Chameleon (28 page)

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?’