O’Hara nodded and held up two fingers.
‘This guy — Chameleon — was a spy, that it?’
‘He was head of some kind of special training section for Japanese agents.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Any old-timers around here who might know something?’ ‘You think this guy’s still alive?’
‘A hunch.’
‘Anybody that dates back that far— is either dead or retired.’
‘Then, how about somebody who’s retired? I just want to talk to somebody who remembers him.’
Hadashi pinched his nose a coup1e of times. ‘You buying lunch?’
‘A rich publisher back in the Stats is buying.’
‘In that case, I thought of a guy. And he’s right here in the building.’
‘Will he talk to me?’
‘He’ll talk to anybody who’ll listen’
They went down in the elevator— to the subbasement and walked through a grim, poorly lit subterranean tunnel to what
appeared to be the basement of the adjoining building. Steam
pipes hissed angrily overhead.
‘They must dislike this guy to put him down here.’
‘They’ve probably forgotten he’s here.’
They entered a large room which was divided by rows of steel shelves stuffed with file folders, books, logs, seemingly endless stacks of paper. The old man sat cross-legged on a tatami. He was sorting through file , using a brush and black
ink to log entries in calligraphy on ledger sheet. There was
no desk in the room, just the mat a.-id the old man and a very modem brass gooseneck lamp over his shoulder.
He was ancient, a shrunken memory of a man with wisps of white hair that flowed down almost to his shoulders. He had no eyebrows. He wore thick horn - rimmed glasses. His face was so wrinkled, only a prune could love it.
He finished the character he was drawing and looked up.
‘Ah, Hadashi-san, how nice of you to come by.’ His soft voice sounded like an echo of yesterday.
‘It is an honour, Kami-sama. I have brought you a small gift.’ He handed the man a package of Redman chewing tobacco.
‘The spirits will reward you at the proper time. Thank you, my friend.’
He immediately opened the package and stuffed a cluster of brown ringlets into his cheek.
‘This is my friend O’Hara, although he is known here as Kazuo. He has a question and I think only you can answer it.’
‘Ah, quite a distinction. You understand I am only a clerk. I have never been more than a clerk. I am the custodian of all this. Records that have been fed to a computer. Our history has been reduced to beeps on film. But these are true records. lam indexing them.’
‘How long have you been doing this?’ O’Hara asked.
‘Oh, I really don’t know. Ten years perhaps, and I am only a little way along. It takes a while, you understand, one tends to get interested in the files. I spend a lot of time reading. There’s no hurry. When I’m through they’ll just make me quit and go home and die.’
‘How long have you been clerk of the records?’
‘Since 1944. I was too old for the service.’ He paused to draw another character in his ledger. ‘All the records went through my hands. I have a good memory for small facts.’
‘Do you remember an agent called Chameleon?’
His eyes widened. He laid down the brush and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. ‘The Chameleon I am thinking of was a true chameleon. He changed colours constantly, so who can say what his true colour was.’
‘I am talking about the man whose code name was Chameleon.’
‘So am I. Nobody knows who he was. It is a secret that went with him to the gods.’
‘He’s dead, then?’
‘Since 1945. He died at Hiroshima. It was verified by your own intelligence people. It was in the records.’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘Only what was in the records. That he existed and that he died. Nothing more.’
‘So, the only proof that he is dead is that the Japanese secret service says so.’
