The Evening News (28 page)

Eyes blazing, he
stormed on, "Pinche cabron!
You could ruin everything! Do you know what
you are doing
?
”

"Yes, I know
,”
Baudelio said. Despite the gauze pads, blood was streaming
down his face
.”
I made an error of judgment. I promise it will not happen
again
.”

Without replying, his face flushed with anger, Miguel stalked out
.
When he had gone, Baudelio used a portable mirror to inspect his bloody
wound. Immediately be knew two things. First, he would carry a scar
,
running the full length of his face, for the remainder of his life
.
Second, and more important, the gaping, open cut needed to be closed and
sutured at once. In present circumstances he could not go to a hospital
or another doctor. Baudelio knew there was no other choice than to do it
himself, however difficult and painful that might be. As best she could
,
Socorro would have to help
.
During his early medical training, Baudelio, like any student, had
learned to suture minor wounds. Later, as an anesthesiologist, he watched
hundreds of incisions being stitched. Then, while working for the
Medellin cartel, he had done some wound repairs himself and knew the
procedures needed now
.
Feeling weak, he sat himself in front of the mirror and told Socorro to
bring his regular medical bag. From it he selected surgical needles, silk
thread and a local anesthetic, lidocaine
.
He explained to Socorro what, between them, they would do. As usual, she
said little except an occasional "ISP
”
or "Iestdbien
!”

Then, without further discussion, Baudelio began to inject lidocaine along the margins of his wound
.
The whole procedure took almost two hours and, despite the local
anesthetic, the pain was excruciating. Several times Baudelio came close to
fainting. His hand shook frequently, which made the sutures uneven. Adding
to his difficulties was the awkward, reverse effect of working with a
mirror. Socorro passed him what he asked for and, once or twice when he was
near collapse, supported him. In the end he managed to hold on and, though
some clumsy sutures meant the residual scar would be worse than he had at
first supposed, the gap in his cheek was closed and he knew the wound would
heal
.
Finally, knowing the most difficult part of his Medellin/ Sendero
assignment was still ahead and that he needed rest, Baudelio took two
hundred milligrams of Seconal and slept.

At about 11:50 A.M., in the apartment at Port Credit, Harry Partridge had switched the living room TV to a Buffalo, New York, station-a CBA affiliate. All Buffalo TV stations, whose signals had only to travel an unobstructed sixty miles across Lake Ontario, were received clearly in the Toronto area
.
Vivien had gone out and would not be back until mid
-
afternoon
.
Partridge hoped to learn, from the noon news, the latest developments
following yesterday's Muskegon Airlines disaster at Dallas-Fort Worth
.
Consequently at 11:55, when programming was interrupted by the CBA News
Special Bulletin, Partridge was watching
.
He was as shocked and horrified as everyone else. Could it really be true,
,
he wondered, or just some incredible snafu? But experience told him that
CBA News would not have put out a bulletin without satisfying itself of the
story's authenticity.
As he watched Don Kettering's face on the screen and heard the continuing
report, he felt, more than anything, a personal concern for Jessica. And
mixed with his emotions was a surge of camaraderie and pity for Crawford
Sloane
.
Partridge also knew, without even thinking about it, that his vacation
,
which had scarcely begun, was already over
.
It was no surprise, then, to receive a phone call some forty
-
five minutes
later, asking him to come to CBA News headquarters in New York. What did
surprise him was that it was a personal appeal from Crawford Sloane
.
Sloane's voice, Partridge discerned, was barely under control. After the
preliminaries, Sloane said, "I desperately need you, Harry. Les and Chuck
are setting up a special unit; it will work on two levels-daily reports
on air and deep investigation. They asked me who I wanted in charge. I
told them there's only one choice-you
.”

In all the years that he and Sloane had known each other, Partridge
realized they had never been closer than at this moment. He responded
,
"Hang in there, Crawf. I'll be on the next flight
.”

"Thank you, Harry. Is there anyone you especially want to work with?
"Yes. Find Rita Abrams, wherever she is--in Minnesota sornewhere-and
bring her in. The same for Minh Van Canh
.”

"If they're not waiting when you get here, they'll be with you soon
after. Anyone else
?
”

Thinking quickly, Partridge said, "I want Teddy Cooper from London
.”

"Cooper
?
”

Sloane sounded puzzled, then remembered
.”
He's our bureau
researcher, isn't he
?
”

"Right
.”

Teddy Cooper was an Englishman, a twenty-five-year-old product of what
the British snobbishly called a red-brick university, and a cheerful
Cockney who might have auditioned successfully for Me and My GirL He was
also, in Partridge's opinion, a near-genius at turning ordinary research
into detective work and following it up with shrewd deductions
.
While working in Europe, Partridge had discovered
Cooper, who at the time held a minor librarian's job at the British Broadcasting Corporation. Partridge had been impressed with some inventive research work that Cooper had done for him. Later he was instrumental in having Cooper employed, with more money and better prospects, by CBA's Lon- don bureau
.”
You've aot him
,”
Sloane replied
.”
He'll be on the next Concorde out of
England
.”

"If you feel up to it
,”
Partridge said, "I'd like to ask some questions
,
so I have something to think about on the way down
.”

"Of course. Go ahead
.”

What followed was a near-replay of queries already put by FBI agent
Havelock. Had there been threats? . . . Any special antagonism? . .
.
Unusual experiences? . . . Was there any notion, even the wildest, as to
who . . .
?
Was there anything known that had not been broadcast?
The asking was necessary, but the answers were all negative
.”
Is there anything at all you can think of
,”
Partridge persisted, "some
little incident, perhaps, which you may have dismissed at the time or even
hardly noticed, but which might relate to what has happened
?
”

"The answer's no at the moment
,”
Sloane said
.”
But I'll think about it
.”

