Star Time (38 page)

"Johnny," Annette confessed in a whisper to keep others from overhearing. "He hasn't been able to get any of his projects off the ground. My success and his failure are driving him crazy. He might just up and leave."

"And so you figured if he became
Luba
's
executive producer . . ."

Annette nodded. “And he could also develop and produce the new series for our company, it might save my marriage. You know the way Johnny is."

Sally nodded. She knew very well how Johnny was.
Italian.
They had once been lovers, and afterward she had introduced him to Annette, who was also Italian and had melted. Many women considered Sally an excellent resource for dates. The list of her lovers before Danny was a long one.

Annette turned the conversation to Sally. She wanted to know how things were going with Danny. Embarrassed by the coldness of her feelings for him, Sally replied only that the TV series he had developed for her had still not been sold to the networks. Annette was more
concerned about her friend's personal life. Sally practiced her acting by sounding enthusiastic about Danny.

Chris and the reporter
Hedy
Anderson had become friendly during the Africa trip. Chris liked the other woman’s lack of pretension and earthy candor; they had a lot in common.

One night while Ken was in Washington on Senate business, the women went for a late supper at a local restaurant.

Hedy
brought up how impressed everyone on the staff had been to discover that Greg
Lyall
, the new CEO, was so committed to the news. Chris immediately set the other woman straight.

"It's not integrity. For him it's a business strategy, its numbers. He thinks more people will watch if they believe they're getting more. You know, a marketing bonus deal, like getting extra steak knives in that infomercial. If he thought the audience would buy dirty limericks set to music, he'd push us to take singing lessons."

That weekend Chris flew down to Washington to join Ken at a White House dinner. Foreign dignitaries and luminaries from a multitude of fields had been invited. Several well-known musicians entertained. Chris was able to contrive a private moment to thank the President and First Lady for their graciousness in submitting to the interview in Johannesburg. Would they consider allowing her to do a series of interviews on their impressions of the first year in office? They would think about it, they told her.

During cocktails she found herself conversing with a Latin American businessman. Something about his face was familiar. A lifetime's experience had taught her to listen to the premonition that jangled like a small bell deep inside her subconscious. She had an idea who he might be.

Chris made several phone calls the next morning and had a researcher
at the Washington bureau do some checking. Her mistrust and the sound of that internal bell continued to amplify.

At two-fifteen that afternoon, a phone call reached Chris with some of the answers she had been seeking. The man who had been an honored guest last night at the White House dinner had been identified during the Iran-contra hearings as the financial conduit in purchasing arms for the Leftist rebels. He had been indicted, but had the charges dropped. The phone call also raised one very large question.

She took her apprehensions and the facts she had so far unearthed to Hugo, and then, with Alan Howe on vacation, both immediately went upstairs to see Greg. They waited in his outer office for a prior meeting to end.

Greg was meeting with
Ev
Carver and Bill Jorgenson. The three agreed that the first prescription for the company's recovery, the cost cutting, was going well. But programming was the heart of any network and the company's most critical area. Greg was planning a trip to Los Angeles to meet with Raoul
Clampton
and his staff and to spend time becoming reacquainted with the Hollywood creative community that FBS needed to attract if it was to gain access to better shows.
Ev
,
Clampton's
supervisor, would join him.

Chris and Hugo replaced the two executives in Greg's office. The wall behind her contained a line of color photos, portraits of the network’s major performers. Hers was already among them. Ignoring the compliment, she filled Greg in on what she had learned.

He asked, "Did this man you met at the White House admit he was named in the hearings?"

"I haven't confronted him and don't intend to until we have all the evidence and are about to go on the air."

Greg agreed. Not wanting to lose the exclusive, only at the last moment would they offer the man an opportunity to answer the charges—when not enough time remained for him to marshal evidence to refute the story or for it to leak out to other news organizations.

Greg assumed the devil's advocate role he had once automatically assumed with her in such discussions. "How can you be sure it's the same man?"

"Except for a mustache, he resembles photos of him for one thing."

"He could be a look-alike. And Lopez is a common Hispanic name."

Hugo had made the same comments, and nodded.

Chris rejoined, "My contact has arranged a meeting for tonight with
a source he says has documents that will prove the two men are one and the same."

Chris paused, anticipating the problem her next words would cause.

"He wants twenty-five thousand dollars for the documents."

"Oh," Greg said, with a sound like air rushing from a punctured tire.

The question of whether to buy incriminating testimony was touchy for news organizations. Most responsible daily newspapers took the position that they would not buy information, that the act undermined their credibility. Another argument against paying for a story was the concern that if an auction market existed, informers would tend to hold back information they now gave freely. However, broadcasters had paid for information and interviews in the past. Nixon's chief of staff, H. R.
Haldeman
, was well paid for an interview. Gossip shows routinely paid for tips. Book publishers commissioned "insider" books as a matter of course.

"Forget about the morality for a minute," Hugo remarked. "On price alone I told her the deal is crazy."

"We'll go with you," Greg decided. "We'll play it by ear."

After that night's broadcast ended, the three FBS people were driven to a restaurant on lower Park Avenue and seated at a large table in the rear. They ordered dinner and waited for the informers to arrive.

