Chameleon (38 page)

‘Why do you stand between us?’ Okari demanded. ‘This has nothing to do with the higaru.’

‘Oh? You question the authority of the Tokenrui?’

‘No!’ cried Chameleon. ‘But this man is a beikoku-jin, he.—’

‘So he is an American. What difference? Would you attack an unarmed man?’

Do not insult me, Tokenrui-san, I offered him his choice of weapons.’

‘And if he is not trained in the use of them, he might as well be unarmed.’

‘I know about O’Hara-san. He is the one they call Kazuo. He knows the way of the sword.’

‘I named him Kazuo. I have taken him as my son. And he, too, is higaru-dashi.’

Chameleon was shocked.

Kimura looked at both men. The muscles in his face were ridged, his eyes stern. ‘I thought both of you had gone beyond brawling. Do either of you think there is any honour to this duel? I fear if there is to be wisdom here, it must come from me. And if there is to be a challenge, it must be made properly and it must be approved by me.’

‘I made the proper challenge,’ O’Hara said.

Kimura looked at the thin scratch down O’Hara’s chest, at the buttons on the floor. Turning to Chameleon, he said, ‘And you, Okari, provoked him.’

‘Hai.’

‘You both insult me.’

‘Why?’ demanded O’Hara.

‘Because it is the way of higaru-dashi. Because we are all brothers, and an honourable man does not take up the sword against his brother. Because both of you are men of honour who have taken the oath of the Secret Warrior.’

Okari and O’Hara stared hard at each other from opposite sides of the small room while the significance of Kimura’s revelation sank in. Kimura stood between them, his arm still outstretched. Neither of them would challenge that gesture. To do so would mean to challenge Tokenrui.

Okari very precisely slid his sword into its sheath.

‘Arigato,’ Kimura said quietly.

‘So, Marui-me has learned the Way of the Secret Warrior,’ Okari said.

‘This man is your brother and yet you use your term “Round-Eyes’ as if it were an insult,’ Kimura said. ‘You, Okari, have you forgotten the fifth lesson of the Tendai? Your arrogance shocks me. For many years you have studied the discipline of humility and now you are about to throw it away in one foolish moment.’

‘He came to kill me!’

‘You say that without fear of being wrong?’ He walked to the far side of the room and turned, standing with his hands clasped before him. ‘I will remind you both, the purpose of our discipline is to make each man a competitor only with himself, for only when you have mastered that demon are you ready to challenge others.’

O’Hara and Okari stood with heads lowered as Kimura chastised them, reminding them of their vows.

Okari said, ‘I never thought—’

‘You never thought! For years you have been trained to look beyond what appears to be reality, to anticipate the unknown. Now you tell me you did not think. You are right — you did not think. Have you still to learn that one never trusts what seems obvious? Does the peacock joyously embrace the trap?’

He walked back to their side of the room and stood in front of them. ‘You have deceived yourselves by your failure to look beyond what seems to be. Both of you have achieved the mystery of the seventh level and yet neither of you has practised it in this affair.’

He stopped for a moment, watching the two men shuffling before him. ‘Could I be wrong? Perhaps neither of you is worthy to be a candidate for Tokenrui.’

They both looked up with shock.

‘Yes, one day I must select between you to take my place as Tokenrui, Now do you understand? I have watched and trained both of you since long before either of you achieved manhood. And at this moment, I could not choose between you.’

‘It never occurred to me that I might be considered,’ O’Hara said.

‘Nor I,’ said Okari.

‘Good. That is encouraging. Perhaps you are still in touch with humility.’

‘What about Sammi,’ O’Hara said, ‘isn’t he a candidate?’

‘Unfortunately, he will be number three. And whichever of you is not chosen as Tokenrui will be second to the one that is. I say “unfortunately” only because Sammi is my grandson and he has trained as hard as either of you. But he has achieved only the state of the fifth level. Whatever the outcome, you three are brothers, and that can never change and if that bond is broken by either of you, you will be banished in dishonour from higaru-dashi forever.’

‘I am to call this gaikoku no karicho my brother?’ Okari said.

‘Does one tiger condemn the stripes of another?’ said Kimura sternly to Okari.

The younger man flashed a look at O’ Hara and then back at Kimura. ‘The beikoku-jin would have killed me,’ he said.

