Chameleon

by William Diehl

  "The whole coup was set up by Chameleon."

  "You said this was nonpolitical."

  "Absolutely nonpolitical, old man. Strictly business. American Electric paid the bill. Guardio was planning to nationalize the power companies, and A.E. had fifty million invested down there. Thornley went in four months ahead and began plotting with the generalissimos. I went in a month before the coup, took me that long to work up the kill. I took out Guardio while he was in church. The generals closed all the doors, trapping the family and loyalists inside. There was a force of four hundred mercenaries just over the border, maybe thirty miles away. Guardio wasn't cold yet when they hit the park across from the church in choppers. Backup for the army. I was back in New York having dinner at the Four Seasons that night. The mop-up took four days and the price tag was two million dollars."

  "They have their own army?"

  "A brigade of British Highlanders, under contract to the British Army with agreement that they can take leave anytime, as long as the country isn't under some kind of military alert. They can be put in the field, fully equipped, in less than thirty days."

  "We can't prove any of this," O'Hara said.

  He got up and leaned over the stern, watching the motors churning up the wake. There were too many holes and not enough details. He needed more names, possible defectors. Anyone who would talk to him. He focused on the sound of the engines, going to the wall again. But it didn't work. Something stronger than details was pulling at him. This had the makings of a great story and now his reporter's instincts were humming. He felt the excitement of a scoop nibbling deep in his stomach. But he needed more than Falmouth. He needed to cross-check before he started doling out Howe's money.

  "How about Thornley?" he asked. "If I can turn him up, it would be a good starting place."

  "I haven't seen him since the Guardio business."

  "Any defectors? Anybody else ever run?"

  Falmouth hesitated. He gave himself some thinking time by lighting another Gitane.

  "Well?" said O'Hara.

  "Do we have a deal?" Falmouth said.

  "Not yet. I couldn't begin to put a story together with what you've told me. I need names to go with faces, and faces to go with jobs. And I want to know who it is that's on the run."

  "I never said anyone was."

  "You can't be the first one to want out of this madness."

  "The world is mad!" said Falmouth. "You were in the Game for five bloody years, O'Hara, didn't you learn anything from it? With greed comes money and with money comes power, and that's what it's all about."

  "Not the world I want to live in."

  "Right, Sailor. So here's your opportunity to change it. Do you doubt I'm risking my life telling you all this?"

  O'Hara considered an answer but Falmouth pressed on, "Just remember, where there's a need, there's always something or someone to fill it."

  "And that someone is Chameleon?"

  "Chameleon's just the beginning."

  "It'll do for starters. Who is he?"

  "Ah, who is he indeed? A faceless figure. A wisp of air, never seen by the Players, or none that I've met. Chameleon's all I know, and that from some of the other boys I've worked with. But he's the head of it, I've heard that often enough to know it's the truth."

  "You don't know where the headquarters is? Where this Chameleon operates from?"

  "No. I can tell you all I know about him in about thirty seconds. He's Oriental and he's been around awhile. That's why you're a natural for this one, old man. You know Japan as well as you know your left hand, and you know the Players, so you can understand the significance of what I'm saying."

  "How do you know he's an Oriental?"

  "From Thornley. From others I heard he was the most dangerous one in the bunch. It was Chameleon burned Colin Bradley."

  "Bradley's dead?"

  "Aye. Popped up in the East River with a bullet in his brain. Somebody wanted Chameleon taken out and Bradley thought he was up to the job. Got his bloody head blown off. That's what you get for thinking."

  "Who wanted him out?"

  "I don't know the answer to that, but I would guess it was one of the enemy."

  "You make it sound like war, Tony."

  "And that it is. But not a cold war, Sailor," and he leaned over and said in a rasping stage whisper, "a bloody dollar war."

  "How does this Chameleon conduct business, how does he run this crazy show you're talking about, if nobody has contact with him?"

  "Through Master."

  "Master?"

  "A computer. Everything is done by computer. The only human contact I have on the top side is a man named Quill."

  "He's your cutout?"