As they conjectured on what to expect, Greg's thoughts wandered to how beautiful Chris was, in a way that seemed limitless, needing no mental allowance for the slightest defect. Her delicately delineated profile was pointed at Hugo, who was speaking. Greg thought he discerned a flush on her cheek. Was she thinking back to the night Hugo entered the little restaurant in L.A. and found them sharing an intimate dinner? Or was his memory imposing itself on his perception? He wished he could see her full face. Turn, he entreated her silently. Turn and glance at me and let me know you share my nostalgia.

Unexpectedly, she turned. He smiled at her and realized his pulse was racing.

"Do you agree?" she
asked,
her expression intense.

No sign of a blush on her skin. He could not tell what she had been thinking, just as he could never be quite sure all those years ago.

"Do you agree with me?" she repeated.

"I was thinking about something else," he admitted.

Chris frowned at his inattention. "If the material proves without a doubt that the man I met last night at the White House is the man who was once involved in financing the purchase of Iranian arms, maybe he's now involved in illegal activity with another South American rebel group. We'd have to buy evidence for something like that. We would be morally remiss in
not
buying it and broadcasting, right?"

Hugo rushed to differ. "Buying evidence troubles me. Even if it weren't morally wrong, which it is, we can never be sure it wasn't forged or something to take our money."

Greg was not so uncompromising. "Everything's for sale in one way or another. But we have to be sure it's real and to be guided by principle in evaluating whether it's too important to the national interest not to buy."

Chris was too intent on winning her argument to scoff at Greg's professing virtue. "So, it's not the principle of payment, but
what is being paid for
that's crucial. What if he’s secretly involved with terrorist activity, like in the old days? And what if the White House knows and condones it?"

Greg replied. "We should figure out a way to pay that doesn't compromise us, but we would certainly have to buy.”

Pleased by Greg’s support, she impulsively gripped his hand, a kind of recognition between teammates. Greg's pulse pounded like a drum. Her hand snapped back as if singed. Greg wondered if she had glimpsed his desire.
Or maybe her own.

I'm acting ridiculously, he told himself.

As he plunged his fork into a
moule
sitting on its open shell, two swarthy men of medium height entered and peered reticently around. Spotting Chris in the rear booth, they headed toward her.

The spokesman was the man with whom she had spoken on the phone, a minor official with the Venezuelan consulate. His companion, also Venezuelan by birth, was an officer at a Maryland bank. Both men spoke overly correct English with heavy Hispanic accents.

The second man apologized for having to ask for payment. "I fear the people who own the bank where I work. If they determine I was the one who gave you these"—he held up a manila envelope—"I will need the money to run."

The speaker placed on the table photocopied bank records for the three broadcasters to read. They revealed Lopez’s ownership of an interest in the bank and that he was using the bank as a conduit for purchases
by
Iran

for embargoed equipment needed to develop Iran’s nuclear facilities. To register with various regulatory commissions, Lopez had changed his name to Lopez-Melendez (which added his mother's last name to his father's in Hispanic style). When the bank officer discovered what Lopez was using the bank to do, he was sure the FBI or the Treasury Department would discover the payments and go after Lopez. But that never happened. He himself was too frightened to speak out until his friend said Christine
Paskins
had been making inquiries about the man.

"We want the documents," Greg admitted after he and his colleagues had examined them, "but I don't think you really want to cheapen what you're doing by putting a price on them. You have my word that we'll keep your identity secret. If a problem arises with your bosses and you fear for your safety, the money will be there for you, as well as legal help no matter how
much that costs
."

The speaker turned to Hugo, whom he recognized as a fellow Latino.
"
Quién
es
este
hombre?"

"El
jefe
de FBS,"
Hugo answered.

The man thought for a minute and then nodded his agreement at Greg. Chris slipped the documents into her brief case.
The
South Americans hurried out of the restaurant.

"I admire your refusing to pay," Hugo said to Greg.

"He was just bargaining to save the money," Chris replied with a hint of scorn, and turned to Greg with a questioning expression.

Greg pulled a check from his inside jacket pocket. Already made out to cash, it lacked only an amount and Greg's signature to be bankable. “I was ready if it was necessary.”

Chris's glance back at Hugo conveyed satisfaction that she had accurately detected Greg's motive. The waiter arrived at that moment with the main courses.

The three were silent for several minutes, enmeshed in their own thoughts. What might have been a story about an innocent mistake in the White House invitation list had become much larger: The White House was unwittingly playing host to an enabler of Iran’s dangerous nuclear ambitions.

During her detour at the morning show, Chris had missed the excitement now racing through her nerves as
if her foot had suddenly slammed pedal to metal. She and Greg had shared kicks like this once.
With Hugo, too.
She could not help now sharing the sudden grin that suddenly broke out on the all their faces.

For several days the news was filled with the story Chris broke. The White House press secretary released a statement asserting both the administration’s belief that Lopez had become a legitimate businessman in the decades since his involvement with rebel movements and their outrage at his new activities. FBS’s jump on the story kept them out in front on it as they traced the money and the transactions it had paid for through clandestine purchases and supply lines around the world. The American companies that had sold the prohibited equipment contended that they had been misled with forged papers indicating legitimate buyers outside of Iran. No one could locate Lopez, who was rumored to be somewhere in Venezuela.