Terminal Transmission

In his Folcroft office Harold W. Smith changed channels the old-fashioned way. By hand.

It was total chaos down in Atlanta. The media had jumped on the least important part of the story-the disabling of KNNN's broadcast ability. The abduction of Cheeta Ching, ostensibly by Jed Burner, Layne Fondue, and an unknown confederate, had yet to break.

With luck, the news would not air until Remo had broken the bad news to the Master of Sinanju.

As for the mysterious Captain Audion, Harold Smith knew that whatever his carefully laid plans had been, Remo had thrown a monkey wrench into them by disabling KNNN.

He turned down the sound and went back to his computer, from which he was monitoring the land, sea, and air search for the missing KNNN Superpuma helicopter, initiated in utter secrecy by the President of the United States himself. The new chief executive was only too happy to pitch in and do his part.

He had been watching KNNN when it went down-and Harold Smith was the first person he called.

Chapter 15

Remo Williams didn't know what to do.

After he had eluded the Atlanta police, he had checked into a Decatur motel, showered, and walked the floor with the TV on.

Like a pack of sharks smelling blood in the water, the networks were providing continuous coverage of "The KNNN Knockdown," as BCN was calling it. Anchors interviewed anchors, who returned the favor. It was a feeding frenzy of interviews, and nowhere was the opinion of an ordinary citizen heard.

A Martian would have thought a religious temple had been desecrated.

There were standups, two-shots, and endlessly repeated film clips of the downed satellite dishes, frightened KNNN staffers, not to mention assorted fistfights. Interspersed with commercials that were three times more interesting than the coverage itself.

Remo had enjoyed none of it. Except the footage of Don Cooder and a nameless KNNN anchor wrestling for possession of a live mike.

The spectacle of Don Cooder under great stress reminded Remo of the time two years back when Cooder had talked a dippy physics student into building a live neutron bomb for a segment of 24 Hours, ostensibly on the easy availability of nuclear technology, but actually as a gigantic ratings ploy. Someone had stolen the bomb and detonated it. Chiun had been on ground zero when it happened, with Remo a helpless witness.

Chiun had survived. A miracle. The Master of Sinanju had burrowed underground to safety, but no one knew it. Not even Remo, who had mourned his Master for many long months, until Harold Smith had located the comatose old Korean under a California desert and resuscitated him.

In the aftermath of the incident, Remo had begged Smith to let him take down Don Cooder. Smith had refused. Remo had never been satisfied with his reasoning. So the sight of Cooder making a fool of himself on live television gave Remo a little solace. But not much.

As he paced, switching channels in the hope of getting some word of Cheeta Ching's whereabouts, Remo wrestled with what he would tell Chiun if the worst came to pass.

For nine months, the impending birth of the baby had haunted Remo. Chiun's insistence that Cheeta and the baby come to live with them threatened their long association. Now this.

There was no way Remo could tell Chiun the truth without destroying their relationship.

In the blackest part of the night Remo had called Harold Smith.

"Smitty. Any news on Cheeta?"

"A full-scale search has turned up nothing."

"What are they doing," Remo said heatedly, "playing with themselves? Tell them to get on it."

"Remo, it is the middle of the night, Georgia is very big and the helicopter is very small. It could have set down anywhere."

"Or crashed," Remo said dully.

"Or crashed," Smith agreed.

"I never thought I'd see the day I cared whether Cheeta Ching would live or die. This is a mess."

"Perhaps."

"What do you mean, perhaps?"

"You have knocked KNNN off the air. Jed Burner has fled for parts unknown. It may be the end of the crisis."

"Not my crisis. I'm holed up in a motel room and I'm thinking of staying here until this blows over."

"You might as well go home, Remo. There is nothing more to be done in Atlanta."

"So what do I tell Chiun?"

"The truth."

"He'll kill me."

"I rather doubt that," Smith said dryly. "The bond between the two of you is very strong."

"Yeah, well I definitely noticed it getting looser and looser the closer Cheeta got to her due date."

"Remo, your face was seen by unknown numbers of KNNN staffers. I would prefer you out of Atlanta and where I can reach you."

"I'll think about it," Remo said, hanging up.

A lot Smith knew. For twenty years, Remo had worked for the old skinflint. There were times when Remo thought he understood Smith, and there were times he despised the man. These days, their relationship was neutral. But Smith didn't appreciate the elemental moods of the Master of Sinanju, how he could turn on Remo over matters of honor or pride.

Remo Williams, the second greatest assassin on the face of the earth, was normally without fear. As he checked out of his motel, he was afraid for his future and desperately trying to come up with a convincing lie that would salvage it.

And as he inserted the key into his front door lock, two and a half hours later in Massachusetts, he was still wracking his brain.

Maybe, he thought, I'll tell him Smitty wants us to fly to Peru and dismember Maoists. Chiun would like that.

The Master of Sinanju was in the kitchen when Remo stepped in. He was making tea. He was humming. This was going to be rough, Remo knew.

Remo stepped in, and Chiun looked up.

The Trinitron stood on its island, black and mute.

Momentary relief washed over Remo. Chiun couldn't have gotten the news.

Remo opened his mouth, trusting to the first lie that emerged.

Instead, he found himself speaking the truth.

"I blew it, Little Father," he said contritely. "I'm sorry."

"This is understandable," Chiun said, setting out a celadon cup.

"It is?"

"You did not have your teacher to guide you to success. "

Remo blinked. "That's right, I didn't, did I?" It hadn't occurred to him. But there it was. An escape hatch.

"Have you broken the news to Smith?" Chiun asked, taking a second cup from the cupboard.

"Yeah."

"He is angered?"

"Actually, he thinks I solved the TV problem even if the bad guys got away."

"A partial success whispers of completeness in a coming hour," said Chiun, pouring the tea into both cups.

"Smith has practically the entire Air Force, Coast Guard and Navy looking for the guy now."

Chiun frowned. "He swam from you?"

Remo shook his head no. "Helicopter."

"Ah. Then you have an acceptable excuse, for we do not fly after helicopters. It is not in our job description."

"Yeah, yeah. Right. Maybe we should turn on the TV now," he added, thinking maybe it would sound better coming from someone Chiun couldn't reach out and strangle.

Chiun frowned. "The squawking of rude readers of the alleged news of this province would spoil such a morning as this."

"There might be news of Cheeta, you know?"

Chiun's wrinkled features quirked. "Is it not too early for the heads that talk?"

"When I left Atlanta, they were all over every channel. They think KNNN going down is big news."

"Then by all means, Remo. Turn on the television device. I have poured you a cup of tea."

"Thanks," said Remo, hitting the on button. The set warmed up, and Remo felt his heart climb into his throat. The last time he had left Chiun, he felt angry and hurt. Now all he wanted was not to be the one to break the bad news-whatever it was.

The set winked into life. And almost immediately winked out again.

"What's wrong with this piece of junk?" Remo said, giving it a whack.

"I do not know."

"Have you been playing with the contrast knob again?"

"You make the pictures too light," Chiun sniffed. "It is bad for the eyes if they are not made to work."

"Well, I don't like it dark," said Remo, turning the contrast knob. The picture lightened. In one corner. There, emerging from the shifting from high contrast to lower contrast, were two mocking white letters:

NO SIGNAL.

"Damn!" said Remo.

Chiun looked up from his tea. He frowned.

"I thought you rendered the fiends impotent," he said.

"I did. I thought I did. Wait a minute, maybe this is a recap of the blackout footage." Remo changed the channel. The other channels were also black. They weren't hooked up to cable, so there was no way to tell what was happening there.

"Not now!" Remo moaned.

Chiun padded up to the screen, his tea forgotten. His facial wrinkles were gathering like storm clouds.

"Is it not a rerun?" he muttered darkly.

"Well, it is and it isn't," said Remo, running up and down the stations. "The out-of-state stations were just as black."

Then the telephone was ringing. Remo took it.

"Remo," said Harold Smith. "It has begun again."

"Yeah, and the timing couldn't be worse. I just turned on TV so Chiun and I could catch up on breaking news and the screen went dead."

"Remo, it is clear that Jed Burner's KNNN broadcast equipment is not responsible for this."

"Maybe not. But he's involved in this somehow, he and Haiphong Hannah. He's gotta be."

"That remains to be seen," said Smith.

"If he isn't, who else could it be?"

Suddenly, the TV began speaking in an electronically filtered voice.

"Do not adjust your set. The networks have refused to accede to my modest demands. So I am declaring a moratorium on all TV for the next seven hours. Or until my demands are met. I now return you to the Electronic Dark Age of"-an echo chamber effect cut in-"Captain Audioooonnnn. "

Then with Remo watching, the Master of Sinanju turned and hissed, "This is all your fault!"

"Huh?"

"You have failed," Chiun said loudly. "And because of your failure, I am deprived of all tidings of Cheeta Ching. "

"I'm sorry, Little Father. Maybe Smith can point us in the direction of the problem. You and I working together, we can probably solve this in a day."

"No. My place is at Cheeta's side. I must go to her at once."

"Oh no," Remo groaned, watching the Master of Sinanju hurry from the kitchen and float up the stairs to pack.

"Smitty," Remo hissed into the receiver. "You hear that?"

"I did."

"What do we do?"

"I do not know," Harold Smith said in a hollow voice. "But you must stay with Master Chiun and keep him from coming into contact with Don Cooder. The results could be catastrophic."

"They could be worse than that," Remo muttered, thinking that if there was anyone on earth the Master of Sinanju would like to snuff, it was Don Cooder.

Chapter 16

Don Cooder entered the newsroom of BCN's New York headquarters, bloodied but unbowed. He was holding a raw steak over one eye. London broil.

"Admiral on the bridge!" the floor manager called, after giving a sharp blast in the bosun's whistle.

"Let no one doubt Don Cooder's manhood after this day," Don Cooder said.

"Don!" the news director called, white-faced.

"No matter the danger, no matter the risks, if it needs reporting, Hurricane Don Cooder will report it," said Don Cooder.

"But Don."

"No buts! I know what you're going to say. Stow it. I may be head anchor, but in these veins flows the blood of a natural-born reporter. I can't help it. At times like these, I'm like a hound dog with a treed coon under a full moon. Call me country, but country is what made Don Cooder the knight of the remote newscast that he is."

With that, Don Cooder stormed in the direction of his office.

The news director was holding his arm leveled at the line monitor, where the tiny white letters No SIGNAL glowed faintly against the blacked-out screen.

"Does anybody want to tell him?" he said in a dispirited voice.

"What's the use? Until we're up again, what's the use?"

"What if we don't come up again?"

"I don't want to think about it," said the news director, his eyes dull and defeated.

"Hey, check this out. MTV is putting on a news bulletin."

Every man in the newsroom rushed to the bank of monitors.

A young girl in purple and silver hair was speaking in a spritely voice.

"Can you, like, stand it?" she was saying. "The networks are, like, having really, really major technical difficulties again. But chill out. You still have your MTV. So here's Fed Leppar with Petaluma."

On came a music video that compressed more scenes than War and Peace contains into 120 seconds of quick-cut disconnected plotiessness.

The news director snapped. "That's it! Nothing about the ransom demands? What kind of news bulletin is that?"

"Right now, the only game in town," said the floor manager, his eyes flicking along the other monitors.

Chapter 17

As the cab whisked them from Newark Airport to the BCN studios in the heart of Times Square, Remo Williams grew worried.

What would Chiun say when he found out the truth? Would he fly off the handle? Would he blame Remo? It was impossible to tell. Remo had seen the Master of Sinanju under every conceivable situation during their long association. But this-this was different.

Remo decided he would have to get control of the situation before it got out of control.

"Look," Remo told Chiun as Seventh Avenue flashed past. "We can't just barge in on Cheeta."

"Why not? She will be pleased to see me."

"Last time, she kept asking after me, remember?"

Chiun sniffed disdainfully and stared out the cab window. It was a sore spot with the Master of Sinanju. His infatuation with Cheeta Ching, even after her pregnancy, had not been completely reciprocated. On the few occasions when their paths had crossed, Cheeta had shown a strong interest in Remo-although she seemed unable to get his name right. Remo had chalked those incidents up to the supercharged pheromones his Sinanju-trained body constantly released. Still, for a woman carrying Chiun's child, her behavior was bizarre.

"And we're on assignment," Remo added.

"You are on assignment," Chiun sniffed. "I am on maternity leave."

"In your case, it's paternity leave, and did you clear this with Smith?"

"Emperor Smith understands these matters," Chiun said loftily. "He too is a father."

"In that case," Remo growled, "he understands a heck of a lot more than me. Anyway, we gotta treat this like an assignment. We can't blow it."

"I am not the blower of assignments in this vehicle," Chiun said.

"I won't argue with that-"

"Because you cannot," Chiun snapped.

"Okay, but chances are we're going to bump into Don Cooder."

Chiun's eyes narrowed and a slow hissing escaped his lips.

Remo said, "He's off-limits. Smitty said so."

"I will do what I must," Chiun said stiffly.

Inwardly, Remo groaned. His palms were actually sweating. He couldn't remember the last time they had done that.

The cab dropped them off at the studio entrance, and Remo got out first. He took the lead, Chiun following closely behind, his footsteps more quick than they normally were.

As they approached the security desk, Chiun called out, "What news of Cheeta?"

Remo's heart sank.

The answer came back. "None."

Chiun's features brightened. "Good. Then I am not too late for the joyous event."

Remo pulled a card out of a wallet that was stuffed with them. "Remo Neilson, FCC," he told the security guard. "I'm here about the blackout."

"That so? Any idea what's causing it?"

"We think it has something to do with hairspray buildup in the transmission equipment," Remo said with a straight face.

"Wow! Does that mean the anchors will have to shave their heads?"

"That's up to Congress," said Remo. "Point us to the guy in charge."

"You mean Don Cooder?"

"Who put him in charge?" Remo demanded.

"His agent." The security guard pointed. "Down the hall, take a right. then another right, then another right and again a right-"

"That's four rights, right?"

"Right. All the offices are strung around the newsroom. It's screwy, but that's the news."

Remo said, "Let's go, Little Father."

The guard looked at Chiun uncertainly, "He with the FCC too?"

"Korean version. We think this has international ramifications."

"No kidding? Damn shame they can't put the story out over the air."

The security guard allowed them to pass and Chiun got in front, his clenched hands held before him like an anxious hen.

"Cheeta will be overjoyed to see me," he squeaked.

Remo caught up and whispered, "Remember-let me do all the talking."

There was a palpable aura of depression in the corridors. Normally, Remo knew, a news operation was a bustling place. Here, staff moved slowly, faces white, eyes dispirited.

They passed the newsroom, visible through a curving pane of glass. It was dark, lit only by a handful of TV monitors. Only a few were working. A bunch of people were watching one in particular. Remo recognized the MTV logo up in one corner.

A man with rolled-up shirtsleeves ran in, waving wire service copy.

"Three more people have died of that new HELP virus out in California!" he shouted.

"So what?" a colorless voice shot back.

"But it's news!"

"If we can't put it out, it's trivia."

Remo and Chiun moved on.

A young woman in Levi's stepped out of an office, hugging a sheaf of papers to her chest.

The Master of Sinanju beamed. "Direct us, O television person, to the illustrious Cheeta Ching."

"I don't know where she is," the woman said. "Please excuse me. I have to get these to Don Cooder. It's his overnight ratings."

"We're going that way," Remo said helpfully. "We'll take it."

The girl hesitated and clutched her rating reports more tightly.

Remo smiled his disarming best and flashed his FCC card.

"It's okay. I know the numbers before anyone does."

"I guess it's all right . . ."

Remo took the reports and asked, "Which way to Cooder's office?"

The girl pointed down the corridor. "Take a left, then another left, then-"

Remove rolled his eyes. "Just give me a number."

The girl raised four fingers and said, "Five."

"His name on the door?"

"Of course," she said, walking off. "It's in Mr. Cooder's contract."

Remo took the lead, wondering what was going on. No one seemed aware that Cheeta Ching had been kidnapped. As he tried to figure out if this was good or bad, he began counting lefts.

The door marked DON COODER was at the fifth left, There was a star on it.

Beside it was a door marked CHEETA CHING. It had a star on it too-a smaller star.

The door was locked. As the Master of Sinanju cleared his throat nervously, Remo knocked.

There was no answer. Chiun put an ear to the panel, face collapsing.

"Guess she's hasn't shown up for the day," Remo said innocently.

Chiun stood looking at the door, frowning.

"She is an early riser. Why is she not here . . . ?"

"Maybe Cooder can tell us," Remo said quickly, thinking any port in a storm. He rapped on Cooder's door. "Remember, behave."

"I have given my promise . . ." Chiun said thinly.

"Get lost!" a voice snarled from behind the door.

"Ratings reports," Remo shouted. "Get 'em while they're hot."

The door flew open and the wild-eyed face of Don Cooder appeared. "How'd I do on the flyover?" he asked, reaching out like a starving man to snag the reports. Remo backpedaled, simultaneously flashing his FCC ID card.

"In the tank," he said, holding the ratings out of Cooder's clutching grasp. "Gotta talk to you about this TV blackout."

Don Cooder flashed his trademark smile. It looked as if every muscle in his body except his lips were concentrated on forming that thin-upped grimace. "Is it important? I'm powerful busy."

"How important is the fact that all TV is blacked out?"

"It is?"

"Don't you know?" Remo asked.

"Right now, it doesn't matter."

"Why not?"

Cooder checked his watch. "I don't go on until 6:30."

"That's one way of looking at it. Look, we want to talk to you about this blackout thing."

"All right. As long as it's off the record. I hate being interviewed. People always ask me about my ego-make that alleged ego."

They stepped into an office that made Remo think of an overgrown child's den. The wall were covered with posters of famous movie cowboys. Remo recognized one. It showed Tom Mix, six feet tall and all his bodily wounds marked and labeled.

On a long table sat a battered old typewriter side by side with an amber-screened computer terminal. There was a tiny brass plaque under the typewriter which said, Don Cooder's First Typewriter. Attached to the terminal was a silver foil sticker that said, WE HANG DATA THIEVES IN THESE PARTS.

Beside this stood a pedestal on which a copy of the Bible lay open.

Cooder took a seat behind his desk and adjusted on his smile. It still didn't fit.

"What can I tell you, Mr.-?"

"Neilson. Remo Neilson."

"And I am Chiun," said the Master of Sinanju in an arid voice.

Cooder blinked. "Chiun, Chiun, Chiun. Where have I heard that name before?"

"One hears the name Chiun in many places," the Master of Sinanju returned coolly.

Cooder crossed one leg over the other and took hold of a dangling boot. "I'm sure one does, but for some reason, I know that name."

The Master of Sinanju lifted a finger and pointed the long colorless nail at the open copy of the Bible.

"Amos 5:26. You may look it up."

"No need. I know the Bible by heart, practically. Let me see . . ." Cooder closed his eyes. " 'But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun, your images, the star of your god, which ye made to your selves.' "

"Huh?" Remo said. "That's from the Bible?"

"You may look it up if you wish," Chiun said blandly.

"I will," said Remo, going to the pedestal. He flipped pages until he got to the Book of Amos and read along, a frown came to his strong face.

"Hey! It's here!"

"Of course," said Chiun, eying Cooder coldly.

"Your name! It's in the Bible. How did it get there?"

"It was put there," said Chiun, eyes still locked with those of Don Cooder, "by the first of my ancestors who bore the proud name of Chiun."

Cooder was looking visibly impressed.

"I'm a religious man," he said. "Not many know it, but it's true. Happy to talk to someone with a name out of the Good Book." His squinty eyes flicked to Remo. "What did you say your name was?"

"Remo," said Remo, looking away from the Bible.

"Well, not all the good names found their way into the Good Book," and he laughed like a nervous spinster. "Now how can I help you God-fearing folks?"

"We're looking into the blackout situation," said Remo, stepping away from the Bible.

"Why ask me? I just read news."

Chiun interrupted. "What is that?" he asked, pointing to a carved wood statuette that occupied a prominent spot on Cooder's desk. It was of a woman in a long concealing garment and head covering.

