The Evening News

by Arthur Hailey

  Miguel reasoned that it was. From experience, he knew it was almost a certainty that after Sendero Luminoso’s ransom demands were made known, one of the captives would have to be killed and the body dumped where it would be found—all to make the point that the kidnappers were serious. Possession of Angus Sloane would mean an extra body for that purpose, leaving either the woman or the boy to be executed later if it became necessary to make the same point twice. So in that sense the extra captive was a bonus.

  Miguel told Baudelio, “Yes, the old man goes.”

  Baudelio nodded. Despite his outward assurance, he was nervous around Miguel today because, the night before, Baudelio had committed what he now recognized as a serious mistake, a possible breach of everyone’s security. While he was alone, in a moment of profound loneliness and dejection, he had used one of the cellular phones to call Peru. It was a woman he had spoken to, his slatternly live-in companion and only friend, whose frequently drunken companionship he sorely missed.

  It was because of Baudelio’s continuing anxiety about that call that he was slow to react when suddenly, unexpectedly, a crisis confronted him.

  Jessica, during the struggle outside the Larchmont supermarket, had had only a minute or two, first of shock, then horror, to grasp the enormity of what was happening. Even after her screams had been silenced by the gag slapped over her mouth, she continued to struggle fiercely and desperately, aware that Nicky, too, had been seized by the unknown brutes around them and that Angus had been savagely struck down. But moments later, as the strong injected sedative circulated through her bloodstream, blackness supervened and she fell into deep unconsciousness.

  But now, without knowing how long it had lasted, she was reviving, her memory returning. She became aware, dimly at first and then more clearly, of sounds around her. She tried to move, to speak, but found she could do neither. When she transferred the effort to her eyes, they would not open.

  It was as if she were at the bottom of a well of darkness, attempting to do something, anything, but able to do nothing.

  Then, as more moments passed, the voices became clearer, the awful memory of events at Larchmont sharpened.

  At last Jessica’s eyes opened.

  Baudelio, Socorro and Miguel were all looking elsewhere and failed to see it happen.

  Jessica was aware of feeling coming back into her body but could not understand why her arms and legs wouldn’t move, except for the smallest distance. Then she saw that her nearer arm, the left, was constricted by a strap and realized she was on what looked like a hospital bed, and that her other arm and both legs were restricted in the same way.

  She turned her head slightly and froze in horror at what she saw.

  Nicky was on another bed, imprisoned like herself. Beyond him Angus, too, was tied down with ropes. And then—Oh, no! Oh, god!—she glimpsed the two open funeral caskets, one smaller than the other, clearly intended for herself and Nicky.

  In a single instant she began to scream and struggle wildly. Somehow, in her demented terror, she managed to get her left arm free.

  Hearing the scream, the three conspirators swung toward her. For a moment Baudelio, who should have taken instant action, was too startled to move. By then Jessica had seen them all.

  Still struggling wildly, she reached out with her left hand, trying desperately to find something to use as a weapon to protect herself and Nicky. The table of instruments was beside her. As her fingers groped frantically, she seized what felt like a kitchen paring knife. It was a scalpel.

  Now Baudelio, having collected his wits, raced toward her. Seeing Jessica’s free arm, he tried to refasten it with Socorro’s help.

  But Jessica was faster. In her desperation she reached out with the metal object, slashing wildly, managing to gash Baudelio’s face, then Socorro’s hand. At first, thin red lines appeared on both. A moment later blood gushed out.

  Baudelio ignored the pain and tried to secure that flailing arm. Miguel, hurrying forward, hit Jessica savagely with his fist, then helped Baudelio. With Baudelio’s wound dripping blood onto Jessica and the cot, they managed to re-strap Jessica’s arm.

  Miguel retrieved the scalpel. Though Jessica still struggled, it was to no avail. Defeated and helpless, she broke down in tears.

  Then, another complication. Nicky’s sedation was also wearing off. Becoming aware of the shouting, and of his mother nearby, he returned to consciousness more quickly. He too began screaming, but despite his struggles couldn’t free himself from the restraining straps.

