The China Syndrome Read online

  THE COVERUP THAT COULD KILL US ALL.

  THEY, LIKE US, LIVE IN THE SHADOW OF TERROR.

  THEY, LIKE US, ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW.

  THE BEAUTIFUL REPORTER. THE TOUGH YOUNG CAMERAMAN. THE HAUNTED ENGINEER.

  NONE OF THEM A HERO UNTIL THEY UNCOVER...

  THE CHINA SYNDROME

  A NOVEL BY BURTON WOHL BASED ON THE SCREENPLAY BY MIKE GRAY & T.S. COOK AND JAMES BRIDGES.

  THE CHINA SYNDROME

  Burton Wohl

  Based on the Screenplay Written

  by

  Mike Gray & T.S.Cook

  and

  James Bridges

  THE CHINA SYNDROME

  A Bantam Book / March 1979

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1979 by Eyewitness, Ltd. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

  For information address: Bantam Books, Inc.

  ISBN 0-553-13017-X

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  About the Author

  ONE

  The air in the TV control room was neither rank nor sweet-smelling, cool nor warm, moving nor still. It was simply lifeless and in a way, dispirited. It had passed through too many ducts, too many fans and valves to retain that vital quality which we unconsciously associate with life.

  On this particular afternoon, the monitors in KXLA’s control room were reflecting Pete Martin’s wide-eyed, toothy good looks from every possible camera angle.

  Martin’s chief gift was a never-flagging boyish enthusiasm, an enthusiasm which he had parlayed with a protean voice into a $175,000 per annum contract with a five-year option.

  But it was not Martin’s dazzling incisors that commanded the attention of the crew in the dimly lighted control room. To a man, they were peering into their screens to catch every little movement of Kimberly Wells, the most recent addition to Channel Three’s news team.

  Kimberly was being fed in from a remote pick-up at the rehearsal hall of The Live Wires, a singing telegram company staffed by eager young musical performers who were trying to survive in Hollywood without waiting tables and parking cars. Their little business, based on the gimmick of a surprise “live” delivery of a message for a special occasion, was enjoying more than modest success. In a town dominated by “show” business, a cute busty chorine in a hot pants version of a bellhop’s uniform still managed to attract attention and earn spin-off jobs with one unexpected appearance. (A birthday telegram to Kimberly’s boss Mac Churchill from a cohort at another station had prompted this little human interest piece, Mac couldn’t wait for his old buddy to see this on the tube tonight. Mac was known for his oneupman ship.)

  Kimberly was holding her own amid a special kind of bedlam. Technicians were swarming around her checking lights and mikes. With both impatience and humor she swatted the lingering hands of a sound man pinning an RF mike to her blouse.

  “Studio B, this is remote,” she said with a noticeable trace of urgency. An odd assortment of tackily costumed people drifted into the room.

  A gawky bearded young man with a UCSB T-shirt showing under his gossamer “Swami” robes donned a pastel-blue turban and sat down in front of a set of bongo drums. A well-fed female in bangles and spangles was practicing some exotic movements that passed for belly dancing. On the sidelines, a young couple formally attired in tux and evening dress were vocalizing the opening bars of what sounded like opera. A station electrician rolled his eyes backward in mock revulsion.

  “Hey, what’s going on? Is anybody there? Mac, are you there?” Kimberly pleaded in a voice that sounded sultry when she slipped out of her professional demeanor.

  “Mac, here,” her boss answered absentmindedly. “What’s up?”

  “We need at least five minutes before you hit us,” she began. “Can you make it after the commercial?”

  “Can’t do it,” he said flat out. “This is the last section.”

  “Can you at least give us two?”

  Stopwatch in hand he answered, “We should be coming to you in forty seconds—”

  “You can’t,” Kimberly panicked. “We don’t have a cameraman.”

  “Where the hell is George?”

  “He’s taking a leak,” she replied matter-of-factly. “What do you want me to tell you. He locked the camera down before he left. This is a two and one-half-minute spot and it isn’t going to hold in a static shot.”

