Cooper’s reasoning had been considered seriously by the others. As Rita Abrams put it, “It makes as much sense as anything so far.”
But Karl Owens pointed out, “That’s an enormous area you’re talking about, densely populated, and there’s no way of searching it effectively, even with an army.” He added, needling Cooper, “That is, unless you have another brilliant idea breezing up behind.”
“Not right now,” Cooper had answered. “I need a good night’s kip. Then maybe I’ll come up with—as you so kindly put it—something ‘brilliant’ in the morning.”
They ended the discussion there, and though the next day was Saturday, Partridge had summoned another task force meeting for 10 A.M. For tonight, most of the group went their separate ways by taxi, though Partridge and Jaeger, enjoying the night air, decided to walk to their hotels.
“Where did you latch on to this guy Cooper?” Jaeger asked.
Partridge told him about discovering Teddy at the BBC, being impressed with his work and, soon after, finding him a better job with CBA.
“One of the first things he did for us in London,” Partridge continued, “was in 1984, at the time the Red Sea was being mined. A lot of ships were getting blown up and sunk all over the place, but no one knew who the hell was laying the mines. Remember?”
“Sure I remember,” Jaeger said. “Iran and Libya were prime suspects, but nothing more. Obviously a ship was doing the filthy work, but no one knew what ship, or whose it was.”
Partridge nodded. “Well, Teddy started researching and spent days and days at Lloyds of London, patiently going through their records of ship movements. He began by believing that whatever ship had done the minelaying had passed through the Suez Canal. So he made lists of all the ships that had gone through Suez since just before the mine sinkings started—and that was a helluva lot of ships.
“Then he went through more records and traced the subsequent movements of each ship he’d listed as it went from port to port, comparing those movements with the dates of mine sinkings in particular areas. Finally—and I mean after a long, long search—he came up with the name of one ship, the Ghat. It had been everywhere where other ships had struck mines, and in each case just a day or two before. Talk about a ‘smoking gun.’ Teddy found it.”
Partridge went on, “As we know now, the ship was Libyan and once the name was in the open, it didn’t take long to put proof together that Qaddafi was behind it all.”
“I knew we were ahead of others on the story,” Jaeger said. “But I didn’t know the rest of the yarn behind it.”
“Isn’t that usually the way?” Partridge grinned. “We correspondents get credit for work that guys like you and Teddy do.”
“I’m not complaining,” Jaeger said. “And I’ll tell you one thing, Harry—I wouldn’t change places with you, especially at my age.” He ruminated, then went on. “Cooper’s just a kid. They’re all kids. This has become a kids’ business. They have the energy and the smarts. Do you have days like me when you get to feeling old?”
Partridge grimaced. “Just lately, all too often.”
They had reached Columbus Circle. To their left was the formidable darkness of Central Park where few New Yorkers ventured at night. Immediately ahead lay West Fifty-ninth Street, beyond it the brighter lights of mid-Manhattan. Partridge and Jaeger carefully crossed the confluence of thoroughfares as traffic swirled about them.
“You and I have seen a lot of changes in this business,” Jaeger said. “I guess, with luck, we’ll be around for more.”
Partridge asked, “What do you think’s ahead?”
Jaeger considered before answering. “I’ll tell you first what I don’t see happening, and that’s network news disappearing or even changing much, despite some dire predictions. Maybe CNN will move into top rank—it has the distribution; all that’s needed is network quality. But the important thing is, there’s an enormous appetite out there for news, more than ever before in history, and in every country.”
“Television did it.”
“Damn right! TV’s the twentieth-century equivalent of Gutenberg and Caxton. What’s more, for all of television’s failings, its news has made people hungry to know more. It’s why newspapers are stronger and will stay that way.”
“I doubt they’ll give us credit,” Partridge said
“They may not give credit, but they give attention. Don Hewitt at CBS has pointed out that the New York Times has four times as many people assigned full-time to television as they have reporters covering the United Nations. And a lot of that writing is about us—TV news, its people, what we do.
