Remember (3 page)

At the same time these demonstrations were starting in Beijing in April, Nicky and her crew had been in Israel, where they were doing a special on Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. But by the end of the month, as they were finishing the special, Nicky had decided they should go to China. Mikhail Gorbachev was due to arrive in the Chinese capital in the middle of May for a state visit, and being fully aware of what the students were doing, Nicky smelled a story developing. A big story. She had phoned the president of news at the ATN network.

“Listen, Larry, the students aren’t simply going to fold their tents and quietly steal away when Gorbachev comes to town,” she had pointed out. “It’s my belief real trouble is brewing over there.”

Larry Anderson had hesitated momentarily, and she had pushed harder.

“Just think of it, Larry. Think of the scenario! How will the kids behave during Gorbachev’s visit? Will they continue to demonstrate?

Will they embarrass the government? How will Gorbachev react to them?

And perhaps more important, how will the Chinese government react to the situation? What will they do?”

These were only a few of the questions she had posed that

morning on the phone from Tel Aviv, and she had obviously been persuasive. After talking to Arch, Larry had agreed they should go. He had immediately pulled them out of the Middle East, brought them back to New York for a week’s rest, then sent them jetting off to mainland China with his blessing.

She and the crew had arrived on May 9. Ostensibly they had come to cover the state visit of Mikhail Gorbachev, which was due to commence on May 15, but they were really there because of the students—and because of Nicky’s anticipation of trouble.

By the time the Russian leader, his wife and entourage appeared, Nicky, Arch, Jimmy and Luke were well ensconced in the Beijing Hotel, along with over one thousand foreign correspondents from every country in the world.

Just as Nicky had suspected, Gorbachev received something of a hero’s welcome from the students, but there was a great deal of turmoil during his three-day visit, and the demonstrations continued unabated. As far as Nicky was concerned, the students had totally upstaged the summit meeting between the Russian and Chinese politicians, just as she had predicted they would. She had made a point of focusing on the students and their predicament in her news reports.

One day during Gorbachev’s stay, a million demonstrators had converged on Tiananmen, demanding democratic rights, freedom of speech and a government free of corruption and graft. The students had hunkered down in the square, determined to remain there despite a scorching sun, violent thunderstorms and heavy rain.

Arch had made sure that Jimmy got everything on film, and Nicky’s daily newscasts had been brilliant, and had been transmitted back to the States via the satellite. For the short time that Gorbachev and the hordes of foreign reporters remained in Beijing, the government turned a blind eye, or assumed an air of tolerance about the students—and the foreign press as well.

But the authorities were quick to make their move two days after the Russians and much of the press had departed. They enforced martial law. Nicky and the crew had stayed on, as had several hundred other journalists. Something extraordinary was happening in China and the news gatherers wanted to be there to do their job, to report unfolding events, history in the making.

Now, as she walked toward the square on this warm June night, Nicky’s mind raced. She knew the end was imminent, and she feared the students were going to die. Perhaps even thousands of them.

With this terrible thought her step faltered, but only for a moment.

She recovered herself, and walked on, even though her heart felt like a lead weight in her chest.

As a chronicler of war, revolution and natural disasters, she was a constant witness to death and destruction, pain and anguish, on every level in many countries. Yet she never grew inured to violence and the horror of catastrophic events.

Over the years, and especially in the last three, she had come to know the world as a most terrifying and horrendous place to live.

Men were no more civilized now than in medieval times. They were still as violent and brutal as they had been then, according to her mother, they always would be. Very simply, those characteristics were part of man’s nature.

What she witnessed and reported on bit into her heart like corrosive acid. Yet she had disciplined herself and found a way, especially since the brutal manner in which Charles Devereaux had treated her, to conceal her true emotions, not only from that all-seeing eye of the television camera, but from her crew and friends as well. Not even Clee, the person she felt most drawn to, knew her real feelings about things that affected her.

