Yuri, freezing the frame. “They’re Americans— you can tell that from their uniforms if you look closely. One of them isn’t even a
futbol
uniform. It’s from a rugby team.”

“I didn’t notice that,” Sharon said, wondering whether Dan Richards had known it either, or whether he had simply trusted his assistants to come up with authentic footage. She looked at her watch; the sequence had taken sixty seconds. “You’re right. It’s unfair and misleading. We’ll cut it.”

Zadiev looked surprised for the briefest moment, and then nodded, as though he had expected no less from someone as fair-minded as Sharon obviously was. “It’s nice to make progress,” he said, and pressed the button to advance the tape.

Twenty-five minutes later, when the tape ended, they had worked it out. Some four minutes of additional footage would be cut; another two and a half minutes of voice-over narration here and there—references to Russia’s political strategy—would be replaced with continuous background music. Otherwise the documentary would run as taped. 

Sharon felt confident in her choice, even though she knew others at UBC, particularly Wayne Taggart, would erupt with outrage at letting the Russians interfere with UBC -material. Too bad. The Russian team had obviously earned its reputation for brutality, but that was no reason to distort the truth or mix politics with sports. She was ready to defend what she had done.

“We’ll be running the new version about 2:00 a.m., Madrid time,” Sharon said, putting her notes into her handbag. “I doubt we’ll have time to get you a cassette in advance, but you have my word that the changes we’ve agreed on will all be made.”

Zadiev smiled thinly and helped himself to another ounce of vodka. “If they’re not, I’m sure both of us will hear about it soon enough. Our diplomatic people in Washington and New York like watching American TV and making reports on the transatlantic telephone. Especially when they know they’re waking someone over here out of a sound sleep. Now about the other matter you mentioned.”

He dug into his file and pulled out a publicity press kit on Katya Romanova. 

Sharon studied it for a moment. “Tell me, is it true that you’ve brought her here to Spain to counter the bad publicity your soccer team picked up? Because if that’s true, I can’t understand why you’re keeping her away from us.”

In mock helplessness, Zadiev put up his hands to shield himself. “I’ll give you a straight answer, in two parts. One: Officially, Katya is in Madrid because her brother, Sergei Romanov, is a member of the Soviet soccer team.”

“Wait a minute. I don’t see the connection.”

“As a traveling companion. The state allows each player one family member free of charge on long tours. Married players generally bring their wives, but Sergei is not married, and the Romanov parents are no longer living. So the sister comes along. It’s not uncommon. As a matter of fact, I myself am another example.”

“You?”

“My younger brother Dimitri is also on the team.” Zadiev twirled the vodka glass slowly with his fingertips, as though debating whether to have another. “I’ve often suspected I was given this assignment so the state could get some work out of me while I’m squandering a month’s travel expenses.”

Sharon nodded. “And the state’s getting some work out of Katya while she’s here too, is that the idea?”

“That was my second point. As a matter of public relations, when you have ‘the little girl who won the West in Moscow,’ as your own press keeps saying, it never hurts to show her off.”

“So why didn’t you let us tape her tonight?”

Zadiev turned up an empty palm. “She speaks good English—why don’t you ask her? From what I’m told, refusing to appear was her idea.”

10

“We’re in a television studio here at Madrid’s Bernabeau Stadium, where in exactly twenty-five days the championship of world soccer will be decided,” Rachel Quinn said easily. “With me is the senior member of the American team, Keith Palermo.”

They shook hands for the camera. His handshake felt rough, hard, like a laborer’s. They sat on high stools in front of the narrow blue backdrop curtain. She had already decided to save the goal-tending demonstration for last, so the viewers at home would stay tuned for the action.

“Everyone knows the American team is hopelessly outclassed here in world competition,” she said with a disarming smile. “Are the players afraid to talk about it?”

The clock on the wall said 19:15, which meant it was a quarter past seven. Rachel felt her stomach muscles tighten. She was good for another twenty minutes, maybe twenty-five. And then the level voice would start to crack, the sparkling on-camera presence would begin to disintegrate.

The interview was set to run thirty minutes.

Beside her, Keith Palermo was making a low-key reply. “We’re Americans, Rachel. Nobody’s afraid. We’re just thrilled to be here.”

Automatically checking the studio monitor positioned just to the left of Camera One, Rachel could see that Keith was presenting a good image. He sat effortlessly, as though he could move in any direction at a moment’s notice, a quality Rachel had seen before, in gymnasts and ballet dancers. His soccer uniform showed his well-muscled chest and legs to advantage, and the studio lights seemed to set off his dark eyes and hair.

“I wonder if we could get a closeup on Keith now,” she said when he had finished. “You’ve been in this game nearly ten years, Keith—does a soccer goalie get scarred up, like a goalie in ice hockey?”

