Trial By Fire (8 page)

Feeling that he had regained a measure of control, Juan pondered the question out loud. “Well, things could become dangerous. They say government troops are all over and that other government police officials across the country are being arrested. There could be fighting.”

Jan listened, responding with, “I see,” and “Ah-huh,” as Juan built a case for a higher salary. When he was finished, Jan repeated her question.

With

the confidence of a man who knew she would never agree to such an outrageous sum, Juan demanded double his current fees. What he had not realized was that Jan was prepared to pay four times the current fee.

Without hesitation, she agreed to double his fee, told him to meet her in the lobby of her hotel in thirty minutes, and hung up before he had the chance to say another word.

Prepared for scenes of chaos and open fighting, Jan was somewhat disappointed as they drove through the deserted streets of the city with her tiny crew consisting of Juan, a cameraman, and a sound technician. After taping ten minutes of empty streetcorners and closed shops, they drove to the main plaza where the Palacio Nacional was located. Again, except for an occasional jeep filled with soldiers, there was nothing. Leaving the van, Jan, followed by the camera crew, began to walk toward the Palacio Nacional in an effort to attract attention or provoke a response from the Army patrols. Again, however, she was quite disappointed as the mounted patrols and guards posted at the doorways of government buildings ignored Jan and the camera.

When they passed the Palacio Nacional, Jan decided to take advantage of her invitation to interview one of the colonels who was supposed to be in charge. She stopped and looked at a knot of soldiers standing about the main entrance. “We had an interview scheduled with the president of Mexico this morning. Now, we have one with his replacement.” Then, with a smile on her face, she turned to her sound man, Joe Bob. “So, my loyal friends and crew, that must mean we are welcomed and sanctioned.

Let’s take advantage of that welcome and do some serious reporting.”

Joe Bob took his cue and pulled the van up to a good place to park.

Without asking or waiting for the opinion of the others with her, Jan turned away and moved with purpose toward the Palacio Nacional. From what she had seen, if there had been a military coup, it had been efficient, quick, and controlled. If those assumptions were true, there was an organization in charge and operating. And if there was a system, it could be manipulated. Since the news wasn’t going to come to them, it was time to dig for it, and what better place to start than at the top?

Juan, however, was shaken by the events of the morning, the presence of so many soldiers, and the brazen attitude of Jan Fields. Never missing a chance, he tried to persuade Jan to return to the hotel until things settled down. Jan would not be put off. Angered by Juan’s timidity, Jan turned to him, throwing her arms out and shouting as she did so. “Settled? If things get any more settled, they’ll roll up the sidewalk!”

Neither Juan nor Jan took into account that while they were looking at the same situation, each was dealing with it based on an entirely different perspective. For Juan, the sight of vacant streets in Mexico City populated only by armed soldiers was a new and disturbing sight. The Federales and their fat officers, after all, could not be trusted. Jan, on the other hand, who had seen firsthand bloody street fighting and cities choked with tanks and troops, began to wonder if the military was, after all, in charge, let alone behind the coup and the unrest that Juan kept worrying about.

After spinning about and looking at the deserted streets, she turned back to Juan. “Settled? If this place becomes any more settled we’ll die from boredom.” Dropping her arms, Jan stood there for a moment and thought. Slowly, a wicked smile lit her face. “What we need to do is stir something up.” Without waiting for a response, she turned and walked right into the middle of the soldiers.

House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

1000 hours, 29 June

Like clockwork, everyone in Congressman Ed Lewis’s outer office dropped what they were doing and turned to the television monitor whenever
WNN
reviewed the top news stories of the hour. Even the congressman, like a figure on a German cuckoo clock, came out of his own office every half hour to watch the news. Ever since Lewis, a Democratic representative from Tennessee, had been appointed a member of the House Intelligence Committee, both he and his staff took a keen interest in any news that involved foreign crisis or conflicts. An avid reader of just about anything in print and a news junkie, Lewis was capable of absorbing and retaining tremendous amounts of information and storing it away, ready for use. Only partially in jest did his fellow representatives refer to him as the next best thing to the Library of Congress.

