"What is this? What is this?" Chiun squeaked, his voice shaking as his eyes went from Remo to Smith and Remo again. They stayed on Remo, cold and steely.
"I can explain," Smitty said hastily.
"It is not you who must explain your words, but Remo."
Remo swallowed.
"I tried to tell you back at the house," he said in a low voice.
Chiun's eyes narrowed to steely gleams. "Tell me now."
"Cheeta beat me to KNNN. I guess she was following the same lead Smith fed me. I got there just as they were bundling her into Burner's chopper."
"And you did not stop them?" Chiun said.
"The guy in the kilt had his gun on Cheeta the whole time."
"That would not have stopped a true Master of Sinanju, whose feet are swift as the snow leopard and whose hands are as the lightning whose thunder is not heard until the blow had been struck."
"He was holding the muzzle to Cheeta's stomach," Remo said.
Chiun's facial hair shuddered. His eyes grew heavy of lid, like a serpent. Remo felt the cold sweat return to his hands. He returned Chiun's unflinching gaze with an open unthreatening stare of his own.
"You did the correct thing," said Chiun in a remote voice, but turned his back on Remo. "But only because you have been trained by the best."
Remo let out a sigh of relief and wiped the back of his hand across his brow, leaving it more sweaty than before.
"Not that you are forgiven for not arriving early," he added coldly.
"Which I wouldn't have been if I hadn't wasted time trying to get you to come along," Remo shot back.
Chiun said nothing. Smith said, "Please describe the scene in Atlanta as you recall it."
Remo furrowed his brow. "I got past the guards, heard that Cheeta had beaten me to Burner and heard shooting. By the time I got to the roof, they were all hustling Cheeta into the chopper."
"They were all armed?"
"Only Banning. Burner and Haiphong Hannah were getting into the chopper ahead of them."
"You are certain it was Banning?"
"He wearing sunglasses and a big hat," Remo said. "The only thing I was sure of was his kilt."
"What color was it?"
"Green plaid in Atlanta. Brown plaid in New York."
"They are called tartans, not plaids," Chiun corrected.
Smith consulted a computer file. "Clan tartans do not change color," he said, frowning. "It is possible the abductor was not Banning."
"So why'd Captain Audion shut down when he heard Banning was dead?" Remo asked.
"Perhaps because he wanted to foster the impression that Banning was the culprit, and that this was a Canadian operation."
"Does that mean Burner and Haiphong Hannah are the real bad guys?"
"It is a reasonable working theory," Smith allowed.
"Okay, let's find them."
"All Federal resources are bent toward that purpose. But so far there was been no sign of them, or Burner's helicopter."
"We're at a dead end then?"
At the word dead, the Master of Sinanju sipped in a shocked breath. "Cheeta is at the mercy of Canadians and there is no helping her," he wailed, throwing back his head and placing a clenched fist to his amber forehead.
Remo was looking at Smith's TV set. "Hey, when did you spring for cable?" he asked, indicating the cable box.
"Today. With broadcast television out of commission, it was absolutely necessary. I must stay on top of events in every way I can."
"Don't sound so miserable. Lots of good stuff is on cable these days-if you like stale thirty-year-old sitcoms. Wait a minute, check this out."
Smith looked up. Turning up the sound, Remo pointed to the Quantel graphic floating to one side of Don Cooder's head.
". . . minutes ago received an extraordinary fax signed 'Captain Audacious'-I mean 'Audion.' " Cooder flashed his anemic smile. "A little slip of the tongue which is not meant to cast aspersions on our colleagues over at KNNN," he added with a nervous laugh. "This fax promises that two days from now, the day May sweeps are set to begin, broadcast television will be shut down for a seven day period. Unless each network and cable service pays fifty-that's fifty-million-million with an M-dollars into a numbered Swiss bank account."
"The fiends!" Chiun shrieked. "Was nothing said about Cheeta? Oh, the heartrending suspense!"
"Here with me now for a reaction to this outrageous demand is BCN news director Loone-"
Smith turned down the sound.
"Don't you want to hear what they're saying?" Remo asked.
"I would rather trace that fax," Smith said flatly.
Smith's fingers worked like pale gray spiders along the keyboard. The intensity of his expression brought the Master of Sinanju to his side.
Smith brought up the BCN AT He froze the last hour's worth of incoming calls and put them in a window up in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Then he accessed the MBC list. This went into the upper left-hand corner. The ANC file completed the screen.
Smith initiated a sort and analyze program.
Only two numbers came up in common. Smith frowned. He accessed the Vox phone records and this added a third common number. Then he went to KNNN. The same incoming number showed up. It was a New York area code. Smith isolated it and interrogated the file, murmuring, "This is odd . . . ."
"What is?" asked Remo.