Chameleon

10

‘This is Chameleon, but not the Chameleon you seek,’ Kimura said, putting his hand on Okari’s shoulder,

O’Hara had called the hotel. As planned, Eliza and the Magician had taken the late-afternoon train to Kyoto and they were in the bar waiting for him to return from Tanabe. He did not explain where he was and what had happened, he merely gave them the address. Now they were all seated in a square. O’Hara and Gunn faced Kimura and Okari, The Magician was seated at one end of the square and Sammi faced him. Tension still crackled between O’Hara and Okari, but they listened intently as Kimura spoke.

‘Imagine that I have several boxes,’ he began. ‘Each is made of glass, so we can see through it, and in each box there is an event. In each box we have placed a moment of history. But to consider these moments in their proper order, we must suspend the boxes in air so we can see each in relationship to the others. Only then can we have a true understanding of what has happened and why. Only then can we see what lies behind each event. Only then will we understand everything. If there is something significant we don’t know, it will become obvious in its absence.

‘So, let us begin with the first box, the one we see most clearly. In it we will put what you have learned, Kazuo, so you must tell us what you know, not what you think.

‘What we know is that a consortium of several petroleum companies was formed. It was conceived by General Alexander Hooker, who was president of Intercon Oil. During the three or four years Hooker was negotiating this deal, the heads of all of these companies either died of heart attacks or were killed in accidents. This includes Shichi Tomoro, the head of the Japanese combine San-San, which has just become a new member of AMRAN. An experimental oil rig was also sabotaged in Alaskan waters.’

‘Excuse me,’ Eliza said, ‘the same thing happened with the Aquila Milena, the car Marza was driving when he was killed. We don’t know why yet. And the Aquila Motor Works is now part of AMRAN, and the consortium is financing work on the car.’

‘Don’t forget the guy in Hawaii,’ said the Magician.

‘Yes ,“ said O’Hara. ‘A man was apparently murdered for some pictures that were taken aboard the oil rig. But all they wanted to do was destroy the film.’

Kimura, like a mime describing a story with his hands, hung invisible glass boxes in the air each time they brought up a new point. ‘It is important to remember in what order these things occurred. The dates do not matter so much as the order,’ he said.

‘Another element in the sequence is Red Bridges,’ Eliza went on. ‘He was a salvage man in Japan right after the war. He went from that to shipbuilding and then became involved in developing a large underwater living environment. It was designed by the scuba scientist Kaginakas. Both he and Bridges later died of heart attacks. The dish, as it was called, has since been completed and taken to... somewhere.’

‘He was also involved in refitting old Liberty ships, turning them into tankers,’ the Magician said.

‘And we learned yesterday that Bridges was part of San-San, which is now part of the consortium,’ Eliza added.

More boxes in the air. Kimura leaned back, concentrating on the imaginary complex he was building. ‘A question: Is there any doubt in your minds that these corporation people who died were actually killed by the mad one with the umbrella?’

O’Hara, Eliza and the Magician all shook their heads.

‘The accidental deaths were probably executed by someone other than Danilov,’ O’Hara said. ‘Falmouth, maybe, or a Frenchman named Le Croix, who is also a faceless one, although his reputation as a sadist is well documented. But the heart attacks were caused by Danilov, there is no question.’

‘And why has AMRAN been singled out as a victim of this terrorist you call Chameleon?’ Okari said.

‘Extortion,’ said O’Hara. ‘AMRAN refused to play ball.’

‘Play ball?’ Okari asked.

‘A beikoku no expression,’ Kimura explained. ‘It means they would not cooperate.’

‘There is another box we left out,’ Eliza said. ‘The oil consultant, Lavander. He had worked for all of these companies during the past year or so, including San-San, and he was murdered too, after they went to a lot of trouble to free him from a terrorist kidnapping in South America.’

‘Do you think there was a connection between the two terrorist groups, those who kidnapped Lavander and those who freed him?’ Kimura asked.

‘No,’ said O’Hara. ‘I think it was a genuine fluke. But it apparently scared one of these oil companies. They sent a man to test Lavander, and Lavander failed. He had become a security risk to someone.’

