Chameleon (31 page)

‘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.’

Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitab
l
e by any competent journalist or historian.

—JOSEPH PULITZER

1

Etched in the golden tablets on the wall of the ancient Japanese temple of Oka-Ri, it is written: ‘The seasons change with the days, man’s memory changes with the yes. An English poet, centuries later, expressed the same thought more succinctly:

‘In the end, all history is memory and gossip.’

There were days when General Hooker would sit alone for hours in the darkness of his office, companioned only by the faulty machine in his chest, gleaning the troubled days of his past to conjure faltered memories. On the blackest of these days he could hear the thunder of cannon and the cry of bugles, but his mind’s eye saw only swirls of dust, clouding faded days of glory. Names and faces eluded him like ghosts at sunrise, and the names of places drifted in and out of his tick-tock solitude without streets, spires or parks.

Only Garvey knew and understood Hooker’s agony. It was Garvey alone who came to his aid when the old man sometimes cried aloud, calling the names of fallen comrades or forgotten battlefields.

‘Did you call, General?’ he would say.

And the general would repeat the name, and Garvey, his own memory blemished by time, would make up a face and an incident and a place to go with it, and Hooker, satisfied, would return to his uneasy reverie. He had been writing his memoirs for ten years and had amassed a gigantic manuscript. Editing it, sorting truth as reality from truth as Hooker wished it were, would have taken another decade, and so the manuscript was unpublishable.

There were rare occasions when the dust of yesteryear dissipated for an hour or so and Hooker would have a very clear vision of the past. These experiences were almost orgasmic for the old man. He would sit entranced, watching the moments play out through glazed and age-grayed eyes. And so, among the hundreds of handwritten pages of tainted facts, there was a handful of brilliantly re-created battle scenes and incredibly precise character studies. All the rest was imagination.

Hooker was not a prisoner of his past. Weeks might go by when he attended to business lucidly. But there were those days when he would awaken and tell Garvey, ‘Colonel, I’m going to work on my memoirs today,’ and he would disappear into the office and Garvey would cancel appointments, rearrange schedules, make the proper apologies, and carry out most of the business as usual. Two or three times during those days, Garvey would respond when Le heard Hooker calling out.

This was just such a day, although Garvey had reminded him of his appointment with O’Hara later in the afternoon. Should he cancel?

‘No. That wouldn’t be prudent,’ Hooker said and winked. He was feeling good.

Hooker had been inside the office for a couple of hours when Garvey heard him cry out his most frequent refrain: ‘Bobby, where are yuh, Bobby?’

Garvey entered the large office.

‘You called, General?’

‘It’s Bobby again. At Bastine.’

Garvey remembered that day well. And he remembered the boy just as well.

Bastine. 9 March 1942. On that day Garvey began his three years as a prisoner of war at the notorious Suchi Barracks. Hooker was to escape to glory and eventually return to Bastine to free him. And Bobby vanished forever.

‘It’s all right, old man,’ Hooker said exuberantly, ‘I can recall it quite clearly, thank you.

He had stood that morning on the porch of the glistening white Officers’ Club building, pole-straight, his campaign hat and dark glasses covering most of his hawklike face, clean-shaven, showered and dressed in freshly washed and ironed khakis, waiting for the inevitable on what he knew would be the most humiliating day of his life.

He listened to the dull thump, thump of the big Japanese guns followed by the sighing 105s as they came in and then the sudden barn of the explosions.

The Japanese were twenty miles away and closing the gap fast. The Americans were in rout. For days, what was left of Hooker’s command had fought up the slender Bastine Peninsula, leaving dozens of dead for every mile they gave up. But the night before, the Japanese had launched a brutal assault. Now they were besieged, and in an hour or two the last of the food, ammo and morphine would be gone. It was a matter of hours.

All around him the general saw fear, panic, anger. You can’t win a war with broomsticks, he thought, and that’s about all they had left. Still, his men had held this beleaguered finger of land for three months against staggering odds. Now Japanese shells were falling on the base. A nearby maintenance shed erupted suddenly in a cloud of black dust, disintegrated and showered the area with bits and pieces of wood and tools. Something inside — a lawnmower, gasoline, something — blew up and what was left of the shed burst into bright-orange flames.

