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    They had it.  They had the scoop.  If NBC or CNN didn't weasel in and steal it--better act fast.
    Harry stubbed out his fifth cigarette and sipped tepid tinto from a styrofoam cup.  He thanked the General's secretary and hung up.
    He called his cameraman Max, and told him to get his butt over to the Military Office of Public Diplomacy on the sixth floor of the Tequendama, to snag the cassette in person.  "And tell NewsView we got it, Max.  It's ours exclusively for six and seven; after that, everybody gets access.  So, they'd better make time for us."
    "Sure they will, Harry.  They'll lead with it." Max still sounded sheepish and deferential, taking down instructions.  Their first night in Bogotá, Max had visited a Colombian whorehouse, alone.  A teenager fixed him a drink spiked with burundanga; Max awoke the next day lying in a junk-filled lot by Avenida El Dorado, with a killer headache, minus his watch, wallet and pocket cam-corder.
    Harry had changed the story for NewsView, so Max wouldn't come off as such a horse's ass. But they docked him pay for the stolen equipment, and told Harry to keep an eye on him.
    His own wallet and passport safely stored in his moneybelt, his press card in his pocket, Harry headed down toward the street, to meet Max and the crew in a little park across from the Tequendama.  The hotel would serve as backdrop for his intro to the video.  The video, after all, was what mattered.
    A cool day.  The altitude no longer made him dizzy.  To the east, a sudden wall of lush green mountains rose up just beyond the city plateau.  He walked briskly up Carrera 7.  The Tequendama and the International Center were not far from his own hotel in the Candelaria.
    Jostling slum houses with sloping, red tile roofs gave way to skyscrapers--streets choked with pedestrians and honking traffic.  The Candelaria was quaint and picturesque, but the International Center, where the US troops holed up, was where the action was.  The closer he got, the more young American soldiers he saw stopping cars at checkpoints, patrolling the streets.
     The week before, Harry had persuaded NewsView to cover Brazil's last forty miles of untouched Amazon rainforest: not much of a story, but he had sensed that action in Colombia was imminent--and was the correspondent on hand.  He had a journalist's instincts, unlike the pretty boys and girls and aging Hollywood celebs who anchored at NewsView.  Plastic surgeons couldn't give them Harry's nose for news.
    The crew assembled by the little blue church across from the Tequendama as Harry arrived.  Max came down from MOPD HQ with a man in dress uniform who carried the tiny videotape in a bulletproof case.  The soldier handed the cassette to Harry; then he and five others staked out a loose cordon, rifles ready, around the crew; this was a war zone.
    "Harry, how the hell did we get this exclusive?"  Bill Patterson, his soundman, whispered through the headphones.
    "The profile of Colonel Whiting," Harry whispered back over the mike, mindful of the proud young men in uniform a    few feet away.  "And you thought I built him up like Moses coming down from the goddamn mountain.  Huh?"
    Bill rolled his eyes, as Harry smirked.  He had laid the flattery on pretty thick in that interview. With a pitchfork, in fact.  But here was the pay-off.  The Army rewarded journalists who played their way.
    Harry liked working for NewsView.  He'd left a small local network station and joined its shaky first year; now it had eclipsed CNN as the most watched 24-hour news station in the country.  NewsView emphasized happy news and tabloid news more than its competitor--hence the lightweight anchors.
    Harry was acknowledged as one of the few serious reporters. He enjoyed the prestige.  He especially relished times like these: when the eyes of America focused on some issue, and even NewsView had to bypass the favorite recipes of soap stars to cover a story of substance.
    Word came from New York; they would be the top story at six and seven!  Harry died and went to prime-time heaven--and came back to organize his intro.  No portable teleprompter--he did fine extempore.
    The crew watched the clip: a powerful scene, beautifully filmed.  Early that morning, Private Lionel Varick, an awkward, gangly, seventeen-year-old Nebraskan, was seen making his way through a poor barrio.  Abruptly, an M-19 gunman opened fire on a newspaperboy shouting out headlines about liberation from the drug lords, thanks to US intervention.    
    The crew caught their breath as Private Varick, in one fluid movement, threw himself in front of the child, returning the sniper's fire.  The thug, a red bandana concealing the lower part of his face, took cover behind a public statue of Simon Bolívar on horseback.  Varick shot the terrorist, saved the boy and died a hero's death.  Harry composed suitably sober remarks to eulogize the young soldier.