“Turn it around, though,” Jaeger continued. “When was there anything important enough about the Times to be featured on TV? All of that applies to the rest of the print press, and so you ask yourself, which is being acknowledged as the more important medium?”
Partridge chuckled. “Color me important.”
“Color!” Jaeger seized the word. “That’s something else TV has changed. Newspapers are looking more like television screens—something USA Today began. You and I, Harry, will live to see four colors on the New York Times front page. The public will demand it and the old gray Times will heed the writing on the tube.”
“You’re full of homespun tonight,” Partridge said. “What else do you foresee?”
“I see the weekly newsmagazines disappearing. They’re dinosaurs. When Time and Newsweek get to subscribers, much of what’s inside is a week to ten days old, and nowadays who wants to read stale news? Incidentally, the way I hear it, advertisers are asking the same question.”
Jaeger went on, “So despite their dishonest cover dates and classy writing, eventually the weekly newsies will go the way of Collier’s, Look and the Saturday Evening Post. Incidentally, most kids working in news nowadays have never heard of those.”
They had come to the Parker-Meridien on West Fifty-seventh, where Jaeger was staying. Partridge had preferred what he thought of as the more cozy Inter-Continental on East Forty-eighth.
“We’re a couple of old war-horses, Harry,” Jaeger said. “See you in the morning.” They shook hands and said good night.
A half hour later, in bed and surrounded by several newspapers he had bought on the way to his hotel, Partridge began reading. But before long the newsprint blurred and he pushed the papers aside. He would go through them in the morning along with fresh editions which would arrive with breakfast.
Still, sleep did not come easily. Too much had happened in the preceding thirty-six hours. His mind was full—a kaleidoscope of events, ideas, responsibilities, all of them intertwined with thoughts of Jessica, the past, the present … memories revived …
Where was Jessica now? Was Teddy right about a twenty-five-mile radius? Was there a chance that somehow he, Harry the Seasoned Warrior, like some medieval knight in shining armor, could successfully lead a crusade to find and free his former love?
Cut the whimsy! Save thoughts about Jessica and the others for tomorrow. He tried to clear his mind to rest, or at least to think of something else.
Inevitably, that something else became Gemma … the other great love of his life.
Yesterday, during the journey from Toronto, he had relived that memorable papal flight: The Alitalia DC-10 … the press section and an encounter with the Pope … Partridge’s decision not to use the pontiff’s “slaves” remark, rewarded by a rose from Gemma … the beginning of their mutual passion and commitment …
No longer avoiding thoughts of Gemma, as he had for so long, he resumed in memory where he had ended the day before.
That papal tour, through Central America and the Caribbean, was long and arduous. It was one of the most ambitious undertaken by the Pope. The itinerary included eight countries and long flights, with some at night.
From the moment of their initial encounter, Partridge decided he wanted to know Gemma better, but his CBA reporting duties allowed him little time to see her during stops. Yet they became increasi
ngly aware of each other and sometimes in the air, when Gemma wasn’t busy, she came to sit beside him. Soon they began holding hands and once, before leaving, she leaned over and they kissed.
When it happened, his already strong desire for her increased.
They talked as often as they could and he began to learn about her background.
Gemma was born in Tuscany, the youngest of three sisters, in a small mountain resort town, Vallombrosa, not far from Florence. “It is not a fashionable place where the rich go, Harry caro, but very beautiful.”
Vallombrosa, she told him, was a haven of the Italian middle class, who stayed there during summers. A mile away was II Paradisino where John Milton once lived and, legend claimed, found the inspiration for Paradise Lost.
Gemma’s father was a talented artist who made a good living restoring paintings and frescoes; he often worked in Florence. Her mother was a music teacher. Art and music were an integral part of the family’s life and continued to be part of Gemma’s.
