Chameleon

  "I grew up here."

  "Oh? What part?"

  "Tokyo, then Kyoto."

  "Ah, I assume then that we have a love of the country in common."

  This is a lot of bull, O'Hara thought. By now the old bird knows chapter and verse on me. Why is he playing games?

  O'Hara nodded. "Kyoto is my favorite spot in the world."

  "A bit tranquil for an old soldier like myself," Hooker said, leaning back in his chair and gazing at O'Hara over the smoldering bowl.

  "You're also the only American petroleum operation based in Japan," O'Hara said, "and that interests me."

  "Well, there's nothing mysterious about it. There are a lot of reasons why we located in this particular spot."

  O'Hara smiled. "That's one of the reasons I'm here, to find out some of them."

  "Good. Fire away."

  O'Hara took out a pad and felt-tip pen. He could still hear a clock ticking somewhere but there was no sign of it. The sound seemed to be coming from the general. A watch perhaps.

  "You seem concerned about something, sir," Hooker said.

  "It's nothing. I keep hearing a clock ticking somewhere."

  "Ah. The clock is in here, Mr. O'Hara," he said, tapping his chest. "A noisy but efficient pacemaker. My doctors don't want to go tampering with it now." He laughed. "If it stops ticking, please call my doctor."

  O'Hara began with obvious questions about Hooker and his association with AMRAN.

  "I was president of Intercon Oil. We first proposed the consortium."

  "When did you get involved in the oil business, sir?"

  "Oh, fifteen, twenty years ago. When I was a candidate for President. Some of my staunchest supporters were Texans. When I dropped out of the race, I was asked to take over Intercon. The company was in trouble. Lack of strong top management. In two years we had it purring like a freshly tuned jeep."

  "Why did you propose a consortium?"

  "It gave the companies involved new financial strength. Like any industry, it takes money to make money."

  "Do the members of the consortium share information?"

  Hooker nodded. "The technology of all the companies is mutually shared, but they operate individually. Their profits are their own. AMRAN is not a profit center, it is more of a ... service organization."

  "Are you still connected with Intercon?"

  "Only in an advisory capacity. Most of our time here is spent on AMRAN operations."

  "When was the consortium actually formed?"

  "We finally got chartered about a year ago. It took quite some time to put this together. You can imagine the problems, trying to bring several major companies under the same umbrella. It took a helluva lot of negotiating to satisfy the needs and demands of each of the corporate structures. I repeat, Mr. O'Hara, each of these companies retains its autonomy."

  "Yes. How long did the negotiating take?"

  "We started talking about it back in ... oh, seventy-five, thereabouts."

  "Which companies eventually joined?"

  "My own, Intercon. Then there was Sunset Oil, Hensell, American Petroleum..." A swift recollection, a brief flash from the past, pierced his concentration, uninvited and unexpected, and erased what he was about to say from his mind. "I'm sorry," he said, perturbed, "what ... uh, was I saying?"

  "You were giving me a list of AMRAN members."

  "Of course! Let's see, where was I..."

  He went on, but the memory persisted, forcing him to deal with it. It was in Sydney, he thought. The first box came right after we got set up in Sydney. He shook the thought off.

  "Intercon, American Petroleum, Hensell, Sunset ..." O'Hara reprised the list for him.

  "Of course ... let's see, there's Bridges Salvage Corporation, The Stone Corporation. Then we have an arrangement with a small Italian motor company."

  "Why a shipyard?"

  "Oil tankers, old man, oil tankers. Why feed the Greek industry when we can build our own?"

  "Self-sufficiency?"

  "Something like that."

  "And The Stone Corporation?"

  "It's a holding company for several power facilities in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, some other Southern states."

  "It also owns oil refineries, doesn't it?"

  The general put another match to his pipe, using the time to further study O'Hara. We must not underestimate this man, he thought.

  "Yes."

  "Here in Japan?"

  Hooker nodded. "Right down at the foot of the hill. The Yumishawa works. We keep them busy. It is the second largest in the world."

  "And you ship oil from other parts of the world to be refined here?"