‘We recovered a ledger of his,’ Eliza said. ‘It contains highly confidential figures from all of the AMRAN oil companies, as well as others he worked for. The figures could be very damaging if they got out.’

‘Why?’ Kimura asked.

‘Because they prove that the companies have lied to the public about the amount of oil they have in reserve.’

‘And why would they do that?’

‘To control the price of oil,’ O’Hara said. ‘The profit margins are staggering — four, five hundred percent a year. The public thinks it’s because there’s a shortage of oil, when actually there’s a surplus.’

‘I see. Go on’

‘There was also a notation about something called Midas,’ O’Hara said. ‘And Danilov mentioned Midas to me. He said, “Midas is lost.”

‘And Midas is another question for which there is no obvious answer at this point,’ said Kimura. ‘So, now we have six questions unanswered. First, why was the man killed in Hawaii? Second, where was this dish of Bridges’ taken and what is it for? Third, what is Midas? Fourth, why was this man Lavander assassinated? Fifth, why was the oil rig sabotaged?

And finally, why was the Italian car blown up? Is that correct?’

‘Right,’ said O’Hara.

‘Is there anything else?’

‘Yes,’ said O’Hara, ‘what was Tony Falmouth doing here?’

‘Perhaps the most revealing question of all,’ said Kimura. ‘But we will hold it for a few more minutes. Do you still believe Chameleon is alive, Kazuo?’

‘I’m looking at him,’ O’Hara said.

‘And the Chameleon you seek was a Japanese agent in World War II, correct?’

O’Hara nodded. Kimura looked at Okari and asked, ‘Does this look like a man who served in World War II?’

O’Hara laughed. ‘No,’ he said.

‘We can assume, then, that they are two different Chameleons?’

O’Hara nodded.

‘So, we now have many boxes to peer through. But before we go any further, let us deal with this anger that is between you two.’

‘I didn’t come here to kill anyone,’ O’Hara said to Okari. ‘I came to find the truth.’

‘And what is the truth?’ Kimura demanded.

‘That Chameleon is a monster who destroys without feeling, who kills for profit.’

‘My son, you have been chasing a name, not a person. You have both been tricked.’

‘Tricked? By whom?’

‘The eikoku-jin outside, the dead one. He tricked you, Kazuo, into believing that Okari was your enemy. And you, Okari, were tricked into believing O’ Hara had come to kill you. You both chose to believe what was obvious, and yet you both know that the truth often hides behind lies.’

‘Then what—’

‘Tell me again, O’Hara, what was your purpose in pursuing Chameleon?’

‘To destroy him with the truth.’

‘And you, Okari?’

‘They have sent killers after me before Why should this one be different?’

‘Because Kazuo is not one of them. You both have the same objective. You both seek to destroy the same evil and yet you have permitted that evil to turn you into enemies.’

‘And Falmouth?’ O’Hara said.

‘An instrument. He follows you to Chameleon and kills both of you.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I listen with my brain, not my heart. Why else? You yourself have admitted to me that the eikoku-jin told you Chameleon was the head of these mercenary terrorists. It was he who sent you on the journey because he was not good enough to find Chameleon himself. For what other reason would he follow you?’

‘I find it hard to believe, Tokenrui-san, that Falmouth was such a man.’

‘I admire your loyalty but not your perception. Why do you still trust him? He killed for money. Can such a man be honourable? Can he truly be a friend? And do you honestly believe that one who shares the Way with you is evil?’

‘Perhaps my ego won’t let me admit I was a sucker.’

Kimura nodded sagely. ‘That is possible. But you had a difficult problem. He told you lies and painted them with truth. And then the mad one on the mountain confirmed them with his lunacy.’

‘So Falmouth shopped me to get to Chameleon?’

‘That was his job, Kazuo, to eliminate a perpetual enemy.

‘But why? If Chameleon is not one of them, why are they so desperate to eliminate him?’

‘We will come to that. Let us stay with the subject. This eikoku-jin would then have killed you because you know too much. It was a risk they took, to reveal enough to put you on the scent but not tell you too much. You were better than they thought. You and Gunn-san.’

‘And then he would have killed Eliza and the Magician for the same reason.’

‘It is likely.’