‘Do you know for sure the American would kill you, or does the fear in your heart speak for you?’

Okari hesitated, staring hard at the green-eyed American.

‘He is not a spy and he does not kill,’ said the old man. ‘And he is not one of them. He came back to expose them’

‘He does not deny he is Chameleon,’ said O’Hara.

‘Yes and no,’ said Kimura. ‘He is Chameleon and he is not.’

‘Yeah, the Chameleon is never what it appears,’ O’Hara said.

‘This time it is quite true. The Chameleon is certainly not what you believe him to be. You both have much to learn. When you both have taken the Walk of a Thousand Days, and the special powers of Zen have been revealed to you, perhaps then your wisdom will be less cloudy. For now, we must decide on our next step. May I suggest we have some tea — all this talk has made me thirsty.’

10

‘This is Chameleon, but not the Chameleon you seek,’ Kimura said, putting his hand on Okari’s shoulder,

O’Hara had called the hotel. As planned, Eliza and the Magician had taken the late-afternoon train to Kyoto and they were in the bar waiting for him to return from Tanabe. He did not explain where he was and what had happened, he merely gave them the address. Now they were all seated in a square. O’Hara and Gunn faced Kimura and Okari, The Magician was seated at one end of the square and Sammi faced him. Tension still crackled between O’Hara and Okari, but they listened intently as Kimura spoke.

‘Imagine that I have several boxes,’ he began. ‘Each is made of glass, so we can see through it, and in each box there is an event. In each box we have placed a moment of history. But to consider these moments in their proper order, we must suspend the boxes in air so we can see each in relationship to the others. Only then can we have a true understanding of what has happened and why. Only then can we see what lies behind each event. Only then will we understand everything. If there is something significant we don’t know, it will become obvious in its absence.

‘So, let us begin with the first box, the one we see most clearly. In it we will put what you have learned, Kazuo, so you must tell us what you
know,
not what you think.

‘What we know is that a consortium of several petroleum companies was formed. It was conceived by General Alexander Hooker, who was president of Intercon Oil. During the three or four years Hooker was negotiating this deal, the heads of all of these companies either died of heart attacks or were killed in accidents. This includes Shichi Tomoro, the head of the Japanese combine San-San, which has just become a new member of AMRAN. An experimental oil rig was also sabotaged in Alaskan waters.’

‘Excuse me,’ Eliza said, ‘the same thing happened with the Aquila Milena, the car Marza was driving when he was killed. We don’t know why yet. And the Aquila Motor Works is now part of AMRAN, and the consortium is financing work on the car.’

‘Don’t forget the guy in Hawaii,’ said the Magician.

‘Yes
,“
said O’Hara. ‘A man was apparently murdered for some pictures that were taken aboard the oil rig. But all they wanted to do was destroy the film.’

Kimura, like a mime describing a story with his hands, hung invisible glass boxes in the air each time they brought up a new point. ‘It is important to remember in what order these things occurred. The dates do not matter so much as the order,’ he said.

‘Another element in the sequence is Red Bridges,’ Eliza went on. ‘He was a salvage man in Japan right after the war. He went from that to shipbuilding and then became involved in developing a large underwater living environment. It was designed by the scuba scientist Kaginakas. Both he and Bridges later died of heart attacks. The dish, as it was called, has since been completed and taken to... somewhere.’

‘He was also involved in refitting old Liberty ships, turning them into tankers,’ the Magician said.

‘And we learned yesterday that Bridges was part of San-San, which is now part of the consortium,’ Eliza added.

More boxes in the air. Kimura leaned back, concentrating on the imaginary complex he was building. ‘A question: Is there any doubt in your minds that these corporation people who died were actually killed by the mad one with the umbrella?’

O’Hara, Eliza and the Magician all shook their heads.

‘The accidental deaths were probably executed by someone other than Danilov,’ O’Hara said. ‘Falmouth, maybe, or a Frenchman named Le Croix, who is also a faceless one, although his reputation as a sadist is well documented. But the heart attacks were caused by Danilov, there is no question.’

‘And why has AMRAN been singled out as a victim of this terrorist you call Chameleon?’ Okari said.

‘Extortion,’ said O’Hara. ‘AMRAN refused to play ball.’

‘Play ball?’ Okari asked.