She had joined Alitalia three years earlier. “I wanted to see the world. There was no other way I could afford it.”
Partridge asked, “This way, have you seen very much?”
“Some pieces. Not as many as I would like, and I am growing tired of being a cameriera del cielo.”
He laughed. “You’re much more than a waitress in the sky. But you must have met many people.” With a jealous twinge, he added, “A lot of men?”
Gemma shrugged. “Most I would not want to meet again outside an airplane.”
“But there were others?”
She smiled, that flashing sweet smile, so much a part of her. “There has been no one I have liked as much as you.”
It was said simply and Partridge, the professional skeptic, wondered if he was being naïve and foolish in believing her. Then he thought, Why shouldn’t I believe when I feel exactly the same way, when no other woman since Jessica has had the same effect on me as Gemma?
Both of them, he sensed, felt the journey was going too quickly. So little time remained. At the end of it they would probably walk away, never seeing each other again.
Perhaps because of that sense of time running out, one memorable night when the cabin lights were turned low and most others were asleep, Gemma curled up beside him and, under a blanket, they made love. In the confines of a tourist three-seat section, they should have been uncomfortable but somehow weren’t, and he remembered it always as among the more beautiful experiences of his life.
It was immediately after their lovemaking—on impulse, and reminded that he had lost Jessica through indecision—he whispered, “Gemma, will you marry me?”
She had whispered back, “Oh, amor mio, of course I will.”
The next stop would be Panama. In a low voice, Partridge asked questions and made plans while Gemma, laughing softly, mischievously in the semidarkness, agreed to everything.
In daylight they landed at Panama’s Tocumen Airport. The Alitalia DC-10 taxied in. The Pope disembarked and, like the trained actor he had once been, smoothly kissed the ground as a multitude of cameras zoomed in. After that, the standard formalities began.
Before the landing, Partridge had talked with his field producer and camera crew, asking them to cover the Pope’s activities during the next few hours without him. He would join them later in narrating and helping edit the regular National Evening News report. Panama, which did not have daylight saving time, was only an hour behind New York, so there would be sufficient time.
While clearly curious, the other CBA staffers asked no questions, though Partridge knew it was unlikely that his and Gemma’s growing attachment had passed unnoticed.
He also approached the New York Times reporter on the flight, who happened to be Graham Broderick, asking if he would share his notes for that day with Partridge. Broderick, while raising his eyebrows quizzically, agreed Working journalists often made such trades, never knowing when they might need help themselves.
When the others disembarked, Partridge held back. He had no idea what explanation Gemma gave to her chief, the senior purser, but she joined him and they left the DC-10 together. Gemma, still in Alitalia uniform, began explaining she had no means of changing into other clothes. But he stopped her and said, “I love you as you are.”
She turned to face him, her expression serious. “Do you truly, Harry?”
He nodded slowly. “Truly.”
They looked into each other’s eyes and each seemed satisfied with what they saw.
Inside the airport terminal, Partridge left Gemma briefly. Going to a tourist booth, he asked several questions of a pimply youth behind a counter. The young man, smirking, told him he must go with the señora to Las Bóvedas, part of the Old City wall in the Plaza de Francia. There he would find the Juzgado Municipal.
Partridge and Gemma took a taxi to the Old City. They got out near a towering obelisk topped by a chanticleer, the crowing rooster commemorating French canal builders, among them the famed Ferdinand de Lesseps.
Some twenty minutes later, inside the old wall and standing before a juez in an ornate office that had once been a prison cell, Harry Partridge and Gemma Baccelli became husband and wife. During a five-minute ceremony the judge, casually dressed in a cotton guayabera, signed an Acta Matrimonial which cost twenty-five dollars and Partridge paid twenty dollars each to two stenographers who served as witnesses.
The bride and groom were informed that the additional formality of registering their marriage was optional and, in fact, unnecessary until they came back for a divorce.
“We will register,” Partridge said, “and we will not be back.”
