Flirting with Danger by Siobhan Darrow

Gamsakhurdia himself. It didn’t seem like such a hot idea to me. Georgians may be gentler than your average combatants, but people were still getting shot. Just that morning Jane had come down to breakfast shaken up. A stray bullet had pierced her bedroom balcony in the night, missing her by inches, but breaking her window. She was undaunted, arguing that the rebels we were with would not fire on us if we crossed the square to reach the Parliament, while those holed up on the other side would know we were journalists. Perhaps the president’s supporters would figure that nobody else in their right mind would attempt to run across the square dividing the two sides, even though plenty of people had come out to watch the fighting. As I would see in later wars, an incredible voyeurism draws people out to see the action, risking their lives. Crowds gathered on street corners to watch, at first tentatively, then inching closer for a better view. When the shooting moved too close and the bullets started ricocheting past their heads, they scattered. One day we came into rebel headquarters and found Coco’s wife, Nina, there. She too wanted to see the action.
    I was terrified at the thought of crossing the square, but as the producer and only Russian speaker, I couldn’t let Jane and Christiane go alone. Coco tried to talk us out of it, but then, since we were his guests, insisted on coming too. It occurred to me how terrible it would be to have to explain to his widow and orphaned children that he had been killed because he was trying to be a good host to his crazy guests. But we were off.
    Christiane went first, then Jane, then me. Coco came last. One by one we ran across the fifty yards of no-man’s-land into the besieged Parliament. I was so terrified I couldn’t even tell if anyone fired or not. I was breathless, immensely relieved to get to the other side alive. But my euphoria was short-lived, as it dawned on me thatwe’d have to run across the square again to get out of there. First, however, we had to try to get this madman to talk to us.
    Gamsakhurdia’s followers were surprised to see three women and Coco show up uninvited into their lair. Being Georgians, they could do nothing else but welcome us and offer whatever food they could scrape up. They rustled up some tea and grizzled salami sandwiches, eager to share what they had even though they were surrounded and had few provisions. It was Christmas day; the first of many I’d spend embroiled in a news story. I looked around this Parliament-cum-bunker at these mustached men armed to the teeth lounging about on sandbags. I loved Russia and always wanted to tell its story, but I had never expected this job to entail such personal risk. I wondered if I would ever get used to it.
    We waited for hours, and finally Gamsakhurdia agreed to see us. He seemed deranged, with the crazed “I’ll stop at nothing” look in his eyes often seen in guerrilla leaders or revolutionary zealots. As we shot our videotape, he rambled on and on. It almost didn’t matter what he said: we had scored a major coup just getting an interview with him and being able to report his side of the story under such trying circumstances. In a blur, we ran back across the square to the rebel side of the street. We had been shipping our stories by air out to Moscow with fleeing Georgians, who were generally happy to carry a tape out for us for fifty dollars. When we got back to the hotel to edit our exclusive story, we learned the airport had just been shut down.
    Our ever-resourceful Coco found someone willing to make the treacherous five-hour drive through the mountains to the airport in Sochi, the nearest city, to get our story out. Our producers in Atlanta were thrilled. However, we knew that although we had scooped the competition, it would take half a day for our tape to get out and on the air.
    It was obvious that we should keep our scoop secret from competing television crews, especially after