  Angus, who had been sedated later than the other two, did not stir.

  By now the noise and confusion were overwhelming, but Baudelio and Socorro both knew their own wounds had to be treated ahead of anything else. Socorro, with the lesser injury, put a temporary adhesive dressing on her own cut hand, then turned to aid Baudelio. She taped gauze pads over his face, though they were quickly soaked with blood.

  Recovering from initial shock, he nodded an acknowledgment, then pointed to the assembled equipment and murmured, “Help me.”

  Socorro tightened the strap above Jessica’s left elbow. Then Baudelio inserted a hypodermic needle into a vein and injected the propofol he had prepared earlier. Jessica, watching and screaming, fought against the drug’s effect until her eyes closed and once more she was unconscious.

  Baudelio and Socorro moved on to Nicky and repeated the process. He, too, stopped his painful cries and slumped back, his brief period of awareness ended.

  Then, rather than take a chance on the old man regaining consciousness and causing trouble, Angus was also given propofol.

  Miguel, while not interfering in the latter stages, had been glowering. Now he accused Baudelio, “You incompetent asshole!” Eyes blazing, he stormed on, “¡Pinche cabrón! You could ruin everything! Do you know what you are doing?”

  “Yes, I know,” Baudelio said. Despite the gauze pads, blood was streaming down his face. “I made an error of judgment. I promise it will not happen again.”

  Without replying, his face flushed with anger, Miguel stalked out.

  When he had gone, Baudelio used a portable mirror to inspect his bloody wound. Immediately he knew two things. First, he would carry a scar, running the full length of his face, for the remainder of his life. Second, and more important, the gaping, open cut needed to be closed and sutured at once. In present circumstances he could not go to a hospital or another doctor. Baudelio knew there was no other choice than to do it himself, however difficult and painful that might be. As best she could, Socorro would have to help.

  During his early medical training, Baudelio, like any student, had learned to suture minor wounds. Later, as an anesthesiologist, he watched hundreds of incisions being stitched. Then, while working for the Medellín cartel, he had done some wound repairs himself and knew the procedures needed now.

  Feeling weak, he sat himself in front of the mirror and told Socorro to bring his regular medical bag. From it he selected surgical needles, silk thread and a local anesthetic, lidocaine.

  He explained to Socorro what, between them, they would do. As usual, she said little except an occasional “¡Sí!” or “¡está bien!” Then, without further discussion, Baudelio began to inject lidocaine along the margins of his wound.

  The whole procedure took almost two hours and, despite the local anesthetic, the pain was excruciating. Several times Baudelio came close to fainting. His hand shook frequently, which made the sutures uneven. Adding to his difficulties was the awkward, reverse effect of working with a mirror. Socorro passed him what he asked for and, once or twice when he was near collapse, supported him. In the end he managed to hold on and, though some clumsy sutures meant the residual scar would be worse than he had at first supposed, the gap in his cheek was closed and he knew the wound would heal.

  Finally, knowing the most difficult part of his Medellín/Sendero assignment was still ahead and that he needed rest, Baudelio took two hundred milligrams of Seconal and slept.

&n
bsp; 3

  At about 11:50 A.M., in the apartment at Port Credit, Harry Partridge had switched the living room TV to a Buffalo, New York, station—a CBA affiliate. All Buffalo TV stations, whose signals had only to travel an unobstructed sixty miles across Lake Ontario, were received clearly in the Toronto area.

  Vivien had gone out and would not be back until midafternoon.

  Partridge hoped to learn, from the noon news, the latest developments following yesterday’s Muskegon Airlines disaster at Dallas–Fort Worth. Consequently at 11:55, when programming was interrupted by the CBA News Special Bulletin, Partridge was watching.

  He was as shocked and horrified as everyone else. Could it really be true, he wondered, or just some incredible snafu? But experience told him that CBA News would not have put out a bulletin without satisfying itself of the story’s authenticity.