  "Right again. I can arrange a tour for you, if you're interested."

  "Perhaps later in the week."

  Hooker slowly released a billow of smoke toward the ceiling. "Good," he said, "I think you'll find it educating."

  "Is Yumishawa profitable?" O'Hara asked.

  Hooker smiled. "We're not a charitable organization; we're in business to make money. Yumishawa had the capacity we needed."

  "Is that what brought you back to Japan?"

  "AMRAN is an international company. We use several Japanese refineries. Also, I happen ... uh, to—"

  Hooker's eyes seemed to cloud over as he spoke. He looked as though he were daydreaming. "—like living here."

  The old man was having difficulty concentrating. Dark memories had begun to intrude and linger in his mind, sharp and persistent memories. He listened intently to O'Hara, trying to crowd them out of his consciousness, but they remained, edging out reality ...

  It was the second—no, it must have been the third chameleon.

  He remembered the box, although there was nothing distinctive about it, just a plain white box, and he remembered staring at it for a very long time, listening to the creature moving about inside it as hate welled up inside him.

  He had been in Sydney for two months, plotting the island stepping-stone campaigns that would take them closer and closer to Honshu. The house was a white frame Victorian mansion that had once belonged to a governor, a a spacious and airy place that had been converted into his campaign headquarters. There were security MP's everywhere.

  And yet she had managed to get inside—with the box.

  She stood before him in the big room, her face as placid as a lake, that inscrutable countenance revealing nothing. Life had been kind to her. Her skin was clear and smooth, and her almond-shaped eyes alert.

  "I remember you as being much prettier," he lied.

  "I beg your pardon?" said O'Hara.

  "Oh, excu—My mind wandered. Business ..." His voice trailed off.

  "I was asking whether you yourself initiated AMRAN," O'Hara said.

  "In a way. It came together almost out of ... uh, necessity. Several of the companies had lost their ... executive officers during the negotiations. Each time it happened we virtually had to start over, dealing with new people."

  "What happened to these key people?"

  "Died. Natural causes mostly. Three died of—no, maybe it was four—heart attacks, and there was an auto accident ... At any rate, there were a great many delays. Frustrating, y'know, trying to put this together with these sudden changes in management ..."

  He was speaking almost by rote, for his mind kept skipping backwards in time.

  In the Philippines, politics had kept her quiet and in her place. Politics and one hundred American dollars a month, a cheap enough price to avoid a scandal that would have ruined his career.

  How, in the middle of a war, had she found her way from Luzon to Australia?

  The box answered that question.

  Chameleon had arranged it. No question about that. Twice before, the boxes had come. Inside each was his signature, a single chameleon. There had been no message in the first one, only a small snapshot of the boy standing in front of a Shinto temple in Tokyo. He looked terrified.

  Hooker's intelligence people had devoted months trying to get
a fix on Chameleon. Even their agents in Japan knew very little. He was head of a special branch of the Japanese secret service. Nobody had come up with his real name.

  The second chameleon, a month or so later, had accompanied the first real message Hooker received. Typed neatly on a small piece of paper, it said simply: "The issue is negotiable."

  Nothing more.

  Then, after two more months of agonized waiting, she had come to verbally deliver the message to him.

  The ultimate insult.

  The snapshot was sadistic. Bobby, sitting in a child's coffin. The boy looked tired, possibly even drugged.

  "What does he want?"

  "It must be done quickly. In the next week."

  "What does he want?" Hooker had demanded, angry to find himself negotiating with a Japanese officer and a concubine.

  She closed her eyes and repeated, as if by rote, "He will exchange Molino for Admiral Asieda, whom the British are now holding prisoner here in Australia."

  God, how he hated her. And yet, he was still attracted by her sensuality. He wondered if her body had changed through the years and he thought about her, lying naked beside him. For three years it had been a state secret. Only Garvey knew.

  The general, only six months a widower, sleeping with a seventeen-year-old house girl and then sending her away after she bore his son. God, how the magpies at the Officers' Club would have chirped over that. And his superiors? They would have destroyed him.