"That? That's an embarrassing question to ask a Texas Baptist like myself. It just happens to be a saint."

"Looks like a nun," said Remo.

"That's right. You must be a Catholic boy."

Remo said nothing.

"This here's Saint Clare of Assisi," Cooder explained. "Probably kin to Saint Francis. Saint Clare is the patron saint of television, believe it or not. So designated by Pope Pius XII back in '58. I did a feature on her once. The Pope, God rest his soul, up and decided television was too powerful not be watched over from above." Cooder frowned. "Saint Clare must have been looking the other way when the FCC gave Jed Burner his broadcast license."

"You think Burner is behind this?" Remo demanded.

"Sure. He's got the most to gain. People can't watch free TV, they have to get cable. Makes sense, doesn't it?"

"It did until KNNN went down," Remo pointed out. "They're off the air and so are you."

"Don't ever go into journalism, friend. You wouldn't last a minute in this man's game. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Burner has his jamming equipment tucked away somewhere."

"Yeah. Well, I know enough to know that the jamming isn't coming out of Middle America."

"No?"

"It's coming out of Canada."

"What makes you say that?"

"That graph you showed last night. The center is Canada, not the U.S."

"You sure about that?" said Cooder, absently picking up the statuette of Saint Clare and rubbing her wimple with his thumb.

"Positive."

"You know, I'm glad you told me that."

"Why?"

"It kinda points me toward tall cotton."

"Huh?"

"Meaning I think I know who might be back of this jamming jamboree."

They waited for him to say it, and why he didn't, Remo asked, "Let's hear it."

"Can't. I have to protect my sources."

"Sources?" Remo said hotly. "I just gave you the major clue. You just said so."

"And I'm protecting you."

The Master of Sinanju slipped up to Don Cooder and, without exerting his frail-looking form, extracted the statuette of Saint Clare from Cooder's strong fingers. He held it up.

"The workmanship is good," Chiun said absently.

"Hand-carved. Did it myself," Cooder said proudly. "I used to whittle some in my short-pants days."

Then the Master of Sinanju closed both thin hands over the statuette and began squeezing. The statuette was of hickory. It made cracking and splintering sounds. The head of Saint Clare popped off and landed in Cooder's astonished mouth.

By the time he spit it to the floor like a hard plug of tobacco, the Master of Sinanju was pouring the remains onto the desk. It slipped from his fingers like sawdust. It was sawdust.

"I know that old trick," Cooder said, regaining his composure. "You slipped the real one up your sleeve."

"Uh-uh," said Remo. "What you see is what you get.

"I don't cotton to being threatened."

Remo folded his arms. "Cotton to it."

"Well," Cooder drawled, "since you two have highcarded me, I guess I can let slip a whisper." He lifted his hands. "As long as it doesn't go any further now."

Remo and Chiun glared and said nothing.

"I'll take your silence as acquiescence," Cooder said quickly. "The Canadians are back of this."

Remo blinked. "How do you figure that?"

"Ever been up there? They hate our TV. Always have. Spend half their days complaining about U.S. TV signals getting up there and polluting their culture. You want my advice? Start with Canada. But don't quote me."

"That's ridiculous," Remo said.

"Or," added Cooder, "you might check out own front yard for saboteurs."

"Meaning?"

Cooder dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I hate to speak ill of a fellow colleague, but war is war. Dieter Banning is as Canadian as, they come."

"Banning? His network is off the air too."

"I'm not blaming my good friends over at ANC, mind you. I'm saying that they may have a skunk in their woodpile. Catch my drift?"

"Skunks stink," said Chiun.

"That's it exactly. You two follow the smell and you'll break this plot as wide open as all outdoors. One thing though."

"Yeah?"

"If you crack it, I get an exclusive."

"No," said Remo.

Cooder lost his smile. "Not very neighborly of you," he muttered.

"Write a letter to the FCC."

"Count on it."

"Come on, Chiun."

"One question I would ask this man," Chiun said.

"Shoot. "

"Where is Cheeta Ching?"

Cooder frowned, "Knowing her, probably looking for a cardboard box or something to have her kid in. Meow."

Chiun stiffened and only Remo's urging got him through the office door before the worst happened.

Out in the corridor, Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju and asked, "What do you think, Little Father?"

"I think there must be someone in this building who knows where Cheeta may be found," Chiun said bitterly.

Remo hesitated. "You heard Cooder," he said. "She's probably in some hospital. And I meant that stuff about Canada."

"Cheeta would not go away without contacting me."

"Forget Cheeta. Canada. What about Canada?"

They were standing outside the closed door to Cheeta Ching's office. Behind the door, a phone tweedled.

"Cheeta!" Chiun gasped. "Perhaps that is her!"

"Wait a minute, don't-"

The Master of Sinanju whirled, a fist like calcified bone sweeping for the doorknob. The knob recoiled from the impact, banging across the floor as Chiun pushed the maimed panel inward.

He rushed for the tweedling phone, his skirts flying.

Remo pulled the door closed after him, hoping against hope no one would notice the missing lock.

He was leaning against the door when Chiun snapped up the receiver and drew it to his face.

"Cheeta!" he cried.

Then, before Remo's eyes, the Master of Sinanju's parchment features turned the crimson of burning paper. His tiny mouth made a shocked O.

With frantic gestures of his free hand, the Master of Sinanju waved Remo closer.

When Remo reached his side, Chiun slapped the squawking receiver into his hand, hissing. "I cannot speak with his man!"

"Who-" Remo asked Chiun.

"This is Cheeta Ching's husband," a grumpy voice demanded. "Who am I speaking with, please?"

"FCC," said Remo.

"Put my wife on."

"She's not here."

"Well, where is she? She didn't come home last night. Is she on assignment?"

"Search me," said Remo, abruptly hanging up.

"Remo! Remo, did you hear?"

"I could hardly help it," Remo said dryly. "You stuck me with your dirty laundry again. That was Cheeta's better half."

"I know who it was!" Chiun snapped. "It is what he said that is important. Cheeta is missing!"

"Don't jump to a rash conclusion, Little Father," Remo said hastily. "It might not be like that at all."

"We must find her!"

"How?"

The Master of Sinanju froze. His shoulders slumped and his lifted hands came down. "We must search for clues. Hurry, Remo, help me search."

Reluctantly, Remo started checking around the office.

On the carpet by the door, he found an amber vial of pills, sealed with a white child-proof cap.

"Check this out," he told Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju was suddenly at Remo's side.

"What is it?" he squeaked excitedly. "What have you found?"

"Prescription pills. Made out to Cheeta."

"What do they say?"

" 'Take every four to six hours.' "

Chiun's pale eyebrows knit together. "Why would Cheeta eat mere pills? She is a Korean. Koreans do not need medicines. We eat rice three times a day."

"I don't know," Remo said, "but Smith might. Let's check it with him."

Chapter 18

Harold Smith was fielding phone calls when the cable installation serviceman showed up at his Folcroft office.

"The man from the cable company is here, Dr. Smith," his secretary announced through the intercom.

"Excuse me, Mr. President," said Harold Smith, hanging up the red receiver and sweeping the phone into the open drawer of his desk. He closed the drawer, locking it.

Into the intercom, he said, "Send him in."

The man wore a blue repairman's uniform and asked, "Where is it?"

"Right here," said Smith, indicating the portable black-and-white TV set on the desk.

The installer stared at the set with disbelieving eyes.

"You want me to hook you up to that?"

"Yes. And please start immediately, I am quite busy."

"But it's black and white. Who springs for cable and watches it on a dinky little set like that?"

"If you do not mind, I have much to do," said Smith in a irritable voice.

"You're the boss," the installer said good-naturedly.

Smith stood up. "I will be having lunch. If any of the desk phones ring, just let them ring. Under no circumstances answer them."

"Natch."

Smith left the man stringing wire off a steel spool and informed his secretary that he was eating lunch out this afternoon.

Smith went down to the commissary and purchased a cup of prune-whip yogurt. He paid for his lunch in exact change from a red plastic change holder, took a white plastic spoon, and went outside to his station wagon.

Driving past the gates, Smith took the single approach road and pulled into a secluded spot overlooking Long Island Sound. Opening his suitcase, he extracted the receiver and reconnected with the White House.

"I am sorry, Mr. President. The cable installer arrived early. I could not speak. Please continue."

"The Federal Communications Commission tells me they couldn't trace the audio signal," the President said, "and until it comes back, they're helpless. This is real frustrating, Smith. I have a flock of SAC bombers jammed with tracking equipment and they might as well be paper kites. Any help on your end?"

"I share your frustration, Mr. President, but until Audion puts out a traceable audio there is nothing that can be done on this end."

"I was afraid you were going to say that."

Harold Smith hung up the phone and opened his cup of yogurt. He had just pushed the white plastic spoon into the cold purplish gray mass when the computer phone rang again. This time, it buzzed. That meant Remo and not the White House calling back. "Yes, Remo?"

"Smitty, I'm in a pay phone. Chiun can't hear me."

"What is the situation?"

"Weird. Nobody at BCN seems to know Cheeta is missing."

"Good."

"And Chiun and I talked to Don Cooder."

"Was that wise? Given their past history?"

"Chiun was so stuck on finding Cheeta, he didn't cause any more of a fuss than usual."

Smith released the air in his lungs slowly. It would have passed for a sigh if it weren't for a certain nasal whistling quality.

Remo added, "Cooder has a harebrained theory."

"Yes."

"He thinks Dieter Banning is behind this."

"Banning? The ANC anchor?"

"I told him the center of the jamming area looked like Canada to me and-"

"Canada?"

"Yeah. BCN showed a graphic. The center looked like Canada to me."

"Where exactly?" Smith asked.

"Search me. Canada might as well be Antarctica for all I know about it."

"Remo, I just got off the phone with the President. The FCC has so far been unable to get a fix on the audio transmission. I wonder if it is because the signal is not of domestic origin, as supposed."

"Would the Canadians be jamming our TV?"

"Canada has always been sensitive to U.S. cultural contamination. Particularly in the area of broadcast signal spillover. Their Federal government is engaged in a program of converting their television broadcast system to cable in the hope of regulating-in effect, prohibiting-U.S. television programs from reaching their citizenry."

"What's wrong with our programs?"

"They complain about the violence and corruption."

"They don't have violence or corruption up on Canada?" Remo asked.

"They have a different culture than we do," Smith said.

"I didn't know they had any culture."

Smith's voice grew sharp, "Remo, why does Don Cooder suspect Dieter Banning of complicity in this matter?"

"He thinks Banning is a Canadian agent. Is it possible?"

"I cannot say, but Don Cooder is well-known for his reliable news sources. He could be right. Remo, look into the Banning connection. It is all we have until we get a precise fix on the pirate signal."

"Okay, but I can't count on Chiun. He's making noises about looking for Cheeta in every hospital in the city."

"Your priority is the assignment. Perhaps one will lead to the other."

"One other thing, Smitty."

"Yes?"

"I found some prescription pills in Cheeta's office. Looks like she dropped them on her way out the door."

"What is it called?"

"Terbutaline Sulfate."

Smith logged onto his portable pharmacopoeia database and input the unfamiliar words.

"Remo," he said, "Terbutaline Sulfate is normally prescribed to delay labor, where there is risk of a premature birth."

"According to the label," Remo said, "the prescription was refilled just last week."

"I am not sure I understand," Smith said slowly. "Miss Ching is now in her tenth month."

"Well, I do. Cheeta's been trying to keep the kid in until sweeps month."

"Preposterous. What kind of mother-to-be would-"

"A ratings hound," snapped Remo. "And if all that's holding her back are these pills, then Cheeta could drop the big one any second now, and our troubles come in triplets."

"Remo, look into the Banning angle. Make no moves without further consultation. I will pursue my own leads."

Harold Smith hung up and returned to his yogurt, a pained expression on his lemony face. He was not thinking of the developing crisis, or of Cheeta Ching's impending childbirth. Harold Smith was thinking of the cable installation fee that would have to come out of the CURE operating budget. It was a small expenditure in the larger scheme of things. Still, it rankled his thrifty soul.

Licking the last traces of yogurt from the plastic spoon he fully intended to wash and surreptitiously return to the Folcroft cafeteria dispenser, Smith made a mental vow to cancel his subscription to cable as soon as this crisis had passed. He hoped to solve it in thirty days. The entire fee was refundable if cancelled in the first month.

It made him feel much better as he piloted his station wagon back through the watchful stone lions that guarded the gates of Folcroft Sanitarium.

Chapter 19

Remo Williams stepped from the phone booth near Times Square. It looked like a ghost town of boarded-up theaters, storefronts and deserted buildings.

There was no sign of the Master of Sinanju. Anywhere.

"Damn," he said.

Remo had left Chiun at a line of cabs, telling him that he would only be a minute. Chiun had agreed without the usual argument, because the location allowed him to watch the BCN studio entrance, in case Cheeta Ching showed up.

Remo had felt guilty over prolonging the deception, and was half-resolved to break down and tell the truth about Cheeta's abduction, but now . . .

"See anything of an old Korean in a kimono?" Remo asked a cabby leaning against the hood of his taxi and wolfing down a pastrami sandwich.

The cabby stopped in midchew and said thickly, "I thought only geisha girls wore kimonos."

"Answer the question."

"Sure. He was watching the bulletin with the rest of us, gave a yip and grabbed the first cab."

The cabby was pointing to the large TV screen on One Times Square Plaza, which, like all the rest of broadcast TV, was as black as a hung crepe except for the tiny NO SIGNAL Chyron.

"Bulletin? The screen's blacked out."

"This wasn't a regular bulletin," the cabby explained. "It was more along the line of a ransom demand."

"Ransom?"

"Wait, here it comes again."

The screen suddenly flared to life.

And looking out over Times Square was the flat, scared-white face of Cheeta Ching. Her hair was a Medusan mass of split ends and her red mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out.

"She's saying that she's having-whadyacall'em-Braxton-Hicks contractions," the cabby explained.

"You can read lips?"

"Naw. The sound was coming in over the dispatch radio, last time. Whatever's messing up TV reception, it's put the radios on the fritz too." The driver obligingly got behind the wheel and turned his radio up.

"-sist that my network agree to all of this lunatic's demands at once," Cheeta was saying in a shrill, helpless tone. "I can't have my baby now. I look a wreck and I don't have my midwife and-"

The screen turned blue and the blue framed a graphic of a stainless steel nautical anchor in a triangular Warner Bros's-style crest.

"We interrupt this interruption of broadcast service," the sonorous voice of Captain Audion broke in, "to announce an escalation in our earlier demands."

The screen was again black.

"The price per network is up to fifty million, but for BCN, I'll throw in Cheeta Ching for an extra ten."

"I'd pass," the cabby opined. "That broad ain't worth last month's rent. Did you see her hair? It's terrible what they pay these people, and they can't even groom themselves right."

"That the message my friend heard?" Remo demanded.

"Yeah, I had my radio up full blast on account of everybody and his brother wanted to hear what she was saying. Fat lot of good it did me. Not one fare."

"Any chance you overheard where my friend went?"

"Sure. He told the first guy in line to take him to the ANC studio."

"You the second guy in line?"

The cabby gestured through his windshield. "You see anybody in front of me now?"

"Then you get to take me to ANC," said Remo, reaching for the passenger door handle.

"Okay, just let me finish my pastrami."

Remo reached over the roof of the parked cab and took hold of the roof light. He disengaged the fixture and handed it to the driver through the open window.

"What's this?" the cabby muttered, pastrami shreds dribbling from his lips.

"An example of what will happen to your head if you don't get your ass into gear," said Remo, dropping into the back seat.

He slammed the door shut as the cab left the curb.

There was only one reason the Master of Sinanju would race off to ANC without him, Remo knew.

Chiun was going to ransom Cheeta Ching by wringing the truth out of the person he believed was her abductor.

Dieter Banning.

Chapter 20

Everyone agreed that Dieter Banning was the most erudite, well-dressed, and polished anchor on American TV.

The truth was that Dieter Banning's early reading consisted almost exclusively of American comic books. Although his resume included Carleigh University in Ottowa, he had in fact enrolled in their night school. He lasted a single week, quitting because, in his words, "There weren't enough pictures in the texts."

He bought his clothes in bulk from a London discount house. But because they were British, he made the annual best-dressed lists.

No one questioned his lack of credentials, because Dieter Banning looked like an anchor should look, spoke the way an anchor was expected to speak, and did it all in an impeccable clipped accent that seemed above reproach.

But most of all, Dieter Banning had the credibility of a man who had the courage to wear his own hair on network TV.

Few viewers would have acknowledged it, in an age of toupees, blown-dry shag cuts and hair weaves, but news viewers subconsciously trusted Dieter Banning because he had the courage to let his thinning hair go out over the air unembellished and unaugmented.

"I'm a journalist, not a fucking Macy's mannikin," he had retorted when the unfamiliar American word "Rogaine" was uttered by the president of the news division. The occasion was Banning's forty-second birthday and the renewal of his first two-year contract.

"Need I remind you, Dieter, that there's an appearance clause in your contract?"

"Take it out, or I walk."

No one in network television had ever heard of such a thing. Dieter Banning was being paid a cool 1.7 million dollars a year to read off a teleprompter five nights a week and he was actually balking at a little career-enhancing cosmetics.

"You," said the news manager, "are either the next Edward R. Murrow or an utter fool."

Dieter Banning simply stared at his lobster Fra Diavolo and said nothing. He found that worked well with Americans. They usually filled the silence with some babble of their own, usually their worst fears.

His employer did not disappoint him.

"Okay, the clause goes. But the ratings better not erode or we're revisiting this whole discussion next renewal."

"Fine," said Dieter Banning, wondering who Edward R. Murrow was. The name had a vaguely familiar ring. Perhaps Murrow was one of those "deputy dogs" who did the weekend reports.

The next day, everyone in the newsroom had nice things to say about his hair.

"New haircut, Dieter?"

"Perhaps," said Dieter, who had dug out an old photo of Edward R. Murrow and fought his hair into a close approximation of the late TV journalist's understated hairstyle.

No one ever commented on the resemblance. But Dieter Banning's ratings went steadily up in the coming months, until his was the undisputably top-rated newscast. While other anchors primped, moussed, augmented and fried their follicles with industrial-strength blow dryers, Dieter Banning's low-maintenance coif was sending out a nightly subliminal message that whispered "Trust me," and almost everyone credited his well-bred manner of speaking.

Dieter Banning had been at his desk when his network went down for the second time in twelve hours. The ANC program director barged in.

"Dieter. We're down again."

"Son of a bitch!"

"It's that Captain Audion again!"

"Shit!"

"All the other networks are black too."

Banning shrugged and said, "Shit happens."

"What do we do?"

"Well," he said with wry unconcern, "we were promised a seven-hour blackout, so I imagine that gives us seven hours to prepare our evening broadcast."

"But the network is losing a fortune. The brass is foaming at the mouth."

Banning smiled coolly. "Get pictures."

Dieter Banning was still at his desk when the excitement started three hours later.

"Is there a problem?" he asked a passing clerk. People had been racing by him for the last last five minutes, howling and frantic, and Dieter Banning thought their stark faces looked more drained of blood than usual. They were often that way, these Americans. Temperamentally unable to handle the pressure of daily news gathering. Here it was nearly noon, and Dieter Banning had already written his five-line lead for the 6:30 feed. He was quite proud of it. The prose almost scanned.

"We're under attack!"

"Oh, don't be so bloody melodramatic," Banning rejoined. "So, Middle America is bereft of a few lame game shows and downmarket tabloid programs and soap operas. The world still spins on its axis, eh?"

"You don't understand. Two security guards are dead! And an FBI SWAT team has been called in."

Dieter Banning blinked, and stood up, his face paling. His legs, under his kilt, paled too.

"Attack! By whom?"

"No one knows."

"We are a news gathering organization. Shouldn't someone know by now?"

Then a voice shouted, "Here he comes!"

ANC security was provided by Purolator guards. The marble lobby was usually thick with them, day and night. A nightly newscast was a convenient target for any desperate attention-seeking person with the firepower to bluff his way to the anchor desk. It had happened. Not at ANC, but at other networks and not a few local stations.

