Chameleon

  "And what are the risks, other than those which are obvious?" asked Kimura.

  "The computers are in what were once the dungeons," Okari said. "It would be risky to linger down there too long. The guards are all sumo and their leader is a man who has the smell of an animal. I have seen him twice. He is very restless. He wanders the halls and dungeons at all hours of the night with a guard dog. I am always cautious that he does not get close enough to recognize me. I call him Hitotsu-me."

  O'Hara looked up sharply. "One-Eye?" he said. "Does he wear a patch?"

  "Hai. With a very bad scar." Okari drew an imaginary line down the side of his face.

  "I saw him today. I had the feeling he was watching me, and I also had the feeling I had met him before but I just—"

  O'Hara paused, concentrating on the sketchy details of a face he had seen for only a few moments, isolating the vague details of that face in his mind and focusing totally on it. He said nothing for more than a minute, then: "No, I don't think I know him. And yet there's something familiar ..." He tried to concentrate, tapping his memory. "A picture, perhaps... No, the face itself is not familiar." He went back to the beginning of it, to his conversation with Falmouth on the boat. The Players...

  "Le Croix," he said.

  "Who?" Okari asked.

  "A Frenchman. Le Croix is his nickname. He lost an eye in Algiers and crucified a couple of dozen rebels to get even. It could be him. There are no photographs of him in existence, he had them all destroyed. If it is Le Croix, you're right—we're looking down a hundred miles of bad road. For the purposes of this junket we need to give him plenty of room. Any other problems?"

  Okari shook his head.

  "How did you figure all this out?" Eliza asked. "Going up through the drains and all that?"

  "Very simple," said Okari, "you forget I lived there once. For three years it was my private playground. I know every stone in the place."

  11

  LE CROIX ENTERED THE DUNGEON STAIRWELL in Dragon's Nest and went down the wide stone staircase. The dog, an ugly mongrel, was expertly trained. It strode ahead of him, its nose first in the air, then along the ground, sniffing, alert.

  Le Croix's instincts had been sending out warnings ever since he saw O'Hara at the fortress earlier in the day. It was the first time since he joined Master that he felt threatened. For three years everything had gone perfectly, not a slip-up. Then things started going a little haywire. First there was the job on the Thoreau when Thomley was killed. Then Lavander was snatched. Then Garvey and Hooker pulled him into Dragon's Nest to head up security. It seemed to him they were getting defensive, and Le Croix's game had always been an offensive one. Now this reporter, who was supposed to lead them to Chameleon, seemed to be getting closer to them instead.

  He hated the dungeons. They were cold and dank and the wind, crying through cracks in the mortar, was unnerving. Even the dog got spooky down here.

  When he was sure the place was secure, he retreated back upstairs to the warmth of the security office and sat watching the monitor screen as the camera scanned the dungeon stairwell. Something was in the air, he could feel it as surely as he felt the cold drafts down below. He would have some coffee and check again in thirty or forty minutes. He did not trust the electronic devices. He did not trust anything or anyone but himself.

  The wall of Dragon's Nest rose out of the trees above them like an enormous gray shroud. They had climbed up the mountain from the road below and now they were at the mouth of a gaping water drain, its masoned stones green with centuries of moss. A trickle of water fell from its mouth and splattered on the rocks below. Red eyes glittered in the beam of O'Hara's flashlight. The creature squealed and scurried back into the opening. Vines cluttered the entrance.

  "No wonder they've never paid any attention to this drain," O'Hara whispered. "You have to be crazy to do this."

  "Welcome to madness," Chameleon said and slithered through the vines into the drain. O'Hara followed him, his hands slipping on the moss-covered rocks. The drain was four feet in diameter and long. It snaked out of light range. Far in the back, O'Hara could hear the steady trickle of a dozen streams echoing through the tunnel. Cold air moaned past them.

