Conspiracy (6 page)

As he waited, he grew progressively more nervous. Every minute he spent here in the jeep, the chances of his capture increased. Unquestionably he would have to make his move in the next hour; one hundred fifty miles back, there were four dead bodies. They would be discovered—if not by the soon-to-arrive inspection team, which he and LeBow had impersonated in order to get through to the guard station, then to get past the afternoon guard shift. Or, if there had been unanswered radio traffic and an investigation had already been made, the army might even now know what they had lost. An all-out search would be inevitable. They would start by trying to locate the jeep that had made the only tire tracks leading away from the dead men.

To calm himself, Groves tried to focus on the things that had gone right with the operation so far. He had the grenades, his main objective. He had the keys to his equipment in New Orleans. And now the worst was over because he no longer had to depend on other people. LeBow, who had panicked and shot the guard at the watch station, was gone. Scofield, who had failed to get control of the other guard, was gone too. Both men should have been fading from Graves’s memory, because they had bungled. The others, the two legitimate guards, were of more concern. Their deaths would intensify the search for him. At least the fat one had used good enough marksmanship to cripple LeBow without damaging the grenades.

But was there anything else that hadn’t gone wrong? Groves tried to take the bad luck as an omen that things would now begin to fall into place for him. He would need good luck to make his delivery before his deadline. If he was delayed somehow—he did not want to think of the consequences. He closed his eyes, shook his head, as though by movement he could drive the offending fears away.

When he opened his eyes, he saw what he had been looking for. Climbing out from behind the wheel of a blue Chevy sedan was a sandy-haired salesman type in a short-sleeved white shirt and loosened tie; the jacket to his blue suit, on a hanger in the back, looked like part of the upholstery. The car had Colorado plates, which might mean that he was headed home, but that disadvantage was definitely outweighed by the other factors. Groves watched carefully as the man rolled up his window, locked his door, and walked briskly toward the restaurant entrance, undoubtedly seeking a quick lunch. When the man had disappeared from view inside the restaurant, Groves got out of his jeep and strolled after him. As he approached the man’s car, Groves slowed, dug in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, and then into his pants pocket for his lighter. As his hand and the lighter came out, so did some loose change. He crouched at the rear of the blue Chevy and reached underneath as if to retrieve the coins. When he straightened up, two small ampules of glass had been tucked under the right rear tire, one in front of the tire and one behind, hidden from all but the closest inspection. Groves stood beside the Chevy and lit his cigarette. A quick inspection of the car’s interior told him that the owner was in the employ of a major pharmaceutical company, and that there was no radio or CB equipment under the dashboard.

Then he strolled on into the restaurant. He headed for the men’s room first, prepared for the unlikely event that the sandy-haired man had only made this stop to relieve himself.

The man was at the urinal; the rest of the room was unoccupied. Groves stepped up beside him, two paces away, unzipped, and let fly, wishing that his tension would flow onto the white porcelain as readily. His quarry took his time with what he was doing. Groves, not wishing to appear conspicuous, went to the washstand, splashed cold water on his face, and made a show of combing his own sandy hair. Yellow dust from the open-topped jeep fell into the white washbasin, small particles dissolving into mud. The salesman, now beside him at the adjoining sink, was also washing up, soaping his hands thoroughly. Probably, Groves thought, the man had to be a model of cleanliness in his line of work.

Happily for Groves, the salesman walked to the take-out counter instead of to a table, which would have meant a longer time in the restaurant. Groves followed from the gift shop where he had been browsing. As the man was paying the cashier, Groves selected one of the Saran-wrapped sandwiches, meat loaf with yellowing pickle slices visible, and a carton of milk. The salesman evidently intended to eat while driving, for he was already on his way to the exit door, carrying his overfilled white paper bag with both hands.

Groves took a table by the window and started to unwrap his sandwich, looking out to the parking lot and the blue Chevy. It was unlikely, yet possible, that the man intended to eat in his car while still parked, and if that happened, Groves would remain in the restaurant. He did not want to be out there in his open jeep, chewing meatloaf and grinning about what a coincidence it was that both of them had sandy hair and liked eating outdoors.

