Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“Yes, of course you may, Madam Secretary,” Castillo said, and the green LEDs on the secretary’s CaseyBerry ceased to glow.

[TWO]

Wolf News World Headquarters

The Wolf News Building

Avenue of the Americas and Forty-third Street

New York City, New York

0001 18 June 2007

It was said, probably accurately, that there were more television monitors in the Wolf News newsroom than there were in the Sony and Sanyo warehouses combined. It was here that Wolf News not only maintained contact with its journalists worldwide but kept its eye on what the competition was up to.

This latter task was normally assigned to the most junior of the newsroom staff, the reason offered being that watching the competition broadened their journalistic horizons. Cynics said it was because somebody had to do it, and better that someone on the payroll who couldn’t find his or her buttocks with either or both hands do it than someone who could be put to laboring on more useful tasks.

And so it was that Miss Sarah Ward, who was twenty-two, a year out of Vassar, and the niece of the Wolf News Corporation’s senior vice president–real estate, was charged to see what the Continental Broadcasting Corporation was up to at midnight.

Specifically, she was tasked to watch Continental’s midnight news telecast, which was called Hockey Puck with Matthew Christian.

The show opened, as it always did, with a hockey player taking a healthy swipe at a hockey puck. The camera followed the puck down the ice as the puck went airborne and then struck a goalkeeper right in his mask, which knocked him off his feet and onto his rear end.

A basso profundo voice, while this was going on, solemnly announced, “It’s midnight, and time for Hockey Puck with Matthew Christian. Let the puck strike where it may!”

The camera then closed in on Mr. Christian, who his detractors said looked like a middle-aged chubby choirboy, sitting behind a desk.

“Good evening,” Mr. Christian said. “Welcome to Hockey Puck!

“My friends, I confess I don’t know what I’m talking about here. You watch, you decide!

“This just in from Sin City, otherwise known as Las Vegas, Nevada.”

The camera showed a crowd of journalists watching a Gulfstream V taxi to the tarmac before a hangar.

“Las Vegas is hosting the fifteenth annual award ceremonies of the adult motion picture business,” Mr. Christian said. “And the word going around is that Red Ravisher is the leading candidate for the best actress award. That much we know. And here she is arriving in Las Vegas in her private jet.”

The camera showed the stair door of the airplane rotating downward as it opened. A huge dog came down the stairs, and then a man started down the steps. The video image went into “freeze-frame mode” and a superimposed flashing arrow pointed to the man.

“Now, and I’m willing to stake my reputation on this,” Mr. Christian said. “That is Roscoe J. Danton, the syndicated columnist who is also employed by another, here unnamed, television news organization. One understandably wonders what Mr. Danton is doing on Red Ravisher’s private jet, but one also recalls that other networks boast that they will go anywhere and do anything to get a story.”

The video image began moving again and the camera followed the man on the stairs to the ground and then as he went to the crowd of journalists. Then the camera went back to the door of the Gulfstream.

“And here is Red Ravisher,” Mr. Christian announced. “One cannot help but note that magnificent head of red hair and… other physical attributes… that make her, so to speak, the Ethel Barrymore of the adult film industry.”

The camera closed in on the redhead’s physical attributes, and then went into freeze-frame mode again.

“Now watch this carefully,” Mr. Christian said, “for we’re about to lose the picture!”

The camera now showed the redhead walking up to a photographer, exchanging a few words with him, and then punching him so hard he fell down. The redhead then kicked him in what sometimes were referred to as a man’s “private parts,” and then picked him up. Next, Mr. Christian’s viewers saw him flying through the air toward the camera.

And then the picture was lost.

Miss Sarah Ward said, “Oh, my!”

And then she saved a digital file of the story to a portable hard drive and took it across the room to the desk of the senior producer.

“What have you got, honey?” he asked.