  "Yes."

  "Quill?"

  "Yes, Quill."

  O'Hara shook his head. "Sounds like you've been reading too much Dickens," he said.

  "Well, that's his name, dammit. Quill. Never met him and the only way to reach him is through Master."

  "And Master's the computer?"

  "Right. To get into it, you have to go through a series of checks. Voice prints. Number intersects. Variable code names, like that. The operation's so simple it's terrifying. A job comes in. Quill programs Master, determines the best man for the job and makes contact. Everything is taken care of. Tickets, money, contacts, hotel reservations, cars. Even weapons, if there's something special you might need. The pay is deposited in the account of your choice before you get your bags packed. It works as smooth as sand running through an hour glass."

  "What about the man himself—what's his background?"

  "Never seen him. Wouldn't know 'im if he came up out of the water there and spit in my eye."

  "You've been at this for eighteen months, you've never seen any of the top Players?"

  "And maybe never will. It isn't necessary."

  "How about some of the operations?"

  As the sun swept overhead, boring relentlessly down on them, Falmouth detailed the Guardio operation and then went on, describing the accidental murder of Marza and the destruction of the Aquila car, how he set up the bomb in the computerized dash, where he stayed, trains and planes he took.

  "The Aquila job was so clean they're still trying to figure out what went wrong. It's delayed work on the car for months. They still haven't recovered from the shock of Marza's death."

  "I want a deposition from you with all those details."

  Falmouth thought for a moment. "When the money's paid," he agreed.

  O'Hara pondered that for a moment and then nodded. "That seems fair enough," he said. "There's got to be a pattern to all of this, something that ties it all together."

  "I tell you, Sailor, stop looking for some kind of logical order to it."

  But O'Hara's mind was trained to consider both the logical and illogical possibilities of any situation. There has to be some common thread, some ultimate goal in this madness, he thought, but Falmouth laughed at him when he said so.

  "It's the Game for fun and profit, plain and simple. There's a fortune being made. What do you think the Marza play cost? My end was a hundred and fifty thousand. They probably charged the client half a million."

  O'Hara was still unconvinced. To him, there had to be an overall objective to the Master operation other than "fun and games." Perhaps only Chameleon knew what it was.

  "You try to figger some kinda conspiracy in it, you'll have a Chinese puzzle on your hands," Falmouth insisted. "Sometimes the jobs make no sense at all." He recounted Hinge's tale of killing a man in Hawaii to retrieve the negatives of a dozen photographs, then destroying the film he had just killed to acquire.

  "And who is this Hinge?" O'Hara asked.

  "Bloody cowboy. Kills without thinking or hesitation. Men or women, no matter. He can do the trick with gun or knife, he can do it with darts or with rope. Hell, he could probably spit us both to fucking death."

  "Nobody can kill you, Tony."

  "I used to think so, until I worked with this ne
w lad two days ago in Caracas."

  "What the hell were you doing in Caracas the day before yesterday?"

  "I got an assignment. I didn't know whether you were going to make it or not. I couldn't turn them down without showing my hand."

  "Who's this young hotshot, a merc?"

  "Was, before this."

  "They're a dime a dozen, Tony."

  "Not this one. There aren't a dozen like him. Made a kill from nineteen hundred feet in Vietnam. And he was using a bloody night scope!"

  "What was this job you two did?"

  "Chap named Lavander got lifted by some local muchachos. We had to bring him in. But it's what's happened since that may give you the hook you're looking for."

  "And how's that?"

  Falmouth leaned over, his eyes gleaming, and smiled. "I'll tell you that when we have a deal," he said.

  O'Hara was watching movement twenty or so yards beyond the lines that skittered along the surface of the sea. He was still uncomfortable about turning over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to Tony Falmouth, but if Falmouth had additional information for him, it could change his mind.

  "I think I'll go back to Japan," O'Hara said. "Live a nice, simple life. No computers running private intelligence agencies or ghosts running computers. It's all too complicated. I didn't want to take this job in the first place."

