"According to a search of your phone records, you did not. And it is impossible for you to have received one."
"What business of it of yours to look into network phone records?" Macaw demanded in a voice that shook with righteous indignation.
"You reporters do this sort of thing all the time," Smith snapped.
"But we're a news organization. We're above the law."
"And I represent the lawful United States government," Smith said, his voice going testy.
"Oh. You'd better talk to legal about that."
"I am talking to you," Smith pointed out.
"Uh, I don't know if I can talk on the record."
"Who has access to the fax machines in this building?"
"Actually I have the only one."
"A network this large and there is only one fax?"
"We lost so much money sponsoring the '92 Olympics we had to sell off a lot of stuff," Macaw admitted. "Why do you think our cameras are robot-controlled? We saved three camera operator salaries."
Smith glanced around the destroyed news set, calculating that the run-amok cameras had cost the network the equivalent of thirty cameraman's salaries.
"Who discovered the fax?" he asked Macaw.
"You mean who found it?"
"Yes."
"Guess I can tell you that. It was our technical director, Nealon." Tim Macaw pointed to the control room. "He's the one with the helpless expression."
"Could you be more specific?" Smith asked.
"In the red shirt."
"Thank you."
Harold Smith worked his way through the confusing maze of satellite rooms surrounding the MBC news set. Security guards challenged him at one point and, impressed by his falsified photo ID, allowed him to roam at will.
Smith entered the control room without knocking.
"Nealon?"
The horse-faced man in the red shirt looked up from an exposed control board. "Yes?"
"Smith. Secret Service. I understand you were the first to discover the latest extortionary fax."
Nealon licked a pasty upper lip and said, "Yeah, I was walking past the thing and it was coming off. I knew it was important so I gave it to Macaw."
"Do you recall what time that was?"
"Yeah. 7:31. I know because the 7:00 feed had just wrapped."
"You are lying."
Nealon blinked. "Say that again?"
"AT cords show that the demand faxes received by the other networks originated at an MBC faxphone. And there were no incoming calls received here at the time you state."
Nealon said nothing. His eyes lost their focus. They began to cross slightly.
Harold Smith had in his pre-CURE days been a CIA bureaucrat, a field operative, and before that an operative for the OSS. He understood how dangerous men behaved under stress. The telltale signs of a man reaching for a weapon were red flags to him.
Smith had his automatic out just as Nealon's fingers took hold of the butt of his own concealed weapon.
"Do not make a mistake you cannot survive," Smith warned without evident emotion.
Nealon looked down the barrel of Harold Smith's formidable handgun, looked up to Smith's gray patrician features and, balancing the threat of one against the resolve of the other, made a mistake that many men who had gone up against Harold W. Smith in his past had made.
He completed his draw, producing a flat .22 pistol. Harold Smith squeezed his trigger once. The bullet smashed the tiny .22 against the man's stomach before he could fire-and continued on into his ribcage.
The bullet richocheted off three ribs and exited Nealon's throat. He took hold of himself with his free hand and the flood of blood told the man all he would ever know. Eyes rolling up in his head, he crumpled to the control room floor.
Harold Smith went to the body, his gray features grim.
"How long has this man been working here?" he demanded, his voice sharp.
A technician croaked, "Six months. Came over from BCN after their last round of layoffs."
Smith became aware of a frantic pounding on the other side of the Plexiglas panel overlooking the newsroom.
It was Tim Macaw. He was banging with one fist and pointing at the dead technical director with the other. Someone flicked a switch, and Macaw's voice came through a intercom.
"-tures! Somebody get a camera in there. We can do a live cut-in. We'll own this story!"
"What is that man saying?" asked Smith.
"He wants this to go out live."
"Absolutely not," said Smith. "This is a Secret Service investigation. I hereby order this control room sealed pending the arrival of a federal coroner, and all camera equipment is excluded until further notice."
"Can you do that?" asked Tim Macaw from the other side of the glass.
"I am doing it," Smith said.