Gin’s new proactive positioning on the morning show did away with the spare moments in the past when we’d both been free to do quick coffee catch-ups between segments. And as soon as the closing credits rolled each day, Heck Cochran’s people whisked her off on publicity errands. So after the first week, I stopped trying to link up with her to find out why she’d embroiled me in her now-infamous contract negotiations.
Time had made the point moot, anyway. My on-camera associates apparently had been arm-wrestled by Rudy into staying satisfied with their admittedly lucrative lots. And their old self-involved but generally pleasant attitudes returned. Even Rudy seemed to have reached the stage where he could look at me without frowning.
As best I could tell, he’d not followed through on his threat to banish me from the Food School pilot or to mess with Blessing’s in the Kitchen. I suspected the commander may have had something to do with that. Or maybe Rudy had just been too busy with other matters to bother. He certainly seemed distracted.
By the time I finally did bump into Gin one morning, minutes before the start of WUA!, her contract was old news. The blogosphere blaze had cooled down and her picture no longer graced newspaper front pages, though the tag “The Fifteen-Million-Dollar Woman,” bestowed on her by the Post, lived on.
“It’s been a while since we talked,” I said.
“I know, Billy. It’s been so hectic. But I love it.”
At six-forty-three a.m. Gin was glowing like the midday sun. And it wasn’t the makeup. Her boyfriend, Ted Parkhurst, was a lucky buck but also, I thought, something of an idiot for continuing to work on other continents when his rep as a journalist was such that he could probably have found something closer to Manhattan to write about.
“I’m getting everything I’ve always wanted, Billy,” she said. “And it’s all because of you.” She warmed me with a look that, to my jaded eyes, came damn close to adoration. “My guru.”
“That’s very flattering, Gin. But I really didn’t do anything. I certainly didn’t tell you to hit them for fifteen mil.”
“You gave me confidence.”
“Didn’t you tell me it wasn’t about money?” I said.
“Well, it wasn’t when we talked. But then Gretchen seemed really set on keepin’ me on Wake Up! She asked me what it would take for me to stick aroun’ for another three years, and I kinda flashed on Katie Couric gettin’ fifteen million from CBS and thought, heck, she’s only on for a half-hour every evenin’.”
“Gretchen didn’t even blink?” I asked.
“Oh, she went through the usual. ‘There’s not enough in the budget.’ ‘These are times of economic uncertainty.’ Bla-bla-bla. That’s when my team started remindin’ Gretchen of my TVQ and threatenin’ her with the possibility of my poppin’ up opposite WUA! on The Early Show or Good Morning America. Then they played with the numbers a little. The thing that finally turned the trick was my agreein’ to read ad copy.”
Way back when John Chancellor anchored the Today show, he established a rule that anchors remain apart from any form of commercial activity. He thought it undercut their effectiveness as objective observers of daily events. Other network news executives agreed, apparently, because it became a sort of industry standard. But that razor-thin line, like the one separating reportage from opinion, has worn away.
“So now you’re making twice as much as Charlie Gibson,” I said.
Gin beamed. “And three times as much as macho-man Lance. And you know what, Billy? With the money comes respect.”
“I definitely would not be doing the interview with Carl Kelstoe this morning if I weren’t the fifteen-million-dollar woman. And I owe it all to you.” She gave me a brief hug and literally danced across the floor to get ready for the start of the show.
There seemed to be no way of convincing her that I’d had little to do with her good fortune. It would have served no purpose for me to mention that she’d unknowingly put my career in jeopardy. She was floating on air, and I didn’t want her to feel any guilt if Rudy did decide to cook my goose.
I was surprised that he wasn’t on the set, spreading his usual malcontent. When I mentioned it to Kiki, she said, “I sensed there was a lightness to the day. Was there something you wanted from him?”
“Not in this lifetime,” I said, and left my dressing room to check the progress of the barbecued ribs I’d be playing with near the end of the hour.
Gin’s interview with Carl Kelstoe, the president of Touchstone International, considered by some to be the world’s largest security company, took place shortly after the news segment that kicked off the second hour of the show.
Touchstone mercenaries working for this country had been accused of starting a riot eleven months ago in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province that resulted in the deaths of seven NATO soldiers and five Afghan soldiers, with nineteen pedestrians left wounded. Kelstoe was making the rounds on the news shows, doing public-relations damage control, before heading to D.C. to appear before a congressional committee studying the cause of the riot.
