‘He must have done something. The government spent five years verifying his death.’
‘And why do you think they spent such time and money?’
‘They must have wanted him real had.’
‘They?’
‘The Army, the CID, whoever. .
‘Whoever, you say. One person, perhaps?’
O’Hara thought for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose one person with enough clout.’
‘Ah, clout, the magic word...’
Clout, thought O’Hara. Enough clout to place a name on the list of war criminals.
‘Like a general maybe?’ O’Hara said.
‘Ah, you begin to look beyond the obvious. Not “they,” not some faceless organization. Him. One man.’
‘Hooker was military governor here for six years,’ O’Hara
‘From 1945 to 1951.’
‘Yes,’ Kimura said. ‘With a passionate hatred of Chameleon.’
‘Why?’
‘An old wound. They were deadly enemies, remember.’
‘The war was over, Tokenrui-san, a lot of enemies were forgiven.’
‘Not all, however.’
‘But what did he do to Hooker, to kindle that kind of hatred?’
The old man pondered the question for a very long time, then said, ‘Perhaps he was frustrated because he could not identify Chameleon. There were no records. And no one ever betrayed the secret of his identity.’
‘You think Hooker had some kind of revenge motive?’ Kirmura nodded. ‘It is certainly a possibility.’
‘Hooker says Chameleon is a blackmailer, an extortionist, a terrorist. You name it. He implied that the whole industry uses Chameleon’s services. Now they’re his victims. They’re terrified of him.’
‘I assure you, the Chameleon you know as Asieda is dead.’ Kimura sat before the tea table and took out a flat box of cigarettes.
‘These are Shermans from New York, It understand they are superb.’
He took one out. It was pink with a gold-wrapped filter. ‘I will have to think about the aesthetics of these,’ he said, holding up the cigarette and contemplating it; then he lit it, taking a deep drag and exhaling very slowly. ‘Five cigarettes a day. That’s what the spirits permit me.’
‘How do you know that?’ O’Hara said sceptically.
‘I asked them.’
‘Tokenrui-san,’ O’Hara said. ‘You can solve the riddle of Chameleon for me. I am certain of it. If the man is dead, let me use your knowledge to put an end to this . . . this guntai shi, this death army.’
Kimura sat on the floor, crossing his legs in the lotus position.
‘Yamuchi Asieda was a wealthy importer in Tokyo, a man of royal blood and an honourable man,’ he said. ‘He was inducted into the higaru-dashi in l939 a candidate for Tokenrui from the beginning. A man of consummate skill with the sword, as agile as a hummingbird, and a man who achieved the state of the seventh level with almost mystical persuasion.
‘Yamuchi Asieda was not in favour of the war. His business took him all over the world and he knew how great the stakes were, how big the gamble. He was not a war lord, not an assassin. He was a man who loved jewellery, paintings, Dresden china. But the Emperor himself asked Asieda to take over the training of agents for the secret service. It was quite natural. Asieda had partners all over the working, so he set about building a network of spies. The Emperor in exchange agreed that his identity would never be revealed. He took the code name Chameleon and selected Dragon’s Nest as his headquarters because it was remote and impenetrable.
‘The only people who knew his true identity were four members of the War Council, and they all died at Hiroshima. When the war was over, Asieda became a nomad, wandering the islands, his identity lost forever in the ashes of the war. He died several years ago. So you see, this man was no terrorist, not an assassin. I can tell you no more, Kazuo —to do so would violate my word of honour.’
O’Hara wanted to press him, but he knew better. Instead he took the slip of paper out of his pocket. ‘A woman who followed me on the train gave me this.’
He handed it to Kimura. The old man looked at the slip without comment and handed it back.
‘She says Chameleon will be there alone, tonight. Nine o’clock.’
‘And who was this woman?’
‘I only saw her for a moment. She appeared to be a geisha. She followed me from the train. There was desperation in her voice. I asked her why she was turning him in and she said she was a prisoner, she wanted her freedom.’
Kimura puffed on his pink cigarette and blew smoke rings in the air.
‘It seems too obvious for a trap. But then, what could be less obvious than the most obvious thing of all.’
‘Tokenrui-san...’
‘Do not go tonight. Give me another day or two to sort this out.,
‘Tokenrui-san, I have not asked you to break your vow of silence. Do not ask me to play a coward’s game. She will lead me to him. I am certain of it.’
‘You know nothing of the woman. Nothing of the house. Nothing of Chameleon. And yet you would walk into this?’
‘I will be prepared.’
‘If this Chameleon is as you think, are you prepared for a knife in the back? A wire around the throat? A silent bullet in the head?’
‘I will be prepared.’
‘You try my faith in you.’
‘This is today. I live for today. You taught me that. If the spirit flies tomorrow, it will be as full as I can make it.’
Kimura said nothing more. He stared past O’Hara at the wall. O’Hara finally got up.
‘I respect and honour your silence, Tokenrui-san, I hope you understand why I must go.’
‘When the fool has enough scars, he becomes a wise man,’ said Kimura, still staring at the wall.
‘Arigato.’
‘Be careful.’ And as O’Hara started out the door, the old man looked up at him and smiled. ‘When you write this story of yours, remember, rhythm is the best measure of the latitude and opulence of a writer. If unskilled, he is at once detected by the poverty of his chimes.’
‘I’ll remember that. Does the Tendai say that?’
‘No, Ralph Waldo Emerson said it.’
Laughing, O’Hara left the house.
‘Shall I follow him?’ Sammi asked.
‘Of course.’
She had been elusive throughout the meal, saying very little, eating her raw fish and sipping sake arid making him talk about himself. He was a widower, he had told her, and was in the book business. It was his first vacation alone. He had dreamed of coming to Kyoto, but the trip had turned out to be lonelier than he had thought.
She had been sympathetic.
Now she led him down through more fenced walkways, past other sounds, into the quiet, almost fairylike residential section. She opened a gate in the high fence and led him through it. A large two-story house, unlike the others around it, sat fifty feet or so back from the street. Its tapered roof and carved columns told Falmouth it was the house of a wealthy person. The grounds were perfectly manicured and spotted with dwarf willows and pines. She held a finger to her mouth and led him around to the side of the place. A small creek trickled tunefully through the grounds and disappeared into the shadows, and somewhere in the back, wind chimes sang to the breeze.
Falmouth checked the place as carefully as he could without seeming obvious. The house was L—shaped. The only lights were at the far corner of the wing.
Deserted.
Beautiful. It might take some twisting to get the address. He didn’t have time to woo the information out of the lady. It had to be quick.
She stopped in front of one of the chambers in the main wing of the house and quietly slid back its panelled door. It wasn’t much of a step into the house, which was built on short, thick stilts, raising it no more than a foot or so above the ground.
When they were inside, she whispered, ‘My father lives in the back. No one else is here. We will leave the light off.’ She slid the panel shut, but light from the street filtered through the thin, opaque glass doors. She unbuttoned his jacket and took it off, then his tie, then drew him down beside her. He thought, damn the luck. To walk into a tasty piece like this and it all has to be business.