“What?”
“It’s been a long damned night, John. I have no — absolutely no — tolerance for bullshit right now. I’ve got to get off the phone. For all I know, a busy signal could cost Frank his life. By the way, the line is tapped.”
“You let the cops put a—”
“Yes.”
“What if one of your sources calls?”
“Not many have this number. I’ll tell them not to talk on this line.”
“Oh, that will be just great!”
“I can’t talk about it now—”
“Listen, you find some other way to call me. Get a cell phone, something — we need to talk.”
“Good-bye, John.”
Cassidy watched me for a moment, then said, “Perhaps we should discuss—”
Before he could say more, the phone rang again. Once again Freeman scrambled to get the headphones on and the tape in motion.
“Irene?”
“Hello, Mark,” I said in resignation. “Don’t say anything yet.”
Once again Cassidy drew a hand across his neck. Freeman turned off the machine and reluctantly removed his headphones.
“Okay,” I said.
“Got a minute to talk?” he asked.
“Did John just tell you to call?”
“I would have called anyway. Will you talk to me?”
Cassidy and Freeman were standing within a few feet of the phone, making no attempt to hide the fact that they were listening to my half of the conversation. “Are you asking me as a friend or are you writing an article?” I asked.
“Both, I guess.”
“I don’t know, Mark. It’s not really a good time—”
“Look, I’m sorry. I asked John to put somebody else on it, but he won’t. I would have waited, but it’s only a matter of hours before you have other media on the way over there.”
“Other media? Here?” I should have thought of it, but nothing was coming to me as quickly as usual.
“So far, we’re the only paper that knows what happened last night, because nobody else monitors the scanners down here.”
“The police used land lines for anything sensitive,” I said.
“Even so, before long, someone in that bomb squad is going to talk to radio or television, and you’re going to have microphones in your face.”
Mark was saying something about how easy it would be for another reporter to find out where we lived, but I was only half listening. I kept thinking of Frank’s mother and sister learning about him from a television or radio broadcast or, worse, being approached for an interview. (“Mrs. Harriman, do you believe there is any hope that your son is still alive? How do you feel at a time like this?”) Thought about the number of times I’d seen a television crew broadcast the movements of a SWAT team as they took position in a hostage situation. “I can’t talk now,” I said to Mark, my self-control slipping. “I’ll call you later.”
I hung up. Cassidy and Freeman were watching me; I could see they wanted to ask me questions about Mark’s call. “Forget it,” I said.
Cassidy told Freeman to call Bredloe and ask for help with media control.
That wasn’t the answer, either, as far as I was concerned. “I’d rather make my own decisions about whether or not I’ll talk to the media,” I said.
“I can see why you feel that way,” Cassidy said. “And no one is trying to keep you from telling your story at some point down the road. But one of the key elements in any successful hostage negotiation is control of what gets out through the media. Hocus is going to watch television, listen to the radio, read the paper.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Think about the kinds of things this group has done so far. While we may never find anything rational behind all this, they seem to be anarchists of a sort. We’ve got two of them in the pokey, and they seem happy to become martyrs. Don’t you think they’re on a mission?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Hard to tell.”
He looked at me as if I were just being stubborn, which I now admit I was. At the time, I was feeling leaned upon, and stubborn seemed like a good response.
“Look at their possible motivations,” he persisted. “You think someone takes a cop for the ransom money?”
“No. I think they want their friends back out of jail.”
“Maybe as an immediate goal. But if these folks are making trouble for political reasons, they may be looking for a little airtime. Sometimes the members of these groups are willing to die for their cause — as far as they’re
