The Magician said, ‘So what we got is...’
‘The quick brown fx imps v lazy dg.
‘And under that we put the alphabet, starting with I instead of
‘lmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk...’
‘Put em all together and what’ve yuh got?
‘Thequickbrownfxjmps vlazydg...’
‘lmnopqrstuvwxyzabcd efghijk...’
‘And there it is. L equals t, mequals h, and so forth.’ He turned to Eliza. ‘Neat.’
‘Yeah, pretty good, Gunn,’ O’Hara said. ‘L for Lavander, that’s easy to remember too.’
‘Does that qualify me to work with you big-timers?’
‘Well, it’s a good start,’ O’Hara had to admit.
‘Thanks a damn bunch,’ she said.
‘So we got a code, where do we go from here?’ the Magician said, ignoring their banter.
Eliza had set up a temporary key—definition library in the computer, replacing the letters on the keyboard with the code letters, and had typed almost all of the information from Lavander’s notebook into the computer.
‘What’s the file name?’ the Magician asked her.
‘LAV/1.’
The Magician typed out ‘LAV/l’ and the screen filled with rows of words and figures. Many of the entries were names of banks with lists of deposits under each heading. Most of the remaining entries, however, were names of companies with coded lists of figures under them.
‘Christ, here’s a bank in Grand Cayman with over a hundred grand in it!’ The Magician was genuinely awed.
‘So far, there are deposits listed in there for almost a million dollars,’ Eliza said, ‘but that’s not what’s really interesting. He’s got production figures, oil-field capacities, refinery operations, everything you can imagine on a dozen or more oil companies, how much they say they pay for crude oil, how much they really pay. It’s an encyclopaedia of juicy information.’
She pointed to two figures on the monitor screen. ‘Published Reserve Capacity versus Actual Reserve Capacity,’ she said. ‘In every entry, the actual reserve are millions of barrels higher than they report. They’re lying to the public, O’Hara.’
‘What’s so surprising about that? They kill people, blow up oil rigs, assassinate politicians. What’s a little lie to the public mean to them? They have to do something to justify ripping us off.’
‘That’s a bit cynical, isn’t it?’
‘Realistic,’ O’Hara said.
‘What’s all this got to do with Chameleon?’ the Magician asked.
‘I’ve said all along, there’s got to be a pattern to this. An objective other than just killing for profit. I think we’re right in the middle of some kind of international oil scandal.’
‘Maybe Hinge killed Lavander to get this book and you beat him to it — maybe it’s just that simple,’ Eliza said.
‘It’s a possibility,’ said the Magician.
‘Yeah, in which case every company in that book has a motive for killing the old boy,’ Eliza said.
‘We need to turn up one bad guy, O’Hara said. ‘Without at least one client we can name, the story falls flat. What the hell motivates the people who hire Master? Who wanted Lavander assassinated? Why was the Thoreau sabotaged? Why was Marza’s car blown up? Who was behind the murders of Simmons and the rest of them? Not just generally. Specifically, why were these things done?’
‘I could make a coupla good guesses,’ the Magician said.
‘Not worth a doodly-shit,’ Eliza said. ‘I see his point.’ ‘And if we can’t get it?’ said the Magician.
‘What we need is Chameleon himself,’ said O’Hara. ‘You tried military and naval intelligence, right?’
The Magician nodded.
‘How about the OSS?’
‘Their files went into the CIA when they reorganized,’ the Magician said. ‘I’ve already checked them.’
‘How about inactive cases?’ O’Hara said. ‘Maybe they’ve got him cubby-holed somewhere. Go back to MI. I’ve turned up more than one sleeper by checking deep.’
The magician punched Military Intelligence Files and queried the index.
‘Hell,’ he said, ‘we got “Inactive, US,” “Inactive, Europe,” “Inactive. . .“ Look at all this shit.’
‘Call up Inactive and run Chameleon through them all.’ The Magician started pounding Izzy’s keys and kept coming up with the same answer: ‘No such file.’ Then, under ‘Inactive, Japan,’ they got a strike:
—Chameleon. N/O/I, Head of Japanese training unit for intelligence agents. On list of war criminals, 1945— 1950. Believed killed at Hiroshima, 8.6.45. Declared legally dead, 2.12.50.
Period.