  Chameleon moved on all fours, like a cat. And fast. They were both dressed in black pants and turtlenecks and black sneakers. Chameleon carried a rope with a small telescoping grappling hook on one end. They had four microwave transmitters, each wrapped in heavy Styrofoam, tucked in their sweaters. Nothing else but the flashlight.

  They both crept along on all fours, their backs curved away from the top of the drain, past two feeder drains. At the third, Chameleon stopped. He pointed up and O'Hara flashed the light toward the ceiling. A shaft went straight up into the guts of the fortress. It was thirty or forty feet straight up to a grate at the far end. Chameleon put his back against one wall and his feet against the other and started shinnying up. It was a torturous ascent because the walls of the shaft were dripping wet. Foot by slippery foot he jerked his way up the narrow enclosure. When he reached the top he fastened the grappling hook to the grate and unwound the rope. It dangled down to O'Hara's fingertips. He climbed up it, hand over hand. He braced himself with feet and back while Chameleon very cautiously pushed up the grate and slid it aside.

  The subterranean passage was grim. Only two lamps illuminated the low-ceilinged dungeons. What were once cells had been converted into storage bins, but the place still seemed to be permeated with soughs of torture and despair, as if history were whispering through its cold stone corridors. It was the wind, keening through cracks in the walls and down the stairways.

  They quickly pulled themselves into the hall and replaced the grate. They hid the grappling hook and ran to an open winding stairway. Chameleon cautioned O'Hara to wait. They looked up and saw a camera shake its head back and forth, slowly scanning the staircase and the hall above. As it swept away, toward the hallway, Chameleon ran up the stairs and stopped directly under the camera. He stood with his back against the wall as it moved silently overhead, pointing back toward the stairwell. Then he ran the rest of the way down the hall to a fire door. The locker room was just inside. He had to make a move before the camera completed its swing back. If there was someone in the hallway on the other side of the door, they were in trouble.

  He opened it and stepped through. The hallway was empty. Behind him, O'Hara dashed to the spot under the camera and waited until it swung back and then ran to the doorway.

  They ran to the locker room and jumped through the door.

  A man was standing in front of them.

  Outside, Eliza and the Magician had driven to the top of the mountain to a point where the road curved close to the edge of a precipice. Eliza pulled off to the side and parked. They could not see into Dragon's Nest from there, but the Magician was sure the reception would be excellent. He was sitting in the back of the van before three built-in videotape decks and monitors, twisting dials, looking for the signal. There was nothing but static.

  "They're not in there yet," he said.

  "I just hope when they do get in they get it done and get their fannies out of there," Eliza said.

  "I just hope they don't run into one of those sumo wrestlers they have as guards. Four hundred pounds of bad news."

  They had left a Toyota parked near the bottom of the mountain. If they were being chased when they left, Eliza would take the tapes and switch to the car. O'Hara, the Magician and Chameleon would stay with the truck and lead pursuers away from her.

  It was O'Hara who had realized that they only needed to get some tape of the pumping system on Midas to prove that AMRAN had stolen the plans. That and the existence of the Midas field itself would be enough for them to justify blowing the AMRAN story wide open.

  The Magician looked at his watch. They had been gone an hour. That's how long Chameleon had estimated it would take to get into the control-panel corridor behind the big map. The Magician would monitor the video screens in the truck
and record anything that was shown. Each of the transmitters was set to beam its signal at a different frequency so the pictures would not overlap. He couldn't think of anything they had forgotten.

  The man in the locker room appeared to be in his fifties. His eyes were faded, his skin was creased with age and his white hair was as thin as wisps of cotton.

  "You're early," he said in Japanese.

  "Yes," Chameleon said quickly, "there is a problem with one of the air conditioners."

  "It takes two of you? My, times have changed. It is much too extravagant for a janitor like me. Good night. Don't work too late." He left.

  "Close," said O'Hara.

  "Let us hope he does not mention it to anyone on the way out."

  "What next?"

