God, I’m losing it, he thought. Must. .. get ... it out. And with all his strength he drew the stiletto from his head. Pain poured into the wound like burning oil, He staggered through the fish pond and fell face down into the rock garden. The knife dropped from his fingers into the creek.
O’Hara found the address with little trouble. He tried the gate and found it unlocked. He looked at his watch. Nine o’clock. Perfect.
He had one leg through the gate when he heard the scream. It was unworldly, a man, shattering the night with anguish. He ran toward the scream, and as he rounded the corner of the house he saw a man plunge through a door. The man staggered into the fish pond, both hands clutching the side of his head, and then collapsed.
O’Hara ran to him and rolled him over on his back. ‘My God,’ he cried, ‘Tony!’
The woman stood in the shattered doorway of the house, a dark shape framed by the lights behind her, her black hair hanging in long strands about her shoulders.
‘He is dead, or will be in a moment, ‘she said in a harsh voice. ‘The blade was soaked in arsenic.’
She reached up and grabbed the crown of her hair and pulled it and the thick black hair fell away.
A wig.
She threw it on the floor. She clutched her blouse with both hands and ripped it open. A padded shirt. She threw it aside also.
And suddenly she was no longer she.
She had become he.
A he, tattooed from waist to chest with intertwined chameleons, writhing across his belly, up his chest, between his pectorals, his left nipple forming an obscene eye in one of the vivid lizards. Each one was a different colour, the vivid patterns along the slender, twisting bodies ranging from cobalt blue to lemon orange to flaming red, their eyes glittering venomously, forked tongues licking the man’s hard stomach.
O’Hara was face to face with Chameleon.
He was the ultimate Chameleon; the she-devil turned Satan.
What was it Danilov had said? ‘I know and I don’t know... Everybody, nobody... The chameleon is never what it seems.’
‘So, Round-Eyes has finally met his match,’ the tattooed man said. ‘You should pray you are more fortunate than your friend.’
O’Hara rolled Falmouth over on his back. His gray eyes looked up with terror, as though he were looking at the face of death. Blood trickled from his ears, his nose, his mouth. His lips moved, a sporadic tremble, like a butterfly flirting with a flower.
‘Demon—’
‘Tony, can you hear me?’
‘Demon ... Bradley, me ,.. got us all. No bloody wonder.’
‘Tony!’
His eyes cleared for a moment. He smiled up at O’Hara. ‘Owe me . . . hundred and twenty-five thou, Sailor,’ he said and died.
O’Hara looked back at the doorway. Chameleon was motionless, hands at his sides, finger stretched out, legs slightly parted.
This was no old man; in fact, he was probably not much older than O’Hara. His body was hard and sinewed, his head shaved bald. O’Hara knew this man from somewhere.
‘Okari,’ O’Hara said. ‘You are the kendo teacher, Okari.’
‘Hai. And you are the beikoku who is called Kazuo.’
‘That’s right, I’m the American. You speak English well.’
‘I had a good teacher.’
‘Did he teach you how to kill helpless men?’
‘Helpless. Hah! Look on his ankle. his sleeve. He would have done the same. An assassin has no honour.’
‘He was my friend.’
‘Then you need to be educated in the election of friends. In fact, your education is about to begin. Is it true that you are a master of the sword?’
O’Hara said nothing. The garden was soundless except for the trickling of water across the rocks the fish pond and the tinkle of wind chimes from somewhere in the back of the house.
O’Hara nodded. ‘I have worked with the sword,’ he said. ‘You are too modest, Marui-me. Come, Round-Eyes, give me a lesson.’
