Chameleon (17 page)

‘This is Master Control.’

‘Clearance for selection.’

‘One moment, please.’ A few seconds later a recorded voice came on the line. ‘Clearance. Your ID?’

‘Quill. Z-l.’

‘Programming Z- 1. Voice check.’

‘Four score and seven years ago..

‘Voice check cleared. Your number?’

‘730-037-370.’

‘Your program?’

‘Selection.’

‘Programming selection.’ There was another pause and then:

‘This is Selection.’

‘Antiterrorism.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Assassination,’

‘Programmed.’

‘Kidnapping.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Language, Spanish.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Venezuela.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Route and intersect.’

‘Routing... intersection.., we have twelve candidates.’

‘File and reselect.’

‘Filed and reprogrammed.’

‘Availability.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Route and intersect.’

‘Routing ... intersection ... we have nine candidates.’ ‘File and reselect.’

‘Filed and reprogrammed.’

‘Team operation.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Previous team.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Assassination, non-political.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Caracas.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Tracking.’

‘Programmed.’

‘Route and intersect.’

‘Routing... intersection .. . we have one candidate.’ ‘Name.’

‘Hinge.’

‘Subfile and reselect.’

‘Subfiled and reprogrammed.’

‘Delete tracking.

‘Tracking deleted.’

‘Route and intersect.’

‘Routing ... intersection ... we have four candidates.’

‘Names.’

‘Falmouth, Gazinsky, Hinge, Kimoto.’

‘File and hold.’

‘Filed ... holding.’

A long pause, then Quill said, ‘Delete Kimoto.’

‘Kimoto deleted.’

‘Hold.’

‘Holding.’

Another pause. Then: ‘Readout ... Falmouth, team ops, A-level.’

‘Falmouth, Tony ... prefers solo ops . . . two previous team ops.. . maximum team size: three.. . commander: one ops... command effectiveness rating: A-plus. . . overall effectiveness rating: A-plus, A-plus.’

‘Delete readout.’

‘Readout deleted.’

‘Readout ... Gazinsky, team ops,. A-level.’

‘Gazinsky, Rado ... four previous teams ops ... commander: one ops ... command effectiveness rating: C .. . overall effectiveness rating: C, A-minus, B, B-plus.’

‘File overall effectiveness rating and delete.’

‘Information deleted... holding.

‘Readout... Hinge, team ops, A—level.’

‘Hinge, Raymond ... four previous team ops ... commander: two ops . . . command effectiveness rating: A, B-plus

overall effectiveness rating: A, B-plus, A, B-plus.’

‘Intersect overall effectiveness rating and score.’

‘Intersection ... scoring: Falmouth, A-plus ... Hinge, A-minus ... Gazinsky, B.’

Falmouth and Hinge were obviously the best men for the job.

As was his custom, Falmouth placed a long-distance call to a 404 area code at eleven o’clock. The telephone was in a small efficiency apartment on the Buford Highway in Atlanta. The apartment contained a small desk, a chair and a telephone with a Code-A-Phone 1400 answering machine. Falmouth paid the rent by the year. Since the phone was used only to collect incoming calls, the bill was fixed and was paid each month by money order. ft answered on the first ring and the recorded voice said: ‘Hello, this is the University Magazine Service. At the tone, please leave your name, number and the time you called. Thank you.’ A beep followed.

Falmouth held a small yellow plastic beeper to the mouthpiece of the phone and pressed the button on the side. A series of musical tones emitted from the beeper. Falmouth could hear the tape in the answering machine rewinding.

‘Skit,’ he said to himself.

The first call was transmitted.

‘This is Quill, eleven-ten, Thursday, 730-037-370. Urgent.’ The second call was almost the same:

‘Quill, eleven fifty-five, Thursday, 730-037-370. Red urgent. One hour.’

Deciphered, that meant Quill had a hot one and needed to make contact with Falmouth within an hour. Falmouth looked at his watch. It was twelve-ten. He had forty-five minutes to get back to Quill.

He had to make a decision fast. Time was running out. Howe had three days left to deliver O’Hara. But if Falmouth failed to call Quill, it could blow his whole plan. His back was against the wall, He decided to make the call.

He dialled the number.

‘Yes?’ the voice answered.

‘Reporting.’

‘Clearance?’

‘Spettro.’

‘Classification?’

‘T- 1.’

‘Voice check.’

‘Jack be nimble, Jack be—’

‘ID number?’

‘730-037-370.’

‘Cleared for routing. Contact?’

‘Quill.’

‘Routing.’

He was on hold for only a few seconds when the cultured voice answered.

‘Quill.’

‘Falmouth.’