  "Check the open lockers. The fixing men usually leave their internal ID badges on their coveralls," Chameleon said. There were several, and the members of the maintenance crew obviously were not as large as those on the security force. They both found coveralls that fit.

  Chameleon handed O'Hara a hardhat and said, "Put this on. Keep your head down so the cameras will not see your face. If you see anyone, just nod and go on. You will find there is little conversation up above. We will go to the top of the stairs and enter the main floor. The map room is immediately to your left, and the corridor leading behind the map is next to it. We are lucky. We do not have far to go."

  "We hook up, check the map room to make sure the cameras are scanning what we want and then split," O'Hara said. "No hanging around rummaging through wastebaskets, okay?"

  "I will try to control myself."

  Getting behind the map was a piece of cake. The main corridor was empty and the door was unlocked. The wall was a myriad of TV monitors.

  "It's going to be tough to find the monitors for the map room," O'Hara said.

  "They are marked. See."

  Each of the boxes had its location written on the frame with a felt-tip pen. Checking the inscriptions, O'Hara and Chameleon had no trouble locating the monitors for the two scanners in the map room. They hooked a tiny alligator clamp attached to a thin wire on the "video out" lug of each of the monitor boxes and plugged in the transmitters, which were three by five inches, and an inch thick. The wires connecting the clips to the transmitters were long enough to permit O'Hara to slide the boxes out of sight under the monitors.

  Then O'Hara noticed another interesting monitor. It was for the scanner in Garvey's office. O'Hara hooked it up, too.

  "Okay, let's check the game room once and get out of here. And let's hope they're picking up something outside."

  In the news van, the Magician slowly twisted the small fine-tuning knob on one of the monitors. Suddenly the picture popped win. He was looking at the room Okari had described. The map was easily thirty feet high and twenty feet long. Recessed in it were a dozen diod screens. The camera was moving and the Magician watched it pan across the room and back. He tuned the other two. One of them was a stationary shot of an office. A small man with a waxed mustache was talking on the phone. The Magician recognized him from O'Hara's description. It had to be General Garvey.

  "We got it, Lizzie. You're not gonna believe this. We got two different angles on the map."

  "Can you see Midas?"

  "Yeah—but the camera's still moving. O'Hara's got to get in there now and freeze it."

  He tuned the sets as sharply as possible. The camera swept to the center of the room and then started back.

  There it was. There were four screens on the Midas location. Two exterior and two interior.

  "Incredible!" said the Magician.

  "Do we have sound?"

  Voices murmured in the map room.

  "Yeah. And a million-dollar picture on all three—"

  He stopped in mid-sentence. He was listening to Garvey.

  "Quill. Nine twenty-five, April 8. 730-037-370. Red urgent. We have not heard from you for twenty-four hours. It is important you make contact immediately." He hung up.

  "Well, I'll be damned. We just got a bonus," the Magician said.

  "What?"

  "We got Quill, on film. And guess who it is?"

  "Hooker?"

  "Garvey."

  "How do we get to the cameras?" O'Hara asked. "Aren't they pretty high up?"

  "There is a ladder with wheels in the map room. There will be four men there, five at the most, and they won't pay any attention—they'll be too busy. It is from this panel that all the machines on Midas are controlled."

  "We just walk right in, that it?" O'Hara said.

  Chameleon nodded. They entered the big room. O'Hara was stunned at the size. Then, on two of the diod screens, he saw Midas for the first time.

  The exteriors were both eerie. Gray soundless pictures under the sea. One was the dish, a saucer under water with its superstructure hanging down toward the bottom of the ocean.

  The other was even more bizarre. A long line of rusted ships, settled deep in the sand, wavered before the camera. Powerful underwater searchlights peered through the murky water, etching the forms and shapes. One of the screens showed a close-up of the pumping station, the heart of the entire system.

  There it was, the evidence they needed, in living color.