‘A
beikoku no
expression,’ Kimura explained. ‘It means they would not cooperate.’

‘There is another box we left out,’ Eliza said. ‘The oil consultant, Lavander. He had worked for all of these companies during the past year or so, including San-San, and he was murdered too, after they went to a lot of trouble to free him from a terrorist kidnapping in South America.’

‘Do you think there was a connection between the two terrorist groups, those who kidnapped Lavander and those who freed
him?
’
Kimura asked.

‘No,’ said O’Hara. ‘I think it was a genuine fluke. But it apparently scared one of these oil companies. They sent a man to test Lavander, and Lavander failed. He had become a security risk to someone.’

‘We recovered a ledger of his,’ Eliza said. ‘It contains highly confidential figures from all of the AMRAN oil companies, as well as others he worked for. The figures could be very damaging if they got out.’

‘Why?’ Kimura asked.

‘Because they prove that the companies have lied to the public about the amount of oil they have in reserve.’

‘And why would they do that?’

‘To
control the price of oil,’ O’Hara said. ‘The profit margins are staggering
—
four, five hundred percent a year. The public thinks it’s because there’s a shortage of oil, when actually there’s a surplus.’

‘I see. Go on’

‘There was also a notation about something called Midas,’ O’Hara said. ‘And Danilov mentioned Midas to me. He said, “Midas is lost.”

‘And Midas is another question for which there is no obvious answer at this point,’ said Kimura. ‘So, now we have six questions unanswered. First, why was the man killed in Hawaii? Second, where was this dish of Bridges’ taken and what is it for? Third, what is Midas? Fourth, why was this man Lavander assassinated? Fifth, why was the oil rig sabotaged?

And finally, why was the Italian car blown up? Is that correct?’

‘Right,’ said O’Hara.

‘Is there anything else?’

‘Yes,’ said O’Hara, ‘what was Tony Falmouth doing here?’

‘Perhaps the most revealing question of all,’ said Kimura. ‘But we will hold it for a few more minutes. Do you still believe Chameleon is alive, Kazuo?’

‘I’m looking at him,’ O’Hara said.

‘And the Chameleon you seek was a Japanese agent in World War II, correct?’

O’Hara nodded. Kimura looked at Okari and asked, ‘Does this look like a man who served in World War II?’

O’Hara laughed. ‘No,’ he said.

‘We can assume, then, that they are two different Chameleons?’

O’Hara nodded.

‘So, we now have many boxes to peer through. But before we go any further, let us deal with this anger that is between you two.’

‘I didn’t come here to kill anyone,’ O’Hara said to Okari. ‘I came to find the truth.’

‘And what is the truth?’ Kimura demanded.

‘That Chameleon is a monster who destroys without feeling, who kills for profit.’

‘My son, you have been chasing a name, not a person. You have both been tricked.’

‘Tricked? By whom?’

‘The eikoku-jin outside, the dead one. He tricked you, Kazuo, into believing that Okari was your enemy. And you, Okari, were tricked into believing O’ Hara had come to kill you. You both chose to believe what was obvious, and yet you both know that the truth often hides behind lies.’

‘Then what—’

‘Tell me again, O’Hara, what was your purpose in pursuing Chameleon?’

‘To destroy him with the truth.’

‘And you, Okari?’

‘They have sent killers after me before Why should this one be different?’

‘Because Kazuo is not one of them. You both have the same objective. You both seek to destroy the same evil and yet you have permitted that evil to turn you into enemies.’

‘And Falmouth?’ O’Hara said.

‘An instrument. He follows you to Chameleon and kills both of you.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I listen with my brain, not my heart. Why else? You yourself have admitted to me that the eikoku-jin told you Chameleon was the head of these mercenary terrorists. It was he who sent you on the journey because he was not good enough to find Chameleon himself. For what other reason would he follow you?’

‘I find it hard to believe, Tokenrui-san, that Falmouth was such a man.’

‘I admire your loyalty but not your perception. Why do you still trust him? He killed for money. Can such a man be honourable? Can he truly be a friend? And do you honestly believe that one who shares the Way with you is evil?’

‘Perhaps my ego won’t let me admit I was a sucker.’

Kimura nodded sagely. ‘That is possible. But you had a difficult problem. He told you lies and painted them with truth. And then the mad one on the mountain confirmed them with his lunacy.’