  As he watched Don Kettering’s face on the screen and heard the continuing report, he felt, more than anything, a personal concern for Jessica. And mixed with his emotions was a surge of camaraderie and pity for Crawford Sloane.

  Partridge also knew, without even thinking about it, that his vacation, which had scarcely begun, was already over.

  It was no surprise, then, to receive a phone call some forty-five minutes later, asking him to come to CBA News headquarters in New York. What did surprise him was that it was a personal appeal from Crawford Sloane.

  Sloane’s voice, Partridge discerned, was barely under control. After the preliminaries, Sloane said, “I desperately need you, Harry. Les and Chuck are setting up a special unit; it will work on two levels—daily reports on air and deep investigation. They asked me who I wanted in charge. I told them there’s only one choice—you.”

  In all the years that he and Sloane had known each other, Partridge realized they had never been closer than at this moment. He responded, “Hang in there, Crawf. I’ll be on the next flight.”

  “Thank you, Harry. Is there anyone you especially want to work with?

  “Yes. Find Rita Abrams, wherever she is—in Minnesota somewhere—and bring her in. The same for Minh Van Canh.”

  “If they’re not waiting when you get here, they’ll be with you soon after. Anyone else?”

  Thinking quickly, Partridge said, “I want Teddy Cooper from London.”

  “Cooper?” Sloane sounded puzzled, then remembered. “He’s our bureau researcher, isn’t he?”

  “Right.”

  Teddy Cooper was an Englishman, a twenty-five-year-old product of what the British snobbishly called a red-brick university, and a cheerful Cockney who might have auditioned successfully for Me and My Girl. He was also, in Partridge’s opinion, a near-genius at turning ordinary research into detective work and following it up with shrewd deductions.

  While working in Europe, Partridge had discovered Cooper, who at the time held a minor librarian’s job at the British Broadcasting Corporation. Partridge had been impressed with some inventive research work that Cooper had done for him. Later he was instrumental in having Cooper employed, with more money and better prospects, by CBA’s London bureau.

  “You’ve got him,” Sloane replied. “He’ll be on the next Concorde out of England.”

  “If you feel up to it,” Partridge said, “I’d like to ask some questions, so I have something to think about on the way down.”

  “Of course. Go ahead.”

  What followed was a near-replay of queries already put by FBI agent Havelock. Had there been threats? … Any special antagonism? … Unusual experiences? … Was there any notion, even the wildest, as to who …? Was there anything known that had not been broadcast?

  The asking was necessary, but the answers were all negative.

  “Is there anything at all you can think of,” Partridge persisted, “some little incident, perhaps, which you may have dismissed at the time or even hardly noticed, but which might relate to what has happened?”

  “The answer’s no at the moment,” Sloane said. “But I’ll think about it.”

  After they hung up, Partridge resumed his own preparations. Even before Sloane’s call he had begun-packing a suitcase that only an hour earlier he had unpacked.

  He telephoned Air Canada, making a reservation on a flight leaving Toronto’s Pearson International at 2:45 P.M. It was due into New York’s La Guardia Airport at 4 P.M. Next, he called for a taxi to collect him in twenty minutes.

  After his packing was finished, Partridge scribbled a goodbye note to Vivien. He knew she would be disappointed at his abrupt departure, as he was himself. Along with the note he left a generous check to cover the apartment refurbishing they had discussed.

  As he looked around for a place to leave the note and check, a buzzer sounded in the apartment. It was the intercom from the lobby below. The taxi he ordered had arrived.

  The last thing he saw before leaving was, on a sideboard, the tickets for the next day’s Mozart concert. He reflected sadly that those—as well as other unused tickets and invitations in the past—represented, more than anything else, the uncertain pattern of a TV newsman’s life.

  The Air Canada flight was non-stop, a 727 with all-economy seating. A light passenger load enabled Partridge to have a three-seat section to himself. He had assured Sloane that he would apply his mind to the kidnapping while en route to New York and had intended to begin planning the direction he and the CBA News investigative group should take. But the information he had was sketchy, and obviously he needed more. So after a while he gave up and, sipping a vodka-tonic, allowed his thoughts to drift.

