Smith groaned, a low inarticulate sound. The voice had told him exactly where the fax had originated.
If it meant what he thought, a new and terrifying kind of conflict was about to be played out. And the battlefield would be an electronic one.
Chapter 6
Cheeta Ching was afraid to leave her office.
Normally, Cheeta Ching wasn't afraid of man, beast, or machine. Behind her back, she was known as the Korean Shark. Even her coworkers feared her. But if there was one colleague even she feared, it was senior BCN anchor Don Cooder.
Theirs had been a long-running feud, dating back to the days before she had jumped rival MBC for BCN. Cheeta had never wanted to leave MBC. Certainly not for a lateral slide from MBC weekend anchor to BCN weekend anchor. She would never have done it. Never in a million years. Except for Don Cooder.
With Cooder in the Chair, BCN was dead last in the ratings, heading for the ratings cellar with a millstone around its corporate neck. Nobody expected him to last. And as the pressure had mounted, the hothead from Texas had become increasingly unstable.
There was the famous seven-minute walk-off. The shouting matches with presidential candidates. Being kidnapped by irate taxi drivers. It was only a matter of time, the industry knew, before Don Cooder cracked like an overboiled egg.
Cheeta Ching knew that she was making a potentially disastrous career move. She also understood that if Cooder went off the deep end, whoever was his heir-apparent was certain to land her lucky ass in the Chair. And Cheeta Ching wanted to be the proud owner of that lucky ass.
Industry critics all but wrote her professional obituary when she accepted the BCN weekend anchor slot. In interviews, she shrugged off all predictions of doom. After all, she was Cheeta Ching. The Cheeta Ching. The only female Korean anchor on earth. Or at least outside Korea. Nothing had ever stood in her way.
Except, she had discovered to her everlasting chagrin, Don Cooder.
The man was like a starfish attached to an oyster with that damned Chair. He couldn't he pried up, knocked off, or smashed loose.
Not that Cheeta Ching hadn't tried. During one of their smoldering feuds, she had hired a group of thugs to jump him outside his Manhattan apartment crying, "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"
It should have sent him over the edge. It didn't. The man was a barnacle, inert and immovable.
After that, Cheeta shifted tactics, announcing the start of her heroic struggle to become pregnant. As Cheeta saw it, the publicity value would be incalculable. She was over forty, female, and a symbol to career-minded women across the nation. To have a child would have made her the ultimate emblem of having it all. And why not? It had worked for Candice Bergen.
Except that Cheeta Ching couldn't conceive to save her life.
It was embarrassing. Entertainment Weekly called her the "Little Anchor Who Couldn't." Don Cooder had ramrodded onto the air a special report, "Why Superwoman Can't Ovulate."
It was especially embarrassing because her husband was a gynecologist-turned-talk-show-host. They did it in every position except free-fall-but only because Rory's fingers couldn't be pried loose from the open aircraft door. He was petrified of heights.
Next, they resorted to every fertility drug known to man. Her biological clock ticking, every tabloid holding her up to ridicule, Cheeta Ching grew desperate as a starved barracuda.
Then, like a miracle, a man had appeared in her life. A Korean. Of course. Only a fellow Korean, a member of the most perfect race ever to grace a sorry world, could have helped barren Cheeta Ching to total, womanly fulfillment.
His name had been Chiun, but out of respect for his years, Cheeta always called him "Grandfather." She had never spoken of him to her husband. There was no need to crush his spirit. Rory had been certain that the oysters and Spanish fly omelette breakfasts he had endured for more than two years had done it.
For nine months now, Cheeta Ching had basked in the glow of positive press. BCN Weekend Report ratings were soaring, even as Cooder's were sinking. She had been cover-featured by People three times-once each trimester. Vanity Fair had a standing cover-shoot offer, preferably showing mother and child nude. Breast-feeding. In the rarified world of the celebrity anchor, Cheeta Ching was Queen of the Mountain-and determined to grind her stiletto heels into the eyes of the competition. It was only a whisper in the halls, but already they were talking about making a major change when Cooder's contract came up for renewal.
The Chair was as good as Cheeta Ching's.
All she had to do was live long enough to plant her lucky behind in it.
It was almost eleven o'clock now. Cheeta had been locked in her office since she had signed off the 6:30 feed and rushed from the newsroom.
"It's for your own good," said the producer, as he escorted her to her office. Security guards ringed her with drawn guns. Down the corridor, Don Cooder was incoherent with rage, screaming, and frothing at the mouth.
The remaining security force was sitting on him.
"I'm admiral now, right?" Cheeta had asked breathlessly.
"We'll talk about it later. Okay?" the producer returned.
"What about the seven o'clock feed?"
"It's a slow news day. We'll just replay the 6:30."
"Who's going to do the West Coast update?"
"Don't worry about that," the producer promised, shoving her into the office and closing the door. "Better lock it to be safe."
As the producer hurried away to deal with his temperamental anchor, Cheeta banged in the door and asked, "What about my Eyeball to Eyeball edition?"
"We'll let you know when the coast is clear."
Cheeta spent the next hour with one ear pressed to her locked office door, listening to the horrible sounds coming from the newsroom as the staff attempted to placate Don Cooder.
"We'll give you a raise, Don."
"Don Cooder's very soul has been wounded. It will take more than mere money to bind up his mortal wounds," he announced.
"We'll increase your operating budget. Add that backup science correspondent you wanted."
"You insult Don Cooder with a bribe of another color."
"How about you do a special special tonight?"
"A special special?"
"Yeah. On the blackout. You can do it in the Eyeball to Eyeball slot."
Cheeta tried to choke it down, but the shriek of anguish came out of her too-red mouth as raw sound.
"You bastard!"
"I'll do it," said Don Cooder in a suddenly placated tone.
At eight o'clock, Don Cooder had gone on the air, his hair sprayed into submission, his wild eyes almost calm.
As she watched on her office TV, Cheeta Ching's greatest hope slowly dwindled to nothingness. Namely that the brass would see the seven-minute blackout as a repetition of the famous seven-minute Don Cooder walkout and can the prima donna once and for all.
"My time will come," she hissed at the screen, while eating cold jungol soup. Once, the baby kicked. Cheeta slapped her belly and he settled right down.
When it was over, Cooder was knocking at the door, saying in an imitation Robert DeNiro voice, "Come out, come out, wherever you are."
Cheeta sat very still in her desk and said nothing until the clumsy sound of his boots creaked away.
Less than an hour later, he was back doing a Jack Nicholson.
"Heeerre's Donny."
Cheeta refused to respond. Fortunately, no ax came splintering through the panel. Cooder went away again. From time to time, furtive footsteps returned to her office door. Cheeta ignored them, mentally vowing to outwait him, just as she would outlast her arch-rival in the long haul.
Hours had passed without any further sign of Cooder. Cheeta called around the studio. No one had seen him. But no one had seen him leave the building either.