At the end, without great conviction, the juez wished them, “¡Que vivan los novios!” They had the feeling he had said it many times before.
Both then and later, Partridge wondered how Gemma, who unhesitatingly agreed to a civil ceremony, reconciled it with her religion. She had been born Catholic and her early education, she had told him, was at a Sacré Coeur school. But each time he asked, she merely shrugged and said, “God will understand. “It was, he supposed, typical of a casualness many Italians had about religion. He had once heard someone say that Italians always assumed God to be Italian too.
Inevitably, aboard the papal airplane the news of the marriage spread—as the London Times correspondent put it, quoting Revelation, faster than “the four winds of the earth.” In the press section, after takeoff from Panama, a celebratory party was held with great quantities of champagne, liquor and caviar. As much as their duties allowed, the pursers and cabin crew joined in and told Gemma there would be no work for her through the remainder of that day. Even the Alitalia captain left the flight deck briefly to come back with congratulations.
Amid the revelry and good wishes, Partridge sensed strong doubts by some that the marriage would last, but also among the men, a feeling of envy.
Notably, but not surprisingly, there was no representation at the party from the ecclesiastics, and for the remainder of the trip Partridge was aware of their coolness and disapproval. Whether or not the Pope was ever informed of what had happened was something none of the journalists learned, despite inquiries. However, on that journey the Pope did not visit the press section again.
In the limited time they were able to spend together, Partridge and Gemma began planning for their future.
In a New York hotel room … slowly, sadly … the image of Gemma faded. The present replaced the past. At last, exhausted, Harry Partridge slept.
10
In the kidnappers’ Hackensack base Miguel received a message by telephone at 7:30 Saturday morning. He took the call in a small room on the first floor of the main building, which he had kept for himself as an office and for sleeping.
Of the six portable cellular phones the group had used, one was earmarked to receive special calls, the number known only to those with authority to make them. Miguel always kept that phone close to him.
The caller, following orders, was using a
public pay phone so the call could not be traced, in or out.
Miguel, alert and waiting, had been expecting the call for the past hour. He picked up the handset on the first ring and answered, “¿Sí?”
The caller then challenged him with a prearranged code word, “¿Tiempo?” to which Miguel responded, “Relámpago.”
There was an alternative reply. If Miguel’s answer to the query “weather?” had been “thunder” instead of “lightning,” it would have meant that, for whatever reason, his group required a twenty-four hours’ delay. As it was, “relámpago” conveyed: “We are ready to go. Name place and time.”
The crucial message followed: “Sombrero profundo sur twenty hundred.”
Sombrero was Teterboro Airport, slightly more than a mile away, profundo sur the airport’s southern end gate. The words “twenty hundred” indicated the time—2000 hours or 8 P.M.—when the kidnap victims and those to accompany them would board a Colombia-registered Learjet 55LR which would be there, waiting. The 55, as Miguel already knew, was a larger model with a more spacious interior than the familiar 20 and 30 series Lears. The LR signified Long Range.
Miguel acknowledged curtly, “Lo comprendo,” and the conversation ended.
The caller had been another diplomat, this time attached to the Colombian Consulate General in New York; he had been a conduit for messages since Miguel’s arrival in the United States a month earlier. Both the Peruvian and Colombian diplomatic corps were riddled with defectors, either Sendero Luminoso sympathizers or on the Medellín cartel payroll, sometimes both, and performing their double-crosses for the large amounts of money which Latin American drug lords paid.
“After receiving the call, Miguel walked through the house and buildings and informed the others, though preparations for departure were already in hand and each group member knew what was required. Those to travel on the Learjet, accompanying the kidnap victims in their caskets, were Miguel, Baudelio, Socorro and Rafael. Julio would remain behind in the United States, resuming his previous identity and becoming, once more, a Medellín cartel sleeping agent. Carlos and Luís would quietly leave the country within the next few days, flying separately to Colombia.