She watched him inhale deeply. He threw his head back and closed his eyes. “I’ll try it from the top. I’m sorry. It was Harrison Gordon they were after. He’s the Ambassador. The kidnapers must have been fairly well organized—at least they seem to have had advance information about his itinerary. He was on a fact-finding tour of the provinces. His party was ambushed at a village junction near the coast of Mexico above the peninsula. The kidnapers took Gordon and everybody in his party, hauled them off in buses. Nobody was killed. Apparently one security guard took a rap on the head. A reporter named Ortega happened to be an eyewitness—he’s a stringer for the L.A. Times.”
“What was Robert doing there?”
“According to Ortega he’d hitched a ride down there to plead for medical assistance for the Yaquis. Robert was talking to Ambassador Gordon when it happened. So he was swept up along with the rest of the party.”
“Why hasn’t it been in the papers?”
“It’ll be in the afternoon editions. Washington and Mexico City wanted to keep it quiet but of course they couldn’t keep Ortega muzzled for very long. They were waiting for the demands.”
“Demands?”
“Ransom. There are always demands, aren’t there? I mean you don’t kidnap a United States Ambassador for a lark.”
She said, “It’s a mistake, isn’t it. A ghastly mistake.”
“We’ll know more in time. I asked Paine to call me here this morning if he learns anything. I hope you don’t mind—”
“Who are they? Don’t they even know who they are?”
“The terrorists? Nobody knows yet.”
She said, “What do we do? Just wait? I don’t know if I can bear that.”
“I don’t know what else to do.” His hands wrenched at each other. “It’s not much good saying I’m sorry. But I hope you know how much I’m hating myself right now. If we hadn’t treated him like a Volleyball between us he might not have run away to Mexico with his Peace Corps nonsense and this might—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. A thing like this is as arbitrary as a tornado. I don’t want to indulge you in a mea culpa right now—I haven’t the strength. Do you want breakfast?”
“No. But go ahead if you’re hungry.”
“I’m not.”
She watched him light his third cigarette. She said, “Shall we just sit here and wait for the phone to ring, then?”
“I don’t know.” She saw the tremor in the hand with which he lifted his glass. He said, “I don’t know what to do or what to say. I’m supposed to be in a meeting at eleven. The Japanese trade delegation.”
“Then go to it.”
“And leave you here alone?”
“I’m going to the studio,” she said, deciding it even as she spoke. “We’re still editing the picture.”
“I wonder if it’s possible to work. To keep one’s mind on anything.”
“I’m not strong enough not to,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly sit here and stare at the walls.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
She looked at her watch. “You’ve still got time to make your meeting.”
“Can I drop you at the studio?”
“No thanks. I may want my car with me.”
“I’m at the Hilton,” he said.
“All right. You can reach me at the studio.”
He made as if to stand, but didn’t. “Carole, this is awkward but let me ask you: Have you got a boy friend?”
“A boy friend? No. I have a few men friends.”
“Someone you can turn to, I mean.”
“Let me worry about it, Howard. Rest assured if I want a shoulder to cry on I won’t choose yours.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said with almost laughable petulance. “But it’s just that if you need anything—”
“I know. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be intolerable. It’s kind of you to offer but I’ll be all right.”
He said vaguely, “I think I’ll ask Paine to fly out today and take my place in these meetings. I’ll go back to Washington tonight. I’d rather be there—maybe I can keep my finger on the pulse of things from there. Mexico’s not my desk, of course, but I know Mark Blaisedell fairly well. Maybe I can build a few fires. I’d hate to think we weren’t doing everything possible to save them.”
“Will you keep me informed?”
“Instantly I know anything.”
She didn’t believe him but there was no point arguing with him.
On the turns down Beverly Glen into the Valley she paid rigid attention to her driving; she was running on her nerve-ends and couldn’t take it for granted. She was in Burbank within twenty minutes, parking in the slot that had her name on it. When she emerged from the air-conditioned car the heat slapped her face and she hurried across the compound. A red light glowed above the door of one of the soundstage hangars.
She was thinking she’d treated Howard shabbily. But when she went inside the studio office block she thought defiantly that he deserved it. By the time she reached the elevator she had pushed him aside in her mind; she was thinking now of Robert, trying to picture his plight, imagining him talking with nervous energy to his fellow hostages. Robert would be analyzing it. Talking in that staccato fashion that was not quite a stammer, his shoulder jerking at random intervals, his mouth grimacing in rictus tics. Spouting facts he’d absorbed from news magazines about terrorist attitudes and hostage behavior—telling the others how to react, what face to present to the captors. She had no doubt the Ambassador was listening to Robert rather than the other way round. Robert was a font of facts if not wisdom, and incapable of passivity.
In the cutting room Mort Kyle stood about, furiously smoking a cigarette-sized cigar, wearing a trim denim outfit and a suntanned scowl; Edith was lapping .35-millimeter frames on the Movieola and talking cheerfully: “The most incredible hat. Anyhow I think it was a hat, because she had it on her head.”
Carole closed the door. In the half darkness Mort searched her face. “What’s wrong, darling?”
She told them. Mort and Edith were shocked. Mort stroked his neat beard and made sounds of sympathy; Edith mouthed some of the right things. Carole cut her off: “Look, dear, I need to work. Busy hands, you know, all that. Now where are we?” She had moved adroitly to evade Mort’s hands; now he put them in his pockets and scowled again. The scowl was his favored expression.
He picked up the extension. “Darling, this is Mort Kyle. We’re in Cutting-room Three. If there are any calls for Carole Marchand, patch them in here, will you?”
Carole said, “It could be for Lundquist.”
Mort relayed it into the phone: “The call may come in under her married name, Lundquist.”
Edith made room above the Movieola’s miniature screen. “We’re trying to shave some frames Off the ski-lift sequence. Right here—we could shorten the long-shot, cut faster to the close-up and tighten up around the dialogue.”
“I hate to lose that shot. Cap broke his ass setting up on the ice to get that angle. It’s a gorgeous composition.”
Mort was on the phone ordering coffee; he turned away from it, cupping the mouthpiece in his hand. “It’d do credit to Archie Stout and John Ford, darling, but we’re not selling a travelogue. We’ve still got to snip a lot of footage.”
Edith cocked a knowing eyebrow and Carole tried to smile to reassure the girl but she was having trouble dimpling up just now; she turned away before it became a snarl. When Mort hung up the phone she said, “Am I going to have to fight you over every foot of this picture?”
“You’re going to have to fight me over about sixty-five hundred frames, darling. That’s what it’s still got to lose.”
The Movieola rattled. Frames jinked across the screen; underlit by that flickering source, Mort’s narrow-bearded face had the Mephistophelean look of a silent movie villain’s.