Barbara Taylor Bradford - Remember

Jimmy picked up the phone, resumed his conversation, talking in a low, fast tone, bringing the call to his wife to an end. ‘Nicky just came in, Jo honey. I gotta go. Duty calls.’ After listening a moment or two longer, he finally said an affectionate goodbye to her and broke the connection. Turning to Nicky, he remarked, ‘This is the best damned phone system. Got to hand it to the Chinese, they certainly installed the most up-to-date equipment. Joanna sounded as if she was in the next room, instead of on Eighty-Third and Park, and she -’

‘It’s French,’ Nicky interrupted. ‘The phone system, I mean.’

‘Yep, I guess I knew that. Jo sends her love.’

Nicky smiled at him. ‘How is she?’

‘Sounds fine. But she’s watching the news on television, listening to the same news on the radio and worrying about the four of us. She seems to be handling it well, though, as she usually does.’ His brow furrowed. ‘But hey, kiddo, you’re supposed to be grabbing a few hours’ shut-eye, not hovering around here obviously anxious to start planning tonight’s newscast.’

‘I know, I know, but I couldn’t sleep. I have a premonition something … no, everything, is going to blow tonight. My gut instinct tells me there’s going to be a crackdown. Probably around midnight, or thereabouts.’

Catching the tension in her voice, noting her worried expression and the seriousness of her words, Jimmy looked at her alertly. After five and a half years of working with her in the trouble spots of the world, he trusted her intuition implicitly. Her judgement had rarely been flawed.

‘If you say so, Nick, and you know I’m with you all the way. But look, I gotta tell you this, it is pretty quiet out there. At least it was twenty minutes ago.’

Nicky focused her eyes on him, the look in them quizzical. ‘Nothing’s happening in the square?’

‘Not really. The kids in the tent encampment were starting to come out of their tents, mingling with each other and chatting, sort of sharing experiences, I suppose, as they appear to do every night.’ For a moment he was thoughtful, before he went on, ‘To tell you the truth, I was reminded of Woodstock tonight, without the drugs, of course. Or, if you prefer, one of those summer street festivals we have in New York. Everything was very relaxed, friendly, easygoing I’d say.’

‘It won’t be for much longer,’ Nicky announced with quiet vehemence, and sat down heavily in a chair. ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, analysing, and I believe that Deng Xiaoping is at the end of his tether. He’s been provoked and frustrated by the students for some time, and I’m sure he’s about to make his move. It’ll be a bungled move, just as he and the government have bungled the whole Tiananmen Square affair ever since it began. He’ll have no compunction, you know. He’ll order the troops to move on the students.’ She sighed, finishing in a low, saddened voice, ‘There’s going to be a bloodbath, Jimmy.’

He stared at her. ‘Not that, Nick, surely not! Deng wouldn’t go so far. He wouldn’t dare. He’d hardly risk condemnation from the world and its leaders.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re wrong, James. He’ll do it all right. And I’ll tell you something else, I don’t think Deng gives a damn about the rest of the world, its leaders, or what they think of him.’

The magnitude of her words struck him forcibly, and Jimmy exclaimed, ‘Oh God! Those kids are so young, so idealistic!’ His voice rose as he rushed on, ‘And they’re so peaceful. All they want is to be listened to … they just want to be heard.’

‘That’s never going to happen,’ Nicky replied. ‘You know as well as I do what the students call Deng and his cohorts … the Gang of the Old, and they’re absolutely right. Deng is eighty-five and far, far too old to understand the way it is today. He’s completely out of touch with this generation, all he’s interested in is clinging to power. We know the students are not making unreasonable demands, and anyway, wanting freedom and democracy is a pretty normal thing, wouldn’t you say?’

Jimmy nodded. He took a deep breath. ‘Okay, so what do you want to do, Nick?’

‘I want to be out there, right in the middle of it when it happens. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To report the news, to bring the news to the people, to tell the outside world the way it is in China on this Friday night, the second day of June, in the year 1989.’

‘We’ve still got one big problem, honey, we can’t film out there,’ Jimmy reminded her. ‘The minute we appear, the police will smash the cameras and the sound equipment. What’s more, we could get hauled in for questioning, like some of the other foreign correspondents have been. We could be detained, flung into jail -’

Jimmy broke off, glancing at the door as it opened to admit Arch.

Nicky’s producer did not seem surprised to see her as he entered the room. ‘And why might we be flung into jail?’ he asked, focusing his attention on the cameraman.

‘If we try to film in the square,’ Jimmy answered.

‘Only too true. Nothing’s changed since yesterday,’ Arch Leverson declared, and came to a standstill next to Nicky. He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezed it, gave her a warm smile, which she returned.

Always elegantly attired wherever he was, Arch was tall and thin, had a saturnine face, prematurely silver hair, and light-grey eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses. Forty-one years old and a veteran of the television news business, he had been lured away from another network by ATN three years ago. Quite aside from the hike in salary they offered, the most exciting inducement they dangled in front of him was Nicky Wells. The man who had produced her shows for several years had retired, and the job was open. There wasn’t a producer in the television news business who didn’t want to take over her newscasts, not to mention the documentaries she was famous for, and for which she had won several Emmys. His agent had negotiated a good contract for him and he had changed networks, had never once regretted doing so. He and Nicky had hit it off immediately; she was a real professional who had his utmost respect, not to mention his affection.

Nicky looked up at Arch, and said, ‘There’s going to be a crackdown … most probably tonight.’

Arch returned her quiet gaze with one equally steady, but he did not immediately respond. After a moment, he said slowly, ‘You’re not often wrong, Nicky, and I’m inclined to agree with you, military intervention is inevitable.’

‘According to Jimmy, it was peaceful in the square earlier this evening. Has the atmosphere changed?’ she asked Arch.

‘Not really. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s positively festive out there. Nevertheless, rumours are rife, mostly about troop movements seen in different parts of Beijing again. I just ran into one of the guys from CNN in the hotel lobby, and he told me he’d heard the same rumours.’

Arch moved across the room and sat down behind the desk, glanced from Nicky to Jimmy, looking considerably worried. ‘We’d better prepare ourselves. I think it’s going to be a rough weekend. Tough in every possible way.’

‘I’m sure of it,’ Nicky muttered.

Jimmy made no comment, nor did he react to the producer’s dire prediction. Instead he paced up and down the room, looking preoccupied, fingering his chin. Finally he stopped, addressed Arch. ‘Since we can’t manage any live-shot locations in the square, I’m going to have to film Nick doing her standups in another part of town, the way we did at the beginning of the week.’

‘I don’t think we dare risk that again,’ Arch exclaimed swiftly, shaking his head. ‘The city’s teeming with police, and we wouldn’t get two steps before we were in deep trouble.’