Soft Targets

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.'

'Christ, after getting smeared by that hysteri­cal miz?'

'Fanatics take a lot of killing,' Engels shrugged. 'He apparently ran out while a gaggle of reporters were trying to learn how to pull a trigger, and he had some woman waiting in a getaway car. By the way, the Vercours woman was anything but hysterical. Maybe you haven't seen a tai kwando offense used in anger, but I have. Vercours is foxy.'

'Damn' right,' Everett grinned, remembering the way those long legs moved, the strawberry sheen in the honey-blonde hair. 'But she's just a trifle butch for my taste.'

'Not foxy looking; foxy smart,' Engels said, corraling a speck of chicken. 'A pretty hard target. And she'd better be, leaving that Chaim character loose somewhere with his nuts in a splint.'

'I thought that's what I heard.' Everett frowned. 'Chaim isn't Arabic, it's about as He­braic as you can get. I mean, what the hell?'

'Some Jew you turned out to be,^' Engels chuckled, glancing at his watch. 'Immigration photo and prints on the weapon checked per­fectly. The young guy was one Chaim Mardor. He's Israeli, all right, from some religious order so strict it doesn't even believe there is an Israel. Even though he was born there. Don't ask me to justify it, pal; I can't.'

Everett watched Engels signal the waitress, reviewing old tales his mother had spun with friends from Tel Aviv. Natural? Something to do with nature? 'Neturay Karta,' he blurted; 'right?'

'Something like that,' Engels agreed, then switched to his frail imitation of Yiddischer speech: 'God forbid I should have to keep all those momzers straight.'

'One of these days you're gonna give offense,' Everett beamed at his departing friend. 'But not this time.'

'Because I let you beat me at handball,' Engels guessed.

'Let me's rickety ass. No, because you bought lunch.' They exchanged grins, like most middle-aged American males unable to say what they felt: our competition is trivial; our affection is not. Everett watched Engels filch mints near the cash register, then let his smile slowly fade as Engels walked out.

He lingered at his table, reflecting on the irony of an orthodox Jewish sect so conservative it could find common cause with Third-World radicals. ^`Neturay Karta,' his sabra mother had said, meant 'guardians of the city.' In the or­thodox quarters of some Israeli cities lay houses and attitudes musty with a hundred generations of tradition. Old Testament Hebrew scriptures insisted that ha-messiach, the Messiah, would