    On a table to his right, out of range of Max's camera, a monitor showed the studio broadcast from Manhattan--what people all over America saw in their homes.  After the long commercial break, the drum roll and music of the six o'clock news hour began, with a deep voice announcing a special report on the intervention in South America.  They cut to a close-up on Chip Andrews, the smiling, blow-dried anchor. Harry had learned to hide his contempt around Chip; viewers seemed to eat him right up.
    Now the little fop attempted to look grave.  "Good evening.  Today is the fifth day of Operation Just Say No, and the last few members of Colombia's outlaw government are    
expected to surrender soon.  General Brewer has announced a new and democratic election, free of the influence of the Mira drug cartel, to get the country back on track.  But
first, let's go, live, to Bogotá, where Harry Lansing is covering a tragic, fast-breaking story."
    The lighting guy was having difficulties, but came through with the right kind of spot as they cut to Harry.  He stood, craggy and grim in his flak-jacket, the proud hotel behind him.  "Chip, early this morning, Private Lionel Varick became the fourteenth US casualty of Operation Just Say No. He was patrolling the war-torn streets of Bogotá, helping to keep things orderly and calm . . ."                                                                                                        

    The video was cued and playing, broadcast direct from their little VCR to the New York studio; they watched on the monitor, as Harry narrated America through it.
    "The newsboy's papers spoke of US protection," Harry concluded.  "Private Varick died proving that the United States of America keeps its promises."  He paused for a beat. "Back to you, Chip."
    And they were off the air.  A few in the crew heaved audible sighs; everyone relaxed.  Sandwiches were brought from the hotel.  The liaison from the MOPD came down with some personal info about Varick's family and high school sweetheart.  This was good; Harry could change his spiel at seven.
    Representatives from two networks, and one from CNN, reached the Tequendama within ten minutes.  They flew upstairs to plead with the military brass for the footage--then charged out as a group, furious, demanding to know how NewsView had gotten this exclusive, shouting obscenities before driving off.  It amused the crew, and put them in an even better mood.  They looked admiringly at Harry, glad to work with a winner.
    Though, God knew, the racket had been different when Harry first started.  When he was an earnest kid with sideburns at journalism school, everybody had wanted to be an investigative reporter, a Woodward or a Bernstein.  They  dreamed of going it alone, detectives blowing the lids off hot government scandals . . . and they all were addicted to newsprint.  Back when TV news was actually somewhat serious, they all had wanted to write.
    But times change, people change . . . the trick now was getting access to footage and VIPs.  And if you bucked the brass--took the military to court, for instance, for imposing censorship in an operation like this--you were out of the loop.  Audiences needed to be fed a steady diet of exciting, focused, sexy images.  It kept them tuned in, kept the parent company and the sponsors happy.
    Now that the military had crews to shoot clips like the Varick piece, they did half the work during wartime.  In cordoned-off zones, they shot mouth-watering footage of battles and airlifts, edited, sometimes even scored it with
stirring music--and quickly dispatched it to stations currently in favor, for a very reasonable fee.  A hell of a lot cheaper, a hell of a lot safer than every civilian newscrew scrounging around independently in a war zone, looking for something worth filming.
    Harry didn't necessarily like all the changes.  But he was still in the moment.  Old farts maundering on about the ideals of Edward R. Murrow wound up on local public access stations in Wichita.  That was not for Harry.   
    The seven o'clock broadcast went smoothly.  Their competitors' emissaries raced back into the hotel for the footage--now available--as the NewsView people gathered their gear.  Bill Patterson offered to buy Harry a drink in the bar of the Tequendama.
    "Thanks, Bill, but I gotta stretch my legs.  Maybe I'll catch up with you guys later.  Just keep tabs on Max," he joked.
    The cameraman laughed nervously.  "Don't worry about me. I'm a good boy now.  I know I'm on parole."
    The crew crossed the street, toward the shoeshine boys and newstand outside the International Center.  Harry walked in the other direction.  They stayed at the Tequendama, comforted by the visible Army presence.  Harry's hotel wasn't fancy, but featured no security check on phone calls     
    Taxis honked at him; he ignored them.  He stifled a twinge of scorn for his colleagues.  He didn't think much of reporters who came to a foreign country and never left the cushy hotel.  Though to blunder into danger as Max had was equally stupid.
    Harry figured he could look out for himself.  He carried a tiny automatic in his flak-jacket, and the Army was omnipresent.  Things seemed quiet, for the moment.  He had spent his first few days getting to know Bogotá: herds of busetas and ancient taxis, litter-strewn, crowded streets,  gangs of boys and youths lounging in front of public buildings, with handkerchiefs full of emeralds to sell.  The old Spanish architecture of the Candelaria, the amazing Museo de Oro.  A strange, exciting city.
