Chameleon

  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.

  Spettrol

  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 he lay on the rocks in the driving rain, massaging the gash 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.

  And for a while there was no Japan.

  14

  "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, l, 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 analyze 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: 5

  Longest word: 13 ch

  Shortest word: 3 ch

  Others:

  5 ch: 1

  4 ch: 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: 1—g;

  2: 5—b, 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 THE/CPL" 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----- ---- -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 w
ith 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 skeptical," Eliza said. "It's the only shot we've got."

  "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 Danilov 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-Haïtien. 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 best 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-Haïtien 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?"

  "You will soon find out," Joli said rather haughtily and left the room.

  Cap-Haïtien, the quiet city in the Basse Terre—the narrow strip of lowlands at the foot of the mountains of northern Haiti—was forty-five minutes behind them, as was thirty miles of the worst road O'Hara had ever seen. The Magician had taken it in stride, having spent the better part of ten years in the Caribbean. But as the dusty old Chevy growled and groaned up one of the many mountains that ridge the country's northern seacoast, even the piano player began to show signs of nervousness. Black clouds lurked over the stiletto peaks, and rain had already begun to fall on the mountains beyond. The road ended abruptly at a stone wall. Beyond the wall was five hundred feet of nothing. A boy, no more than nine or ten, was waiting with three mules.

  "Those are donkeys!" the Magician whispered. "Joli didn't say anything about ridin' a fuckin' donkey."

  "Joli didn't say much of anything."

  "That fuckin' little chocolate frog. He's got a very perverted sense of humor. This ain't the first time he's tied a can to my tail."

  "And we're not there yet," said O'Hara.

  Billy, the guide, had said hardly a dozen words since he picked them up at the airport. He was not unfriendly, just uncommunicative. He was a tall man, rib-thin and the color of milk chocolate, with bulging muscles in arms and shoulders, and enormous, knobby hands. His face was long with hard angles and deep cheekbones. The youth with the mules looked enough like him to be his son.

  Billy got out and motioned them to follow. He spoke briefly in French to the boy, and the youngster got in the car. Then Billy motioned them to get on the mules.

  "We should hurry. It would be best to get there before the storm hits."

  "How far is it?" the Magician asked.

  "Maybe thirty minutes up the mountain, not far."

  The Magician looked sadly at O'Hara.

  "Thirty minutes up a mountain on a mule and he says it's 'not far'?"

  They clopped uneasily up the side of the cliff on the three mules. The sheer face of the mountain dropped straight down to the path, which was barely five feet wide. Then the mountain dropped away again, into the valley, hundreds of feet below them. Wind howled around the craggy face of the cliffs, carrying the damp promise of rain, and thunder grumbled through the spires above and below them.

  "I'm gonna have Joli's ass this time. This time I'm really gonna, y'know, rip a nice chunk of it off and nail it on the wall over my piano."

  "Hell, Magician, he found Danilov for us."

  "He didn't tell us we were gonna ride fuckin' donkeys up the side of a mountain on a path no wider than a slab of bacon. Some sense of humor. He's like all them goddamn frogs—perverted!"

  "He's not a frog, Magician. He's a Haitian."

  "He talks frog and he acts frog and he's perverted and that makes him a frog t' me," the Magician yelled.

  "And what would you do without him?" O'Hara yelled into the wind.

  "Sleep better at night," the Magician yelled back.

  The mules were just ornery enough to be scary. Billy led the procession. The Magician, bitching constantly, was in the middle, with O'Hara bringing up the rear. The wind howled at them, cutting through their summer windbreakers. The path became wet and slippery and then the rain started. And then the path got even narrower. Billy broke out a flashlight, sweeping it back and forth, keeping the path in view.

  To the west La Citadelle, the mountaintop fortress built by King Christophe in the early nineteenth century, brooded over the northern coast, its high, grim walls capping one of the many jagged mountains around them. It soon vanished in the swirling rain and fading light.

  They climbed higher.

  The Magician passed the time griping about Joli while O'Hara preoccupied himself by thinking about Lizzie, about how soft and warm she had been in Montego Bay and how eagerly she had jumped at the chance to work with Izzy on the code while they were gone. The lady pulled her weight, no doubt about that. Thinking about her helped pass the time.

  Forty-five minutes of hard riding through the storm brought them to the end of the trail, a tiny plateau protected only by a low earthen wall. Wind and rain lashed them. There was a hitching rail for the animals, room for the three mules and the three of them and not much more.

  O'Hara looked up. The cliff disappeared up into the fog.

  "Now what?" the Magician said woefully. "Do we fly the rest of the way?"

  There was a bell attached to the face of the cliff and Billy rang it several times before a voice called down from above.

  "Oui? Qui est là?"

  "C'est moi—Billy," the guide yelled back.

  "Ah, oui, Billee. Un instant." A moment later a thick rope dangled down from the darkness above with a basket attached to it. Above the basket was a loop of rope, like the strap in a subway.

  "Who will be first?" Billy asked and he smiled for the first time.

&nbs
p; "We're going up the rest of the way in that?" the Magician exclaimed with alarm.

  "Oui," said Billy.

  "I'll go second," the Magician said, hunching his shoulders against the wind and rain. "Or maybe I'll wait here."

  "A little nervous?" O'Hara asked.

  "Sailor, I'm scared shitless," he said.

  "I will go up first," the gangly Haitian said. "So they will know everything is in order." He gave the flashlight to O'Hara and got in the basket, sitting on his knees and holding the rope strap with both hands.

  "Allez-y!" he called to the man above and a moment later the basket rose into the darkness.

  "Allez, my ass," the Magician said. "What am I doin' here, anyway?"

  "You told me you were bored and wanted to perk your life up. This is called perking things up."

  "It's called freezing things off, that's what it's called." He stared grimly up into the darkness, listening to the rope groaning and the slow, steady click of the pully above.

  Then the pully stopped clicking. A few seconds later Billy yelled down, "Allez donc! Come up. It is safe."

  "Merci," O'Hara yelled back.

  The swing basket dropped out of the darkness. O'Hara helped the Magician into it. The musician clutched the rope handle and clung to the rope. His knuckles were white, his eyes squeezed shut. "Things aren't bad enough, we had to pick the goddamn monsoon season for this gig!" he cried. His voice was lost to the winds as the basket, buffeted about, was hefted into the rain and strobe-lit by the lightning that zigzagged above the mountain.

  When the basket was lowered the third time, O'Hara settled into it and whistled through his fingers. He felt himself being drawn slowly up the cliffside. As he neared the top he could hear the steady clinking of the ratchet pulley. The basket was being raised and lowered like a bucket in a well.