Her pace quickened as her thoughts settled on Clee. He was in Tiananmen, and she needed to talk to him. His instincts were so good, and he often had a visceral, intuitive response to events, just as she herself did. Moreover, she trusted his judgment. She always had, ever since they first met in Lebanon, when they were both covering the long-running war there. They had been introduced the day after Premier Rashid Karami was assassinated, when a bomb exploded in his helicopter.

That was in 1987. She realized she had known Clee for exactly two years.

It was Arch Leverson who had made the introduction. Clee was an old friend of his, and they had bumped into each other in the lobby of the Commodore in West Beirut, the hotel favored by the foreign press corps.

Arch and Clee had made a date for drinks that evening, and Arch had insisted she come too.

Cleeland Donovan was something of a celebrity, a legend even. He was considered to be the greatest war photographer and photojournalist since Robert Capa, and, like Capa, he had a reputation for courage and daring. It was a well-known fact that Clee Donovan flung himself into the middle of the action on a battlefield in order to get the powerful images on film for which he was famous. An expatriate American living in Paris, he had founded Image, his own photo news agency, at the age of twenty-five, and seemingly had never looked back. His pictures appeared in every leading magazine and newspaper in the world, he had published several books containing his work, all of which had been best-sellers, and he was the recipient of many awards for his photojournalism. Also, according to Arch, women found him very attractive.

A faint smile touched Nicky’s mouth as she remembered the night they had met. While changing in her room at the Commodore she had gone over what she had heard about Clee Donovan, and instantly she had known what to expect. Obviously he was going to be insufferable—a man who was more than likely conceited, full of himself and certainly egocentric.

She had been wrong, Clee was none of these things.

When he walked into the crowded bar of the Commodore, spoke to some of the correspondents and then headed in their direction, she had thought for a moment that he was someone else, another friend of Arch’s, who had been invited to join them. He did not look as glamorous as he did in the photographs she had seen of him, although he was quite good-looking in a cleancut, all-American way. He had a nice face—that was the best way to describe it—a face that was open and honest. His hair was dark, his eyes brown, their expression gentle, and his sensitive mouth was quick to smile. He was about five feet ten inches in height, but appeared to be taller because his body was lean and athletic.

A pleasant, ordinary sort of guy, she had decided, despite all that fame, all that success. He had seated himself at the table, ordered a drink and begun to chat amiably with them.

Within twenty minutes or so she had changed her mind, Ordina7y was certainly the wrong word to apply to Clee Donovan. He was highly intelligent, very amusing and blessed with a natural charm that was irresistible. He had held them spellbound with his stories, fully living up to his reputation.

She had believed him to be her age, maybe even a bit younger, but later Arch told her Clee was three years older than she. This had surprised her, because he looked so boyish.

The other thing Nicky had discovered at their first meeting was that he was a man with little or no conceit, contrary to what she had expected.

He was sure of himself, but it was a self-assurance about his work, and it sprang from his talent as a photojournalist. Eventually she had come to understand that Clee’s work was his lifeblood.

That night in Beirut they had taken a great liking to each other,

and their friendship had grown steadily over the weeks and months that followed. Frequently they found themselves in the same trouble spots, covering the same stories, and when this occurred they always joined forces.

Sometimes they went in different directions, and were on opposite sides of the world, but they managed to stay in touch by phone, or through their respective offices, as a strong fraternal feeling had developed between them. She had come to think of Clee as the brother she had never had. Certainly he was her very good friend, her comrade-in-arms.

leeland Donovan sat on one of the ledges encircling the Monument to the People’s Heroes, also known as the Martyrs’ Monument, staring at the Goddess of Democracy. The thirty-three-foot statue had been erected in the middle of the square by the students to face a giant portrait of Mao Zedong that hung above Tiananmen Gate. The defiant white statue, composed of plaster and Styrofoam, had been made by the students and faculty of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and brought somewhat ceremoniously to the square.