‘So Falmouth shopped me to get to Chameleon?’

‘That was his job, Kazuo, to eliminate a perpetual enemy.

‘But why? If Chameleon is not one of them, why are they so desperate to eliminate him?’

‘We will come to that. Let us stay with the subject. This eikoku-jin would then have killed you because you know too much. It was a risk they took, to reveal enough to put you on the scent but not tell you too much. You were better than they thought. You and Gunn-san.’

‘And then he would have killed Eliza and the Magician for the same reason.’

‘It is likely.’

‘You are right, Tokenrui-san, Falmouth could have killed me with ease. I wasn’t expecting it.’

Kimura nodded, but added, ‘Okari told me the eikoku-jin was behind you. He believed you were working together. It was when you told me you had not seen the Englishman since your meeting on the sea that I understood what he was up to.’

‘Great — now I owe Chameleon my life!’ O’Hara said.

‘Hai, A burden that is heavy to bear.’

‘I am in your debt, flu-san,’ O’Hara said and bowed to Okari.

‘And I owe you my apology, for drawing the sword against a brother.’

‘Ah, a beginning. Now we will have to endure the tests,’ Kimura said with a sigh.

‘Tests?’ Okari asked.

‘Yes, you will test him, he will test you. Ultimately you will be true brothers, but before that, there will be this testing and it will be quite a bore, I think.’

‘The testing is over,’ said O’Hara..

‘Yes,’ Okari agreed. ‘I have too heavy a burden to concern myself with such trivial matters.’

‘It has become a burden for all of us, Okari. We are all involved now,’ Kimura said.

‘I still don’t know why Master is so dedicated to killing Okari,’ Eliza said.

‘Not Okari Chameleon. It is important to remember that.’

‘Why?’

‘To understand that, we must go back to the boxes. Now that you understand this Chameleon is not your enemy, what do the boxes tell you? Study the sequence of events. The men who were murdered all died before their companies were swallowed up by this AMRAN, is that not correct?’

‘All but Bridges,’ said the Magician ‘He was part of San-San almost from the beginning.’

‘But the others were,’ said O’Hara.

‘The answer is in the boxes,’ said Kimura. ‘The Chameleon you seek wears the skin of a hero but has the heart of a weasel. He wears garlands when he should wear thorns. He used his military office to become rich. And he has fashioned an organization with its own assassins, thieves, destructors.’

‘Hooker,’ Eliza said. ‘You mean our war hero is the head of all this?’

‘The true Chameleon,’ said O’Hara. ‘The question is, Why? Why did they have Falmouth set me off on a trail that would eventually lead back to them?’

‘That’s easy,’ said the Magician. ‘They had one of the best damn assassins in the world shopping you all the way. If you got outa line, they’d pull the plug.’

‘This man who followed me was really following you,’ said Okari. ‘I saw him at the station. I mistakenly thought that you were working as a team. And when he started to follow me, I was sure of it.’

‘Sumpin’ happened,’ said the Magician. ‘You just came from your meetin’ with Hooker. Falmouth musta known where you were goin’ and when you were comin’ back. He was waitin’ at the train station, right? Then he musta changed his mind at the last minute, see, decided to follow Okari here instead.’

A sad smile crossed O’Hara’s face. ‘He told me he was getting too old for the Game, that he made mistakes. Sooner or later it had to be a big one.’

‘So — we look at the boxes and we see the general, Hooker, building his oil empire by murder. The reasons could be many. What is important now is that you must quickly destroy Hooker. He knows how dangerous you are. “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

‘Anybody got any ideas?’ asked the Magician.

Okari said, ‘It is written in the Tendai that truth kills faster than poison.’

‘Well spoken,’ Kimura agreed, ‘but what meaning does that bring to this problem?’

‘Are not the Gunn-san and Kazuo voices of the truth?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Eliza, ‘but the truth requires proof, and so far we couldn’t prove doodly-squat.’

‘Perhaps the final boxes will give us an answer,’ said Kimura. ‘But to put events in their proper place, we must go back to before the war. To the first Chameleon, Yamuchi Asieda.

‘Asieda never married. His brother, an admiral in the Imperial Navy, was taken prisoner in the early days of the war. When the Philippines were about to fall, Hooker was ordered to leave his headquarters at Bastine by your President Roosevelt. Through an accident, Hooker’s adopted son was left behind and ultimately fell into the hands of Asieda, who took him back to Japan.