Hooker ignored the chaos around him, the screaming shells, the sudden shock of the explosions, fire and falling trees, and stood rereading the message that had just interrupted his coffee:

You will rendezvous at your headquarters at 0700 hours this date, with two USN PT Boats under command, Captain Alvin Leamon. Be prepared to turn over your command to Colonel Jesse W. Garvey and leave that place immediately. Each boat will accommodate six officers. Take with you those men who can support you on our march to victory.

Good luck.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

Commander-in-Chief

The message had been decoded and reconfirmed and he reread it with ambivalent feelings. He was humiliated by defeat. But he knew his rescue meant he was destined eventually to wreak an even more horrible revenge on the Japanese. He had an hour in which to select ten key officers from his battered staff and leave the place that had been his home for so many years. The boy, of course, would go with him He checked the time. Six-ten. The boy was safe in the bomb shelter with those civilians who, because of age, sex or infirmity, could not fight,

They had moved headquarters into a concrete cannon emplacement near the bay, and it was there he found Garvey, eye-weary and body-sore, unshaven, his clothes in tatters, hunched over a chart of the Bastine Peninsula, dictating orders into a field phone. Their telephone lines had been obliterated weeks before.

Garvey stared at him bleakly. ‘The Japs’ve got two destroyers and a cruiser in The Sluice. They’re shelling Sackett from the sea, bombing him ... shit, there must be fifty thousand Japs coming at us on the ground.’

‘What’s your estimate?’ Hooker said.

‘Three hours, maybe. No more than that. They’ll be shelling us from out there in the bay, another hour or so. What the hell’s the difference, General? When Sackett and what’s left of the Third Battalion get here, there’s no place else to go.’ He waved toward the point of the peninsula, a few hundred yards to the north. ‘We’ll have to swim.’

Hooker knew what he was saying. They had been discussing when to surrender for days. Both men were burned out, exhausted far beyond the ability to make keen decisions. And neither of them could face the final one.

‘A lot of our boys are using personal pistols and their own shotguns. We’re just about out of rifle ammunition.’

The situation dictated immediate surrender, but the paper in Hooker’s hand changed that. Hooker handed him the order and Garvey read it and handed it back.

‘If the message were from anyone else, I’d ignore it,’ Hooker said. ‘Now we’ve got to hold this point until the Navy gets here.’

‘Good,’ Garvey said, ‘at least one of us is getting out of this shit hole. Who do you want?’

‘Who’s left?’

‘The best man we’ve got is Sackett, but he may be dead by now. If he’s not, I doubt that he can fight his way back here. He was in a box surrounded on three sides when I talked to him half an hour ago. He only had a dozen men left at the command post in Capice and he was going to hold it as long as possible.’

A heavy shell landed nearby and the thunderous explosion showered dust down from the roof.

‘Damn! Why did they wait until now to issue this order.’

‘The laps didn’t break through at Capice until late last night, Up to now we’ve been fighting a pretty good holding action, considering we’re outnumbered maybe fifty to one on the ground, and we haven’t had any air or sea support for over a month.’

‘I suppose you’re right. They realize the issue is in doubt here.’

‘Doubt! Hell, it’s a matter of hours now. Moving you out fast like this, at least we don’t have to worry about a security leak.’

‘I’ll round up my people immediately,’ Hooker said. ‘Perhaps the Navy will get here early.’

‘How about the boy?’

‘He goes with me, of course.’

They sipped coffee and drew up a list of the key officers in the company.

‘I’m leaving Irv Kaler with you,’ Hooker said. ‘He’s a fine field officer but he also has the best command of Japanese on the base. You may need him to interpret for you for the next few ... months. But I want Sergeant Finney. I’ll need a first-rate top kick.’

When they finished the list, Hooker called a runner and ordered him to have the men report to the dock. He looked at his watch. Six twenty-five. Another shell hit close on and the earth shivered underfoot.

Hooker stood at the doorway for a moment and then put out his hand.

‘I wish you were going with me, Jess,’ he said.

My God, Garvey said to himself, the old man’s got tears in his eyes. Garvey smiled. ‘You’ll come back and get me,’ he said.

Hooker suddenly embraced the tough little colonel. ‘You can bet your pension on it, General,’ he said. His voice was trembling with sorrow and anger as he took his old brigadier’s star from his pocket and pinned it on Garvey’s collar. ‘I know how long you’ve been waiting for this,’ he said. ‘Sorry it couldn’t have been under better circumstances. I’ll be back for you, Jess.’

‘I’ll be waiting.’