There were contingency measures in place if a terrorist or other criminal attempted to hijack Worldly News Nitely.

The first was simple: Shoot the terrorist dead. Dead terrorists don't commit much mischief, and rarely sued.

Obviously, this terrorist was resisting being shot. Pity.

The second line of defense was to go black. There was a master switch that would shut down all transmissions, both broadcast and cable, and replace it with a technical difficulties sign. This would buy time for negotiations, not to mention insuring that ANC got the exclusive footage.

Here at least, luck was with ANC. They were already black.

The third contingency plan was to go to the bunker. The ANC studios were a designated community fallout shelter, and the basement was well stocked with provisions in the now-unlikely event of a thermonuclear exchange. It boasted a door that could have been hung on a bank vault.

It's clearly time, Dieter Banning decided as security guards began giving back, firing wildly, before the unseen intruder, to seek out the bunker.

"Excuse me," he asked a cowering intern, "which way to the bunker?"

The cowering intern said nothing. Possibly the gunfire was drowning out his inquiry, so Dieter Banning restated the question in his brand of perfectly enunciated Americanized English.

"Excuse me you stupid bitch, but where the hell can I find the fucking bunker!"

The woman burst into tears and pointed toward a fire door. "Follow the yellow arrow," she sobbed.

"Thank you," said Banning, hurriedly exiting the newsroom. He found the yellow arrow, which led to another yellow arrow, which pointed down a seldom-used flight of steps. At the bottom of the steps there was another fire door.

Dieter Banning almost lost his kilt at the door. The kilt pin snagged the latchbar. He pulled free and went on. It was one of the biggest secrets in the news industry that the ANC anchor desk hid the clan tartan worn by the male Bannings of Ottowa since they came to the New World in 1853.

The bunker was around the first bend in the corridor, a yawning cavern of stainless steel and whitepainted brick.

It was empty, so Banning stepped over the sill and pulled the ponderous door behind him.

It was quite dark, but after a moment's fumbling he found a light switch.

Outside, someone was pounding on the door.

Banning gave the wheel a spin, securing the door from intruders. To be polite, Banning called through the door.

"Yes. Who is it please?"

"Ned Doppler. That you, Dieter?"

"Do you have bunker privileges, Ned?"

"It's in my contract."

"Got it on you?"

"No."

"Then you cannot easily slip it under the door, can you?"

"Dieter, you sissy prick! Open this door. It's a slaughterhouse up there."

"If it becomes a slaughterhouse down here, you will give a yell, won't you?"

Then another voice came through the door, high, ringing, angry.

"I seek the fiend who calls himself Dieter Banning."

"Here's in there," Ned Doppler said instantly.

Banning snarled, "Traitor!"

"Why don't I leave you two alone?" added Doppler, his footsteps going away.

"I think it only fair to warn you," Dieter Banning called to the person outside the vault door, "I have no intentions of coming out."

"In that case," the voice replied coldly, "I am coming in."

Dieter Banning gave a little laugh. It sounded so hollow in the great vault he got a little worried in the silence that followed the last lingering echo.

The next sound brought Banning's manicured hands clapping over his ears.

They were shrieks, howls and other sounds. Metallic sounds. Human beings weren't making them. Machines were. They must be. But what kind of machine sounded like an ocean liner going through a Veg-o-matic?

When the great door showed cracks of lights around the rounded seams where it met the door casing, Dieter Banning knew the sound was that of the bunker door being breached.

Then the vault door fell and the gaping hole framed the sight of the person who wanted Dieter Banning so badly he had blown through ANC like a frenzied tornado.

A tiny Asian man with fingernails like talons.

"You will reveal the truth about Cheeta Ching," the attacker told Dieter Banning, "or you will die on the spot where you stand!"

"Glad to. Cheeta Ching is in collusion with her husband to delay the baby until sweeps month. I plan on breaking the story the day she gives birth."

The tiny Asian's facial wrinkles compressed in stages, like a mainspring being wound to the snapping point.

Then, the mainspring sprung.

"Oh, bugger," Dieter Banning muttered, "I'm fucked."

And he felt a sudden hot weight in the seat of his pants that he couldn't explain unless-ridiculous thought he had lost all bowel control.

Chapter 21

Harold W. Smith returned to his office exactly thirty minutes after he left it.

"He's still here, Dr. Smith," said Smith's secretary.

"Thank you, Mrs. Mikulka."

Frowning, Harold Smith entered his office. He disliked leaving it alone, but he felt confident that the cable installer would come across nothing untoward. The only unusual items in the entire office were the red telephone, safely locked in a drawer, and the CURE terminal, which Smith had sent slipping into its secret desktop reservoir.

Smith stepped into the room to find it unoccupied.

"My God!" he said hoarsely.

A waving hand lifted a screwdriver above the level of his desk.

"Be done in a second," a disembodied voice said.

Smith came around the desk and peered into the foot well. There, the installer was on his hands and knees, tacking the cable down with a staple gun.

"Is there a problem?" Smith asked.

"Naw. Usually, people put their TVs against an outside wall and it's just a matter of plugging her in. I didn't think you'd want a loose cable at your feet so I'm tacking it down. That's okay, isn't it?"

"That will be fine," said Smith. Hovering over the man, he felt awkward. His chair had been pushed off to one side. Unable to sit at his own desk, he stood with his gangling hands hanging loose-fingered out of his coat sleeves.

Presently, the repairman stood up and reached for the tiny TV set on Harold Smith's desk.

"Let's see how she fires up," he said, hitting the on switch of a cable box that perched atop the too-small set like a pit bull on a possum.

The screen came on. It was black. Two words, No SIGNAL, glowed in thin ivory letters.

"Funny."

"What?" Smith asked.

"I got it turned to MBC."

"MBC is blacked out," Smith pointed out.

"Yeah, so I heard. But you're hooked up to cable now."

"Yes?"

"The signal the cable company transmits isn't picked off the air, you know. We'd have a piss-poor signal quality if we did it that way. We get it off a microwave transmission. New York Skypath. Direct." The man began switching channels. "Whatever's jamming the airwaves shouldn't affect you now that you're cabled up. But look at it. Everything network is black. Except KNNN. And they're broadcasting snow."

"Can you explain how it is possible to intercept both broadcast and cable-fed network signals?" Smith asked.

"It's not."

"Yet it is happening."

"No, it's not."

Smith's lemony face quirked. "Excuse me?"

"That 'No Signal'? Normally, you see that when a network isn't getting its signal from the affiliates. Usually it's a bad microwave path or something. Follow me so far?"

"I believe so," said Smith, giving his rimless glass a thoughtful adjustment.

"Okay. Let's say the networks are down. That still leaves the affiliate stations. It's their signal you receive. When an affiliate goes down, you don't get anything like this. Snow, sure. Color bars sometimes. Usually, they throw up a station ID card or a technical difficulties graphic."

"What are you saying?"

"What you're seeing isn't jamming. Can't be."

"Then what is it?"

The cable installer made faces at the screen.

"The only way I can figure it," the cable installer said slowly, "is that somebody's broadcasting black."

"Broadcasting black?"

"We're not looking at a 'No Signal' here. We're looking at a signal that says 'No Signal.' "

Smith's voice betrayed a growing excitement. "That means it could be traced?"

"Sure."

Harold Smith was a reserved New Englander. People thought him cold, aloof, and as warm as shaved ice. Expressions of emotion were rare with him, and limited to the occasional exclamation.

On this occasion, Harold W. Smith took hold of the repairman's right hand in both of his and pumped it furiously.

"You have been very helpful," he said. "I cannot thank you enough."

The installer brightened. "Glad to help. Say, while I'm here, I could cable up this whole facility in jig time. We offer a bulk discount . . ."

Smith abruptly released the man's hand. His voice temperature cooled audibly. "Thank you, no. Now if you will excuse me, I have some telephone calls to make."

The cable installer hastily packed up his equipment. "Well, don't trip over the furniture in your hurry to give me the bum's rush. Cheeze . . ."

Chapter 22

A block from the ANC studio, Remo was forced to abandon the cab. The police had the area cordoned off with blue and white squad cars and NYPD sawhorses. A dozen ambulances waited in side streets their backs open and filled with body bags, which weren't full but not exactly empty either. There were sharpshooters on every roof, and a lone police helicopter orbited the scene nervously.

News crews were crushing against the cordon. There were enough of them to cover a civil revolt, and Remo wondered how they had got the word so fast. Then he noticed the ANC logo on literally every camera. Obviously, the crews had evacuated the building and begun recording. Some lenses were trained unwaveringly on the studio entrance. Others were covering the cordon. Still others filmed the first two teams. There was enough coverage, Remo thought, to support a 3-D hologram of the event.

Off to one side, Remo recognized Ned Doppler banging a handheld microphone against the hood of 5 police car, complaining, "The dip switch is gone on this thing!"

"What's the big deal?" someone asked. "We're blacked out, and can't broadcast live."

"We cares about a live standup? This is for Nightmirror!"

"So what's the rush?"

"I want to tape a standup on my brush with death while everything's fresh in my mind!"

Remo moved on.

A man in plainclothes tried to prevent him from entering the cordon. Remo flashed an FBI ID card and said, "Remo Reynolds, Special Agent."

The man responded by flashing a similar card of his own and said, "John Bundish, Division Chief, and I never heard of you."

"I'm up from Washington. Looking into the TV blackout."

Division Chief Bundish looked him up and down. "They dress that casual down in D.C. now?"

"Undercover. I'm pretending to be a makeup man. Listen, what's going on?"

"Crazy man busted in and is demanding that Cheeta Ching be brought to him. Guess he got his networks mixed up, or something. We got a call into BCN, but they don't know where the woman is. Meanwhile, the bodies keep piling up."

"Who's dead?"

"Who isn't is the question. We've got dead security, wounded technical staff, you name it."

"Damn!"

Division Chief Bundish noticed Remo's Italian loafers.

"Let me see that ID of yours again," he demanded.

Remo put a friendly arm on his shoulder and propelled him away from the crowd. "Let's talk in that alley over there."

Division Chief Bundish found his feet moving toward the alley despite his brain's attempt to resist.

In the alley, Remo confided, "Listen, I know who's behind all this."

"You do?"

"Yeah. North Korean terrorist. Name's Wing Wang Wo. A killer. A cold assassin. They call him the Korean Dragon. Someone's going to have to talk him out of the building before more people get killed."

"Hostage negotiation team is on the way."

"Yeah, but I'm here now."

"No chance. I'm in charge."

"You sure that's your final answer?"

"Positive. You see all those cameras out there? I can't have you representing the Bureau dressed for shooting pool. The least you could have done is thrown on a regulation windbreaker."

The man had a point, so Remo dropped him where he stood in his brown wingtips. They were about the same height and weight, so Remo stripped the man of his outer clothes and put them on.

Remo flashed his card at the first cop he came to and asked, "Who's in charge here?"

"Lieutenant Rebello over there."

Lieutenant Rebello scarcely looked at Remo's ID card. "We've got him barricaded in the basement fallout shelter. Everytime we send someone in-"

"Let me guess," Remo interrupted. "They don't come out."

A first-floor window broke and out sailed a riot-control helmet. It bounced upon impact, showing clearly that it still encapsulated its late owner's head.

A SWAT team in flak jackets raced up and gathered up the head-helmet and all-into a fire retardant blanket and rushed it to a waiting ambulance.

"They come back like that," the lieutenant said hoarsely.

"Got a bullhorn?"

A bullhorn was surrendered. Remo brought it up to his mouth, took a deep breath, and called, "You in there. This is FBI Special Agent Reynolds. Remo Reynolds."

"Liar!" a squeaky voice called out.

"You know who I am. The jig's up, Wo. I want you to surrender peacefully-or else."

"Or else what?"

"Or else, I'm coming in there after you."

"Do your worst, O FBI lackey."

A collective gasp went up. Assault rifles and sidearms were steadied over the hoods of the police-car cordon. Every trigger finger was white at the knuckles. The air filled with the simultaneous whir of video equipment.

Remo turned to the lieutenant and said, "Watch my back."

"You can't go in there. You saw what happened. And they were wearing full protective gear."

"I've done this before. And I speak fluent Korean."

And as the trigger-happy police watched, the FBI agent entered the marble ANC lobby and disappeared from sight.

"That's one brave agent," a cop remarked.

"That's one brave dead agent," Lieutenant Rebello said.

Ten minutes later, the well-dressed FBI agent emerged again, face grim.

"He's willing to surrender," Remo said.

"He is?"

"There's one condition."

"What's that?"

"Absolutely, positively no cameras."

The word went out. The cameramen were pushed back. A few news people cried out their first amendment rights and ended up in the backs of police cars, sitting on their handcuffed hands.

When that was done, Agent Remo Reynolds went back in.

Minutes ticked by. Huddling behind barricades, SWAT weapons pointed unwaveringly at the studio entrance.

Then, a figure emerged-short, wispy, swathed in a blue-and-gold native costume, hands raised in abject surrender.

"I am surrendering because I have met my match," he announced in a loud voice.

"Amazing," Lieutenant Rebello croaked.

The tiny Asian stepped out onto the sidewalk and said in a loud voice. "Fear not. I will harm no one because I have seen the error of my ways."

"Okay, take him," Rebello called. The police moved in, weapons raised and cocked. They looked eager to shoot at the slightest provocation.

"Don't," Remo said, stepping between the encircling gun muzzles and the Master of Sinanju. "I got him calmed down now. You'll only set him off again."

"He's surrendered, right?"

"He's agreed to surrender to the FBI," Remo corrected.

"I have watched their television program and it has struck fear my fearless heart," cried the old Korean in a high voice.

"Look," Remo said anxiously. "I gotta get him to FBI headquarters fast. I need to borrow a car."

Rebello waved his men back and shouted, "Get an unmarked unit over here!"

A nondescript sedan was brought up. Keys were surrendered.

The old Asian went meekly into the back. The door was clapped shut and FBI Agent Reynolds took the wheel, saying, "Thanks. You'll get a full report."

And as the way was cleared, the unmarked car disappeared from sight.

Lieutenant Rebello took a deep breath. "All right, let's sweep the building."

The FBI van arrived within fifteen minutes. The doors popped and slid open, and out came a team of agents in blue windbreakers with the letters FBI stenciled on the back.

"Who are you?" Rebello demanded of the agent who appeared in charge.

"Hostage negotiation team."

"You're a little late. Agent Reynolds took care of it. Talked the guy out clean."

"Reynolds?"

"Yeah. One guy. Never seen anything like it."

"I don't know any agent Reynolds."

"First name Remo. The guy was slick. Deserves a commendation."

The hostage negotiation team conferred among themselves. No one had heard of a Remo Reynolds.

"He must be with some other office," Lieutenant Rebello suggested in a tone that suggested diminishing confidence.

"We were told to liase with Division Chief Bundish."

"He was around here earlier. I haven't seen him since Reynolds . . ." Lieutenant Rebello swallowed. "That's right! Bundish. What the hell happened to him?"

Then, a voice called out, "Hey, there's a guy sleeping in this alley in his underwear," and Lieutenant Rebello's promising career in law-enforcement took a sharp, sudden drop into the toilet. In later years, he swore that at that exact moment he heard a distinct flushing sound.

Chapter 23

Remo Williams ditched the unmarked car and street clothes on Park Avenue South, his face tight with anguish.

In his earlier life, he had been a cop. An ordinary cop. Nothing special. Except that he had been honest. He knew what it was to put on the blue uniform and stand between society and lawlessness. It was a long time ago, so long Remo had forgotten all but the rough outlines of those days when he had worn an extra twenty-five pounds and a face that had not been altered by plastic surgery and had espoused a simple, if naive, concept of justice.

What he had found in the basement of the ANC building had left him sickened: The sight of the Master of Sinanju standing red-faced and steely-eyed among a pile of headless corpses.

"Jesus Christ, Chiun!" Remo had exploded when he came upon the carnage. "What are you trying to do? Get us both killed?"

"It is not I who am at fault," Chiun had said tightly. "I have been attacked from the moment I set foot in this den of unrepentant Canadians."

"You killed cops. Honest, hardworking cops."

The Master of Sinanju looked down upon the piled dead.

"How do you know they are honest?" he asked.

"Skip it. Look, I gotta get you out of here in one piece. Those cops out there are hot to shoot you on sight."

Chiun drew himself up proudly. "I am not afraid."

"You'd better be. If they all come charging in-hey, who's this?" Remo asked, noticing one body in particular.

"Who is what?"

"This dead guy," Remo said pointing to a pair of bare legs sticking out from under a pile of miscellaneous dead. The legs were half-covered in gray knee socks, but they weren't what had caught Remo's eye.

He reached down and grabbed the body by the ankles and pulled it free, fully exposing a brown tartan kilt. Remo continued pulling and found that the rest of the body was attired in a cheap coat and tie.

The body had no head.

"Where's the head to this one?" Remo had asked, looking around for the missing item.

"Why do you wish to know?" Chiun had asked thinly.

"Because it's important," Remo snapped, lifting up head after head and tossing them aside after a moment's examination.

"Why is it important?"

"Look, we don't have much time. The place is completely surrounded. There are sharpshooters on every roof. There's no way out of here unless you come out as my prisoner."

"Never! What would Cheeta think?"

"That's another thing. There are cameras everywhere. We can't just walk out in full view of everyone. Even if we make it out alive, Smitty'll have us both under a plastic surgeon's knife by sundown."

Chiun stamped a sandaled foot.

"I am not leaving until Cheeta is brought to me. Such are my demands and I must abide by them or be shamed."

"Will you cut the crap?" Remo had said, continuing to look for a matching head. There were too many heads. And they were too scattered about. It was as if everyone had blundered into a head-husking machine, which dropped the bodies where they stood but sent the heads flying.

"Look," he said, giving up, "just do whatever I say and we'll work this out."

The tightness in Chiun's visage had loosened at that point. "I will go along," he had allowed, "but I will defend myself if provoked-even against the blue centurions of Emperor Smith."

"Okay, just sit tight," Remo had said. "I'll negotiate safe passage. And don't kill anyone else."

Remo had worked it all out, but he was still sick about it. In the earlier days of their association, these things tended to happen a lot. Bellboys maimed for nicking Chiun's luggage, telephone repairmen killed for interrupting his soap operas. Gradually, the Master of Sinanju had become accustomed to the odd ways of America-including the difficult-to-comprehend concept that ordinary citizens-peasants, he called them-were actually considered valuable and were not to be killed.

Such inconvenient incidents had long ago tapered off, but the occasional security guard, soldier, or police officer still managed to meet an untimely end. Usually when they caught Chiun in a foul mood.

This, however, was major even by Chiun's standards.

"Look, think hard," Remo was saying as he hailed a cab. "The guy in the kilt-who was he?"

"They were so many . . ."

"But only one in a freaking kilt. Now come on."

The cab slid to a stop. The cabby looked happy to see them. His radio was hissing static.

"Airport," said Remo.

"Which?"

"The nearest one. We're not fussy."

"Newark it is."

As they rode uptown, Remo asked in a tight low voice. "Now tell me who wore the kilt."

"It was that ballast," Chiun said.

"The what?"

"You know-the one who reads news."

"The anchor?"

"Yes. The deceiving Canadian anchor."

"You decapitated Dieter Banning?"

"He refused to confess his crimes. I demanded to know the whereabouts of Cheeta the Fecund, and he resisted, showering vile curses and imprecations upon my person. So I snuffed him."

"You put pressure on him first, right?"

"Correct."

"And he still insisted he had nothing to do with any of it?"

"He did not say that. He cursed me."

"You've been cursed at before. Usually you remove a few fingers. Sometimes a tongue. What's the big deal?"

The Master of Sinanju grew silent. His lower lip pouted out. "He spoke ill of Cheeta. He called her a slant-eyed goop."

"He ranked her out and you went ballistic?"

"I avenged the honor of a fellow Korean," Chiun sniffed.

"And lost the only lead we had."

"He was no lead. He had nothing to do with anything."

