Chameleon

11

By nine o’clock the King Line pier in Montego Bay was a madhouse. Local merchants had arrived at dawn to set up their stalls and makeshift shops, turning the pier into a noisy but colorful flea market. The big cruise ship was tied down, its anchor was dropped and its gangplank was swung into place. The passengers, in their white suits and cotton dresses, trudged eagerly down to the marketplace, to haggle over straw baskets and hats, postcards, coffee beans, wooden sculpture and toys. The din was heightened by a calypso band beating on steel drums in the middle of the square.

O’Hara and the Magician were waiting at the bottom of the gangplank when the first passengers came down, looking for the man they knew only by the meagerest description. He was small, thin and eccentric, that was about all they knew. Several times they had approached men who vaguely fit the description.

‘Are you Mr Teach?’

The answer was always a shake of the head or a hurried ‘No.’

In ten minutes the first rush of passengers had left the boat, and the gangplank was empty. The steward drifted away from the top of the landing bridge to attend to other duties. O’Hara and the Magician boarded the boat. With the rush of activity, nobody paid any attention to them. They were both dressed in sports clothes and could easily have been mistaken for passengers. The purser was standing nearby with a check off list in hand. O’Hara decided to take a chance.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, feigning anxiety, ‘I seem to have missed Mr Teach. We were going ashore together and now I’ve forgotten his cabin number.’

The purser looked at him with a frown but before he could ask any questions, O’Hara looked at his watch. ‘I’m sure he said to meet him here. Is there any other way to leave the ship?’

‘No, sir,’ the purser said, checking over the passenger list. ‘Mr Teach is on A deck. Cabin One-one-six.’

‘Of course! Thanks,’ O’Hara said and rushed away before the purser could ask any more questions.

The Mag waited at the foot of the gangplank while O’Hara went in search of Cabin 116. He found it with little trouble, but Lavander did not answer his knock.

‘Mr Teach,’ O’Hara called, ‘it’s the steward. I have a message for you.’

Still no answer.

Several passengers nodded ‘Good morning’ as they drifted by on their way into town. When the corridor was empty, O’Hara took out a penknife, slipped the blade through the crack in the door and pressed the latch back as he turned the handle. The latch popped. O’Hara swung it open very slowly until he could see the entire cabin.

Empty.

He checked the head. Empty too. He closed the door, bolted it and began to search the room.

The cabin was small but tastefully decorated, the bed a mess and the porthole open. The sounds of pandemonium from the dock drifted into the room as O’Hara quickly searched it.

Lavander obviously travelled light and paid little attention to clothes. There were two suits and a pair of slacks hanging in the closet. His fingers traced pockets and lining. Nothing there. One of the Suits looked as if it had never been pressed, the other had a coffee stain on the lapel. There was one tie, hanging lopsided on a wire hanger, an atrocious, multicoloured flowered tie that still had the knot in it. The suitcase was empty. A few undergarments and shirts were in the dresser drawers, nothing else. There was one book on the night table beside the bed, a scholarly-looking volume entitled The Kingdom of Oil. O’Hara flipped through it casually. Small type and a lot of it.

He checked the cabinet in the head, Lavander’s travel kit, the pockets of a bathrobe hanging behind the door. Nothing.

The entire search didn’t take five minutes.

He looked around again, checked under the mattress, and was finally satisfied that there was nothing else in the cabin.

As he reached for the doorknob, there was a knock on the door. O’Hara froze. He moved back a few steps. Knuckles tapped on the oak door again.

‘Señor, it is the maid.’

‘Un momento.’

‘SI. I weel be back,’ she said and moved on down the corridor.

O’Hara unbolted the door and checked the hallway. The maid was in the cabin next door. He locked the door behind him and went up on the upper deck. It was empty. So were the dining room, the bar, the game room, the salon. The pool area was attended by a lifeguard who was asleep in a deck chair. Nobody cared, because nobody was there, either.

He went back and tapped on the door again. Still no answer.

The Magician was sitting on a crate sipping a piña colada when O’Hara went ashore. ‘Well?’ he asked.

O’Hara led him down through the flea market. ‘He’s gone,’ he said. ‘My message must have backfired. He’s probably running scared. I checked the upper decks, dining rooms, everyplace.’

‘Maybe they’re gonna meet on the boat,’ the Magician said.

‘I doubt it. If the Cutout meets him on the boat, they’ll have to kill him on board. Much safer luring him out in the open. No, he’s out here, somewhere.’

‘He could be meeting with the cutout right now, all we know.’

‘A definite possibility.’ O’Hara looked at his watch again. Eleven o’clock. ‘Hell, he could be dead by now.’

They stopped on the far side of the marketplace and looked around. Somewhere out there, Avery Lavander had an appointment with death. Their only chance to save him was if Eliza spotted Hinge when he arrived. That, of course, was assuming he was not there already, in which case Lavander was most definitely a dead man.

The Montego Bay airport terminal was a large two-story building. Its main waiting room encompassed most of the first floor, with a half-dozen airline counters lining the wall facing the entrance. Customs inspection was carried out in a small room on the east end of the building and was cursory at best. The restaurant was on the second floor, directly over customs.

Eliza had been in the airport since six-thirty that morning and it was now close to noon. Three planes had arrived so far. She was sure Hinge had not come through the gate yet. She checked her list. Five more planes were due before sundown: two from the States, one of which stopped in Puerto Rico and was at the gate now; one from Mexico; an Air France jet from Paris via Port-au-Prince; and a small island connector from Kingston. She found a seat in the waiting room near the door and settled down with a flight schedule. She had rented a car and bribed a porter to let her park it near the front door.

Another planeload of tourists streamed from customs and hurried past, yelling for taxis. Hinge was not among them. She hardly glanced at the tall hawk-faced man with shiny black hair as he went by carrying an attaché case. He was Derek Frazer, vice president of AMRAN, a new oil consortium out of Houston, and he had an appointment in less than eight hours with Lavander.

The day dragged on. After each plane arrived, she called the hotel, leaving the same basic message. Her last had been: ‘EAL 610 from Miami has arrived. Your luggage is not on it. The next plane arrives at six-five.’

Then she went upstairs to the restaurant and took up her dreary vigil at the window overlooking the runway. The next plane was not due for two hours.

O’Hara and the Magician had spent the morning perusing the town of Montego Bay, hoping to luck into Lavander. Finally they settled in at a small bar across from the pier, where they had been sitting for hours, watching the gangplank, hoping Lavander would return. Or perhaps leave, O’Hara realized he could easily have missed him when he searched the boat.

Lavander could still be aboard, but it was a slim chance. In fact, it was wishful thinking.

O’Hara knew by early afternoon that he had overplayed his hand. What had seemed like a good idea, a way to keep Lavander from leaving the cruise ship, had turned into a disaster. Perhaps Lavander was afraid of Quill. And there was also the distinct possibility that he did not know who Quill was, in which case the message could have spooked the eccentric consultant right into Hinge’s arms. It was one of the things he hated about the Game. There was n margin for error when dealing with people like Hinge. In the Game, death was the penalty for a bad call. He brooded about it until the Magician dismissed the ploy with a wave of his hand.

‘Stop agonizin’,’ he said. it could have been a good idea.’

‘That helps a lot,’ the reporter said drearily.

‘He’s a weirdo, Sailor. You can’t tell which way a weirdo’s gonna lump. Hell, you took a shot and fucked up. Don’t let it get to you.’

‘1 could have cost Lavander his life.’

‘Ah shit, que será is what I say. It was a long shot, anyway.’

As the day wore on without a sign of the eccentric consultant, they became more and more convinced that it was too late, that somewhere on the island Lavander’s body was waiting to be discovered.

Normally, Lavander would have stayed on board until just before the meeting with the AMRAN executive, but the message he had received made him uncomfortable. Who knew he was travelling under the name Teach’? And who in God’s name was this Quill?

It had bothered him for two days, so he left the ship by way of the cargo hatch as soon as it docked. Now he would have to kill the entire day waiting for the meeting.

AMRAN wanted to discuss a matter of bénéfice reciproque, and that intrigued him. Even if the talk turned out to be a bust, he was sure he would learn something, for even gossip sometimes provided him with invaluable information, bits and pieces here and there which, when fitted together, added to his remarkable knowledge of the oil business.

Lavander’s appointment was not until eight o’clock, so he moved from restaurant to teashop to bar to newspaper vendor, trying to keep busy. Lavander was not a man long on patience, and his annoyance turned to irritation and then to anger as the day grew hotter and the streets more crowded and be was reduced to fighting his way through the rush of street hucksters, who offered everything from caged crickets to expensive watches, and kids who trotted beside him, whispering, ‘Ginja, ginja. I got you best price for best smoke in Jamaica.’

‘Get on, you little urchins, I’ll report you to the police,’ Lavander snapped and one of the kids made a face at him and ran off into the crowd.

Lavander was an easy fellow to make fun of. He was almost a visual joke: a wizened, dour little man, thin and unkempt, with bulging eyes, a gray, unhealthy pallor, pouty cheeks and straw-coloured hair, which seemed to sprout, helter-skelter, like alfalfa, from his oversized head. His white suit seemed permanently un-pressed, one of his coat pockets was hanging half out, his bow tie was on crooked, and his shoes had never seen a bootblack’s brush.

Lavander never walked, he scurried, constantly looking around, like a rodent foraging the dark corners of a warehouse. His eccentricity was compounded by a wildly neurotic paranoia. He imagined reporters lurking everywhere, waiting to pounce and demand interviews. That not one newsman had approached him for several years was inconsequential. He frequently switched airline reservations at the last moment, sometimes to a totally different country, then doubled back, taking laboriously involved routes to places where there were direct flights, and changing hotels two or three times. It was his only recreation, this madness for privacy, as if his almost religious overview of the oil business had crowded rationality out of his mind. Since the horror of his kidnapping, Lavander had become even more suspicious, more paranoid.

And so he scampered around the city, sitting in parks, reading several American and European newspapers, killing time, unwittingly waiting for destiny to catch up with him.

The plane was twenty minutes late arriving, but Hinge still had over an hour until the meeting between Frazer and Lavander, Plenty of time to check out Trelawney Square and the pastry shop where they were to meet. He had memorized Frazer’s picture and then burned it in the plane’s lavatory.

Hinge felt comfortable moving through customs. They checked his bag with a piece of white chalk and moved him on through.

He immediately noticed the girl sitting on a bench in the waiting room, studying an airline timetable. There was no mistaking her reaction when she saw him. Recognition? Interest? Perhaps she had mistaken hint for someone else.

Was she following him? But why? Why would a woman be waiting for him in the Montego Bay air terminal?

He went to a phone booth and searched his pockets for a coin. She had moved to another bench closer to the door. He could see her reflected in the glass panel behind the telephone.

He stood in front of the dial when he made the call, then casually turned sideways in the booth. She was in a phone booth on the opposite side of the terminal.

It could be paranoia. She seemed t be laughing while she was talking. It didn’t hurt to be overly cautious. He would keep an eye on her.

He asked the restaurant operator for Mr David Jackson. Derek Frazer answered very quickly.

Hinge said, ‘Is this Mr Jackson?’

Frazer said, ‘Which Mr Jackson do you want?’

Avery Jackson.’

‘Is this Mr Garrett from Texas?’ Frazer asked.

‘Yes.’

‘When did you move?’

‘Fourteen months ago.’

‘Very good. Any problems?’

‘Smooth as velvet.’

‘The car is taken care of. They’re holding the keys for you at the rental counter. The package is in the trunk.’

‘Thanks. It’s the Nelson Pastry Shoppe on Trelawney Square. Eight o’clock, right?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘What time do you leave?’

‘I’ll be going straight to the airport from the square.’

‘I’ll call the drop when I’ve delivered the package.’

‘Thank you.’

The girl was gone when he finished. He looked around the terminal, then entered the rental office and got the keys. The car was a red two-door Datsun coupe. He opened the trunk. There was a small canvas bag in back of the spare. He closed the trunk, got in the car and drove off.

A blue Datsun pulled out and started following him. He watched for the lights after turning on the main road to town. It was still behind him. He slowed down and the blue car drew closer. When it was less than half a block behind him, he turned off the main road, coursing around a park. The blue car stayed with him.

It had to be the girl.

But why?

Hinge did not have time to get involved. He needed to do something fast. He floored the accelerator and turned into the next street on his right. The Datsun surged under him as he took the next turn, then another. Then he flicked off his lights and whipped into a palm-lined driveway.

He killed the engine and waited for her.

O’Hara had been looking at the Gulf Star for several minutes without speaking. It was almost seven o’clock and Lavander had yet to show his face.

‘I better check the hotel again, see if Hinge was on that last plane,’ the Magician said.

O’Hara continued to stare at the ship. Finally, as the Magician stood up to go to the phone, he said, ‘I’m going back on board.’

‘Why?’

‘Remember I told you how frantic Lavander was about his hotel room after he was released in Caracas?’

‘So?’

‘Why should he care? The company was paying his expenses. What was so important about the room?’

‘Maybe he was worried about his baggage,’

‘I’ve seen his baggage. Believe me, it has nothing to do with his baggage. I mean, Tony said it was the first thing out of his mouth.’

‘So?’