  Now he hated her all the more because, in his own weakness, he had lived a lie for three years and now it was coming back to haunt him. Staunchly Christian, he was needled by guilt as he stared at her. "You should be shot as an enemy agent," he told her.

  "I want my son back alive," she said ...

  "... plane crash," O'Hara was saying.

  "I beg your pardon," Hooker said, snapping back to reality.

  "I said Robertson, of The Stone Corporation, was killed in a private plane crash."

  "Yes. Wasn't supposed to fly himself, y'know. Company policy. But when you're president of the corporation, who does the chastising, eh? That put us back a bit. We were close to an agreement with Stone when the accident occurred. There was also that chap in, uh, Dallas ..."

  "David Fiske Thurman, Alamo Oil."

  Hooker looked at him, obviously surprised. "You've certainly done your homework, young fellow. Thurman always was a madman behind the wheel. Unless I'm mistaken, he had several close calls before that."

  O'Hara pressed on, clarifying information before forcing the issue of Chameleon.

  But the general began to slip again ...

  What nerve. To give him, the second highest ranking officer in the Pacific command, an ultimatum. He was infuriated.

  "Here's what I think of that bastard," Hooker said to the woman. He grabbed the lizard, held it out with one hand and squeezed its writhing body until it was dead. The creature dangled from his fist. He threw it back in the box.

  "Take that back to the son of a bitch with my compliments."

  "You will let him kill Molino?"

  "His name is Bobby."

  "His name was Molino until you stole him from me. What a coward you are."

  "Woman, you're pushing my patience beyond its limits."

  She, too, had lost her composure. "I want that agreement. It is the least you can do. You left him once ..."

  "Left him! It was an act of fate. I didn't abandon the boy, I—"

  "The boy. The boy. That's all he ever was to you, the boy. You took him away from me once. Unless you do this thing, I will tell them that you raped me in your house at Bastine, that you—"

  "Raped you! I've never seen a pair of legs open faster in my life. He's my son and I'll call him what I want to call him. You have no claim on him. He's mine, adopted on record. All other records have been destroyed. You couldn't prove ... anything."

  "He is my son. They will kill him. You must do as—"

  "Goddammit, woman, how dare you threaten me with lies and blackmail? Don't tell me what they will and won't do..."

  Anger and guilt overwhelmed him. Images clouded rationality. Sins of the flesh. Calvin and his cane of lightning. The American flag. Images that catalyzed his hatred. Here she stood before him, an enemy consort, threatening blackmail. His rage burned uncontrollably.

  "I don't know how you got here but it's the end of the line for you. I'm having you arrested and charged with high treason. I'll pull the trap on your gallows myself."

  "And how do you propose to have me arrested without revealing that I am your son's mother?"

  "No one will believe you. A Filipino whore turned Jap agent? Hah!"

  Her dark, flashing eyes revealed her frenzied state. She threw back her head and spat across the desk into his face.

  He got up slowly, walked around the desk and stood very close to her. "I'll teach you to respect what I stand for, you slant-eyed little bitch!"

  She reared back again, growling with hate, and his own hatred erupted. He quite suddenly reached out and clamped his hands around her throat. His large bony hands first crushed her cries, then her windpipe, then her larynx. He kept squeezing, twisting ...

  He could still hear the sound of it, like the sound of twigs being twisted and broken.

  "General?"

  "Yes!"

  "Are you all right?"

  "Yes, yes, I ... my mind, uh, drifted off there. It's been a difficult day for me."

  "I'm sorry. I just have a couple more questions."

  "I'll try to be more ... uh, attentive."

  "I'd like to get into another area," O'Hara said.

  Here we go.

  "Does the word 'Chameleon' mean anything to you?"

  There was a glimmer in his eye, his lips moved, his jaw tightened. Color seemed to rise in his cheeks. "This really has nothing to do with the oil business."

  "It has to do with your business."

  "I really am feeling a bit low, Mr. O'Hara." He started to get up.

  "Excuse me, General, but I know about Chameleon. We need to talk about it."

