As the clock approached four on a warm Friday afternoon, Matt Cobb, network vice-president in charge of special projects, debated his options. He could bolt from his office in Manhattan for an early start to a long weekend, or continue to toil over the paperwork that had been sitting on his desk for far too long. But as the network's youngest executive, Cobb saw his duty and buried his nose in a heap of spreadsheets. Moments later Richard Bentyne burst into his office and Matt Cobb knew he should have hit the highway. In the late-night talk-show wars, Richard Bentyne is a ruthless samurai whose whopping forty-five-million-dollar contract is shadowed only by the size of his ego. The network brought him on board to battle Letterman and Leno, and he has come to ask Cobb to go to Kennedy International to pick up his secret weapon - the "mountain man." Clement Bates, the ultrawealthy and intensely eccentric mountain hermit, hasn't set foot on civilized soil in thirty-five years and is making his first public appearance on Bentyne's show. America, however, never gets to see Bates's debut. Television's favorite talk-show host has been canceled - forever - and Cobb's newest special project is to find the killer and protect the Network.