‘Is your phone clean?’

‘Yes, it’s a pay phone.’

‘Excellent. Glad you got back to me. I have something for you. It’s a bit dirty, but the price is good.’

‘Yes?’

‘A consultant has been lifted by the Rafsaludi from Sunset Oil in Caracas. They want two million by day after tomorrow. The subject is Avery Lavander. We want to bring him in whole.’

‘Have you a play in mind?’

‘Yes. A variation on the Algerian switch.’

‘That would require a preliminary face-to-face confrontation.’

‘We’ve had a bit of a break in that respect. The plant manager has arranged a meeting between the Rafsaludi and a company rep tomorrow at two. They’re being quite audacious about this, but they’re also a bit stupid. It gives us plenty of time to get in there and set up.’

‘Hmmm.’

‘Are you familiar with the play?’

‘Yes. It requires a team.’

‘Affirmative. But only two men. L understand you prefer to operate solo, but you happen to be.

Quill’s voice seemed to fade away. Falmouth was already considering his options. It would be the worst kind of tactic to turn down a red urgent assignment at this point. But a chill coursed through his body into his stomach. He felt as if he had swallowed an ice cube. The timing could not be worse. And a team play into the bargain. He had made his reputation as a solo. Working alone was something e had learned a long time ago

On the outskirts of Newtonabbey, six or seven miles northeast of Belfast, the grim rowhouses seem to stretch for miles. as if reflected in mirrors. They crowd the cobblestone streets, these dismal clones, caked a monochrome gray by decades of industrial dust that has long since disguised whatever colours the houses once were. One of Tony Falmouth’s earliest memories was that his house and all the houses in this drab infinity seemed constantly to be peeling. The grit-caked paint hung in flakes from window sills and porch railings and door frames, like dead skin peeling from a burned body. In his youthful nightmares, the rains would come and the flakes became soggy and the houses began to melt and son the gutters of the claustrophobic streets were flooded with a thick gray mass of putty, and Tony ran along the sidewalk trying to find his own house in that molten river of gray slime. Then he woke up.

13y the time he was ten, Tony Falmouth had already begun to deal with his identity crisis. He had his Uncle Jerry to thank for that. Uncle Jerry was another persistent memory from his youth, although a much more pleasant one. Uncle Jerry, the wiry, hard-talking little Cheshire Cat of a man, always smiling, always humming some nondescript tune; a man so ugly he was beautiful, with a large warty nose and hands so big he could conceal a pint in his fist.

Jerry Devlin, his mother’s brother, listened to his dreams and his fears and talked to him. Nobody else did. His father, Emmett, crushed under the weight of family and job and assigned by fate to the worst kind of drab anonymity, had very little to say to anyone. Every night he sat with his pint or two of ale, staring out the window, down through the endless parade of slums, to a place where he cu1d just barely see the ocean between the houses. One night, when Tony was nine, his father got up from the chair and followed his gaze out the door, down the cobblestone street, and off into the fog and never came home.

The crisis precipitated by the desertion of Emmett Falmouth was resolved by Uncle Jerry and Uncle Martin. Tony was very bright, so it was decided he would stay in school and Jerry and Marty would keep food on the table and make the rent and keep an eye on the kid.

But there was always the weight. He had watched it bend his father until he looked like a hunchback. And now he watched the weight bow his mother, watched the wrinkles spread across her face like ripples on water, watched the colour fade from her hair and the life fade from her eyes until one morning she could no longer get out of bed. It took her a month, lying there choking on her own phlegm, to die.

When Father Donleavy came to the house, Tony made a confession,. He told the priest he hated his father. Father Donleavy suggested a round of Our Fathers and Hail Marys and told him time would ease the pain. He went to live with Marty, and it was another two years before Tony realized Father Donleavy was full of shit. Time and Hail Marys did not get rid of the anger. Instead, it grew inside him, like a snake coiled in his stomach.

Jerry always came at night. He was always armed. And the only time he spoke with bitterness about anything was when he talked about the British. Marty ‘was different. He was apolitical. He had good friends among the British in Ulster. There was no fight in him and he and .Jerry never discussed the Troubles. Nobody ever told Tony his Uncle Jerry was an IRA gunman, after a while he just knew it.

Once, when Tony was twelve, a military payroll was robbed and there was a great deal of shooting and several men on both sides were killed. That night, Jerry came to the house and they sat at the table in the kitchen with the curtains drawn and Jerry took out a package wrapped in yellow oilskin.

‘Hide this fer me, will ye now,’ Jerry said. And Tony climbed out the window of his second-floor room and hid the package in a vent in the roof. Two weeks later Jerry took Tony out to the fields twenty miles from Newtonabbey and he opened up the package. It was a brand-new Webley .38-caliber pistol.

