"You faiied?" Ditko said hoarsely.
"No, no! I didn't fail. Here. I made a new tape. It contains everything."
Colonel Ditko scooped up the videocam.
"Play it back through the viewfinder," Sammy said eagerly. "You'll see."
Ditko did as he was bidden. In his eagerness, he placed the viewfinder to his right eye. Annoyed, he switched to his good eye. He ran the tape, which played back minus sound.
"What am I seeing?" Ditko asked.
"The Master of Sinanju. He has returned. And he brought with him the American agent he has trained in Sinanju. They tell everything. They are assassins for America. It's all on that tape."
Colonel Ditko felt a wave of relief. "You have succeeded."
"Help me now."
"Come then. We will leave before light."
"You must help me. I can't move my legs."
"What is wrong with them?"
"The one called Remo. The Master's American pupil. He did something to them. I have no feeling in my legs. But you can carry me."
Colonel Ditko unloaded the tape from the videocam. "I cannot carry this and you."
"But you can't leave me here. They'll kill me horribly."
"And I will kill you mercifully," said Colonel Ditko, who placed the muzzle of his Tokarev pistol into Sammy Kee's open mouth, deep into his mouth, and pulled the trigger once.
Sammy Kee's mouth swallowed the sound of the shot. And the bullet.
Sammy Kee's head slipped off the barrel of the gun with macabre slowness and struck the floor in several melonlike sections.
Colonel Ditko wiped the backsplatter blood from his hand on Sammy's peasant blouse.
"Good-bye, Sammy Kee," said Colonel Viktor Ditko. "I will remember you when I am warm and prosperous in Moscow."
And Viktor Ditko slipped back into the night. This time he knew the walk through the invisible wall would not be that difficult.
The caretaker, Pullyang, brought the word to the Master of Sinanju with the chill of the Sinanju dawn. "The prisoner is dead," he said.
"Fear of the wrath of Sinanju extracts its own price," said Chiun wisely.
"His head lies in pieces."
"The mother," said Chiun. "She cannot be blamed for seeking revenge."
"No rock ever burst a skull in this fashion," Pullyang insisted.
"Speak your mind," said Chiun.
"A western weapon did this," said Pullyang. "A gun."
"Who would dare profane the sanctity of Sinanju with a shooter of pellets?" demanded Chiun.
Pullyang said nothing. He lowered his head. "You have something else to tell me."
"Forgive me, Master of Sinanju, for I have committed a grave trespass."
"I cannot forgive what I do not understand."
"This American was here before. A week ago. He asked many questions, and I, being proud of my village, told him many stories of the magnificence of Sinanju."
"Advertising pays," said Chiun. "There is no fault in that."
"This American carried a machine with him, the same one he had yesterday. He pointed it at me when I spoke."
"Fetch this machine."
When Pullyang returned, he offered the videocam to the Master of Sinanju, who took it in hand as if it were an unclean fetish.
"The receptacle for words and pictures is missing," Chiun said. "It was not missing last night."
"It is so, Master of Sinanju."
Chiun's eyes lowered as he thought. A man had recorded the words of the caretaker Pullyang one week ago. Now he had returned to record more of the same. But this time, he had recorded the Master of Sinanju and his pupil, for Chiun knew that the dragon dancer at yesterday's breakfast feast was Sammy Kee.
What did this mean? Chiun did not fear for Sinanju. Sinanju was inviolate. The dogs of Pyongyang, from the lowliest to the header for Life, Kim Il Sung, had made a pact with Sinanju. There would be no trouble from them.
The mad Emperor Smith was not behind this. Chiun did not always understand Smith, but Smith's mania for secrecy was the one constant of his deranged white mind. Smith would not dispatch persons to record the secrets of Sinanju.
Enemies of Smith perhaps, seeking gain. Or enemies of America. There were many of those. Even America's friends were but slumbering enemies, presenting a smiling visage but clutching daggers behind their backs.
Presently Chiun's eyes refocused.
"I forgive you, Pullyang, for in truth you are, compared to me, young, and unwise in the ways of the outer world."
"What does this mean?" asked Pullyang gratefully.
"Where is Remo?" asked Chiun suddenly.
"He has not been seen."
"By no one?"
"Some say he walked toward the house of the beast."
"Go to the house of Mah-Li the unfortunate and fetch my adopted son to me. I do not understand what transpired last night, but I know that it must concern my son. Only he can advise me in this matter."
"Yes, Master of Sinanju." And Pullyang, greatly relieved that no blame was attached to him, hied away from the house of the Master, who suddenly sank into his seat and closed his eyes with a great weariness.
The tape cassette arrived from Pyongyang by diplomatic pouch. In the pouch was a note from the Soviet ambassador to the People's Republic of Korea demanding to know why the head of embassy security, Colonel Ditko, was sending packages directly to the Kremlin through the ambassador's pouch.
As he loaded the cassette into his private machine, the General Secretary made a mental note to inform the Soviet ambassador to mind his own business regarding the activities of the People's Hero, Colonel Ditko.
The General Secretary watched the tape to the end. He saw an old man and a Caucasian exhorting a crowd of peasant Koreans. According to the note from Colonel Ditko, the tape showed the legendary Master of Sinanju and his American running dog confessing to espionage, genocide, and other crimes against the international community on behalf of a renegade United States government agency known as CURE.
There was a crude transcript with the tape, and an apology from Colonel Ditko, who explained that his Korean was not good, and that for security reasons he had not had the tape translated by someone more fluent. And by the way, the Korean-American, Sammy Kee, had met an unfortunate death in the course of making this tape.
The General Secretary called the supreme commander of the KGB.
"Look through the non-persons list and find me someone who speaks fluent Korean," he ordered. "Bring him to me."
Within the day, they had exactly the right person, a dissident history teacher who specialized in Oriental studies.
The General Secretary ordered him locked in a room with only a videotape machine, pen and paper, and instructions to translate the cassette tape from Korea.
By day's end, the transcript was delivered, sealed, to the office of the General Secretary.
"What shall we do with the translator?" asked the courier.
"He is still locked in the viewing room?"
"Da."
"When the smell of death seeps into the corridor, in a week or two, you may remove the body."
The courier left swiftly, his kindly opinion of the worldly new General Secretary forever shattered. The General Secretary read the transcript through once, quickly. And then again, to absorb all the details. And a third time to savor the sweetness of this greatest of intelligence coups.
A smile spread over the open features of the General Secretary, making him look like someone's well-fed and content grandfather.
It was all there. The United States had a secret agency known as CURE, one unknown even to the Congress of the United States. It was illegal, and indulged in assassinations both in America and abroad. The assassins were trained in Sinanju. In theory, they could go anywhere, do anything, and never be suspected.
And then the General Secretary remembered stories that had circulated in the upper levels of the Politburo before he had assumed his current rank. Fragmentary rumors. Operations that had been stopped by unknown agents, presumably American. Strange accidents that defied explanation. The liquidation of Soviet Treska killer teams during the time when America's intelligence services had been emasculated. The strangeness during the Moscow Olympics. The failure of the Volga, a space device that would have become the ultimate terror weapon had not unidentified American agents neutralized it. The disappearance of Field Marshal Zemyatin during the ozone-shield crisis two years ago.