  Four men were at work at the enormous console. One of them glanced back over his shoulder as they entered the room, then turned back to whatever he was doing. Chameleon rolled the eighteen-foot ladder in place under the cameras. Since there was no way for him to check the parameters of the two cameras, he wanted to make sure one of them was aimed at the crucial part of the map, the TV close-up of the pumping station. And there was no way for them to know for sure whether the transistors were working. At this point they were playing it by ear.

  O'Hara went up the ladder. There was a small switch at the bottom of the camera which stopped it from scanning and froze it in place. Once O'Hara stopped the camera it would be only a matter of time until somebody in the security office noticed and came to check. They needed to get out fast once he threw the switch.

  He was reaching for the switch when the door opened and Garvey came in. He was directly below O'Hara, who quickly looked away and started fiddling with the camera. Chameleon, too, turned his back to the jaunty little man.

  "Everything okay?" Garvey asked as he passed them.

  Chameleon nodded. "Just cleaning the lenses," he said.

  But Garvey was much more interested in the console. "What's it look like?"

  "We're about ready to bring in Number Seventeen," one of the operators said.

  "Better get the general. You know how he loves to watch these new wells come in."

  "Not much to see," the man at the console answered. "Just the on-line lights going and the digital counter clocking off the gallons."

  "Ours not to reason why," Garvey sighed. He picked up the phone and pressed a number and waited. "General, we're about to punch in Seventeen... Very good, sir." He hung up. "He's coming in."

  It was then O'Hara realized what was happening. They were getting ready to bring an oil well on-line.

  They had to get out of there fast. O'Hara reached up and switched off the scanning button. The camera stopped roving. It was aimed directly at the Midas screens. He hurried back down the ladder and jerked his head toward the door.

  Chameleon did not move. He was staring at the door. O'Hara grabbed his arm but Chameleon shook his head. He could not leave.

  He had to see Hooker.

  Just once, he had to be an arm's length away from the man he had hated since he was a child.

  The general entered the room from his office.

  O'Hara busied himself by returning the ladder to the corner, keeping his face away from Hooker and Garvey.

  We have to get out of here fast, thought O'Hara. Everyone's in this room but Le Croix, and God know's where he is. If Hooker or Garvey spot me, the game's over. He turned back.

  Chameleon was edging closer to the tall hawk-faced man.

  Christ, O'Hara though
t, he's blowing it.

  But the small cluster of men at the console were all riveted to the instruments, to the action at the console.

  The key operator said, "Okay, we're ready."

  "Close-up on the valve," Garvey said.

  The operator punched a key, and the camera, obviously equipped with a zoom lens, was triggered. The picture on the TV screen changed slowly as the lens zoomed in.

  It was perfect. A close-up of the stolen pumping station actually in the process of switching on a new well. Now all he had to do was get Chameleon the hell out of there without being obvious. The tattooed man stood a few feet behind Hooker, transfixed, staring at the sharp profile.

  His own father, a few feet away.

  "On-line programmed," the operator said.

  He punched some more keys.

  "Counting down... five, four, three, two, one... and switch-in."

  The TV screen told the story. On the console of the pumping valve, a bank of lights blinked on in sequence. Then the numbers on the digital counter began switching so fast that it was hard to read them.

  "And we're in," the operator cried.

  The general laughed and clapped his hands. "Well done, gentlemen," he said. "Congratulations. Jess, come on into the office, I've got champagne on ice."

  "Right, sir, in a minute."

  Hooker wheeled around and started back toward the office door. For a moment he came eye to eye with Chameleon. The general looked at him briefly, then nodded and marched off.

  Chameleon was right behind him. Nobody else saw him but O'Hara. The others were still staring intently at the nerve center of Midas.

  What the hell's he doing? O'Hara thought.

  The general entered his office, and Chameleon, waiting until the door was almost closed, leaped through it sideways. The door clicked shut.

  Well, I'll be damned, O'Hara thought. What now?

  In the van, the Magician and Eliza were howling with glee. There it was, a close-up of what they needed, and in the process of bringing in a new well.