‘A grand weapon,’ Jerry said. ‘And ‘tis toime ye learn to use it. Do it like yer pointin’ yer finger. Keep both eyes open. Imagine yer shootin’ at the bloody Black and Tans.’

Tony took the gun and held it and put his finger on the trigger and it felt good in his hand and he could feel the energy from it charging through his body. He held the gun out at arm’s length and sighted down along the barrel and the gun seemed to be an extension of his arm and his anger flooded down into his finger and he squeezed the trigger.

Boom!

The gun kicked up high and the power of the weapon made him dizzy with excitement and after that he practised whenever he could, watching the bottles and rocks explode as he squeezed off the shots. Only it wasn’t Black and Tans he imagined shooting, it was his father.

“Tis one thing to know how to use a weapon,’ Jerry said. ‘Just remember, plannin’ is most important. Plannin’ is everything. Always know how to get into and how to get out of a fix. And don’t trust nobody. When ye can, work on yer own. Dead heroes ain’t no good to nobody.’

When they were finished, he would hide the gun back in the rooftop vent. Occasionally Jerry would come in the night and get the yellow oilskin wrapper. And then he would return it a day or two later. Then one day they came to the house and told Marty that Jerry was dead, informed on by one of his own, and tracked down and killed by a new British colonel in Newtonabbey.

Nobody came to get the gun. A month or two went by, and Tony realized it was his now.

Tony played soccer in the street near the school which also happened to be across the way from the British patrol station. The colonel, whose name was Floodwell, was a stiff and proper man with waxed moustaches and suspicious eyes. Planning, that was important. And doing it alone. Twice a week at exactly six o’clock the colonel left the patrol station and walked three blocks to a narrow little street without a name that sat on The Bluffs. The street was a dead end and beyond the barrier, the land dropped away fifty or sixty feet to the street below. There were houses built into the side of The Bluffs whose basements were on the lower level. The colonel walked down the dead-end street and, using his own key, entered a house near the dead end and there he had a drink of Scotch and dinner and made love to the young woman who had rooms in the house.

Tony planned his first execution all winter long, following the colonel, watching him from the darkness across the Street. He found an abandoned house and used it as a short cut home from school each night. He memorized the house, knew every step, sat for long periods of time, listening to the rats cavorting in the darkness, making his plans.

Between the vacant house and his own house, there was a small sentry house squatted on the corner and when there was trouble, the troopers stationed there pulled the barbed-wire barriers across the road. Tony had youth on his side. At fourteen, he was still small for his age. When he went home, he went down through the vacant house and out the basement door and crossed the street and walked close to the houses on the other side, staying in the shadows until he was almost to the sentry box. At first he would startle the two troopers at the check point, but they soon got to know him.

On a Monday in early spring, he loaded the Webley, and folded it back in its oilskin wrapper. he got a potato from the pantry and bored a hole about three—quarters of an inch in diameter through the centre of it and put the gun and the potato in the bottom of his canvas knapsack, covering them with books and his lunch. After school, he played soccer in the street near the patrol station. The knapsack lay on the sidewalk in full view of everybody for two hours. By five-thirty it was too dark to play any longer. He said goodbye to his friends and went straight to the deserted house on the nameless street. He got out the oilskin wrapper and unfolded it and held the Webley in his hand and felt its energy, like electricity, sizzling up his arm. He took out the potato. It was a trick Jerry had taught him.

‘It’s good for one shot,’ Jerry had said. Makes a .38 sound like a popgun. Whoever ya hit’ll die with potato all over his mug.’ And he had laughed. Tony twisted it on the end of the barrel. He waited in the dark with the rats. He felt no fear, only exhilaration.

The colonel entered the nameless street whistling a tune, his swagger stick under his arm. He walked with a marching step, jaunty and arrogant, his chin held up high. Tony stepped out of the doorway and stayed close to the house. He started to walk toward the colonel.

He was ten feet away when the colonel saw him. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘You gave me a start there, boy. Step out here, let me have a look at you.’

Tony looked up at the colonel, but suddenly he wasn’t looking at the colonel’s thin lips or his long, arrogant nose or his glittering, cold eyes. He was looking, instead, at the face of his father. He stepped out of the dark, held the gun at arm’s length and squeezed the trigger.

The potato muffled the shot.

It went pumf.

And the potato disintegrated and the bullet ripped into the colonel’s head just above his left eye and tore the side of his skull away. Bits of potato splattered against his shocked face. The force of the shot twisted him half around and he staggered sideways, his feet skittering under him, but he did not fall. He kept his balance and turned back toward Tony. The side of his face was a soggy mess. His eye was blown from its socket. Geysers of blood flooded down his jacket. His one good eye stared with disbelief at Tony. He took an unsteady step and fell to his knees.

