"The story, Don, is that Randal Rumpp is claiming to have turned his prime architectural trophy into an insubstantial asset. It is literally untouchable."
"I understand, Cheeta, that you've spoken with Rumpp this evening."
"That's right, Don, I-"
"Any footage?"
Cheeta Ching's face colored. Her bloodred lips thinned, and her black eyes snapped with fury. She muttered something under her breath that, out of the millions watching the broadcast, perhaps only Remo and Chiun, who both understood Korean, picked up on.
"Did she just call him a bastard?" Remo asked Chiun.
"Hush!"
Cheeta went on. "Don, whatever dark forces are at work here, obviously it affects videotape. My exclusive interview was ruined."
"Too bad."
Cheeta smiled through set teeth. A guttural fragment of sound emerged, too.
Remo asked, "Did she just call him a prick in Korean?"
"Be still!"
"But," Cheeta added, lifting a notebook into camera range, "I can quote precisely several of the things Rumpp had to say." She began reading off the pad. "According to the real-estate developer himself, the Rumpp Tower has been 'spectralized.' That is, made insubstantial to human touch. Rumpp declined to explain why he had resorted to this unique approach to protecting his assets from seizure, but it's widely believed in banking circles that this is the last, desperate act of a desperate man, a man who, only a decade ago-"
"That's fine, Cheeta," Don Cooder cut in, "but we have a follow-up report to get to."
"But-"
The angry face of Cheeta Ching winked out and Don Cooder turned to face his audience, saying,
"Spectralization. What is it? Can it happen to your home? Here with a full report is BCN science editor, Frank Feldmeyer."
The Master of Sinanju stabbed the OFF switch angrily.
"Hey, I wanted to see that report!" Remo protested.
"There is a saloon in the lower regions of this building," Chiun said. "I am certain if you cross his palm with silver, the saloonkeeper will oblige you."
"Crap," said Remo, turning on the TV again. Chiun retreated to the dresser and seized the remote. He stabbed the button.
A competing newscaster appeared. The anchor was explaining, as if it were a perfectly ordinary occurrence, how the Rumpp Tower had been "dematerialized."
Remo switched back to BCN.
Chiun ran the channel selector to another broadcast.
This particular anchor, in referring to the Rumpp Tower, called it "owl-blasted."
Remo and Chiun stopped their struggle for television supremacy and looked at one another.
"Owl-blasted?" they said. They began paying attention to the screen, as the camera pulled back and no other than Delpha Rohmer was revealed seated beside the boyish anchor.
"Here with exclusive footage of the apparent haunting is Delpha Rohmer, official witch of Salem, Massachusetts," said the anchor.
"Perfect," Remo groused.
"First, Miss Rohmer," said the anchor, "can you explain the so-called 'event' on Fifth Avenue?"
Delpha Rohmer parted her scarlet lips in a dry, empty smile. Her eye shadow had been replenished. It was an unappetizing color similar to canned mushroom soup.
"It is not an event," she said in a vaguely sinister monotone. "It is the sign of the second coming of Baphomet, the Great Horned One. Soon all Fifth Avenue, then all of Manhattan, will become as the Rumpp Tower. More innocents will slip into the earth to roast in Baphomet's pitiless hellfires."
"You're not serious?"
Delpha's mushroom-hued lids settled, like an alligator's inner eye membrane. "It will be the fate of all who do not practice the craft of Wicca to fall into the Horned One's toils. Only by embracing the first religion can womankind be saved."
"What about men?" Remo asked the picture tube.
"What about men?" the anchor asked Delpha.
"Men," retorted Delpha Rohmer, "can be saved only by wise women. If the women out in the audience wish to be saved, or desire to succor their menfolk . . ."
"Here it comes," Remo said.
"I have a toll-free number they may call for information," Delpha finished.
"Actually, we don't have time for that," the anchor interjected hastily, "because we want to run that footage."
At which point Delpha Rohmer flicked her fingers in the anchor's face, causing him to fall into a sneezing fit. While the camera cut back to her, in order to spare the continental United States the sight of a star anchor's nasal distress, Delpha tore open her dress front, exposing two pale but generous breasts over which was stenciled a 900 number.
"A trick!" Chiun hissed, looking away. "I saw her fling some exotic herb!"
"If you call pepper 'exotic,' " Remo said dryly.
"To a Korean, Mediterranean spices are as alien as bubblegum." Chiun sniffed.
"Shall I change the channel, or do you want to copy down the number?" Remo asked.
"No! It is as the Book of Sinanju says: 'Never trust a mudang. Especially a white one.' "
"So much for magic," said Remo, grabbing the remote. But before he could bring it into play, the footage captured by Cheeta Ching's cameraman rolled. His finger on the channel-changer, Remo froze. "Chiun! Check this out!"
Chapter 22
The long black Volga automobile carried former KBG major Yuli Batenin through the gates of a forbidding gray stone prison, causing his heart to leap with joy.