Journey (11 page)

“Maddy, you can't shut down
all
outbound flights out of Kennedy for three days. Do you know what that means? At that rate, you'd have to shut down all incoming too, in case the blast hit them. This country would have gone haywire, and our economy with it.”

“I don't believe this,” she said, suddenly in a white
fury. “You and God knows who else decided to just go ahead with business as usual and not warn anyone, because our
economy
would be affected? And you'd disrupt flight schedules? Tell me this didn't happen the way I think it did. Tell me four hundred and twelve people didn't die to spare our aviation industry a disruption. Is that what you're telling me? It was a
business
decision? Who the hell decided that one?”

“Our President, you fool. What do you think? That I make decisions like that? It was a major issue, but the threat just wasn't specific enough. They couldn't do a goddamn thing about it, except check every plane with a fine-tooth comb before it went out. And if you quote me, Mad, I'll fucking kill you.”

“I don't give a damn what you do. This is about people and lives and babies and children, and innocent people who got on an airplane with a bomb on it because no one had the balls to shut down Kennedy for three days. But goddammit, Jack, they should have!”

“You don't know what you're talking about. You don't shut down a major international airport for three days for a bomb threat, not and stay in business.”

“They shut it down for snow, for chrissake, and the economy stays afloat. Why not for a bomb threat?”

“Because they'd have looked like fools and everyone would have panicked.”

“Oh, okay, I guess four hundred lives is a small price to pay in order to avoid a panic. My God, I can't believe what I'm hearing. I can't believe you knew and you didn't do
a fucking
thing about it.”

“What did you expect me to do? Go to JFK and hand out leaflets?”

“No, you asshole, you own the network. You could
have blown the whistle on this, anonymously if you wanted to, and forced them to shut down the airport.”

“And the door to the White House would have been slammed in my face forever. You think they wouldn't have known who leaked something like that? Don't be ridiculous, and
don't,”
he said, grabbing her arm and yanking her hard with it,
“ever
call me an asshole. I knew what I was doing.”

“You and the boys you were playing with last night killed four hundred and twelve people at noon today,” she almost spat the words at him and her voice was shaking. She couldn't believe he had been a party to it. “Why don't you just buy a gun, and start shooting people? It's cleaner, and a lot more honest. Do you know what this means? It means that business is more important than people. It means that every time some woman gets on an airplane with her kids, she doesn't know if someone has been warned that there's a bomb on it, but for the sake of big business, she and her kids are a walking sacrifice, because no one thinks they're important enough to warrant a ‘disruption.’”

“They're not, in the larger scale of things. You're naive. You don't understand. Sometimes people have to be sacrificed for larger interests.” She felt as though she was going to throw up as she listened. “And I'll tell you something, if you breathe a word of this, I will personally drag you back to Knoxville and leave you on Bobby Joe's doorstep. If you say a goddamn word, you're going to have to answer to the President of the United States and I hope they throw your ass in jail for treason. This was a security issue, and it was handled by people who knew what they were doing and have the highest possible clearance. This is not some little whining, psychotic
housewife we're talking about, or some fat slobbering Senator. If you open up this can of worms, you're going to have the President on your neck, and the FBI, and the FAA, and every major agency in this country, and I'm going to watch you go down in flames with it. You are
not
touching this one. You don't know a goddamn thing about it, and they'll turn on you so fast, and bury you in about five minutes. You'll never win this one.”

She knew there was some truth to what he said, everyone would lie about it, and it would be the biggest cover-up since Watergate, and more than likely the public would never believe her. She was one small voice in a sea of much bigger ones who would not only out-shout her, they would see to it that she was discredited forever. They might even kill her. The thought of it was frightening, but the thought of letting the public down and not telling them the truth made her feel like a traitor. They had a right to know that the people on Flight 263 had been sacrificed to economic concerns. And to the people who had made that decision, they meant nothing. “Did you hear what I just said to you?” Jack asked her with a terrifying look in his eyes. He was beginning to scare her. He would be the first one to take her down, before even the others could, if she jeopardized his network.