  The fin of a big fish sliced the surface for a moment and went under again.

  "You can't back off now," Falmouth said.

  "The hell I can't."

  "You do and I'm a dead man."

  "Just do a few more jobs and then run," said O'Hara.

  "I am already on the dodge. I agreed last night I'd do another job, but I didn't return Quill's call to get the details. You don't accept a job, then disappear, not without creating a certain level of anxiety in the heart of Mr. Quill. By now he's figuring either I've run or something happened to me. Whatever, he's assigned someone else to the job, and that's where I can help you."

  "And how's that?" said O'Hara.

  Falmouth's gray eyes were twinkling, his lips playing with a smile. "Because I know the mark," he said. "I know where he's going to be hit. I know when. And I know the assassin."

  And after he let that sink in, he added, "And I'll give you the runner as a bonus."

  A runner. Someone else on the dodge. Now, that had possibilities. The bonus is what turned O'Hara. If someone other than Tony was dodging Chameleon and he could turn up the runner, he could verify Falmouth's story.

  The fin split the surface of the ocean again, this time about ten yards to the lee side of the line.

  "I'll make a deal with you," said O'Hara. "If you give me that information, I'll pay you half. If I score and the information is clean, I'll deposit the other half anywhere you say or meet you and give you the rest."

  "Goddamn, we're playin' rough, aren't we, Sailor."

  "It isn't my money."

  Falmouth nodded very slightly and then stuck out his hand. "Done," he said, and they shook.

  "Let's hear it," said O'Hara.

  "Listen here, Sailor, I can't lie to you, tell you I understand everything that goes on here, okay? But I can tell you this ... there's always a reason for them doing what they do. I'm not back from Caracas ten hours than I pick up an urgent from Quill. So I contact him. Now, understand—Hinge and I put our cojones on the line to spring this Lavander fella, right? So here it is, not two days later, and Quill tells me he's got a fast job. He says it'll all be over in four or five days. I'm to meet a cutout in the Caribbean area somewhere and stand by for a possible hit. The cutout will make the decision. And who's the bloody subject? Lavander."

  O'Hara was genuinely surprised. "Lavander!" he exclaimed.

  "Lavander. See what I mean? Can you make any sense outa that?"

  "Hell, they're your pals, Tony, you make a guess."

  "I thought a lot about it. Logically? It's got to be that he's become a security risk to someone."

  "Why?"

  "He knows too much. About something, I don't know what. He's worked as a consultant for a lot of big companies all over the world. So he knows a lot about a lot of people. He knows a lot of company secrets."

  "You think they'd kill this man just because he's a security risk to some corporation?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Why the cutout, why not just send you in to waste the poor bastard?"

  "Guessing again, I'd say the cutout's gonna give him a very subtle third degree. If he gives the wrong answers, au revoir, Monsieur Lavander."

  "You say you know the place."

  "Not exactly. But I do know he's leaving Honduras very soon on a Caribbean cruise, courtesy of Sunset Oil, a little bonus for his trials and tribulations. I also know he's traveling under the name J. M. Teach. And last night Quill told me the job would be over in four or five days. Shouldn't be hard to track down a steamer leaving Honduras sometime in the next day or so and find out her first port o' call."

  "Why's he traveling under an assumed name?"

  "Because he's weird. I told you, he's an eccentric. I saw him for just a moment or two after he was released. There he was, eyes like a couple of wells, looked like he hadn't slept in two days, and the first thing he asks is, 'Did you check me out of the hotel while I was gone?' I mean, he was genuinely concerned about it. A true nut."

  There was a flash of sunlight on fin in the wake of the Miami Belle; the big line snapped from the outrigger, then the line jarred again and the reel began to sing as it fed out.

  "Christ, we got a big one," Falmouth cried. "It's all yours, Sailor!"

  O'Hara moved the rod quickly from its sheath on the rail to the cup between his legs and Falmouth tightened his safety belt as O'Hara began the fight.

  The fish, a blue marlin, was enormous.

  "Three hundred pounds!" Falmouth guessed. "She could be a record, lad."