"Says you."

"No one holds his tongue whom the Master of Sinanju holds by the throat. You know this."

Remo said nothing. He did know it. No one could possibly resist the awful, agonizing pain Chiun was capable of inflicting. If Dieter Banning knew anything about Cheeta Ching, Chiun would have gotten it out of him. No question.

Ordinarily, that would have settled that. But Banning had been wearing a kilt when he died. And Cheeta Ching's abductor had been wearing a kilt too. What the hell did it mean?

At the Newark Airport, Remo called Harold Smith from a payphone. The Master of Sinanju hovered close.

"Smitty, Remo."

"What is the situation, Remo?"

"We ran into a little trouble."

"What kind?"

"You haven't heard?"

"No news is getting out."

"Well," Remo said, lifting his voice. "Chiun-who's here with me now-went on ahead to-ANC without me. It seems Cheeta Ching has been kidnapped by Captain Audion."

Hearing this, Chiun raised his voice. "Remo was too slow, Emperor Smith. I dared not wait for him with Cheeta Ching in peril."

"Chiun blew into ANC and-"

"I was attacked the moment I entered the building," Chiun shouted. "I had to defend myself. The place is a viper's nest of Canadians. Vicious, antiAmerican Canadians."

Smith groaned. "There are casualties?"

"Piles of them," Remo admitted.

Smith groaned again.

"Chiun tried to get Dieter Banning to talk. Banning wouldn't. He insulted Cheeta. So Chiun wasted him."

"Remo, are you certain of this?"

"I saw the body myself. Of course, it didn't have its head, but it was wearing a kilt."

The Master of Sinanju held his breath.

No sound came from the receiver.

Then, in a low voice, Harold Smith asked, "A kilt?"

"Yeah," Remo said guardedly. "A kilt."

The Master of Sinanju looked from the silent receiver to his pupil.

"Why is this kilt important?" he asked suspiciously.

"Who said it was important?" Remo asked in a too-innocent voice.

"The tone of your voice."

Smith said, "Put Master Chiun on, Remo."

"A pleasure. Here. Smitty wants to talk to you."

The Master of Sinanju took up the receiver and said, "I am listening, Emperor Smith."

"There is a report that Cheeta Ching was abducted by a man who wore a kilt."

Chiun's eyes narrowed to slits. "A Scotsman?"

"He wore a kilt. That is my only information."

"Emperor Smith, you must find Cheeta. Her baby will be born soon. I must attend the birth."

"I am doing all I can. Please put Remo back on."

"Yeah, Smitty?" said Remo.

"Remo, are you certain that Dieter Banning is dead?"

"Yeah. Definitely."

"Either Banning is part of this conspiracy or he is not. I am going to get the word out."

"Yeah?"

"Perhaps something will happen."

"Okay, what do Chiun and I do in the meantime? We're pretty hot in these parts."

"Return to Folcroft. That way you will be convenient to New York if something breaks."

"On our way, Smitty. Thanks."

Remo hung up. The Master of Sinanju was looking up at him, his wrinkled face tight and searching.

"We're going back to Folcroft," Remo said.

"You are going to Folcroft. I seek Cheeta Ching, defamed by the base round-eye whites whom she had attempted to educate with her nightly songs of truth and purity."

"Look, we're at a dead end. If anyone can find her, it's Smitty. Let's give him a chance."

"Cheeta has pleaded for succor. The boy who is to be born is nigh-"

"Nigher than you think," said Remo.

"What do you mean?"

"That bottle of pills we found in Cheeta's office? They're to delay contractions. Cheeta's been holding back. Without her pills, the baby is due practically any minute."

The Master of Sinanju's anguished wail stopped pedestrian traffic in its tracks.

"Aiieee! Poor Cheeta. What will become of her?"

Noticing a prowling police cruiser through the terminal window, Remo said, "Right now, what will become of us is what worries me the most. Come on, we gotta find a rental car."

Chapter 24

In his Folcroft office, Harold W. Smith called up the newswire services on his terminal.

There were sketchy reports of a massacre at the New York headquarters of the American Networking Conglomerate, but no confirmation of dead.

Logging off, Smith typed out a wire-service-style report that stated that ANC anchor Dieter Banning had been killed. He gave no other details.

With the deft clicking of keys, the report was simultaneously faxed to terminals at UPI, AP, a dozen major newspapers and news magazines, and the newsrooms of ANC, BCN, MBC, KNNN, and Vox.

Within seconds, pedestrians were reading it off the ticker at One Times Square.

At MBC, Tim Macaw ripped the fax out of his office machine and called his agent.

"They've lost Banning over at ANC," he said in a breathless husky whisper. "See if you can get me a sitdown with their news director."

Then he hung up, ran the fax through the office shredder and resumed touching up his boyish features with Gay Whisper pancake makeup.

The news director came bustling up with a sheet of COPY. They re done editing your lead for the 6:30 feed," he said.

"Oh, good. Any problems?"

"Yeah, the woman-of-color editor said you can't say black. You gotta say Afro-American."

"That's ridiculous. It's a blackout. We can't call it an Afro-American-out. It makes no sense."

"Come up with a better word then. If we don't humor her, she's bound to go on another damn hunger strike."

"How about whiteout?" Macaw asked.

"But it's not white. We're not putting out snow. Besides, you know how she is about the word white. Last week, she complained when we used the word whitewash. Went into that whole Why-is-white-always-good-and-black-always-bad tirade of hers."

"Right, right. How does 'broadcast interruption' sound?"

"Already thought of that. The woman's editor says broad is N.G. Sounds sexist."

"Oh, that's right. She brought that up at the last hunkcasters conference." Macaw sucked on a tooth. "Can I call it a transmission failure?"

"The brass won't like that. MBC failing? Makes us look bad. Try technical difficulties."

"Won't the technical union have fits?"

"Damn. Good catch, Tim. Work on it. We've still got four hours until our signal's restored."

At the end of another hour, Tim Macaw thought he had two viable options: Signal-challenged transmission or Deemptive nontelecast.

At BCN, Don Cooder received the fax at his office desk. He had a Caller ID unit on his faxphone and he stabbed the button to see who had sent him a blind fax reporting the death of ANC anchor, Dieter Banning.

The digital readout read: 000-000-0000.

Cooder pressed it again and got the same string of ciphers.

"What kind of phone number is that?" he muttered.

Then he picked up his desk phone and stabbed out a number.

"Frank, I want a gut check on a fax that just came in..."

Harold Smith was listening to the President of the United States with one ear and the TV on his desk with the other.

It was not difficult to do. The TV was just hissing. The President was speaking in brisk sentences.

"The FCC are working hard on this thing, Smith. But they claim I'm asking the impossible. You can't trace a signal that isn't there."

"But it is, Mr. President."

"What is the source of this information?"

Thinking of the nameless repairman, Smith said, "That's classified."

The President cleared his throat unhappily.

Then Harold Smith groaned.

"What is it?" the President demanded.

"BCN is back on."

"But the seven hours aren't yet up."

Smith glanced at his watch. The seven hours were far from up. "Mr. President, check with your FCC commissioner. Find out if they were successful."

"I'll be back with you shortly."

Harold Smith hung up and turned up the TV volume.

The screen was full of snow. The snow had come on after a sonorous voice had intoned eleven simple words:

"We now return control of your television set. Until next time . . . "

Smith roved the channels. They were all full of snow, except the all-cable stations.

"What has caused Captain Audion to cease broadcasting?" he muttered aloud.

The red telephone rang once. Smith caught it.

"I'm sorry, Smith. They were still working on it when the signal stopped."

"They confirmed there was a signal?"

"A powerful one."

"Unfortunate," said Smith.

"There is one thing to report, however," the President added. "One leg of the triangle was plotted."

Smith perked up. "Yes?"

"The signal seemed to be coming out of Canada. Somewhere along North Latitude 62."

Smith pulled up a chart on his terminal.

"The high north," he reported. "Underpopulated terrain, all of it. A lot to search even if the Canadian Federal government were being cooperative."

"I've been ducking calls from the Canadian Prime Minister all day. He thinks this is some U.S. Early Warning Broadcast System test gone haywire."

"The Canadian prime minister is your problem, Mr. President. If the transmitter can be located, my people can destroy it. Until then, we can only await this madman's next move."

"The FCC are on standby."

"You might call the prime minister and give him the facts. It may be that the CRTC picked up something."

"CRTC?"

"The Canadian Radio-Televisions and Telecommunications Commission," Smith explained. "Their FCC."

"Oh. Will do."

Smith hung up. His sharp mind went back to the immediate question. Captain Audion had deliberately ceased broadcasting black. Why?

On his screen, Smith typed out possibilities.

POWER OUTAGE?

Good, he thought. Checking for power outages in Canada might narrow the locus point.

TO CONFUSE ISSUE?

Unlikely. Smith realized. Terrorists do not fold their hands before public deadlines.

FEAR?

Of what? Smith thought. It was too farfetched. Then it struck him.

KNOWLEDGE THAT TRIANGULATION HAD BEGUN?

"Possible," Smith muttered. "Just possible." He had two good leads now. He attacked the first and within twenty minutes had determined there had been no power outages in the vast Canadian landmass.

That left the other theory. Where did it go? A leak in the FCC? Or was Captain Audion himself FCC? Enormous technical knowledge and resources would be required to blanket the U.S. and its neighbors with a masking TV signal.

Or was it possible that the Canadians were indeed responsible for this outrage? Smith mused. It was looking more and more likely.

As Harold Smith mulled these thoughts over in his head, he noticed MBC anchor Tim Macaw on his TV. He turned up the sound.

". . . At this hour, no one can explain the reasons for this unprecedented five-hour nonwhite transmission-impaired noncommercial interruption. "

"The man is making no sense," snapped Smith, changing the channel.

Don Cooder was on BCN, his voice cracking with emotion.

"Unconfirmed reports have it that ANC anchor Dieter Banning-a personal friend of mine despite our friendly rivalry for ratings-lies dead tonight, a victim of the faceless, voiceless, thoughtless unknown who calls himself Captain Audion. We here at BCN salute our fallen comrade in arms and say to this cowardly terrorist, the glassy eye of BCN is searching for you. Speaking for the management here, we will never accede to your ransom demand of our beloved Cheeta Ching. And in memory of Cheeta-not that we don't expect her to be returned safely to us-in lieu of our usual closing credits, we will run a retrospective of Cheeta's most recent work. Until our regular newscast tonight, this is Don Cooder, saying 'Courage.' "

A commercial for a home-use pregnancy test kit narrated by Cheeta Ching came on, followed by another for woman's aspirin and a third in which Cheeta extolled the virtues of an intimate moisturizing product.

Only when the BCN copyright notice came on did Harold Smith realize the parade of commercials constituted the Cheeta Ching retrospective.

Face reddening, Smith switched channels. It was scandalous what went out over the air these days.

Chapter 25

Cheeta Ching watched the parade of her commercials that followed Don Cooder's live broadcast in a room that was only slightly larger than the cot to which she had been handcuffed.

The room was lit by a 25-watt bulb on a frayed drop cord. The TV was a tiny portable set and no amount of adjusting could balance out the contrast. Either the tube was going or the power was dimming.

"You jealous bastard!" she shrieked at the screen.

Then she fell back on the bed and let out a shriek of another kind.

The Braxton-Hicks contractions were more closely spaced now.

A rude wooden door rattled, and a man shoved in.

"Y'all right?" a muffled voice asked worriedly.

"I have hot flashes, cold flashes, and heartburn I can feel clear up to my uvula," Cheeta spat. "I'm constipated, my ankles are swollen by preclampsia, and my contractions are making my tonsils pucker, so you'd better let me go, buster!"

"No chance."

Cheeta Ching sat up like the Bride of Frankenstein with a bowling ball lodged in her stomach. Her hair and eyes were wild.

The man in the doorway was dressed in a TV-screen-blue bodysuit with an silvery anchor stitched into a crest on his chest. Where his head should be was a large television set, topped by a pair of rabbit-ears antennae bent by contact with too-low ceilings. The screen was black and in the upper right-hand corner the words NO SIGNAL gleamed whitely.

"Who are you supposed to be?" Cheeta spat.

"Captain Audion."

"Captain Audacious, you mean." Cheeta fell back onto the pillow. "Uhhhrrr."

"Should Ah boil some watah, or somethin'?"

"They only do that in movies, you idiot! Get me a birthing chair!"

The light flickered momentarily and went out. When it returned, the wan glow was dimmer than before.

"Sorry," said the man with the TV-set head. "Power problem. Gotta go."

The door slammed, and as Cheeta Ching writhed on her cot, the mattress soaking up her cold sweat, her own voice was ringing surreally in her ears.

"Vagi-rinse. For the modern on-the-go woman who doesn't have time for yeast infections . . . "

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this!" she wailed.

Chapter 26

Folcroft Sanitarium was all but dark when Remo sent his rented car through the open wrought-iron gates.

In the passenger seat, the Master of Sinanju sat in grim silence, his face stone, his hazel eyes cold agates that seemed hot around the edges.

Remo knew that look. Chiun was seething. Only the complete lack of a solid lead had enabled Remo to talk him into leaving New York.

"Smitty will know what to do," Remo said as he pulled into a visitor's parking slot and turned off the ignition. They got out.

"It will be too late," Chiun intoned, his voice sere.

"Look, I'm sorry about Cheeta."

"You are not," Chiun snapped. "You are jealous of Cheeta, and of the son whose undiluted Koreanness threatens you."

They were walking through the hospital green corridors now. The security guard had passed them upon Remo's flashing an AMA inspector's card. Although they often visited Folcroft, the guard did not recognize them because Smith often rotated personnel.

"I don't feel threatened by a baby," Remo snapped back. "It's just that having Cheeta and the kid move in with us would be a mistake. Big time."

"Now, it may not even be," Chiun intoned in a dead hollow voice. It suddenly rose to a bitter keen. "O where is Cheeta now? What anguish frets her perfect features? What thoughts can she be thinking, alone, abandoned, deprived of the wise counsel of the one who brought her to fruition?"

"Oh, brother," Remo said as they stepped off the elevator and onto the second floor.

"Who will cut the cord!" Chiun shrieked to the ceiling.

Harold Smith poked his gray head out of his halfopen office, his face drained of color.

"What was that sound?" he gasped.

"Chiun was just wondering who will cut Cheeta's cord," Remo said dryly.

"Some witless white, no doubt," Chiun muttered darkly. Then, his voice calmer, he said, "Hail, Emperor Smith."

Distaste showed on Harold Smith's lemony face. "I wish you would not call me that, Master Chiun. I am not an emperor."

"Only your lack of ambition stands between you and the Eagle Throne," Chiun whispered. "Speak the word, and this mindless charade called the right to vote will be yours to abolish by royal decree."

Harold Smith returned to his desk and his computer.

"Any progress?" Remo asked, closing the door after him.

Smith shook his gray head. "The jamming signal went down before it could be traced. I am trying to ascertain why. So far, I have discounted a power outage at the transmission site, and other obvious causes."

Remo and Chiun took positions behind Smith and looked over his shoulder at the computer screen.

Smith pressed a key, bringing up a wire frame map of Canada. "The FCC was able to plot out the latitude of the pirate signal."

"So I was right," said Remo. "It was in Canada."

"Foreign enemies are usually the most dangerous," Chiun said thinly. "No doubt they covet your northernmost provinces, Smith."

"Canada is one of our closest allies," Smith pointed out, "and we share with them the longest undefended border in human history."

"You have never been at war with these people?"

"Not since the War of 1812," Smith said, pressing another key. A red line tracked across the map of Canada. When it completed itself, Smith added, "The transmitter is situated somewhere on that line."

"Can't we find it by air?" asked Remo.

"The line runs from the Canadian Northwest to the Canadian Shield. It's desolate country. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. Even if the Canadians would agree to U.S. overflights."

"They won't, huh?"

"They are currently blaming us for this transmission problem."

Remo frowned. "Satellite recon?"

"It will take time to reposition a KH-12 for this task. Normally, we do not spy on Canada."

Chiun lifted his voice. "Cheeta! Why are we not looking for Cheeta?"

"One will lead to another," said Smith.

"These evil Canadians are responsible for this outrage," Chiun said sharply, raising a shaking fist. "No doubt to avenge their inglorious defeat in 1812. It is our duty as loyal Americans to seize their ruler and hold him for ransom."

"Loyal Americans?" Smith said blankly.

"Let me guess," Remo added. "The ransom is Cheeta. "

"Of course," said Chiun, his voice and face bland. "They will surrender her with great ceremony, as befits the high station of the hostages." The Master of Sinanju eyed Harold Smith. "I will be pleased to act as mediator, Emperor Smith. Perhaps certain untraceable poisons can be introduced into the Canadian ruler's food during the exchange banquet as a subtle hint that this outrage must be never repeated."

"No," Smith said flatly.

Chiun's sparse eyebrows lifted. "No?"

"Absolutely not. We do not know that the Canadians are responsible."

"The proof is in this telecast device," said Chiun, pointing to Smith's TV.

They looked. The BCN Evening News with Don Cooder was on. The sound was off. No one bothered to remedy that situation.

"Explain please," said Smith.

"It is known that the evil transmitter lies hidden in the wicked Kingdom of Canada."

"Canada is a democracy, but yes."

"You have told me that one of the abductors was a known Scot?"

"Yes. And Dieter Banning is a Canadian of Scottish ancestry," Smith corrected.

"A spy in your land," sniffed Chiun. "Whom I vanquished."

"That was unfortunate."

"Was it? Did the evil blackness not cease with his death?"

Smith blinked. He switched to ANC. Ned Doppler was reading copy, red-eyed and obviously close to tears. The screen was edged in black, no doubt the graphic department's idea of a tribute to the late Dieter Banning.

Smith made a thoughtful face. "That's right. It did. But why?"

"The answer is clear," announced Chiun. "The evil mastermind dead, his minions now cower, dreading your regal justice."

Smith shook his head. "Unlikely. Even if Banning was involved in this, his death would not result in . . ." Smith's voice trailed off.

"What is it?" Remo asked.

"I faxed news of Banning's death to every news organization, print and television. My aim was to elicit some response from Captain Audion."

"But instead Audion shut everything down," Remo muttered.

"I had been pursuing the theory that Audion was aware of our attempts to track down his signal, and cut transmission to avoid discovery," Smith said slowly. "Perhaps that was not the situation at all. Perhaps..."

Smith logged off his Canadian file and brought up a blank screen.

"We have two main suspects here," Smith said, "Jed Burner, president of KNNN and Dieter Banning, ANC's nightly anchor."

"Why are they called 'anchors'?" Chiun asked suddenly.

"Why do they always say 'nightly'?" wondered Remo.

"Not now," Smith said as he typed the names on the screen.

"Don't forget Haiphong Hannah," Remo inserted.

Nodding, Smith added Layne Fondue's name as well.

"According to your description of the events in Atlanta," Smith said absently, "Cheeta Ching was taken away by Burner, Fondue, and a disguised man wearing-"

"Don't say it," Remo said urgently.

"-a kilt."

"What is this? What is this?" Chiun squeaked, his voice shaking as his eyes went from Remo to Smith and Remo again. They stayed on Remo, cold and steely.

"I can explain," Smitty said hastily.

"It is not you who must explain your words, but Remo."

Remo swallowed.

"I tried to tell you back at the house," he said in a low voice.

Chiun's eyes narrowed to steely gleams. "Tell me now."

"Cheeta beat me to KNNN. I guess she was following the same lead Smith fed me. I got there just as they were bundling her into Burner's chopper."

"And you did not stop them?" Chiun said.

"The guy in the kilt had his gun on Cheeta the whole time."

"That would not have stopped a true Master of Sinanju, whose feet are swift as the snow leopard and whose hands are as the lightning whose thunder is not heard until the blow had been struck."

"He was holding the muzzle to Cheeta's stomach," Remo said.

Chiun's facial hair shuddered. His eyes grew heavy of lid, like a serpent. Remo felt the cold sweat return to his hands. He returned Chiun's unflinching gaze with an open unthreatening stare of his own.

