Burying the Lede

by John A. Tures

                “You came here at great personal risk for this interview, Miss Renata.” The leader of the Nationalists grinned as she removed her blindfold. “You could have done it by phone, or even email. Why do this in person?”

          The reporter blinked several times and then brushed a stray strand of her long black hair from her pale face as she considered the candles barely illuminating what appeared to be the end of the tunnel. “There is so much confusion in the war. I didn’t want to bury the lede.”

          The Vice-Commandant of the Nationalists’ confident gaze flipped to a frown as his men who had escorted her to the hideaway began to assemble. “Bury…the lead?”

          “Lede,” she politely corrected him. “It means losing the most important part of the story.”

          The Nationalists’ leader, identified as public enemy number one not just in his country but in many other places around the world, stroked his beard calmly. “And, Miss Renata, what do you believe is, in fact, the lede?”

          The journalist pushed the eraser to the base of her bright red lips, showing some surprising confidence for someone in her situation. “I’m here to find that out. I feel most Americans are being fed a great deal of propaganda by my government and your country’s regime. And I prefer to hear your story in person….to learn what drove you to engage in armed rebellion against our ally, against such difficult odds.”

          The Vice-Commandant looked intrigued. “Why do you think we are fighting so hard, Miss Renata?”

          She glanced around the room at the determined faces of the other bearded men in the basement, close to the tunnel where she had emerged. “I suppose you believe it is the righteousness of your cause, how firmly you believe this land is sacred to you.”

          Instead of bowing reverentially, the men laughed.

          The reporter paused. “Am I wrong?”

          The Vice-Commandant pointed to a map on the wall, or more accurately, a series of images of the country’s shape, often showing the same place in different colors. “It is also holy to our enemies who currently control the governing apparatus of this country as well. So many have trodden over the land that it is impossible to tell who it belongs to, any more than you can pick out the hooves of a specific horse where a herd has passed through.”

          When she gasped slightly, he added, “But it is so important to many of our followers that they believe it is worth giving their lives for.”

          The reporter frowned. “But…”

          “You perhaps expected another full-throated defense of our armed actions for a noble cause?” the Vice-Commandant laughed. “I joined the insurrection as a young man decades ago against your country’s ally. All it taught me was the hopelessness of such ideals. We could never hope to beat our regime and their American allies in open battle. Our fortunes changed when I was in prison, reading the works of your famous foreign policy professor, Henry Kissinger.”

          Her audible gulp caused the men gathered around her to snicker. One of them came back with several cans with an American beer brand on it.

          “Ironic, isn’t it?” he continued. “Kissinger is an interesting mentor for me, wouldn’t you say? My men and I replaced our pious policies with a new god—power. No longer shackled by the rules of morality, our Nationalists grew strong indeed.”

          He fished a cigarette from his shirt pocket and produced a lighter, leading the reporter’s eyes to widen further. “Doesn’t your religion frown upon alcohol and cigarettes?”

          The Vice-Commandant ignored her question. “Would you like to see more evidence of our wealth and power, my dear?”

          She nodded. Then the leader of the guerillas stood and walked across the room while an underling shoved aside a work shelf of tools, revealing an extensive number of locks on a section previously hidden by the power devices. As the door swung open, the bearded men prodded the correspondent forward.

          The Vice-Commandant pulled the string on several light bulbs. It took a moment for the room to come into view, but when it did, she needed a hand to cover her mouth to stifle a cry of shock.

          A large cavern was in front of her containing enough contraband to stock a full bazaar of debauchery: drugs, alcohol, and guns of all sorts. Posters glorifying violence ringed the walls. And were those women being herded around like cattle?

          “You’re…. nothing more than a common criminal…a demagogue!” the reporter managed.

          “So, you’ve discovered our secret, ‘the lede,’ as you would say. But are we so different from your ally’s regime, or even your own country? Western decadence and depravity have replaced your own nation’s so-called morals. We are no crueler than your Professor Kissinger, whose power theories took the lives of so many across the globe.”

