The Evening News (48 page)

It was not until after the first-feed Saturday National Evening News that the special task force meeting, interrupted by that morning's harrowing events at White Plains, resumed at CDA News headquarters. By then it was 7:10 P.m. and the task force members had resignedly canceled any weekend plans. It was often said of TV news people that their irregular working hours, long absences from home and the impossibility of leading any predictable social life produced one of the highest occupational divorce rates
.
Seated once more at the head of the conference-room table, Harry
Partridge surveyed the others-Rita, Norman Jaeger, Iris Everly, Karl
Owens, Teddy Cooper. Most looked tired; Iris, for once, was less than
immaculate, her hair awry and white blouse ink-stained. Jaeger, in
shirtsleeves, had his chair tilted back, feet up on the table
.
The room itself was messy, with waste containers overflowing, ash trays
full, dirty coffee cups abounding and discarded newspapers littering the
floor. A price paid for keeping the task force offices locked was that
cleaners had been unable to get in. Rita reminded herself to arrange for
the place to be spruced up before Monday morning
.
The "Sequence of Events
”
and "Miscellaneous
”
boards had been added to
considerably. The most recent contribution was a summary of that
morning's White Plains havoc, typed by Partridge. Frustratingly, though
,
there was still nothing conclusive on the boards about the kidnappers'
identities or their victims' whereabouts
.”
Reports, anyone
?
”

Partridge asked
.
Jaeger, who had lowered his feet and propelled his chair to the table
,
raised a hand
.”
Go ahead, Norm
.”

T
he veteran producer spoke in his quiet, scholarly fashion
.”
For most of
today I've been telephoning Europe and the Middle East--our bureau
chiefs, correspondents, stringers, fixers
asking questions: What have they
heard that is fresh or unusual about terrorist activity? Are there signs
of peculiar movements of terrorism people? Have any terrorists
,
especially groups, disappeared from sight recently? If they have, is it
possible they could be in the United States? And so on
.”

Jaeger paused, shuffling notes, then continued, "There are some
semi-
positive answers. A whole group of Hezbollah disappeared from Beirut
a month ago and haven't surfaced. But rumor puts them in Turkey, planning
a new attack on Jews, and there's confirmation from Ankara that the
Turkish police are searching for them. No proof, though. They could be
anywhere
.”
The FARL-Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions
are said to have people
on the move, but three separate reports, including one from Paris, say
that they're in France. Again no proof. Abu Nidal has disappeared from
Syria and is believed to be in Italy where there are rumbles that he, the
Islamic Jihad and Red Brigades are plotting something vicious
.”

Jaeger
threw up his hands
.”
All these hoodlums are like slippery shadows, though
the sources I've used have been reliable in the past
.”

Leslie Chippingham entered the conference room, followed a moment later
by Crawford Sloane. They joined the others at the table. As the meeting
fell silent, the news president urged, "Carry on, please
.”

As Jaeger continued, Partridge observed Sloane and thought the anchorman
looked ghastly, even more pale and gaunt than yesterday, though it was
not surprising with the growing strain
.
Jaeger said, "The intelligence grapevine reports some more individual
terrorist movements. I won't bother you with details except to say
they're apparently confined to Europe and the Middle East. More
important, the people I talked to don't believe there's been any
terrorist exodus, certainly not in sizable numbers, to the U.S. or
Canada. If there were, they say it's
unlikely there'd be no word at all. But I've told everybody to keep looking, listening and reporting
.”

"Thanks, Norm
.”

Partridge turned to Karl Owens
.”
I know you've been
inquiring southward, Karl. Any results
?
”

"Nothing really positive
.”

The younger producer had no need to shuffle
notes from his day of telephoning. Typical of his precise methodology, he
had each phone call summarized on a four-by-six card, the handwriting neat
,
the cards sorted into order
.”
I've talked with the same kind of contacts as Norm, asking similar
questions-mine in Managua, San Salvador, Havana, La Paz, Buenos Aires
,
Tegucigalpa, Lima, Santiago, BogotA, Brasilia, Mexico City. As always
,
there's terrorist activity in most of those places, also reports about
terrorists changing countries, crossing borders like commuters switching
trains. But nothing in the intelligence mill fits a group movement of the
kind we're looking for. I did stumble on one thing. I'm still working on
it . .
.”

"Tell us
,”
Partridge said
.”
We'll take it raw
.”

"Well, it's something from Colombia. About a guy called Ulises Rodriguez
.”

"A particularly nasty terrorist
,”
Rita said
.”
I've heard him referred to
as the Abu Nidal of Latin America
.”