"You did the correct thing," said Chiun in a remote voice, but turned his back on Remo. "But only because you have been trained by the best."

Remo let out a sigh of relief and wiped the back of his hand across his brow, leaving it more sweaty than before.

"Not that you are forgiven for not arriving early," he added coldly.

"Which I wouldn't have been if I hadn't wasted time trying to get you to come along," Remo shot back.

Chiun said nothing. Smith said, "Please describe the scene in Atlanta as you recall it."

Remo furrowed his brow. "I got past the guards, heard that Cheeta had beaten me to Burner and heard shooting. By the time I got to the roof, they were all hustling Cheeta into the chopper."

"They were all armed?"

"Only Banning. Burner and Haiphong Hannah were getting into the chopper ahead of them."

"You are certain it was Banning?"

"He wearing sunglasses and a big hat," Remo said. "The only thing I was sure of was his kilt."

"What color was it?"

"Green plaid in Atlanta. Brown plaid in New York."

"They are called tartans, not plaids," Chiun corrected.

Smith consulted a computer file. "Clan tartans do not change color," he said, frowning. "It is possible the abductor was not Banning."

"So why'd Captain Audion shut down when he heard Banning was dead?" Remo asked.

"Perhaps because he wanted to foster the impression that Banning was the culprit, and that this was a Canadian operation."

"Does that mean Burner and Haiphong Hannah are the real bad guys?"

"It is a reasonable working theory," Smith allowed.

"Okay, let's find them."

"All Federal resources are bent toward that purpose. But so far there was been no sign of them, or Burner's helicopter."

"We're at a dead end then?"

At the word dead, the Master of Sinanju sipped in a shocked breath. "Cheeta is at the mercy of Canadians and there is no helping her," he wailed, throwing back his head and placing a clenched fist to his amber forehead.

Remo was looking at Smith's TV set. "Hey, when did you spring for cable?" he asked, indicating the cable box.

"Today. With broadcast television out of commission, it was absolutely necessary. I must stay on top of events in every way I can."

"Don't sound so miserable. Lots of good stuff is on cable these days-if you like stale thirty-year-old sitcoms. Wait a minute, check this out."

Smith looked up. Turning up the sound, Remo pointed to the Quantel graphic floating to one side of Don Cooder's head.

". . . minutes ago received an extraordinary fax signed 'Captain Audacious'-I mean 'Audion.' " Cooder flashed his anemic smile. "A little slip of the tongue which is not meant to cast aspersions on our colleagues over at KNNN," he added with a nervous laugh. "This fax promises that two days from now, the day May sweeps are set to begin, broadcast television will be shut down for a seven day period. Unless each network and cable service pays fifty-that's fifty-million-million with an M-dollars into a numbered Swiss bank account."

"The fiends!" Chiun shrieked. "Was nothing said about Cheeta? Oh, the heartrending suspense!"

"Here with me now for a reaction to this outrageous demand is BCN news director Loone-"

Smith turned down the sound.

"Don't you want to hear what they're saying?" Remo asked.

"I would rather trace that fax," Smith said flatly.

Smith's fingers worked like pale gray spiders along the keyboard. The intensity of his expression brought the Master of Sinanju to his side.

Smith brought up the BCN AT He froze the last hour's worth of incoming calls and put them in a window up in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Then he accessed the MBC list. This went into the upper left-hand corner. The ANC file completed the screen.

Smith initiated a sort and analyze program.

Only two numbers came up in common. Smith frowned. He accessed the Vox phone records and this added a third common number. Then he went to KNNN. The same incoming number showed up. It was a New York area code. Smith isolated it and interrogated the file, murmuring, "This is odd . . . ."

"What is?" asked Remo.

"Of the major news organizations, only MBC does not show a recent incoming call in common with the other networks."

Then Smith saw why.

"My God. The Captain Audion fax came from MBC. "

Remo started for the door. "We're right on it, Smitty."

"No, you are not," Smith said tightly.

"Huh?"

"Thanks to Master Chiun, you are both wanted by the New York City Police. We cannot put you back in the field so soon."

"So what do we-?"

"I am going to MBC," Smith said.

"What about us?"

"You will remain here, by the telephone, ready to move on my signal."

"Emperor Smith," Chiun said suddenly. "I have a brilliant suggestion."

"Yes?"

"Pay the ransom. It is only money and Cheeta is-"

"No."

Chiun turned pale and said no more.

Without another word, Harold Smith went over to a filing cabinet and took from it his briefcase. From the top drawer he extracted an old Army issue .45 automatic and a clip of bullets. He placed these in his suitcase and walked from the office.

After the sound of the elevator came to his ears, the Master of Sinanju turned to Remo and said, "This is all your fault."

"My fault! If you hadn't run ahead to ANC, our faces wouldn't be on every light pole and post office in Manhattan."

"If you had not been late, I would not have had to seek out Cheeta in dangerous places."

"And if you had come with me to Atlanta, we wouldn't have lost Cheeta in the first place!"

The Master of Sinanju froze, his face stung. Slowly, the tight pattern of his wrinkles disintegrated.

"Cheeta! Poor Cheeta! Who will soothe her troubled brow while I am forced to abide in a madhouse among white madmen?"

Chapter 27

There was panic at Multinational Broadcast Company when Harold Smith presented himself, Secret Service photo III in one hand, at the MBC security desk. Staff was pouring from the building as if from a fire.

"What is wrong!" Smith demanded.

"They're running haywire again!" the guard cried, pulling his sidearm free of its holster and pushing against the human tide.

Smith followed him into the building, through a rabbit warren of corridors and cubicles in which secretaries cowered under desks and technical staff hid behind heavy editing equipment.

The guard came to a heavy steel door marked SET. There was a bulbous red light over a sign that said ON AIR. He put his back to the door, holding his pistol high in a two-handed grip. He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath.

"What is wrong?" Smith repeated.

The guard didn't reply. He slammed into the door, whirled, and legs spread apart, began firing into the news set.

Eight closely spaced shots came out. Gun smoke wafted back in Smith's horrified face.

Then, the guard stumbled back and said in a shaken voice, "I can't stop them! Bullets don't even faze them."

Smith grabbed the man by his jacket front.

"Get hold of yourself," he said tightly. "And tell me what is wrong."

"It's those damned Nishitsu robot cameras!" the guard said.

Smith scowled. "Robot cameras?"

Smith released the man and eased the door open. He saw the familiar MBC news set. There was the anchor desk that Tim Macaw usually sat behind.

Only now Macaw was up on the desktop cowering on his knees as a trio of wheeled unmanned cameras were blindly bumping into sets, backdrops, and live monitors and into the desk itself, their bullet-pocked teleprompters frozen on the words, THIS IS THE MBC NIGHTIME NEWS.

Macaw saw Smith and wailed, "Get security before these things kill-I mean terminally inconvenience-me!"

As if responding to his voice, the number two camera shifted away from breaking the world map that made up one wing of the background and joined the number one camera in banging into and retreating from the news desk. Big chunks began appearing in the thick formica top, threatening Macaw's shrinking perch.

Smith's gaze raked the set. Through a long glass panel, he could see control-room staff frantically throwing switches. One turned and threw his hands up in a helpless gesture of defeat.

Harold Smith strode in, stepped gingerly around the struggle over the news desk, and went up to the number three camera, which had jammed its square glass lens into the monitor array and was furiously spinning its smoking rubber wheels, trying to disengage.

Smith found a panel marked FUSE, popped it open, and unscrewed the fuse. The camera abruptly shut down.

Still clutching his briefcase, Smith went to the remaining cameras and, with more difficulty, pulled their fuses.

Tim Macaw climbed off the chewed-up island that had been his desk.

"Thanks," he said shakily. "I owe you. Wanna do a two-shot? We can take turns asking the questions."

"No," Smith said flatly. He flashed his Secret Service card. "I am investigating the Captain Audion threats. Earlier this evening, ANC and BCN both received a new demand fax from this terrorist."

"Yeah, I know."

"How do you know?"

"We got one, too."

"According to a search of your phone records, you did not. And it is impossible for you to have received one."

"What business of it of yours to look into network phone records?" Macaw demanded in a voice that shook with righteous indignation.

"You reporters do this sort of thing all the time," Smith snapped.

"But we're a news organization. We're above the law."

"And I represent the lawful United States government," Smith said, his voice going testy.

"Oh. You'd better talk to legal about that."

"I am talking to you," Smith pointed out.

"Uh, I don't know if I can talk on the record."

"Who has access to the fax machines in this building?"

"Actually I have the only one."

"A network this large and there is only one fax?"

"We lost so much money sponsoring the '92 Olympics we had to sell off a lot of stuff," Macaw admitted. "Why do you think our cameras are robot-controlled? We saved three camera operator salaries."

Smith glanced around the destroyed news set, calculating that the run-amok cameras had cost the network the equivalent of thirty cameraman's salaries.

"Who discovered the fax?" he asked Macaw.

"You mean who found it?"

"Yes."

"Guess I can tell you that. It was our technical director, Nealon." Tim Macaw pointed to the control room. "He's the one with the helpless expression."

"Could you be more specific?" Smith asked.

"In the red shirt."

"Thank you."

Harold Smith worked his way through the confusing maze of satellite rooms surrounding the MBC news set. Security guards challenged him at one point and, impressed by his falsified photo ID, allowed him to roam at will.

Smith entered the control room without knocking.

"Nealon?"

The horse-faced man in the red shirt looked up from an exposed control board. "Yes?"

"Smith. Secret Service. I understand you were the first to discover the latest extortionary fax."

Nealon licked a pasty upper lip and said, "Yeah, I was walking past the thing and it was coming off. I knew it was important so I gave it to Macaw."

"Do you recall what time that was?"

"Yeah. 7:31. I know because the 7:00 feed had just wrapped."

"You are lying."

Nealon blinked. "Say that again?"

"AT cords show that the demand faxes received by the other networks originated at an MBC faxphone. And there were no incoming calls received here at the time you state."

Nealon said nothing. His eyes lost their focus. They began to cross slightly.

Harold Smith had in his pre-CURE days been a CIA bureaucrat, a field operative, and before that an operative for the OSS. He understood how dangerous men behaved under stress. The telltale signs of a man reaching for a weapon were red flags to him.

Smith had his automatic out just as Nealon's fingers took hold of the butt of his own concealed weapon.

"Do not make a mistake you cannot survive," Smith warned without evident emotion.

Nealon looked down the barrel of Harold Smith's formidable handgun, looked up to Smith's gray patrician features and, balancing the threat of one against the resolve of the other, made a mistake that many men who had gone up against Harold W. Smith in his past had made.

He completed his draw, producing a flat .22 pistol. Harold Smith squeezed his trigger once. The bullet smashed the tiny .22 against the man's stomach before he could fire-and continued on into his ribcage.

The bullet richocheted off three ribs and exited Nealon's throat. He took hold of himself with his free hand and the flood of blood told the man all he would ever know. Eyes rolling up in his head, he crumpled to the control room floor.

Harold Smith went to the body, his gray features grim.

"How long has this man been working here?" he demanded, his voice sharp.

A technician croaked, "Six months. Came over from BCN after their last round of layoffs."

Smith became aware of a frantic pounding on the other side of the Plexiglas panel overlooking the newsroom.

It was Tim Macaw. He was banging with one fist and pointing at the dead technical director with the other. Someone flicked a switch, and Macaw's voice came through a intercom.

"-tures! Somebody get a camera in there. We can do a live cut-in. We'll own this story!"

"What is that man saying?" asked Smith.

"He wants this to go out live."

"Absolutely not," said Smith. "This is a Secret Service investigation. I hereby order this control room sealed pending the arrival of a federal coroner, and all camera equipment is excluded until further notice."

"Can you do that?" asked Tim Macaw from the other side of the glass.

"I am doing it," Smith said.

The news director was called in. He took one look at the dead man and asked, "Did anyone get the shooting on tape?"

When the answer came back no, he lost interest in the body and told Smith, "You can't suppress the news. This is news. I stand on the first amendment rights of the great peacock-proud MBC network news tradition."

"This is in your interest," Smith said.

"It is never in the public's interest to suppress news."

"My investigation shows conclusively that the MBC technical director is responsible for transmitting the latest extortionary faxes from the terrorist who calls himself Captain Audion."

The news director took a sudden step backward as if hit by a blow.

"MBC is as much a victim of this nut as anyone else," he protested.

"The fax Nealon said he had received was falsified. Nealon is an operative of Captain Audion."

"Did I tell you we got him from BCN?"

"Immaterial. He is an MBC employee. Now."

"Look, what'll it take to put this on ice for a while?"

"Your complete cooperation," said Smith.

"I'll have to check with legal."

"Do so."

A representative from the legal department who came down from an upper floor threw up over the body when it was shown to him. Covering his mouth with his handkerchief, he retreated to the relative safety of his office.

"I guess we're cooperating, then," the news director said thickly.

Harold Smith was allowed access to MBC employee records and staff and was shielded from all news and camera crews, although Tim Macaw had to be locked in the film storage library until he stopped crying.

After twenty minutes, Smith had determined that Dennis Nealon had come from BCN less than four months ago.

"What happened to the previous technical director?" Smith asked.

"Cooke? Hit and run victim."

"Was the driver ever caught?"

"No. It was one of those drunk driver things."

"I see."

"See what?"

"That Dennis Nealon was a plant. Tell me, isn't there a redundancy system for putting out your signal?"

"You mean the microwave feed?"

"Yes."

"Sure."

"Why did the microwave feed not go out to the affiliates?"

"We don't know. Nealon was in charge of-" The news director paled.

"Could the feed have been disabled by Nealon?"

"Sure, but why would he-"

"Why would he attempt to assassinate Tim Macaw with robot cameras?" Smith countered.

"That was a short circuit. We get those from time to time. Back when Cheeta Ching was working here, one of them up and goosed her. She turned around and slapped us with sexual harassment suit. We had to settle out of court."

"Dennis Nealon just attempted to kill Tim Macaw."

"Why would he do that?"

Harold Smith said nothing. His mouth was a compressed, bloodless line.

A shout went up from the control room.

"Hey, KNNN is broadcasting again!"

"Hoorray!" came the muffled voice of Tim Macaw. The MBC anchor was liberated as staffers crowded into the cramped control room to watch the KNNN feed.

Two anonymous KNNN anchors were interviewing one another, interspersed with footage of the downed satellite dishes.

"At this hour," one said, "there has been no word of KNNN owner Jediah Burner and wife, Layne Fondue, missing since the outrageous attack on KNNN's broadcast signal by persons unknown."

"They don't know any more that we do," Macaw said unhappily. Smith noticed that he was standing on the stomach of the dead technical director, Dennis Nealon, in an attempt to see above the heads of the others. Everytime Macaw shifted his feet, blood gurgled from the dead man's open throat and mouth.

While the MBC news staff was fixated on the KNNN broadcast, Harold Smith slipped out a side door and hailed a Checker cab.

Half an hour later, Smith was seated on the bed in a corner room in an aging hotel near Madison Square Garden, his briefcase open on the drumhead-tight bedspread.

The TV was on and Smith was tuned to KNNN. The sound was off. Smith was speaking directly to the President of the United States, straining to be heard over the rock music playing in the background.

"Mr. President, I have made some progress."

"Good. We can use it."

"I have discovered Captain Audion had placed a mole in the MBC news organization."

"A mole?"

"An agent, whose job it was to facilitate the implementation of his blackouts. This man was responsible for the latest demands."

"Was?"

"He is dead. I was unable to interrogate him. It is unfortunate, but even in death he may be useful."

"How?"

"I would like the Secret Service to take possession of the dead man's body and throw a blanket of secrecy over the death."

"I kind of doubt that MBC will go along."

"They will go along, Mr. President. At least long enough for me to implement my plan."

"If you can do that Smith, you're a better man than I am. That MBC White House reporter all but jumped down my throat during my last press conference."

"Thank you for your cooperation," said Smith, hanging up before the President could ask questions that Harold Smith had no time to answer.

Smith logged into his computer and typed up a blind fax. It stated in bare-bones, journalistic sentences, that Dennis Nealon, technical director for MBC's news division, had been taken into custody by the Secret Service in connection with the Captain Audion threat.

Smith transmitted it to all news organizations except MBC.

Then, turning up the sound, he waited for something to happen.

KNNN broke the story first. ANC and Vox followed. Smith flipped between BCN and MBC to see who would jump on the story next. It turned out to be Don Cooder.

His stentorian voice broke in, saying, "This is a BCN Special Report. Good evening. Don Cooder reporting. The latest salvo in the struggle for the soul of broadcast television-if not human civilization-and the faceless monster calling himself Captain Audion has been fired. BCN has just learned that the Secret Service has taken into custody one Dennis Nealon, technical director for the Multinational Broadcasting Corporation, in connection with the Captain Audion terror transmission. Whether this implicates MBC management and we want to be extra, extra careful about this-no one is saying. Officially. The word from MBC is a tight-lipped 'No Comment.' There are no further details available at this time. As always, we here at BCN stand ready to break in with new developments as they happen in this, our continuing effort to stand vigil over your right to know. Now, back to Raven."

For its part, MBC news issued a terse written "no comment" nonrelease unstatement and did not break programming.

Smith smiled thinly. Captain Audion, wherever he was, was certain to panic over the reports. It was reasonable to assume that his agents, whom Smith was now convinced were planted in every broadcast news organization in the country, would hesitate to implement the threatened broadcast blackout set for three days hence.

In the game of high-stakes chess he was playing against an unknown opponent, Harold Smith was confident that he had checked his opposition. Perhaps irrevocably.

Chapter 28

Don Cooder's frozen smile stayed frozen until the tally light over the number one camera winked off. Then he reached under the desk for the producer phone and asked, "How was I?"

"Fantastic, Don," gushed his producer. "As always."

"So what's the latest?"

"Nothing, Don. Our sources have all dried up."

"Can't we get anything out of the Secret Service?"

"They're worse than the CIA. They refuse to talk off the record, never mind on."

"If we send a camera crew over to MBC, how do you think it would play?"

"That's a precedent I don't want to set, Don."

"What the hell's the matter with you? This is big. Maybe the biggest story of the last decade of the twentieth century. We can't just let it go rolling past like sagebrush ahead of a Texas twister."

"Upper management says hands off. They're hoping the Secret Secret rips the lid off this thing before the deadline."

Cooder lowered his voice. "They're not talking about paying, are they?"

"They're not talking. Period."

"Well, next time you talk to them, tell them they'll pay this blackmailer over Don Cooder's dead body."

"Don, you sure you want me to say that?"

"Why not? I'm a man of principal."

"You're also dead last in the news ratings. They're very sensitive about that."

"And if Don Cooder breaks this story, he'll be first in the ratings."

"Don, listen to me: Dieter Banning is dead. That automatically bumps you up a notch. Cheeta has been kidnapped. KNNN is reporting Jed Burner as missing, too. And MBC is hinting that there was an attempt on Tim Macaw tonight. You know what that means?"

"I'm number one?"

"No. It means Captain Audion is targeting news anchors by ratings and your low numbers are probably all that've saved you so far."

"Don Cooder is not afraid of high ratings. He will gladly lay down his life for a solid three share!"

"Fine, Don. But let's not encourage the brass. Don't forget they took a ten-million-dollar insurance policy out on you."

"Good thought. Let's keep this conversation between ourselves, shall we?"

"You got it, Don."

Don Cooder hung up, straightened his tie, and clumped on ostrich hide boots to his office, where he picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

"Frank, it's me again. I need a reality check on something . . ."

Chapter 29

Harold W. Smith left his Rye, New York home the next morning and almost broke his neck tripping over an obstruction on his front step.

Smith recovered his balance, and for a moment his mind refused to accept what his gray eyes told him was on the step.

It was his subscription copy of his morning paper. And it was twice the size of the usual Sunday edition.

Except that this was Saturday. Or Smith thought it was. Was his mind going? Smith stooped to pick up the paper, and a telephone book block of color advertising inserts popped out.

He was forced to set his briefcase down and use both hands to lift the paper. Even then, slippery inserts kept sliding out.

