to repeat myself, but it's probably too late to change the TelePrompTers."
"And to repeat myself, that won't be necessary. None of this would be necessary if you hired writers who could spell the word journalism, or even knew its basic precepts."
"You print-types, or should I say, you refugees from print who can now afford joints in the Hamptons with swimming pools, always complain."
"I went to the Hamptons once, Manny," said the handsome, silver-haired Wagner while continuing to edit the sheets of copy, "and I'll tell you why I won't go there again. Do you want to hear?"
"Sure."
"The beaches are filled with people of both sexes, either very thin or very fat, who walk up and down the sand carrying galleys to -prove that they're writers. Then at night they gather together in candlelit cafes to extol their unprintable scribblings and exercise their egos at the expense of unwashed publishers."
"That's pretty heavy, Frank."
"It's pretty damned accurate. I grew up on a farm in Vancouver where, if the Pacific winds brought in sand, it meant the crops wouldn't grow."
"That's kind of a leap, isn't it?"
"Perhaps, but I can't stand writers, on television or otherwise, who let the sand pile up between the words.. .. There I'm finished. If there aren't any news breaks we'll have a relatively literate broadcast."
4 4Nobody can say you're humble, Mr. Sincere."
"I don't pretend to be. And, speaking of humility, to which you're uniquely entitled, why are you here, Manny? I thought you delegated all criticisms and network objections to our executive producer."
"This goes beyond that, Frank," said Chernov, his eyes heavy lidded sad.
"I had a visitor today, this afternoon, a fellow from the FBI, who, God knows, I couldn't ignore, am I right?"
"So far. What did he want?"
"Your head, I think."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You're Canadian, right?"
"I am, indeed, and proud of it."
"When you were in that university, the .. . the
"University of British Columbia."
"Yeah, that one. Did you protest the Vietnam War?"
"It was a United Nations 'action," and, yes, I opposed it vociferously."
"You refused to serve?"
"We, were not obligated to serve, Manny."
"But you didn't go."
Chapter Twelve
"I wasn't asked to and if I had been, I wouldn't have."
"You were a member of the Universal Peace Movement, is that correct?"
"Yes, I was. Most of us, not all, of course, were."
"Did you know that Germany was one of the sponsors?"
"The young people of Germany, student organizations, certainly not the government. Bonn is prohibited from engaging in armed conflicts or even parliamentary discussions of the issues. Their surrender codified neutrality. Good God, despite your title, don't you know anything?"
"I know that a lot of Germans were part of the Universal Peace Movement, and you were a member in pretty obvious good standing.
"Universal Peace' could have another meaning, like Hitler's "Peace Through Universal Might and Moral Strength."
"Are you playing paranoid Hebrew, Manny? If so, I should remind you that my wife's mother was Jewish, which is apparently more important than if her father were. Therefore, my children, by extension, are hardly Aryan. Beyond that irrefutable fact, which disqualifies me from being part of the Wehrmacht, the German government had nothing to do with the U.P.M."
"Still, the German influence was pretty damned apparent."
"Guilt, Manny, profound guilt was the reason. What the hell are you trying to say?"
"This FBI man, he wanted to know if you had any ties with the new political movements in Germany. After all, Wagner is a German name."
"I don't believe this!"
Clarence "Clarr" Ogilvie, retired chairman of the board of Global Electronics, drove his restored Duesenberg off the Merritt Parkway at the Greenwich, Connecticut, exit nearest his home, or estate, as the press sarcastically called it. In his family's wealthier days, before the '29 crash, three acres of land with a normal-size pool and no tennis court or stables would have hardly constituted an estate.
However, because he had I come from money," he was somehow an object of scorn, as if he had chosen to be born rich, and his accomplishments were therefore deemed meaningless, merely the products of high-priced public relations which he obviously could afford.
Forgotten, or, to be less charitable, purposefully overlooked, were the years he had spent, twelve to fifteen hours a day, turning an only marginally profitable family company into one of the most successful electronics firms in the country. He had graduated from M.I.T. in the late forties, an advocate of the new technologies, and when he came into the family business, he had instantly recognized that it was a decade behind the times.