Hooker marched back to headquarters and walked through the wreckage of the sturdy old teak-panelled building. Papers and files littered floors already covered with shards of glass. Doors hung askew and thin layers of smoke drifted in through broken windows and clung to the ceiling like puffs of dirty cotton.

He stood in the shattered remains of his office for a moment or two, then turned sharply and headed for the pier.

Fifteen miles away, two PT boats roared up The Sluice, staying close to the shore of the main island. Sailors on deck watched the terrifying battle on the peninsula opposite them through binoculars.

‘Jesus,’ one sailor said. ‘They’s fuckin Japs everywhere! It’s like watchin’ an ant hill.’

Captain Leamon was in contact by phone with the commander of the other PT boat, Peter Coakley, a lieutenant from Boston, only out of Annapolis two years. Coakley was a brash red-headed youngster with a John Wayne attitude about the whole stinkin’ mess.

‘Remember your orders, Lieutenant,’ Leamon had told Coakley an hour before. ‘We’re to proceed with extreme haste to Bastine. Do not — repeat do not — engage the enemy for any reason. Just ... get by them.’

Leamon was watching the three Japanese naval vessels through binoculars. ‘They aren’t ten miles from the Bastine pier,’ he said.

Coakley was watching too. ‘They’re sittin’ ducks, Al,’ he said. ‘The cruiser’ll be between us and the destroyers. We could pick—’

‘Do I have to tell you again, Lieutenant? Our mission is to take VIPs off Bastine.’

‘Nursemaids, that’s what we are,’ Coakley said bitterly.

‘You want to burn in hell, you’ll get a chance soon enough. But not today.’

‘Goddamn taxi service,’ Coakley growled.

‘Lieutenant, you want a court-martial?’

‘We ignore the surface vessels. Is that goddamn clear, Lieutenant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I mean is it goddamn clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then let’s roll.’

The two destroyers and the cruiser were hardly a mile in front of them, concentrating their fire on the narrow peninsula. The steady pum of their big guns grew louder.

‘Okay, I’ll take the first run. You stay close to the shore, wait’ll I’m clear, you run for it.’

‘Got it,’ Coakley yelled back and cradled his phone. He turned the slim high-powered boat into shore, throttled back and lay close to the trees. Leamon was moving up The Sluice like hell’s bat, the bow sitting high out of the water, the stern settled deep. Blossoms of death burst overhead, showering the sea around them with flak. Shells geysered fore and aft, starboard and port. The sleek torpedo boat streaked up The Sluice and the shelling got heavier. The sky was black with the smoke of antipersonnel bombs. Leamon kept right on going.

‘Son of a bitch, he’s gonna make it,’ Coakley yelled. ‘Okay, buckos, hang on to your balls, here we go.’ And he edged the boat away from shore out into the narrow isthmus and slammed the throttles forward.

Hooker and his men were watching the sea drama from the pier.

‘Here comes the first one,’ a West Point major named Forester yelled. Hooker stood beside him, his small group of officers huddled around him. Hooker had decided to leave his son in the bomb shelter until the last minute. Now it was time.

‘Sergeant Finney.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Please go to the civilian bunker and bring the boy to me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Finney was a tough professional soldier. His shirt was button-less and lay open to his belt and one sleeve was hanging by threads at the shoulder. He handed his BAR to one of the officers, jumped in the general’s jeep and took off across the lawn toward the bunker. It was no more than five hundred yards from the pier. He was almost there when the shell exploded directly in his path. The jeep went up on its back wheels, skittered sideways and turned over. Finney vaulted out of the seat, hit the ground and rolled over several times. The jeep slid to a stop a few feet from him and exploded.

‘I’ll get him,’ the young baby-faced lieutenant named Grisoglio said and started to run toward the bunker, but Finney got up on his feet, shook his head and ran the rest of the distance.

‘Hold your place, Lieutenant,’ Hooker ordered.

Leamon was guiding the fast little torpedo boat into a narrow channel that had been cleared through the wreckage of sailboats and fishing craft. There was barely room for the sleek torpedo boat to fit through. He talked the long, narrow vessel through the junkyard, gently steering it past the burned-out wrecks.

‘Hold the lines, don’t tie us down,’ Leamon yelled to his skeleton crew. ‘Tell the general to come aboard fast. We don’t have any time. Coakley’s right behind us.’

Hooker turned to his group, picked out six officers and ordered them aboard. He could see Sergeant Finney and the boy leaving the bunker and running toward the pier.