    The only areas he was denied access to were some of the poorest barrios, where shelling was rumored to be severe. None of the press were allowed in yet.
    People could tell he was a gringo.  Some glances were hostile--some fearful.  So far, he had avoided confrontations.  He walked south down Carrera 7, past young male prostitutes in front of an ugly commercial center.  The girls, he knew, hung out mostly over on Carrera 13.
    A street vendor was hawking hot buñuelos; the smell turned Harry's head.  He ordered two; deep-fried, salty cheeseballs had never tasted so good.  He lingered to smoke a
cigarette and talk.  In serviceable Spanish, he asked the vendor about the Occupation.  The guy seemed reluctant to talk politics.  Harry pressed him.
    "The guerrilleros have taken up arms again," the man said at last.  "Attacking Bogotá.  And this new government is corrupt.  I did not vote for them.  But Colombians should decide the fate of Colombia!"  This last declaration was spoken with a bit more fire, which the man instantly seemed to regret.  "But I work here at my stall.  I mind my own business."  He turned away.  
    Harry finished his smoke and wiped off his hands.  Hard to say exactly what had triggered the invasion.  Sure, the new government ignored cocaine-processing in the southern jungles--but so had those before them.
    Probably more important, this was not the party Washington had wanted to win--and they had committed flagrant electoral fraud.  The FARC terrorist bombing of the US ambassador's house had been the pretext for sending in the 82nd Airborne; seven US citizens died in the blast.  But once in, how to get out?
    Party feuds and terrorism had begun here during the bloody "Violencia" decade in the '40s . . . Harry had been reading up on history in his hotel, calling up texts from US libraries on his mini-laptop.  Reviled as the world's dope dealers, Colombians still resented the swiping of Panama by
the US for its canal.  They bore the present Occupation with sullen hostility, which sometimes flared into outright rebellion.
    Though bogotanos were not known as subdued, they kept indoors.  In rich neighborhoods, men in gray suits and society women smiled and waved at the GIs.  Months of US embargo had blasted the economy; the invasion meant sanctions would end soon.  But poor people seemed fearful, cautious. Drunks stared down at their bottles, instead of shouting piropos at pretty girls.  There were no Lottery ticket sellers.  The shoeshine boys hung out near hotels, not on the carreras.  Many small tiendas bore Cerrado signs, over iron gratings, heavily padlocked.  Had the owners fled Bogotá? Were they expecting rioting, or violence?
    Guarding a corner Dutch bank, several lanky, adolescent Colombians with semi-automatics paced and glanced around skittishly.  Some local army and police units still performed their duties--elements the US brass felt could be trusted. Others were disbanded, and attempts by dangerous Colombian officers to dress in civvies and melt into slums were being "dealt with."
    Harry entered a run-down bar.  From the door he caught a whiff of absinthe.  Perhaps alcohol would loosen the tongues of the men inside, and he might get more of the local perspective . . .
    Bad move.  Silence fell.  The men at the bar glared at their little shot glasses of aguardiente.  Those at the scattered tables whispered.  He'd killed whatever atmosphere the joint might have had.  He ordered a beer, drank the watery liquid quickly, threw a handful of pesos onto the bar, and left.
    As he headed along the calle near his hotel, he realized he was being followed, and glanced backward casually.  A nondescript, middle-aged mestiza woman, not shabby, not well-dressed, interchangeable with a thousand others in Bogotá.   
    She stared at him, holding down the corner of her blue sweater.  Unnerved by his experience in the bar, Harry wondered: was she concealing a gun?  Emeralds, drugs, some other black market goods?
    He turned to face her.  She jerked her head toward a shadowed store awning.  A set-up?  Was some goon lurking nearby?  Harry took a chance and followed her.  The woman moved closer to Harry.
    "Usted es soldado?"
    Harry shook his head.  "No.  Periodista."
    She seemed relieved.  She spoke so rapidly he had trouble following.  Something about . . . her daughter's first communion?  There had been a little party, she had rented a cam-corder to document the occasion, there was some commotion outside, her apartment was on the second floor, and she videotaped what happened . . . Would he be interested in buying this videotape?  It had good footage of a battle between a North American soldier and a local.
    "At what hour was the fiesta?" he asked.
    "Two in the afternoon.  Yesterday."