‘So I think he hid something in the room and he was worried about getting it back.’

‘Money?’

‘Could be. I doubt it. He’s got money stashed all over the world.’

‘So what d’ya think, Sailor?’

‘According to your information on Lavander, he keeps personal records in a book. Maybe the book’s too big to carry around. So, he hides it.’

‘You’ve searched his room.’

‘Maybe I missed something. I got this worm in my stomach that keeps telling me I missed something.’

‘What if Hinge has shown up at the airport?’

‘I won’t be gone long. You call the hotel; I’ll be back in ten minutes,’

He had no problem getting aboard. The corridor was empty. Most of the passengers were still living it up in town. He popped the lock and cautiously entered the cabin again.

The maid had cleaned the small room. O’Hara closed the porthole and pulled the curtains and turned on the lamp. He sat down on the bed and slowly looked around the room. He checked the closet again and the suitcase. He checked the lavatory again. He lifted the mattress and checked under it and then felt the mattress carefully, then replaced it.

He sat back on the bed again.

He stared at the dresser. He got up and took out the drawers, one at a time, starting with the top drawer. The fourth drawer down stuck as he pulled it out. He took out the fifth drawer, lay down on the floor, struck fire to his lighter and held it in under the drawer. There was a black letter-sized notebook taped to the bottom.

O’Hara pulled it free and sat on the floor, leafing through page after page of figures and code words. Not one page in the book made any sense.

He replaced the drawers, stuffed the book into the back of his pants, shut off the lights and left.

The Magician was waiting in front of the bar. ‘He arrived on the six-ten from Miami,’ the musician said excitedly. ‘It was twenty minutes late. She called and left a message about five minutes before I called.’

‘Then Lavander’s still alive.’

‘C’mon,’ the Magician said. ‘I’ve already squared the bill. Let’s get back to the hotel so we can catch her next call in person.’

Eliza drove slowly through the dark. She had circled back to the little park after losing Hinge and now she was near tears. Had he seen her? Or did she just lose him? Either way, she had lost their ace in the hole.

She kept circling, hoping to blunder upon Hinge. After ten minutes of fruitless driving she gave up. She started looking for a telephone. The dark streets led her back to the waterfront. She passed a noisy club, and a block ahead, saw a phone booth on the opposite side of the street.

She stopped, rooted through her cluttered shoulder bag, found a dime, dropped the car keys in her bag and ran across the street to the phone booth.

It took forever for the operator to answer.

‘Cottage Sixteen, please,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’

It rang several times but there was no answer. She jiggled the hook and got the operator back. ‘I want to leave another message, please.’

‘Go ahead.’

Headlights turned into the darkened street two blocks away, but her back was turned to them.

‘For Sixteen. The message is: “Have lost the luggage. I am coming back to the hotel.”

‘You are having a terrible time with your baggage,’ the operator said. ‘Perhaps our manager can be of some assistance.’

The car was moving slowly down the street toward her.

‘Uh, I think the airline has taken—’

She turned and saw the car, less than a block away. The red Datsun. Hinge’s leathery face loomed behind the wheel.

‘—care of it. Thanks very much. Bye.’

She hung up but it was too late to get back across the street. He was almost there. He was so close she could see those cold reptilian eyes staring at her through the open window.

She took off her shoes and ran. She ran faster than she had ever run in her life. She could have made the Olympics, she ran so fast. She ran away from the street, through the darkness, down a long narrow alleyway, toward the beach.

Hinge stopped and jumped out of his car.

Eliza ran along the beach until her breath was gone and her legs ached and finally she fell on her hands and knees in the sand. She turned quickly and looked back expecting to see Hinge. But the beach stretched behind her, gray in the moonlight and empty.

She looked all around.

Nothing.

Overhead, ominous clouds were beginning to chase the moon and lightning glittered near the horizon.

Great. Now it’s going to start raining.

She sat for a few moments to catch her breath, then walked up to the line of trees that ran adjacent to the water’s edge, and using them for protection, started cautiously back toward her

But Hinge had opted not to go after the girl. There was no time for that. He watched her run frantically into the darkness and he thought, Who is she? What in hell is her problem? Is there something about this I don’t know? Or is she just some flake?

He stopped beside her car and looked inside. In the glove compartment he found the rental agreement.

Eliza Gunn. Staying at the Half Moon Bay Club, cottage 16.

He put the contract back and slammed the glove compartment shut.

Smiling, he returned to his car and drove off. He had other things to do. There would be time to handle the girl when he was finished with Lavander.

When Eliza reached the street, it was empty. No sign of the red Datsun. She hesitated for several minutes, hiding in the darkness of the shrubs and trees near the road, building up her nerve before she ran across the street and jumped in the car.

She felt lucky as she started the car and drove back to the hotel. She had not talked to either O’Hara or the Magician all day. Perhaps, she thought, they had intercepted Lavander and everything was all right.

12

It was dark when Lavander strolled into Trelawney Square but it might have been the middle of the day. The shops were all open and there was a carnival atmosphere about the place.

He found himself opposite the pastry shop and stepped into a gift shop. Walking to the back, he picked over some things while watching the square. Then he went through the back door and walked around the block, staying in the shadows, and appraised the street.

Derek Frazer, the man who had been described to him over the phone, was sitting near the window of the Nelson Pastry Shoppe. Lavander concentrated on him for a while. Frazer had the kind of sharp features some women consider handsome. Lavander knew the type. A typical corporate flunky dressed by Brooks Brothers, with an innocuous title, vice president in charge of something or other, some catchall term to cover a variety of sins.

Frazer was sipping his coffee and reading the wretched Kingston Journal.

Well, that wouldn’t take him long. Lavander chuckled to himself. He was sure nobody was following him.

Lavander was right: Hinge did not have to follow him. All Hinge had to do was watch Frazer. It was an old but effective trick, shopping the contact instead of the mark, one that would never have occurred to an amateur like Lavander.

Frazer had spotted the consultant the minute Lavander entered the square, watching him benignly from over the top of the newspaper as the little man played out his odd melodrama. Frazer assumed that the assassin was also watching.

Lavander finally crossed the street and entered the pastry shop. Frazer looked up, smiled, raised a finger and his eyebrows, and stood as Lavander walked to the table, offering his hand. He almost crushed several of Lavander’s fingers. He’s taken the executive-handshake course, I see, Lavander said to himself.

‘Hi, I’m Derek Frazer.’

How jaunty, the little man thought. ‘Lavander, here.’

‘Well, this is quite an honour, quite an honour indeed. It isn’t every day one meets a living legend.’

His voice, cultured early in some executive-training program to be flat, authoritative and intimidating, was oddly patronizing toward Lavander. The Britisher found both Frazer’s attitude and his looks manufactured and offensive.

Lavander shrugged. ‘Yes, there aren’t that many of us about.’

Frazer thought, An egomaniac. An absolute, flying, whacked-out egomaniac.

‘What would you like?’ Frazer asked, motioning to the waitress.

Strong tea and something sweet. A napoleon, I think.’ The waitress nodded and left.

Frazer smiled and rubbed his palms together. ‘Well, sir, we

uh, first of all, we are indebted to you for taking. . time out of your vacation to talk with us.’

‘You use the collective pronoun, Mr Frazer. Is someone joining us?’

Frazer smiled indulgently. ‘Of course, I’m speaking for my company. I’m sure you know us. AMRAN. Kind of the. . . uh, the new kids on the block, see what I mean?’

No doubt about it, Lavander thought, I don’t like this Frazer chap at all. They’ve sent a shill to do a man’s job, and that offends me more than anything. But business was business, so Lavander would hear what he had to say. ‘Yes, yes, I know all about AMRAN,’ he said impatiently.

‘And I assume the deposit to your bank was verified.’

‘I’m here, am I not?’

‘Quite! Well, then, at least we don’t need to be concerned about credentials for my company. That saves us some time, see what I mean?’

‘I have plenty of time,’ Lavander said nonchalantly. The waitress brought his pastry and tea. When she left, Lavander looked across the table at Frazer, his bulging eyes twinkling in anticipation of the conversation. ‘Now, what is it you want?’ he asked.

‘We’re new, as I said. We don’t pretend to know all the answers, but we know you know a lot of them. We’re interested in a consulting situation.’

‘You have serious problems already,’ said Lavander, sipping his tea noisily.

‘1 beg your pardon?’

‘Among AMRAN’s less fortunate decisions was the inclusion of the Hensell Oil Company in your consortium, sir. You have acquired a bankrupt partner.’ He raised his eyebrows and leaned toward Frazer. ‘Hmmm?’

‘We... uh, I assume this conversation is confidential.’

‘Really!’

‘Sorry,’ Frazer said quickly. ‘Point is, sir, we need their outlets. They’re in thirty-seven states. Twelve pumpers, see what I mean?’

‘Actually forty-two states, under three different corporate names. You could have waited another three months and had Hensell for ten cents on the dollar.’ Lavander waved his hand disdainfully, like a king dismissing a pauper.

‘It was cheaper than making a giant investment, particularly at a time when things are a bit—’

‘You haven’t studied your figures. You have yourself a problem company as an equal partner at a time when the market is unstable.’

‘We’d have lost them. Somebody else would have snapped them up.’

‘Not as an equal partner. Subsidiary, perhaps.’

Frazer leaned back. ‘There’s also the matter of oil properties, specifically Hensell’s holdings.’

‘What have you allocated for deve1opment?’

Frazer hesitated. He seemed to be considering whether to answer the question or not.

Lavander laughed. ‘Would you like me to tell you, hmmm?’

‘Three hundred million,’ Frazer said in almost a whisper.

‘Another questionable move. Over half of those holdings are in the Montana Strip. The field is erratic, sir. I know it well. Over a million acres and there are no patterns. You’ll drill a dozen dry holes for every strike, and the yield is going to be low in the bargain. I would guess no more than.., twenty to twenty-two barrels a day per well.’ He shook his head. ‘You’d be better off spending the development money in Alaska or the North Sea.’

‘Too crowded,’ Frazer said. ‘Our other companies have resources—’

Lavander cut him off again. ‘Of course, your other four companies are healthy. American Petroleum will be showing a five hundred and fifty percent profit increase over last year. Sunset Oil will be up at least four hundred percent. Very nice. Very nice that the Americans are such sheep. They’ll pay through the nose for a while. Question is, how long will they put up with it?’

‘Long enough to pay the fattest dividends in history,’ Frazer said.

‘And if the Middle East cuts you off?’

‘I ... uh, we don’t anticipate that for some time.’

‘It will happen. Suddenly and soon.’

‘Well, we’ll cross that bridge—’

Fact is, you have very safe reserves. I know it and you know it. All the oil companies do. Stored away somewhere. Let’s be bloody honest, shall we? Your company is sitting on at least what ... five billion gallons proven reserves’?’

‘That’s confidential information, Mr Lavander..

‘It was announced by your company in an annual report not two months ago. Confidential indeed! I suggest we be honest. Actually it’s closer to fifteen billion, hmm?’

Frazer was genuinely surprised at Lavander’s wealth of knowledge.

‘Look, old chap,’ Lavander said, ‘I don’t care, y’know, what you tell the poor fools in Congress or the people on the streets of America. But please don’t race me off, hmm? Actually you’re really sitting on fifty to sixty billion gallons in undeclared reserves, right? All oil companies have far more oil in reserve than they admit. How else could you all fix prices, eh?’

‘Everyone does it,’ Frazer said.

‘Of course, of course, but the numbers! Dear me, the numbers! Provoking a shortage when you have a surplus. Sooner or later someone is going to blow the lid off the whole ugly business.’

‘We’re hardly in a position to take the lead in a general house cleaning.’

Lavander gazed at the colourful city square. ‘When it happens,’ he mused, ‘people will go to jail, politicians will be mined, it could go as high as the Cabinet, y’know. It will make your Watergate and Abscam scandals seem as innocent as a day at Disneyland.’

‘That won’t happen.’

‘The American people were humiliated by Watergate and Abscam,’ said Lavander. ‘They’ll be infuriated when they find out just how badly the oil companies are exploiting them. I’m suggesting you use some common sense. There’s plenty of money to be made. You don’t have to break the law.’

‘If that does happen,’ said Frazer, ‘the ax’ll fall on all the others before it falls on us. We’re new.’

‘The weak ones always go first. Law of nature. You’re new, you have problems. The investigators will sharpen their teeth on you new chaps. The hyenas will eat you first, then the big competitors will become very repentant, they’ll say, “Oh, excuse us, we miscalculated,” the politicians in their pocket will say, “Naughty, naughty,” fine them a couple of hundred thousand dollars, excuse them for the good of the economy. What good will that do your AMRAN? They’ll already have ruined you.’

‘A dismal viewpoint, I must say.’

‘Realistic. The script is already written.’

‘Let’s hope you’re wrong this time.’

‘I have a reputation, Frazer. I’ve never associated, in any way, with anything unsavoury. I can help AMRAN, but only if you agree to listen to me and accept my advice. The price is a thousand dollars a day. Thirty days payable in advance. If we go beyond that, you pay another thirty days in advance. And I reserve the right to step out anytime I feel your decisions might place me in jeopardy. That’s my standard deal, take it or leave it.’

