"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.
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