Terminal Transmission

"Other two?" Remo asked.

"Jed Burner and Haiphong Hannah. They're in the control room yonder."

Chiun hovered over the bed. "You have been avenged, Cheeta. The evil ones who cut the child from your belly are no more."

"What are . . . you talking . . . about?" Cheeta groaned. "I . . . did that."

"You-?"

"I couldn't stand it-anymore-the endless labor-the contractions. I used a . . . jackknife."

One bloodied arm came up clutching the dripping blade.

Chiun nodded grimly. "Suicide. I understand. The pain must have been unendurable to drive you to this."

"No," Cheeta said weakly. "I gave . . . myself a. . . caesarian."

Chiun gasped.

Cheeta rolled her eyes up in her head and moaned, "I was magnificent. If only there had been a camera crew . . ."

The Master of Sinanju offered the baby to its mother, saying, "Fret not, Cheeta. Your child breathes. Here . . ."

"Get it away from me!" Cheeta shrieked.

Chiun stepped back, his face stunned. "What?"

"I carried that brat for ten long months, and what does he do? He can't wait until I'm rescued before kicking to be born. Two lousy days and I could have done this in prime time." A sob shook Cheeta's painwracked body. "The first self-induced caesarian in the history of womankind and no pictures."

Chiun only stared. His wispy beard shook uncontrollably.

"Come on, Little Father," Remo said. "Cheeta's just freaked out. She'll get over it."

Cheeta gasped. "Vino? Is that you?"

"Vino?" Remo and Chiun said together.

Cheeta smiled dreamily. "You're my wine . . ."

The Master of Sinanju laid the squalling infant on its mother's chest and backed from the room, his hazel eyes unreadable.

"Cheeta has gone mad . . . ." he breathed.

"In the business," Don Cooder said, "we call it ratings-induced dementia. Some people just can't take the pressure."

Remo closed the door after them.

The Master of Sinanju turned, his hands slipping into his sleeves. His gaze came to rest on the stiff face of Don Cooder.

"It was your face the fiend showed to the world," he said.

Cooder showed his white teeth all around. "Frame."

"And it was the statue you worshipped which crowns this mountain of wickness," Chiun added.

Don Cooder shook his head. "Frank Feldmeyer, crooked as a snake. I still can't believe it. Can you imagine him, a traitor to the news organization that made his a household face?"

The Master of Sinanju turned to his pupil. "Remo, do you believe this man's lies?"

"Not really," said Remo, folding his arms.

Don Cooder couldn't believe what he was hearing. He took hold of his fixed smile and said, "The proof is in the control room. The bad guys. They killed themselves rather than be taken alive."

"Show us," said the old Oriental.

As he led the pair to the control room, Don Cooder tried to cover his nervousness with a question. "Was it really one of your ancestors who got written up in the Bible?"

"Yes."

"That's the kind of press a man can be proud to call his own. My ancestors were simple dirt farmers, proud but poor."

Cooder led them past the groaning and unconscious Mounties to the control room and said, "There. A textbook example of 'if it bleeds, it leads' if I ever saw one."

The old Oriental gave the grisly scene only the briefest of glances. "You saw this happen?" he asked.

"The tail end of it. Feldmeyer shot them both dead then turned the gun on himself. Suicide pact, is the way I see it."

"And which one did you shoot?"

"Huh?"

"You heard him," Remo added. "Who did you shoot?"

"No one. What are you talking about? The only shooting I ever do is with a video camera." He lifted his chains. "Can't even do that with these fetters."

"The stink of gunpowder is on your hands," Chiun said.

Don Cooder brought his fingers to his hands and sniffed. "I don't smell anything," he said.

"We do," said Remo.

Cooder puffed out his chest. "It's your word against that of the Anchor of Steel."

"That only works in court," said Remo.

"Hey, I'm a prisoner of the RCMP, the finest law enforcement organization since the Texas Rangers. I'll go with their brand of justice."

"Sorry. You go with ours. We've got some old scores to settle with you."

"I don't follow . . ."

