Kimono hems spinning crazily around his ankles, the Master of Sinanju mounted the stairs. Smith followed.
The enclosed staircase led to a warped pine door. Chiun pushed the door open and slipped inside.
At the far end of the long room, weak winter sunlight spilled through three ceiling-to-floor windows. Smith hadn't been sure what to expect. He realized his expectations needn't have been very high.
For once the Master of Sinanju's instincts had been wrong. The room was empty, save the collection of medical junk that had accumulated in the attic for the eighty-or-so years Folcroft had been in operation.
Smith was allowing the tension to drain from him even as the old Korean made his way across the floor to the window.
"I suppose we should allow the police to conduct the search for Mark after all," Smith said with a sigh. "You may return to your quarters if you wish. I'll let you know if they turn up anything. Master Chiun?"
Chiun seemed intensely interested in a bundle of old rags that had been dumped beneath the window. The rags rested in shadow, tucked up under the sill away from the sunlight.
Only when he squinted against the light did the CURE director see that the pile of rags was wearing shoes.
Holding his breath, Smith hurried over to join Chiun.
The man was lying in the inch-thick dust, curled up in a tight fetal position. His head and knees touched the wall beneath the grimy windows.
Smith's mouth opened in slow shock. "Mark?" he asked. Deep apprehension flavored his lemony voice. It was as if the voice were some intangible lifeline. The man on the floor rolled his head from the wall. Desperate, terrified eyes darted between the two standing men. The instant he saw Smith, the young man's eyes seemed to find focus. All at once the man lunged at Smith.
He grabbed the CURE director tight, wrapping both arms around the older man's neck.
Baffled, Smith looked at the Master of Sinanju. Great sadness filled the old Korean's leathery face. And the pleading voice warm in Smith's ear was filled with fear and incomprehension.
"Help me," Mark Howard croaked.
And with that his frightened eyes rolled back in his head and the assistant director of CURE passed out in the arms of Harold W. Smith.
Chapter 5
The Australian outback would have been a dream. A deserted tropical island? Heaven.
So what if there were snakes in the outback or if it was the kind of island where you had to eat rats and bugs? Paradise was in the eyes of the beholder. Right about now, even having to endure a backstabbing, overweight gay guy strutting around naked wouldn't have been so bad.
"When I signed on for this, I thought we'd be going somewhere tropical," R. Chappel said. "I worked out for two months straight. Got in the best shape of my life. I even bought a home tanning bed. For what? Look at this dump."
He waved an angry hand at the surrounding scenery. The hand was covered by a thick mitten. The mitten matched his heavy down jacket. A tiny patch adorned the breast of the winter coat, its logo recognizable to television viewers across the country and around the world.
"I mean it," Chappel concluded. "Did you expect this?"
"Could be worse," replied David Felder. He continued to forage on the ground for supplies.
That was typical Felder. Never wanting to complain, always trying to put on a good face. That was Felder's strategy. Keep his head down, stay quiet, don't make waves and-with luck-when this mess was over, walk away with the million-dollar prize.
That wasn't R. Chappel's strategy. Chappel was the official complainer. There was one every time. Everyone would bitch and moan about his constant griping, and when they couldn't take it any longer they'd vote him the hell out of there. Right about now Chappel didn't care.
"Gimme my own house, my own bed. I'm sick of sleeping on the ground. And you!" he suddenly snapped directly to the camera. "Get that damn thing away from me before I shove it down your throat!"
The camera that hovered a few inches from his angry face didn't move. The cameraman behind it didn't reply.
The camera operators never talked. It was in their contracts not to interfere with the contestants. They could film, but they could not interact.
"Dammit," Chappel snarled. "Like talking to a damn zombie."
He turned back to Felder. "We about done here?"
"A couple more minutes," Felder said as he continued to pick items off the ground. "'This place is a gold mine."
Crossing his arms, Chappel glanced around. It didn't look like a gold mine to him. Not unless gold mines were surrounded by bombed-out tenements and abandoned stores.
This was the cruelest trick life had ever played on R. Chappel.
At first this had been a dream come true. He had submitted the audition tape without any expectations at all, and he had made it! He'd beaten all odds and actually been chosen as a contestant for the biggest reality game show in the history of American television.
Winner was a genuine cultural phenomenon. Hugely popular among viewers. A ratings juggernaut. Even those who had never once seen the show couldn't escape from it.
The premise was simple. A group of people with wildly different backgrounds was placed in a remote setting and forced to survive without any of the creature comforts of modern life. Each week, the group would select one person to expel. Their numbers would be winnowed down until only one was left. To the winner was awarded the one-million-dollar grand prize.
The settings of the first Winner seasons had been hot, exciting and dangerous. To shake things up in the latest installment, the producers had gone in a different direction.
"Goddamn Harlem," R. Chappel griped as he looked around the benighted urban landscape. "What were they smoking when they came up with this?"
David Felder didn't answer. He continued to dig up discarded hypodermic needles from the dirty snow of the abandoned lot. The group had leaned early on that the used needles could be traded to crack addicts for food stamps. The contestants could then trade in the food stamps at the corner convenience mart for necessities.
Felder dropped two more needles into his knapsack.
He had swiped the knapsack from base camp. The same logo that adorned both of their jackets was stitched to the bag. The words Surmount, Surpass, Survive were printed in an oval, surrounding the larger word Winner.
That same logo was plastered all over everything, from hats to T-shirts to belt buckles. It was even on the goddamn rolls of toilet paper.
Of course, real toilet paper was reserved for the producers and crew. The cast had to scrounge up whatever they could whenever nature called. When they couldn't barter with needles or deposit bottles, they were forced to make do with whatever they could find. R. Chappel had learned pretty quickly that Church's Chicken bags and discarded Wrigley's Spearmint wrappers weren't worth shit for absorbing.
"It's all rigged anyway," R. Chappel said. "They pick who's gonna win even before we get started. A guy like me doesn't have a shot." He scowled for the camera. "Yeah, and don't think I don't know you're gonna edit that out."
The three-man camera crew was no longer looking his way.
That was odd. He had gotten used to the cameras always being aimed at him. But now they were aimed at the ground. Chappel had come to think of the camera operators as cyborgs, their cameras permanently affixed to their faces. But the faces had emerged. What's more, they looked worried. They were staring down the street.
Chappel followed their line of sight.
"Oh, great," he said, rolling his eyes. "Not again."
There was a group of people heading his way. That was part of the problem with using a public locale for Winner. When the Harlem location was first brought up, there were fears for the safety of the contestants. It turned out those concerns were unnecessary. The biggest worry in this modern era of celebrity worship were those locals who wanted to get in on the act.