‘Well, of course I’ll run this by management and—’

‘This is Friday, Frazer. I will expect your answer by Monday. Say five P.M.? You can send me a message aboard the Gulf Star.’

‘That’s a bit short, what with—’

Lavander’s face clouded up. He was becoming impatient. He cut Frazer off. ‘Right now Hensell’s US output is about twenty thousand barrels a day. The company’s reserves are down to — I’m guessing, of course — sixty million forty-two- gallon barrels. One of the reasons Hensell was going under, they were buying sixty percent of their crude from the Middle East. At premium. Hmmm?’

Frazer stared across the table at Lavander. His neck was turning pink under the ears.

Lavander pressed on. ‘Point is, Mr Frazer, your AMRAN was sold a bill of goods by Hensell’s people. You bought a pig’-.-he stopped and laughed—’ without looking in the poke.’

You insufferable bastard, Frazer thought. But he kept his temper. His job was to keep his temper.

‘What’s going to happen, old chap, is that AMRAN is going to have to dip into its oil capital, so to speak. Tap the reserves of the other members of the consortium, to reduce Hensell’s Middle East commitments. And then, sir, you are on dangerous ground, having to explain oil reserves you supposedly don’t have. The Mafia has the same problem trying to wash its money. You’re going to have to wash your oil.’ He chuckled again, then added, ‘Enough free advice for one day.’

Anger burned deep in Frazer’s stomach, but he had to keep playing the game. ‘So what would you suggest?’

‘I suggest you retain me to keep you out of the soup and to clean up this mess.’

Frazer stared at him across the top of his coffee cup. ‘That’s why we’re here,’ he said slowly, after a several-second pause.

Lavander raised his eyebrows. He looked down into his teacup. ‘I see — hmm. .. I see a message and the message says, “Frazer doesn’t have the authority to make a commitment.” Am I correct?’

‘My job is simply to open up negotiations. We know by your reputation that you can help us. The question is, Can we afford you?’

‘A grain of salt in the ocean. Of course you can afford me. I can help you. The ball is in your court. Let me know.’ He started to get up.

Frazer said, ‘Uh, perhaps we have a little something extra in the kitty.’

‘Ahh?’

Frazer took out a pint jar from his briefcase and set it on the table. It contained sand, sand as white as sugar but streaked with a black compound. Frazer picked it up and shook it, then looked at Lavander and smiled. He held the jar toward Lavander and said, ‘I’ve heard you can look at a core sample and taste it and tell within two city blocks what part of the world it came from and how rich the strike might be.’

Lavander could not conceal his curiosity. But he did not touch the jar. ‘When we have concluded our business, Frazer.’

He’s a crazy old coot, all right, Frazer thought. Crazy-smart. He’s playing games. Corporate one-upmanship.

Frazer was more interested in results. ‘I am authorized to retain you for a minimum of sixty days,’ he said. ‘We will have sixty thousand, in gold, in whatever account you desire, Monday morning, when the banks open’ He smiled and jiggled the jar again. ‘Care to see our hole card?’

Lavander looked at the jar, his brown eyes aglitter. But he still made no move to take it. He was caught in an inner struggle between commerce and curiosity. ‘I’ll be travelling for the next two weeks or so,’ he said. ‘Will that be a problem?’

‘Not at all, sir. We’d like you in Houston by the first of the month.’

‘Then it’s acceptable,’ he said. ‘Uh .. . may I?’

‘Of course,’ Frazer said. He’s taking the bait, he told himself. We will soon know.

Lavander took the jar and held it up as if it were a rare diamond. He spread a paper napkin on the table and smoothed it out with his hands. Then he opened the jar, shook several grams of the sand on to the napkin and re-corked the jar. He held up the napkin between his hands, making a trough of it, and shook the sand around, watching it carefully. He put the napkin back on the table, took out a jeweller’s glass, and separating the grains with the handle of a spoon, stared intently at them through the loupe. He dipped his tongue into the sand, tasting it as a wine steward might sample a vintage bottle.

Frazer watched him with interest. Gone for the moment were the egocentricities and the sarcasm, replaced by a pro at work. Lavander scooped up some of the sand and let it run through his fingers, back onto the napkin.

His lips were moving like a palsied old man’s: ‘Semitropical to tropical. Not Africa ... let’s see, let’s see ... the Middle East? No, wrong colour. Not coarse enough . . . hmm. . . a little too fine for Mexico. Or California... hmm.’

He stopped suddenly, peering up at Frazer for a fraction of a second, then, just as quickly, looking back.

He’s on to it, Frazer thought. No’ let’s see what he does next.

Lavander made a funnel of the napkin, poured the sand back into the jar and handed it to Frazer. I’d like some more tea,’ he said. As Frazer turned to summon the waitress, Lavander folded the napkin, with two or three grams of sand in it, and slipped it into his pocket. Frazer acted as if he hadn’t noticed; instead he said, ‘Well, let’s see how good you are!’

Lavander seemed wary. ‘Central Pacific,’ he said, ‘someplace north of New Zealand. Perhaps somewhere along the Tonga Trench.’

‘I’ve just agreed to pay you sixty thousand dollars as a retainer for two months’ work, sir,’ said Frazer. ‘And the first thing you do is try to bullshit me.’

‘I beg your pardon!’

Now it was Frazer who took the offensive. ‘You know that core sample didn’t come from anywhere near New Zealand.’

‘Then why ask?’

‘It’s supposed to be your forte.’

‘Testing me?’

‘Why not? All I know is your reputation. And I knew that before I got here. How about the quality of that strain?’

‘You know the quality, Frazer.’

Frazer nodded very slowly.

‘I’m dealing in approximations now. Guesses,’ said Lavander. ‘To be accurate, I’d need some time in the lab.’

‘We have all that,’ Frazer said. ‘I just want you to know we had good reason to make the deal with Hensell.’

‘This is from the Hensell properties?’ Lavander said with surprise.

‘It wasn’t in the package as part of their oil property, Hensell acquired the tracts for other reasons. Our engineers more or less blundered into it, testing core samples for something else.’

‘I see.’

‘We feel we’re on to something, see what I mean? Nobody else is even aware there could be oil in this area.’

Lavander had lost control of the meeting, temporarily. Now was the time to get the ball back. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said flatly, and let the remark hang there for effect.

‘Wrong?’

‘Where is this field, roughly,’ Lavander said quietly, almost whispering.

Frazer leaned over the table. ‘North of Micronesia, roughly.’

Lavander’s ego was wavering, his need to put Frazer in his place and control the meeting becoming obsessive. ‘There is a strike ... ulf, northwest of there. Very high quality, just like yours.’

‘Impossible.’

‘I’m telling you a fact,’ Lavander said, bristling at the thought that his word should be questioned.

‘We’ve had photographic aerial surveillance, very high resolution, and the entire area for three thousand miles has been scanned by satellite. Nothing between us and Japan.’

‘And I’m telling you, there’s a strike ... not some core sample — a strike!’

‘Where?’

‘Between you and. . . Japan. Could even be part of the same strata.’

So there it is, Frazer thought — he actually said it. His ego’s bigger than his discretion, a fatal personality flaw.

‘Look,’ Frazer said, ‘you’ve convinced me. I’m off for Mexico tonight to meet my wife. I’ll take care of your business Monday morning and see you in Houston on the first. Our offices, nine A.M.?’

‘Excellent, I like an early start,’ Lavander agreed, and then, ‘Oh! The check!’

‘On me,’ Frazer insisted and summoned the waitress.

Lavander said goodbye and scurried from the shop. After Frazer had paid the check, he picked up his newspaper and walked outside, tore it in half and dropped it in a waste container.

Hinge had had less than an hour to plan the elimination of Lavander. He had left Eliza’s car and had driven his own Datsun to a dark side Street just off the square, where he parked and got the small bag from the trunk, Inside were a cigar-type blowgun, a hypodermic needle, a small vial of mercury and a double-edged knife in an arm sheath. The knife blade was eight inches long and sharpened on both edges.

Beautiful.

Simple tools for a simple job. In all probability he would not need the dart gun.

No guns. Carrying a gun in Jamaica could be inviting trouble. Besides, this job did not call for bullets.

He strapped the sheathed knife to his left forearm. Then he loaded three drops of mercury in the syringe opening, inserted the needle in the cigar blowgun and put it in his shirt pocket.

Fast and neat, he thought. Nothing complicated. Hit and run. Lavander would be an easy mark. Now to find the spot.

His information on the mark was skimpy and of little value, but he did know that normally Lavander preferred walking to taking cabs particularly over short distances.

Hinge hurriedly measured the distance from the square to the pier, by walking the obvious route first and heading away from the square and down the main street four blocks and then west another two. He arrived at the pier in seven minutes, During the next forty minutes he tracked back to the square, figuring the various combinations Lavander might choose if he tried a short cut. There were few paths he could take. The toughest for Hinge would be if he stuck to the main street. It was fairly well lit and there was a lot of traffic. The others had led him down long narrow side streets through the warehouse district.

By the time Lavander had arrived at the pastry shop, Hinge was waiting across the square. He watched the mini-drama unfold in the shop. He had the advantage on Lavander. Lavander had to cross the square on the way back to the ship, and Hinge, who was between Lavander and the ship, had a good head start when Lavander left.

Hinge first concentrated on Frazer, saw him leave the shop and tear his newspaper in half, throwing it in a litter barrel. With this simple move, Frazer had approved the death of Lavander. Now Hinge began stalking his prey.

Lavander stopped a local and asked for directions. Hinge watched the man, first indicating a route down the main drag, arcing his hand off to the Left, then pointing straight down through the warehouses.

Lavander decided to take the short cut.

Hinge was elated. He hurried down the main street two blocks and cut west to the end of one of the long passages. And he waited.

Lavander was sweating by the time he reached Talisman Way, a narrow, cobblestone alley barely broad enough for two people to pass comfortably, stucco warehouse walls rising on either side, cutting off what light there was. But Lavander could see the lights from the pier at the other end. He started down, Thunder mumbled overhead arid a streak of lightning lit the passage for a second.

He was perhaps halfway down the tunnel-like walk when a man appeared at the other end and started toward him. Lavander felt momentary panic. But ii the dim light at the end of the street, he saw that the man was dressed in a suit and was white, so he assumed he was a tourist. Nevertheless, he quickened his pace. The man coming toward him was whistling.

As they drew closer together the man stopped whistling and said good-naturedly, ‘Hey, pal, how about a little ginja? Best in Jamaica.’

Lavander, his face burning with indignation, turned angrily, looking up at the man. ‘I’m not interested in your damn—’

He never finished the sentence. As he started it he was aware of a blur of movement, a sudden burning sensation in his neck, and his voice seemed to fade and the man was smiling at him, he could see the hard edges of his face, lit from the pier lights spilling into the street, and the man was holding something in front of Lavander’s eyes and Lavander seemed to have trouble focusing, then saw what it was, a stiletto, its thin blade soiled by a splash of blood, and then it was gone and he felt something tug his suit jacket and then the back pocket of his pants and the man was wiggling something else in front of his face and it was Lavander’s wallet, and Lavander felt as though he were in a dream and he could not feel his feet and he was floating and then he tasted salt and the burning sensation in his throat turned to fire. He looked down, saw a bubbling, crimson stain down the front of his white suit, then saw more crimson splashing down, and he realized it was his own blood and he opened his mouth to scream but his windpipe was filled with blood and he grabbed at it and a finger slipped into the slit in his throat.

The ground began to blur, to spin away from him.

He could see his feet, moving one in front of the other, but there was no feeling in them.

Something hit his knees and it was a few moments before he realized he had fallen.

Lavander began to crawl toward the lights, trying to scream, to attract attention, but there wasn’t anybody to hear him and then he felt the edge of the building and he crawled out on to the pavement and looked up and saw the face of a woman and she opened her mouth and seemed to be screaming, only he could hear nothing. He tried to speak, but his teeth started to chatter and for a moment his body was racked with spasms and then his back arched and he fell face down into King Street and died.

At the airport Frazer checked in and confirmed his reservation. Then he walked across the terminal and stood near the public phones. He had been there ten minutes when the first phone in the line rang. He picked it up immediately.

‘This is Mr Jackson,’ he said.

‘Avery Jackson?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

The cold flat voice on the other end said, ‘The package has been delivered.’

‘Any problems?’ Frazer asked.

‘Nothing I can’t take care of.’

‘Thanks very much.’

Frazer hung up, smiling with satisfaction as he left the booth. Ten minutes later his plane was announced. He bought a copy of Paris-Match and an Italian edition of Playboy in the newsstand and then boarded his plane.

Hinge hung up the phone and went back to his car. A rumble of thunder rolled slowly across the sky, and dark clouds drifted past the face of a full moon. Lightning shimmered among them and he felt the first tentative drops of rain. He ignored them. He was a few hundred yards from the entrance to the Half Moon Bay Club. He drove down to the palm-lined entrance and parked the car in the shadows, and hunching his shoulders against the raindrops that began pelting him, he hurried down o the beach. He stayed well back from the ocean as he studied the layout of the sprawling beachfront hotel, actually scurrying way from one small ripple of a wave.