It reminded Clee of the Statue of Liberty. It was not so much the face that was familiar, but rather the posture, plus the toga-like robe draped around the body, and the raised arms holding high a torch of freedom. The statue was ugly, but that did not matter. It was the symbolism that counted.

He had been present in Tiananmen when the students had erected the goddess statue and unveiled it three days ago. They had sung the “Internationale” amid much cheering, and shouts of”Long live democracy!” had nung out across the square. The ceremony had been emotional, and had touched him deeply. He had managed to shoot several rolls of film surreptitiously, even though cameras were forbidden in the square, he had had three cameras smashed by the police.

Fortunately, he had several in reserve, including the Nikon F4 that was now strapped to his shoulder underneath the loose cotton jacket he was wearing.

The night the statue had been brought to the square the weather had changed in the early hours. There had been strong winds and rain, but, remarkably, the goddess remained undamaged the following morning, there wasn’t even a scratch on her. How long she would remain so was another matter.

Clee knew the goddess had irritated and outraged the government more than anything else the students had done, and government officials had denounced it as a “humiliation” in such a historically important and solemn place as Tiananmen Square.

On the other hand, it had been the shot in the arm the students had needed. Just seeing the statue in such a strategic spot had lifted their spirits. To protect the goddess, they had erected tents around her base, and groups of students were always present, ready to defend her.

But the government will tear the statue down, Clee thought, sighing heavily.

Luke Michaels, seated next to Clee, looked at him. “Something wrong?”

“I was just wondering how long that’s going to be standing there,” he murmured, gesturing to the statue.

“I dunno.” Luke shmgged, ran a hand through his darkred hair and turned his earnest freckled face to Clee. “Forever, perhaps?”

Clee laughed hollowly. “I give it a couple of days, at the most, before it’s totally destroyed. And I can guarantee you this, Luke— it won’t be standing there a week from today.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right, it’s such a thorn in Deng’s side.

Well, it’s a thorn in all of their sides. The Gang of the Old can’t stand the sight of it, and they consider the making of it an act of pure defiance. It was wishful thinking on my part, hoping the statue would stand forever as a sort of tribute to the kids.”

“Nobody around here is going to pay them a tribute, except for us—the international press. We have to keep telling the world about them and their struggle, do whatever it takes to accomplish that.”

Luke nodded, and shifted his position slightly, he leaned back against the stone and closed his eyes. It was photojournalists like Clee and correspondents like Nicky who risked their lives to bring the tnuth to the public, and he found the two of them inspiring. He especially admired Nicky Wells, she was what his mother called a real trouper. He wasn’t married yet, or seriously dating anybody special, but when the time came for him to settle down, he hoped he would find a woman like Nicky. There was something warm and reassuring about her, and she didn’t put men down.

He had been part of Nicky’s crew for just over a year, and he had seen and learned a lot, working with her. At twenty-seven, he had been in the television business for only five years, and he knew he was green in some respects. But Nicky had been helpful and nice to him right from the start, and had treated him like a seasoned veteran. She was a stickler about punctuality and a lot of other things as well, and a perfectionist, and sometimes she

could blow her stack. But she was a pro, and he’d do just about anything for her.

He wished she could find a good guy. Sometimes she looked sad, and her eyes would have a distant expression, as if she were remembering something painful. There were strange rumors about a man she’d been in love with before Luke joined her team.

Apparently he’d treated her badly. Arch and Jimmy were pretty close-mouthed about it, though, and he didn’t like to ask too many questions. Still, it was a shame she was alone. What a waste of a lovely woman-“Luke! Luke!”

The sound engineer sat up with a jolt, hearing his name. He looked down, and at the base of the monument people were milling about, as they usually were, since this spot was command headquarters for the student movement. The foreign press corps tended to congregate in the area too, and there was always a great deal of activity. His buddy Tony Marsden was beckoning to him.