"Tell me. If it blows, will it get the House of Representatives?" Remo asked.
"Without question."
"I think maybe I should go back to sleep," Remo said.
"This is serious," Smith said.
"Okay, I get the picture." Remo slid past Dara Worthington and slipped into his trousers. "I'll look around. Anything else?"
"I should think that would be enough," Smith said. Remo hung up and patted Dara on her bare hindquarters.
"Sorry, darling. Something's come up."
"Again? So soon? How lovely."
"Work," Remo said. "Just sit tight."
"Your Aunt Mildred sounds very demanding," Dara said. "I heard you call her that."
"She is," Remo said. "She is." He wondered if he should tell her about the bomb threat but decided not to. If he couldn't find the bomb, there wasn't much chance of anyone living anyway.
Remo went into the next room where Chiun lay in the middle of the floor in the thin blanket stripped from the apartment bed.
"Not asleep, Little Father?" Rerno asked.
"Sleep? How does one sleep when one's ears are besieged by the sounds of rutting moose next door?"
"Sorry, Little Father. It was just something that happened."
"Anyway, I am not speaking to you," Chiun said, "so I would appreciate your moving your bleached noisy carcass out of my room."
"In a little while, none of us may be talking to anybody," Remo said. "There may be a bomb on the grounds."
Chiun said nothing. "A nuclear bomb." Chiun was silent.
"I'll do it myself, Chiun," said Remo. "But I don't know much about how to find a bomb. If I don't find it and we all get blown to kingdom come, I just want you to know, well, that it was wonderful knowing you."
Chiun sat up and shook his head. "You are hopelessly white," he said.
"What's my color got to do with it?"
"Everything. Only a white man would search for a bomb by trying to locate a bomb," Chiun said as he rose and brushed past Remo and led the way outdoors.
Remo followed and said, "It sounds reasonable to me, searching for a bomb by looking for a bomb. What would you look for? A four-leaf clover and hope to get lucky?"
"I," the aged Korean said loftily, "would look for tracks. But then I am only a poor abused gentle soul, not nearly so worldly wise as you are."
"What do bomb tracks look like?"
"You don't look for bomb tracks, you imbecile. You look for people tracks. Unless the bomb delivered itself here, people tracks will be left by those who carried it."
"Okay. Let's look for people tracks," Remo said. "And thank you for talking to me."
"You're welcome. Will you promise to wear a kimono?"
"I'd rather not find the bomb," Remo said.
TV station WIMP's chief competitor in the ratings, station WACK, had just arrived on the scene in the person of a camera crew and Lance Larew, anchorman who was, if anything, even tanner than Rance Renfrew, his main rival in the news rating race.
He saw the two cameramen from WIMP but felt elated when he did not see Rance Renfrew around.
"All right, men," he said. "Let's set up and shoot." He took a portable toothbrush from inside his tuxedo pocket and quickly brushed his teeth.
A cameraman said to him, "Hey, if a bomb's gonna go off here, I don't want to be around."
"This is where the action is, boy, and where the action is, you'll find Lance Larew and station WACK."
"Yeah, well the action may be five miles up in the air pretty soon if there's a bomb and it goes off."
"Don't worry. We'll shoot our stuff and get out of here," Larew said. "Let's get in on the grounds."
"I think I see something," Remo said.
Standing on the smooth, damp turf on the lawn, Remo pointed to a series of small impressions following a snaking line. "The grass is flattened here. A combat crawl," he said.
"Amateurs," Chiun said with disdain. He pointed to a small indentation. "Right-handed. Even her elbows leave prints."
"Her?" Remo said.
"Obviously a woman's elbow," Chiun said.
"Obviously," said Remo.
"With a man following behind her. But the woman was carrying the device," Chiun said.
"Obviously," Remo said.
"Hey, look," Lance Larew hissed to his cameramen. "I think there's somebody up ahead. Who are those guys?"
"Maybe they're scientists," the cameraman said. "Maybe. Let's roll the cameras and stay with them in case they blow up."
They were talking in whispers but fifty yards away, Chiun turned to Remo and said, "Who are these noisy fools?"
"I don't know. First the bomb, then I'll take care of them." He looked down at the tracks. "I think you're onto something."
"He's onto something," one of the camera crew shouted. He lumbered forward with his equipment. Lance Larew followed him.
"Perhaps I should dispatch these meddlers into the void," Chiun said, "so we may continue our search in peace."
"Oh, I don't know," Remo said. "Kill a newsman and you never hear the end of it."
"I don't like performing in front of these louts, like a circus elephant."
"Let me find the bomb first," Remo said. He followed the line of the tracks to a flowering bush. He felt the ground with his fingers. The device was there, covered scantily by a coating of earth.
"Hurry. They are encroaching," Chiun whispered as the newsmen came closer. Finally, one of the cameramen pushed forward quickly and flicked his camera in Chiun's direction. Chiun pressed his nose against the lens.
"Hey, cut it out, Methuselah," the cameraman said. "You're getting nose grease all over my lens."
"Nose grease? The Master of Sinanju does not produce nose grease. You have insulted me to the core of my being."
"Now you've done it," Remo called out. "I'm not responsible anymore."
"What is it you're doing there?" Lance Larew shouted. "What are you doing under that bush?" Remo's hands worked fast, first disconnecting the timer, and then dismembering the nuclear device by pounding the metal pieces into powder. He buried the little pile of black and silver granules beneath the mulberry bush.
"I said what are you doing there?" Larew said. He was standing near Remo now.
"Looking for the dreaded Australian night-stalker," Remo said. "This is the only night it blooms. But we missed it. We'll have to wait until next year."
"What about the bomb?" Larew demanded.
"There was no bomb," Remo said. "We've been getting calls like that for weeks. Just cranks."
"You mean I came all this way on a crank call?" Larew said.
"Seems like it," Remo said.
Larew stamped his foot in anger, then called to the two cameramen behind him. "All right, men. We'll do a feature story anyway. Scientists prowl the grounds at midnight looking for a rare flower."
"You don't want to do that," Remo said.
"Don't tell me what I want to do," L,arew said. "First Amendment rights. Freedom of the press. Free speech." He turned to the cameramen. "Shoot some footage on these guys."
The two cameramen aimed at Remo and Chiun, and began rolling the tapes inside the devices. Chiun's narrow hazel eyes peered into one of the cameras.
"How about a little smile?" the cameraman said. "Like this?" Chiun asked, his face contorted in a strained smile.
"That's good, old man. More teeth."
Chiun grabbed the camera and, still smiling, crushed it into a flat slab. Bowing, he handed it back to the cameraman. "Enough teeth?" he asked.
Remo grabbed the other camera from the other cameraman and shredded it into noodle-shaped pieces.
"First Amendment!" screamed Larew.
Remo put some of camera pieces into Larew's mouth. "First Amendment that," he said.
The news crew fled toward the rip in the chain-link fence.
"Thank you, Chiun, for your help," Remo said.