LITMIR.BIZ

      Sleep eluded her.

      She lay in the darkness, trying to empty her head of every thought, troubling or otherwise, but this seemed to be an impossibility. Bone-tired though she had been earlier, when she had stripped off her clothes and fallen into bed, she was now wide-awake. All of her senses were alerted; she strained to catch any untoward sounds from outside. At this moment, though, very little noise penetrated the walls of the plush hotel suite. It was curious, ominous, the silence outside.

      That’s where I should be, she thought. Outside.

      Certainly that was where she belonged, where her heart and mind were. Outside … with her crew: Jimmy Trainer, her cameraman, Luke Michaels, her sound engineer, and Arch Leverson, her producer. They usually hung together most of the time, like any good news team on foreign assignment.

      It was rare for her not to be with them, but tonight, over an early dinner, she had been so weary, her eyelids dropping after several nights with little or no sleep, that Arch had insisted she grab a few hours in bed. He had promised to wake her in plenty of time for her to prepare for her nightly broadcast to the States. Common sense plus fatigue had prevailed; she had agreed, only to find herself unable to relax and drop off the moment she was between the cool sheets.

      She was tense, expectant, and she knew the reason why. Her intelligence, judgement and instinct, combined with her experience as a war correspondent, were all telling her the same thing. It was going to happen tonight. The crackdown that had been in the wind for days would be tonight.

      Involuntarily, she shivered at this foreknowledge, turned cold. Blessed with a prescience that was unusual, she knew better than to doubt herself, and she shivered again at the thought of bloodshed. Blood would be spilled if the People’s Army moved against the people.

      Pushing herself up against the pillows, she switched on the bedside lamp, glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes before ten. Throwing back the covers decisively, she got out of bed and hurried across the floor to the window. Opening it wide, she stepped out onto the balcony, anxious to see what, if anything, was happening in the streets of Beijing.

      Her suite was on the fourteenth floor of the Beijing Hotel, overlooking Changan Avenue, also known as the Avenue of Eternal Peace, which led into Tiananmen Square. Below her on this wide boulevard, illuminated by cluster lights shaded in green, people were moving along steadily in a continuous flow, like trout heading upstream. As they passed through the pools of light cast by the lamps, she saw that they were mostly wearing white shirts or tops; they moved so quietly, so silently, she found this to be quite amazing.

      They were making for Tiananmen Square, that vast rectangle of stone dating back to 1651 in the early Qing Dynasty, built to hold a million people in its one-hundred-acre expanse. She had come to understand that it was the symbolic heart of political power in China, and over the centuries the square had been the site of some momentous events in the country’s turbulent history.

      She sniffed the air. It was clear, held no hint of tear gas, or the smell of the yellow dust that perpetually blew in from the Gobi Desert and was normally all-pervasive in the congested capital. Perhaps the light wind was carrying both smells away from the hotel, or perhaps tear gas had not been used tonight. Glancing up and down the long avenue quickly, her eyes shifted back to the crowded pavement below her balcony and the people walking towards the square in such an orderly fashion. Everything appeared to be peaceful, and certainly the military were nowhere to be seen. At the moment.

      The calm before the storm, she thought dismally, turned, and went back into the suite.

      After switching on the rest of the lights in the bedroom, she hurried into the adjoining bathroom, where she splashed cold water on her face, patted it dry with a towel, and began to brush her hair in swift, even strokes.

      The face surrounded by the soft blonde hair was somewhat wide with a strong jawline, but its individual features were classical, clean cut, well defined - high cheekbones, straight nose, pretty mouth, chin that was firm and resolute without being pugnacious. The eyes, set wide apart under arched blonde brows, were large and clear, their colour a light sea-blue that was almost but not quite turquoise. The features came together to create a face that was unusually attractive, lively with vivid intelligence and humour, highly photogenic. In her bare feet, as she was now, she stood five feet six inches tall; slender of frame yet surprisingly strong, she had long legs and possessed a willowy grace.

      The young woman’s name was Nicole Wells, known as Nicky to the world at large. But her family, crew and closest friends affectionately called her Nick most of the time.

      At thirty-six she was at the height of her profession, war correspondent for the American Television Network, headquartered in New York. Renowned as a brilliant investigative reporter as well as a chronicler of war, and respected for her spectacular coverage of world events, she had a reputation for being courageous and intrepid. On camera she was charismatic: she had become a genuine superstar in the media.

      Nicky put down the brush, pulled her hair straight back into a pony tail and anchored it firmly, before reaching into her makeup kit for a lipstick. Once she had outlined her mouth in pink, she leaned closer, grimacing at herself. She looked washed out, pallid, without makeup, but she was in too much of a hurry to start applying it. Besides, she was certain she would not be on camera tonight. When martial law had been declared on 20 May, almost two weeks ago now, the Chinese government had turned off the satellite; furthermore, television cameras had been banned in the square. No more live-spot location shots without that satellite feed or Jimmy behind his camera. At least not in Tiananmen Square, and that’s where the story was - at the centre of the action. Once again, she would have to make do with a phoned-in report.

      Swinging away from the mirror, Nicky returned to the bedroom, where she dressed rapidly in the clothes she had shed only a brief while ago: loose, beige cotton trousers, a blue cotton T-shirt, and a short-sleeved safari-style jacket which matched the pants. This was her standard uniform when she was abroad on assignment in the summer; she always packed three identical safari suits, plus a selection of T-shirts and man-tailored cotton shirts to add contrast colour to the suits, and for the benefit of the camera.

      After she had slipped her feet into soft brown leather loafers, she went to the closet and took out her big shoulder bag, brought it back to the table. This was a commodious carryall made of some sort of sage-green waterproofed fabric; it contained what she laughingly referred to as ‘my entire life,’ and she rarely went anywhere without it when she was on foreign assignment. Now, as she always did before going out, she unlocked it, double-checked that her ‘life’ was indeed safely inside the bag. Passport, press credentials, plastic money, real money including US dollars, Hong Kong dollars, English pounds and the local yuan, door keys for her Manhattan apartment, world address book, a small cosmetic bag containing toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, makeup, eye drops, makeup mirror, hairspray,

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