    Harry considered.  Army brass had not mentioned a skirmish the previous afternoon.  Obviously, he could not play the footage on the air, even if it was good; he might run afoul of the military censor just for possessing it.
    If he were caught.  After all, he wasn't at the Tequendama.  And the tape might clue him in to something interesting.  The team player and the journalist in Harry did battle.  The journalist won.  "Cuanto?" he asked the woman--then bargained her down.  Several minutes later, he was headed back to his hotel, a few thousand pesos poorer, another small object squirreled away in his flak-jacket.
    He climbed to the second floor; the rooms ringed the balcony above the old, colonial courtyard.  His room was simply furnished, but the TV got Miami cable.
    He hung a No Molestar sign on the door, and popped the cassette into the VCR.  The first twenty minutes were deadly. He fastforwarded through a sea of giggling little girls, dolled up in frilly white and pink, with balloons and flowers everywhere, telling himself he'd been suckered.  Almost as bad as Max.
    Then, abruptly, the little girls' faces changed.  Harry stopped the tape, rewound, and played it at normal speed. Shouting and jeering.  There was a dizzying blur of tilting walls and doorways as the camera was carried, and then he was looking down on a street scene, with a newsboy throwing stones, taunting an American soldier.  The kid was a poor marksman, but possessed a colorful vocabulary.  The soldier attempted to ignore him, and crossed the street.
    The kid followed; now their faces were visible.  Harry leaned forward on the bed.  Jesus, they were the kid and Private Varick!  The boy managed to bonk the soldier squarely on the helmet.  The soldier wheeled around, firing twice, not aiming at the kid.  Perhaps he meant to scare him.  The kid dropped his bag and ran.  Varick--it did seem to be Varick--fired again.  The kid was out of frame now.   
    Another shot rang out.  Varick crumpled, a dark stain spreading across his khaki back.  Loud gasps from the women and girls at the party watching, and someone began praying rapidly in Spanish.  The camera swerved again in a blur, to discover the killer.  An older man in a checked shirt stepped out from behind the statue of Bolívar, looking foolish, his eyes bugged out.  He stared at Varick, at the gun in his own hand, then turned and fled in the opposite direction.       
    The camera followed his flight.  More blurry, jerky motion--Harry thought he could make out, for a moment,
an MOPD cameraman in fatigues filming the street scene.  US soldiers ran after the assassin.  More shots.  But the amateur camerawoman who had filmed this was already focusing again on the corpse of Private Varick, now in a puddle of blood, as medics swarmed.  It was impossible to know if the man, or the boy, had gotten away.
     Another camera blur--then, abruptly, loud, snowy static. The end of the show.  Harry switched off the VCR, feeling numb.  What the hell . . .
    The same scene, the same street, and two of the principles from the clip he had introduced on NewsView.  This was a different angle, and greenish, messy, amateurish videotaping . . . but that should have been the only difference.
    Except it wasn't.  These events were as messy as the camerawork.  Instead of saving the boy, Varick fired at him. And the assassin had become a different person altogether, not M-19, and the story never resolved itself.
    Slightly nauseous, Harry shakily lit a cigarette.  A small voice told him to destroy the videotape and dispose of it.  Pretend he'd never seen it.  This wasn't what he got paid to do--run around buying illegal footage that could jeopardize the relationship with General Brewer he had painstakingly built.  And maybe it was a trap?  Maybe that housewife was really M-19, or FARC, or worked for the drug lords, and they somehow staged and filmed this--to confuse him?  Changed the faces of actors?  God knew the Mira cartel had money . . .
    A breeze blew in from the dark night outside his window. Salsa and merengue music blared up from cars crawling the streets below.
    Then again.  He had heard MOPD cameramen mention something in the Tequendama bar, days before.  "Video Enhancement."  They clammed up when they noticed Harry listening in.
     Morning found him wandering, almost pacing, the stone floor.  Outside, a drizzle fell.  A nice room: adobe walls chalked white, a wooden desk, wooden shutters, a skylight in the ceiling, where the rain pattered softly.  He really did enjoy his job.  Sure it was lonely, and brainless . . .   
    But, sometimes, he felt, he was able to raise the level of discourse on NewsView just a bit.  Slip in some real, hard, journalism, when nobody was looking.  He had a weatherbeaten quality they liked, that enhanced their credibility, and they let him take liberties.  Work without a teleprompter, be his own on-line producer, stay in an isolated hotel  . . .  He'd been handsomely paid, and allowed to write his own ticket, for years.