Groaning, Smith carried the paper to his waiting station wagon. He had to make two trips. Finally, briefcase holding down the pile of paper, he drove toward Folcroft.

According to the masthead, today was Saturday. This simple confirmation lifted a great weight off Harold Smith's mind. If he had one fear as head of CURE, it was that his mental faculties might slip. He and he alone was responsible for the day-to-day running of CURE.

The day would one day come, Smith knew, when he could no longer shoulder those responsibilities. Retirement was out of the question. He knew too much about how America kept its political head above the waters of anarchy and social chaos. Smith expected to die at his desk, serving his country. Or in the field.

Upon his demise, CURE would either be shut down by the presiding President or a new head of CURE would be installed. That would not be Harold Smith's problem.

But if Smith's mind showed any signs of failing, it was his responsibility to take his own life with a poison pill he kept in the watch pocket of his gray vest when awake and in his gray pajama pocket when sleeping.

At a stoplight, Smith scanned the headlines.

The entire front page was devoted to stories about the five-hour TV broadcast blackout.

The lead story was long and told Smith little he hadn't known before.

It was the sidebars and companion stories that held his attention even after the light changed and the honking of horns brought his head up and his foot to the gas.

Buried in the human interest angles of video rentals surges, predictions of a mini-baby-boom nine months in the future, and a 3 percent increase in incidents of domestic violence, were scattered reports of riots in certain inner cities--Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and Miami.

In most cities, the riots had begun as protests over the loss of television signal. Police were theorizing that these incidents were the result of a frustration with useless TV sets. Smith understood there was more to it than that.

Television had become a social sedative, without which certain elements, having too much time on its hands, got into more trouble than usual. But beyond that there was a deeper psychological warning. People had come to depend on TV as their chief source of news and main connection with the world beyond their neighborhoods. Deprived of the electronic window on the world, they quickly became uneasy, restless, disconnected, and worried. In these scattered events there was the shadow of a darker menace-widespread civil unrest, if not panic.

Smith had foreseen this even before the President. What he had not foreseen he saw as he scanned the inner pages, was the international ramifications of the problem. Mexico and Canada had also ceased broadcasting over the air. In those countries, cable stations continued carrying signals. That told Smith that Captain Audion was targeting U.S. networks primarily, and the spillover was due to the enormous scope of the broadcast null zone.

Still, the government of Mexico and Canada did not grasp this. They saw only that their airwaves were being disrupted. There was growing instability in Mexico. But the greater problem lay to the north. The Canadian government was threatening to close its borders with the U.S. if the interference did not cease.

As Smith turned into the gates of Folcroft Sanitarium, he promised himself that he would hunt down Captain Audion before the situation could escalate further.

But how to do that? Until Audion resumed jamming, there was no way to trace his transmitter. And Smith had seen to it that Audion would not dare to carry through on this threat.

Remo Williams greeted him when Harold Smith, bent almost double by the weight of his morning newspaper, stepped off the elevator.

"Here, let me get that," Remo said, taking the bundle of newsprint from Smith's thin arms. Seeing the size of the edition, Remo looked puzzled. "Is it Sunday already?"

"No, the blackout has panicked advertisers into taking out newspaper ads in anticipation of Captain Audion's next attack."

Remo's dark eyes lifted hopefully. "Does that mean they've doubled the size of the comics page, too?"

"I have not looked."

Smith unlocked his office, saying, "Where is Master Chiun?"

"In his room. I don't think he slept. I could hear him pacing all night. He's worried sick about Cheeta, and he's not talking to me."

Smith laid the newspaper and briefcase on his desk, took his seat, and touched the concealed stud that brought his CURE terminal humming out of its hidden desk reservoir. Smith logged on.

Remo turned on the tiny TV and checked every channel. All stations were broadcasting normally, and he settled on KNNN.

"When did KNNN come back on?" he asked Smith.

"Last night," said Smith, not looking up from his scan of the morning news digests. Smith preferred to get his news in digest form. Commentators only diluted the facts with their personal prejudices, he felt. Smith's computers continually scanned wire services feeds, gathering and summarizing events according to a program Smith had long ago set up.

Remo abruptly snapped his finger. "Hey! I just remembered something."

"Yes?"

"When we were at Cooder's office, Chiun impressed Cooder by quoting from the Bible."

"How so?"

"Chiun's name was in it."

"Really? Do you recall the citation?"

"No."

Smith pulled up his Bible concordance, input the name Chiun, then depressed the Search key.

"There is only one reference to a Biblical Chiun," he told Remo. "But in context, I do not understand it."

"Neither do I. Chiun gave me a cock-and-bull story about one of his ancestors. Chiun the First. But he wasn't exactly generous with details."

"According to this footnote," Smith added, "Chiun is a transliteration of the Hebrew Kaiwan, a name that goes back to the Babylonia word, Kayamanu, which has been identified with the planet Saturn, which in turn can be equated with certain obscure Babylonian deities, such as Ninurta and Rentham, whom the Hebrew people worshipped during their desert exile."

"That tells me a lot," Remo said dryly. "Anything else?"

"Kayamanu, or Saturn, was called 'the star of right and justice.' But we could be here days backtracking obscure references," said Smith, abruptly logging off his Bible database. "We must unmask Captain Audion before the deadline."

"I don't see what the big deal is."

"Read the front page," Smith suggested.

Remo did. People had been killed over satellite dishes. Stores reported massive dropoffs in sales-apparently because without commercials to motivate the average citizen, he held onto his money. The economy was taking a further beating. "All this because of no TV for a crummy five hours?" he complained.

"Try to imagine the consequences of the seven-day blackout-sports riots, domestic strife."

"Maybe the networks will pay up."

"They might. But it would not solve the basic problem."

The red telephone rang and Smith said, "Excuse me. That is the President."

"Give him a message for me."

"What?"

"Drown the Vice President."

Smith frowned and put the receiver to his ear.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"I have some news. I just spoke with the prime minister of Canada. His CRTC was tracing the pirate transmitter until the signal went off the air."

"Did they get a fix?"

"Not exactly. The prime minister tells me he has the longitude line."

"And we have the latitude."

"I offered to exchange data, organize a joint assault operation on the transmitter, but he refused and demanded I surrender the latitude coordinates as a good faith gesture to demonstrate U.S. noninvolvement."

"You, of course, declined?"

"Damn straight. I wasn't about to let them swoop down on this transmitter, grab the bad guys and phoney up a scenario implicating a U.S. citizen or his government."

"You did right," said Smith, "We have to be prepared for the probability that U.S. citizens are behind this plot."

"I know," sighed the President. "And here is something else: I've spoken with the heads of the major networks. They say they can't afford a seven-day blackout. It would break them. They're losing millions in advertising money to newspapers and magazines already. You should see my Washington Post this morning. The Secret Service thought it was a bomb and detonated it."

"Capitulation to terrorism is always a mistake."

"I know. But I have no control over what the networks do. Civil unrest could explode if TV is blacked out again. And the economy is hurting. I had no idea how much spending was motivated by TV commercials."

"Can you convince the networks to give us twenty-four hours?"

"I can try. But they sound ready to wire the ransom into the numbered Swiss account today."

"Do your best, Mr. President," said Smith, hanging up. He looked to Remo.

"The networks are prepared to pay the ransom."

"Damn. I couldn't care less about the networks, but I can't stand the idea of this nut getting away with this crap. Once he's paid off, he can vanish and we'll never find him."

Smith was staring at the greenish field of commands on his terminal screen.

"There must be some clue," he said, "some lead. We know that the transmitter is in Northern Canada. But where?"

"Let's put our heads together."

Smith's prim mouth tightened. "How do you mean?"

"You work your computer . . ."

"Yes?"

"And I'll pull up a chair and watch KNNN."

"Why KNNN?"

Remo grinned. "Because they always break stuff first."

"It is worth a try," Smith said without enthusiasm.

Hours later, a bleary-eyed Harold Smith looked up from his screen and began polishing his glasses with a handkerchief.

"Anything?" asked Remo, looking away from the TV. He had the newspaper spread out over his end of the desk.

"The only anomaly I can find in scanning Canadian news feeds is a rash of car battery thefts in the area of upper Quebec called the Canadian Shield."

"Car battery thefts?"

"From parked cars and auto supply stores and gas stations."

"What would that have to do with a pirate transmitter?"

Smith frowned. "I do not know. . . ."

The red telephone rang. Smith lifted the receiver.

"The networks have just paid the ransom," the President said in a subdued voice. "I did what I could. They were looking at their economic survival."

"The trail may end here, Mr. President."

"But the crisis is over. Isn't it?"

"For this month. Perhaps this year. But Captain Audion has just earned 100 million dollars by extortion. The combined ad revenues of the big three networks exceed five billion dollars annually. What is to stop this madman from asking for one of those billions next time?"

"We can only hope he isn't that greedy."

"I would not count on such a likelihood, Mr. President," said Smith wearily. "Now if you will excuse me, I intend to continue my search for the transmitter."

Remo, having overheard every word, asked glumly, "Does that mean Cheeta's going to be released?"

"We should know before long," said Smith.

"Then our problems will really start," Remo muttered.

They went back to work.

Hours passed.

In his sparsely furnished room in the private wing of Folcroft Sanitarium, the Master of Sinanju sat before a television set, his face stone, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the screen.

He was watching BCN, trusting that news of Cheeta, beloved Cheeta, the flower of Korean womanhood, would be given.

Never had he felt so helpless. Never had been forced to endure such tortures. First, fair Cheeta is kidnapped and then his emperor refused to allow a reasonable ransom to be paid. Were all whites mad? What was mere paper money against the life of a mother and child? No doubt this was a subtle example of the virulent anti-Koreanism that infected the white mind.

Now he was reduced to watching Bowling for Bucks, as if every fat white wheezing in victory or sobbing defeat was important. It was unendurable.

But there was nothing he could do. His emperor had forbidden him from taking action.

Then, abruptly, the screen went black and a sonorous voice said, "There is nothing wrong with your television set . . . "

Remo was reading Calvin en the KNNN anchor said, "On a lighter note, Canadian authorities are unable to explain the discovery on a remote mountaintop in Quebec of a religious statue of a kind normally seen perched on South American hillsides."

At the sound of the word "Quebec," both Remo and Harold Smith looked up from their reading.

A Quantel graphic materialized beside the anchor's serious face-and the screen turned to snow and static.

Remo changed the channel. And got blackness.

"There is nothing wrong with your television set . . . " a voice began saying.

"What's this crap?" Remo exploded.

"I do not understand," Smith muttered. "The ransom has been paid."

"Maybe the checks bounced."

"Wire transfers do not bounce," said Smith as Remo changed channels. Not every channel was blacked out. A number of cable stations was in service. The networks were down. As was Nickelodeon and MTV, and a smattering of others.

"Try KNNN again," Smith directed.

Remo obliged. The KNNN transmission was just snow.

"Think their dishes went down again?" Remo said.

"Coincident with the new blackout? Not likely."

Then KNNN came back on. With a technical difficulties graphic depicting a broken anchor. A voiceover said, "Please stand by while KNNN switches to its backup film library."

"Must mean that robot-controlled room I saw," Remo said.

The graphic went away. And filling the screen was a slab of unreflective basalt decorated by the words:

NO SIGNAL.

"Impossible," snapped Smith. "A cable transmission cannot be masked like that."

Captain Audion began speaking. "There is nothing wrong with your television set . . ."

Remo switched channels. On the network feeds, Captain Audion was already deep into his recitation.

"It's not the same signal," Remo said.

"You are right," said Smith.

Just then, the office door burst in and the Master of Sinanju, eyes ablaze, leapt in.

"Emperor Smith! The faceless fiend has struck again! You must do something. We must ransom Cheeta before it is too late."

Smith picked up the red telephone and was soon speaking with the President.

"If we move quickly, we may be able to trace the signal," Smith said.

"So will the Canadians."

"My people can move on instant notice."

"The fiend will die with his very own anchor wrapped around his lying throat," Chiun shrieked.

"What was that?" asked the President.

"Later," said Smith. "Time is of the essence." He hung up.

Remo asked, "Anything we can do?"

Smith frowned at the black TV screen.

"There must be some reason Audion went back on his word so quickly. But what?"

"But that's good, isn't it?" said Remo. "He can be traced now, right?"

"Yes. But it will take hours for the tracking planes to . . ." Smith's bloodless lips thinned.

"What? What?" squeaked Chiun.

"Perhaps there is another way."

"Speak the words, O Emperor Smith, and your loyal assassins will wreak your holy vengeance on the Canadian pirates."

Remo stared at the Master of Sinanju. "Holy?"

Chiun glowered back.

Smith winced, "Please, I must think."

The Master of Sinanju came down off his toes and dropped his upflung arms. He squinted one eye thoughtfully at Harold Smith.

"Captain Audion had a reason for restoring the blackout, despite being paid," Smith was saying. "A reason that overrode the danger of his signal being traced."

"Not necessarily," said Chiun.

Smith looked up from his thoughts. "Excuse me?"

"Everyone knows that Canadians are notoriously irrational."

Smith's frowning mouth grew puzzled. "Why do you say that?"

"The fiend swore to eradicate all television for seven hours, but ceased after only five. This is not how one strikes fear into an enemy nation. Therefore, he is irrational."

"Sound like inescapable logic to me," Remo said dryly.

"Thank you," said Chiun.

Remo rolled his eyes.

Smith said, "I find it difficult to believe this is a Canadian operation, even though all evidence points to a Canadian transmission site."

"Do not forget the vile-tongued spy, Banning," Chiun added.

"I have not. But I wonder if Banning were not a red herring?"

"He was a Scot. A white Scot. They are a cunning race--cunning and stingy. Worse than Canadians."

"Did we ever work for the Scots?" asked Remo.

"Who do you mean we, white thing?"

"Jed Burner is not Canadian," said Smith slowly. "Neither is Layne Fondue. Yet the finger of suspicion has pointed to them, to Dieter Banning, and via planted fax transmissions, to KNNN and MBC both."

"You saying that Audion been throwing suspicion on everyone he could?"

"It is obvious. And his targets might point to the identity of the terrorist."

"Who does that leave . . ."

Remo's voice trailed off. A light jumped into his deep-set eyes.

Before his mouth could open, a voice jumped from the silent TV screen that was still broadcasting black.

"This is a special report. Captain Audion speaking. "

Remo and Chiun hurried to the set.

The screen head was still black. Then, the blackness shrank and retreated, until the picture showed a television set perched on the broad shoulders of a figure wearing blue pinstripes.

The TV screen was blacked out except for the NO SIGNAL.

Then a hand reached up into the frame and turned a knob.

The TV screen within the TV screen winked on, showing a rugged face that was known to millions of television watchers across the nation.

"Hear ye! Hear ye! Cheeta Ching, broadcast anchorette, is about to have a cow. That's right, folks, her water has broken. Stay tuned."

"Aiieee! The unmitigated fiend! He has shown his face and now must die!"

Chapter 30

Don Cooder had locked his office door against the constant demands of his staff. They were forever pestering him at all hours, the shameless syncophants. So he had established a locked-office period, usually around three in the afternoon. He called it Sanity Maintenance Time.

His staff had other names: Nap Time, Fetal Position Hour, and Don's Thumb-sucking Break.

The truth was that it was at three in the afternoon that Don Cooder touched up the gray in his hair. If the aphorism that TV news is about hair, not journalism, is true, Don Cooder had a take on it no one else in television ever dreamed of. Where other anchors used Grecian Formula to take the gray out of their hair, he had a special formula to salt his virile black locks with mature gray.

Another anchor might have been proud of his luxurious helmet of jet-black hair. Not Don Cooder. He had inherited the Chair from the most distinguished anchor of the last two decades, Dalt Conklin, the affable and avuncular Uncle Dalt whose shoes Don Cooder had been trying to fill for ten years now.

From day one, the critics had been merciless in their unfair comparisons. The public changed channels in droves. His own staff had a pool betting on the week he would be let go.

After only two years in the Chair, Cooder had come to a ego-deflating realization. He would never, ever, no matter how low he pitched his voice or faked a catch in his voice, fill Dalt Conklin's shoes.

So he decided to copy his hair instead. The gray was painted in slowly over the months until his hemorrhaging ratings stabilized. Another year was spent in perfecting the perfect salt-and-pepper mixture.

Cooder had created a calendar chart for each week in the year. A photo of his black-to-gray hair ratio in the Sunday slot and his Nielson and Arbitron ratings scribbled over Saturday.

When he found the perfect balance, it was just a matter of holding it stable.

And so now, in his eleventh year anchoring the BCN Evening News, Don Cooder sat at his desk, an illuminated makeup mirror propped in front of him, touching up his artfully placed gray streaks with a slender brush.

A knock brought a scowl to his craggy face.

"Go way, I'm maintaining my sanity!"

"Turn on the TV. Turn on your TV." It was his news director.

Cooder reached for the instant-on button of his desk TV set and saw his own face staring back at him-framed in a TV set framed in his TV screen.

"This is Captain Audion of the Video Rangers," a voice, very much like his own, was saying. "Greetings Earthlings!"

Don Cooder shot bolt upright in his chair.

"That's not me! That's not me! It's a frame! We've got to get the word out."

"We can't," the BCN news director shouted through the locked door. "We're in black; everyone is in black."

"There's gotta be a way. My whole career, my credibility, my reputation for honesty and sincerity is about to-"

The clatter of his bottle of hair color dropping to the floor brought a question from the other side of the door.

"You all right, Don?"

"Knocked over a Diet Coke in my excitement. Nothing to worry about."

"What are you going to do, Don?"

Don Cooder strode over to his office window, looking down Seventh Avenue toward Times Square.

"I know exactly what I'm going to do," he announced in a deep, manly voice as he yanked his office window open.

Hearing this, the news director screamed, "Don! Don't do it! Don't jump!"

"Too late," said Don Cooder, climbing out on the ledge.

The news director of the Broadcast Corporation of North America was frantic.

"Help me someone. Help me to break down this door."

"We can't. There's trouble at the front door."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Press. They're clamoring for an interview with Don Cooder."

"He's left the building!"

"Then they're going to want an interview with you."

"Somebody help with this door. I'm going out the window, too!"

But there was no budging Don Cooder's reinforced door.

The news director ducked into Cheeta Ching's office and waited for help. No one came. In fact, the shouting from the front of the building died down. After a few minutes, someone came for him.

"It's okay," he was told by his floor manager. "They left."

"They did?"

"Yeah. They found Cooder."

"Is he . . . dead?"

"No, he's broadcasting from One Times Square."

"How can he do that? We're off the air."

"Remember at the last Democratic National Convention when we opened with a talking head shot of Cooder, then pulled back the camera to show that it was a simulcast with the screen up on One Times Square?"

"Yeah, that was a spectacular shot. Cooder was his own Quantel graphic."

"Well, it must have given him the idea. Because he's in that building doing a remote bulletin."

"The man is a genius. A fucking genius. And worth every cent we overpay him." The news director blinked. "He is denying the story, isn't he?"

"I guess."

They ran out into Times Square.

Traffic had stopped. Newspaper reporters were pushing through the gathering crowd as the giant face of Don Cooder, the bags under his eyes as fat as prize Holsteins and an inexplicable splash of gray in his well-combed hair, stared down at them as if from some electronic Mount Olympus.

"I categorically deny being Captain Audion. I am not Captain Audion. This is a frame, a cheap frame. A conspiracy by my many enemies in the media. They're trying to kill me. But Don Cooder can't be killed. As long as there is news to report, Don Cooder will live on, unbowed, unbloodied, immortal-"

"He's losing it," the floor manager said.

"Yeah, he's no good without a script. Never was."

"Good thing this isn't going out nationwide."

"Yeah. Wait a minute." The news director shouted back toward the studio. "Hey, somebody get a camera on this for rebroadcast later."

"Are you crazy? He's falling apart up there!"

"Yeah," said the news director, "but it's great television."

Chapter 31

Harold W. Smith stared at the bizarre image on his tiny television screen and said, "That is not Don Cooder."