The beach swung in a wide crescent from the squat two..story hotel at one end to the far side, where a stone breakwater separated its beach from that of the Holiday Inn. The registration desk was attached to the main building but was in the open, under a roof of shingles covered with palm fronds. Adjacent to it was an open-air bar and restaurant overlooking the bay. People were moving under the shingled awnings to escape the rain while a calypso band, accustomed to sudden storms, continued playing in the restaurant, its steely music echoing out across the bay.

The cottages began just beyond the restaurant, stretching around to the breakwater. They were built fifty or sixty feet from the water’s edge, one-story stucco units, most of them dark. He counted them. Eighteen in all. Lights gleamed from the last three in the line. Despite the impending storm, the sea was placid, slapping lazily at the shore.

It started raining harder as he followed the beach to cottage 16.

13

O’Hara and the Magician arrived at Eliza’s cottage two minutes after she did. She stammered as she described her encounter with Hinge, the terror still in her eyes.

‘You’re lucky,’ O’Hara said. ‘He probably didn’t have time to chase you.’ He shook his head. ‘We acted like a bunch of amateurs this time around.’

‘I’m the amateur,’ Eliza said. ‘If—’

‘Nobody’s to blame,’ said the Magician.

‘Yeah,’ said O’Hara, ‘we fumbled in the clutch. Best thing we can do is move on.’

The bright spring colors of the cottage, the yellow-and green-print slipcovers, the vase with cut flowers on the dresser and fresh fruit on the night tables did not help their mood. They sat glumly mulling over their options.

‘Maybe we should call the police, at least they could put out an APJ3 on Lavander and Hinge,’ Eliza suggested.

‘This isn’t the Bronx,’ O’Hara said. ‘I doubt they have ten cops on this end of the island.’

‘What a mess,’ Eliza said, genuinely concerned over Lavander’s welfare, or lack thereof.

The Magician scratched an unshaven chin. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you think this is bad, how’d you like to be caught in the middle of a fight between six truck drivers and fourteen midgets in the Soperton, Georgia, Waffle House at one o’clock in the morning?’

‘What!’ Eliza said, and started to giggle.

‘This is about ten years ago. I was down on my uppers and playing calliope for a little half -assed circus, and it went broke in Texarkana and there we were, stranded in the middle of nowhere. So I got the fourteen midgets together and formed this basketball team. I thought it would be a real novelty, them riding on each other’s shoulders to make baskets, running between the opponent’s legs, stuff like that. Only it turned out to be a one-line joke, funny for about half the first quarter, after that the audience started throwing their popcorn boxes at us. We were stuck in Dalton-fuckin’ Georgia, with all our games cancelled, so broke we were rubbing buffalo nickels together hoping they’d mate.

‘Dismal.

‘And then, damned if I didn’t find out these little suckers could sing! Man, they could belt it out like angels. Fourteen- part harmony. So we changed our name from Mike Rothschild’s Little Big Men to Jesus Rothschild and the Gospel Midgets, and to, everybody loved us. We were doing state fairs, charity gigs, revival meetings. The black people loved us. Kids loved us. Red dirt farmers would come with their families and fruit jars and get drunk and get religion. Sweet Jesus, we were saving souls and making money. Hallelujah, what a summer!’

‘Magician, what in hell are you talking about?’ O’Hara asked.

‘There’s a point, stick with me. One night we pull into Soperton, Georgia, which is about as big as a flea’s ass, and it’s maybe one o’clock in the morning and we pass this Waffle House, which is open, so we all pile in for coffee. There’s maybe half a dozen or so truck drivers in there raising hell and one thing leads to another and it’s getting a little nasty what with the midget jokes and shit, so Herman Heartfinder, who was kind of the spokesman for the little guys — he also had a very bad temper — he says for them to go easy on the midget jokes. This one driver says to Herman, “Hey, shortie, if your pecker was twice as big as your mouth, you’d still have to jack off with two fingers,” and Herman stands straight up, all three-foot-six of him, and lets fly with one of those old- fashioned glass sugar dispensers, the ones that weigh about two tons. Splat, right across the side of the head. All of a sudden, it’s John Wayne time. Truck drivers and midgets, all kickin’ the shit out of each other and, incidentally, wasting the Soperton, Georgia, Waffle House while they’re at it.

‘Right then I figured Soperton, Georgia, was no place to be if you’re a six-fingered Jewish piano player hustling fourteen midgets who are at that moment inciting a riot. So! just walked away from it, down to the Trailways bus station, where I stood around for about an hour, listening to the police cars and ambulance, until the bus came and I headed south and got off when we ran out of road in Key West.’

He stopped and smiled rather grandly and added, ‘And that’s the point.’

‘What’s the point?’ Eliza asked.

‘The point is, this is no place for us to be right now.’

‘Amen,’ said O’Hara.

‘But Lavander could still be alive. If the police had a description of Lavander and Hinge...’

‘They wouldn’t do doodly-shit,’ said the Magician.

‘Lavander’s had it,’ O’Hara said. ‘By now Hinge is probably on his way back to Tucson or wherever he’s from, and all we’ve got is Lavander’s little black book of gibberish.’

Outside, Hinge huddled close to the cottage to escape the driving rain. He was grateful for the storm, since it provided excellent sound cover. The raindrops, battering palm leaves and ferns, sounded like drums accompanied by the timpani of thunder. He had moved as close to the window as possible, standing just outside its orbit of light but close enough to hear their conversation through the open window.

My God, he thought, they know my name and they know about Lavander! And what’s this about Lavander’s book?

Who the hell are these people, anyway?

It made no difference. Hinge decided very quickly that he had to kill all three of them. The question was when and how. He concluded that each of them had a cottage, accounting for the lights in the last three cottages. He would wait until they were each in their rooms and take them one at a time.

Piece a cake.

He continued his eavesdropping.

‘I think the book’s going to give up something,’ said the Magician.

‘All we gotta do is break Lavander’s code.’

‘All,’ Eliza said.

‘He carries the book with him. Obviously he makes entries in it all the time, so he must have memorized his own code. And if he memorized it, I can break it. And if I can’t, Izzy certainly can.’ He got up to leave. ‘What time did the pilot say he’d meet us at the airport?’

‘Five-thirty,’ O’Hara said.

‘I’ll wake everybody up,’ he said and left, scampering through the rain to his cottage, the last one in the row.

O’Hara hunched deep in one of the yellow-and-green chairs and said, ‘I’ll sleep here in the chair.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ Eliza said.

‘We’ve already underestimated Hinge once tonight. I’d feel better being here.’

Thunder rumbled outside the window and lightning snapped close by.

‘Better be careful, O’Hara, I’m liable to get the wrong impression, think you have a heart after all.’

‘Now, what does that mean?’

‘Up until now, you’ve been a robot.’

‘A robot!’

‘That’s right, a robot.’

‘Well, I don’t feel like a robot,’ he said, looking at her through half-closed eyes.

O’Hara had already dismissed the Lavander affair from his mind. They had botched it. Enough said. Now he concentrated on his competitor across the room, for that was how he still thought of her. Five feet tall, proficient and dangerously naïve.

That was the professional view. Personally, other things about her crowded his mind. She was prettier than he remembered from their brief meeting in Japan, and he had been too startled when she showed up in St. Lucifer to really pay any attention to her. Now he realized what a stunning woman she was. Her tininess simply added to her allure. Shaggy jet-black hair, cut short with curled strands peeking around her neck; wide, almost startled eyes, appearing even more vulnerable because of her size; a wondrously perfect nose and a tentative, pouty mouth that could, in an instant, become the most dazzling smile he had ever seen.

Beautiful, smart and tempting.

Very dangerous.

She was momentarily flustered and avoided contact with his green eyes. She Sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the floor. O’Hara intimidated her and 1ad since before she met him. The biographical material she had read had commended him for many things, including his investigative ability. But it was his apparent mastery of the Japanese philosophy that both fascinated and unsettled her. He moved with oiled grace, which she attributed to his martial-arts training in Japan. She remembered the speed with which he accepted and defeated his attacker in Japan. Unruffled. Even with a stab wound, he was simply unruffled. In fact, he was uncomfortably calm. And now he seemed able to accept the inevitability of Lavander’s death without guilt or remorse. And yet, what she read to be something almost mystical might simply be the result of years of armouring. Perhaps O’Hara was so thoroughly shielded that he just seemed mystical.

She sighed and said, I can’t get used to the fact that we may have caused Lavander’s death.’

‘No, didn’t cause it. We didn’t save him. There’s a big difference.’

‘But can’t we do something? I’d recognize the car. And it was a rental, so he’ll have to turn it in and—’

‘A good hunter knows when the hunt is over.’

‘There you go. Mr Kimura talks like that all the time. “The smart man doesn’t wear wet socks.” How’s that?’

‘Actually, it would be, “The wise man does not put on his sock until the sun blesses it.”

‘Oh, bullshit.’ She paused for a second. ‘I’d just like to get another look at that creep, anyway. I’ve never seen a real live assassin before.’

‘You really have a taste for this, don’t you?’

‘For what?’

‘Chasing the big story. How did you get into this business, anyway? Hell, you’ve read my K-file, you know everything about me right down to my underwear size. I don’t know anything about you.’

How did she get into the business? Well, it had started because she was chubby.

When Eliza Gunn was growing up in Nebraska she was plump. Well, perhaps ‘plump’ is being generous. Actually she was somewhere between plump and fat. Chipmunk-cheeks- and-dimpled-legs chubby is what she was.

She lived in Ozone. Once you got a chuckle out of the name, it was all downhill. Dull. Dull. Dull. The only statue in town was of Calvin Coolidge, who once waved at Ozone from the rear of a passing train. So much for Ozone, Nebraska.

Her father owned the local drugstore and was a kind, patient, Christian man. Reserved, the kind that thinks a pat on the head is as good as a hug. Alwyn Gunn died thinking that only perverts read Playboy and that Quaaludes were tranquilizers. And that was in 1977.

Her mother died when she was three in a car wreck driving back from a shopping trip to Omaha. The drive was so dull that she fell asleep at the wheel. Alwyn hired a housekeeper, a German widow whose husband died in a fall off a tractor, and went about business as usual. He never remarried. Too much effort.

Chubby kids are cute. Until they get to be about six. A fat twelve-year-old is not cute. Eliza didn’t enter puberty, she stomped into it.

One of the reasons Lizzie Gunn was chubby is that if you lived in Ozone, there was no reason to be skinny. Actually there wasn’t much reason to do anything but eat, read books and get pregnant. A lot of Eliza’s friends got pregnant. Eliza read books and ate. Among his many ‘virtues, Alwyn Gunn was a lover of books. When she was just beginning to read, Alwyn would bring home half a dozen kids’ books to her from the library. By the time she was ten she was into the adult section.

She also realized, at about age ten, that she was different from everyone else. Not because she was chubby/fat, but because she didn’t want to be like everybody else. She had no desire to be one of the gang. If she couldn’t win, she would rather have come in ten minutes after everybody else. Anything to avoid being part of the herd. Fat or thin, the thought of being common repelled her. It was mental, not physical.

She also had a passion to find out, to be the first to know. To have a secret nobody else shared

The more she read, the more her fantasies blossomed.

No, they exploded.

She rode to Valhalla with Kipling; stormed the gates of Moscow with Tolstoy; conned her ,ay to New Orleans with Twain. She learned class from Shaw, grace from Galsworthy, elegance from Henry James. She was Anna Karenina, Sarah Bernhardt and Holly Golightly. She made up stories in school, told them to her toothbrush in the bathroom, to her dog, her cat, to anyone who would listen. And when old movies started appearing on television, she was Rosalind Russell, James Cagney and Pat O’Brien all wrapped in one, in hot pursuit of the big story. The scoop.

She was editor of the school paper, a job usually relegated to chubby girls who wore glasses, since it was assumed that they were more serious than pretty girls with tits and ass, or to boys, who were too horny to do an anything right. She wore her father’s old fedora with a press pass in the brim, barked orders and drove everybody crazy. The paper won the Sigma Chi award as the best high school newspaper in the state. She got a personal award for best editorial. It was about the passing of the town’s last blacksmith. That was when she was sixteen, her junior year.

And then she became seventeen. That year something happened to Lizzy. She got skinny. Skinny the way girls dream of being skinny.

It happened suddenly. Like a cocoon bursting open, the fat just fell away and suddenly there was Lizzie Gunn, five feet tail, ninety-four pounds, with the best tits and ass in Ozone High School. The Hair-breath Harrys of the school went crazy. Her phone rang constantly, now she was cute.

She was also independent, somewhat eccentric, a daydreamer and a loner. Slimmed down, she had boundless energy.

Ozone to Missouri U. to Lincoln to Chicago to Boston. Life had been upbeat ever since. After Ozone, nothing would ever be dull again. Dull dissolved into the six o’clock nightly news and a constant what she called ‘twiddle’ in her stomach. Her stomach had been in a ‘twiddle’ ever since. And now, sitting with Frank O’Hara chasing a chimera named Chameleon, all her fantasies, daydreams, aspirations, everything! had come true.

She kept the story short. Sunk down in the comfortable chair, he kept looking at her over his kneecaps as though he were sighting a gun. This time she stared back, and when she was finished she went right back to the subject at hand.

