"I do not know," said the Master of Sinanju, looking about the room. His eyes gleamed and he brushed past his pupil. Remo followed him with his eyes.
The Master of Sinanju reached down and lifted a black video camrecorder.
"Probably taken from Air Force One," Remo suggested.
"How do you work this device?"
"If it's one of those that give you instant playback, you rewind it and just press the trigger like on a gun. Then you look through the viewfinder."
"I cannot find this so-called viewfinder," Chiun complained.
"Give it here."
The Master of Sinanju retreated away from Remo's outreaching hand, saying, "No! I will do this myself."
Remo folded his arms in annoyance. "You won't see anything useful anyway. These ragheads probably stole it just to hock it. They wouldn't actually record the abduction. They're not idiots."
The Master of Sinanju paid no attention to his pupil's prattle. He found the proper buttons and lifted the device to one eager hazel eye. He depressed the trigger.
And before his eyes an amazing procession of images was displayed.
"I see the President!" Chiun cried in triumph.
Remo started. "You do?"
"He is answering questions put to him by unseen interrogators."
"Oh," Remo said, subsiding, "press-conference stuff."
"Wait! There is more!"
"What?" Remo said, reaching out again. Chiun faded back even though one eye was closed and the other was glued to the viewfinder.
"I see these three corpses lying dead about us, but in life."
"You do?"
"Yes. And they are recording the abduction of the true President, who appears to be unconscious, much like your President of Vice, except that the President's eyes are closed."
"He's alive!" Remo blurted.
"They are carrying him off, the imbeciles."
"Yeah?"
"Now they are posing with him," Chiun squeaked. "The President is bound to the chair with twine and a belt."
"Are they torturing him?"
"If he were awake, it could be called that," Chiun snapped.
Remo's fists clenched. "No!"
"They are capering around him like baboons, making inane comments and acting in jest. They are truly imbeciles." Chiun stopped speaking.
"What's happening now?" Remo demanded.
"I am coming to that," Chiun said, turning the video camera this way and that, as if to get a better view. "Ah!" Chiun breathed. Then, in a hard voice: "Oh! Oh, no!"
"What? What?" Remo asked anxiously.
"It is a plot!" Chiun cried in triumph. "I was right. "
"What? About what?"
"Behold," the Master of Sinanju said, quickly passing the video recorder to Remo.
Remo caught it up to his eyes. He pressed the trigger. He saw the late Abu Al-Kalbin at the exact moment he was beheaded by a number-one wood, wielded by familiar hands.
"It's the Vice-President," Remo said in disbelief.
"The schemer!" Chiun added indignantly.
"My God, he's pulverizing these terrorists."
"A subterfuge," Chiun cried. "He is disposing of his underlings so they cannot betray him. We will be vindicated in Emperor Smith's eyes, after all. He sent us on a ferocious goose quest."
"Wild-goose chase."
"The very same!" Chiun's voice rose with the indignation of it all. "And while we were dealing with foreign enemies, this stripling, this callow pretender to the throne, was manipulating his hireling killers, who performed the dastardly deed for him. And now the President of Vice has taken the true President off to some dank dungeon for possible execution or some worse fate."
"I see it, but I don't believe it," Remo said in a low voice.
"Believe it. Sony would not lie."
"He's gotta be almost as strong as us," Remo said doubtfully.
"Not if he must use mere tools to work his wicked will," Chiun countered. "Sinanju has not employed implements of destruction in generations."
"I never heard of killing someone with a golf club."
"There is no limit to what certain persons will stoop to in the unholy quest for ill-gotten glory," Chiun said sagely. "We must hasten back to America to warn Smith. No doubt the treacherous President of Vice is even now preparing to assume the Eagle Throne."
"No," Remo said as the tape ended. He popped the cassette from the camcorder. "We gotta find the President. He can't have gotten far."
A sudden voice came from the open door.