She undid his gold watch and laid it gently on the floor beside the tatami.
It was nine o’clock.
She lay back and drew him down beside her. Her lips brushed his. She reached back and drew out the hairpin. Affixed to the jade handle was a stiletto six inches long.
Her hair tumbled down around her shoulders.
What the hell, Falmouth thought, a few more minutes more or less—
It was almost the last thought he ever had.
As he leaned over to kiss her, she held the dirk at arm’s length and then plunged it into his ear.
Fire burned deep into the back of his throat, seared his brain and then erupted in pain.
His scream sliced the night like a hatchet. He rolled away from her, struggled to his knees, his trembling fingers touching the jade hilt, which stuck obscenely from the hole in his ear. The fire burned deeper and the pain of steel in his brain was unbearable.
He got to his feet but the room was already a blur, the pain frozen in his throat. He was growling like a fox in a trap. The floor tilted. He turned, tried to regain his balance and stumbled sideways and plunged headlong through the door. The glass shattered into hundreds of light blossoms. The frame cracked and the door crashed with him into the garden.
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.
Plump.
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.
9
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.’
Chameleon backed slowly into the small room. O’Hara walked to the smashed doorway and. looked in. It was a bedroom. The tatamis were laid out carefully in one end of the room, An obi lay at the head of the mats. There was a low table near the bed with a stick of incense smouldering in a holder. One overhead lantern shed an even but dim glow over the room. Chameleon slid back a panel in the wall and removed two samurai swords. The tattooed chameleons wrapped around his sides and across his back. Hardly an inch of skin had escaped the tattooist’s needle. He turned around to face O’Hara.
He was a bizarre sight, his tattooed body glistening in the yellow light from the lantern, the eye shadow, rouge and lipstick still concealing his true features. He knelt in the centre of the room and placed the swords on the floor, their hilts aimed toward O’Hara.
‘It is your choice,’ Chameleon said.
‘I did not come here to kill you,’ O’Hara said.
‘Good, then we are of the same mind. I don’t intend to let you,
‘You should not have killed Falmouth.’
‘I have killed many like him. They come for blood and I give them blood.’
‘And did you kill all of them the same way, by hiding behind the skirts of a woman and striking when their eyes were closed?’
The muscles in Chameleon’s jaw shimmered but he pressed his point. ‘You both came to kill me. He has failed. I am offering you a chance to avenge his death. Am Ito believe that a son of the sword is afraid to lift the sword?’
‘I prefer to follow the law.’
Chameleon stood as O’Hara spoke. He took one of the swords and pulled it from its wooden scabbard and took several deliberate steps toward O’Hara, stopping perhaps three feet in front of him. He placed the point of his blade on O’Hara’s throat and drew the sword slowly down to O’Hara’s waist. It snipped off the buttons of his shirt, and they clattered to the floor. Chameleon flicked the shirt open with the point of his blade. There was a hairline cut from O’Hara’s throat down to his navel.
‘Take up the samurai, Round-Eyes,’ Chameleon ordered. ‘No. I have taken a vow not to—’ defend yourself? This is an instrument of honour. To master it for play is an insult to my ancestors.’
‘If I lift the sword against you, I will dishonour it,’ O’Hara said. ‘You do not deserve honour. You kill from behind.’
‘You know the mark of okubyo, the coward? The cheek cut that brands those who are afraid to defend their own honour?’ He put the point of the samurai sword against O’Hara’s cheekbone. A pearl of blood appeared.