‘I can’t believe a man is probably getting killed at this very moment and we’re just sitting here helplessly.’

O’Hara got up and walked to the bed, and taking her hands, guided her to her feet. He put his arms around her and hugged her. It was a friendly hug, meant to restore her sense of security. She was moved by the simple act, and the warmth of his body was reassuring.

‘It got too nasty, too fast,’ he said.

‘You were right,’ she said, ‘those Mafia guys were kid stuff.’

He ran his finger down her cheek and along her jaw.

‘M-m-maybe you’re right, maybe I’m not cut out for all this.’ My God, I’m stammering, she thought.

‘We did the best we could. Life’s a lot easier if you can accept the inevitable.’ He stroked the soft part of her ear.

‘I thought I was so clever, following him that way and then I turned a corner and—’

‘We can’t brood over it. I made a bad call. The man’s a pro. It’s what he does. Put it behind you.’ He lightly stroked her neck with his fingertips.

She moved a little closer. He began to stroke her cheeks with his fingertips, then ran them lightly over her lower lip.

She thought, Does he think he can do this for a minute or two and I’ll just fall into bed?

He said, ‘Close your eyes, Lizzie.’

She felt his wet lips slipping back and forth on hers and then his tongue barely touching her lips.

She thought, yep, that’s exactly what he thinks.

Her mouth pouted open very slightly and the end of her tongue touched his.

And she thought, He’s right.

The storm was getting worse. Lightning etched the clouds and speared the earth. The world lit up for a second, then pow!—the power went off and there was utter darkness.

Hinge inched closer to the window.

She slipped away from him for a moment and her lighter flicked. There were five candles in the room and she lit them. The flames wavered in the cool breeze blowing through the windows.

‘I’m a candlelight freak,’ she said in a whisper.

‘Some tough cookie,’ he said, taking her shirt collar in his hands and drawing her lightly to him again.

Her emotions were hardly stable. She was tingling from the excitement of the night — and aroused by it. She found O’Hara irresistible, the pirate who comes swinging out of nowhere, snatches her out of the slave market and carries her away on his ship. It was a fantasy created when she first became aware of her sensuality, one that had persisted through the years. And finally she had met the pirate.

And she was the girl in his fantasy: vulnerable, lovely —but wonderfully experienced.

Hinge moved closer. It was raining harder and the wind was coming up and the garden around the cottage was turning into a mud hole and lightning seemed to be showering to the earth and in its garish light, he watched the man’s fingers unbuttoning the girl’s blouse. It seemed to take forever. Then the blouse fell open, but the man was between Hinge and the girl. He moved to the next window, saw him silhouetted against the garish flashes of lightning, barely tracing her full breasts with his thumb; taking her blouse off and dropping it on the bed; kissing her throat, her shoulders, the edge of her breast.

Hinge took the cigar from his shirt pocket and put it between his teeth and slipped the knife out of his sleeve. He risked the chance that the lights might suddenly come back on or that he would be seen in a flare of lightning. They were too involved to see anything. The guy ought to thank him. What a way to go. He would dirk the man first and kill the girl with a dart if he did not kill the man with his first thrust. O’Hara and Eliza were a single moving form in the candlelight, illuminated sporadically by the yellow glare of the storm, fumbling with belts and buttons, finally entwined, hands searching, lips tasting, as he lowered her slowly to the bed.

Fronds slapped one another in the wind, and the pelting rain stung his face. He could see them through the louvered window, dimly on the bed, naked now, lying sideways facing each other.

Eliza felt O’Hara pressing against her, his lips seemed to be all over her body, on her nipples, her stomach. His tongue explored her while she moved her hands over his back, feeling his skin, the deep arch in his back, his hard ass. She pressed slightly and he responded lightly. It was beginning. She could feel it on the back of her neck, under her ears, welling up in her stomach. She forgot where she was, who she was with, everything but the feeling that kept building, the wonderful electric responses to each touch and kiss.

Hinge started around the corner of the cottage. He reached out to try the door.

He did not hear or see the wire loop drop over his head, was not aware of its presence until it bit into his neck.

He reacted immediately and by instinct. First he shoved himself backward toward his assailant. He bunched up his neck, swelling the muscles against the wire. Then he reached back, trying to grab his attacker. Nobody.

He was on the Leash.

The wire jerked him again and he went backwards across the sidewalk into the wet sand, rolling as he hit the ground and twisting so that he came to his knees facing the assassin. He saw only a tall, dim figure holding the garrotte wire.

It was an old trick, using the Leash. The wire ran through a small ratchet, which could be tightened by pulling the wire. The killer stayed three or four feet behind the victim, constantly throwing him off balance until the wire suffocated him.

The wire had cut deep. Hinge could feel its harsh edge against his windpipe. He slashed out with the knife and tried to cut the wire. Moving quickly behind him, the assailant jerked him over backwards.

Hinge half rolled, half flipped, and landed on his feet. He jumped at the figure and slashed at him, felt the knife bite into his forearm and tear through flesh. The cigar was still between his teeth but he could not get a clean shot at the tall man’s throat.

The assailant jumped back and pulled him over again.

Hinge was losing his strength. His breath came in small gasps as the wire cut deeper. He rolled in the wet sand, grabbed the Leash and pulled the assassin toward him. The tall man lurched forward and landed close to the water’s edge on his hands and knees.

The storm-swept beach was lit up for a second by an arc of lightning. Hinge saw the soggy face of his killer, and his eyes bulged.

Spettro!

He stuck his tongue in the end of the cigar and spat the dart straight at Falmouth’s face. But the wind and Falmouth’s sudden move toward Hinge conspired to ruin his aim. The dart hit Falmouth’s jacket in the shoulder. He brushed it away as he collided with Hinge, and the two men went down in the wet sand again.

The surf rolled up over their feet.

Hinge was terrified. He began to growl like a dog, twisting and scrambling away from the water, clawing the sand with the hand that held the knife while he pulled at the deadly collar with the other. Falmouth grabbed his ankles and dragged him into the surf. In the flash of lightning, Falmouth could see the terror in Hinge’s eyes. And he could hear the scream of horror trapped in his mangled throat.

He’s afraid of water, Falmouth thought. Hinge is afraid of water.

The Texan thrashed frantically as the gentle surf washed over him. Gagging, gasping for air, he reached out blindly for Falmouth, slashing the darkness with his knife.

Falmouth rolled him into deeper water. Hinge could not last much longer. The wire was doing its job. Now, if he held Hinge underwater, it would be all over. Suddenly Falmouth felt a vise on his throat. Hinge’s thumb and fingers dug into the flesh. His hand was like iron. Then Falmouth felt the knife pierce his side. The blade burned into his flesh.

For a moment Falmouth thought, He’s got me, the bloody cowboy’s neck must be almost cut in two and he’s still fighting. Even in the water, Hinge was far from beat.

He twisted hard, twirling Hinge with him into still deeper water, holding him under with the Leash. He groped with his other hand, found the knife still sticking in his side, pulled it free and let the tide carry it away. He grabbed Hinge’s hand with his own and tried to pry the fingers loose, but it was like trying to pry open a possum trap. Falmouth’s lungs burned as he and Hinge tumbled in the sea, then he broke the surface and gulped air. He hauled Hinge to the surface by the wire and stared at the grotesque obscenity that death had made of Hinge’s face.

He took Hinge’s thumb in his fist and broke it and pried the fingers away from his throat and fell against the rock piling and dragged himself out of the water. And be lay on the rocks in the driving rain, massaging the sash in his side and his bruised throat. A moment later Hinge’s body bobbed to the surface, face down, and Falmouth watched it, bumping against the rocks, while he got his wind back.

Inside the cottage, as the storm raged on, O’Hara’s mind flashed back and forth, like the lightning, between now and the past, between Jamaica and Japan. But then he felt her, heard her begin a tiny chant to herself, felt the wetness, and felt her hand, searching for him and finding him, and he felt her vibrancy flowing into him and felt her soft skin against him and it was the way she smelled and moved and whispered and touched and kissed. It was the way she cried out and it was her silence. It was the way he felt inside her.

14

And for a while there was no Japan.

‘Well,’ said the Magician, ‘Lavander’s dead. I just picked up Kingston radio on the shortwave. They’re callin’ it a mugging. Throat slit, pockets cut out, like that.’

He had been holed up with his computer, Izzy, chipping away at the code in Lavander’s book, since their return to St Lucifer early that morning.

‘It’s really no big surprise,’ O’Hara said.

‘No, but I’ll tell you what is,’ the Magician said. ‘Another body drifted into Montego Bay with the tide. White male. No identification yet, but it appears he was strangled.’

‘Strangled?’

‘Yeah, but let’s worry about one homicide at a time,’ said the Magician.

‘We blew it in Jamaica. That’s the short and the tall of it. The question is, Where do we go from here?’

‘Yes, we don’t have much to show for our trip,’ said Eliza. ‘A dead man and a book we can’t read.’

‘I can break that code,’ the Magician said confidently. ‘I been workin’ on it all morning, just a matter of time. It’s a letter code, I can tell from the sentence structure.’

‘What’s that mean?’ Eliza asked.

‘What it means is, the code substitutes one letter for another. Okay? Like a is given the value z or b or g of whatever the goddamn code calls for. Something simple so Lavander could memorize it. See what I mean? Who the hell can remember twenty-fuckin’-six different letter substitutions, right?’

‘Lavander might. He was supposed to be some kind of nutty genius,’ O’Hara said.

‘So how is Izzy going to solve this problem?’ Eliza asked.

‘It’s an anagram, a simple goddamn anagram,’ said the Magician. ‘Some words are obvious, like “the” and “and” are the three-letter words used most in the language, okay? Then there’s repeaters, like certain letters repeat more than others, vowels and double-letter combinations. T, 1, n, like that.’

‘It will take forever, trying to decipher all the possible combinations,’ Eliza said.

‘Not with Izzy. First, see, I simplify it for him. Like I pick a sentence, then program Izzy to look for the repeaters. I try the “the” and “and” combination of three-letter words, keep narrowing it down. Finally I get three, four words that begin to make some goddamn sense.’

‘I still don’t understand.’

‘C’mon, I’ll show you.’

‘By the way, has anybody seen Jolicoeur since we got back?’ O’Hara asked.

The Magician shrugged. ‘He’s probably putting a shine on some new scam.’

Izzy sat humming quietly in his oversized closet. The television monitor was covered with nonsense words. The Magician sat down and studied the screen. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Can you follow me on this? First, see, I pick a trial line, something directly outa the book.’ He pointed to a line on the screen:

Cpl Zbwqn Mfclbngcmwngx Ygnj Xca

‘Looks like Aztec,’ Eliza said.

The Magician ignored her. ‘Next, I ask Izzy to analyse the line for me.’ He typed ‘ANLYZ’ on the keyboard. A moment later the computer began printing out information on the monitor screen:

No of words:

Longest word: 13 ch

Shortest word: 3 ch

Others:

5 ch: I

4ch: 1

Different letters: 15

Capitals: 5

Three-letter words: 2

Repeat frequency:

13:0; 12:0; 11:0; 10:0;

9:0; 8:0; 7:0; 6:0; 5:0;

4: 2—c,n;

3: l-g;

2: 5—b, 1, m, w, x;

1: 7—a, f, j, p. q, y, z

Double-letter combinations: 0

Three-letter words: Cpl, Xca...

The machine paused. Another message appeared:

Holding for sub direct...

‘Okay,’ said the Magician, ‘let’s save old Izzy a little time here. There are no double-letter combinations, so we’ll try the two-and three-letter words, okay? It would also be a fuckin’ fluke, this sentence beginning or ending with the word “and”

- or the sentence ending with the word “the,” right? You with me so far? Okay, now it’s likely, see, that the sentence might start with “the.” So let’s let Izzy recompute the trial sentence, substituting “The” for “Cpl.”

He typed ‘SUB THEICPL’ and hit the return key.

The old sentence appeared immediately:

Cpl Zbwqn Mfclbngcmwngx Ygnj Xca

It was followed by the new sentence with the substitutions:

The Zbwqn Mftebngtmwngx Ygnj Xta

‘Now let’s see what we’ve got with only the new letters.’ He typed ‘LIST SUB ONLY.’

The machine displayed the following:

The te---t —

‘Where do you go from here?’ asked O’Hara.

‘I’ll just put this here in hold. Then I go to the next sentence I picked. It’s trial and error, okay, but Izzy does all the goddamn work, and fast. So what I do, I keep substituting until finally I come up with a word or two makes sense. I’m gonna break this code, Sailor.’

‘Stay in touch,’ O’Hara said. ‘I’d like to keep track of you through the years.’

But Eliza was fascinated. She had worked with word-processing machines and had some knowledge of computer language.

‘Maybe he can do it,’ she said optimistically.

The Magician leaned forward, his eyes flashing, his gloved fingers wiggling in front of his face. ‘And just maybe we’ll get lucky, come up with something, a list of his clients, maybe?’

‘We need a break,’ O’Hara said. ‘Right now we’re running on empty.’

‘Don’t be so sceptical,’ Eliza said. ‘It’s the only shot we’ve

‘Not quite, mam’selle et messieurs!’