  Mac sighed with a decade of weariness in his voice and said to the director, “Give Pete the stretch. Remote’s not ready.”

  Kimberly took advantage of the pause to spell out her plan. “I want to start it on a tight shot of me. Then after I introduce them, pull back wide.”

  “No problem. Just get George back.” He added hastily, “And tell that belly dancer to keep it cool. I love her message but this is a family program. If she jiggles too much and pops out of that bikini top, we’re in big trouble. This show is live.”

  “Oh, Mac.” Kimberly sighed with a newly acquired weariness that came out of her own experience as a woman trying to operate professionally. The belly dancer (Kimberly knew from a preshow conversation) was a graduate student at UCLA and about to collect her master’s degree in broadcasting. She wanted to be a television news producer. Hah, thought Kimberly, wait’ll she applies to Mac for a job.

  While Mac was busy finessing the details of a smooth delay, his boss, station manager Don. Jacovich, and Jerry Faulks, the marketing consultant who had suggested Kimberly for the job, discussed the assets of their mutual choice.

  Preening like a proud parent, Jerry congratulated himself. “She looks great. I knew it. Just knew it.”

  Jacovich concurred, “Our noon ratings are up half a point since she’s come on.”

  “I know,” Jerry said a bit smugly. “Our research showed she’d do well in the L.A. market. She was being wasted in Sacramento. This girl’s got class—as well as a few more obvious assets. She could go all the way.”

  Jacovich agreed but inwardly felt a tinge of resentment. “All the way” meant network, meant New York. If she was that good, he’d only be able to hold onto her for a year or so. He’d cautiously signed her for only a year, with an option for another. Maybe he’d better renegotiate now. But, hell, you can’t hold a hot one with an ironclad contract. Better, he thought, he’d really use her, bolster his ratings, exploit her appeal, and eventually overexpose her. A bird in hand.

  Almost reading his mind, Jerry asked, “What do you think of the way she dresses?”

  “Fine, fine,” Jacovich nodded. Personally, he liked the way she looked, spoke, read copy, liked everything about her except that sometimes she got too serious.

  “Clothes could be sexier, I suppose,” Jerry admitted. “She sort of plays down her body but maybe she’s right. The effect in the end is very provocative because she never flashes any skin or wears clingy stuff. Keeps ’em panting without offending the wives.”

  “Right,” Jacovich agreed. “We’re using her on the ‘Evening News’ and highlighting her on the ‘Live at Noon’ show. Our weakness was daytime. I don’t want a knockout like Kimberly intimidating the
housefraus.”

  “Exactly,” Jerry said, adding, “when it comes right down to it, that hair is her on-camera I.D. Nobody in the business has hair like that. It’s dynamite.”

  “You don’t think it’s a bit much, then?” asked Jacovich conservatively.

  “Hell, no,” Jerry countered. “Maybe shorter. Not too much, men like long hair on their women. Would she cut it a little?”

  “She’ll do anything we say,” Jacovich said emphatically. “She wants to make it. She’s really serious about her work.”

  “She seeing anyone from the station?” Jerry asked unexpectedly.

  “I really don’t get involved with the private lives of my staff,” Jacovich answered icily.

  “Just wondering,” mumbled Jerry as they both turned to watch Kimberly run her fingers through her long red hair, moisten her lips with her tongue, and begin her on-camera dialogue.

  “What did you do the last time someone had a birthday? Did you send a card, candy, or perhaps flowers? Boring, huh? How about something a bit more imaginative? Here’s one idea that’s taking L.A. by storm.”

  Beside her, a uniformed fellow burst on the scene singing a Happy Birthday message. As he danced off-camera the opera duet descended on Kimberly, and she continued, “There’s one for every occasion. Maybe it’s your parents who are celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary and you’d like to send them an Operagram...

  “Or maybe you have a message that words cannot express...” the belly dancer and her accompanist slithered onto the scene.