‘You are right, Tokenrui-san, Falmouth could have killed me with ease. I wasn’t expecting it.’

Kimura nodded, but added, ‘Okari told me the eikoku-jin was behind you. He believed you were working together. It was when you told me you had not seen the Englishman since your meeting on the sea that I understood what he was up to.’

‘Great — now I owe Chameleon my life!’ O’Hara said.

‘Hai, A burden that is heavy to bear.’

‘I am in your debt, flu-san,’ O’Hara said and bowed to Okari.

‘And I owe you my apology, for drawing the sword against a brother.’

‘Ah, a beginning. Now we will have to endure the tests,’ Kimura said with a sigh.

‘Tests?’ Okari asked.

‘Yes, you will test him, he will test you. Ultimately you will be true brothers, but before that, there will be this testing and it will be quite a bore, I think.’

‘The testing is over,’ said O’Hara..

‘Yes,’ Okari agreed. ‘I have too heavy a burden to concern myself with such trivial matters.’

‘It has become a burden for all of us, Okari. We are all involved now,’ Kimura said.

‘I still don’t know why Master is so dedicated to killing Okari,’ Eliza said.

‘Not Okari Chameleon. It is important to remember that.’

‘Why?’

‘To understand that, we must go back to the boxes. Now that you understand this Chameleon is not your enemy, what do the boxes tell you? Study the sequence of events. The men who were murdered all died before their companies were swallowed up by this AMRAN, is that not correct?’

‘All but Bridges,’ said the Magician ‘He was part of San-San almost from the beginning.’

‘But the others were,’ said O’Hara.

‘The answer is in the boxes,’ said Kimura. ‘The Chameleon you seek wears the skin of a hero but has the heart of a weasel. He wears garlands when he should wear thorns. He used his military office to become rich. And he has fashioned an organization with its own assassins, thieves, destructors.’

‘Hooker,’ Eliza said. ‘You mean our war hero is the head of all this?’

‘The true Chameleon,’ said O’Hara. ‘The question is, Why? Why did they have Falmouth set me off on a trail that would eventually lead back to them?’

‘That’s easy,’ said the Magician. ‘They had one of the best damn assassins in the world shopping you all the way. If you got outa line, they’d pull the plug.’

‘This man who followed me was really following you,’ said Okari. ‘I saw him at the station. I mistakenly thought that you were working as a team. And when he started to follow me, I was sure of it.’

‘Sumpin’ happened,’ said the Magician. ‘You just came from your meetin’ with Hooker. Falmouth musta known where you were goin’ and when you were comin’ back. He was waitin’ at the train station, right? Then he musta changed his mind at the last minute, see, decided to follow Okari here instead.’

A sad smile crossed O’Hara’s face. ‘He told me he was getting too old for the Game, that he made mistakes. Sooner or later it had to be a big one.’

‘So — we look at the boxes and we see the general, Hooker, building his oil empire by murder. The reasons could be many. What is important now is that you must quickly destroy Hooker. He knows how dangerous you are. “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

‘Anybody got any ideas?’ asked the Magician.

Okari said, ‘It is written in the Tendai that truth kills faster than poison.’

‘Well spoken,’ Kimura agreed, ‘but what meaning does that bring to this problem?’

‘Are not the Gunn-san and Kazuo voices of the truth?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Eliza, ‘but the truth requires proof, and so far we couldn’t prove doodly-squat.’

‘Perhaps the final boxes will give us an answer,’ said Kimura. ‘But to put events in their proper place, we must go back to before the war. To the first Chameleon, Yamuchi Asieda.

‘Asieda never married. His brother, an admiral in the Imperial Navy, was taken prisoner in the early days of the war. When the Philippines were about to fall, Hooker was ordered to leave his headquarters at Bastine by your President Roosevelt. Through an accident, Hooker’s adopted son was left behind and ultimately fell into the hands of Asieda, who took him back to Japan.

‘The boy, who was half Filipino, looked more Japanese than even his mother, so living here was not difficult for him. Asieda took him to Dragon’s Nest, where he tried to arrange a trade. The boy for Asieda’s brother. He communicated by sending Hooker a chameleon in a box and then he found the boy’s mother and sent her to try to negotiate the trade. Hooker responded by murdering her. Asieda had no choice. Negotiation was out of the question, But what could he do with Hooker’s son?