  Hooker looked at him with annoyance. "Is that why you're really here?"

  "Yes, sir, it is."

  "And just what do you know?"

  "That Chameleon is head of a very efficient intelligence agency for the private sector. That his agents have killed, stolen corporate secrets, sabotaged installations at the cost of more than a hundred lives. And for some reason, AMRAN and its partners seem to be his favorite victims."

  Hooker took time to dab the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe and light it. "Can we talk off the record for a few moments?"

  O'Hara hesitated. A lot of good information had gone down the drain "off the record," but he had no choice.

  "Chameleon is probably the most dangerous terrorist in the world today," Hooker said. "His methods are unpredictable and so is his choice of victims. Nothing is beyond him. Blackmail, kidnapping, robbery, murder, sabotage, nothing at all."

  "Do you think your competitors are behind these acts?"

  "They're not immune. Some of them have suffered too. Obviously companies are using Chameleon's unique ... service. But I have no idea who or why."

  "But AMRAN seems to be a particular target."

  "I don't know—"

  "Supposing I told you I believe Chameleon was responsible for the deaths of Simmons, Richman, Thurman ... most of the executives connected with AMRAN who've died or been killed?"

  "I would say strong talk with no backup."

  "I know the man who killed them all," O'Hara said. "Or most of them."

  "Then produce him. You have that kind of evidence, then perhaps your story will have credence."

  "I don't think that's possible."

  "Listen to me, O'Hara, nobody would be happier than myself if you were to turn up this ... vampire and show the world what he is. But so far everything you've said or intimated would be comical without some way to substantiate it."

  Hooker let the smoke from his pipe trail s
lowly from the corner of his mouth. He sat for almost a minute, staring across the room.

  "Most of these men died of natural causes or in accidents. Heart attacks in a business where heart attacks are an occupational hazard. A high-stress business, oil is, and these were high-rolling gentlemen without exception, and all in their fifties and sixties."

  "How about Bridges? He wasn't in the oil business."

  "Red Bridges was a roustabout, a salvager, a gambler. Hell, for four or five years after the war he ran deepwater salvage off the Japanese coast. Shipbuilding is a very mean business. And Red had a bad weight problem on top of that. In his sixties, and a hundred pounds overweight. Prime candidate for a coronary. See what I mean, O'Hara? Without some proof, nobody'll believe you."

  "That's why he can operate the way he does. Nobody's got guts enough to talk about it openly. Hell, we're off the goddamn record."

  "Do you have some personal stake in this?" Hooker asked, surprised by his sudden outburst.

  "I'm a journalist and I'm trying to do my job the best way there is. I know Chameleon exists. You know it. Apparently dozens of other powerful businessmen know it. And you're his chief target. Why?"

  "We refuse to pay extortion. That's what it is, y'know, blackmail by fear."

  "But why AMRAN? Why not Ampex or Blue Diamond?"

  "I don't know. I suppose because we are the youngest of the oil conglomerates they think we're the most vulnerable."

  He was sweating and he took out a handkerchief and patted his face. The pacemaker was ticking furiously. "I'm sorry. I ... uh, I'm having a chill. Nothing to be concerned about. Blood's just too thin. One of the hazards of growing old."

  O'Hara was genuinely concerned. The man seemed to have aged another year or two as they talked. His face was gray and his eyes had become listless.

  "I'm sorry, I know this was an imposition," O'Hara said. "I'm grateful you took the time to talk with me."

  Talking about Chameleon had at least cleared Hooker's mind. Now his concern was dealing with O'Hara. "Perhaps another time," he said.

  "One last thing. Did Chameleon sabotage the Thoreau and the Aquila automobile?"

  The general put his pipe aside and made a steeple of his fingers. He leaned forward, across his desk. "Mr. O'Hara, I told you before, nobody in the business will discuss Chameleon. He's a profit-terrorist. People are afraid of him. He's vindictive. Most of my peers think that if they ignore him, he'll ignore them. Talking about him gives his actions a certain legitimacy. Nobody wants to do that."