Chameleon

‘Listen here, Sailor, I can’t lie to you, tell you I understand everything that goes on here, okay? But I can tell you this there’s always a reason for them doing what they do. I’m not back from Caracas ten hours than I pick up an urgent from Quill. So I contact him. Now, understand — Hinge and I put our cojones on the line to spring this Lavander fella, right? So here it is, not two days later, and Quill tells me he’s got a fast job. He says it’ll all be over in four or five days. I’m to meet a cutout in the Caribbean area somewhere and stand by for a possible hit. The cutout will make the decision. And who’s the bloody subject? Lavander.’

O’Hara was genuinely surprised. ‘Lavander!’ he exclaimed.

‘Lavander. See what I mean? Can you make any sense outa that?’

‘Hell, they’re your pals, Tony, you make a guess

‘I thought a lot about it. Logically? It’s got to be that he’s become a security risk to someone.’

‘Why?’

‘He knows too much. About something, I don’t know what. He’s worked as a consultant for a lot of big companies all over the world. So he knows a lot about a lot of people. He knows a lot of company secrets,’

‘You think they’d kill this man just because he’s a security risk to some corporation?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Why the cutout, why not just send you in to waste the poor bastard?’

‘Guessing again, I’d say the cutout’s gonna give him a very subtle third degree. If he gives the wrong answers, au revoir, Monsieur Lavander.’

‘You say you know the place.’

‘Not exactly. But I do know he’s leaving Honduras very soon on a Caribbean cruise, courtesy of Sunset Oil, a little bonus for his trials and tribulations. I also know he’s travelling under the name 3. M. Teach. And last night Quill told me the job would be over in four or five days. Shouldn’t be hard to track down a steamer leaving Honduras sometime in the next day or so and find out her first port o’ call.’

‘Why’s he travelling under an assumed name?’

‘Because he’s weird. I told you, he’s an eccentric. I saw him for just a moment or two after he was released. There he was, eyes like a couple of wells, looked like he hadn’t slept in two days, and the first thing he asks is, “Did you check me out of the hotel while I was gone?” I mean, he was genuinely concerned about it. A true nut.’

There was a flash of sunlight on fin in the wake of the Miami Belle; the big line snapped from the outrigger, then the line jarred again and the reel began to sing as it fed out.

‘Christ, we got a big one,’ Falmouth cried. ‘It’s all yours, Sailor!’

O’Hara moved the rod quickly from its sheath on the rail to the cup between his legs and Falmouth tightened his safety belt as O’Hara began the fight.

The fish, a blue marlin, was enormous.

‘Three hundred pounds!’ Falmouth guessed. ‘She could be a record, lad.’

The fight lasted the better part of two hours. By the time it was over, O’Hara’s arms were leaden, his hands blistered. Cap’n K. manoeuvred the boat perfectly, using its big engines to tire the fish as O’Hara reeled the fighting marlin closer to the stern.

‘Ya got ‘im!’ the captain yelled down. ‘Get ‘im close enough to the stern so we can knock the fucker out. It’s gonna take all three of us to get him aboard.’

The fish sounded one last time, leaping high from the water, his tail thrashing angrily. Then he dove deep. O’Hara kept the pressure on. The marlin’s beaked head appeared a few feet from the stern. The fight was gone out of him.

‘You did fine there, Sailor. What a beauty! Well,’ Falmouth said, ‘too bad’ — and he bent over and pulled an old, rusty machete free of the rail where it was sticking out, and he reared back and the blade whistled past O’Hara’s head and hit the stern with a chock. The line was cut. The marlin speared the surface one last time, snapped its head and plunged into the wake of the boat. It was gone.

The captain screamed, ‘What in hell are ye doin’? That was a goddamn three-hundred-pound marlin, yuh crazy bastard!’ Cap’n K. continued to rave from the bridge, screaming obscenities at the wind, the gulls, the sea, at everything.

Falmouth looked down at the stunned O’Hara, who had sagged back in the fighting chair and was shaking the pain from his arms. ‘Wouldn’t do, would it now, us coming into Freeport with a record marlin on board. There’d be pictures and God knows what all, right? That’s all the papers have to write about there.’

O’Hara nodded very slowly. ‘Tony,’ he said, ‘I’m beginning to believe you. Now, who’s going after Lavander?’

Falmouth leaned over and smiled proudly. ‘Why, Hinge, of course. He knows Lavander. Besides, it’s got to be Hinge. If they think I’m running, they’ll send Gazinsky or Lavanieux after me.’

‘Why not Daniov?’

‘Because, Sailor, he’s the runner.’