There was a knock on the door.
‘If that’s you, Garvey — come!’
The voice, too, was unforgettable. Deep, commanding, authoritative, intimidating and yet paternal; a voice that engendered every word with reassurance. A war correspondent had once written: ‘To know what God sounded like, one need only hear General Alexander Lee Hooker speak.’
The door opened and Garvey entered the room. He was Hooker’s oldest friend as well as his closest wartime aide, and although both had been retired for at least fifteen years, Garvey, who was a year shy of sixty, still carried himself with the ramrod posture of a Marine honour guard. He stood at attention in front of the desk. Hooker and Garvey, two men, born to the khaki, their hearts and minds shaped inexorably by the cry of the bugle, retired into an alien world of peace lovers where they still fantasized about that one last battle to ride out to, even though the dream had died years before; two men whose friendship stood second only to the charade they continued to play.
‘Good evening, General,’ Garvey said. ‘Happy New Year.’
His eyes strayed to the box.
Hooker’s harsh blue eyes stared with hatred across the long Irish clay pipe he was smoking and foe used on the box.
‘Thanks, Jess. And you. At ease, have a seat.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Let’s deal with pleasant things first.’ He reached behind him, into the gloom, to the bottle of champagne nestled in a silver bucket on a small table behind his chair. He poured two glasses and handed one to Garvey.
‘To the Division,’ he said. Garvey echoed the toast and their glasses rang in the solitude of the room. Garvey took a sip, smacked his lips and leaned back, staring up into darkness.
‘Taittinger, definitely.’ He took another sip, pursed his lips, let the bubbles tickle his tongue. ‘Uh, ‘seventy-one, I’d say.’
The older man laughed. ‘Can’t fool you. Never could. Well, here’s to the years. Been a long time, Jess.’
‘Forty years exactly, General. I joined your staff at Hickam Field on New Year’s Eve, 1939. I was a nineteen-year-old shavetail.’
‘Best I ever saw. I used to tell my officers, “That Garvey, he can be another Custer. He’ll have a star before he’s thirty.”
‘Didn’t quite make it by thirty,’ Garvey said.
‘Hmmp. There were a lot of disappointments in that war. And the rest to follow. Goddamn that old son of a bitch, playing politics at the last minute. He should have fought Truman over Hiroshima. They should have let us go in there and do it right. We deserved that shot. Damn, we deserved it. He got to do his act in the Philippines. We earned the right to Japan.’
It was a complaint heard frequently when the two men were together.
He looked down in the glass, watching the bubbles tumble to the surface. ‘What the hell,’ he said finally, ‘it’s all just history. Kids sleep through it in classrooms. They’re all gone now, anyway. Bless ‘em all. At least we won it. It’s the last goddamn war we won.’ And he raised his glass again.
‘May I smoke?’ Garvey asked.
‘Of course, Jess. Smoking lamp’s always lit for you.’
Hooker reached into a desk drawer, took out a box wrapped in silver paper and slid the package across the desk.
‘A little something to start the new year off right, Jess. With thanks for all the good years.’
It was a tradition with them, exchanging gifts on New Year’s Eve. Garvey handed a slightly smaller package to Hooker.
‘And Happy New Year to you, General.’
He stared back at the box for a moment, then watched as Hooker opened his present. It was a watch fob, a replica of the insignia of the First Island Division, The Hook’s old regiment, forged in gold with the motto ‘First to land, first to win’ inscribed across the bottom of two crossed bayonets.
Hooker was visibly moved.
‘By God, old man, that’s something to cherish. Yessir, I’ll be wearing that when they put me away.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Garvey said and smiled with satisfaction. There was a sound from the box. A scraping sound. Garvey cast a nervous glance toward it but said nothing.
‘Well, sir, your turn,’ Hooker said, and Garvey tore the silver paper from around his gift. It was a pewter wine goblet, hand-crafted, with the artist’s name etched in the base, and inscribed on its side were the words ‘Major General J. W. Garvey, US Army (Ret.).’
Garvey held up the chalice by the stem. ‘Beautiful, sir. Has a great feel to it.’
‘Well, I know your love for the grape, old man. About time you had a proper goblet.’
There was a more urgent sound from the box. The top moved again, just a hair.
Hooker struck a match and relit his pipe. ‘It came about an hour ago,’ he said, without looking at the box. ‘Done up like a goddamn Christmas present, that bloody heathen.’
He opened the center desk drawer and took out a knife, a malicious stiletto with a curved blade and a hand-tooled leather handle. He slid its razor edge under the string, turned the box slightly and snipped the string off. With the point of the knife he lifted the lid and slid it slowly back.
They heard it before they saw it. Scratching, slithering along the bottom of the box and up the side.
Hooker saw its horns first, the two tusks protruding straight out from over its eyes, the third, like a needle, between them. Then its head peered over the side of the box.
It was bright-green to start with, its eyes lurking under hoods of wrinkled skin, its tail switching slowly back and forth.
Eighteen inches long or so, he guessed. Hooker knew the species, all eighty kinds of Chamaeleontidae. For thirty-six years now, he had been studying them. This one was the Chameleon jacksoni. African, most likely, although it might have come from Madagascar, its eyes moving independently, looking for prey before they focused together and the tongue struck. And arrogant — they were all arrogant.
It crawled down the side of the box and very slowly across the desk to the base of the lamp and then just as slowly up over the belly of the Buddha. It changed slowly, its eyes picking up the change in the light rays of the new colour, signalling down the nervous system to the pigment cells in the skin, first mud-brown, then beige, then pink, then blood-red, like a salamander. Its tongue continued to work the air, its head turned, its stony eyes studying the darkness beyond the desk. Then it switched again and moved on t the letter box.
Hooker watched it turn again, this time to the colour of teak.
He reached in the box and took out a note. His hand trembled as he read it.
‘What’s it say?’ Garvey asked.
Hooker handed it to him. There were three names on the slip of paper:
AQUILA
THOREAU
WOLFNAGLE
‘He’s everywhere,’ Hooker croaked, ‘he’s like the mist, like some foul fog.’ He tilted the box, looked inside and paused for a moment before reaching in and taking out a man’s gold watch. He turned it over and read the name engraved on the back.
‘We’ve still got Bradley,’ Garvey said. ‘He’s one of the best assassins in the world. If anybody can terminate Chameleon, he can.’
‘Afraid not,’ Hooker whispered and his voice quivered with rage. This is Bradley’s watch.’
BOOK TWO
A true friend always stabs you in the front
—OSCAR WILDE
I
The frigid February wind swept in off Boston Bay, and Eliza Gunn and George Gentry huddled in the arched doorway to avoid the stinging snow that was swept along with it. The car was half a block away. James, the sound man, a latter-day hippie who was only slightly larger than Eliza, would be sitting in there with his cowboy hat pulled down over his eyes and the heater on, listening to the Top Forty while they froze their onions here on Foster Street.