The blonde kept down, rummaging in her equipment. A pocket mirror gleamed in the sun before she slid it upward, a makeshift periscope trained on tiered orbits. The German shouted threats, intent on the men who had taken cover in his wake. At that instant the mobile began to shift, its metal circles now moving at varying speeds in accord with some preprogrammed sequence. Very soon, now, it would scissor its occupants in a blind embrace.
The blonde began to search her equipment bag, working quickly as she lay on her side. Presently she slid the bag out to provide a rest for the mirror, then eased up into a squat, her feet a full unladylike pace apart. She held several loops of power cord in her left hand, and some-thing that bulked larger than a microphone in her right. The German craned his neck to study the street again, and apparently caught sight of the woman. But as he swung the .45 to this new menace, he could not see that his perch was closing the gap on the next concentric circle.
The metal scissors closed inexorably, nudging nearer, pressing the German's shoulder so that his shot went wide. Conklin, his hair in the German's grip, slid lower as he saw the scissors closing. Then the thick metal circles swung into the same ecliptic. The German, his thigh pinioned, screamed and swept his gun arm back toward Conklin who stared helplessly upward.
The blonde was five meters from the pool, ten from the German, and one second from an assassination.
She spurted up from her cover, vaulted to the pool lip, and sprang toward the German, hurling the battery pack she had tied to the power cord. The heavy battery pack sailed overhead but she passed beneath to splash barefooted into the pool, yanking the cord like a lariat. The cord passed across the German's extended arm, taut from the battery pack's mass, snapping the arm hard enough to wrest the heavy automatic from any normal man.
The German was not a normal man. Fighting free of the cord, he swung the Colt again toward Conklin, now single-minded on killing. The blonde shouted and flung the cord at his face, so that the German missed Conklin's head at one-meter range.
A heavy Conklin fist swung upward then in a roundhouse right to match any monument. The German's head flicked up and back, rebounding from the metal sculpture. His arms went limp, Conklin tumbling into the knee-deep water as the German slumped half conscious. Now both Conklin and the blonde were beyond arm's reach. A fusillade from the building wrenched and shook the German's torso, and a ragged cheer spread across the plaza.
Faintly, above the cheering, there came a shriek of tires on pavement from somewhere beyond the camera's view. Wally Conklin was not cheering. He was embracing the blonde.
The screen went blank in Anaheim. "Now," David Engels breathed in awe, "you've met Gina Vercours."
It took the Commission a few moments to recover from the videotape; a thousand Hollywood scenarios and ten thousand stage killings were poor preparation for the shuddering, flopping reality of violent death.
Everett saw that John Rooker cradled his face behind hands that shook. Costigan was pale, rubbing her arms to banish gooseflesh. "Pretty strong stuff, Thomas," Everett said to Wills. "You might have warned us."
"My apologies. The Phoenix stations, I'm told, showed only brief clips. For obvious reasons."
Leon Cole waved his hands, mystified. "But why no injunction on this? The footage outside in the plaza was much more horrifying. Why prohibit only the inside footage?"
Wills let one eyebrow rise. "Because, Mr. Cole, the inside footage included closeups."
Everett: "But that wasn't the stated reason."
Wills: "No. But it was Ms. Vercours's real reason. I have this orally from Conklin."
"Ah; so the Vercours woman got the injunction," Cole said. "But that doesn't make sense. I'd think that, as an ENG reporter herself, she'd enjoy all that coverage. It could have made her reputation overnight—and she's, um, a strikingly handsome lady."
"Her status changed appreciably between her sack lunch that day, and her dinner in the Hyatt House with Wally Conklin," said Thomas Wills. "Conklin had her on a retainer within ten minutes. The next time you see Wally in a place where it's tough to maintain tight security, take a close look around. You'll probably find Vercours among the ENG people roaming around him."
"She was my tennis instructor, you know," Costigan chirped.
"In Chicago?"
"No, a vacation in Phoenix. Gina had ideas of making it on the Phoenix Racquets, but she wasn't quite that good. I got her interested in ENG. God, I'm glad I did."
"We're moving off the point, I'm afraid," Wills murmured.
"I see the woman's angle," said David Engels. "Vercours realized she'd be compromised if everybody in the country saw her in closeups. With a new job as bodyguard, she wouldn't want those tapes aired. But how'd the little independent station that hired her get so much clout with a judge, so fast?"
"It didn't, Mr. Engels. Wally Conklin did."
Everett laughed, "Wheels within wheels. Conklin asked for the injunction on her behalf then? Conklin is CBS, but Ms. Vercours is strictly a private individual."
"You can say that again," Barb Costigan giggled.
Rooker, more composed now, put in: "I take it that CBS knows of Wallace Conklin's part in this."
"To be sure," Wills replied, "but they felt it politic to make their protest along with NBN and ABC. What if the Vercours injunction becomes a common ploy by many people who find themselves in the news in some quasi-private capacity?"
The Commission took up this sobering thought, wrangling through a coffee break toward a solution; perhaps a test case. As always, such gritty questions would take time to resolve and as always, media men would tiptoe over rotten eggs until the FCC, in good time, set out fresh guidelines. The meeting broke up in time for Everett to grab a quick lunch with David Engels before taking the copter shuttle to catch his Denver flight.
Engels studied his colleague as their order arrived. "Why so subdued, Maury? Still thinking about Phoenix?"
A brief nod. "Not just the violence, Dave. I saw worse in 'Nam." He paused as Engels forked a bite of his entree, then continued slowly. "Do you realize we've spent the better part of the morning, and much of the conference, grappling with a wave of problems brought on by a bunch of shit-gargling terrorists?"
Engels stopped chewing, met Everett's glance. He tried twice before he could swallow. "Did you have to say that while I have a mouthful of chicken a la king?"
"Mea maxima culpa," Everett said in mock contrition.
"Your mother'll love hearing you've turned Catholic."
"What I've turned is chicken. This link between terrorism and the media, especially TV, has me worried, Dave." Everett gestured with his spoon, searching for a simile. "It's like—not a link at all. More like an intertwining," he muttered.
Engels tore into a buttered roll. "Emigrate to China," he cracked. "Either China. They don't fuck around with terrorists in police states, of buddy."
"I hear you," said Everett, picking through his Crab Louis. "A free press means freedom to sell time to some murderous little nit with his head in a sack. At least we bagged that bunch down in Phoenix," he finished.
"Not all of 'em. Jeez," at Everett's startled glance, "you must spend a lot of time noodling around in the Rockies, Danl. The German with the gee-eye forty-five was Fritz Valken; one of the Baader-Meinhoff gang—and I wish we'd taken him alive. The beard was some guy named Hashem, an Algerian national who was sup-posed to be in class at M.I.T. A grad student in nuclear engineering." He saw Everett blink at the significance of terrorists being trained in nuclear technology. "Yeah," he answered the unspoken comment; "but now he's building bombs in hell. It was the kid with the Schmeisser machine pistol who got away."