  In the control room, Mac was pleased with her smooth delivery. It had just the ideal combination of enthusiasm and amused condescension that newspeople acquired after years of reading ludicrous copy. An assistant waved a telephone at him and signaled to pick-up. He grabbed the phone, keeping an eye on the monitor which featured a close-up of the nubile belly dancer doing her thing. Mac answered the voice on the phone in a distracted way he nodded while keeping his finger poised on a button that would punch the action onto another camera if the belly dancer got out of hand, or out of bra, as the case might be.

  “Uh, who,? Yeah. That’s right. She was the one who suggested it for a feature. She can handle it all right. Tell him it’s on and we’ll get back to him if there’s any hitch. I’m sure we can fit it in this afternoon.”

  Mac turned back to glance at Jerry and found him engrossed in the tiny screen. Kimberly’s hooked her own Pygmalion, Mac thought to himself. And this is a rating point that counts.

  “That’s a bellygram and words cannot express that,” she concluded. “This is Kimberly Wells, ‘Live at Noon.”

  “That’s it kiddies,” a technician called, yanking arcs and audio equipment out of their sockets with more speed than the set-up. “We’re off the air.”

  “Hey, Kimberly, schedule change,” the assistant director Tom called. “They just set another assignment for this afternoon.”

  “I don’t believe it. Just for once, I’d like to get through a whole day, even a whole morning, without having the rug yanked out.”

  “Hey, lady, I didn’t do nothin’. It’s Mac. He just got a call from that nuke plant. What’s it called, Ventana? We’re clear to go over there this afternoon and make some movies.”

  “Ventana? Really? Great. I’d just about given up on them. I think I first called them about a month ago. Who’ve we got for a crew?”

  “Richard and Hector.”

  “Richard! Terrific. They did the other segments. At least we’ll have continuity.”

  “And trouble. Your ex-bomb thrower had better be on his best behavior.”

  “Richard? Richard,” she protested, “is a political activist, not a bomb thrower.”

  “Same difference. Listen, there’s a McDonald’s out on the highway about three miles before you get to the plant. They’ll be waiting for you at 1:00 and you’re supposed to be out there between one and two. Now don’t shack up in any motels along the way....”

  “You really are a disgusting, stone-age flathead of a male chauvinist pig.”

  “You think that’s something,” Tom said, taking her microphone from her, “wait’ll you see me tap dance. Everybody back on the bus, Jimmie? Lee? Leave them naked ladies alone, you’ll get sand on your hands.”

  Kimberly eased herself into the front seat of the truck. There was, as there is in every mini-society, a pecking order in the group, and it was generally recognized that the newscaster, was accorded top position in that order, even though he or she was not able to plug in a jack or start up a spool of tape or turn on a light switch, and was practically useless for any human activity other than reading the news. It wasn’t much, Kimberly thought, but it did give her the time to repair her make-up, compose her thoughts for the next gig and even get in a nap once in a while.

  She felt good to be sitting in this truck, with these guys, barreling along the Pacific Coast highway. She had wanted to be where she was, had wanted it for a long time, schemed and fought and worked for it, and she wasn’t about to have late-blooming remorse. Ever since college she wanted to do something more with herself than walk up and down in front of jittery; horny, or arrogant fashion photographers wearing clothes that she couldn’t afford. She’d done that and all it had gotten her was a year and a half in analysis—which she could not afford—and a husband, ditto. The husband did have one advantage, however. As an advertising executive, bent on destroying himself and everyone around him, he knew several indestructible people, some of whom turned out to be in TV. It was to one of these, a TV news director, that Kimberly repaired when her erstwhile husband strayed from the marital nest.

  From a philandering husband to a TV news director. He was kindly, absent-minded, undemanding and saw to it that she got a job in the news room. Little by little, she worked her way up and out. Up the ladder and out of the office staff until she finally landed a spot on the news team in Sacramento. It took her a little more than a year and a half but she was finally spotted by a marketing consultant scouting fresh blood for the anemically rated KXLA. They broke her contract in one day and she was on a plane to L.A. by the weekend.

