"Remo. Go to MacGuire Air Force Base. An Air Mobility Command transport will be waiting for you. I am sending you to Quebec."
"What do you think we're going to find?"
"I do not know. But that statue is squarely on the parallel of latitude line and it is also in the area where there had been a rash of missing car batteries."
"How would car batteries fit into this?"
"That is only one of the answers I expect you to find. Good luck, Remo."
After Remo hung up, he faced the waiting Master of Sinanju.
"You have been telling fables about me, again," Chiun accused.
"Save it. We're off to Quebec. And there's a good chance we'll find out what happened to Cheeta when we get there."
The Master of Sinanju raised clenched fists and a voice like distilled grief to the open sky. "Cheeta! Do not despair, precious one. We are coming to succor you!"
Cheeta Ching was past despair. She was beyond agony. Being flayed by rusty razor blades would be infinitely preferable to the exquisite tortures that were wracking her sweat-soaked body.
She was in her sixteenth hour of labor. Her swollen, jittering belly felt like it was trying to launch into orbit using her splayed legs as launch rails.
If only the damned brat would come out.
"Come on, you little bastard!" she grunted between contractions. "Get out of here or I'll pull you out by your miserable scrotum!"
The door opened and the figure of Captain Audion pushed in. He was lugging a car battery which he added to a growing pile.
"Can I get y'all any little thang?" he asked, turning the blacked-out screen of his square head in Cheeta's direction.
"Yes," Cheeta said through clenched teeth. "A coat hanger."
"Say what?"
"I going to abort this useless little dink if it's the last thing I do!"
"Settle for a jackknife?"
Don Cooder was arrested by Royal Canadian Mounted Police constables the moment he opened his passport for the Montreal customs inspector.
"You can't do this to me. I'm Don Cooder. Premier anchor of our age."
"The charges will include extortion, interfering with the airwaves of a sovereign nation, espionage, and air piracy," said the RCMP sergeant, whose serge coat was a disappointing brown, not scarlet.
"Air piracy? Captain Audion didn't hijack any planes-did he?"
"Then you admit that you are Captain Audion?"
"That dog won't hunt and you know it," Cooder snapped.
The constables stared at him, eyes unreadable under their big yellow-banded hats.
"Would Don Cooder, if he were Captain Audion, telecast his own face to the world?" Don Cooder challenged.
"Whose own face?" he was asked.
"Don Cooder's."
The constables looked at one another.
"Yes, he would," they said in unison.
"Why would he-I mean I-do that? Were I not me, that is?"
"Ratings," said one.
"Ego," added the other.
"How can there be ratings when all TV is blacked out?" Cooder returned.
The sergeant said, "Perhaps the judge will have a theory."
"Look, I've entered your country to expose Captain Audion for who he is."
"And who is he, if not you?"
"I can't say."
The Mounties took him roughly by the elbows.
"Wait. Wait. I can't say publicly. It would be libel."
They continued along, despite Cooder's dragging heels.
"But I could broadcast it," he added.
The constables stopped.
"See," Cooder explained. "it's libel if I accuse him without proof, but if I unmask him on television, it will be news. A different kind of libel altogether. Legal libel."
"How can you do that with all television out of commission?"
"That's the tremendous part. I think I know where the transmitter is. We can go there with a remote uplink, knock out the transmitter, and broadcast the unmasking. It will be the ratings sensation of all time!"
"We will have to let the judge decide this."
The judge listened patiently.