Warren Murphy: Terminal Transmission

Remo was about to press down on the one button-the foolproof code by which he could reach his superior-when abruptly the screech-owl sound of Cheeta Ching's voice filled the kitchen.

"This is the BCN Evening News with Don Cooder. Cheeta Ching reporting. Don is off tonight."

"Cheeta!" Chiun crowed. "It is Cheeta! My ancestors have heard me. My prayers have been answered."

"If they have," Remo growled, "they must have a heck of a lot of pull with the FCC."

"Hush."

Remo left the phone and came to Chiun's side.

"Tonight," Cheeta Ching was saying, "BCN Evening News was blacked out nationwide just as a search for missing anchor Don Cooder was called off."

"You lying witch!" a voice cried from offstage. "You said your water broke!"

"Wasn't that Cooder's voice?" Remo said.

"Hush!"

"As yet," Cheeta continued unperturbed, "no clear understanding of the electronic disturbance has been ascertained. There are reports, unconfirmed at this time, that the broadcast blackout was not confined to BCN."

"It wasn't my fault!" Don Cooder's disembodied voice cried.

"That was Cooder," said Remo. "Where is he?"

"Remo!"

"In our efforts to stay on top of the headlines, BCN has video of the unprecedented phenomenon."

The screen went black except for the NO SIGNAL message, and the sonorous voice repeated its monotone mantra: There is nothing wrong with your television set . . . . "

"Remo," Chiun squeaked. "The TV is broken again!"

"No, this is a tape."

"But why are they showing this?"

"It's the headline for the night. What else are they going to show? Don Cooder standing around with nothing to do?"

"They could show Cheeta's beauteous face, dwelling on her perfect nose, her lips so-"

"Vampire-like."

"Philistine!"

The wall phone rang suddenly and Remo said, "Karnac predicts that's Smitty."

"Tell him I am out."

"Sure thing," said Remo, picking up the receiver. "Sinanju diaper service," he recited. "You soil 'em and we'll boil 'em."

A voice that sounded the way bitter lemons smell said, "Remo. Smith here."

Remo stepped out into the hall, the receiver cord uncoiling behind him. He eased the door closed. "Tell me this isn't Cuba all over again," he whispered.

"Remo, I do not know what it is. But for nearly seven minutes broadcast television was knocked off the air from Yellowknife to Acapulco."

"Could the Cubans do that?"

"Theoretically, with a powerful enough transmitter, they could. But that is not what appears to have happened. Except for cable owners and satellite dish receivers, on-air television signals did not reach their affiliates, and somehow the affiliate signals were blocked before they could be received by home sets."

"Is that what the 'no signal' message meant?"

"Yes. I want you and Chiun to stand by."

"I wasn't having any luck getting hold of Dr. Doom, anyway."

"I must remind you that he is not yet an assignment-and certainly not a problem of this magnitude."

"Problem? There was no TV for a few minutes. Big hairy deal. The worst thing that could have happened was for everybody to go to the john at once and mess up the plumbing."

Smith's humorless voice was clipped. "Remo, stand by. I must gather more information. Just stand by."

The line clicked. Remo returned to the kitchen to hang up and look in on Chiun.

Cheeta Ching was going on and on in her screechy voice. As Remo listened, he realized she was simply repeating the essential story: Broadcast TV had been blacked out. No one knew why. It was a three sentence story, but like a stuck phonograph record, she couldn't get off it.

From time to time, a hand would appear in the background, waving or shaking a fist. It apparently came from a figure who was presumably flat on the floor, and from the occasional glimpse of a human form being prevented from rising into camera range by kneeling stage hands.

"Looks like Cooder finally Wigged out on camera," Remo remarked. "They must have pulled Cheeta in as a substitute anchor."

"Hush."

Twenty minutes later, after Cheeta had had on-air conversations with virtually every BCN correspondent, all saying the same thing-which is to say, nothing--Cheeta Ching fixed the viewers with her dull, sharklike eyes and smiled without sincerity.

"In other news, I'm happy to report that my pregnancy continues on schedule with all signs pointing to an imminent delivery. Stay with BCN News for further updates and bulletins on this momentous developing story. This is Cheeta Ching reporting."

"Which momentous story?" Remo asked. "The blackout or the baby?"

"Oh, Remo do not be ridiculous. Of course it is the baby."

"That's what I was afraid of," said Remo, rolling his eyes ceilingward.

Chapter 3

Dr. Harold W. Smith rarely watched television.

Even when it was new, he seldom spent more than a passing hour a month watching television. He much preferred radio. With radio, it was possible to do something constructive and listen at the same time. To a lifelong workaholic like Harold Smith, the demands television put on a person's full attention meant only one thing: TV would not last. It was a fad, a vehicle for novelty programs like wrestling matches and roller derbys, soon to pass.

So back in the so-called Golden Age of Television-the early 1950s, when he would come home from his long days at the then-new Central Intelligence Agency, Harold Smith would ignore the tiny round-screened television despite the serious dent it had made in his government salary, and he would turn on the radio instead. Why bother watching a broadcaster reading the news off a script when radio commentators performed the same service and stimulated the imagination at the same time?

Yet millions did. Further proof that TV would not last.

But it was not long before the television shows expanded to thirty minutes and began including footage of events. And as music tastes changed and rock and roll seemed to more and more crowd out the tasteful standards Harold Smith enjoyed, he listened less and less to his old console Atwater Kent-a graduation gift from his uncle Ormond.

Reluctantly he retired it into the attic.

Grudgingly Harold Smith fell into the habit of watching TV news. The Huntley-Brinkley Report had been his favorite-although Howard K. Smith-no relation-had also been good. He was able to stomach Harry Reasoner, despite his unseemly frivolity.

Today, the current crop of anchors left much to be desired, so Smith had swallowed hard and invested in home cable, paying out of his own pocket the installation charge and the monthly access fee despite the fact that he was well within his rights to charge the fee to either of his operating budgets.

Smith had two. The lesser of them was the operating budget for Folcroft Sanitarium, a sleepy but efficient private hospital on the shores of Long Island Sound in Rye, New York. Harold Smith was Folcroft's director, and had been since his retirement from the CIA back in the halcyon days of Huntley and Brinkley.

The other operating budget was Smith's to do with as he wished. It wasn't literally true, but in practice there was no one above Smith to tell him that no, he could not siphon off $53.50 each month to equip his Rye, New York home and Folcroft office with cable. Even if he had been subject to auditing, the paltry $53.50 would have been hardly a blip on a CPA's radar screen.

For Smith's total annual operating budget, the budget in which Folcroft was a minor expenditure, exceeded many millions of dollars in taxpayer's money.

Harold W. Smith was the head of CURE, sanctioned by the President of the United States-but answerable to no lawmaker, no congressional oversight committee, no one. It had been set up in the early 1960s to operate outside the constraints of lawful government. Its mission: to keep order in an increasingly chaotic society, resorting to extraconstitutional activities when deemed necessary by Harold Smith.