"Remember, wicked one, the bomb your lust for ratings caused to be built?" Chiun asked in a grave voice.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Because of this device, I lay entombed for many bitter months. This occurred two years ago, but the bitter memory is with me still. Only the wisdom of my emperor enabled me to see the sunlight again."

"What's he talking about?" Cooder asked Remo.

"Long story," Remo said aridly.

"In return," Chiun continued, "I promised my emperor that I would bring no harm to you, for you were not directly responsible for that atrocity."

"I'm not following this."

"But now, your perfidy has changed everything."

"Translate for me, friend," Cooder asked Remo.

"He's saying you're last week's headlines. History."

"History? How can I be history? I'm alive and on the top of my game."

"I might let you live if you truthfully answer a question," Chiun said thinly.

"Gladly."

"Why are your kind called anchors?"

Don Cooder blinked. It was a heck of a good question. Why was he called an anchor? He wracked his brain. "Hold on. It'll come to me in a minute."

But the minute never came because the tiny old man stepped up to Don Cooder and took hold of one arm. Cooder lifted his chains to fend him off as the other one watched with cool unconcern.

Don Cooder experienced a rapid series of sensations in the last minutes of his life. All involving exquisite nerve-searing pain. First in his elbow, then his legs and, as the pain grew to a crescendo that swallowed his screaming brain, the chains that draped his arms and legs were coiling coldly around his throat.

When he was found, hours later, he was strung from the ceiling, his purple-black tongue protruding from his bruise-colored face, hanged by the neck. But that was not what made the headlines next day. It was the twisted pretzel shape of his body, arms curled tight to his shoulders and legs bent at impossible upward angles to his pelvis, broken but somehow curved as if the bones were made soft and flexible and then hardened again.

The Quebec authorities thought the shape was vaguely familiar. It took three of them to decide Don Cooder's mortal remains had been bent and twisted into the shape of a nautical anchor.

No one ever figured out how it was done, however.

Chapter 37

"It is obvious," Harold Smith was saying, "that Don Cooder was Captain Audion. He had the financial resources, the necessary industry connections, as well as the motivation to point the finger of suspicion at his many rivals, both perceived and otherwise."

It was the afternoon of the next day and Remo and Chiun were in Harold Smith's Folcroft office. Bright spring sunlight flooded in through the big picture window.

"Wait a minute," Remo said. "If he was already rich, why did he try to blackmail the networks?"

"The man had a reputation for instability. From all we've seen, it may be that he simply cracked under the pressure of the relentless race for ratings, and went into a psychotic tailspin."

"That doesn't explain why he had Feldmeyer broadcast that pretaped monologue of himself as Captain Audion."

"He was mad," Chiun spat. "Who can understand a madman?"

"There are several reasons for that," Smith said. "The first is that having pointed the finger of blame at everyone from KNNN to Dieter Banning, adding himself to the list of suspects helped confuse the issue. Also, his ego may have played a role."

"You mean he wanted the credit?" Remo said.

Smith nodded. "In a perverse manner. Just as he was willing to sacrifice his confederate, Feldmeyer, to cover his tracks, and incidentally enjoy a final ratings grab exposing Jed Burner as the guilty party before no doubt retiring on the extortion money."

"Did the networks get their money back from the Swiss yet?" Remo asked.

"They are trying very hard. But I am pleased to report that we seem to have rooted out every Captain Audion agent who was planted in the various broadcast and cable stations to facilitate the entire scheme. I must admit Cooder was quite clever in recruiting laid-off BCN employees through Feldmeyer and arranging to place them in his target stations."

"Well, at least we won't have Don Cooder to kick around anymore," said Remo. "I guess it'll be Cheeta five nights a week from now on, now that they've sewn her back up."

"I understand Miss Ching has announced that she will be taking a long leave of absence to care for her baby once she is released from the hospital," said Smith.

"From the way she was acting yesterday, she was all set to drown the kid for blowing her big ratings grab," Remo grunted.

"Miss Ching has received an outpouring of sympathy in the wake of her ordeal," Smith said. "And a great many product endorsement offers. No doubt this has affected her attitude."

At that point, both Remo and Smith looked to the Master of Sinanju.