A window opened down the alley.

‘Whos’at? What’s goin’ on?’ a voice called out.

Tony ducked into the shadows and stared back up the nameless street. A door opened near the end of the street, a shaft of yellow light cut through the darkness.

Tony turned back toward the empty house and then his heart froze. Something grabbed his ankle. He turned, and the colonel had one hand around his ankle and his good eye was glaring up at the youth with hate, and his other hand was clawing at his holster. Blood splashed on Tony’s pants leg. The colonel tried to say something, to scream, but all that came out was a bloody gurgle.

Tony tried to pull away. He dragged the colonel a few feet toward the vacant house, but the officer had Tony’s leg in a death grip. He started to release the pistol from its holster. Tony held the pistol an inch from the man’s forehead and fired again. Floodwell’s forehead exploded. Bits of skull and blood peppered Tony’s face. The colonel rolled over and lay on his back gagging, then a rattle started deep in his throat.

Tony bolted into the doorway of the house, wrapped the gun in its oilcloth packet and stuffed the gun down under his books. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his bloody face as he ran back to the basement steps. He heard footsteps on the street above and he kept running and wiping the blood off his face. When he reached the back door lie stopped. He stuffed the kerchief down with the gun and stepped cautiously into the dark street. It was empty. He walked quickly to other side, where the shadows were deeper and started toward the sentry post. He could see the two troopers inside the small blockhouse in the middle of the road. The street was open. The barbed-wire gate was pulled back on the sidewalk. The two troopers seemed to be working on the radio. He could hear its static as he drew closer.

There was only blood on one of his pants legs. That was a help.

He stayed in the shadows, walking very slowly, his eyes on the two Tans standing near the check booth.

‘I’m tellin’ ya, Striker, it was shots,’ one of them said, ‘at least the second one was.’

‘Awr, ya hear shots in yer sleep, Finch,’ the one called Striker said.

Tony walked toward the two troopers who were silhouetted by the lights in the booth. In the future, he thought walking in the darkness toward them, he would try to think of everything that could go wrong. He would have more than one plan.

Tony reached the barbed-wire gate that had been pulled back on the sidewalk. The two troopers had not seen him, they were busy trying to tune in their radio, but all they were getting was static.

He held his leg against the barbed—wire fence and pushed until he felt one of the steel knots dig through his pants and into his leg. He pulled up and the barb tore deep into his flesh. He screamed.

The trooper called Striker flashed his torch in Tony’s face.

‘Help me, please! I’ve hurt m’self,’ he called out.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Striker cried and rushed over to Tony.

‘You got yerself a bad cut there, son,’ he said, watching blood pumping through Tony’s torn -pants. ‘Dintcha see that wire?’

‘I was in a hurry. Played soccer too long, y’know. I’m really in for it now. Late for dinner and me pants is ruined. My uncle’ll take the strap to me for sure.’

Ere, Finch, get out the kit. Our soccer champ, ‘ere, has got hisself wounded on our wire.’

Finch was hitting the radio with his fist, trying to clear the static. ‘Wonder what the hell’s goin’ on up ‘ere?’ he said. He looked at Tony’s leg. ‘Christ, son, you really tore yourself up, now, dintcha. Hold still a minute, I got some iodine and a bandage in the first aid. Din’ ‘at sound like gunshots to you, Striker?’

‘I was fuckin’ with the radio, Finch, I really didn’t hear it,’ he said. ‘Hang on, son, this’ll have a bite in it.’ He bathed the ragged tear in Tony’s foot with iodine and bandaged it.

The phone in the booth rang and Finch picked it up. ‘Whas’at

whas’at? Jesus, is he a goner? No, there ain’t been a living soul down ‘ere for half an hour. . . just a school kid we know, cut his leg on the wire. . . Rightch’are. We’ll close her off now, but it’s been quiet as a bleedin’ church mouse down ‘ere.’ He hung up. ‘You ain’t gonna believe this, Striker. Somebody just blew the colonel’s head off. Not two blocks from ‘ere, up on The Bluff. We got to close up the street. I told yez I ‘eard shots.’

Tony squinched up his face and forced out some tears. ‘Owww,’ he moaned.

‘How far do ya live?’ Finch asked.

‘Just two roads down, on Mulflower.’

‘Kin ya walk on ‘at?’

‘I think so.’ He tried it. The cut burned but he could stand on it. ‘I can make it okay. Thank ye, for yer help.’