"What's wrong with this piece of junk?" Remo said, giving it a whack.
"I do not know."
"Have you been playing with the contrast knob again?"
"You make the pictures too light," Chiun sniffed. "It is bad for the eyes if they are not made to work."
"Well, I don't like it dark," said Remo, turning the contrast knob. The picture lightened. In one corner. There, emerging from the shifting from high contrast to lower contrast, were two mocking white letters:
NO SIGNAL.
"Damn!" said Remo.
Chiun looked up from his tea. He frowned.
"I thought you rendered the fiends impotent," he said.
"I did. I thought I did. Wait a minute, maybe this is a recap of the blackout footage." Remo changed the channel. The other channels were also black. They weren't hooked up to cable, so there was no way to tell what was happening there.
"Not now!" Remo moaned.
Chiun padded up to the screen, his tea forgotten. His facial wrinkles were gathering like storm clouds.
"Is it not a rerun?" he muttered darkly.
"Well, it is and it isn't," said Remo, running up and down the stations. "The out-of-state stations were just as black."
Then the telephone was ringing. Remo took it.
"Remo," said Harold Smith. "It has begun again."
"Yeah, and the timing couldn't be worse. I just turned on TV so Chiun and I could catch up on breaking news and the screen went dead."
"Remo, it is clear that Jed Burner's KNNN broadcast equipment is not responsible for this."
"Maybe not. But he's involved in this somehow, he and Haiphong Hannah. He's gotta be."
"That remains to be seen," said Smith.
"If he isn't, who else could it be?"
Suddenly, the TV began speaking in an electronically filtered voice.
"Do not adjust your set. The networks have refused to accede to my modest demands. So I am declaring a moratorium on all TV for the next seven hours. Or until my demands are met. I now return you to the Electronic Dark Age of"-an echo chamber effect cut in-"Captain Audioooonnnn. "
Then with Remo watching, the Master of Sinanju turned and hissed, "This is all your fault!"
"Huh?"
"You have failed," Chiun said loudly. "And because of your failure, I am deprived of all tidings of Cheeta Ching. "
"I'm sorry, Little Father. Maybe Smith can point us in the direction of the problem. You and I working together, we can probably solve this in a day."
"No. My place is at Cheeta's side. I must go to her at once."
"Oh no," Remo groaned, watching the Master of Sinanju hurry from the kitchen and float up the stairs to pack.
"Smitty," Remo hissed into the receiver. "You hear that?"
"I did."
"What do we do?"
"I do not know," Harold Smith said in a hollow voice. "But you must stay with Master Chiun and keep him from coming into contact with Don Cooder. The results could be catastrophic."
"They could be worse than that," Remo muttered, thinking that if there was anyone on earth the Master of Sinanju would like to snuff, it was Don Cooder.
Chapter 16
Don Cooder entered the newsroom of BCN's New York headquarters, bloodied but unbowed. He was holding a raw steak over one eye. London broil.
"Admiral on the bridge!" the floor manager called, after giving a sharp blast in the bosun's whistle.
"Let no one doubt Don Cooder's manhood after this day," Don Cooder said.
"Don!" the news director called, white-faced.
"No matter the danger, no matter the risks, if it needs reporting, Hurricane Don Cooder will report it," said Don Cooder.
"But Don."
"No buts! I know what you're going to say. Stow it. I may be head anchor, but in these veins flows the blood of a natural-born reporter. I can't help it. At times like these, I'm like a hound dog with a treed coon under a full moon. Call me country, but country is what made Don Cooder the knight of the remote newscast that he is."
With that, Don Cooder stormed in the direction of his office.
The news director was holding his arm leveled at the line monitor, where the tiny white letters No SIGNAL glowed faintly against the blacked-out screen.
"Does anybody want to tell him?" he said in a dispirited voice.
"What's the use? Until we're up again, what's the use?"
"What if we don't come up again?"
"I don't want to think about it," said the news director, his eyes dull and defeated.
"Hey, check this out. MTV is putting on a news bulletin."
Every man in the newsroom rushed to the bank of monitors.
A young girl in purple and silver hair was speaking in a spritely voice.
"Can you, like, stand it?" she was saying. "The networks are, like, having really, really major technical difficulties again. But chill out. You still have your MTV. So here's Fed Leppar with Petaluma."
On came a music video that compressed more scenes than War and Peace contains into 120 seconds of quick-cut disconnected plotiessness.
The news director snapped. "That's it! Nothing about the ransom demands? What kind of news bulletin is that?"
"Right now, the only game in town," said the floor manager, his eyes flicking along the other monitors.
Chapter 17
As the cab whisked them from Newark Airport to the BCN studios in the heart of Times Square, Remo Williams grew worried.
What would Chiun say when he found out the truth? Would he fly off the handle? Would he blame Remo? It was impossible to tell. Remo had seen the Master of Sinanju under every conceivable situation during their long association. But this-this was different.
Remo decided he would have to get control of the situation before it got out of control.
"Look," Remo told Chiun as Seventh Avenue flashed past. "We can't just barge in on Cheeta."
"Why not? She will be pleased to see me."
"Last time, she kept asking after me, remember?"
Chiun sniffed disdainfully and stared out the cab window. It was a sore spot with the Master of Sinanju. His infatuation with Cheeta Ching, even after her pregnancy, had not been completely reciprocated. On the few occasions when their paths had crossed, Cheeta had shown a strong interest in Remo-although she seemed unable to get his name right. Remo had chalked those incidents up to the supercharged pheromones his Sinanju-trained body constantly released. Still, for a woman carrying Chiun's child, her behavior was bizarre.
"And we're on assignment," Remo added.
"You are on assignment," Chiun sniffed. "I am on maternity leave."
"In your case, it's paternity leave, and did you clear this with Smith?"
"Emperor Smith understands these matters," Chiun said loftily. "He too is a father."
"In that case," Remo growled, "he understands a heck of a lot more than me. Anyway, we gotta treat this like an assignment. We can't blow it."
"I am not the blower of assignments in this vehicle," Chiun said.
"I won't argue with that-"
"Because you cannot," Chiun snapped.
"Okay, but chances are we're going to bump into Don Cooder."
Chiun's eyes narrowed and a slow hissing escaped his lips.
Remo said, "He's off-limits. Smitty said so."
"I will do what I must," Chiun said stiffly.
Inwardly, Remo groaned. His palms were actually sweating. He couldn't remember the last time they had done that.
The cab dropped them off at the studio entrance, and Remo got out first. He took the lead, Chiun following closely behind, his footsteps more quick than they normally were.
As they approached the security desk, Chiun called out, "What news of Cheeta?"
Remo's heart sank.
The answer came back. "None."
Chiun's features brightened. "Good. Then I am not too late for the joyous event."
Remo pulled a card out of a wallet that was stuffed with them. "Remo Neilson, FCC," he told the security guard. "I'm here about the blackout."