Yet no one would think of describing Lewis as being bookish or an intellectual. At forty-two, he looked more like a college basketball coach than a U.S. congressman. His six-foot two-inch frame was lean without being skinny. His brown hair, streaked with stray strands of gray, was cut short, not styled. Though he often wore a warm and friendly smile, it was his eyes, more than any other feature, that expressed his moods and betrayed his thoughts. They could be warm and inviting to a new acquaintance, cold and cutting to an opponent, and friendly and mischievous to a friend. His eyes told everything and, like the college basketball coach, missed nothing. More than one witness who appeared before a panel on which Lewis sat commented on the manner in which Lewis used his eyes to unnerve them. An interdepartmental memo circulated within the
CIA
to members of that agency slated to appear before Lewis, advised that its members read or pretend to read notes and avoid eye contact with Lewis when answering questions.

As he stood in his doorway watching the news on the situation in Mexico, Lewis compared the story to the information he already had.

That, unfortunately, was not only skimpy, but contradictory. Official statements and contacts he had cultivated at the
CIA
, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or
DIA
, and the National Security Agency, or
NSA
, provided only bits and pieces of the story, bits and pieces that didn’t fit together.

What he had heard was not at all satisfactory. From the
CIA
, he got the impression that the coup in Mexico was a bolt out of the blue. Though he was given few details, the
DIA
described the coup as an efficient and comprehensive operation that had decapitated the Mexican government.

The
NSA
, on the other hand, noted that the situation was confused and quite chaotic. Based on his experiences with intelligence people, Lewis knew that, in reality, the situation in Mexico contained all those elements.

The material from the nation’s intelligence agencies, after all, was no better than the sources they used and the opinions of the people doing the data analysis. Each agency depended on different sources and used different criteria when determining what was relevant and what could be ignored. While the information they provided was nice, it wasn’t what he needed at a time like this. What he and the nation’s decision-makers needed was a clear, concise, and comprehensive overview of the situation, a view that brought all the stray pieces together. Unfortunately, Lewis knew it would be days before anyone in the intelligence community would be able, or willing, to commit themselves to such a summary.

So until then, all they would get was raw data and bits and pieces.

Still, Lewis was disturbed that no one had seen the coup coming. It was like the fall of Cuba in 1959, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and of Afghanistan in 1979, the reunification of Germany in 1989, the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the Soviet coup in 1991, and a score of other

“bolts out of the blue”: America’s leaders were handed a crisis which they had not been prepared to deal with, leaving them no choice but to throw together a policy on the fly. What made this failure even more disturbing was the fact that the U.S. had massive resources deployed in Mexico and along the border as part of the drug-interdiction mission.

Surely, Lewis thought, someone working with the Mexican military or government must have come across something. No one, he knew, could hide an undertaking massive enough to topple the Mexican government in a matter of hours without someone noticing.

As he watched the news, he considered his next move. He would give the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until noon to begin asking questions before he did anything. If, by noon, no one else had, Lewis would throw a few turds in the punch bowl and start hounding people, not only for information bjut for answers. With the amount of money the Congress sank into the intelligence community, there was absolutely no excuse for the nation’s depending on a twit like Jan Fields to provide them with their only source of information on world events.

As if by magic, the image of Jan Fields flashed onto the screen across the office. With the Palacio Nacional as a background, the bright-eyed journalist stood reporting from the heart of Mexico City. Ranked by well-armed and grinning soldiers, she casually recapped what she had seen, mentioning that she had arranged an interview with a member of the Council of 13, the organization she described as comprised of Army and Air Force officers who had assumed control of the government.

Lewis could feel his anger building up. Mumbling, he turned away.

“Christ, in a few hours she knows more about what’s going on than the
CIA
. What a farce! What a bloody farce!”