Joli stood in the doorway, his mouth a keyboard of gleaming white teeth. ‘I told you I could hide a yellow elephant in Haiti. Au contraire, they could not hide a flea from me there. I have found the elusive one.’

‘Danilov?’ O’Hara cried.

‘Oui. But of course.’

‘In Haiti?’

The little man nodded rather grandly. ‘And I suggest you two move quickly.’

‘Two? I’m not included in this?’ Eliza said.

‘I am afraid, Eliza, you cannot go on this expedition. Both of us must stay behind this time.’

‘Why?’ she demanded indignantly.

‘Me, because I cannot go back to Haiti. You, because this place where Daniov hides is only for men.’

‘Only for men. Where is he, the Port-au-Prince YMCA?’

‘No. He is in a monastery.’

‘A monastery?’ O’Hara said.

‘Oui. It is near Cap-Haitien. La Montagne des Yeux Vides. I have arranged with a friend to meet you at the airport. He will lead you to the place and see to your entry.’

‘When?’ asked the Magician.

‘As soon as possible. It would be test to get there before dark. It is now only’ —he looked at the gold watch that glittered on his wrist—’twelve-thirty. If you leave by three o’clock, you can be in Cap-Haitien by four-thirty and at Les Yeux Vides by sundown.’

‘Here we go again,’ the Magician said. ‘Howe’s going to think we’ve gone west with his Lear jet.’

‘I’ll find the pilot,’ Eliza said. ‘Hopefully he’s not off deep-sea fishing or something.’ And she raced from the room.

‘Joli,’ O’Hara said, ‘how did you find Danilov so fast? Chameleon’s probably had some of his best operators tracking him for months.’

‘Because Joli knows everybody in Haiti,’ the Magician answered. ‘He may not be able to go back, but he sure can pull a lot of weight over the phone.’

‘How did you do it, Joli?’ O’Hara asked.

The little man beamed with pride. ‘It could remain my secret, but... first, I must admit that I know this Danilov. He was in and out of the hotel here many times for about a year. Le Sorcier was much too busy with his computer to pay any attention, but Joli! Hah, I got to know him, not by occupation, of course, he did not talk about that. But he confided that he had been visiting Haiti a lot, so I put him in touch with some of my friends. I knew if he was in Haiti, I could find him, and voilà, I did it!’

‘A monastery,’ O’Hara said. ‘Who would ever think to look for the master assassin of Europe in a monastery!’

‘Yeah,’ the Magician agreed, ‘and what self-respecting monk would take the bastard in?’

‘You will soon find out,’ Joli said rather haughtily and left the room.

Cap-Haitien, the quiet city in the Basse Terre — the narrow strip of lowlands at the foot of the mountains of northern Haiti — was forty-five minutes behind them, as was thirty miles of the worst road O’Hara had ever seen. The Magician had taken it in stride, having spent the better part of ten years in the Caribbean. But as the dusty old Chevy growled and groaned up one of the many mountains that ridge the country’s northern seacoast, even the piano player began to show signs of nervousness. Black clouds lurked over the stiletto peaks, and rain had already begun to fall on the mountains beyond. The road ended abruptly at a stone wall. Beyond the wall was five hundred feet of nothing. A boy, no more than nine or ten, was waiting with three mules.

‘Those are donkeys!’ the Magician whispered. ‘Joli didn’t say anything about ridin’ a fuckin’ donkey.’

‘Joli didn’t say much of anything.’

‘That fuckin’ little chocolate frog. He’s got a very perverted sense of humor. This ain’t the first time he’s tied a can to my tail.’

‘And we’re not there yet,’ said O’Hara.

Billy, the guide, had said hardly a dozen words since he picked them up at the airport. He was not unfriendly, just uncommunicative. He was a tail man, rib-thin and the color of milk chocolate, with bulging muscles in arms and shoulders, and enormous, knobby hands. His face was long with hard angles and deep cheekbones. The youth with the mules looked enough like him to be his son.

Billy got out and motioned them to follow. He spoke briefly in French to the boy, and the youngster got in the car. Then Billy motioned them to get on the mules.

‘We should hurry. It would be best to get there before the storm hits.’

‘How far is it?’ the Magician asked.

‘Maybe thirty minutes up the mountain, not far.’

The Magician looked sadly at O’Hara.

‘Thirty minutes up a mountain on a mule and he says it’s “not far”?’

They clopped uneasily up the side of the cliff on the three mules. The sheer face of the mountain dropped straight down to the path, which was barely five feet wide. Then the mountain dropped away again, into the valley, hundreds of feet below them. Wind howled around the craggy face of the cliffs, carrying the damp promise of rain, and -thunder grumbled through the spires above and below them.

‘I’m gonna have Joli’s ass this time. This time I’m really gonna, y’know, rip a nice chunk of it off and nail it on the wall over my piano.’

‘Hell, Magician, he found Danilov for us.’

‘He didn’t tell us we were gonna ride fuckin’ donkeys up the side of a mountain on a path no wider than a slab of bacon. Some sense of humour. He’s like all them goddamn frogs — perverted!’

‘He’s not a frog, Magician. He’s a Haitian.’

‘He talks frog and he acts frog and he’s perverted and that makes him a frog t’ me,’ the Magician yelled.

‘And what would you do without him?’ O’Hara yelled into the wind.

‘Sleep better at night,’ the Magician yelled back.

The mules were just ornery enough to be scary. Billy led the procession. The Magician, bitching constantly, was in the middle, with O’Hara bringing up the rear. The wind howled at them, cutting through their summer windbreakers. The path became wet and slippery and then the rain started. And then the path got even narrower. Billy broke out a flashlight, sweeping it back and forth, keeping the path in view.

To the west La Citadelle, the mountaintop fortress built by King Christophe in the early nineteenth century, brooded over the northern coast, its high, grim walls capping one of the many jagged mountains around them. It soon vanished in the swirling rain and fading light.

They climbed higher.

The Magician passed the time griping about Joli while O’Hara preoccupied himself by thinking about Lizzie, about how soft and warm she had been in Montego Bay and how eagerly she had jumped at the chance to work with Izzy on the code while they were gone. The lady pulled her weight, no doubt about that. Thinking about her helped pass the time.

Forty-five minutes of hard riding through the storm brought them to the end of the trail, a tiny plateau protected only by a low earthen wall. Wind and rain lashed them. There was a hitching rail for the animals, room for the three mules and the three of them and not much more.

O’Hara looked up. The cliff disappeared up into the fog.

‘Now what?’ the Magician said woefully. ‘Do we fly the rest of the way?’

There was a bell attached to the face of the cliff and Billy rang it several times before a voice called down from above.

‘Oui? Qui est là?

‘C’est mol— Billy,’ the guide yelled back.

‘Ah, oui, Billee. Un instant.’ A moment later a thick rope dangled down from the darkness above with a basket attached to it. Above the basket was a loop of rope, like the strap in a subway.

‘Who will be first?’ Billy asked and he smiled for the first time.

‘We’re going up the rest of the way in that?’ the Magician exclaimed with alarm.

‘Oui,’ said Billy.

‘I’ll go second,’ the Magician said, hunching his shoulders against the wind and rain. ‘Or maybe I’ll wait here.’

‘A little nervous?’ O’Hara asked.

‘Sailor, I’m scared shitless,’ he said.

‘I will go up first,’ the gangly Haitian said. ‘So they will know everything is in order.’ He gave the flashlight to O’Hara and got in the basket, sitting on his knees and holding the rope strap with both hands.

‘Allez-y! he called to the man above and a moment later the basket rose into the darkness.

‘Allez, my ass,’ the Magician said. ‘What am I doin’ here, anyway?’

‘You told me you were bored and wanted to perk your life up. This is called perking things up.’

‘It’s called freezing things off, that’s what it’s called.’ He stared grimly up into the darkness, listening to the rope groaning and the slow, steady click of the pulley above.

Then the pulley stopped clicking. A few seconds later Billy yelled down, ‘Allez donc! Come up. It is safe.’

‘Merci,’ O’Hara yelled back.

The swing basket dropped out of the darkness. O’Hara helped the Magician into it. The musician clutched the rope handle and clung to the rope. His knuckles were white, his eyes squeezed shut. ‘Things aren’t bad enough, we had to pick the goddamn monsoon season for this gig!’ he cried. His voice was lost to the winds as the basket, buffeted about, was hefted into the rain and strobe-lit by the lightning that zigzagged above the mountain.

When the basket was lowered the third time, O’Hara settled into it and whistled through his fingers. He felt himself being drawn slowly up the cliffside. As he neared the top he could hear the steady clinking of the ratchet pulley. The basket was being raised and lowered like a bucket in a well.

When he reached the top, O’Hara was instantly overwhelmed by the eeriness. It was not so much the place as the ambience of the place: the hooded monk, a faceless spectre bent over the crank of the basket; the monastery itself, an adobe maze commanding the cramped mountain top like some medieval gaol, its squat, weather-scarred buildings, connected haphazardly by roofed walkways; and underscoring it all, a chilling and constant moaning pierced by an occasional scream that reminded O’Hara of Dante’s description of the torments of hell.

Billy and the Magician were huddled in the low arched doorway of what appeared to be the main building.

‘I am Frère Clef,’ the hooded monk said.

‘O’Hara. This is Mike Rothschild, and you know Billy.’

‘Oui. Bonsoir, mon ami.’

‘Bonsoir,’ the Haitian replied.

Frere Clef turned back to O’Hara. ‘You should know that those who have joined our order have taken a vow of silence,’ he said. ‘I am the gatekeeper. By tradition, I alone may converse with visitors.’

He spoke softly, his accent a hybrid. British, a touch of French, perhaps even a bit of Spanish.

‘We understand you are here to see the man with the umbrella and that you are sympathetic with his plight.’

‘That’s correct,’ O’Hara said.

‘Bon. Please follow me.’

Billy elected to wait in the grim anteroom while the monk led O’Hara and the Magician along walkways that protected them from the rain. They went down through the catacomb-like monastery, past doors with barred windows, and suddenly O’Hara realized where the wailing was coming from and why, and the name of the place made sense for the first time.

La Montagne des Yeux Vides: the Mountain of the Empty Eyes.

Well-named. Lifeless eyes peered out at them from behind bars, arms reached out to touch them, and with each crack of lightning, a chorus of woe arose from the lips of inmates.

The monastery was an insane asylum, the silent monks its caretakers.

The Magician cast O’Hara an apprehensive look and rolled his eyes heavenward.

Another crack of lightning, another chorus from the damned.

They entered the last of the buildings and went down a short flight of wide stone stairs. Torches flickered in sconces on the bare walls of the grim, winding hallway. The building, chilled by rain and wind, smelled dank and foreboding.

The hooded man stopped at the first cell. ‘I have told him you are coming,’ he said. ‘But his reaction may be ... a bit startling.’

‘Frere Clef, is Danilov insane?’

‘You didn’t know? Oh yes, Brother Umbrella is quite mad. He seeks repentance in his madness.’ The monk peered through the barred door. ‘You will find that he ... what is the word — meanders? He meanders in and out of the real world.’

‘Are you treating him?’ the Magician asked,

‘lam afraid those who have been sent to Les Yeux Vides are beyond treatment. Brother Umbrella was brought to us by friends, but he asked to be secluded here.’

‘He asked to be brought here?’ said the Magician.

‘Yes. He was suffering extreme paranoia and had become occasionally irrational. He thought everyone was trying to kill him. He even believes his umbrella is deadly.’

Believes! O’Hara thought. Obviously the monks of Les Yeux Vides did not know who Danilov really was. Or care. And they thought his deadly umbrella was harmless.

‘How long has he been here?’ O’Hara asked.

‘Four months. And since coming here, he has slipped further away from reality.’ He pointed to a bell beside the door. ‘You may ring the bell when you are finished. Oh, one other thing. He believes this is his home. He does not realize he is one of them. Good luck.’

The monk unlocked the door and slid back the large shot-bolt lock.

‘Monsieur, you have guests,’ he said and padded silently back up the stairs.

They entered the room cautiously, remaining near the door, and their eyes were assaulted by flickering candlelight. Candles were everywhere, casting a ghoulish yellow light over Danilov’s cell — or cells — for it was actually two cells connected by an arch carved through the stone wall. The main room was a surprise: there was a large oak table, pushed against the wall opposite the arch, covered with papers and notebooks; a large bookcase, choked with books in many languages against another wall; a cot with several down pillows opposite it; a small table beside the cot; a high-backed chair at the desk, and two others shoved haphazardly in corners. The walls were covered with maps, photographs of flowers and wild animals, and a small black-and-white photograph of downtown Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, which appeared to be a dismal, grim-looking city.

The other room contained a bed, a night table and a large, bulky free-standing closet. Nothing more.

There was a large vase of daisies on the floor near the desk, where Daniov was sitting, pen in hand, bent over a sheaf of papers and writing furiously.

‘Un moment, un moment,’ he said with the wave of a hand. And when he had finished what he was working on, he turned around. His face told the whole story, for here was a man haunted by his own ghosts, driven to insanity by age, conscience and fear; an assassin, urged further into madness by his own bizarre, self-imposed imprisonment; a madman sequestered among madmen, totally oblivious of his predicament. His cabbage-face was drawn and sunken. Self-destruction lurked in eyes that were listless one moment, bright as a diamond the next. His hair, what there was of it, had turned pure-white and clung, in sweat-matted disarray, to his skull. His palsied hands were knotted with arthritis. Beads of perspiration clung to his worn-out face. He was wearing a pair of soiled, hopelessly wrinkled white pants and a white dress shirt, open almost to the waist.