"He's all of that
,”
Owens agreed, "and he's also believed to have been
involved in several Colombian kidnappings. They don't get reported much
here, but they happen all the time. Well, three months ago Rodriguez was
reported as being in Bogot
a
, then he simply disappeared. Those who should
know are convinced he's active somewhere. There was a rumor he might have
gone to London, but wherever he is, he's stayed successfully out of sight
since June
.”

Owens paused, referring to a card
.”
Now something else: On a hunch I called
a Washington contact in U.S. Immigration and floated Rodriguez's name
.
Later, my source called me back and said that three months ago, which is
about the time Rodriguez dropped out of sight, Immigration was warned by
the CIA that he might attempt a U.S. entry through Miami.
There's a federal arrest warrant out for him and Miami Immigration and Customs went on red alert. But he didn't show
.”

"Or managed to get through undetected
,”
Iris Everly added
.”
That's possible. Or he could have come in through a different
doorway-from London, perhaps, if the rumor I mentioned was right. That's
something else about him. Rodriguez studied English at Berkeley and
speaks it without an accent-or, rather, with an American accent. What I'm
saying is, he can blend in
.”

"This gets interesting
,”
Rita said
.”
Is there anything more
?
”

Owens nodded
.”
A little
.”

The others around the table were listening intently and Partridge
reflected that only those in the news business understood just how much
information could be assembled through contacts and persistent
telephoning
.”
The little that's on record about Rodriguez
,”
Owens said, "includes what
I've just told you and that be graduated from Berkeley with the class of
'72
.”

Partridge asked, "Are there pictures of him
?
”

Owens shook his head
.”
I asked Immigration and came up nil. They say no
one has a photo, which includes the CIA. Rodriguez has been careful
.
However, on that score we may have got lucky
.”

"For chrissakes, Karl
!”

Rita complained
.”
If you must act like a
novelist, get on with the story
!”

Owens smiled. Patient plodding was his personal style. It worked and he
had no intention of changing it for Abrams or anyone else
.”
After learning about Rodriguez I called our San Francisco bureau and
asked to have someone sent over to Berkeley to do some checking
.”

He
glanced at Chippingham
.”
I invoked your name, Les. Said you'd authorized
zip priority
.”

The news president nodded as Owens continued
.”
They sent Fiona Gowan who happens to be a Berkeley graduate, knows her
way around. Fiona got lucky, especially on Saturday and-if you'll believe
it-located an English Department faculty member who actually remembers Rodriguez from the Class of '72
.”

Rita sighed
.”
We believe it
.”

Her tone said: Get on!
"Rodriguez, it seems, was a loner, had no close friends. Something else
the faculty guy recalled was that Rodriguez was camera-shy, would never
let anyone take his picture. The Daily Cal, the student newspaper, wanted
to feature him in a group of foreign students; he turned them down
.
Eventually it got to be a joke, so a classmate who was a pretty good
artist did a charcoal sketch of Rodriguez without his knowing. When the
artist showed it around, Rodriguez flew into a rage. Then he offered to
buy the picture and did, paying more than it was worth. The Catch-22 was
that the artist had already made a dozen copies which he doled out to his
friends. Rodriguez never knew that
.”

"Those copies
Partridge began
.”
We're on to it, Harry
.”

Owens smiled, still refusing to be hurried
.”
Fiona's back in San Francisco, been working the phones all afternoon
.
It was a big job because the Berkeley English class of '72 had three
hundred and eighty-eight members. Anyway she managed to scrape up names
and some alumni home numbers, one leading to another. Just before this
meeting she called me to say she's located one of the copy sketches and
will have it by tomorrow. Soon as it's in, San Fran bureau will transmit
it to us
.”

There was an approving murmur around the table
.”
Nice staff work
,”
Chippingham said
.”
Thank Fiona for me
.”

"We should keep a sense of proportion, though
,”
Owens pointed out
.”
At
the moment we've nothing more than coincidence and it's only a guess that
Rodriguez might be involved with our kidnap. Also, that charcoal drawing
is twenty years old
.”

"People don't change all that much, even in twenty years
,”
Partridge
said
.”
What we can do is show the picture around Larchmont and ask if
anyone remembers seeing him. Anything else?
”
"Washington bureau checked in
,”
Rita said
.”
They say the FBI has nothing
new. Their forensic people are working on
what was left of the Nissan van at White Plains, but they're not hopeful. Just as Salerno said on Friday's broadcast, the FBI in kidnap cases depend on the kidnappers making contact
.”

Partridge looked down the table toward Sloane
.”
I'm sorry, Crawf, but that
seems to be all we have
.”