    It was a lot to throw away.  He ordered a pot of tinto from room service and called Bill Patterson at the Tequendama.
    "Bill, when are we on this morning?"
    "Jesus, Harry, do you know what time it is now?  They don't need us for another three hours."
    "Sorry I woke you."
    "You nut.  Listen, Harry, Max says the MOPD sent him some footage last night--planes taking off from a Navy carrier on the coast.  You figure we should go with that?"
    "Sure, sounds great.  Um, Bill?"
    "Yeah?"
    "Can I run a hypothetical by you?"
    "Uh oh," his friend joked, wary.  "Okay, shoot."   
    "If you had some information that could possibly piss off the brass, would you tell NewsView?"   
    Bill groaned.  "That's easy.  I would put it out of my mind, not bother New York with it, and go back to sleep. G'night, Harry.  See you in a couple hours."
    "G'night, Bill."  Harry hung up.  If some Army eavesdropper had listened in, Harry was already on somebody's shit list.  But that still didn't solve his dilemma.   
    Four hours later saw them on the air.  Harry introduced the footage of sleek planes, gleaming in the sun as they rose, with proper enthusiasm.  The planes flew south, into what remained of the Colombian rainforests (larger than Brazil's) to scout out cocaine refineries.  That segment aired periodically throughout the day.  Other channels had similar footage of the planes.
    Meanwhile, there was another story to shoot.  Arriving in Bogotá, Harry had asked to interview troops on the ground; now NewsView had approval to speak with five soldiers the  Army selected.  Max filmed them telling Harry how good it felt to help Colombians take back their country and turn it into a narcotics-free democracy.  He, Max and Bill edited it down to a nice, quickie "feel good" piece.  Human interest.
    Bill looked at him oddly, but made no mention of their early-morning conversation.  They would air the piece at seven.  Not a top story, but before the first commercial during NewsView's most heavily watched hour.  Harry held the cassette with the interviews in his hand, and found that the hand was shaking.  If he said one word about his mystery video, NewsView could kiss goodbye any future interviews with soldiers--or any cooperation from the military chiefs.  He could just introduce this feel-good tape.  Simple.  He had the spiel in his head.
    Max shot the Tequendama from a different angle, for variety.  Again, a squadron protected them and their equipment.  The lighting man fussed.  The monitor showed Chip Andrews at his most adorably upbeat.  "Plenty of folks are missing loved ones in Operation Just Say No.  Those brave young men and women are in all our prayers.  Today, Harry Lansing got the GI view of what's going on in Colombia. Harry?"
    Harry cleared his throat.  The light was in his eyes, and his forehead perspired, as he glued on a newscaster's smile.  "Chip, as important as that is, I want talk about an exciting, new technique the Army's using, called Video Enhancement--like 'morphing.'  Amazingly, computers alter videotaped events; they can make people on film say things they never said, do things that never happened.  They change faces and reinvent history!"
    He shoved a small cassette into the machine--a job for someone off-camera.  Instead of the first baby-faced soldier appearing, the footage was greenish, awkwardly shot, and showed a child throwing stones at a soldier.  Harry dropped his happy tone.  "This is what really happened to Private Lionel Varick two days ago--not yesterday morning.  It's confused and complicated, with no pat resolution--" A soldier near him whispered urgently into his radio--"but people have a right to know."
    The soldier barked a signal.  Two men walked over, grabbed Harry under the arms and lifted sharply, dislocating a shoulder.  He grimaced as they hustled him off: "Back to you, Chip."  His last impression, as he was pulled toward the Tequendama, was of Chip Andrews' face on the monitor, mouth open, a vision of strawberry-blond panic.  Poor Chip.
    Harry's story had been all guesswork, no confirmation. But the rapid Army response seemed to indicate he'd hit pretty close to the mark.
    They marched him through the lobby.  One pressed for the elevator.  Harry figured he'd be interrogated on the sixth
 floor, then arrested and shipped back to the States.  By airing raw footage, he had violated the National Security Act authorizing military censorship.  A big trial, First Amendment issues brought up; maybe it would make the Supreme Court?  America had seen enough to know that what had aired the night before had been a lie.  He'd sent the original of the cassette, and several copies, back to the States, as evidence.
    Harry's shoulder hurt like hell.  As he rose in the elevator, a guard at either side, he knew he was really going down--but he'd go down in flames!  Go down as what he sometimes saw himself as being; in the strange, plastic world of American TV news, he was the very last journalist.