“I heard you,” she said numbly. “And I hate you for it.”

“I don't give a damn what you think or feel about this. I only care about what you do, and it goddamn better be the right thing this time, or you're finished. With me, and the network. Is that clear, Mad?” She looked at him for a long moment and then turned on her heel and walked swiftly down the stairs, back to her own floor.
She didn't even wait for the elevator, and when she got back to her office, she was pale and shaking.

“What happened? Did he know anything?” Greg asked. He had figured out instantly where she'd gone, and he'd never seen her look the way she did when she returned to her office. She was deathly pale and she looked sick, but for a moment she said nothing.

“No, he didn't” was all she said, and she took three aspirin with half a cup of coffee. And not surprisingly, ten minutes later the head producer came in and looked sternly at both of them before issuing a warning.

“I have to clear your copy before you go on the air tonight, both of you. Anything that deviates from what's approved, we cut you off and go to commercial. You got that?”

“Got it,” Greg said quietly, and he knew where it came from, just as Maddy did. Greg didn't know what had been said upstairs, but he knew it couldn't have been pretty. Just looking at Maddy s face told its own story. He waited until the producer left and then looked across at Maddy, his eyes full of questions. “I take it he knew,” Greg said softly. “You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.” She looked long and hard at Greg and nodded.

“I can't prove that. And we can't say it. Everyone involved will deny it.”

“I think we better not touch this one, Mad. This is one very large hot potato. Too big for us, I think. If they knew, you can be damn sure, everyone involved covered their asses. This one had to be run by the big boys.” It impressed him to realize that Jack Hunter was now considered one of them. He had heard for a while
that Jack had become the Presidents spin doctor. He was obviously playing in the big leagues.

“He said he'd kick me off the show if I touch it.” She looked less impressed than Greg had thought she'd be as she said it. “I don't care about that, I hate lying to the public.”

“Sometimes we have to,” Greg said carefully, “even though I don't like it either. But the big guys would hang us out to dry on this one.”

“Jack said I'll wind up in jail, or something pleasant like that.”

“Isn't he getting a little cranky?” Greg said with a wry smile, and Maddy laughed in spite of herself, and then remembered the way he had grabbed her arm and shaken her. She had never seen him as enraged, or as frightened. But this was a big one.

They wrote their copy for the show that afternoon, and it was checked carefully by the producer. And half an hour later, it was returned to them with further edits. The piece on the air disaster was about as bland as it could be, and the powers that be upstairs wanted them to rely mostly on video footage to convey the story.

“Be careful, Mad,” Greg whispered to her, as they sat at their desks in the studio, waiting to go on the air, after the countdown had started. And she only nodded. He knew what a crusader she was, and what a purist. It would have been just like her to take a kamikaze dive into the danger zone, by exposing the truth after all, but this time he was pretty sure she wouldn't do it.

She read off the piece about the crash of Flight 263, and her voice nearly broke once. She sounded somber and respectful as she spoke of the people on board, and
the number of children. And the footage they showed underlined the tragedy even further. They had just shown the last shots, of some video footage someone on Long Island happened to get of the explosion, and Maddy was about to close when Greg saw her fold her hands on the desk, and look away from the TelePrompTer, and all he could feel as he watched her was terror. He mouthed the words “Maddy, don't …” because he could see on the monitor he was off camera, but she didn't see him. She was looking straight into the camera she was facing, right into the faces and hearts and homes of the American public.