13

When Sharon came into the control truck, they were still taping the Argentina-Italy game. At the back, to the left of the door she used, were Jim and Cliff, the two sound men, watching their meters and dials, faces intent under their headphones. At the center were the slo-mo replay apparatus and the master tape: four screens, four decks, and four men, Wesley, Boyd, Frank, and Earvin, on swivel chairs, ringed back to back in a cubicle no bigger than Sharon’s desktop. Wesley and Earvin saw Sharon and nodded a greeting; the other two were facing away and didn’t notice her.

The familiar voice of Dan Richards came from the ceiling loudspeaker system, “. . . a lesson in ball control from the Argentinians . . . Zico . . . over to Medina . . .”

She walked forward in the truck, moving sideways in the submarine-sized corridor, to the control room and the director’s console. Fourteen of the eighteen monitor screens were switched on. Seven were taking the feed from Spanish cameras at the Barcelona stadium; two, at the bottom of the console, carried the signal from the UBC exclusive field-level units that Larry Noble had fought so hard to get. Three others showed the output from the slo-mo units, which had been wired to pick up signals from any of the nine cameras, depending on which three were covering the best section. The thirteenth screen, the largest, at the center of the console, was the “on air” monitor, carrying whichever signal Wayne Taggart chose to “put up” on the “board” at any given moment. The fourteenth monitor, slightly smaller than the on-air screen beside it, carried graphics typed electronically by two men in the Chyron unit, which was housed in a smaller truck parked a few feet away.

On the graphics screen and the on-air, Sharon read the words TIME REMAINING and then the numbers, changing with each elapsed second: 2:21 .. . 2:20 . . . 2:19 .. .

Three men sat at the console. On the left was the rotund, balding Larry Noble, flicking switches to change the signals going into each of the three slo-mo units. To Larry’s right, at the center of the board, Wayne Taggart was barking commands at Billy Leon, the technical director, who moved the switches that put up whatever camera signal Taggart ordered.

“. . . cut to Seven . . . now Nine . . . Christ, what a move he made, it’s on Seven, Seven . . . goddammit, will you put up Seven? For chrissake how many times do I have to say it?” As he spoke, Taggart shifted constantly in his chair, sometimes up on one knee, to make notes, then slumping back, his feet in sandals up on the edge of the console, tilting his chair; then upright, drumming fingers on his clipboard. Sharon had worked with him before at NBC, and found his constant nervous aggression difficult to put up with. But Taggart was quick, one of the best free-lance directors around, and he knew soccer, and Larry Noble liked the way he talked about “creative symmetry.”

Sharon sat at her position in this tiny cubicle behind the three men: a narrow console with telephone connections to the other two trucks and to the outside world, and a direct line to the UBC switchboard and Molly in the building across the highway. She spread out the papers she had brought with her. There was so little room in the cubicle that the back of the bench Sharon sat on was simply padding on the wall, and the front of the console before her was only an inch or two from the chairs of Larry and Wayne. When Taggart leaned far back, the cowboy hat he never seemed to take off was practically in Sharon’s lap.

“Do you mind, Wayne?” Sharon said quietly, moving her papers to one side. Lany Noble and Billy heard her, turned around, and said “Hi.” Taggart did not respond. He kept his chair tilted back and continued calling out the camera numbers.

Now the hat brim brushed against the roll of stadium plans Sharon had brought, knocking them to the floor.

“Wayne, do you mind?” Sharon pushed the hat away from her, in the process tilting it.down over Taggart’s face so that he could no longer see the bank of monitor screens before him.

Taggart gave a cry of rage. He leaned forward, clutching the hat to straighten it, and whirled around to face Sharon, eyes blazing. His thick brown Pancho Villa mustache quivered with indignation. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” he screamed. “Do you realize I couldn’t see?”

Sharon replied calmly, “You can’t see the monitors when you’re looking at me, either. And you’re missing a good shot on Eight.”

Larry Noble’s soft baritone cut in before Taggart could answer. “Put up Eight, Billy. And Wayne, get back to the board. Put up the score, Chyron, and then get ready with the lists of tomorrow’s highlights.”

