Chameleon

4

It was an enormous room, menacing in its darkness, the hand sculpted molding around its ten-foot ceilings vaguely discernible in the eerie shadows cast by one small Oriental lamp in a corner. Bare hardwood floors glistened like the surface in an ice-skating rink; corners were pools of shadows. The only windows in the room, lining one entire wall, had once been exterior French doors, now glassed in to reveal a windowless hothouse filled with tropical ferns and flowerless leafy plants. The three or four small grow lights on the floor of the hothouse accentuated its greenery but succeeded only in creating ominous silhouettes of what little furniture there was in the main room.

The temperature in the room was exactly 82 degrees; it was always exactly 82 degrees.

The place was as quiet as a library. Except for the incessant ticking, like a time bomb ticking away the minutes of someone’s life.

Near the door was an ensemble of leather furniture: two large easy chairs and a seven-foot sofa separated by a low teak coffee table. The end tables were made of matching teak, and each held a Philippine basket lamp. The coffee table was empty except for a single oversized Oriental ashtray.

Two of the other three corners were bare except for antique temple dogs that squatted angrily under tall leafy ferns.

The other corner was dominated by a large oak campaign desk with eight hard-back chairs in front of it. The top of the desk was bare except for an old-fashioned wooden letter file, a large ashtray, a leather-bound appointment book and an elaborate red Buddha lamp with an old-fashioned fringed lampshade and a pull string.

And the box.

It was a plain white box about the size of a large dictionary. There was a red ribbon around it with a large frivolous Christmas bow.

The chair behind the desk loomed up like a throne, its giant back rising into the darkness. A cloud of smoke eddied out from the dark tombstone of the chair. ‘The only lamp on iii the room was the Buddha lamp. It slanted an eerie light over the desk, casting the white box in harsh shadows. Its heat sucked the smoke away from the chair, sent it swirling in little whirlpools, up through the lampshade.

There was a sound in the box, a scurrying. The top moved slightly, and then was still again.

The man in the chair moved forward. His long, narrow, skeletal head was topped by thin strands of white hair, carefully brushed from one side to the other. His cheeks were deeply drawn, each line and wrinkle accentuated by the light from the single lamp; his jaw tight, the -veins standing out along its hard edge like strands of wire. It was a face from the past, from history books and old newsreels and magazines, a stern, hawklike face, promising victory while defeat was still sour in his mouth, a vengeful face that conjured memories of the wrath of Moses and the zeal of John Brown.

General Hooker. The Hook. He had been called a military genius, compared by militarists and historians to Alexander the Great, Stonewall Jackson and Patton. Hooker, chased out of the Philippines by the Japanese early in the war, becoming the architect of the Pacific War, plotting every strategic move, studying every island as he edged closer and closer to the Japanese mainland.

Hooker had almost become a legend.

That son of a bitch, he said to himself. He was thinking about Douglas MacArthur. Dugout Doug, who had run the war from Australia while the Hook plodded wearily from one bleak atoll to the next in the bloody march toward Japan. True, the old bastard was quick with the praise as Hooker scored the victories, but he knew just what to say to the press, and when to say it, and ultimately the mantle of victory fell on MacArthur’s shoulders. There was no way to top the son of a bitch. On the day Corregidor fell, one of the blackest days in American history, while everyone else was in a panic over how to tell the public, the old bastard had turned the melee into a personal victory chorus with his goddamn ‘I shall return.’ It had become a slogan, a war cry, the ‘Remember the Alamo’ of World War II. But, even the Hook had to hand it to the old s.o.b., it was also a promise of victory, said with such stalwart authority that no one ever doubted him. And when he did get back, with that I have returned’ shit, everybody knew it was all over. The photographs even made the old bastard look like he was walking on water, just in case there were any heretics around.

So MacArthur became the legend, and the Hook became a mere folk hero, along with Wainwright, Chennault, Stilwell, and a few others.

After that, there was nothing but disaster ahead. Hooker could see it coming. People were tired of war. MacArthur got the sack in Korea. A hot war was brewing in Indochina. And the Hook knew the Orient, knew that Vietnam, as it would come to be known, was no place to be.

Screw it.

Let Westmoreland or some other daisy take the rap for Vietnam. The Hook hung it up and retired. There were other things to do.

Two years later the rigors of those years claimed their toll. A massive coronary almost killed Hoo.ker. The ticking in the room came from deep in his chest; a pacemaker, flawed yet effective, and much too dangerous for doctors to replace. It was a constant reminder of his mortality and would one day be a harbinger of his death. When its ominous note stopped, for that fraction of a moment before everything stopped with it, Hooker would know he was a dead man. In the meantime he continued to defy the odds; he was pushing seventy-five, but he still had the brilliance and the obsessions of a man much younger.

There was a knock on the door.

‘If that’s you, Garvey — come!’

The voice, too, was unforgettable. Deep, commanding, authoritative, intimidating and yet paternal; a voice that engendered every word with reassurance. A war correspondent had once written: ‘To know what God sounded like, one need only hear General Alexander Lee Hooker speak.’

The door opened and Garvey entered the room. He was Hooker’s oldest friend as well as his closest wartime aide, and although both had been retired for at least fifteen years, Garvey, who was a year shy of sixty, still carried himself with the ramrod posture of a Marine honour guard. He stood at attention in front of the desk. Hooker and Garvey, two men, born to the khaki, their hearts and minds shaped inexorably by the cry of the bugle, retired into an alien world of peace lovers where they still fantasized about that one last battle to ride out to, even though the dream had died years before; two men whose friendship stood second only to the charade they continued to play.