Watching the interview from the control booth, I was fascinated by the merc master. He must have been six-four, with a crew-cut king-size head atop a thick neck and a body that resembled Superman’s, clothed in a gray gabardine suit that had been perfectly tailored to fit his v-shaped physique. According to stereotype, a guy that big should have been slow and maybe even a little mentally deficient. But Kelstoe was agile, of both body and mind.
As Camera 2 zoomed in for a close-up, the monitor picked up eyes so light brown they were almost golden. Kelstoe focused them on Gin as if she was the center of his universe.
Looking at his rugged mug, I guessed that most men would want to be his friend and most women would at least think about being his lover. Thanks to my misspent youth, I had a different take. I pegged him right off as a sociopath, the kind Shakespeare said “would smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
In his seemingly guileless way, and in a whispery voice that might have been distinctive if Clint Eastwood had never gone to Italy, Kelstoe told Gin and our viewers that it would have been impossible for his expertly trained men to have acted the way the province officials claimed.
“The incident occurred just weeks after the end of Operation Mountain Thrust,” he said, “and there was a high degree of confusion and tension in the province.” His was the soft but mesmerizing voice of a snake oil salesman shrewd enough to make it sound like the voice of reason. “The so-called ‘innocent civilian’ my men had stopped was in fact an armed Taliban insurgent who was there to cause trouble. My men stopped him, ordered him to surrender his weapon. He refused, shouting and cursing them. It was a tense situation. And then someone in the crowd—I think we can safely assume it was another Taliban member—threw a rock that hit one of my men. His gun went off and regrettably killed the man they had stopped.
“That’s when all hell broke loose. I’m sorry—can I say ‘hell’ on television?”
“It’s your story,” Gin said.
“Well, anyway, the crowd started stoning my guys, and two of them fell. Their weapons were yanked from their hands and used on the arriving troops. It was a terrible tragedy, but I’m not sure what else my guys could have done once that rock was thrown.”
At that point Lance would probably have closed down the interview and wished Kelstoe well. Gin may have done that, too, a few weeks ago. But no longer. Not since she’d become the Fifteen-Million-Dollar Woman.
“It’s been reported that your mercenary soldier fired the shot before the rock was thrown, that it was thrown because he’d used his gun on a man who was doing nothing more incendiary than brushing against him on a narrow walkway.”
“I’ve had over a year to investigate this,” Kelstoe replied, “to study exactly what transpired every single second of that deadly event. If I had discovered one thing to make me believe any of my men were responsible for that tragedy, I would say so.”
“The congressional committee may see things differently,” Gin said. “Am I right in assuming that whichever way the decision goes, you could wind up losing the lucrative contract Touchstone has with our State Department?”
“I don’t see that happening.” Kelstoe’s smile started to harden, and his whispery voice showed a hint of anger.
“But you have lost important contracts since the incident, right?” Gin asked.
“I’m not sure exactly what you’re referencing.…”
“I’m thinking of Markham Books,” Gin said. “Until recently, the publisher has used Touchstone to ensure the safety of its more controversial authors on their book tours. But when ex–Mossad agent Goyal Aharon arrives later this week to promote his debut spy thriller, your main competitor, InterTec, will be guarding him. Isn’t this a result of the investigation into Touchstone?”
That wiped the smile from Kelstoe’s face. “It’s just business,” he replied tersely. “You win some and you lose some. With our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and an unmatched success rate, we’ve got quite a lot on our plate right now.”
“But you can’t deny that a negative report from the committee would clean that plate a little?”
Kelstoe glared at her and, just for an instant, dropped his protective shield and exposed a naked ruthlessness. Then the shield snapped back in place and he said, “More likely, when Congress hears the full story, Touchstone will be needing a nice, big platter.”
I’d had enough of the dishware metaphor, and of him. As I turned away, I saw that the commander had made one of his rare visits to the control booth. He was staring at Kelstoe with such intensity that I asked if he was all right.
It took him a few seconds to break loose from his thoughts. “I’m fine,” he said with uncharacteristic annoyance. “Why shouldn’t I be? And where the hell is Rudy?”
Ah, if we’d only known.