  The fight lasted the better part of two hours. By the time it was over, O'Hara's arms were leaden, his hands blistered. Cap'n K. maneuvered the boat perfectly, using its big engines to tire the fish as O'Hara reeled the fighting marlin closer to the stern.

  "Ya got 'im!" the captain yelled down. "Get 'im close enough to the stern so we can knock the fucker out. It's gonna take all three of us to get him aboard."

  The fish sounded one last time, leaping high from the water, his tail thrashing angrily. Then he dove deep. O'Hara kept the pressure on. The marlin's beaked head appeared a few feet from the stern. The fight was gone out of him.

  "You did fine there, Sailor. What a beauty! Well," Falmouth said, "too bad"—and he bent over and pulled an old, rusty machete free of the rail where it was sticking out, and he reared back and the blade whistled past O'Hara's head and hit the stern with a chock. The line was cut. The marlin speared the surface one last time, snapped its head and plunged into the wake of the boat. It was gone.

  The captain screamed, "What in hell are ye doin'? That was a goddamn three-hundred-pound marlin, yuh crazy bastard!" Cap'n K. continued to rave from the bridge, screaming obscenities at the wind, the gulls, the sea, at everything.

  Falmouth looked down at the stunned O'Hara, who had sagged back in the fighting chair and was shaking the pain from his arms. "Wouldn't do, would it now, us coming into Freeport with a record marlin on board. There'd be pictures and God knows what all, right? That's all the papers have to write about there."

  O'Hara nodded very slowly. "Tony," he said, "I'm beginning to believe you. Now, who's going after Lavander?"

  Falmouth leaned over and smiled proudly. "Why, Hinge, of course. He knows Lavander. Besides, it's got to be Hinge. If they think I'm running, they'll send Gazinsky or Lavanieux after me."

  "Why not Danilov?"

  "Because, Sailor, he's the runner."

  10

  "MR. HOWE, PLEASE."

  "Mr. Charles Gordon Howe?" the secretary asked.

  "That's right."

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Howe is in conference and can't be disturbed."

&
nbsp; "Tell him O'Hara's on the phone."

  "I have explicit instructions not to disturb him," the secretary said sternly.

  "Just tell him it's me, I'm sure he'll take this call."

  There was a momentary pause, then an annoyed: "Just a moment, please."

  He was on hold for hardly a breath before he heard Howe's crusty, laced-with-Irish brogue. "Where are you, Lieutenant?"

  "Down in the islands, but that's not important. I need to do a little traveling. Is your Lear jet still available?"

  "Where d'you want it and when?" Howe asked immediately. There was excitement in his voice.

  "As soon as possible. Fort Lauderdale airport."

  "Can I assume we have a story, then?"

  "I'll need a couple more days before I can commit for sure."

  "You're a cautious one, I'll say that."

  "It's your money, Mr. Howe."

  "Fair enough. I assume you've met this Falmouth feller already."

  "Yes."

  There was silence on the line as if Howe were waiting for O'Hara to go on. Finally the publisher said, "Well?"

  "I'm not ready to talk about it just yet. I can tell you I've paid him a hundred and twenty-five. He gets the rest if his information is good."

  "I assume from what you've just said that you feel you're on to something."

  "I wouldn't have parted company with all that money if I didn't think he had something. Putting it all together may be a problem."

  "I have the best libel lawyers in the business, Lieutenant. I want to be accurate, not cautious."

  "I'll keep that in mind. Usually it's the other way around —the publisher tells me to be cautious."

  Howe chuckled. "My feelin' about you, Lieutenant, is that if we have anything, it will be big."

  "Thanks."

  A pause.

  "Are you in any danger, Lieutenant?"

  O'Hara thought for a few seconds, then said, "There's an element of risk. We're dealing with some pretty mean characters here."

  "You know them, then?"

  "Personally or by reputation. Right now, all I got's conjecture. Talking about it further could be counterproductive and increase the risk."

  "I don't think I need t' tell you to be careful."