Conspiracy (10 page)

“I’m afraid of nothing,” she said, trying to mean it. “But I am not going to let that woman ask me why I’m not ashamed that my country is trying to take over the world’s oil supply. And I’ll bet that’s exactly the kind of question she had waiting for me tonight.”

Tamara’s lower lip protruded as she thought it all over. Finally she nodded, as though she were in at least partial agreement. “I am not qualified to judge between American television personnel,” she said. “But I will pass your opinions along to Zadiev.”

19

At 1:30 a.m., Madrid time, it was 7:30 p.m. in New York. People sat before television sets throughout the city, flipping dials. The seven o’clock news—which had not mentioned the morning’s theft of thirty-six Cobor grenades, after Pentagon staff had classified that item as not being in the public interest— was now over. A half hour remained before the national prime-time programming from the three major networks went on the air at eight. UBC, taking this federally mandated regulation into account, had chosen to begin beaming back its taped signal from Spain at this hour, hoping to attract a good percentage of the dial-spinners and then hold them for the next ninety minutes. If UBC was successful, tomorrow’s “overnight ratings”—taken from the 621 TV sets in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles that were wired directly to the Nielson computers in Chicago—would show it by 10:00 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time. 

In Spain, that would be four in the afternoon. By then the UBC crews would have taped the morning’s American practice session and then scrambled to ready themselves to tape highlights from the games to be played that day. There were four, coming from four different Spanish cities: possible to cover with the four regional broadcast teams a CBS used for Sunday pro football in America, but out of the question for the pared-down UBC staff. Sharon and the others knew they would be glassy-eyed simply from trying to catch the high spots from the eight hours of Spanish feed, and from putting together the rest of that evening’s broadcast—more documentaries, interviews, and features.

So tonight, or this morning, really, rest was in order. That was why, as the ninety-minute master tape began to roll and the American audience began to tune in, only the technical crew of transmission engineer Carlos Antonio and his one assistant, both of whom had not been involved with the day’s production, were watching the monitors in Madrid.

Sharon Foster was not asleep. She was in the back of a taxi with Keith Palermo, whom she had found sleeping soundly on the receptionist’s couch outside her office cubicle when she returned from the studio trucks inside the stadium.

The night was warm. At this hour there was little traffic on the wide Avenue of the Generals. Spotlights glittered on the baroque buildings and the majestic, fountain-ringed statues of Columbus and other Spanish heroes who kept watch from their pedestals within the traffic circles that marked the major intersections. On two of the statues, the fountains were still flowing, and the lights in the cascading spray shimmered like diamonds.

They were heading for the Palace, the hotel where Sharon was staying. Sharon was not certain that the grill would be open—one-thirty in the morning was late, even for Spanish dining—but she had made a promise to Keith and intended to keep it. Besides, she enjoyed his company. When his eyes had flickered open, his face coming alive the instant she had touched his shoulder to wake him, Sharon felt a surge of excitement—a sense that the overlong day and its frustrations were only a minor price to pay for being here. 

Keith evidently shared the feeling. He seemed not at all concerned that in less than seven hours he would be alone in front of a
futbol
goal, stopping seventy-mile-an-hour practice shots from his teammates in Bernabeau Stadium.

“All I’ve got to do tomorrow and Tuesday is catch the plane for Seville,” he said. “I ought to be able to catch some sleep, too. You’re the one who’s going to need time off. I still can’t believe you’re going to cover every day of this tournament.”

She laughed. “We may get a vacation sooner than we expect. Today’s word is that if the ratings aren’t up there the first week, our whole crew may be flying home to look for new jobs.” Briefly she told him about her talk with Cantrell, UBC’s owner.

Keith emitted a low whistle. “Risky business you’ve got here,” he said. “Ever think of getting out?”

“Not on a night like this.” She smiled again, not wanting to break the mood with memories of other nights, or of the days when she had been happily out of television, the days when she had been a doctor’s wife with two small children and an apartment on Central Park West in Manhattan. Then she added, “Besides, Ross Cantrell’s really been good to us. Whatever comes, I’m sure he’ll make every effort to keep us here.”