Chiun had a bleak light in his hazel eyes.

"I do not care," he said thinly. "I will never care again."

"What about the baby?" asked Remo. "Don't you even care about her a little?"

"It is not important, for it is not mine."

Remo's eyebrows shot up. "Wait a minute, what's this?"

Chiun half turned. "I do not wish to speak of it."

"Not so fast," Remo said quickly. "You've been stringing us out for almost a year on this baby thing. You gotta come clean. Now are you the father or not?"

"Grandfather," Chiun said bitterly. "In spirit."

"How does that work?"

"You will remember the time we saved Cheeta from the evil dictator of California?" Chiun asked.

"Will I ever? You went off with her for a long weekend. Next thing we hear, she's pregnant and you're picking out baby clothes."

Chiun winced. "It is well known that Cheeta had been trying to conceive for many years before I entered her life."

"Yeah. She told every live mike in the Western hemisphere."

"It is not, as is commonly believed, her husband's fault."

"Which? That she couldn't have a kid or that she did?"

"The former. In our brief dalliance together, I told Cheeta of my feelings toward her and she of her disappointment in her husband's inability to fulfill her."

Remo looked skeptical. "So you fulfilled her?"

"I sensed in her an imbalance, which prevented her womb from fruiting with a proper child."

"Yeah . . . ?"

"And I assisted in correcting this."

"How, Master Chiun?" asked Smith, leaning forward in his chair.

"Wait a minute!" said Remo. "Maybe we're better off not knowing."

"It was a simple matter of diet," Chiun explained. "I told Cheeta that she needed to eat the whites of duck eggs boiled in rice four times a day."

"Sounds like an old wive's tale to me," Remo said.

"It is a remedy that goes back many generations and never has been known to fail, ignorant one," sniffed Chiun.

"So you didn't make it with Cheeta, after all?"

"Remo! My love for Cheeta is too pure to be sullied by such things. Besides, were I the father of the . . . female, it would not be female, but male. I know how to direct the correct seed to its proper destiny."

Chiun glared at Remo pointedly. Remo frowned. He had a daughter he had not seen in years, whom the Master of Sinanju believed would-and should-have been a boy if Remo had paid more attention to what he was doing with the mother rather than enjoying it.

"Look, there's nothing wrong with baby girls," Remo said hotly.

"Except that they are always the first to be sent home to the sea and cannot be trained in Sinanju," Chiun returned.

"Because no one ever tried," Remo snapped.

"And no one ever will. Especially you, who are not equal to the demands of Masterhood and may never be."

Remo turned to Smith. "Let's change the subject. Are the networks back on?"

"Yes. The Canadians shut off the pirate transmitter and are in the process of dismantling the-er-nun. Although I am still unclear on how power was supplied to such an enormous device."

"Forgot to tell you. Remember the missing car batteries? We found a cave filled with them, all hooked up together. There must have been thousands of them. Enough to do the job, ridiculous as it sounds."

Smith frowned. "It is not so farfetched. I recall now an Air Force laser device housed in a remote test facility that had to be powered by great numbers of interconnected auto batteries. It should have occurred to me before. Obviously, Feldmeyer was forced to scrounge for replacements as the supply was taxed under continual broadcast demands."

"So we're back on the air and things are squared away with the Canadians?"

"Yes. But it was an object lesson for society. Our reliance on television, for news as well as entertainment, has taken on the proportions of a shared national addiction. I've recommended to the new President that he lay this problem before the American people as a challenge for the next century."

"Think he'll go along?"

"No," said Harold Smith glumly. "He is a baby boomer."

"Pah," spat Chiun. "Do not speak that word in my presence again. I am done with babies forever. And with Cheeta Ching, the fickle."

And Remo laughed. A huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Turning to the Master of Sinanju, he asked, "Care to tell us about the Chiun from the Bible?"

"When someone informs me why the readers of alleged news are called anchors."

Remo and Harold Smith exchanged blank looks.

When the answer was not found in the CURE computer, the Master of Sinanju stalked from the room, a wraith in crimson silks.

Remo shrugged, indicated Smith's TV set and wondered, "Anything good on?"