"Are you blind!" shrieked the Master of Sinanju. "It is the fiend himself."

"A minute ago you were blaming Dieter Banning and the Canadians," Remo pointed out.

Chiun's voice grew frosty. "Who is to say this man is not in league with the wicked Canadians? Or a secret Canadian himself."

"Not you, that's for sure," Remo retorted.

"His mouth looks Canadian-thin and merciless," said Chiun, padding up to Harold Smith and facing him across his pathologically neat desk. "Emperor Smith, the villain has revealed himself for all to see. His motives are clear."

"They are?" Smith said.

"Yes, yes. Are you blind too? He is jealous of Cheeta. You yourself heard how he threatened her on television."

Remo caught Smith's eyes. "He has a point there."

"Perhaps. But that is not Don Cooder," Smith said flatly. "It is an animated graphic."

Remo took a closer look at the TV screen. His eyes were so heightened by the discipline of Sinanju that he had to focus hard, otherwise all he saw were the changing pixels, like colorful amoebae living out some superfast life cycle. "Yeah, you're right," he said. "Does that mean Audion is trying to frame Cooder?"

"It fits Audion's pattern to date. He has thrown suspicion on virtually every network and its news division."

"But why the news divisions every time? I mean, if he's attacking the networks, why go after the news? Aren't they the least profitable?"

"But the most visible for Audion's purposes. Each anchor functions as a kind of living symbol of his network. No, this is sound strategy."

"So we're nowhere?"

"No," said Smith. "We have an abundance of facts. There must be a way-"

Chiun made clutching motions with his long-nailed fingers and said, "Emperor Smith, allow Remo and I to descend upon every television station and I promise you we will wring the truth out of the secret oppressors."

"Like you wrung the truth out of Dieter Banning?" asked Remo.

"Pah! He is but a tool of baser fiends."

Smith raised his hands. "Please, Master Chiun. Reckless violence will not smoke out Captain Audion. We must attack this with logic."

Chiun made a face. "I am a Korean, not a Greek. I do not practice logic."

Harold Smith was staring at the TV screen on which the talking TV set with Don Cooder's face continually gestured and spoke. The sound was off.

"There is a reason for this," Smith mused. "Just as there was a reason Audion prematurely terminated his earlier transmission."

"Sure," said Remo. "Because he wanted everyone to think he was Banning."

"Possible. But he is not Banning. Yet he has to be someone in the television industry, if not currently, then at one point in the past."

"How do you figure that?"

"It takes enormous technical skill to engineer a broadcast and cable interruption of this magnitude," Smith explained. "As well as sophisticated equipment and deep financial reserves."

Chiun spoke up. "Those anchors are paid obscene amounts of money. Remo has said so."

Remo snapped his fingers suddenly. "Hey! Maybe Cheeta's behind this!"

The Master of Sinanju turned a slow crimson and stared at his pupil coldly.

"Then again," Remo amended, "maybe not."

"This person must have the contacts to plant his agents in many networks and TV stations for sabotage purposes," Smith continued as if speaking to himself. "He is powerful. He is wealthy. And he has a compelling reason for attacking television."

"Comes back to Captain Audacious, Jed Burner," said Remo. "Both are captains and Burner's company symbol is an anchor. It all fits."

"Emperor," Chiun said breathfully, "I will go to Atlanta this time, to atone for my previous mistake. I will tear through the evil tower of Jed and topple it into ruins, as the walls of Jericho fell. This will end the darkness that has blighted your kingdom, O Smith."

Frowning, Smith changed the channel to KNNN. The bizarre computer image of Don Cooder was playing there too, but in what seemed to be a three-minute delay.

"This is a cable signal," he said, "microwaved from the KNNN tower to a satellite and downlinked to an earth station. It should not-"

Then, Harold Smith's TV screen gave out a hissy pop and the screen went dead.

"What was that?" he gasped.

"Looks like the tube blew, Smitty."

Reaching for the selector knob, Smith changed channels by hand. The blackout signal returned.

"Guess it's fine," muttered Remo.

Smith switched back to cable. He got snow.

"Then why am I not receiving the cable signal?" he mused.

Lips thinning, Smith put in a call to his local cable company. He spoke for several minutes, then hung up.

"The cable company has been knocked out of commission," he explained.

"How?"

"Captain Audion is very clever. He can mask broadcast signals for as long as he continues broadcasting, but his plants in the cable-only stations can get away with covering up their sabotage of the outgoing signals only so long. Audion has figured out a way to knock out cable companies, one by one."

"Yeah? How?"

"Because of the proliferation of nonauthorized cable boxes, the companies had developed the technology to remotely disable the boxes when they are illegal or illegally tampered with to obtain an unauthorized channel. It is called a magic bullet-a fanciful name for an electronic pulse sent through the cable itself and designed to short out the box. In practice, an illegal box owner would be forced to call the company for a service call, thus exposing himself to the company."

"Yeah, I read about those. But your box isn't illegal-is it?"

Smith looked pained. "Of course not. Someone at the local cable company has sent a magic bullet that has disabled every box, legal or not, in the system. The company tells me their phones are ringing off the hook."

"Great. Audion keeps raising the ante. But why? He's got his money. Is he asking for more?"

Smith turned up the sound.

Captain Audion was saying, "What's the frequency, Kenneth? People say that to me a lot. They want to know what it means. The truth is it doesn't mean anything. It's just a lot of bull's wool. Like Cheeta Ching's hair. "

Smith lowered the sound. "It does not sound as if he is doing anything more than dominating the airwaves for his own amusement."

"Air hog," sniffed Chiun. "Why does he not let Cheeta speak?"

"Why he is back on the air is what concerns us," Smith said. "It makes no sense. Unless . . ."

"Yeah?"

"Unless there is something he did not wish to go out over the air. Remo, do you recall what you were watching when KNNN went off the air?"

"Nothing. I was reading Calvin and Hobbes."

"Er, yes. I remember now. A report had just come on. Quebec was mentioned, was it not?"

"Yeah, I remember now."

"What did the report say?"

"Search me. I wasn't looking at the TV. When I looked up, I saw snow."

Smith smoothed his tie. "Snow . . . KNNN is not a broadcast station, yet it was knocked off the air. When it came back on, it was blacked out just like the others." He picked up the telephone with one hand and queried his computer with the other, stabbing out the phone number that appeared on the screen.

"Let me speak with your program director," he told the person who answered. "This is Smith, with the Secret Service."

Remo and Chiun crowded close to overhear.

"This is Melcher," a harried voice said. "We're a little busy down here, Smith. What can I do for you?"

"You went off the air at approximately 3:30."

"Three twenty-eight. I know because that's when my heart stopped, too. We couldn't get out a signal no matter what we did, so we switched to our backup tape library to run the most recent feed. The master monitor showed a No Signal. We can't figure it out. We got so desperate we tried airing commercials only, and got the same damn thing."

"You might enter your tape library, pull a tape at random and play it on a machine," Smith suggested.

"What good would that do?"

"Try it please."

Smith held the line. A minute later, the program director came back on. "The fucking thing-excuse my Cajun-is coming up No Signal on the tape deck. It's prerecorded to go out black. And there are other tapes with that glory hound Cooder on it wearing a TV set for a helmet."

"Your tape library has been sabotaged," said Smith.

"I know that now."

"Who is in charge of your prerecorded library?"

"Duncan. Why?"

"He may be the saboteur."

"Duncan? He's one of the best. We got him from BCN. "

"Excuse me. Did you say BCN?"

"That's right. They laid him off and we snapped him right up. Good timing, too. A hit and run driver had just nailed the guy he replaced."

Smith, Remo and Chiun exchanged silent glances.

"One more question," said Smith. "Before you went off the air, you were about to air a taped segment."

"We call them pieces and yeah, we never got it out."

"What was the content of that piece?"

"It was a sayonara piece, you know, a feel-good thing. We always end broadcasts with something light. This one was about a religious statue that just up and appeared on a mountain up in Canada. No one can explain it."

"I see. Where did you get this information?"

"Where else? It came off the wire and we put our Montreal correspondent on it."

As Harold Smith had been listening, his thin fingers were picking apart the international section of his morning paper. He scanned the first page and turned to the second. When his eyes came to page three, they widened.

"Holy Christ!" Remo exploded. "I know what that is!"

"Who's that?" asked Melcher.

"Thank you for your time," Smith said and hung up.

Smith looked up from the paper. Remo and Chiun were staring at the photo over the headline: MYSTERY STATUE APPEARS ON MOUNTAINTOP.

"That's St. Clare of Assisi," said Remo.

"Yes," echoed Chiun. "It is definitely St. Clare."

"Yes?" said Smith, face and voice equally blank.

"She is the patron saint of television," intoned Chiun. "Pope Pius XII placed that odious burden on her frail shoulders in 1958, poor woman."

"How do you both know this?" Smith asked.

"Simple," said Remo. "Don Cooder had a statuette just like this on his desk."

They looked to the TV screen where the computer-generated image of Don Cooder with a television set for a head continued gesturing animatedly.

"So," Remo said. "Does this mean that Cooder is Captain Audion after all, or he isn't?"

Chapter 32

Don Cooder refused to vacate the tiny television studio in One Times Square.

"Don Cooder is not leaving this studio," he shouted.

"Please, Don," begged Tim Macaw in a wheedling voice.

"Yeah, Don," added Ned Doppler. "You had your turn. Give us a shot."

"Never. As of right now, Don Cooder owns broadcast news. My audience may be small, but it's the only audience there is. When this is all cleared up, I'll go down in anchor history."

"You're already on the front pages of the newspaper," said Macaw. "Isn't that enough?"

"Liar! I did that interview only two hours ago. The paper won't come out until tomorrow."

"They put out an extra," Doppler explained.

Don Cooder's voice grew suspicious. "An extra what?"

"An extra afternoon edition. Just to cover breaking developments. You know, like a bulletin."

"Can newspapers do bulletins?"

"The News did," said Doppler.

"So did the Times," added Macaw.

"Care to slip it under the door?" asked Cooder.

"Can't, Don. It's as thick as a telephone book."

"Now I know you're lying. Nice try. Newspapers are dying."

"Thanks to Captain Audion, they're coming back.

"Even USA Today put out an extra. With today's news for a change."

"Slip the front page under the door."

"If we do," Macaw asked, "will you come out?"

"No."

"Then we're not slipping you anything," snapped Doppler.

"First man who slips me a readable front page will be interviewed on my next newscast."

Paper started cramming and bunching up under the door so fast it tore. Don Cooder pulled pieces free and began to assemble them on the studio floor like a jigsaw puzzle.

A headline read:

TV BLACKED OUT!

Is Captain Audion Don Cooder?

Another said:

NO NEWS FIT TO BROADCAST

Newsprint Makes a Comeback

"Let us in, Don."

But Don Cooder wasn't hearing the pleading of his colleagues. He was looking at a sidebar story that showed a photograph of St. Clare of Assisi, two hundred feet high, standing atop a mountain in Canada.

"I've changed my mind," he said suddenly. "You can both broadcast."

And he flung open the door.

Tim Macaw and Ned Doppler plowed in and tackled the anchor seat like opposing linebackers.

They were literally pulling it and their clothing apart in their frenzy to be the first to plant his posterior in the rickety bentwood chair, as Don Cooder, a feverish gleam in his eyes, slipped out the building bundled up in a belted trenchcoat, dark glasses, and Borsalino hat.

No one in the growing crowd surrounding the big TV screen overlooking Times Square noticed him as he ducked into an idle cab.

"Kennedy Airport, driver," he bit out.

"Wanna wait another minute, pal? Don Cooder should be back on any second now."

"Don Cooder does not wait for Don Cooder. Drive on, driver."

Chapter 33

At the BCN studio lobby, security had been tripled in the wake of the death of rival anchor Dieter Banning.

"We're looking for Don Cooder," Remo told the ring of guards who looked at him with hands on holstered revolver grips.

One shouted, "Look, isn't that Wing Wang Wo, the Korean Dragon!"

The Master of Sinanju saw the finger pointing at him and naturally looked over his shoulder.

There was no one there.

"What is this, Remo?" he demanded.

"A long story," Remo whispered. "Look, we admit it. That's who he is. And if you don't want to end up separated from your head, you'll tell us where to find Don Cooder."

"He's missing."

"I heard he was broadcasting," said Remo.

"Yeah. From Times Square. But he deserted his post."

"Damn."

At a payphone, Remo called Smith. "Cooder took a powder. No one knows where he went."

"One minute, Remo."

The clicking of computer keys came over the line.

"According to his telephone records, he has not used his home telephone today. Nor his office telephone." More keys clicked. Then:

"According to his credit cards records, Don Cooder took a five o'clock flight to Montreal, Canada, connecting with Fort Chimo in Northern Quebec."

"He's our man!"

"Do not jump to conclusions. Remember Dieter Banning."

"Here, you tell it to Chiun," said Remo, handing the phone to the Master of Sinanju.

"Master Chiun, I am ordering you to Canada," said Harold Smith.

"Speak their names and their heads will be yours by nightfall," Chiun cried.

"I do not want heads. I want answers. Kill no one unless provoked. Now put Remo back on."

"What's our next move, Smitty?"

"Remo. Go to MacGuire Air Force Base. An Air Mobility Command transport will be waiting for you. I am sending you to Quebec."

"What do you think we're going to find?"

"I do not know. But that statue is squarely on the parallel of latitude line and it is also in the area where there had been a rash of missing car batteries."

"How would car batteries fit into this?"

"That is only one of the answers I expect you to find. Good luck, Remo."

After Remo hung up, he faced the waiting Master of Sinanju.

"You have been telling fables about me, again," Chiun accused.

"Save it. We're off to Quebec. And there's a good chance we'll find out what happened to Cheeta when we get there."

The Master of Sinanju raised clenched fists and a voice like distilled grief to the open sky. "Cheeta! Do not despair, precious one. We are coming to succor you!"

Cheeta Ching was past despair. She was beyond agony. Being flayed by rusty razor blades would be infinitely preferable to the exquisite tortures that were wracking her sweat-soaked body.

She was in her sixteenth hour of labor. Her swollen, jittering belly felt like it was trying to launch into orbit using her splayed legs as launch rails.

If only the damned brat would come out.

"Come on, you little bastard!" she grunted between contractions. "Get out of here or I'll pull you out by your miserable scrotum!"

The door opened and the figure of Captain Audion pushed in. He was lugging a car battery which he added to a growing pile.

"Can I get y'all any little thang?" he asked, turning the blacked-out screen of his square head in Cheeta's direction.

"Yes," Cheeta said through clenched teeth. "A coat hanger."

"Say what?"

"I going to abort this useless little dink if it's the last thing I do!"

"Settle for a jackknife?"

Don Cooder was arrested by Royal Canadian Mounted Police constables the moment he opened his passport for the Montreal customs inspector.

"You can't do this to me. I'm Don Cooder. Premier anchor of our age."

"The charges will include extortion, interfering with the airwaves of a sovereign nation, espionage, and air piracy," said the RCMP sergeant, whose serge coat was a disappointing brown, not scarlet.

"Air piracy? Captain Audion didn't hijack any planes-did he?"

"Then you admit that you are Captain Audion?"

"That dog won't hunt and you know it," Cooder snapped.

The constables stared at him, eyes unreadable under their big yellow-banded hats.

"Would Don Cooder, if he were Captain Audion, telecast his own face to the world?" Don Cooder challenged.

"Whose own face?" he was asked.

"Don Cooder's."

The constables looked at one another.

"Yes, he would," they said in unison.

"Why would he-I mean I-do that? Were I not me, that is?"

"Ratings," said one.

"Ego," added the other.

"How can there be ratings when all TV is blacked out?" Cooder returned.

The sergeant said, "Perhaps the judge will have a theory."

"Look, I've entered your country to expose Captain Audion for who he is."

"And who is he, if not you?"

"I can't say."

The Mounties took him roughly by the elbows.

"Wait. Wait. I can't say publicly. It would be libel."

They continued along, despite Cooder's dragging heels.

"But I could broadcast it," he added.

The constables stopped.

"See," Cooder explained. "it's libel if I accuse him without proof, but if I unmask him on television, it will be news. A different kind of libel altogether. Legal libel."

"How can you do that with all television out of commission?"

"That's the tremendous part. I think I know where the transmitter is. We can go there with a remote uplink, knock out the transmitter, and broadcast the unmasking. It will be the ratings sensation of all time!"

"We will have to let the judge decide this."

The judge listened patiently.

"The man is mad!" he exploded.

"He has that reputation," one of the constables said dryly.

Frowning, the judge addressed Don Cooder.

"Your story is preposterous. I will ask you to divulge your suspicions and leave this matter to Federal troops."

Don Cooder pretended the judge was a camera lens and fixed him with unflinching eyes. "I stand on my first amendment rights."

"Well spoken. Except that you are standing on Canadian soil, and have no such rights. And please do not insult this court by suggesting that you are innocent until proven guilty, We subscribe to the Napoleonic code here. You are guilty until proven innocent."

"Then I stand on my principles as a journalist and a Texan-not necessarily in that order."

"Then I have no choice but to remand you into custody."

"You're a mean man in a knife fight, judge. But if you do like I say you're bound to land in tall cotton."

The judge looked to his constables. Everyone shrugged.

In the end, he relented. His country was at loggerheads with the United States of America, and everyone wanted the crisis to end. If only to restore good programming to the people of Canada.

"You will be shackled during every moment of the quest," he warned in his sternest voice.

Don Cooder grinned happily. "No problem. Just tell the cameraman not to shoot below my clavicle."

Chapter 34

Captain Roger Nodell understood the mission.

Fly from point A to point B, and drop off two passengers.

He just didn't understand what the hell he was doing in an FB-111 Stealth bomber violating Canadian airspace.

Oh, he could take a wild stab and guess it had something to do with the broadcast blackout that had the northern hemisphere tied in knots. That part was easy. But what the hell did it mean? The Canadians were blaming Washington. Some nut with a TV set for a head was taking all the credit, there was panic in the streets, the military was on the highest state of alert, and here he was flying across the Hudson Strait into Quebec.

As he passed south of Baffin Island, he turned on his radio.

Captain Audion was speaking in a voice that sounded like a synthesized version of Don Cooder's voice. If he wasn't going off the deep end, he was doing a great imitation.

"I know something I can't tell. Nah Nah Nah . . ."

Nodell turned off his radio. It was like this all over. Every frequency from the CB bands to the military channels was masked by the unauthorized transmission. It was screwing up the already jittery upper echelons.

So he flew on over the most godforsaken desolation he had ever seen. There was literally no place to land for miles around. It was all hard rock and frozen lake chains and some kind of swampy green stuff they told him was called muskeg.

After a while he asked his copilot to take over, and Captain Nodell went back to speak with his mysterious civilian passengers.

He found them arguing over, of all things, television personalities.

"Jed Burner is behind this," the Caucasian was saying. "I saw him kidnap Cheeta with my own eyes."

"Wrong!" the old Asian in black snapped back. "Don Cooder is the villain. He has revealed himself and so must die."

"Nobody famous is going to die. Those are our orders. One Dieter Banning is enough."

Then they noticed him and lapsed into a sullen silence.

"So far, we're doing okay," Nodell told them. "The Royal Canadian Air Force hasn't scrambled a single bird."

"The barbarians," snapped the old Oriental.

"Excuse me, sir?"

"It is bad enough to scramble the eggs of fowl. But to subject the poor mother birds to such torture is typical of Canadian cruelty."

Nodell chewed his cheek while trying to think of a proper response, but nothing came.

"The radio's still bollixed up," he said. "We're maintaining our assigned heading and keeping our eyes peeled."

"Good," said the Caucasian.

"So, where are we going?" Nodell asked.

"Look for a mountain with a nun in white standing on it."

"A what?"

The civilian passed him a folded newspaper clipping, and asked, "Think you can spot that from the air?"

"If I miss this," Nodell said, looking at the photograph, "I should be shot for dereliction of duty."

"That will never happen," said the Oriental.

"Glad to hear it."

"I will personally fling you from this aircraft if you embarrass us."

