He had a brief word with Peter Henderson, who – whatever his other failings and motives – had quickly put together an efficient transport pool, supply staging area, and press tent.
Potter was known to the press and they descended on him frantically as he walked from the car. They were as he expected them to be: aggressive, humorless, smart, blindered. They'd never changed in all the years Potter had been doing this. His first reaction, as always, was how he would hate to be married to one of them.
He climbed to the podium that Henderson had installed, and looked into the mass of white video lights. "At about eight-thirty this morning three escaped felons kidnaped and took hostage two teachers and eight students from the Laurent Clerc School for the Deaf in Hebron, Kansas. The felons had earlier in the day escaped from the Callana Federal Penitentiary.
"They're presently holed up in an abandoned factory along the Arkansas River about a mile and a half from here, on the border of the town of Crow Ridge. They are being contained by several hundred state, local, and federal law enforcers."
More like a hundred, but Potter would rather bend the truth to the fourth estate than risk nurturing overconfidence on the part of the takers – just in case they happened to catch a news report. "There has been one fatality among the hostages…" The reporters gasped and bristled at this and their hands shot up. They barked questions but Potter said only, "The identity of the victim and those of the rest of the hostages will not be disclosed until all family members have been notified of the incident. We are in the midst of negotiations with the felons, who've been identified as Louis Handy, Shepard Wilcox, and Ray 'Sonny' Bonner. During the course of the negotiations there will be no press access to the barricade site. You'll be receiving updates as we get new information. That's all I have to say at this time."
"Agent Potter -"
"I'm not answering any questions now."
"Agent Potter -"
"Agent Potter, please -"
"Could you compare this situation to the Koresh situation in Waco?"
"We need the press copters released. Our lawyers have already contacted the director -"
"Is this like the Weaver situation a few years -" Potter walked out of the press tent amid the silent flashes of still cameras and the blaring of videocam lights. He was almost to the car when he heard a voice. "Agent Potter, can I have a minute?"
Potter turned to see a man approaching. He had a limp. He didn't look like a typical newsman. He wasn't a pretty boy and while he seemed aggressive and sullen he was not indignant, which raised him – slightly – in Potter's estimation. Older than his colleagues, he was dark-complected, had a deeply lined face. At least he looked like a real journalist. Edward R. Murrow.
The negotiator said, "No individual statements."
"I'm not asking for one. I'm Joe Silbert with KFAL in Kansas City."
"Yessir, if you'll excuse me -"
"You're a prick, Potter," Silbert said with more exhaustion than anger. "Nobody's ever grounded press choppers before."
Extreme stakes, the agent thought. "You'll get the news as soon as anybody."
"Hold up. I know you guys could care less about us. We're a pain in the ass. But we've got our job to do too. This is big news. And you know it. We're going to need fucking more than just press releases and non-briefings like the one we just had. The Admiral's going to be on your ass so fast you'll wish you were back in Waco."
Something about the way he uttered the rank suggested that Silbert knew the FBI director personally.
"There's nothing I can do. Security at the barricade site has to be perfect."
"I have to tell you that if you suppress too much, those youngsters're going to try some pretty desperate things to get inside your perimeter. They're going to be using descrambling scanners to intercept transmissions, they're going to be impersonating officers -"
"All of which is illegal."
"I'm just telling you what some of them have been talking about. There are rumblings out there. And I sure as hell don't want to lose an exclusive to some little asshole law-breaking journalism school graduate."
"I've given orders to arrest any non-law-enforcement personnel within sight of the plant. Reporters included."
Silbert rolled his eyes. "Arnett had it easier in Baghdad. Jesus Christ. You're a negotiator, I thought. Why won't you negotiate?"
"I should be getting back."
"Please! Just listen to my proposal. I want to start a press pool. You allow one or two journalists at a time up near the front. No cameras, radios, recorders. Just typewriters or laptops. Or pen and pencil."
"Joe, we can't risk the takers' getting any information about what we're doing. You know that. They might have a radio inside."
An ominous tone slipped into his voice. "Look, you start suppressing, we'll start speculating."
A barricade in Miami several years ago went hot when the takers heard on their portable radio a newscaster describing an HRT assault on the barricade site. It turned out the reporter was merely speculating as to what might happen but the takers thought it was real and began firing at the hostages.
"That's a threat, I assume," Potter said evenly.
"Tornadoes are threats," Silbert responded. "They're also facts of life. Look, Potter, what can I do to convince you?"
"Nothing. Sorry."
Potter turned toward the car. Silbert sighed. "Fuck. How's this? You can read the stories before we file them. You can censor them."
This was a first. Of the hundreds of barricades Potter had negotiated, he'd had good and bad relationships with the press as he tried to balance the First Amendment versus the safety of hostages and cops. But he'd never met a journalist who agreed to let him preview stories.
"That's a prior restraint," said Potter, fourth in his law school class.
"There've already been a half-dozen reporters talking about crossing the barriers. That'll stop if you agree to let a couple of us inside. They'll listen to me."
"And you want to be one of those two."
Silbert grinned. "Of course I fucking want to be one of them. In fact I want to be one of the first two. I've got a deadline in an hour. Come on, what do you think?"
What did he think? That half the problem at Waco had been press relations. That he was responsible not only for the lives of the hostages and troopers and fellow agents but for the integrity of the Bureau itself and its image, and that for all his negotiating skills he was an inept player of agency politics. He knew too that most of what Congress, senior Justice officials, and the White House learned about what happened here would be from CNN and the Washington Post.
"All right," Potter agreed. "You can set it up. You'll coordinate with Captain Charlie Budd."
He looked at his watch. The food was due. He should be getting back. He drove to the command van, told Budd to set up a small press tent behind it and to meet with Joe Silbert about the pooling arrangement.
"Will do. Where's the food?" Budd asked, gazing anxiously up the road. "Time's getting close."
"Oh," Potter said, "we've got a little flexibility. Once a taker's agreed to release a hostage you're past the biggest hurdle. He's already given Jocylyn up in his mind."
"You think?"
"Go set up that press tent."
He started back to the command van and found himself thinking not of food or helicopters or Louis Handy but rather of Melanie Charrol. And not of how valuable she as a hostage might be to him as a negotiator nor of how much of a benefit or liability she might be in a tactical resolution of the barricade. No, he was mulling over soft information, dicta. Recalling the motion of her mouth as she spoke to him from the dim window of the slaughterhouse.
What could she have been saying?
Speculating mostly about what it would be like to have a conversation with her. Here was a man who'd made his way in the world by listening to other people's words, by talking. And here she was, a deaf-mute.