Palacio Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico

1235 hours, 29 June

Sitting across from the Mexican colonel, Jan couldn’t be more pleased with herself. In a matter of a few hours, she had shot a piece, made contact with the ruling council, arranged for an interview with a member of that council, and even got the Mexican military to help her transmit her first story to
WNN
headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Seated across from her was, from what she had been told, one of the architects of the coup that had brought to an end “the corrupt and self serving government of the few,” as an official spokesman had called President Montalvo’s administration. Although the Mexican colonel’s uniform was slightly wrinkled, and specked with dirt and dust, his presence and carriage were commanding. That, coupled with his extraordinary command of English and his position on the Council of 13, provided Jan with an opportunity to create a piece that would be head-and-shoulders above anything the other news agencies could possibly hope to put together for days. Now all she needed was to get this colonel to give her a few interesting comments that she could add to the framework of the official comments she had in hand.

“So, Colonel Guajardo, what finally convinced you and the other members of the council that the duly elected government of Mexico no longer represented the people?”

Though the question by the American correspondent bothered Guajardo, he didn’t show it. Looking straight into Jan Fields’s eyes, he framed his response, translating his thoughts from Spanish to English in his mind. When he was ready, Guajardo leaned forward, toward Jan.

“There is no simple answer to that question, I am afraid. In the past few weeks, I have often pondered that same thought.” Guajardo paused, allowing himself to settle back in his seat before continuing. When he began to speak, he waved his right hand about, sometimes throwing it out to the side with the palm up and open, other times pointing his index finger at Jan to emphasize a point. “Is such a violent response, I asked myself many times, really necessary? Isn’t there a better way? Not a day passed that I didn’t say to myself, you are not giving the system a chance.

Perhaps, just perhaps, things will get better.” Pausing, Guajardo let out a sigh, letting his right hand come to rest on his right thigh while he let his head drop down as if to study his resting hand. “But, alas, nothing changed. The politicians, they came and went. Programs to solve our debt, create jobs, and remedy our social problems were launched with great fanfare and wonderful speeches. For a while, whatever problem the program was aimed at solving would improve.”

In a flash, Guajardo changed. Jan was startled by the sudden transformation.

When their eyes met, she was greeted by eyes that were cold and distant, set in a face contorted in anger. Though she didn’t notice, Guajardo’s right hand was now clenched into a fist, a fist that he was slowly using to pound his right thigh as he spoke with a harsh, cutting voice.

“But then, when no one was looking, the politicians went back to their big houses and the programs were forgotten. The only thing that did not change was the faces of the people. In their eyes, you could see the flame of hope slowly dying, drowned by the harsh reality of survival in modern Mexico.”

Jan, momentarily caught off guard by Guajardo’s response, paused.

After thirty minutes of simple banter and short, crisp answers, she had finally gotten the colonel to react. Sensing it was time, she seized the mood and drove on. “So, you and your fellow colonels decided that you had to act. But I wonder, was it necessary to eliminate the entire government and the leadership of the
PRI
, as well as the other political parties? Surely there was no-need to turn on the
PAN
and the
PSUM
. If anything, wouldn’t they have been better as allies, not rivals, in your efforts to establish a new government?”

Again Guajardo paused before answering. He continued to look into Jan Fields’s eyes while he thought. She was attempting to provoke him.

It was as if she had driven a knife into him and was slowly twisting it.

Well, he thought, if you want a reaction, you shall have one. But Guajardo, ever the professional soldier, sought to maintain control.

‘ “The
PRI
has rooted itself throughout our nation like a great cancer. It is everywhere, it touches everything and everyone. And everyone it touches it infects. For decades, men like my father struggled to cure the cancer from within. He served the party well, doing what was asked in the belief that he was doing something important for Mexico. And all the while, he closed his eyes to the graft, the corruption, the fixed elections, the misappropriation of funds. I would hear him at night telling my mother that someday, when he had the power, he would do what was right. He would come forth, like the knight on the white horse, and change everything.”