‘Parlez-vous francais? Habla Usted español? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’

‘English. We speak English.’

‘English’ he said, ‘so you are Englishmen, then?’ He spoke the language well, although with a guttural accent.

‘Americans.’

‘Americans!’ He stared at them suspiciously and then said, in a fevered and annoyed tone, ‘Yes, yes, what is it? I’m a busy man. Can’t you see I’m busy? Eh? Look at this desk, just look at it! Projects, projects, pro— Never enough hours in the day to get... My secretary... I haven’t seen ... uh, she’s off on holiday. That bitch.’

He frantically moved papers around on the desk.

‘Danilov?’ O’Hara said.

The haunted man peered at him through the flickering candlelight. ‘I know you,’ he said. There was panic in his voice. ‘You’re here to kill me.’ He backed into the corner of his cell-like room, whimpering like a scared puppy, holding his umbrella in front of him, its point gleaming dangerously. O’Hara backed away from the deadly weapon.

‘I want to help you,’ O’Hara said.

‘I don’t want help. Get away from me. You’re one of them.’

‘One of whom?’

Danilov’s mood changed suddenly. ‘Don’t try to-You think I’m a fool? How did you get— All right, all right, where’s Security? Security! How did you get— Security! They sold me sold me... Oh, those bastards.. .‘ He closed his eyes and

beat one fist on his knee.

‘Nobody sold you out, Danilov. I promise you, your secret is safe with us. I’ve been on the dodge myself — for over a year.’

Danilov’s mood changed again. He giggled and spoke in mock musical tones. ‘Don’t believe you,’ he said, as if he were singing a song. ‘You lie. Everyone lies. Did you know that lying is an art?’

He waited for an answer, his eyebrows raised, then went on, ‘In the KGB they teach lying, like they teach point in ballet. Basic. Basic!’ A long pause. ‘Who are you? I do know you, don’t I?’

‘We’ve never met officially. My name’s O’Hara.’

‘O’Hara ... O’Hara... Irish, eh? IRA?’

‘American.’

‘Yesyesyesyoutoldmethatallrightallright,’ he babbled in frustration. Then, just as quickly, he became almost playful again. ‘Well, Slip the doodle-do, right?’ He leaned on the umbrella and danced a jig around it. ‘The cock-a-doodle-do.’ He raised his head and crowed like a rooster.

‘Mad as a fuckin’ hatter,’ the Magician whispered. ‘Let’s get the hell outa here. This guy’s absolutely tutti-fruiti, off-the- wall, bananas, Sailor.’

‘We didn’t come all the way up here to end up with nothing, Magician.’ O’Hara raised his voice and called out, ‘Mr Danilov?’

The little man stopped and peered forlornly over his shoulder at O’Hara.

‘We have a similar problem, Mr Daniov.’

The little man stopped his dance and looked at O’Hara quizzically. ‘Oh, really? The soil up here ... terrible, terrible. But.. . I have prevailed, sir.’ He pointed to the daisies. ‘Grown in pure rock. This place is a veritable Gibraltar. But... I did

prevail.’

‘My problem is not gardening,’ O’ Hara said.

‘Oh?’

‘My problem is, my own section chief sanctioned me.’

Danilov looked at him with suspicion. Then his mind began to shift; there was a glimmer of recognition, perhaps. ‘Happens all the time,’ he said. ‘When you trust someone, that’s the one not to trust. I call it my reversal theory, eh? Or is it the other way around?’

‘We want to help you, Danilov.’

‘To do what?’

‘Do you know why you’re here?’

‘Peace. Serenity. I don’t want to leave here. I like it here. No surprises anymore. I can’t stand surprises. Can’t stand

wondering. Every day is the same here. Food is the same. People are the same. I have a garden, just outside there. But it’s raining. Later, perhaps, we can take a stroll. Perhaps in the morning. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. . . Time will tell, eh? Are you a guest here too?’

He skittered close to O’Hara and said in a low voice, ‘I must warn you, the food is wretched. But the service, ah, the service

superb. Absolutely ... superb. Not a lot of jibber-jabber, and quite prompt. Certainly not.. . not of course, of course not

absolutely not the Plaza or the Savoy, but then, the food was never any good in Egypt, either. Do you travel?’

‘I’m leaving,’ the Magician whispered. ‘I listen to much more of this, I’ll be certifiable.’

O’Hara ignored him and pressed the point. ‘Mr Daniov, do you know who I am?’

Danilov strolled the room again, studying O’Hara’s candle- jaundiced face flickering before him. ‘My friend? My brother? My teacher, my priest, my driver, my enemy? L’enemi, yes. My ... own .. . executioner.’

‘Do you know who lam?’ O’Hara insisted.

The mad Bulgarian sat down again and pursed his lips. ‘I was always very good at tests,’ he said, still pondering, and then he said, ‘You’re the one they call the Sailor.’

O’Hara was taken aback. ‘That’s right,’ he said with surprise.

‘And you,’ he said to the Magician, ‘are the one with the hotel.’

‘Be damned,’ the Magician said.

Danilov turned back to O’Hara. ‘You ditched it.’

‘Right again.’

‘Ditched it. Yes, I remember you. I ditched it too. Not an easy thing to do.’

‘Why do you think that is?’

‘Because they don’t want that. It’s unsafe. They prefer to give you the long sleep.’

‘Who is “they”?’

‘The faceless ones, telephone voices, kill this one, kill that one. For what reason? Never mind. Oh, excuse me, excusez moi, monsieur.’

‘Who is Chameleon?’

‘I know and I don’t know.’

‘What does he look like?’

‘Everybody, nobody. He is a chameleon. The chameleon is never what it seems.’

‘What do you know about Master?’

He became cautious again. His eyes flicked around the room. ‘It’s very dangerous, you know, to underestimate them.’

‘Underestimate whom? You mean Master?’

‘They’re philosophical racists. Couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t do it and now ... no place left for me but here. It is my. . . rabbit hole.’

‘Why did you run, Danilov?’

‘Too old. Arthritis.’ He held up his deformed hands. ‘Senseless. Too many faces. The jolly fat man in the rain you can’t retire. No such thing as quitting. When you are no longer useful, they dispose of you. Understand? They shove you down the ... what do you call it?’—he made a sound like brrrttt—’... garbage disposal.’

‘And the only reason Master wants you dead is because you got arthritis?’

Danilov nodded ruefully. ‘Yes, the unpardonable. To get sick. Tried to keep them from finding out. But eventually there were ... things I couldn’t do anymore.’

He dry-washed his hands, over and over. Then he said, ‘I failed them. No such thing . .. failure.’

‘How did you fail them?’

‘Chameleon.’

‘What about Chameleon?’

‘I missed Chameleon.’

‘Missed him? Were you trying to kill him?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Did Quill tell you to kill Chameleon?’

‘You must find the ant before you can step on it.’

‘Did Quill tell you to find Chameleon?’

Danilov nodded slowly. He was staring at one of the candle flames, as though hypnotized.

‘And that’s the reason?’

He nodded. ‘Failure. They wanted me to do that job in Hawaii, too, but I was too far away. Couldn’t hold that against me.’

‘What job in Hawaii?’

‘The man with the pictures from the Thoreau.’

O’Hara looked at the Magician, his eyebrows rising into question marks.

‘You mean the oil rig that sank?’ the Magician asked.

‘Yes. Where we lost Thornby.’

‘You mean Thornley, the British agent?’ said O’Hara. ‘Yes, only he changed all that. Buried at sea, I understand. Poetic, don’t you think?’

‘Did Thornley recruit you into Master?’

‘Yes. Paris. Three years ago. My first job was ... was Simmons. Texas. In Houston. Gave him the old whack with the umbrella. Dead in six hours. Heart attack. They never knew.’ He smiled and winked.

‘Let’s get back to the Thoreau for a minute. Did they actually sink the Thoreau?’

‘Yes. With all hands. A hundred and some. Eighty million... a hundred million dollars. It was a terrifying feat. All we lost was Thornley, hardly a fair trade, yes? Took out one of the legs with plastique.’

‘And they wanted you to get pictures of the rig that someone else had taken, is that it?’

‘The photographs were of the pumping system. Very revolutionary, But they didn’t want to see them, they just wanted them destroyed, and the chap that took them. All the same day. Quaint, eh?’

‘What do you mean, the same day?’

‘The same day they sank the Thoreau was the day they wanted me for the take-out in Hawaii. I suppose they got someone else to do it. I was in London, couldn’t get out. Bad weather. Not surprising.’

‘Daniov, who ordered the take-out n Chameleon?’

‘The phone.’

‘Was it Quill?’

‘Yes.’

‘Quill gave you a sanction on Chameleon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘There are no reasons. There are never any reasons.’

‘Can you guess?’

‘He has become a problem.’

‘Doesn’t he run Master?’

He nodded.

‘So Quill wants to get rid of Chameleon and take over the whole operation?’

Daniov shrugged. ‘There are no reasons,’ he said. Outside, the storm had subsided. Thunder still rumbled between the mountain peaks.

‘Where is Chameleon?’

‘I lost him.’

‘Where did you lose him?’

‘Tokyo.’

‘He lives in Tokyo?’

Daniov shrugged again. ‘Perhaps.’

‘So Quill ordered you to seek and destroy Chameleon and you followed him to Tokyo and lost him. Is that when you ran?’

‘No. Found him and lost him in Tokyo.’

‘Where? Where did you lose him?’

‘On the street. Poof! he was gone.’

‘How did you get on to him?’

‘Too long. One thing and another. Others failed before me.’

‘Danilov, how many people have you killed for Master?’

‘How many?’

‘All right, who?’

‘Simmons in Houston, Richman in New York, Garcia in Los Angeles, a man in Teheran, another in Greece. And . . . it was cold and rainy. . . always cold and rainy - . . jolly man. Fat. The boat man. This was in .. . in. . .‘ His memory had clouded over again.

‘Did anyone other than Quill ever give you an assignment?’

‘Cutout.’

‘Who?’

He shook his head. ‘Left a message at hotel. “Your football tickets are at the box office.” That way I knew to get him at the arena.’

‘Which one was this?’

‘Simmons. I remember now, the one in the rain.., that was in Japan. Bridges. Name was Bridges. The jolly shipbuilder. Fat man. Got him coming out of a restaurant.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘I ... don’t remember...’

‘Danilov, how did you recognize Chameleon in Tokyo?’

‘I ... don’t remember.,.’

‘And you’ve never met Quill.’

‘Quill is a voice. Chameleon is a ghost. Midas is lost.’

‘Midas? Who is Midas?’

‘Midas...’

‘Is it a person? A place?’

‘I ... don’t remember...’

He looked up very suddenly, sat straight up in the chair with his hands on his knees, the umbrella at his side. ‘The teacher will now recite Pound. You can recite Pound, can’t you? What a strange name—Ezra. What a heavy burden to put on a son.,

‘Danilov...’

And then he fell to his knees and began a bizarre litany:

‘Nabikov, Ivan, a street in Paris, on his way to work. Gregori, Georg, London, right in front of Parliament. . .‘ and continued chanting the list of his victims.

‘You lost him, Sailor,’ said the Magician.

‘Damn!’

‘You got a lot.’

‘He knows a lot more.’

‘Not tonight. He’s gone back in his rabbit hole.’

Daniov looked at them, his alabaster eyes twinkling with madness again. And roaring like a forest beast, he grabbed the umbrella and jumped up and began slashing at the candlesticks.

‘He’s lost it, man. Let’s get the shit outta here.’

O’Hara and the Magician backed toward the door as the madman continued to smash out the candles. He charged through the darkness when they reached the door, the deadly umbrella held like a spear before him. They ducked out the door and slammed it shut.

‘Wow!’ said the Magician, ‘that was a cl—’

The umbrella came slashing through the window in the door, its tip brushing O’Hara’s hair. He fell sideways and slammed the bolt shut.

Daniov began to scream. He screamed as they made their way back through the serpentine passageways to the gate. He was still screaming as they were lowered, one by one, down from the pinnacle of hell.

15

‘Okay, so you broke Lavander’s code,’ said the Magician. ‘Let’s see what you got.’

Rested, showered and attended by fresh fruit and coffee, they hovered over Izzy as the Magician prepared to conjure information from its memory, his fingers poised over the computer’s keyboard as though it were a Steinway. He was humming ‘Body and Soul’ as he urged the computer to talk to him.

Eliza explained that she had run several combinations of sentences from the Lavander book through the computer, trying to break the code by trial and error. Then she began thinking about what the Magician had said: if it was not written down, it would have to be simple because nobody could remember twenty-six letter substitutions. Twenty-six. The alphabet. And she remembered from her childhood a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet: ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’

Her next step had been to experiment with the alphabet, running it forward and in reverse under the sentence, trying to decipher his alphabetic code. That didn’t work.