          The reporter’s mouth moved, but it took several times before sound emerged. “But…your people are starving in refugee camps! All of this could have been spent to feed them…save them!”

          The Vice-Commandant opened one of the laptops from the stacks on a table and clicked a few times until a familiar website emerged. “Camila Renata, famous American reporter… in expensive designer clothes. See the rich ball gowns you wear to the White House Correspondent Dinners and Journalism Awards Ceremonies? How many families could be fed if you sold those clothes on the open market? Would you part so willingly with your penthouse, Porsche, and private vacations to feed people from your own country in distress, much less poor residents in mine?”

          Not waiting for a response, the Nationalist leader pressed on. “You claim to care about our ‘noble struggle,’ but it’s the fame and fortune from obtaining a dangerous exclusive interview that you care about.”

          The correspondent hung her head, unable to look at the speaker.

          “So now you know the truth about who we really are, and what we do behind the scenes. But that is still not what you would call, ‘the lede.’”

          The journalist’s head shot up as she wiped away the tears of shame that covered her face.

          “The real story that will go out to the other members of the press around the world is that a beautiful, famous news writer is now a human shield, a powerful deterrent against a frontal assault by the soldiers of your country’s ally.”

          The woman trembled as she shook her head. “No…no! I don’t have to report any of this! I can tell of your people’s struggle—your cause, and your good intentions. I could win you sympathizers around the world. With my reporting, you could raise the money you seek, and you wouldn’t need all of…this!” She waved her hand to indicate the guns, illicit items, and the tied-up women, fearful of facing a similar fate.

          The bearded leader of the Nationalists shook his head. “The audience will look at your pretty face, ignore your words, and go back to eating their dinners, forgetting anything you said within the hour. But your captivity will shock the world. It should make your government and your ally’s regime pause in their counterinsurgency campaign.”

          The correspondent backed away from the leader of the insurgency. “They’ll only see your cruelty as captors. They’ll see how you’ll be a tyrant if you ever come to power.”

          “They’ll see how desperate our enemies have made us,” he shot back. “You are our best hope at staving off a brutal assault.”

          The reporter backed up against the cavern’s walls, clearly cornered, looking around with a panicked expression as one of the Nationalist subordinates approached with a coil of rope.

          “As much as I’ve enjoyed our little tete-a-tete, it’s time to cut this interview short,” the Vice-Commandant announced, as a minion dragged her from the wall and then pulled her arms behind her back, forcing her wrists to meet at an X, where the other man with the rope fastened her wrists together.

          “Y-you’re making a big mistake,” the writer screamed.

          The man who led the Nationalists shook his finger at her. “No, Ms. Renata. It is you who have erred, coming to us so willingly, and unprotected. Being our hostage is now ‘the lede’ as the world will now learn.” He carefully removed the silk handkerchief from her jacket pocket and then crumpled it into a ball.

          “This…is so…unfair!” she wailed, a second before the Nationalist leader stuffed the cloth into her mouth. Then he unwound the scarf around her neck, slowly like a serpent slithering across her shoulder. He stepped behind her and shaped it into a triangle, reaching over her head to pull the fabric over her nose and lips, keeping the wad jammed into her mouth. 

          As he tied the two ends of her scarf behind her hair falling down her back, the Vice-Commandant joked “It seems I have…as your people would say…muzzled the press.” He translated it for his fellow Nationalists, who roared with laughter, nearly drowning out the journalist’s gagged cries as he led her across the room, past the other helpless women, to another door which an underling opened with three keys.

          Inside were furnishings almost as fancy as any five-star hotel. He pushed her to the bed, which was thankfully soft, though she landed hard enough on her shoulder to groan in pain after falling on her side.

          He pushed her legs up on the mattress. “Make yourself comfortable, Miss Renata, while I work on your press release about you being my prisoner and distribute news of your kidnapping around the world.”