‘With the General’s permission, we got to clear this pier fast,’ Leamon yelled.

Hooker nodded curtly and immediately jumped aboard. ‘Lieutenant Grisoglio, you’re senior officer on the second boat. Tell Sergeant Finney to keep an eye on the youngster, please. I’ll bring the lad over here with me when we stop for the night.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Grisoglio, who was shot in the leg and was using a tree limb for a crutch. He threw Hooker a sharp salute.

‘All right, Captain,’ Hooker said to Leamon, ‘move out.’

They backed through the wreckage and Leamon spun the wheel and the PT boat turned in the water and headed out toward the bay and open sea.

Hooker watched as the pier grew smaller and finally saw Bobby and Finney with the rest of the officers. Thank God, he thought. He waved, and the eight-year-old youngster stood erect and threw him a sharp salute and Hooker watched until the smoke obliterated the dock and he could no longer see him. Hooker turned his attention to the second boat, now speeding up through The Sluice, adjacent to the destroyer, dodging the shells.

Coakley was running wide open, adjacent to the destroyer when the shell hit. It tore into the side of his craft. It was a hard hit. The boat shuddered, debris erupted from the deck and was wafted away in the wind. One of the crewmen soared head over heels over the side. Seconds later, a sky bomb exploded over the foredecks. The boatswain was hurled against the main cabin, his chest riddled with flak. The master’s cabin was ripped open like a paper box. Glass showered to the winds. Coakley was hit with a blast of scorching hot air. Hot metal ripped into his side and shoulder. The wheel was wrenched from his grip and he felt himself tumbling across the deck into the railing. He was stunned for a moment and then he realized he was on his hands and knees, staring at his own blood, dribbling onto the deck. He heard a crewman yelling ‘Fire!’ heard flames fanning in the wind. His boat was burning around him.

Coakley got to his feet and grabbed the wheel. He ignored the pain in his body; it no longer mattered. He whipped the stricken PT boat around and headed straight toward the destroyer. Flames twirled in his wake, and sizzled up the side of the boat, but it was still skimming across the water like a zephyr, racing through the smoke and din, straight at the enemy ship.

‘Motherfuckers,’ Coakley screamed. ‘Motherfuckers, motherfuckers, motherfuckers...’

Leamon watched in shock as Coakley’s torpedo boat raced straight into the side of the destroyer. There was a moment when everything seemed suspended in time. Then the torpedoes went, then the big ship’s ammunition holds went. The destroyer lurched and rolled in the water. An orange ball of fire roiled from the hole in her side, and then they heard another explosion and another and another.

‘God, oh God!’ Leamon cried out. He turned to the general, who was standing beside him watching the death throes of the warship. ‘Do we go back, sir, for the rest of your people?’

Hooker looked back at Bastine, but there was nothing to see, just black smoke, endless explosions and flames, billowing up through the black pallor.

‘I have my orders,’ Hooker said. ‘And so do you.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Captain Leamon said and guided his speeding boat away from Bastine.

And now Hooker sat in his study, the tears fresh on his cheeks, and he remembered it was that day, among all the days of his life, that he most wanted to forget.

The box came about four-thirty in the afternoon. It was delivered by a cab driver who had picked it up at the train station where it had been delivered from...

Ad infinitum.

It was always the same story. Impossible to trace. Just a plain white box with holes in it, marked ‘Namamono’ — ‘Perishable.’

The general was seated in the dark when he entered the office.

‘Excuse me, sir?’

‘Come in, Jesse. I was just dozing here. Thinking about the old days.’

‘Bad news, sir.’

‘What is it?’

‘Another present.’

‘God damn!’

Garvey put the box on Hooker’s desk. ‘Want me to open it for you?’

‘I’ll do it.’

He took the letter opener out of his drawer, snipped the string and flipped off the top.

It came out slowly. They always did, searching the air with their tongues, their eyes moving in different directions. Jesus, were they ugly.

He waited until it had dropped over the side of the box and was strolling across the desk. He nicked it in the side, deep enough to pierce the skin. The chameleon squirmed, its tail lashing behind it. It was a small one, no more than nine or ten inches long. He stuck it again.

The chameleon began to thrash in pain. He jabbed it again and again. Then he put the sharp side of the opener on the chameleon’s neck and held it hard against the desk. Its tongue bulged in its mouth, a rolled-up ball of red tissue, trembling in its partly open mouth.