The screen showed the fire department helicopters going away — from the angle, the picture was being taken from one of the helicopters far above. The air jangled with microwave transmissions. A reporter appeared, microphone riveted to his chin. He was in the street; behind him were four or five black-and-whites, and occasionally an officer in a bulletproof jacket sprinted past him. The director cut to the helicopter shot of the smoldering rooftop, while the reporter indicated that the fire wasn't serious. Leland changed the channel.
A night scene, with the words "recorded earlier" in yellow at the bottom of the screen. A black-and-white came into the picture from the right, seemed to shake as it crossed the center of the screen, then wheeled off crazily and into the light pole. Leland remembered something and turned the volume off. A shot of the muzzle flash of one of the terrorists' automatic weapons. Police running. Now the picture went out of control, spun around, and focused on the building with a cloud of smoke obscuring the upper floors. Daylight again... "Live" — showing the ring of destruction around the middle of the building. Leland had done the job; he had aced the whole building. He turned up the volume.
"...And then, with the sunrise, police helicopters came over the hills to try to protect the desperate, former policeman who, he says, has killed seven of the gang. Although three are known dead, the man observed early last night on the steps to the front entrance, the man shot and then who fell from, the guess is, the thirty-sixth floor, and the woman still visible on the roof — although, I say, although these three are accounted for, the information is that the police discount Leland's estimate of the size of the gang and his body count, as it were, because of the incredible show of strength by the terrorists at dawn, just a few minutes ago."
"I should have taken scalps," Leland said sourly.
"It ought to be said here that this is not a pretty piece of tape, so viewer discretion is advised..."
Tape of the street now: with slightly more light, it was possible to see bullets striking the walls and sidewalks. A long, long shot of empty sky, with a bit of the Klaxon roof coming into view. The helicopters appeared as spots growing larger. It took Leland a moment to get his bearings. He was out of the picture, to the left, and from this distance, his contribution, such as it was, would not even register. One after the other, the police helicopters exploded. None of the cameras was even trained in his direction.
"Now comes word from the police asking all those persons here in the Los Angeles area to stop, repeat, stop, jamming the forty Citizens Band channels. You will recall that Leland asked the mysterious Taco Bill to jam one of the channels on which the German language transmission had been heard. While no one knows exactly what did happen to Leland, there is no evidence of his death. He is not in view on the roof. Repeating: the police want the persons jamming..."
Leland changed the channel. A blonde woman in a blue housecoat watching herself on a television screen. Kathi Logan — with her hair down to her shoulders, Leland almost did not recognize her. A microphone appeared at her shoulder.
"Did you see anything?"
She leaned toward the microphone to speak. "No."
"What do you think?"
"He told me not to worry. I think he's alive. I've only known him a short period of time, but he's a very special man."
"He said he was going to do his duty," the reporter said with apparent amusement. Kathi Logan kept watching herself on television.
"Well, he's under tremendous pressure. Normally he doesn't talk like that, but people who know him are aware that he has his own set of rules and he lives by them even when it's very difficult to do so."
"He says he's killed seven people. What are your feelings about that?"
Now she turned. "My feelings are that I hope that God has mercy on their souls, because they'll need it. The man in that building isn't young, and he's alone!"
"If there are television sets in the Klaxon building, he could be watching right now. Anything you'd like to say to him?"
She glared at him. "We just didtalk!"
"I mean now, on television, when he can see you. If he can."
"Just that I know that he's right and those hoodlums in there are wrong, and most of the people in this country agree with me. We don't want killing — we don't want to be threatened with machine guns or bombs, ever. We have the right to live our lives in peace, all of us, and we ought to say so. I think most people are like me. What you see is all I have in the world."
The reporter put his hand to his ear, "Uh, thank you. Back to the Klaxon building in Los Angeles."
Another reporter was standing next to a young black man with a badge on his jacket. Al Powelclass="underline" he looked like a twenty-year-old. Leland smiled. Behind them was a battery of television sets, and Powell was holding a two-way radio. "Thanks, Jim. This is Sergeant Al Powell, pressed into service late last night. You've been actually talking to the man inside, Joseph Leland, haven't you?"
"Yes, but not in the last few minutes." Leland watched Powell's eyes, although it did not seem that Powell was thinking that Leland could be watching him. "We're asking people to stop jamming the CB. The telephones in there are shut down, and CB is his only means of contact with us. This man has been tremendously valuable so far, and we know that if he can continue to help us, he's going to try."
"Now, something came out of one of the windows a little while ago. What was that, a message?"
"No, the wind up there is pretty strong, and with all those broken windows, things are going to come flying out."
"What was the object?"
Al Powell smiled. "Hey, finders, keepers, right? Look at all the terrific television sets I've picked up. Maybe we can work out a deal. Let's see that watch you're wearing."
Leland laughed. The flustered reporter took Powell's cue. "This is your communication center, isn't it?"
"Well, actually it's yours,but we've borrowed it, and the studio has been feeding tapes back to us."
"And?"
"We're using them to gather information."
"You've been to the city engineer's office, too, haven't you?"
"Hey, my wife thinks I've been here all night."
The reporter smiled haplessly. "Sorry. What's the next step?"
"You know as much as I do. The people in control of the building said we would hear from them again at ten o'clock. We'll all learn something then."
Leland was sitting up.
"And that was the only communication from the terrorists?"
"That's it. The one line just a few minutes ago. 'You will hear from us at ten o'clock.'"
"There have been no negotiations, then?"
"With the situation as it is, we're going to have to wait."
The reporter announced a commercial break, and Leland turned down the sound. After the station's holiday greetings, there was a shot of an oil-drilling platform belonging to one of Klaxon's competitors. Leland wanted to go to the window to have a look at what was happening, but now he was afraid that one of the helicopters would spot him and let one and all know he was alive. Powell knew. The note Leland had enclosed in his wallet had asked for the jamming to stop, adding, "Let me make first radio contact with you. The helicopter attack was ineffective — no casualties on the other side."
It looked like the police were beginning to respond to him, but Leland wasn't completely sure. Cause and effect weren't always what they seemed. He wanted the CB transmissions stopped, and the police seemed to be going along — but Leland was following another line of thought now, independent of what he had been putting into events. It had to do with the safe, the hostages, and the building. What if Leland had never gotten here? What if he had called Steffie and taken the plane on down to San Diego?