I wanted the prologue to subtly introduce the main characters, and also describe how the election of the pope in 1978 would culminate – with the canonization of a new saint, Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in nearly five centuries.
The central feature of the prologue is the interview conducted by the fictional Bob Bishop of CNN with the American couple he finds in St. Peter’s Square. The concept for this interview, and its conduct, whether fully accurate or not in technical terms, came from a story I was told by a friend who worked in the White House during the first years of the Clinton administration.
He told me of a situation regarding a trip former President Jimmy Carter, at the request of President Clinton, took to North Korea in June 1994 to discuss a nuclear deal with the North Korean dictator, Kin Il Sung. However, in his discussions with the Koreans, Carter evidently went past the instructions he had received from President Clinton, and the word came back that Carter was about to announce something on CNN. Clinton desperately wanted to talk to Carter before he went on television, but without any routine communications to North Korea, or even any clear idea where Carter actually was, there seemed to be no way to reach him. The chief of the White House Communications room was about to pull his remaining few hairs out, when it occurred to him that CNN obviously had a crew in North Korea with Carter, and had some sort of satellite feed to contact them. How else was Carter going to go on the air?
The White House communications chief called Tom Johnson, then the President of CNN, and asked – or perhaps demanded – that Clinton be patched through the CNN network to Carter in North Korea. This happened and Clinton talked Carter into making no announcements or pronouncements beyond describing in general terms what he had discussed with the North Korean leader.
The communications capabilities of the modern broadcast media are impressive. And on some occasions, such as the circumstance in 1994, their extra-territorial, international status provides capabilities that even the White House can’t routinely match.
