Treason by Newt Gingrich, Pete Earley Page A

to my story.”
    A crew member fiddled with switches on a console until images from the brooch came into focus on his monitor. He shot her a thumbs-up.
    â€œGood, because here she comes,” Kattan said.
    Major Brooke Grant was the first to exit the revolving glass doors, followed by Jennifer Conner and her Ghana-born nanny, Miriam Okpara.
    Kattan slid open the van’s passenger door. “Still good?” she asked as she stepped around the vehicle onto the sidewalk.
    â€œYes,” she heard through her earbud.
    â€œMajor Grant!” she called out.
    Brooke, who had been speaking to Jennifer, glanced over her shoulder at the figure approaching them from behind.
    â€œI thought it was you,” Kattan chirped, pretending she had simply been passing by. She extended her hand toward Jennifer as she neared them. “You must be Gunter Conner’s daughter.”
    Brooke stepped between them, blocking Kattan from Jennifer. As she did, her eyes swept the parking lot where the white van with D.C. plates and tinted windows was parked. The glass button in Kattan’s brooch confirmed Brooke’s immediate suspicions.
    â€œYou’re filming us,” she snapped. “Miriam, take Jennifer to the car. Now!”
    Grasping Jennifer’s hand, Okpara hurried toward Brooke’s Jaguar XF sedan, one of the few luxuries that she afforded herself.
    â€œHow dare you ambush me,” she said.
    Having overheard Brooke’s comments through the brooch microphone, the film crew emerged from their hiding place and started toward them.
    â€œIn America, you can film anyone out in public,” Kattan replied.
    â€œNo one with any ethics ambushes an underage child,” Brooke replied, turning her back as she walked toward her Jaguar sedan.
    â€œSpeak to me and I’ll block out her face,” Kattan said, giving chase. “I would have telephoned you, but you would never have agreed to an interview.”
    â€œYou’re right. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
    Kattan’s camera crew dashed ahead of them toward the car, but Miriam had already tucked Jennifer into its backseat and covered the teenager’s face with a shawl. Frustrated, the cameraman turned the camera on a visibly angry Brooke, who was now only steps away from the driver’s door.
    â€œGet away from my car,” she ordered.
    â€œYou owe me,” Kattan said. “I helped rescue that girl’s father in Mogadishu. I got him an ambulance.”
    â€œYou also broadcast a documentary that revealed where he was hospitalized in Germany and the Falcon murdered him.”
    â€œYou can’t blame me for your government’s lax security. I simply report the news.”
    â€œYou told the world I was on a personal crusade to kill the Falcon.”
    â€œAren’t you?” Kattan asked, happy her crew was filming Brooke hollering at her over the car top. “Don’t you want vengeance?”
    Brooke slipped into the Jaguar, pushed the car’s start button, and spun its console dial into reverse. Before its rearview camera had time to relay an image to the dash screen, Brooke hit the accelerator and the Jaguar shot backward, nearly hitting the camera operator. He yelped and leaped sideways as Brooke exited the parking lot.
    Checking her watch, Kattan said, “We need to hurry.” It was ten a.m., which meant it was six p.m. in Al Arabic’s main Dubai studio. With any luck, she would be able to broadcast a live report from the network’s Washington studio in time for the network’s most watched seven o’clock news hour.
    As the van sped east on the I-66 expressway, Kattan scribbled out her script, and by the time she hurried into Al Arabic’s bureau on Capitol Hill, she’d cleared her story with her editors and the government censors in the Dubai Media City compound, the hub for all broadcasts to the Arab world.
    Kattan dashed into her dressing room, where she