‘I find it hard to believe, Tokenrui-san, that Falmouth was such a man.’
‘I admire your loyalty but not your perception. Why do you still trust him? He killed for money. Can such a man be honourable? Can he truly be a friend? And do you honestly believe that one who shares the Way with you is evil?’
‘Perhaps my ego won’t let me admit I was a sucker.’
Kimura nodded sagely. ‘That is possible. But you had a difficult problem. He told you lies and painted them with truth. And then the mad one on the mountain confirmed them with his lunacy.’
‘So Falmouth shopped me to get to Chameleon?’
‘That was his job, Kazuo, to eliminate a perpetual enemy.
‘But why? If Chameleon is not one of them, why are they so desperate to eliminate him?’
‘We will come to that. Let us stay with the subject. This eikoku-jin would then have killed you because you know too much. It was a risk they took, to reveal enough to put you on the scent but not tell you too much. You were better than they thought. You and Gunn-san.’
‘And then he would have killed Eliza and the Magician for the same reason.’
‘It is likely.’
‘You are right, Tokenrui-san, Falmouth could have killed me with ease. I wasn’t expecting it.’
Kimura nodded, but added, ‘Okari told me the eikoku-jin was behind you. He believed you were working together. It was when you told me you had not seen the Englishman since your meeting on the sea that I understood what he was up to.’
‘Great — now I owe Chameleon my life!’ O’Hara said.
‘Hai, A burden that is heavy to bear.’
‘I am in your debt, flu-san,’ O’Hara said and bowed to Okari.
‘And I owe you my apology, for drawing the sword against a brother.’
‘Ah, a beginning. Now we will have to endure the tests,’ Kimura said with a sigh.
‘Tests?’ Okari asked.
‘Yes, you will test him, he will test you. Ultimately you will be true brothers, but before that, there will be this testing and it will be quite a bore, I think.’
‘The testing is over,’ said O’Hara..
‘Yes,’ Okari agreed. ‘I have too heavy a burden to concern myself with such trivial matters.’
‘It has become a burden for all of us, Okari. We are all involved now,’ Kimura said.
‘I still don’t know why Master is so dedicated to killing Okari,’ Eliza said.
‘Not Okari Chameleon. It is important to remember that.’
‘Why?’
‘To understand that, we must go back to the boxes. Now that you understand this Chameleon is not your enemy, what do the boxes tell you? Study the sequence of events. The men who were murdered all died before their companies were swallowed up by this AMRAN, is that not correct?’
‘All but Bridges,’ said the Magician ‘He was part of San-San almost from the beginning.’
‘But the others were,’ said O’Hara.
‘The answer is in the boxes,’ said Kimura. ‘The Chameleon you seek wears the skin of a hero but has the heart of a weasel. He wears garlands when he should wear thorns. He used his military office to become rich. And he has fashioned an organization with its own assassins, thieves, destructors.’
‘Hooker,’ Eliza said. ‘You mean our war hero is the head of all this?’
‘The true Chameleon,’ said O’Hara. ‘The question is, Why? Why did they have Falmouth set me off on a trail that would eventually lead back to them?’
‘That’s easy,’ said the Magician. ‘They had one of the best damn assassins in the world shopping you all the way. If you got outa line, they’d pull the plug.’
‘This man who followed me was really following you,’ said Okari. ‘I saw him at the station. I mistakenly thought that you were working as a team. And when he started to follow me, I was sure of it.’
‘Sumpin’ happened,’ said the Magician. ‘You just came from your meetin’ with Hooker. Falmouth musta known where you were goin’ and when you were comin’ back. He was waitin’ at the train station, right? Then he musta changed his mind at the last minute, see, decided to follow Okari here instead.’
A sad smile crossed O’Hara’s face. ‘He told me he was getting too old for the Game, that he made mistakes. Sooner or later it had to be a big one.’
‘So — we look at the boxes and we see the general, Hooker, building his oil empire by murder. The reasons could be many. What is important now is that you must quickly destroy Hooker. He knows how dangerous you are. “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
‘Anybody got any ideas?’ asked the Magician.
Okari said, ‘It is written in the Tendai that truth kills faster than poison.’
‘Well spoken,’ Kimura agreed, ‘but what meaning does that bring to this problem?’
‘Are not the Gunn-san and Kazuo voices of the truth?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Eliza, ‘but the truth requires proof, and so far we couldn’t prove doodly-squat.’
‘Perhaps the final boxes will give us an answer,’ said Kimura. ‘But to put events in their proper place, we must go back to before the war. To the first Chameleon, Yamuchi Asieda.
‘Asieda never married. His brother, an admiral in the Imperial Navy, was taken prisoner in the early days of the war. When the Philippines were about to fall, Hooker was ordered to leave his headquarters at Bastine by your President Roosevelt. Through an accident, Hooker’s adopted son was left behind and ultimately fell into the hands of Asieda, who took him back to Japan.
‘The boy, who was half Filipino, looked more Japanese than even his mother, so living here was not difficult for him. Asieda took him to Dragon’s Nest, where he tried to arrange a trade. The boy for Asieda’s brother. He communicated by sending Hooker a chameleon in a box and then he found the boy’s mother and sent her to try to negotiate the trade. Hooker responded by murdering her. Asieda had no choice. Negotiation was out of the question, But what could he do with Hooker’s son?
‘Remember, this was a very kind man, not a war lord. And through the months of captivity, he had developed a great affection for Hooker’s son. The boy ultimately felt secure with Asieda. They became inseparable. A true irony that Chameleon should adopt the son of his deadliest enemy.
‘But as the war drew to its close., the members of the War Council panicked. The few who knew who Chameleons son really was demanded a meeting, in Hiroshima. It was their plan to use the boy as a bargaining tool once the war was over. Asieda, of course, disagreed. They fought about it, and that night Chameleon, disguised as a woman, slipped away with his son and left at dawn by train two hours before the city was obliterated. Asieda and young Hooker watched from the train.
‘He and the boy became nomads. They had two things in common: they loved each other and they hated Hooker. Ultimately they settled in Kushiro on the island of Hokkaido to the north. Asieda became a fisherman.
‘Asieda had made a vow that he would never let Hooker rest. He knew Hooker had murdered his own mistress, Bobby’s mother. He knew he was using his military position to set up new industries in Japan in which he was a silent partner. He. learned all of the general’s vulnerabilities, and there were many. Chameleon knew more about General Hooker than anyone alive. And he became like a conscience. When Hooker became military governor, he helped set up the conglomerate San-San and made Tomoro the head of it. In exchange, Tomoro tried for five years to track down Chameleon. But it was impossible. Chameleon’s agents would never have revealed his identity — they were all members of the higaru-dashi. And those few members of the council who knew his true identity all died at Hiroshima.’
‘Asieda, too, was reported dead at Hiroshima,’ said Okari. ‘And so, for thirty years, Hooker was hounded by a ghost — Chameleon. Of course, it was no ghost, only one man, devoted to psychologically destroying his enemy. A simple fisherman who had taken a vow to wreak his revenge on a dishonourable man by becoming the voice of his conscience. His old agents provided him with information. So did his friends in the government. The vendetta worked both ways. Hooker sent assassin after assassin to find Chameleon. Some gave up. Some died, The last to come was your friend Falmouth. And although Asieda died peacefully in his sleep four years ago, Chameleon lives on. His son took up the vow. And it will go on until Hooker dies or they kill me.’