‘Remember, this was a very kind man, not a war lord. And through the months of captivity, he had developed a great affection for Hooker’s son. The boy ultimately felt secure with Asieda. They became inseparable. A true irony that Chameleon should adopt the son of his deadliest enemy.

‘But as the war drew to its close., the members of the War Council panicked. The few who knew who Chameleons son really was demanded a meeting, in Hiroshima. It was their plan to use the boy as a bargaining tool once the war was over. Asieda, of course, disagreed. They fought about it, and that night Chameleon, disguised as a woman, slipped away with his son and left at dawn by train two hours before the city was obliterated. Asieda and young Hooker watched from the train.

‘He and the boy became nomads. They had two things in common: they loved each other and they hated Hooker. Ultimately they settled in Kushiro on the island of Hokkaido to the north. Asieda became a fisherman.

‘Asieda had made a vow that he would never let Hooker rest. He knew Hooker had murdered his own mistress, Bobby’s mother. He knew he was using his military position to set up new industries in Japan in which he was a silent partner. He. learned all of the general’s vulnerabilities, and there were many. Chameleon knew more about General Hooker than anyone alive. And he became like a conscience. When Hooker became military governor, he helped set up the conglomerate San-San and made Tomoro the head of it. In exchange, Tomoro tried for five years to track down Chameleon. But it was impossible. Chameleon’s agents would never have revealed his identity — they were all members of the higaru-dashi. And those few members of the council who knew his true identity all died at Hiroshima.’

‘Asieda, too, was reported dead at Hiroshima,’ said Okari. ‘And so, for thirty years, Hooker was hounded by a ghost — Chameleon. Of course, it was no ghost, only one man, devoted to psychologically destroying his enemy. A simple fisherman who had taken a vow to wreak his revenge on a dishonourable man by becoming the voice of his conscience. His old agents provided him with information. So did his friends in the government. The vendetta worked both ways. Hooker sent assassin after assassin to find Chameleon. Some gave up. Some died, The last to come was your friend Falmouth. And although Asieda died peacefully in his sleep four years ago, Chameleon lives on. His son took up the vow. And it will go on until Hooker dies or they kill me.’

‘So you’re Bobby Hooker,’ Eliza said.

‘I am Okari Asieda,’ the tattooed man said. ‘Bobby Hooker no longer exists.’

He revealed to them private feelings which he could never share before, how he had hated and feared Asieda-san for months and how Asieda-san with patience and wisdom had finally won him over, had explained the meaning of the Tendai and the most ancient myths and how to live in the forest and fish the sea.

‘And when the war was over and he set off on his Walk of a Thousand Days, I went with him, begging at doorways, walking from one end of Japan to the other, as he sought the wisdom of Zen. And always there was time for the lessons. He taught me the Way of the Secret Warrior, the Moves of the Sword, the Language of the Creatures. He taught me honour, respect and love. And finally, he revealed to me the seventh level of the higaru-dashi.’

‘And he never attempted blackmail? Extortion?’ the Magician asked.

‘He never asked for anything after his brother died.’

O’Hara leaned back, staring at the imaginary boxes hanging in the air before him, looking back through time. Slowly the pieces began to fall into place. The sequence became obvious to him.

What Hooker and his elitist friends needed was a power base of their own. From that, they could begin monopolizing other related companies. There was only one problem: monopolies were illegal. But an oil consortium of separately owned corporations, each with its own autonomy — that would be perfect. The key was AMRAN, They formed the consortium, then killed the key men in the member corporations and put their own people in. In effect, they owned every company. They owned Hensell, Alamo, Sunset, Intercom, Am Petro and San-San and all its subsidiaries. They even controlled a bank in Boston. The common thread was oil.

There were still a few empty boxes,

‘I keep wondering why they blew up Marza’s car,’ Eliza said.

‘It made it easier to take over Aquila.’

‘And,’ the Magician said, ‘do you know what was so special about that car?’ Eliza shook her head. ‘The fucker was supposed to get fifty, sixty miles to the gallon. It would have revolutionized the auto business. Do you realize how that would have cut into AMRAN’s profits?’

