"Let me put it this way: you and I both know D'Este can put us all on the list of endangered species. You think our names are due to hit the newsstands?"
"I know they are," said Althouse, with a sickly smile that told Everett why the writer had flown to Reno: face-to-face admission that Everett could expect the worst. There could be little pleasure in a print-media hero label that doubled as death warrant.
No point in asking how Rhone Althouse knew. His pallor said he knew. "Tell Charlie George we are about to learn what it's like to be a popular politico," Everett remarked, fashioning a cross-hair `X' with his forefingers. As an effort at levity, the gesture fell sprawling. "How long before our oh-so-responsible press fingers us?"
"Tomorrow."
Everett drew a long breath. "Goddam the world's D'Estes, we ought to put out a contract on that guy ourselves. Well, I can't say I didn't expect this sooner or later."
"My fault. I knew Dahl was a gamble."'
"Uh-huh—with odds they'd be ashamed to quote in this town. I don't like the stakes, either."
"What're you going to do?"
"Find pressing business somewhere else. One thing I won't do is stick around in Reno. Thanks again; and luck, Rhone." Everett turned and moved off.
Althouse stood and watched the big man, wondering if Everett would hide, wondering if he too should disappear as D'Este had already done. He took some comfort in Everett's refusal to blame him for the original idea. But the Commissioner had known the danger, even while he lent tacit bureaucratic support. D'Este gone to ground, Everett forewarned: better than nothing, yet a poor defense against the fury of terrorism which his own scripts had turned against them all.
An unfamiliar itch between his shoulders made Rhone Althouse aware that he was standing absolutely inert, alone and unarmed in a hotel, a perfect target. Althouse walked away quickly. He did not care who noticed that his path was a zigzag.
THURSDAY, 4 DECEMBER, 1980:
The news magazines spread across Hakim's bed made up in depth what they lacked in immediacy. The article before him was satisfyingly thorough under its head, "TV: No More Strange Bedfellows?" It began:
For weeks, every pundit in the sprawling television medium had matched his favorite terrorism rumor against the rumors in the next studio. The scathing satire on terrorism, newly unleashed and widespread in TV, was said to originate in an oval office. Or, less likely, that it was a propaganda ploy jointly financed by Israel and England. One pollster claimed that the new scripts merely reflect what the American viewer wanted to see.
The truth, as it filtered from CBS last week, was both likelier and stranger than whodunits. There had been no tugs at domestic political strings, and no foreign influence. But in the persons of four highly regarded media men, there was definitely a plot. The top banana, to no one's great surprise, turned out to be NBN's answer to Jacques Tati, the protean Charlie George. Of considerably more interest to media analysts was the reputed anchorman, anomalous FCC sachem Maurice D. Everett (see box)... .
"All bedfellows are strange," muttered Hakim, patting the rump of the girl who slept as he scanned the stack of clippings. He read the four-page article carefully, marking some passages with a flow pen, then concentrated on the verbal sketch of Everett:
The Commission will not provide some trendy new definition of pornography every two years, or even every election year. True, our job is as the traffic cops of broadcasting. Well, we'd like to enter into a sort of public collusion with the National Association of Broadcasters: we won't give you speeding tickets, if you won't be too racy on public information channels. Fair enough?"
These were the closing words last Wednesday in an NAB address by Maurice Everett, the FCC's strapping executive-turned-Commissioner. The only son of a Des Moines merchant, his mother a 1936 emigre from Haifa, the eclectic Everett brings a lively open mind and informal clarity to media problems.
Everett, 42, has always marched to the music of a contrapuntal drum. His unpredictability was well-known as early as his undergraduate days in California Polytechnic where Everett switched majors four times while holding his position as second-string fullback. He emerged with a double major in American History and Engineering, and has not been second-string at anything since.
The Vietnam conflict drew Everett for a tour of combat duty where the towering young lieutenant won a Silver Star and, not incidentally, picked up fresh ideas on electronic information-gathering systems. His subsequent marriage was brief, ending in divorce in 1964.
Everett's career with a Colorado microelectronics firm seemed to orient the salty-tongued young executive toward narrow technical areas but, in a clean break with other industrialists in 1970, he thrust his hulking shoulders in with Denver ecologists. Between frequent solo jaunts into western wild areas, Everett championed several hobby and special-interest groups in what, at first, appeared to be playboy enthusiasm. But Everett, long regarded as one of Colorado's most eligible rebounds, rarely followed the playboy mold. He supported the Equal Rights Amendment, small sedan racing, cross-country skiing, and bicyclists in a pattern that developed squarely in opposition to the philosophy of conspicuous consumption.
For the past two years a member of the Federal Communications Commission, Maurice Everett had seemed to be settling into a liberal position, confining his aggressiveness to the handball courts, even after a chance encounter with the Pueblo bombing that hospitalized him for a time. But late last week, acquaintance and set designer Dahl D'Este revealed an apparent about-face by Everett. Previously a staunch friend of press freedoms, the Commissioner was reportedly a key figure in the sub rosa group that planned a broad media counterattack on terrorism (see Media). Central to the group's strategy was a new treatment of the act of terrorism per se; and to some pundits this treatment was a dangerous excursion into media control. For free-swinging libertarians, the choice lies between the Scylla of manipulated media and the Charybdis of ram-pant terrorism. Whichever course the Commissioner charts, he will create new enemies. Judging by his demeanor last week in Reno, Maurice Everett is losing little sleep over it.
Hakim made special note of the Commissioner's unpredictability, his stress on physical fitness, his military background, his direct methods of dealing with the world. Hakim did not find these details pleasant; the man could be a formidable challenge. Yet the element of surprise still resided with Fat'ah. Presently Hakim riffled through other clippings, finding—as he had expected—invaluable data on his enemies. His sullen longing found focus in names which he listed in alphabetical order: Althouse, D'Este, Everett, George.
Print media made one thing pellucid: no matter how brilliantly successful his coup, the terrorist was still to be treated as a charlie, a fool, on television. Hakim saw this dictum as a simple clash of wills. These strategists might give up their brave posturings if one of their number paid the price. Fat'ah might even subcontract the job.
If the fait accompli carried no leverage, Fat'ah could relocate again and try the threat. No hollow promise, but one steeped in potency. The sort of threat one could employ when the enemy is reduced to a softened target; isolated, immobile, helpless. Hakim wondered which of the four he would concentrate on first. Perhaps he could find some means to make object lessons of all four, he thought, and felt a lambent surge of rekindled strength. He turned off the light and nudged Leah Talith. It had not once occurred to Hakim that others, less cautious than he, might react with a blinder savagery.