Delroy lay back in the rear seat of the cruiser and felt helpless. He hadn’t lain out in the cold to die, as the deputy seemed to think, but he wouldn’t have minded if that had happened either. He just hadn’t figured out what he was supposed to do next.
A moment later, the deputy put the transmission in drive and headed toward the cemetery’s entrance. Mud slung from the tires thumped against the undercarriage as the cruiser rocked over the uneven ground. Before the vehicle reached the highway, Delroy fell into a yawning black pit and slept.
OneWorld NewsNet Corporate Offices
Bucharest, Romania
Local Time 1124 Hours
When Danielle Vinchenzo’s call came through, Radu Stolojan stood at the silver tea service in his office preparing a cup. He gazed out over Bucharest with a feeling of contentment. The world was in turmoil, and that was exactly as it should be at the moment. Everything was going according to plan.
He returned to his desk and punched the speaker function. Few people had his personal number.
“Stolojan,” he said.
“It’s Danielle Vinchenzo.”
Stolojan sat at his immense desk and tried to put a brighter note in his voice. “Yes, Danielle. You are well, I take it?”
“So far,” the woman answered. “Things here are still hectic.”
Glancing to his left, Stolojan studied the wall of monitors that ran news feeds from OneWorld as well as from FOX News and CNN. He knew the placement of each as well as he knew the back of his own hand.
Although he wasn’t the director of OneWorld NewsNet, he was the power behind the throne. As Niccolò Machiavelli had written in his book, The Prince, a smart monarch surrounded himself with people willing to do the heinous things the monarch could not himself afford to do.
Stolojan was that man. At least he was one of them. He took enormous pride in that, as well as in the lucrative perks he received from his work. Nothing took place in the building, in the city, or in any of the around-the-world operations the news service was involved in that he didn’t know about.
He studied the monitor that showed the latest footage from Sanliurfa, noting the icon in the lower right of the screen. Although they kept cycling scenes of the early morning attack on the city, Danielle and her crew had added footage of the search-and-rescue and recovery efforts now taking place in the war-torn streets.
“I see that.” Stolojan took a biscuit from the silver platter on his desk. They were fresh baked and brought to his office precisely at eleven-fifteen every morning. He broke the biscuit open and inhaled the delightful fragrance. “I have reports that there were a number of casualties.”
“There were.”
Stolojan smiled. Large numbers of casualties were good for news. So far, the OneWorld NewsNet team was the only one getting live video broadcasts out of the city with any degree of success. That was also as things had been planned.
“Unfortunately,” Stolojan said, “many of those casualties are unconfirmed.”
“I haven’t gotten an interview with Captain Remington yet,” Danielle said a little defensively.
“By choice?” Stolojan felt irritated. Danielle had a freer agenda than most of the people working for OneWorld, but she wasn’t as independent as she sometimes thought she was.
“The man is busy.” Danielle’s tone carried frustration.
Stolojan’s irritation bloomed into full-blown anger. One of these days he would break her. He looked forward to that day, but knew that until then she was still useful. Holding the biscuit open, he took a knife and slathered creamy butter and orange marmalade onto the bread with delight. He had a child’s sweet tooth.
“Get the interview,” Stolojan ordered.
“I’m working on it.”
“Captain Remington is hungry for media exposure.” Stolojan eyed the biscuit appreciatively.
When he was young, still a boy, he’d run through Bucharest’s streets and been treated with no more regard than a rodent. He’d been homeless, an unwanted child born to a couple who already had the two children allowed by the state. During those years, birth control was banned, as were any more than two children. Those unwanted children fought and died in alleys throughout the city, whether from beatings from police or other children, or from starvation or sickness.
Stolojan’s employer had taken him from all of that. He’d been given the job at OneWorld, and there was nothing he would not do to make certain he stayed in Nicolae Carpathia’s good graces.
“Remington loves the camera,” Danielle agreed. “But he’s not the guy most of the world wants to see.”
Stolojan frowned. “Ah, yes, your sergeant. Goose Gander.”
“He’s not my sergeant,” Danielle protested. “But he is the guy people want to see and hear when this story is covered.”
Unfortunately, the media ratings that ran constantly on OneWorld’s news broadcasts reinforced Danielle’s assessment of her pet project. The share of the market the Turkish-Syrian war currently cornered was driven, in a significant part, by the first sergeant’s presence. He was an American hero, and much of the American, as well as the Western, audience had embraced him. OneWorld had received a number of e-mails wanting to know more about Gander.
“In light of everything else going on in the world at this moment, the story in Sanliurfa is slight.” Stolojan enjoyed the idea of deflating the woman’s ego. He bit into the biscuit and relished the warm, sweet taste.
“Then why have me here?” Danielle asked. “For a story so … slight?”
Displeased, Stolojan put his biscuit down. Both of them knew that her presence in Sanliurfa was because she happened to be there when the war broke out. However, her ability to capture the attention of the viewers—especially the American viewers—was significant at this juncture. So was Sergeant Gander, although he wasn’t the primary target they were after.
Nicolae Carpathia had several interests vested in the Middle Eastern war taking shape between Turkey and Syria.
“I want the interview confirming the casualties,” Stolojan said, putting a little more