‘The boy, who was half Filipino, looked more Japanese than even his mother, so living here was not difficult for him. Asieda took him to Dragon’s Nest, where he tried to arrange a trade. The boy for Asieda’s brother. He communicated by sending Hooker a chameleon in a box and then he found the boy’s mother and sent her to try to negotiate the trade. Hooker responded by murdering her. Asieda had no choice. Negotiation was out of the question, But what could he do with Hooker’s son?

‘Remember, this was a very kind man, not a war lord. And through the months of captivity, he had developed a great affection for Hooker’s son. The boy ultimately felt secure with Asieda. They became inseparable. A true irony that Chameleon should adopt the son of his deadliest enemy.

‘But as the war drew to its close., the members of the War Council panicked. The few who knew who Chameleons son really was demanded a meeting, in Hiroshima. It was their plan to use the boy as a bargaining tool once the war was over. Asieda, of course, disagreed. They fought about it, and that night Chameleon, disguised as a woman, slipped away with his son and left at dawn by train two hours before the city was obliterated. Asieda and young Hooker watched from the train.

‘He and the boy became nomads. They had two things in common: they loved each other and they hated Hooker. Ultimately they settled in Kushiro on the island of Hokkaido to the north. Asieda became a fisherman.

‘Asieda had made a vow that he would never let Hooker rest. He knew Hooker had murdered his own mistress, Bobby’s mother. He knew he was using his military position to set up new industries in Japan in which he was a silent partner. He. learned all of the general’s vulnerabilities, and there were many. Chameleon knew more about General Hooker than anyone alive. And he became like a conscience. When Hooker became military governor, he helped set up the conglomerate San-San and made Tomoro the head of it. In exchange, Tomoro tried for five years to track down Chameleon. But it was impossible. Chameleon’s agents would never have revealed his identity — they were all members of the higaru-dashi. And those few members of the council who knew his true identity all died at Hiroshima.’

‘Asieda, too, was reported dead at Hiroshima,’ said Okari. ‘And so, for thirty years, Hooker was hounded by a ghost — Chameleon. Of course, it was no ghost, only one man, devoted to psychologically destroying his enemy. A simple fisherman who had taken a vow to wreak his revenge on a dishonourable man by becoming the voice of his conscience. His old agents provided him with information. So did his friends in the government. The vendetta worked both ways. Hooker sent assassin after assassin to find Chameleon. Some gave up. Some died, The last to come was your friend Falmouth. And although Asieda died peacefully in his sleep four years ago, Chameleon lives on. His son took up the vow. And it will go on until Hooker dies or they kill me.’

‘So you’re Bobby Hooker,’ Eliza said.

‘I am Okari Asieda,’ the tattooed man said. ‘Bobby Hooker no longer exists.’

He revealed to them private feelings which he could never share before, how he had hated and feared Asieda-san for months and how Asieda-san with patience and wisdom had finally won him over, had explained the meaning of the Tendai and the most ancient myths and how to live in the forest and fish the sea.

‘And when the war was over and he set off on his Walk of a Thousand Days, I went with him, begging at doorways, walking from one end of Japan to the other, as he sought the wisdom of Zen. And always there was time for the lessons. He taught me the Way of the Secret Warrior, the Moves of the Sword, the Language of the Creatures. He taught me honour, respect and love. And finally, he revealed to me the seventh level of the higaru-dashi.’

‘And he never attempted blackmail? Extortion?’ the Magician asked.

‘He never asked for anything after his brother died.’

O’Hara leaned back, staring at the imaginary boxes hanging in the air before him, looking back through time. Slowly the pieces began to fall into place. The sequence became obvious to him.

What Hooker and his elitist friends needed was a power base of their own. From that, they could begin monopolizing other related companies. There was only one problem: monopolies were illegal. But an oil consortium of separately owned corporations, each with its own autonomy — that would be perfect. The key was AMRAN, They formed the consortium, then killed the key men in the member corporations and put their own people in. In effect, they owned every company. They owned Hensell, Alamo, Sunset, Intercom, Am Petro and San-San and all its subsidiaries. They even controlled a bank in Boston. The common thread was oil.