“I hope he does. If the team bombs out and we get sent home early, you’re my only chance for a ticket to the finals.”

“You think it’s likely you’ll need it?”

“It’s hard to be truthful, when you want something so badly. Our kids have all the hustle, all the desire—but compared to the teams we’re going up against, they’re only kids. And the opposition isn’t exactly unmotivated. I figure to be catching a lot of shots.”

“C’mon, now. I saw the tape of your interview.” Sharon had watched the edited version going on to the master tape for tonight’s broadcast only a few minutes earlier. Dan Richards had been there to do the introductions and voice-overs. The work had seemed to take forever, so Sharon hadn’t reviewed the edited version of Dan’s Russian documentary, and neither had Dan. Cindy Ling and Wayne Taggart, however, had verified that all the required cuts had been made. Sharon added, “I thought our ‘kids’ were going to run the other teams into the ground.”

“I said they had a chance. Hell, I couldn’t go back to the team hotel tonight and look ’em in the eye if I’d said anything different. Besides, Americans expect you to hype the team. If I even hinted that we might lose, people would think we didn’t have a prayer. Nobody’d tune in, and your ratings would drop like a cement lifejacket.”

He said it with a smile, as though he didn’t for one moment think he had really influenced any future viewing patterns, but Sharon knew there was an element of truth to what he had said. Nobody wanted to watch a losing team; box-office figures and local-coverage ratings had proven that time and again. By the same token, Sharon thought with a feeling of discomfort, nobody wanted to watch a losing network. Those had been Wayne Taggart’s words tonight as they were taping.

He contended that by giving in to the Russians, UBC was starting off with a defeat; that the controversial documentary would have attracted new viewers to tomorrow’s show, while the edited, “milksop” version would be forgotten; that if Larry Noble had any sense, he would reverse Sharon’s decision while there was time to do it. If Sharon had not been on hand to defend her actions on grounds of journalistic accuracy, Larry would doubtless have made the change, and Sharon would have had some painful explanations to make to Yuri Zadiev.

The little cab had slowed after a right turn and was now stopping in front of the Palace. The hotel faced the still-illuminated Plaza de Cortes, matching the monumental pedestal of that Spanish hero with its own massive columns, a latter-day temple of opulence. Five white stars on a small blue shield beside the entrance indicated the hotel’s official government rating: the highest. In all of Spain, a country where tourists outnumbered the native population, and hotels were a major source of revenue, there were only a few comparable five-star hotels. One of them was the Ritz, the ornate, cathedral-like sister hotel of the Palace, visible across the open plaza.

“Cantrell stays here too, does he?” As they left the cab, Keith nodded toward a sleek black Rolls Cornische with an “RC” crest, parked discreetly around the corner from the entrance. The car had become a familiar fixture around Bernabeau stadium the last few days.

Sharon wondered briefly why the car was waiting outside instead of being garaged for the night. “He says he wouldn’t want us staying anywhere he wouldn’t like to be himself,” she replied. “At first I thought he just wanted to keep an eye on us, but now I think he really means it. I think he sees himself as a kind of father to the people who work for him.”

“Just so he doesn’t try to sit at the head of our table.”

Inside the hotel, the lobby area was quiet. The small shops that sold leather, chocolates, antiques, and other commodities to tempt the traveler were closed, darkened behind their illuminated window displays. Farther inside, lights still burned in the famous, glass-domed Great Hall, but the couches and chairs visible from the entrance were empty.

As they passed the desk, Sharon’s eyes automatically scanned the mail slots, where she saw three letters above her room number. Keith waited for her while the clerk handed them over, and explained that the forwarding postage due had been added to Sharon’s bill.

“Three of my babies,” she said, showing him the envelopes. “They write me once a month.”

The postmarks had been stamped in Venezuela, Mexico, and Chile. Keith looked at the labored, smudged handwriting on all three envelopes. “You’re supporting three foster children?”

“Sponsoring. It’s the easy way to have a family. I just send in my contributions and write back, and the agency people see that they’re fed and clothed and taught. I’ve been doing it since college.”