He tapped one fingertip alongside his white, even teeth and grinned. “Got some bridgework in here,” he said. “A few stitches too. Face, arms, legs. Don’t forget, there’s no pads in soccer.. Somebody kicks you instead of the ball, it’s going to hurt.”

“So soccer’s a violent game.” She kept him on the subject of violence as she discovered he had a lot to tell: the illegal kinds of tackling when the referee’s back was turned; the setups, where one man would take his opponent down legally, using legs only and going for the ball, with a second man coming full speed behind the tackler to “accidentally” stumble and catch his cleats in the opponent’s face.

Rachel looked at the clock again and winced inwardly. She had expected to complete the interview with the little Russian girl more than a half hour ago, leaving herself plenty of time for retakes. And so many other things had gone wrong. She had not had time to do the kind of probing research on Keith Palermo that had made her a top network reporter during the last decade. And even before the last-minute substitution that Sharon Foster had made, Wayne Taggart, the director, had demanded thirty minutes of taping—even though only ten minutes of the interview would be aired. 

Five years earlier, when her career was at its peak, Rachel would never have allowed two-thirds of her work to be cut, except possibly by the network evening news. But now she did not want to antagonize Wayne Taggart. He was vindictive and dangerous. With his power as director, he could easily spoil what he had already cruelly referred to as her “first comeback attempt.”

“Brazil used the same program to win the 1970 World Cup,” Keith Palermo was saying. “The long-distance roadwork every day and the hard interval sprint training, all added to the regular workouts, to build up the cardiovascular reserves. And they’ve also done high-intensity workouts with the Nautilus machines, for body strength.”

She leaned forward to interrupt, concentrating hard now. “You say the American team’s been training for two years, Keith. What about you? You haven’t been with them that long.”

He laughed. “The kids call me ‘the old man.’ But I’m the goalie. I pretty much stay put in the penalty area, while they’re running seven, eight miles every game. And that’s hard sprinting, most of it. So you can see where the conditioning really pays off.”

Her eyes glittered. “Haven’t the other teams trained hard too?”

“Look at the second-half scoring in our games. That’s where we’ve outscored our opponents. They get tired—we don’t.”

She kept at him, knowing the viewers would expect it of her. “But isn’t the World Cup different? We’re not just playing Canada and Mexico and Guatemala.”

He shrugged it away as easily as he had handled all her other probes. “Sure, it’s different, but I still say you’veve got to give us a chance.” He flashed a grin. “I guess in a week or two, we’ll know if I’m right.”

“Speaking as an American, Keith, I hope you are.” She smiled and reached for the soccer ball a technician was holding out for her, and suddenly felt as though she were about to fall off the stool. Adrenaline surged through her; she could not fall! 

Steeling herself, she took the ball and held it up for the camera, even taking care to keep the “Adidas” trademark stamp away from view so there would be no complaints from American manufacturers about free UBC publicity. “Now I wonder if we could get started with that demonstration we promised our viewers. We’ve got some equipment set up over here.”

Less than ten minutes remained, and her hands were starting to tremble as she handed the ball to Keith. But the worst was over. Now the cameras would be on him, on the action.

The crew had brought in a soccer goal from the stadium and assembled it in front of the longest wall, the white nylon mesh showing up well against the light blue backdrop. Keith explained the dimensions of the net, how it was too large an area for one man to cover unless he could anticipate the shots and move before they came. Then he had Rachel throw him a couple of easy ones. He picked them off as though he were weightless, landing on the foam-rubber gymnastics mat the crew had left in place from the earlier setup.

“Okay,” he said, getting to his feet, “now why don’t you take off those high heels and see if you can boot one past me.”

He tossed her the ball and she quickly set it down on the mat, unable to hold it steady. If she had only gone out to the parking lot and brought in some more from the car when she’d had the chance! But no, she’d had to prepare the new questions for Keith Palermo.

She felt as though she’d been standing over the ball for centuries. “Should I take a run at it?”

“If you don’t, it’ll be too easy.”

She took a few unsteady steps back and then came at it from the side, as she’d seen the players do, and swung her leg hard. But her stocking slipped on the mat and she topped the ball, lost her balance, and fell.

The cameramen and technicians were silent as she got up again, but in her earpiece came Wayne Taggart’s voice, strident, insinuating. “Retake, everybody! Run it back!”

She waited and started to tremble, and finally sat down on the mat while the taping crew moved the big reel back to where she had begun the shot, and then spent an even more frustrating minute or two positioning herself exactly where she had been earlier, so that if Taggart decided to use the whole sequence uncut, there would not appear to be any break in the action.

Then she stepped up, concentrating as hard as she could, and booted the ball straight into Keith’s chest. He caught it and held on.