After they hung up, Partridge resumed his own preparations. Even before
Sloane's call he had begun packing a suitcase that only an hour earlier he
had unpacked
.
He telephoned Air Canada, making a reservation on a flight leaving
Toronto's Pearson International at 2:45 P.M. It was due into New York's La
Guardia Airport at 4 P.m. Next, he called for a taxi to collect him in
twenty minutes
.
After his packing was finished, Partridge scribbled a goodbye note to
Vivien. He knew she would be disappointed at his abrupt departure, as he
was himself Along with the note he left a generous check to cover the
.
apartment refurbishing they had discussed
.
As he looked around for a place to leave the note and
check, a buzzer sounded in the apartment. It was the intercom from the lobby below. The taxi he ordered had arrived
.
The last thing he saw before leaving was, on a sideboard, the tickets for
the next day's Mozart concert. He reflected sadly that those-as well as
other unused tickets and invitations in the past-represented, more than
anything else, the uncertain pattern of a TV newsman's life.

The Air Canada flight was non-stop, a 727 with all-economy seating. A
light passenger load enabled Partridge to have a three-seat section to
himself. He had assured Sloane that he would apply his mind to the
kidnapping while en route to New York and had intended to begin planning
the direction he and the CBA News investigative group should take. But
the information he had was sketchy, and obviously he needed more. So
after a while he gave up and, sipping a vodka-tonic, allowed his thoughts
to drift
.
He considered, on a personal level, Jessica and himself
.
Over the years since Vietnam he had grown accustomed to regarding Jessica
as belonging only in the past, as someone he had once loved but who was
no longer relevant to him and in any case far beyond his reach. To an
extent, Partridge realized, his thinking had been an act of
self-discipline, a safeguard against feeling sorry for himself, self-pity
being something he abhorred
.
But now, because Jessica was in danger, he admitted to himself that he
cared as much about her as ever, and always had. Face it, you're still
in love with her. Yes I am. And not with some shadowy memory, but with
a person who was living, vital, real
.
So whatever his role was to be in searching for Jessica-and Crawf himself
had asked that it be a major one--Harry Partridge knew that his love for
Jessica would drive and sustain him, even though he would hold that love
secret, burning out of sight within himself
Then, with what he recognized as a characteristic touch of quirky humor
,
he asked himself, Am I being disloyal?
Disloyal to whom? Of course, to Gemma who was dead.
Ah, dearest Gemma! Earlier today, when he had remembered the one exception
to his apparent inability to cry, he had almost let memories about her
crowd in. But he had pushed them away as being more than he could handle
.
But now thoughts of Gemma were flooding back. She will always come back he
thought.

A few years after his duty tour in Vietnam and some other hard-living
assignments, CBA News sent Partridge to be resident correspondent in Rome
.
He remained there almost five years
.
Among all television networks, an assignment to a Rome bureau was
considered a plum. The standard of living was high, living costs modest by
comparison with big cities elsewhere, and though pressures and tensions
were inevitably transmitted from New York, the local pace of life was
leisurely and easy
.
As well as reporting on area stories and sometimes roving far afield
,
Partridge covered the Vatican. Also, several times he traveled on papal
airplanes
, accompanying Pope John Paul II
on the pontiffs international
peregrinations
.
It was on one of those papal journeys he met Gemma.

Partridge was often amused at the assumption by outsiders that a papal air
journey was an exercise in decorum and restraint. In fact, it wasn't. In
particular, in the press section at the rear of the airplane the reverse
was true. Invariably there was much
partying and drinking-the liquor
unlimited and free
and during long overnight flights, sexual dalliance was
not unknown
.
Partridge once heard the papal airplane described by a fellow correspondent
as having different levels, ranging--as in Dante's Inferno--all the way
from
hell to heaven. (W
hile there was never any permanent aircraft earmarked
for the Pope's flights, the special interior configuration for each journey
was usually the same.)
At the
front of the airplane on every trip was a spacious cabin outfitted
for
the Pope. It contained a bed and two large comfortable seats, sometimes
three.
The next section back was for senior members of the Pope's entourage-his
Secretary of State,
some cardinals,
the Pope's doctor, secretary and
valet. Then, behind another divider was a cabin for bishops and
lower-ranking priests
.
In between one of the
forward cabins, and depending on the type of
airplane was an open space where all the gifts the Pope received on
his
journey were stored. It was inevitably a large, rich pile
.
Finally there was the last cabin in the plane-for
journalists. The seat
config
uration here was to
urist, but with first-class ser
vice, many flight attendants, and superb food and wine. There
were generous gifts for journalists too, usually from the airline
involved which, more often than not, was Alitalia. Airlines, astute
in public relations, recognized a chance for good publicity when
they saw one
.
As to the journalists themselves, they were an average group from their
profession, an international mixture of newspaper, television and radio
reporters, the television people accompanied by technical crews-all with
normal interests, normal skepticism, and a penchant at times for
irreverent behavior
.
While no TV network would ever admit it openly, they privately preferred
that correspondents reporting on religious subjects, such as a papal
journey, not be committed deeply to any faith. A religious adherent, they
feared, would send in cloying reports. A healthy skepticism was preferred
In that regard, Harry Partridge filled the bill
Some seven years after his own experiences on papal
flights, Partridge
greatly admired a 1987 TV news report by ABCs Judd Rose who was covering
a visit by Pope John Paul II to Los Angeles. Rose successfully trod a
hairline between hard news and pyrrhonism with his commentary.