After spinning about and looking at the deserted streets, she turned back to Juan. "Settled? If this place becomes any more settled we'll die from boredom." Dropping her arms, Jan stood there for a moment and thought. Slowly, a wicked smile lit her face. "What we need to do is stir something up." Without waiting for a response, she turned and walked right into the middle of the soldiers.
Like clockwork, everyone in Congressman Ed Lewis's outer office dropped what they were doing and turned to the television monitor whenever WNN reviewed the top news stories of the hour. Even the congressman, like a figure on a German cuckoo clock, came out of his own office every half hour to watch the news. Ever since Lewis, a Democratic representative from Tennessee, had been appointed a member of the House Intelligence Committee, both he and his staff took a keen interest in any news that involved foreign crisis or conflicts. An avid reader of just about anything in print and a news junkie, Lewis was capable of absorbing and retaining tremendous amounts of information and storing it away, ready for use. Only partially in jest did his fellow representatives refer to him as the next best thing to the Library of Congress.
Yet no one would think of describing Lewis as being bookish or an intellectual. At forty-two, he looked more like a college basketball coach than a U.S. congressman. His six-foot two-inch frame was lean without being skinny. His brown hair, streaked with stray strands of gray, was cut short, not styled. Though he often wore a warm and friendly smile, it was his eyes, more than any other feature, that expressed his moods and betrayed his thoughts. They could be warm and inviting to a new acquaintance, cold and cutting to an opponent, and friendly and mischievous to a friend. His eyes told everything and, like the college basketball coach, missed nothing. More than one witness who appeared before a panel on which Lewis sat commented on the manner in which Lewis used his eyes to unnerve them. An interdepartmental memo circulated within the CIA to members of that agency slated to appear before Lewis, advised that its members read or pretend to read notes and avoid eye contact with Lewis when answering questions.
As he stood in his doorway watching the news on the situation in Mexico, Lewis compared the story to the information he already had.
That, unfortunately, was not only skimpy, but contradictory. Official statements and contacts he had cultivated at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, and the National Security Agency, or NSA, provided only bits and pieces of the story, bits and pieces that didn't fit together.
What he had heard was not at all satisfactory. From the CIA, he got the impression that the coup in Mexico was a bolt out of the blue. Though he was given few details, the DIA described the coup as an efficient and comprehensive operation that had decapitated the Mexican government.
The NSA, on the other hand, noted that the situation was confused and quite chaotic. Based on his experiences with intelligence people, Lewis knew that, in reality, the situation in Mexico contained all those elements.
The material from the nation's intelligence agencies, after all, was no better than the sources they used and the opinions of the people doing the data analysis. Each agency depended on different sources and used different criteria when determining what was relevant and what could be ignored. While the information they provided was nice, it wasn't what he needed at a time like this. What he and the nation's decision-makers needed was a clear, concise, and comprehensive overview of the situation, a view that brought all the stray pieces together. Unfortunately, Lewis knew it would be days before anyone in the intelligence community would be able, or willing, to commit themselves to such a summary.
So until then, all they would get was raw data and bits and pieces.
Still, Lewis was disturbed that no one had seen the coup coming. It was like the fall of Cuba in 1959, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and of Afghanistan in 1979, the reunification of Germany in 1989, the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the Soviet coup in 1991, and a score of other "bolts out of the blue": America's leaders were handed a crisis which they had not been prepared to deal with, leaving them no choice but to throw together a policy on the fly. What made this failure even more disturbing was the fact that the U.S. had massive resources deployed in Mexico and along the border as part of the drug-interdiction mission.
Surely, Lewis thought, someone working with the Mexican military or government must have come across something. No one, he knew, could hide an undertaking massive enough to topple the Mexican government in a matter of hours without someone noticing.
As he watched the news, he considered his next move. He would give the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until noon to begin asking questions before he did anything. If, by noon, no one else had, Lewis would throw a few turds in the punch bowl and start hounding people, not only for information bjut for answers. With the amount of money the Congress sank into the intelligence community, there was absolutely no excuse for the nation's depending on a twit like Jan Fields to provide them with their only source of information on world events.
As if by magic, the image of Jan Fields flashed onto the screen across the office. With the Palacio Nacional as a background, the bright-eyed journalist stood reporting from the heart of Mexico City. Ranked by well-armed and grinning soldiers, she casually recapped what she had seen, mentioning that she had arranged an interview with a member of the Council of 13, the organization she described as comprised of Army and Air Force officers who had assumed control of the government.
Lewis could feel his anger building up. Mumbling, he turned away.
"Christ, in a few hours she knows more about what's going on than the CIA. What a farce! What a bloody farce!"
Sitting across from the Mexican colonel, Jan couldn't be more pleased with herself. In a matter of a few hours, she had shot a piece, made contact with the ruling council, arranged for an interview with a member of that council, and even got the Mexican military to help her transmit her first story to WNN headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Seated across from her was, from what she had been told, one of the architects of the coup that had brought to an end "the corrupt and self serving government of the few," as an official spokesman had called President Montalvo's administration. Although the Mexican colonel's uniform was slightly wrinkled, and specked with dirt and dust, his presence and carriage were commanding. That, coupled with his extraordinary command of English and his position on the Council of 13, provided Jan with an opportunity to create a piece that would be head-and-shoulders above anything the other news agencies could possibly hope to put together for days. Now all she needed was to get this colonel to give her a few interesting comments that she could add to the framework of the official comments she had in hand.
"So, Colonel Guajardo, what finally convinced you and the other members of the council that the duly elected government of Mexico no longer represented the people?"
Though the question by the American correspondent bothered Guajardo, he didn't show it. Looking straight into Jan Fields's eyes, he framed his response, translating his thoughts from Spanish to English in his mind. When he was ready, Guajardo leaned forward, toward Jan.
"There is no simple answer to that question, I am afraid. In the past few weeks, I have often pondered that same thought." Guajardo paused, allowing himself to settle back in his seat before continuing. When he began to speak, he waved his right hand about, sometimes throwing it out to the side with the palm up and open, other times pointing his index finger at Jan to emphasize a point. "Is such a violent response, I asked myself many times, really necessary? Isn't there a better way? Not a day passed that I didn't say to myself, you are not giving the system a chance.