"This wasn't a regular bulletin," the cabby explained. "It was more along the line of a ransom demand."
"Ransom?"
"Wait, here it comes again."
The screen suddenly flared to life.
And looking out over Times Square was the flat, scared-white face of Cheeta Ching. Her hair was a Medusan mass of split ends and her red mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out.
"She's saying that she's having-whadyacall'em-Braxton-Hicks contractions," the cabby explained.
"You can read lips?"
"Naw. The sound was coming in over the dispatch radio, last time. Whatever's messing up TV reception, it's put the radios on the fritz too." The driver obligingly got behind the wheel and turned his radio up.
"-sist that my network agree to all of this lunatic's demands at once," Cheeta was saying in a shrill, helpless tone. "I can't have my baby now. I look a wreck and I don't have my midwife and-"
The screen turned blue and the blue framed a graphic of a stainless steel nautical anchor in a triangular Warner Bros's-style crest.
"We interrupt this interruption of broadcast service," the sonorous voice of Captain Audion broke in, "to announce an escalation in our earlier demands."
The screen was again black.
"The price per network is up to fifty million, but for BCN, I'll throw in Cheeta Ching for an extra ten."
"I'd pass," the cabby opined. "That broad ain't worth last month's rent. Did you see her hair? It's terrible what they pay these people, and they can't even groom themselves right."
"That the message my friend heard?" Remo demanded.
"Yeah, I had my radio up full blast on account of everybody and his brother wanted to hear what she was saying. Fat lot of good it did me. Not one fare."
"Any chance you overheard where my friend went?"
"Sure. He told the first guy in line to take him to the ANC studio."
"You the second guy in line?"
The cabby gestured through his windshield. "You see anybody in front of me now?"
"Then you get to take me to ANC," said Remo, reaching for the passenger door handle.
"Okay, just let me finish my pastrami."
Remo reached over the roof of the parked cab and took hold of the roof light. He disengaged the fixture and handed it to the driver through the open window.
"What's this?" the cabby muttered, pastrami shreds dribbling from his lips.
"An example of what will happen to your head if you don't get your ass into gear," said Remo, dropping into the back seat.
He slammed the door shut as the cab left the curb.
There was only one reason the Master of Sinanju would race off to ANC without him, Remo knew.
Chiun was going to ransom Cheeta Ching by wringing the truth out of the person he believed was her abductor.
Dieter Banning.
Chapter 20
Everyone agreed that Dieter Banning was the most erudite, well-dressed, and polished anchor on American TV.
The truth was that Dieter Banning's early reading consisted almost exclusively of American comic books. Although his resume included Carleigh University in Ottowa, he had in fact enrolled in their night school. He lasted a single week, quitting because, in his words, "There weren't enough pictures in the texts."
He bought his clothes in bulk from a London discount house. But because they were British, he made the annual best-dressed lists.
No one questioned his lack of credentials, because Dieter Banning looked like an anchor should look, spoke the way an anchor was expected to speak, and did it all in an impeccable clipped accent that seemed above reproach.
But most of all, Dieter Banning had the credibility of a man who had the courage to wear his own hair on network TV.
Few viewers would have acknowledged it, in an age of toupees, blown-dry shag cuts and hair weaves, but news viewers subconsciously trusted Dieter Banning because he had the courage to let his thinning hair go out over the air unembellished and unaugmented.
"I'm a journalist, not a fucking Macy's mannikin," he had retorted when the unfamiliar American word "Rogaine" was uttered by the president of the news division. The occasion was Banning's forty-second birthday and the renewal of his first two-year contract.
"Need I remind you, Dieter, that there's an appearance clause in your contract?"
"Take it out, or I walk."
No one in network television had ever heard of such a thing. Dieter Banning was being paid a cool 1.7 million dollars a year to read off a teleprompter five nights a week and he was actually balking at a little career-enhancing cosmetics.
"You," said the news manager, "are either the next Edward R. Murrow or an utter fool."
Dieter Banning simply stared at his lobster Fra Diavolo and said nothing. He found that worked well with Americans. They usually filled the silence with some babble of their own, usually their worst fears.
His employer did not disappoint him.
"Okay, the clause goes. But the ratings better not erode or we're revisiting this whole discussion next renewal."
"Fine," said Dieter Banning, wondering who Edward R. Murrow was. The name had a vaguely familiar ring. Perhaps Murrow was one of those "deputy dogs" who did the weekend reports.
The next day, everyone in the newsroom had nice things to say about his hair.
"New haircut, Dieter?"
"Perhaps," said Dieter, who had dug out an old photo of Edward R. Murrow and fought his hair into a close approximation of the late TV journalist's understated hairstyle.
No one ever commented on the resemblance. But Dieter Banning's ratings went steadily up in the coming months, until his was the undisputably top-rated newscast. While other anchors primped, moussed, augmented and fried their follicles with industrial-strength blow dryers, Dieter Banning's low-maintenance coif was sending out a nightly subliminal message that whispered "Trust me," and almost everyone credited his well-bred manner of speaking.
Dieter Banning had been at his desk when his network went down for the second time in twelve hours. The ANC program director barged in.
"Dieter. We're down again."
"Son of a bitch!"
"It's that Captain Audion again!"
"Shit!"
"All the other networks are black too."
Banning shrugged and said, "Shit happens."
"What do we do?"
"Well," he said with wry unconcern, "we were promised a seven-hour blackout, so I imagine that gives us seven hours to prepare our evening broadcast."
"But the network is losing a fortune. The brass is foaming at the mouth."
Banning smiled coolly. "Get pictures."
Dieter Banning was still at his desk when the excitement started three hours later.
"Is there a problem?" he asked a passing clerk. People had been racing by him for the last last five minutes, howling and frantic, and Dieter Banning thought their stark faces looked more drained of blood than usual. They were often that way, these Americans. Temperamentally unable to handle the pressure of daily news gathering. Here it was nearly noon, and Dieter Banning had already written his five-line lead for the 6:30 feed. He was quite proud of it. The prose almost scanned.
"We're under attack!"
"Oh, don't be so bloody melodramatic," Banning rejoined. "So, Middle America is bereft of a few lame game shows and downmarket tabloid programs and soap operas. The world still spins on its axis, eh?"
"You don't understand. Two security guards are dead! And an FBI SWAT team has been called in."
Dieter Banning blinked, and stood up, his face paling. His legs, under his kilt, paled too.
"Attack! By whom?"
"No one knows."
"We are a news gathering organization. Shouldn't someone know by now?"
Then a voice shouted, "Here he comes!"
ANC security was provided by Purolator guards. The marble lobby was usually thick with them, day and night. A nightly newscast was a convenient target for any desperate attention-seeking person with the firepower to bluff his way to the anchor desk. It had happened. Not at ANC, but at other networks and not a few local stations.