“You’re not going to say anything to her?” Taggart turned to the producer in anger. “You’re just going to let her get away with it?” Pinpoints of sweat appeared around the top of his pink forehead, moistening his permanent-waved ringlets of brown hair. The skin of his chest, bared by the blue silk shirt he wore open to the navel, was flushed red. His fingers clutched the heavy gold medallion on the chain around his neck as though he were about to tear it off and throw it.

“Simmer down, Wayne,” Larry Noble said quietly. “Put up Six, Billy. Now put up Eight again.” His soft brown eyes watching the board, Larry fished a new cigarette from his shirt pocket and chain-lit it.

Over the ceiling loudspeaker, Dan Richards’s voice continued the commentary “. . . now, with less than a minute to go, the Italians move desperately after the ball . . .”

Taggart glared at Sharon. Then he spun around in his chair to face the board again.

When the game was completed, Sharon waited to see if Taggart would have anything more to say to her about his hat, but he did not. The second that Dan Richards completed the wrapup, Taggart turned to Larry and slid his clipboard over for the producer to see. “I think fifteen minutes ought to do it,” he said, pointing to the events he had written on his clipboard, with the times at which they had occurred. “We start with the first goal, then we flash back to the opening ceremony, then we go to the three shots we had of that first Italian penalty. . . .”

Sharon watched as Taggart continued to explain what he planned to include in the segment of game coverage that would be broadcast tonight during U.S. prime time. It sounded good to her; even though she had not seen the game, she had watched enough soccer to know that Wayne had chosen a good balance between the action-filled highlights of this particular contest and the corner kicks, blocks, and play setups that Dan Richards chose to describe and analyze for viewers unfamiliar with soccer. Evidently, Larry Noble thought so too, for he gave his approval immediately. Taggart stood up then, his back to Sharon, and appeared to be leaving.

“Two things before you go, Wayne,” she said.

“Yes?” He turned toward her, his face taut.

She pointed to the roll of stadium plans that she had retrieved from the floor. “I want you to take a look at these possible camera placements for the U.S. team practice here tomorrow morning. And Katya Romanova will reschedule for next Sunday when Dan Richards is back. I set it up for two in the afternoon so we can run it Sunday night when the kids are watching.”

He nodded, thumbing through the plans. “What is all this?” he said impatiently. “Where are the cameras?”

“They’re the red X’s on the top sheet. The other pages are plumbing and wiring and the other parts of the stadium. The Spanish government gave us a complete set.”

Taggart circled two of the X’s and pointed to a third. “Platforms here and here, and I’ll have Emerson and his handheld unit over here to catch the goals. Is that all?”

“Far as I know. I do remember a phone message from you on my desk, though. Something about an emergency?”

“Oh, that.” He sounded evasive. “I already took care of it myself.”

“Mind telling me what it was?”

“That interpreter you hired yesterday. I caught her stealing. When you didn’t return my call, I told her she was fired.”

Larry Noble looked up. “You told her what?”

Taggart folded his arms across his chest, avoiding Larry’s eyes. It was plain that he knew he had acted outside his authority, that producers, and not directors, did the hiring and firing. “She was stealing,” he repeated. “I caught her. It seemed to me there was only one choice.”

“What did she steal?” Sharon asked.

He kept his eyes down. “My complimentary tickets for the championship game. One of them, anyway. Probably she would have come back for the others tomorrow.”

“You’re certain it was Maria?” Larry puffed on a fresh cigarette, grinding out the old one in his ashtray. “She seems like such a nice kid.”

Taggart’s head came up. “I found her putting my tote bag back on my desk. The ticket was in her hand.”

“Where is she now?”

He put his hands into the pockets of his Levi’s and shrugged. “She went out of my office on a crying jag when the game was about to start. I don’t know where she is. I’m going back to prepare the master tape for tonight.”

“Cindy won’t be ready for you in the editing truck,” Sharon called after him. “She’s still working on the changes for Dan’s documentary.”

There was no answer. The outer door of the truck slammed behind him.

After Billy, the TD, had said goodbye and gone, Larry turned to Sharon. “Sorry about that nonsense.” He started a fresh cigarette. “Wayne’s really off tonight. I think it was the pep talk from the boss man.”