  He considered, on a personal level, Jessica and himself.

  Over the years since Vietnam he had grown accustomed to regarding Jessica as belonging only in the past, as someone he had once loved but who was no longer relevant to him and in any case far beyond his reach. To an extent, Partridge realized, his thinking had been an act of self-discipline, a safeguard against feeling sorry for himself, self-pity being something he abhorred.

  But now, because Jessica was in danger, he admitted to himself that he cared as much about her as ever, and always had. Face it, you’re still in love with her. Yes I am. And not with some shadowy memory, but with a person who was living, vital, real.

  So whatever his role was to be in searching for Jessica—and Crawf himself had asked that it be a major one—Harry Partridge knew that his love for Jessica would drive and sustain him, even though he would hold that love secret, burning out of sight within himself.

  Then, with what he recognized as a characteristic touch of quirky humor, he asked himself, Am I being disloyal?

  Disloyal to whom? Of course, to Gemma who was dead.

  Ah, dearest Gemma! Earlier today, when he had remembered the one exception to his apparent inability to cry, he had almost let memories about her crowd in. But he had pushed them away as being more than he could handle. But now thoughts of Gemma were flooding back. She will always come back, he thought.

  A few years after his duty tour in Vietnam and some other hard-living assignments, CBA News sent Partridge to be resident correspondent in Rome. He remained there almost five years.

  Among all television networks, an assignment to a Rome bureau was considered a plum. The standard of living was high, living costs modest by comparison with big cities elsewhere, and though pressures and tensions were inevitably transmitted from New York, the local pace of life was leisurely and easy.

  As well as reporting on area stories and sometimes roving far afield, Partridge covered the Vatican. Also, several times he traveled on papal airplanes, accompanying Pope John Paul II on the pontiff’s international peregrinations.

  It was on one of those papal journeys he met Gemma.

  Partridge was often amused at the assumption by outsiders that a papal air journey was an exercise in decorum and restraint. In fact, it wasn’t. In particular, in the press section at the rear of the airplane the reverse was true. Invariably there was much partying and drinking—the liquor unlimited and free—and during long overnig
ht flights, sexual dalliance was not unknown.

  Partridge once heard the papal airplane described by a fellow correspondent as having different levels, ranging—as in Dante’s Inferno—all the way from hell to heaven. (While there was never any permanent aircraft earmarked for the Pope’s flights, the special interior configuration for each journey was usually the same.)

  At the front of the airplane on every trip was a spacious cabin outfitted for the Pope. It contained a bed and two large comfortable seats, sometimes three.

  The next section back was for senior members of the Pope’s entourage—his Secretary of State, some cardinals, the Pope’s doctor, secretary and valet. Then, behind another divider was a cabin for bishops and lower-ranking priests.

  In between one of the forward cabins, and depending on the type of airplane was an open space where all the gifts the Pope received on his journey were stored. It was inevitably a large, rich pile.

  Finally there was the last cabin in the plane—for journalists. The seat configuration here was tourist, but with first-class service, many flight attendants, and superb food and wine. There were generous gifts for journalists too, usually from the airline involved which, more often than not, was Alitalia. Airlines, astute in public relations, recognized a chance for good publicity when they saw one.

  As to the journalists themselves, they were an average group from their profession, an international mixture of newspaper, television and radio reporters, the television people accompanied by technical crews—all with normal interests, normal skepticism, and a penchant at times for irreverent behavior.

  While no TV network would ever admit it openly, they privately preferred that correspondents reporting on religious subjects, such as a papal journey, not be committed deeply to any faith. A religious adherent, they feared, would send in cloying reports. A healthy skepticism was preferred.

  In that regard, Harry Partridge filled the bill.

  Some seven years after his own experiences on papal flights, Partridge greatly admired a 1987 TV news report by ABC’s Judd Rose who was covering a visit by Pope John Paul II to Los Angeles. Rose successfully trod a hairline between hard news and pyrrhonism with his commentary.