‘My god,’ Eliza said. ‘Are they that greedy?’

‘Money’s no longer the game,’ O’Hara said. ‘They’ve got all the money they need. Now the game is pure power.’

‘Then why did they sink the Thoreau?’ Eliza asked. ‘If the AMRAN people were wooing Sunset Oil as a potential member of the consortium, they were destroying an eighty-million-dollar asset that might someday belong to them. Isn’t that kinda cutting off your nose to spite your face?’

‘Maybe it was a squeeze play,’ said the Magician. ‘Maybe Sunset was a holdout, and it couldn’t afford to be a holdout anymore after the rig got knocked over.’

‘That’s a good theory,’ said O’Hara. ‘But let’s look beyond it for a minute. Why were the pictures lifted in Hawaii and then destroyed?’

‘Because nobody needed them,’ the Magician said.

‘Then why buy them?’

‘So nobody else would!’ Eliza said.

‘That’s what I think,’ said O’Hara. ‘Which indicates that whoever had the man killed had the details of something on the Thoreau.’

‘The pumping station,’ said the Magician. ‘Gotta be!’

‘If that’s the case, there were two reasons for destroying the Thoreau. One was to put Sunset in a financial bind. The other was because AMRAN already had the plans for the pumping station. They wanted the pictures off the market. So AMRAN is probably using that pumping station itself.’

‘It’s interesting,’ O’Hara said. ‘Hooker denies any knowledge of Midas.’

‘What is Midas?’ asked Okari.

‘We think it’s an oil field, maybe the largest in the world. But we don’t know where it is.’

‘And I think I know why,’ Eliza said.

They all turned toward the tiny reporter, who was wearing one of her million-dollar smiles.

‘Well?’ O’Hara said.

‘It’s underwater. Kraft American said the underwater dish built by Bridges was called Midas. Midas is the heart of the oil field, it’s the pumping station for the whole operation. And it’s all under the sea, the perfect hiding place.’

‘But where is it’?’ the Magician asked.

‘I think I can help there,’ Okari said. ‘I have seen the room from which they direct everything. It is enormous, perhaps forty meters high. And there is a huge map with odd-shaped TV screens recessed in it.’

‘They’re called diod screens,’ said the Magician. ‘Free form.’

‘These TV screens show their operations all over the world. They can watch everything that goes on in this empire of theirs.

There is one in particular, near Bonin, which has this undersea dish you speak of. They have TV pictures inside and out. And there are also ships down there, it is like some great graveyard of old tankers.’

‘Beautiful,’ said the Magician. ‘That’s the answer to the tankers. They sink them and Store oil in them. I’ll bet more than one skipper has vanished in that part of the ocean in the last few years.’

‘And Yumishawa has a new refinery on the Bonin Islands, less than a hundred miles away,’ said Okari.

‘So they pump oil from their underwater storage ships to their refinery as they need it. Christ, what an ingenious operation,’ said O’Hara.

‘They been on to this for — what, thirty years?’ the Magician said. ‘Why didn’t they start pumping oil back then? Why wait?’

‘They couldn’t do anything before this,’ Eliza said. ‘Not without revealing the existence of the strike. That’s their ace in the hole. It gives them almost unlimited oil reserves. Just think what that means in the marketplace. The longer they keep it under wraps, the more powerful they become.’

‘Yes,’ Kimura reflected, ‘if one sells coconuts, the world knows one has a tree.’

‘Very patient men,’ Okari put in.

‘Why not?’ said the Magician. ‘Look at the payoff.’

‘And Lavander got it because he was hired to appraise the field when they started to make their big move,’ Eliza said. ‘It was in his book. He knew the potential. Hell, the poor fool just knew too much for his own good.’

‘They probably had plans to hit him even before he was lifted,’ the Magician said. ‘They only had one problem

Chameleon, who seemed to knew everything they were doing.’