‘Good evening, General,’ Garvey said. ‘Happy New Year.’

His eyes strayed to the box.

Hooker’s harsh blue eyes stared with hatred across the long Irish clay pipe he was smoking and foe used on the box.

‘Thanks, Jess. And you. At ease, have a seat.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Let’s deal with pleasant things first.’ He reached behind him, into the gloom, to the bottle of champagne nestled in a silver bucket on a small table behind his chair. He poured two glasses and handed one to Garvey.

‘To the Division,’ he said. Garvey echoed the toast and their glasses rang in the solitude of the room. Garvey took a sip, smacked his lips and leaned back, staring up into darkness.

‘Taittinger, definitely.’ He took another sip, pursed his lips, let the bubbles tickle his tongue. ‘Uh, ‘seventy-one, I’d say.’

The older man laughed. ‘Can’t fool you. Never could. Well, here’s to the years. Been a long time, Jess.’

‘Forty years exactly, General. I joined your staff at Hickam Field on New Year’s Eve, 1939. I was a nineteen-year-old shavetail.’

‘Best I ever saw. I used to tell my officers, “That Garvey, he can be another Custer. He’ll have a star before he’s thirty.”

‘Didn’t quite make it by thirty,’ Garvey said.

‘Hmmp. There were a lot of disappointments in that war. And the rest to follow. Goddamn that old son of a bitch, playing politics at the last minute. He should have fought Truman over Hiroshima. They should have let us go in there and do it right. We deserved that shot. Damn, we deserved it. He got to do his act in the Philippines. We earned the right to Japan.’

It was a complaint heard frequently when the two men were together.

He looked down in the glass, watching the bubbles tumble to the surface. ‘What the hell,’ he said finally, ‘it’s all just history. Kids sleep through it in classrooms. They’re all gone now, anyway. Bless ‘em all. At least we won it. It’s the last goddamn war we won.’ And he raised his glass again.

‘May I smoke?’ Garvey asked.

‘Of course, Jess. Smoking lamp’s always lit for you.’

Hooker reached into a desk drawer, took out a box wrapped in silver paper and slid the package across the desk.

‘A little something to start the new year off right, Jess. With thanks for all the good years.’

It was a tradition with them, exchanging gifts on New Year’s Eve. Garvey handed a slightly smaller package to Hooker.

‘And Happy New Year to you, General.’

He stared back at the box for a moment, then watched as Hooker opened his present. It was a watch fob, a replica of the insignia of the First Island Division, The Hook’s old regiment, forged in gold with the motto ‘First to land, first to win’ inscribed across the bottom of two crossed bayonets.

Hooker was visibly moved.

‘By God, old man, that’s something to cherish. Yessir, I’ll be wearing that when they put me away.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Garvey said and smiled with satisfaction. There was a sound from the box. A scraping sound. Garvey cast a nervous glance toward it but said nothing.

‘Well, sir, your turn,’ Hooker said, and Garvey tore the silver paper from around his gift. It was a pewter wine goblet, hand-crafted, with the artist’s name etched in the base, and inscribed on its side were the words ‘Major General J. W. Garvey, US Army (Ret.).’

Garvey held up the chalice by the stem. ‘Beautiful, sir. Has a great feel to it.’

‘Well, I know your love for the grape, old man. About time you had a proper goblet.’

There was a more urgent sound from the box. The top moved again, just a hair.

Hooker struck a match and relit his pipe. ‘It came about an hour ago,’ he said, without looking at the box. ‘Done up like a goddamn Christmas present, that bloody heathen.’

He opened the center desk drawer and took out a knife, a malicious stiletto with a curved blade and a hand-tooled leather handle. He slid its razor edge under the string, turned the box slightly and snipped the string off. With the point of the knife he lifted the lid and slid it slowly back.

They heard it before they saw it. Scratching, slithering along the bottom of the box and up the side.

Hooker saw its horns first, the two tusks protruding straight out from over its eyes, the third, like a needle, between them. Then its head peered over the side of the box.

It was bright-green to start with, its eyes lurking under hoods of wrinkled skin, its tail switching slowly back and forth.

Eighteen inches long or so, he guessed. Hooker knew the species, all eighty kinds of Chamaeleontidae. For thirty-six years now, he had been studying them. This one was the Chameleon jacksoni. African, most likely, although it might have come from Madagascar, its eyes moving independently, looking for prey before they focused together and the tongue struck. And arrogant — they were all arrogant.

It crawled down the side of the box and very slowly across the desk to the base of the lamp and then just as slowly up over the belly of the Buddha. It changed slowly, its eyes picking up the change in the light rays of the new colour, signalling down the nervous system to the pigment cells in the skin, first mud-brown, then beige, then pink, then blood-red, like a salamander. Its tongue continued to work the air, its head turned, its stony eyes studying the darkness beyond the desk. Then it switched again and moved on t the letter box.

Hooker watched it turn again, this time to the colour of teak.

He reached in the box and took out a note. His hand trembled as he read it.

‘What’s it say?’ Garvey asked.

Hooker handed it to him. There were three names on the slip of paper:

AQUILA

THOREAU

WOLFNAGLE

‘He’s everywhere,’ Hooker croaked, ‘he’s like the mist, like some foul fog.’ He tilted the box, looked inside and paused for a moment before reaching in and taking out a man’s gold watch. He turned it over and read the name engraved on the back.

‘We’ve still got Bradley,’ Garvey said. ‘He’s one of the best assassins in the world. If anybody can terminate Chameleon, he can.’

‘Afraid not,’ Hooker whispered and his voice quivered with rage. This is Bradley’s watch.’