“There are a lot of rumors flying around about the crash today,” she began cautiously, “some of them very disturbing.” Greg could see the producer stand up behind the set, with a look of panic. But they didn't cut away to commercial. “There have been rumors that the FAA was warned in advance, that ‘some’ mysterious, unknown flight outbound from Kennedy might be carrying a bomb, ‘sometime’ this week. But there is no evidence to support that rumor. We know nothing more right now than that four hundred and twelve lives were lost, and we can only assume that if the FAA was warned, they would have shared that information with the public.” She was coming close to the line, but she didn't cross it, as Greg held his breath and watched her, as she continued. “All of us here at WBT would like to extend our condolences to the friends and families and loved ones of those who died on Flight 263. It is a tragedy beyond measure. Goodnight. I'm Maddy Hunter.” And with that, they cut to commercial, and Greg looked pale as Maddy sat grim-faced and took her mike off.

“Shit, you terrified me. I thought you were going to blow it. You damn near did, didn't you?” She had raised a question, but not provided the damning answer to it. And she could have.

“I said what I could,” which wasn't much, they both knew. And as she stood up, off camera now, she saw the producer in the doorway, talking to her husband. Jack walked straight toward her purposefully, and stopped when he reached her.

“You skated pretty close to the line on that one, didn't you, Maddy? We were ready to cut you off at any second.” He didn't look pleased, but he no longer looked angry. She hadn't betrayed him, and she could have. Or she could have tried at least, although they wouldn't have let her get far.

“I know you were,” she said coldly, her eyes looked like bright blue stones as they met his. Something terrible had happened between them that afternoon, and she would never forget it. “Are you satisfied?” she asked in a tone as icy as the look she gave him.

“You saved your own ass, not mine,” he said so no one else could hear them. The producer had already walked away, and Greg had gone back to his office. “You were the one on the line here.”

“The public got cheated.”

“They would have been pissed out of their minds, if every flight in and out of Kennedy had been canceled for three days.”

“Well, I'm glad we didn't piss them off, aren't you? I bet the people on Flight 263 were real glad too. It's a lot better to kill people than to make them angry,” she said grimly.

“Don't push your luck, Maddy,” he said ominously,
and she could see that he meant it. She said nothing, and walked right by him to her office. Greg was just leaving when she got there.

“Are you okay?” he whispered, not sure how close Jack was; he had stayed in the studio to talk to the producer.

“Not really” she said honestly. “I don't know what I am. Heartsick mostly. I sold out, Greg,” she said, fighting back tears. She hated herself for it.

“You had no choice. Get past it. This was too big for you to tackle. How is he?” he asked, referring to her husband. “Pissed? He shouldn't be. You gift-wrapped it for him, and you sure got the FAA off the hook, and everyone else with it.”

“I think I scared him,” she said, smiling through her tears.

“Never mind him, you scared the shit out of me. I thought I was going to have to put my jacket over your face to shut you up, before someone killed you. They might have, you know. They would have said you had a psychotic break, that you've been unstable for months, under psychiatric care, schizoid, they'd have done everything they had to. I'm glad you didn't do anything really stupid.” She was about to say something just as Jack walked into her office.

“Get your things, we're leaving.” He didn't even bother to acknowledge Greg. Jack was satisfied with Greg's ratings, but he had never liked him, and never bothered to pretend he did. But he spoke to Maddy now like a servant, just someone to be ordered around and carry out his orders. She picked up her handbag and walked out of the office without saying a word. She wasn't sure how, but she knew that after today things
would be different between them. They each felt betrayed by the other.

Jack followed her to the elevator, and they rode downstairs in silence, and it was only once they were in the car that he spoke to her again. “You came damn near close to ending your career today. I hope you know that.”

“You and your friends killed four hundred and twelve people. I can't even imagine how that must feel. Compared to that, my career doesn't mean much.”

“I'm glad you think so. You were playing with fire out there. You were told to only read your approved copy.”

“I thought the death of more than four hundred people merited some small comment. I didn't say anything you could object to.”

They sat in silence again until they got home, and then he looked at her with contempt, as though to remind her that she was unimportant. “Pack your bags, Mad. We're leaving tomorrow.”

“For where?” she said without interest.

“Europe.” As usual, he offered no details, and hadn't asked her.