O’Hara was deep in thought, trying to construct the abstract boxes in the air into basic realities He was sure the answers to all their questions were there, now he had to clarify them. But he could not clear the image of Hooker from his mind, To dishonour the great wartime hero seemed almost like dishonouring history, besmirching America’s victories — and that troubled him. Yet Hooker had dishonoured himself. What hatreds, what frustrations, could have smouldered so deep inside him that they twisted his senses until he found relief in the dark side of his soul? He had betrayed his trust, designed a monolith of greed financed by elitists as dishonourable as he, and created a nightmare empire in which murder and robbery were taken for granted and executed by vipers: Hinge, Danilov, Le Croix, yes, even Falmouth. Hooker must be destroyed. But how? The answer was simple: with the truth.

How to do it was the problem.

‘We need to get inside and get photographs of that board, particularly close-ups of the pumping station,’ O’Hara said. The question is how.’

‘Why haven’t you told anyone about this before?’ the Magician asked Okari.

Okari smiled wistfully. ‘It was a personal matter,’ he said. ‘Besides, I did not understand the significance of all this, nor did Asieda-san. We had bits and pieces, scraps from their wastebaskets, memos on desks. They thought we knew much more than we did.’

The Magician was humming ‘C-Jam Blues’ and smiling. ‘I got an idea,’ he said. ‘This place is made out of stone, right?’

Okari nodded.

‘No metal in the walls?’

Okari shook his head. ‘Timber,’ he said,

‘Perfect.’

‘You going to let us in on the secret?’ asked O’Hara.

‘They have security cameras scanning this room, right?’ the Magician asked Okari.

‘Yes, near the ceiling. Some are stationary, some sniff the room like ferrets.’

‘And we got the production truck. There’s half a dozen videotape machines in there. All we gotta do, get us a coupla small microwave transmitters. Get inside, find the back of their monitors and hook the transmitters into their “video out” lug. It’ll change their scanner into cameras. We’ll pick up the signal in the live news truck outside and videotape it. What we’ll get is a continuous picture from inside the place.’

‘Where does one find such a transmitter?’ asked Kimura.

‘Oh, just about any radio shop,’ the piano player said, still grinning.

‘How do you get into this place?’ O’Hara asked Okari.

‘Up through the great stone drains at the foot of the wall. They lead to the dungeons, which are used only for storage. The grates are old. Once inside, I go to the locker room where the fixing men keep their uniforms. Once I have changed clothes, I come and go as I please. I rummage through wastebaskets, search Hooker’s desk, find something to unnerve him, to make my presence known. And then I send the chameleon.’

‘And what are the risks, other than those which are obvious?’ asked Kimura.

‘The computers are in what were once the dungeons,’ Okari said. ‘It would be risky to linger down there too long. The guards are all sumo and their leader is a man who has the smell of an animal. I have seen him twice. He is very restless. He wanders the halls and dungeons at all hours of the night with a guard dog. I am always cautious that he does not get close enough to recognize me. I call him Hitotsu-me.’

O’Hara looked up sharply. ‘One-Eye?’ he said. ‘Does he wear a patch?’

‘Hai. With a very bad scar.’ Okari drew an imaginary line down the side of his face.

‘I saw him today. I had the feeling he was watching me, and I also had the feeling I had met him before but I just—’

O’Hara paused, concentrating on the sketchy details of a face he had seen for only a few moments, isolating the vague details of that face in his mind and focusing totally on it. He said nothing for more than a minute, then: ‘No, I don’t think I know him. And yet there’s something familiar...’ He tried to concentrate, tapping his memory. ‘A picture, perhaps... No, the face itself is not familiar.’ He went back to the beginning of it, to his conversation with Falmouth on the boat. The Players...

‘Le Croix,’ he said.

‘Who?’ Okari asked.

‘A Frenchman. Le Croix is his nickname. He lost an eye in Algiers and crucified a couple of dozen rebels to get even. It could be him. There are no photographs of him in existence, he had them all destroyed. If it is Le Croix, you’re right— we’re looking down a hundred miles of bad road. For the purposes of this junket we need to give him plenty of room. Any other problems?’

Okari shook his head.

‘How did you figure all this out?’ Eliza asked. ‘Going up through the drains and all that?’

‘Very simple,’ said Okari; ‘you forget I lived there once. For three years it was my private playground. I know every stone in the place.’