          Her muffled replies could not be made out clearly, but her widened eyes telegraphed fear as he used his necktie to bind her ankles. He gave a hearty chuckle and then stomped toward the door, opened it, and banged it shut behind him, locks clicking loudly.

          Inside the palatial room carved out of the cavern, she listened carefully for the footsteps to fade away, before she went to work. The knots at her wrists might have rendered a reporter helpless, but not a trained agent, who was no “damsel-in-distress.” Quickly, she undid the ropes holding her arms pinned behind her back, and then rapidly loosened the necktie above her feet so she could kick it off easily. She considered pulling her scarf from her lips and removing the fabric wadded in her mouth, but no, that would alert her enemy that she had freed herself. Better to let him believe he still held her bound and gagged, she thought.

          The spy then reached under her long skirt, locating the small, thin object secured to her leg so the transmitter would communicate their location to the ally’s government commandos, waiting a short distance away for final confirmation of where she was. Then it was time to reach toward her other thigh for another long thin object, less technological, but far sharper, and more lethal. She held the weapon behind her back, making it appear that her hands were still tied behind her back.

          As she waited for her opportunity to attack, she considered what he was doing, announcing the capture of Camila Renata. But the woman on the bed wasn’t the stylish publicity hound he thought he had locked away in his lair. The real reporter was safely tucked in her flat, under agency guard, her silence bought by promises that the story about an affair with a media mogul, and the pictures, would disappear if she cooperated until the mission was over. Instead, that newswoman was replaced by a trained assassin who specialized in disguises, infiltration, and close-quarters killings.

          During the interview, the Vice-Commandant made a point about the weakness of idealism and the power of realism. But there was one value the autocratic terrorist had overlooked in his lesson, one which led her to volunteer eagerly for the mission, despite the potential peril.

          She thought back to her grandfather, her first political tutor, so handsome in his uniform even in his later years. Summoned out of retirement, he agreed to lead a peacekeeping mission to the county she was currently held in, enforcing a cease-fire during a prior war between the ally and Nationalists, leading to hostage swaps and allowing peace to take hold. But calm and stability are bad news for any terrorist group, and a new target was chosen.

          Everyone in the world soon saw the grainy video footage of her grandfather, arms behind his back, a noose tied around his neck. The bearded man on the film read from the paper a death sentence for a myriad of made-up crimes. Then the chair was kicked, leading him to struggle for breath until he expired. But all that the agent could see in repeated viewings was the once young man, beard less gray back then, who once pronounced the verdict, now having risen through the ranks to adopt the title of Vice-Commandant.

          They wouldn’t allow the granddaughter to view the mutilated corpse when it arrived at Dover Air Force Base. But access to her agency’s files enabled her to see the sad photo, the image showing why it had to be a closed-casket funeral, and the reason she would never see her beloved grandfather again, the true source of the tears she had to produce to convince the Nationalists that she feared for her life.

          Shots and screams now enveloped the cavern as the commandos made short work of the Nationalists. She steadied her nerves, thinking only of the final moment when she would have her revenge. Within a minute, she could detect the frantic footsteps outside the room, the desperate pinging of the locks as the Nationalist leader ripped open the door, and then flung it behind him, several shots bouncing off it. After rapidly locking it from the inside, he approached his victim, pistol in hand. She would be his ticket to safety and perhaps more when he reached that protection. He climbed on the bed…

          In a flash, the skilled agent slashed the Vice-Commandant’s neck with the retractable blade. The move shocked him into dropping his firearm. Her second strike cut the other side of his throat, hitting the jugular vein. As the Nationalist leader fell from the bed, choking on his blood, she sprang to his side. Pulling down the scarf below her chin, she spat out the handkerchief from her mouth. She whispered the name of her grandfather and then revealed to him her real identity, leaving him quarry bug-eyed at the disclosure.

          The assassin completed her mission by plunging her weapon into the Vice-Commandant’s chest, hissing, “Looks like you failed to ‘bury the lede.’ Tomorrow’s headline will be your demise.”