Again, not wanting to give the mood of the evening a serious turn, she did not mention what she could have told him: that there had been a period of four years—the time she had been married—when Sharon had sent letters and contributions for only two children, but that after the hit-and-run accident that had killed her husband and two little girls, the number had steadily increased. Now Sharon received two or three letters every day of the month. She mimeographed a monthly letter that she sent to each of the children, along with hastily written personal notes at the end. Seventy-four children, in thirty-two countries, and each time she saw one of the magazine ads that proclaimed, “. . . or you can turn the page,” she wanted to take on another.

A Manhattan psychiatrist had told her she was afraid to face the risk of taking on a new family of her own; she had stopped seeing him. It was her money, she felt, and if she didn’t give it to the children, it would only go to taxes and end up in a new bomber or some loafer’s welfare check.

She put the letters into her purse. “Let’s see if the grill’s open,” she said, changing the subject before Keith had time to ask any more questions.

The grill was closed, but room service was on duty day and night. Soon Keith and Sharon were in her room, with a bottle of Gonzales Jerez—the hotel wine captain’s favorite sherry— two hotel goblets, and a dinner ordered from the room-service menu on the way. The room was spacious and comfortable, overlooking the plaza, with large windows open to catch the night breeze. 

Sharon poured the drinks, suddenly feeling that they could make love right here in this room, in the large double bed only a few feet away from where she stood, that it could happen not the next time, or the one after that, but tonight. Here in her room, Keith seemed even more masculine, more attractive, than before—and yet, paradoxically, he also seemed to radiate a softness, an understanding concern that put lovemaking in perspective, like a birthday gift that could be unwrapped some other time. She wondered if she was imagining things, if perhaps he was simply being polite and indifferent. But he was here, she reminded herself. If he wasn’t interested, he’d be somewhere else at 2:00 a.m. in a strange city.

She handed him his drink, hoping she didn’t seem nervous. “What made you get started in soccer?”

“Stickball,” he said without hesitation. “I put one through an apartment window one morning when I was about ten years old, and my dad made me knock on the tenant’s door and offer to replace the pane of glass myself. The tenant turned out to be an official in one of the Brooklyn men’s industrial soccer leagues, and after I got to know him, he found me a job with one of the teams as a water boy. They weren’t pros, but most of them had grown up playing the game in Europe. They taught me a lot.”

“You didn’t tell Rachel Quinn that.”

“She didn’t ask.” He raised his glass to Sharon. “Now let’s talk about how you got started in TV.”

“C’mon,” she said, “we’re not on the air. We don’t have to have equal time.” But he said no, he really wanted to know what got her started and what she thought of the business now that she was in it. He was looking around now for his next career, and some offers had been made by two of the networks, so he had a practical reason for asking. . . .

And inwardly he kicked himself for saying that, as though it weren’t enough of an important thing just to know about her, as though he planned to use her evaluations, translate them into numbers in a little black “career options” book, and total them up.

Sharon thought what the hell, she might just as well tell him the truth, so she took a deep breath and laid it all out. She started with the Gillette “Friday Night Fights”, which had been the high point of her grandfather’s week, especially after he became bedridden: she told about the “Camel Caravan” nightly news, with John Cameron Swayze, that her parents never missed; about the Wednesday nights when family troubles would be forgotten during an hour of “Disneyland.”

She had reached college still thinking television was magic, taken all the journalism and broadcasting courses her state university had to offer, and directed two student projects her senior year, one of which got an award from a New York State journalists’ association. One of the judges was a producer at WOR, a Manhattan independent TV station. Six years later, when she was a widow in Manhattan looking for a job, he remembered her well enough to take her on as a production assistant. She fetched coffee and cigarettes and typed and answered the phone . . . 

“And after three years I felt I was qualified to move up,” she concluded. “It took me one year to find a producer who agreed with me.”

I didn’t know you’d been married, he wanted to say, but caught himself, because he didn’t want to bring up what must be a painful memory. He just wanted to savor this new thing he had learned about her: that she was the marrying kind.