Chameleon (30 page)

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”?’