‘So,’ she said, ‘I left the sentence on the monitor, and then

I started running the alphabet under it, moving one letter to the

end of the alphabet each time. In other words, I started with

b as the first letter, then c. I got up to I and that was the

The Magician said, ‘So what we got is...’

‘The quick brown fx imps v lazy dg.

‘And under that we put the alphabet, starting with I instead of

‘lmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk...’

‘Put em all together and what’ve yuh got?

‘Thequickbrownfxjmps vlazydg...’

‘lmnopqrstuvwxyzabcd efghijk...’

‘And there it is. L equals t, mequals h, and so forth.’ He turned to Eliza. ‘Neat.’

‘Yeah, pretty good, Gunn,’ O’Hara said. ‘L for Lavander, that’s easy to remember too.’

‘Does that qualify me to work with you big-timers?’

‘Well, it’s a good start,’ O’Hara had to admit.

‘Thanks a damn bunch,’ she said.

‘So we got a code, where do we go from here?’ the Magician said, ignoring their banter.

Eliza had set up a temporary key—definition library in the computer, replacing the letters on the keyboard with the code letters, and had typed almost all of the information from Lavander’s notebook into the computer.

‘What’s the file name?’ the Magician asked her.

‘LAV/1.’

The Magician typed out ‘LAV/l’ and the screen filled with rows of words and figures. Many of the entries were names of banks with lists of deposits under each heading. Most of the remaining entries, however, were names of companies with coded lists of figures under them.

‘Christ, here’s a bank in Grand Cayman with over a hundred grand in it!’ The Magician was genuinely awed.

‘So far, there are deposits listed in there for almost a million dollars,’ Eliza said, ‘but that’s not what’s really interesting. He’s got production figures, oil-field capacities, refinery operations, everything you can imagine on a dozen or more oil companies, how much they say they pay for crude oil, how much they really pay. It’s an encyclopaedia of juicy information.’

She pointed to two figures on the monitor screen. ‘Published Reserve Capacity versus Actual Reserve Capacity,’ she said. ‘In every entry, the actual reserve are millions of barrels higher than they report. They’re lying to the public, O’Hara.’

‘What’s so surprising about that? They kill people, blow up oil rigs, assassinate politicians. What’s a little lie to the public mean to them? They have to do something to justify ripping us off.’

‘That’s a bit cynical, isn’t it?’

‘Realistic,’ O’Hara said.

‘What’s all this got to do with Chameleon?’ the Magician asked.

‘I’ve said all along, there’s got to be a pattern to this. An objective other than just killing for profit. I think we’re right in the middle of some kind of international oil scandal.’

‘Maybe Hinge killed Lavander to get this book and you beat him to it — maybe it’s just that simple,’ Eliza said.

‘It’s a possibility,’ said the Magician.

‘Yeah, in which case every company in that book has a motive for killing the old boy,’ Eliza said.

‘We need to turn up one bad guy, O’Hara said. ‘Without at least one client we can name, the story falls flat. What the hell motivates the people who hire Master? Who wanted Lavander assassinated? Why was the Thoreau sabotaged? Why was Marza’s car blown up? Who was behind the murders of Simmons and the rest of them? Not just generally. Specifically, why were these things done?’

‘I could make a coupla good guesses,’ the Magician said.

‘Not worth a doodly-shit,’ Eliza said. ‘I see his point.’ ‘And if we can’t get it?’ said the Magician.

‘What we need is Chameleon himself,’ said O’Hara. ‘You tried military and naval intelligence, right?’

The Magician nodded.

‘How about the OSS?’

‘Their files went into the CIA when they reorganized,’ the Magician said. ‘I’ve already checked them.’

‘How about inactive cases?’ O’Hara said. ‘Maybe they’ve got him cubby-holed somewhere. Go back to MI. I’ve turned up more than one sleeper by checking deep.’

The magician punched Military Intelligence Files and queried the index.

‘Hell,’ he said, ‘we got “Inactive, US,” “Inactive, Europe,” “Inactive. . .“ Look at all this shit.’

‘Call up Inactive and run Chameleon through them all.’ The Magician started pounding Izzy’s keys and kept coming up with the same answer: ‘No such file.’ Then, under ‘Inactive, Japan,’ they got a strike:

—Chameleon. N/O/I, Head of Japanese training unit for intelligence agents. On list of war criminals, 1945—1950. Believed killed at Hiroshima, 8.6.45. Declared legally dead, 2.12.50.

Period.

‘What’s N/Oh, mean?’ Eliza asked.

“No other identification,” said O’Hara.

They stared at the entry for a long minute. Finally O’Hara said, ‘He must’ve been on the hot list. Took them five years to declare him dead.’

The Magician said, ‘Not much there.’

‘It seems like it would be a common code name, Chameleon,’ Eliza said. ‘Maybe there’s more than one.’

‘Maybe,’ O’Hara said. ‘Or maybe he didn’t die at Hiroshima.’

‘He’d have to be, shit, close to seventy. That was more than thirty-five years ago.’

‘You don’t stop functioning when you’re seventy,’ said O’Hara. But he tucked the information in the back of his mind for future use.

‘Let’s go on to something else,’ Eliza said. ‘What other outside sources can Izzy tap?’

‘Name it. UPI, the New York Times, Washington Post, Dow Jones, the Wall Street Journal, the CIA, the British Secret Service, la Surete.

‘Can we feed the names we picked up from Daniov in this thing and scan some of them for information?’

‘That’s what it’s made for, and it’s not “this thing,” Sailor,’ said the Magician. ‘Just call it Izzy. Anything this smart should be treated with a little respect.’

They settled down to work, scanning the wire services and newspapers to get information on the victims, It was tiring because it was boring, typing in requests, getting ‘No info available’ back. Hours went by. It was amazing how many Simmonses and Richmans popped up, obviously not connected. Then they got a hit.

They had queried United Press International to scan Houston newspaper obits from October 1976 through October 1977 for Merrill Wendell Simmons. According to Daniov, he had killed Simmons three years earlier, which would have been in the spring. But the cutout had left his ‘football tickets’ at the box office, which would indicate Danilov was mistaken on the date. It might have been in the fall.

Danilov was mistaken. It had been three and half years.

The machine spelled out:

—UPI/Ref/Houston Chronicle/11.12 .76/p. 1 C @File:

HUCH/76/l1/12/NWS./2555-242.

‘Let’s see who he was,’ O’Hara said.

The Magician typed out the file number and the obit appeared on the screen.

—Houston, 12 November (UPI)—Millionaire oil tycoon Merrill Wendell (‘Corkscrew’) Simmons, former SMU quarterback, who parlayed a single oil lease won in a poker game into the sprawling American Petroleum Corporation, died of a massive heart attack at his home in suburban Houston tonight. He was 56 years old,

The business magnate had appeared in excellent health and had attended an SMU homecoming game in the afternoon. He complained of feeling ill while preparing steaks on an outdoor grill in his backyard and collapsed a few moments later. Simmons was rushed to Houston General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival at 7:25 p.m.

A fairly detailed biography followed.

‘Well, that’s one confirmed kill for Danilov. Who’s next?’ ft was their first break and it renewed their energy. They kept

seeking information, checking and cross-checking each name and the new leads it created. Slowly, the information began building up.

—Jack ‘Red’ Bridges, President, Bridges Salvage Corp., Tokyo, Japan, died, heart attack, 6.2 1.77.

—Arnold Richman, Sunset Oil International President, died on business trip to New York, 2.9.77,

—Abraham Garcia, President and Chairman of the Board, Hensell Oil Co., died of a heart attack on a business trip to Los Angeles, 9.18.78.

‘That’s the four of them. He must have been telling the truth,’ O’Hara said.

‘This Chameleon has a real hard-on for oil companies,’ the Magician said, ‘Three oil-company execs have been kayoed, plus the Thoreau was sabotaged.’

‘Let’s not forget Lavander,’ Eliza said, ‘he was in oil up to his eyebrows. And speaking of that, all of the companies these guys worked for are in this book. Just look, here’s Hensell... Am Petro ... Sunset...’

O’Hara looked at the decoded entries which Eliza had run off on the printer. On the second line of each of the three entries was the word ‘AMRAN.’

‘What’s AMRAN?’ O’Hara asked.

‘I dunno,’ the Magician said. Eliza just shrugged.

‘Can we find out from Izzy here?’

‘I’ll try Dow Jones.’

Half a dozen references popped tip immediately.

‘Bingo!’ cried the Magician. ‘Now we’re cookin’, man. Let’s scan the profile outline from the Wall Street Journal.’

‘What’s the date?’ O’Hara asked.

‘9 November.’

‘Pretty recent. Let’s see it.’

The outline flashed on the screen:

.—AMRAN Ltd Consortium formed 28 October 1979. Comprised of Intercon Oil Corp., American Petro Ltd, Hensell Oil Products Corp., Sunset Oil Intern’l Inc., The Alamo Oil Company, The Stone Corporation, Bridges Salvage Corp.

Objectives: Stronger market position, joint experimental ventures, consolidation of markets, increased financial strength. Chief Executive Officer: Alexander Lee Hooker, Gen of the Army (Ret); VP, Operations: Jesse W. Garvey, Gen, US Army (Ret); VP, Marketing: (Position vacant since death of Vice President Ralph Greentree, 1.3.80.) Chief Financing Institution: First Boston Common Bank. Home office: Tanabe, Japan.

‘I’ll be damned. I thought the Hook was dead. I haven’t heard anything about him in years,’ O’Hara said. ‘And their main base is in Japan.’

‘Where’s Tanabe?’ asked Eliza.

‘On the east coast of Honshu, about a hundred miles from Kyoto. Desolate goddamn place.’

‘Chameleon’s really got it in for AMRAN,’ said Eliza. ‘He’s killed most of the executives in the consortium. The Thoreau was owned by Sunset Oil. The guy who was killed on Maui had pictures from the Thoreau.’

‘Anybody wanna take bets on how old Ralphie Greentree died?’ said the Magician.

‘Just for the hell of it, Magician, check Alamo and see if they’ve had any recent deaths in the high echelons.’

The Magician asked for a profile on Alamo Oil. There it was, four lines down:

—David Fiske Thurman, Chairman of the Board, Alamo Oil Company, killed in single-car wreck, outskirts of Dallas, Texas, 4.8.77.

‘Try Ralph Greentree.’

—Ralph Greentree, former Executive Vice President of Alamo Oil Company and Marketing VP of AMRAN, drowned while vacationing in Honolulu, 1.3.80.

‘It’s getting better,’ O’Hara said. ‘Guess who was on Maui two days before that?’

‘Hinge,’ Eliza said.

‘Right. Greentree drowned three days after Hinge killed the man on Maui and lifted the film from the Thoreau. Honolulu’s a thirty-minute plane ride from Maui.’

‘What else?’

‘Try one more. Try this Stone Corp., see what we can find out.’

Izzy revealed the following:

—The Stone Corporation. Holding company in the power and energy field. Corporation’s widespread holdings are not a matter of public record, but are known to include nuclear power plants in Ga, NC, Ala, Fla and national and international oil-refining properties. Temporary Executive Officer, Melvin James, replacing C.L.K. Robertson III, who died in crash of private plane, 6.25.78.

‘Jesus,’ said the Magician, ‘I’d like to think some of these people actually died in accidents. But I’ve got serious doubts,’

‘How about this final entry?’ Eliza said. They bad overlooked the last paragraph of the outline:

Newest acquisition: merger with Japanese conglomerate, San-San. 5.10.79

‘What’s this San-San?’ Eliza said.

‘It’s a very powerful company over there,’ said O’Hara. ‘But I really don’t know much about it.’

‘I’ve had it,’ the Magician said.

He got up and stretched. Eliza slipped behind the keyboard, changed disks and started feeding the last few entries from Lavander’ s book into Izzy.

‘Don’t you ever get tired?’ the Magician asked in a somewhat annoyed tone.

‘It’s youth,’ O’Hara said.

Their energy had carried them for hours and now, suddenly, all three of them seemed to fall apart at once. They decided to take a break and let Izzy print out the remaining entries in Lavander’s book.

Eliza, spotting the entry as they were leaving for dinner, said, ‘O’Hara, better look at this.’

There it was, on the print-out, one of the last entries:

—Midas/lo 354,200/109, 12/lgr Ghawar/es 2bb/d 0-112.

The three of them hunched over the printer, staring at the entry for several seconds.

“Midas is lost...” O’Hara said.

‘What?’ said Eliza.

‘That’s what Danilov said, “Midas is lost.” Midas isn’t a person, it’s a company or place. Wonder what all these figures mean. And what is “Jo”? And “Gha’..var”?’

‘I haven’t seen another entry like this,’ Eliza said. ‘Usually you can tell what the figures mean.’

‘I’m too tired to figure out what anything means anymore,’ the Magician said. ‘I gotta get some shut-eye.’

‘Okay, let’s pack it in. Izzy can run the print-out on all this and we’ll take it with us.’

‘Take it with us where?’ asked Eliza.

‘Japan.’

‘Japan!’

‘Right. AMRAN’s in Japan. Hooker’s in Japan. Bridges was in Japan, Chameleon’s in Japan, San-San is in Japan. Obviously there’s only one place to be, so let’s all get some rest. The next stop is Tokyo.’