  And not the least bit sorry. Not that Los Angeles was Kimberly’s idea of nirvana. In truth, she really didn’t have an idea of nirvana. Two weeks in Montego Bay seemed like a pleasant notion, depending on who you were with. But what she really wanted and wanted very deeply, was to get to New York and be nothing less than anchor person on her very own show. If Barbara could parlay a lisp and a lot of chutzpah into a million bucks a year, then she, Kimberly Wells, could do the same. She didn’t have the lisp, but she had no shortage of whatever it was that came out as chutzpah, call it drive, determination, or just plain ambition.

  Having completed her make-up, along with a plastic cup of lukewarm coffee, she gave herself up, as she sometimes did, to free-floating fantasies about “the good life in New York.” It started out with a suite—no, a floor—at the Carlyle, a sherry and a shaggy mongrel dog waiting to greet her when she came in from her own network news show or acclaimed one-hour special on the new Pope or Muhammed Ali. There was a man somewhere around the edges of this fantasy, she was sure of that. But she wasn’t sure what he looked like or even if he would be important. When she came right down to it, there wasn’t a man, not anywhere she looked, who seemed to belong in her fantasy future. Maybe someday he’d come along, she thought, and comforted herself with the additional thought that, even if he didn’t come along, what the hell. This was a whole new age, and a woman didn’t need a man to complete her existence. A thorough professional, she fell into a doze when the van hit the freeway. A special kind of doze. It didn’t muss her hair or smudge her make-up. Kimberly Wells was ready to come out of the slot at running speed.

  She had no trouble spotting her crew when the van let her off at McDonald’s. Richard Adams, an intense young man with disorderly hair and a beard to match, sat at the wheel of a battered Ford Bronco. The 4-wheel drive looked as if it had spent the last three years submerged u
p to the floorboards in a salt marsh, being roosted on by sea gulls. It was half rusted away, battle scarred, salt encrusted, mouse infested, and it drove, because of a blown-out engine, like a shutter-banging bomb.

  Next to Adams sat Hector Salas, a chunky, smooth-faced chicano with shoulders the size and shape of a truck radiator. Salas’s manner was as amiable as his expression, which was a good thing on the whole, because a combination of all those muscles and bad temper would be dangerous to public order. Kimberly knew Salas to be an excellent sound man but she didn’t know him well.

  Adams, on the other hand, was someone she’d known awhile. They’d met when she was doing commercials, before she cared about being something more than just another pretty face. Richard wasn’t quite used to the ambitious change in Kimberly. It amused him. She was becoming a real proponent of the Establishment. He, on the other hand, was using the Establishment for a fast buck and no qualms about it. Richard was a regular organizer of civil rights marches, Viet Nam protest marches, free speech movements, campus disturbances, Greenpeace demonstrations, liberation movements of every kind and of every persuasion. Adams was not merely a cause-joiner, he was a riot-inciter, flame-fanner, activist, agit-prop, and establishment-critic. His head had more scars from police clubs, his dossier had more minor arrests on misdemeanor charges, his pad had housed more dissident refugees than Abbie Hoffman. Adams hung in there, doing his gigs as a freelance cameraman—gigs that weren’t hard to come by because there wasn’t another cameraman in Southern California who could set up a shot as quickly and capture it as well—while waiting for the right cause to come along.

  He took one look as Kimberly got out of the van and averted his gaze. She wasn’t the right cause at all. They’d had a little waltz together when she first came to town. They’d spent a little time, smoked a little, danced a little, laid back a little wine together and that was about as far as it ever got. Richard wasn’t about to settle for a vine-clad duplex with roses hanging over the Mercedes. And Kimberly wasn’t about to lose her hard-won status by shuffling up Laurel Canyon in a granny dress and bare feet after a spaced-out morning dozing over Bill Baker’s bean sprouts.