Nodell started to crack a grin, but the civilian added, "He means it."

Captain Nodell decided two pairs of eyes were needed in the cockpit. The casual manner in which the tiny little Asian man was using his long fingernails to score the titanium floor made him nervous.

Harold W. Smith monitored the steady stream of data flowing in from across the nation.

He was limited in what he could gather. Without broadcast television or radio, news traveled slowly. He had sent a security guard out for an extra. They were appearing every two hours, like clockwork, fat as the Manhattan Yellow Pages.

Meanwhile, Smith monitored computer bulletin boards. They were all choked with reports, some obviously spurious.

One interesting report came out of A. C. Neilson.

It seemed that in certain localities, people had begun to watch their TVs again. Some of it was the curiosity factor of the bizarre spectacle of Captain Audion. But in localities where reception consisted of snow, they were watching, too. Watching in numbers that were estimated to be greater than regular programming.

BCN, for example, was enjoying its best ratings in five years.

But that minor quirk paled before the magnitude of the growing crisis. The stock market had lost over a hundred points in anticipation of a long television siege and the resulting body blow to the national economy.

The word had gotten out that Alaska lay outside the interference zone, and airlines were so overbooked by citizens eager to relocate to the only state in the union still serviced by regular programming that they had quadrupled ticket prices.

Professional sports was at a standstill. The commissioner of baseball instituted an emergency moratorium on all games, pending the resumption of commercial broadcasting.

Irate fans, egged on by ringleaders later identified as bookies, picketed TV stations in all major cities.

They had to fight for sidewalk space. Angry soap opera addicts-mostly housewives-usually got there first.

In most cities, the soap opera addicts forced the sports fans to retreat behind police lines, where they felt safe.

National Guard units had been activated in eight states to help keep order. The President was considering federalizing guard elsewhere.

It was, Smith knew, just the beginning. Unless Remo and Chiun could come through for America.

Chapter 35

The Master of Sinanju looked up, tension on his face, as the American captain stomped clod-footed into the rear of the bomber.

"We've spotted it!" he exclaimed.

"Great," said Remo.

"Land," said Chiun.

"We can't land. You two are supposed to be airdropped. Those were my instructions."

The Master of Sinanju arose from his place in the center of the great bomb bay. He padded up to the captain who, although young, towered over him.

Chiun reached up as if to take a speck of fluff from the callow one's chin. The movement was swift and it brought swift results.

"Ow ow ow!" said the captain, dropping to his knees as the exquisite sharpness of Sinanju-hardened fingernails met with his earlobe caught between them.

"Better change your mind," Remo said. "I saw him do that for three hours straight once. The guy had to be committed afterward."

"Okay, okay! We'll land."

Chiun released the young captain. "Thank you," he said and returned to his place on the floor.

Soon, soon, he would find Cheeta Ching. If only it was not too late . . .

Harold Smith's hand seized the red telephone before the first ring had stopped.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"The Secret Service has finished interrogating an ANC employee they caught sabotaging one of their microwave relay towers. He's given up his employer."

"Who is it?"

"A man I've never heard of. Frank Feldmeyer."

"Frank Feldmeyer is the science editor for the Broadcast Corporation of North America," Smith said grimly. "He would have the technical background to engineer this operation."

"This is like a bad mystery story. The villain is someone no one would have suspected."

"We have not yet determined that he is Captain Audion. He may be a lieutenant."

"Maybe there isn't a Captain Audion. This guy on my set looks like a cross between Don Cooder and Max Headroom's second cousin."

"I'm sorry. Mr. President. I do not understand the reference."

The President started to explain, and when Smith realized it was some irrelevant trivia, he cut him off.

"Does the Secret Service have a line on Frank Feldmeyer?" Smith asked.

"No. BCN management tell me he's on vacation."

"Where?"

"Quebec is all they have."

"Thank you, Mr. President. Keep me informed and I will do the same."

Smith returned to his computer, his dry features concerned. It was going to be difficult working with a president who had no foreign experience and watched pointless popular television programs.

He returned to his prowling of BCN employee records. One by one he had been identifying those who had been placed in other networks and alerting the Secret Service to pick them up. A number had already confessed . . .

The RCMP cars had been trundling south of Fort Chimo for three hours. They had flown up from Montreal in an official De Havilland Otter and transferred to RCMP cars.

In the back of the lead car, shackled hand and foot, Don Cooder sat ramrod straight, unflinching, unafraid.

"This," he said, "is going to be the biggest story since Hurricane Andrew. That will go down in broadcast history as one of Don Cooder's finest hours. Makes me feel young again. Like Hurricane Carla, back in '61. I cut my teeth on that blow. But this is bigger than any old hurricane."

The RCMP guards were growing bored. One yawned.

"Are there any trees around these parts?" Don Cooder asked suddenly.

"Why do you ask, Yank?" asked the major in charge of the search. His voice was guttural in its French accent.

"Even an anchor has to take a leak from time to time."

The Mounties broke out into peals of rough-hewn laughter.

Don Cooder smiled sheepishly.

He was still smiling when they escorted him to a gully, their .38 caliber Smith volvers holstered and flapped at their sides.

Stopping to unzip, Cooder said, "Mind turning your backs? Bashful kidney."

"Eh?"

"I can't piss when people are looking."

That brought another laugh and the Mounties turned their brown serge backs.

Because he really did have to urinate, Don Cooder did so at great length. When the sound stopped the Mounties waited politely for the sound of his zipper.

Instead, they caught a long length of chain in the sides of their heads and went down, sidearms still flapped and undrawn.

Cooder made a dash for the lead RMCP car.

His driver was on the other side of the road relieving himself. A number of the others were similarly preoccupied.

They turned around at the sound of the idling car engine racing into life.

"Sacremont! The American is escaping!"

Don Cooder flipped them the bird and floored the gas.

Some of them ran, holding on to themselves and peeing all over their limping legs. Others finished their business, cursing fluently.

Either way, he had a head start. And a head start was all Don Cooder ever needed to be the first to break a breaking story.

"This," he chortled, pulling a .38 from the glove compartment, "is going to be bigger than Dallas, 1963!"

Captain Nodell was making a preliminary pass, dragging the landing area for stones and muskeg patches when he saw the black-and-white car scoot out of nowhere.

"Uh-oh," he told his copilot.

"Think he saw us?"

"Dunno. Is it a police car?"

"Well, it's got a roof flasher and there's some kind of letters stenciled on the door panel. Begins with R."

"RCMP?"

"Maybe."

"Mounties," said Captain Nodell.

"They still got those up here?"

"Looks like." He pulled up and sent the Stealth fighter sweeping around.

And got a clear view of the speedy little car, distantly pursued by two others, racing toward the mountain that supported the 200-foot statue of a nun-and disappearing into it.

"Must be a cave or something in the base . . ."

"Do we still land?" asked the nervous copilot.

"No choice," said Nodell, feeling his tender earlobe. It felt hot, like a cooked piece of steak.

Frank Feldmeyer was shivering in his blue Captain Audion bodysuit in the great control room under the mountain when he saw the red warning light go off and swore under his breath.

Bolting from the control room, he grabbed up a pistol from a rack by the door.

From down the corridor cut from rough stone, shrieks and wails of pain were coming. He shut them out.

Moving to the spiral stainless-steel steps, he ran down, weapon at the ready, prepared to defend his post.

A familiar voice called up. "Psst, Frank!"

"Don. Is that you?"

Don Cooder, shackled and holding a .38 revolver, stomped up the stairs on his ostrich-skin cowboy boots.

"Yeah," he said, his breath steaming. "Are we still on the air?"

Frank Feldmeyer wiped the cold sweat off his brow and said, "Yeah. But power's getting low. How long do you expect me to keep this up?"

"It's time to wrap this up."

"Great. Let's get out of here."

"Can't."

"Why not?"

"Mounties are on my trail like a pack of redbone foxhounds in heat."

"Mounties! What the hell do we do?"

"They think I'm trying to break this story. I'm covered."

"What about me?" Feldmeyer demanded anxiously. "Look at me, I'm dressed up like Captain Audion, for God's sake."

"You can hide once we set things up. Where are Burner and that loudmouth bitch?"

"Cheeta?"

"No, the other loudmouth bitch."

"On ice."

"Okay, let's get them out."

Ignoring the shrieks of pain, Don Cooder moved through frost-rimmed stone corridors to a stainless-steel door like a walk-in freezer and yanked on the handle. A blast of cold air wafted out, along with the chill dead smell of frozen meat.

They entered a small cave. Past shelves of frozen steaks and chicken parts, they pushed to the dimly lighted rear of the natural freezer.

Cooder knelt beside two motionless figures.

"They look kinda blue," he muttered.

Feldmeyer said, "They weren't dead when I looked in on them last."

Cooder put his ear to the still chest of Jed Burner.

"This man's heart is beating like a stone, which is to say it's not."

"Oh God, I didn't count on murder." "Shush. Let me check on old Haiphong Hannah." Cooder listened, his face contorting. "I got a beat."

"Great. Thank God."

"Okay, let's get them into the control room."

Rattling his chains with every step, Don Cooder lugged Haiphong Hannah down the corridor to the control room and dumped her into one of the console seats. Jed Burner was dropped into the other, not quite fitting because his joints had stiffened.

"Where's the damn helmets?" Cooder demanded, looking around.

Feldmeyer pointed unsteadily. "In that cabinet. Why?"

"We're going to set it up so that it looks like they're the black hats. Why do you think I had you abduct them in the first place?"

"Will it work, Don?"

"Burner's dead and Haiphong Hannah's got the credibility of Saddam Hussein. How can it fail?"

Shrugging, Frank Feldmeyer helped Cooder set the Captain Audion helmet over Jed Burner's frost-rimmed head.

"Now let's get old Hannah set up and this thing is in the barn."

When they were done, two television-headed figures sat at the console that controlled the most powerful broadcast TV signal on earth.

"Okay," Cooder said panting, "let me have your gun."

"Why?"

"I'm going to shoot Burner."

"Why?"

"Why? The low-down goat roper had the nerve to ask 'Who the hell is Don Cooder?' when I was holding onto the Chair by my sphincter. Made me a laughing stock. Nearly ruined my career at a crucial time."

"No, I mean what good will it do?"

"Dead men tell no tales."

Then the ringing of steel stair treads came from beyond the open door.

"That's the Mounties," Cooder snapped. "Right on cue. We gotta shoot them right now or it's boot hill for us both."

"I can't shoot anyone," Feldmeyer said shakily.

"Tell you what, you shoot Burner. He's already dead. And I'll shoot Hannah. Deal?"

"O-okay."

Together, the two men lifted their weapons and pointed them at the unmoving backs of their targets.

"Count of three," Cooder said.

Swallowing hard, Feldmeyer nodded.

"One!"

"Two!"

"Three!"

Closing his eyes, Frank Feldmeyer steeled himself to pump a single round into the cold back of Jed Burner, and never opened them again.

The roar of Don Cooder's pistol in his ear reached his eardrum just as the bullet had gouged out one ear canal and exited the other in a spray of grayish curd.

Cooder emptied the cylinder into the back of Haiphong Hannah's head, shattering her screen with its steady NO SIGNAL message.

Taking the dead hand of Jed Burner in his, he wrapped the stiffened fingers around a black handle marked DESTRUCT and pulled hard. A red digital timer began counting backward from 00:00:10.

Calmly, he wiped the gun free of fingerprints and placed it in Frank Feldmeyer's still-twitching hand. From the floor, he took the automatic that had killed no one, squeezed the grip so he left crystal clear prints, lifted both manacled hands to the ceiling, and patiently whistled "Cowboy's Lament" as the Mounties pounded up the spiral stairs.

The shrieking of Cheeta Ching in the torment of childbirth filled the corridor.

"Damn," he muttered. "Forgot one. Oh, well. Next time."

The digital timer reached 00:00:00.

From far above, there came an explosive sound muffled by tons of granite.

Chapter 36

The sleek black shape of the Stealth bomber rolled to a whining, bumpy stop, and a hatch popped open.

"Wait for us," Remo called over his shoulder as he followed the Master of Sinanju out into the coldest, most inhospitable expanse he had seen outside of Outer Mongolia.

"What if you don't come back alive?" returned Captain Nodell.

"Wait anyway."

"You got it."

Remo found himself standing on hard rock dappled by spongy moss and lichen. Muskeg pools, some no bigger than his fist, speckled the terrain.

"Ready, Little Father?"

"I am prepared for anything," said the Master of Sinanju.

It was a good half mile to the flat-topped mountain which loomed up from the rock-and-muskeg waste. The statue of Saint Clare stood watch like a lonely bride atop an ugly wedding cake.

They started off at a dead run, picked up speed and soon were moving as fast as a speeding car. "Remember," Remo warned, "we don't kill anyone unless we're sure."

Then, as they crossed the difficult terrain, the head of Saint Clare came apart in a noisy black puff of smoke.

A shriek went up to the heavens and the Master of Sinanju pulled ahead of Remo like a spastic-limbed bat.

"Cheeta!" he squeaked. "I am coming, my child!"

And as they pulled closer, the smoke began to thin, revealing the red top of a transmission tower poking up from the statue's broken stump of a neck.

Then the skin of the statue began to crack apart, coming away to expose the spidery alternating white and red supports . . .

Don Cooder's face and smile looked ready to crack. He had flopsweat, severe eye-dart and cottonmouth all at once.

"You're just in time," he shouted to the arriving Mounties.

They stormed in with their revolvers trained on him.

"What happened here?" demanded the major.

"I was too late."

"You just said we were just in time."

"You were. I wasn't." He rattled his chains in the direction of the bodies. "Mark it. The culprit, Captain Audion, dead at his console with his accomplices scattered around him like so many checked pawns. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit." His grin stretched to the tearing point. "That's going to be my lead."

The Mounties were having none of it. Don Cooder was made to sit on the floor amid the blood, but he didn't care.

"I saw most of it," he was saying as the Mounties examined the bodies. "Feldmeyer shot them both."

"Why?"

"Thieves fall out is going to be my tag. It's up to you nice folks to flesh out the details. On TV, we have to reduce a story to its gut. And man, this one. has a lot of guts to it. Back in my field days we called this a 'Fuzz and Wuzz' story. You folks are the fuzz. No offense."

The RCMP major was frowning as he looked at the TV screen faces of the two dead people seated at the control console. He noticed the dead hand of one clutching a handle marked DESTRUCT and tied it with the faint rattling of rock that was coming from the mountaintop, far above this warren of stone tunnels.

"Let's get this contraption off them," he said.

Cooder asked, "What about the cameras?"

"Cameras?"

"Look, this is the climax. You gotta get this on tape. This will make great television. I could win an Emmy for this."

"Any tape will become state's evidence."

"You boys don't get it, do you?" He pointed ceilingward. "This is the hidden transmitter."

"A statue of a nun?"

"Saint Clare of Assisi. The patron saint of TV. That's how I figured it out. I've thrown a few thankyous her way in my time. This isn't some misplaced religious shrine. Dollars to doughnuts the antenna mast is jammed up the sister's skirts." Cooder lifted sheepish eyes to the rock ceiling. "Excuse my French, Saint Clare."

A videocam was trained on the two figures and when the light was blazing, the major removed the first helmet.

"I'll be danged!" Don Cooder said. "If it isn't Jed Burner. Captain Audacious himself!"

The second helmet revealed a head like a Pekinese that had been used to wipe up an abattoir floor.

"Haiphong Hannah Fondue," Cooder said. "She came to fame broadcasting for the North Vietnamese. Now she meets her maker trying to undermine capitalism's greatest, loudest voice---free TV."

"She has no face," said the major. "How do you know that is her?"

"I'm a trained network anchor. I know hair. That's Haiphong Hannah. Probably a wig."

The major pushed at the hair. It slipped loose. A wig.

"So who is this individual?" he asked, pointing to the sprawled figure in the anchor-emblazoned blue bodystocking.

Don Cooder put on a mournful face. "That, I deeply regret to say, is a colleague of mine. Frank Feldmeyer. He is-was-our science editor. And probably the brains of this insidious operation."

The major looked doubtful. "So which of them is this Captain Audion?"

"You call it and I'll broadcast it that way," Cooder said, winking.

A sudden shriek pierced every ear-long, ripping and bloodcurdling.

"What on earth was that?" said Don Cooder in a suddenly shocked-dead voice.

The Mounties seized him by his chains and pulled him along as they went in search of the horrible sound's source.

Remo Williams followed the Master of Sinanju into the cave mouth, where three RCMP cars sat, engines still radiating heat, amid piles of discarded car batteries.

His head straining forward, turtle-fashion, Chiun zipped up a set of spiral stairs like a careening black pinball.

"Cheeta, I am coming!"

"Wait up! Chiun! You don't know what you're walking into!"

Another shriek came, louder than before.

Remo skipped the too-narrow stairs and went up the circling rail like a monkey. He still reached the top a full second after the Master of Sinanju.

"Halt!" an authoritative voice cried. "Who goes there?"

"I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju and the man who stands between me and Cheeta Ching has seen his last sunrise!"

"I am Major Cartier of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and I will know your business here."

Remo got between the guns and Chiun and told the Mounties, "We're from the USA. Take it easy. We're looking for Cheeta Ching."

"Who is Cheeta Ching?"

Behind the Mounties, Don Cooder smiled with pleasure.

Then another shriek filled the cold stone corridor.

Remo could see it coming, but there was nothing he could do about it. The Master of Sinanju leaped for the sound. The Mounties brought their big revolvers tracking around. Fingers tightened on triggers.

And Remo, cursing under his breath, swept in and took them out.

He killed no one. But his hands snapped wrists, his feet exploded kneecaps, and pistols flew everywhere to land clattering and unfired.

Don Cooder backed away, his hands lifted in surrender and his shackles rattling nervously.

"What are you doing here?" Remo demanded.

"Don't be ridiculous. You know what this place is?"

"I have a good idea."

"Where there's news, there's Don Cooder."

Chiun's voice rose to a keen. "Cheeta, my beloved! What have they done to you?"

Grabbing at a hanging loop of chain, Remo raced to the sound, pulling a hopping Don Cooder with him.

There was an open door and the smell of fresh blood was coming out of it in warm metallic-tasting waves.

Remo put in his head-and the sight sickened him.

The Master of Sinanju was kneeling beside a bloodsoaked bed where Cheeta Ching, her face contorted in what looked like a permanent grimace of agony, lay in her own pooled blood. A flap of flesh lay open, exposing her internal organs. And lying beside her, red as if dipped in Mercurochrome, was a wriggling baby.

"The butchers!" Chiun shrieked. "They have killed Cheeta. "

"Urrr," gurgled Cheeta, only the whites of her eyes showing.

"Yet the child lives. My ancestors smile." The Master of Sinanju lifted the baby in gentle hands. From its stomach trailed a purplish pink umbilical cord. He severed it with a broad sweep of one flashing fingernail.

Then, holding the baby up, he spanked it once on the backside, producing a wail that made Remo want to cover his ears.

"Takes after its mother," Remo said.

"Son of perfection," Chiun intoned gravely, "I welcome you into the bitter world that has taken the life of your mother."

Then the eyes of the Master of Sinanju fell upon the baby's kicking legs.

"Aiieee!"

"What's wrong?" Remo asked, "Is it deformed?"

"Worse. It is a female."

"So?"

"I wanted a male," Chiun wailed. "This is a calamity! I have lost Cheeta, and her only offspring is unsuitable for Sinanju training."

"What is he talking about?" Don Cooder asked Remo.

"You stay out of this," Remo snapped.

Chiun, his voice dripping with distaste, said, "Take this whelp, Remo. I do not want it."

Remo backed away. "I don't want it."

"Neither do . . . I . . ." Cheeta Ching groaned.

Whirling, Chiun gasped, "Cheeta! You live!"

"Barely . . ."

"Name the ones who savaged you so cruelly and I will place their heads at your feet, my child."

"Frank . . . Feldmeyer . . . kidnapped me. The bastard."

"Frank's dead," Don Cooder said quickly. "I found him dead with the other two."