The Chameleon Factor Read online

  These were the Magnificent Seven, as they had been humorlessly dubbed by the terrified staff of the New Yorker, the private bodyguards of Peter Woods who traveled with him everywhere, even the bedroom. Many a young socialite, seeking to improve her standing in the register, had been startled to learn that going to bed with Peter Woods meant having sex before a live audience. And if the girl complained too much, Woods would toss her to his men, like giving table scraps to hunting dogs. Afterward, the weeping girl would never speak of the matter to anybody, and soon another pretty fool would offer herself to the beast of the New Yorker, positive that she would be the one to land the most eligible bachelor in town.

  At the moment, two topless women, one in a red bikini bottom, and the other in a black thong, were massaging Woods’s legs with scented coconut oil. Both of the woman tinkled musically as they moved, the blonde from the silver bells dangling from her nipple ring, the redhead with the same from her elaborate earrings. They thought it was merely a fetish of the billionaire, but in truth, Woods merely wanted to keep track of them in the dark. Twice assassins had come disguised as whores to service his Herculean sexual appetite. One was buried in the concrete foundation of the New Yorker itself; the other had been strangled by Woods inside his limousine while on the way to meet the mayor at the Firemen’s Annual Ball. He stuffed her lifeless body out the window while crossing a bridge, and arrived with a smile on his cold face. The ball was long remembered as the nicest Peter Woods had ever been in public. The billionaire thug loved to kill.

  “Shoulders,” Woods said, turning his face to make sure his tan stayed even. “And put some muscle into it.”

  “Yes, Mr. Woods,” the blonde said, and they both began fingering the knotted muscles in his upper torso. Jingling, the redhead made sure that her full breasts brushed against the man’s arm on a regular basis. He grunted at the contact and reached out to slide a hand up the inner thigh of the blonde.

  The woman gasped as he roughly kneaded her flesh, but managed to change it into a laugh.

  “Now, don’t be fresh, Mr. Woods,” she chided in a friendly manner, tears in her eyes.

  “Shut up, and take ’em off,” he ordered, rolling onto his back. Then he looked at the redhead. “You, too,” he snapped impatiently.

  Forcing smiles onto their faces, the women stripped and started to climb on top of the man when a cultured voice called his name.

  Pushing them rudely off, Woods sat upright to see a waiter for the indoor beach hurrying across the artificial grass near the bar, holding a silver tray covered with a white linen napkin.

  As the servant stepped onto the white sand, two members of the seven blocked the way and quickly checked the man thoroughly, before parting and allowing him by.

  Kneeling near the billionaire, the waiter removed the white cloth to reveal a cell phone lying on the silver tray.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Woods,” he whispered urgently. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. There is an urgent call from your mother.”

  Already reaching for the phone, Woods paused to frown. “Give me that again,” he growled. “Who called?”

  “Your mother, sir,” the waiter gushed, feeling a drop of nervous sweat trickle down his spine. “Naturally, I would never disturb a guest in the no-call zone, but you specifically asked me to do so if your mother ever called.”

  Inhaling slowly, Woods narrowed his eyes to stare at the waiter. “Yes, of course, thank you,” he said, then glanced over a shoulder. “That will be all today, ladies. See you tomorrow.”

  The naked women nodded assent and gathered their clothing to pad across the sand toward the elevator banks. Woods watched their hips swinging to the motion of their young bodies for a moment, then clicked on the phone.

  “Woods here,” he snapped into the phone. “Is this a secure line?”

  “Damn straight it is, Chief,” the familiar voice of Tommy Mannix replied. “And the shit has hit the fan.”

  The man’s real name was Tomasinoro Marnix, but on the street that had quickly become Tommy Mannix. Tommy the Hammer. Unlike Woods, Mannix didn’t try to hide his true nature and relished the fact that people were uneasy to even speak his name out loud in the town he controlled. Mannix had money; Woods kept him well supplied. But as the commander of Cascade, his authority came from the end of the sledgehammer he liked to use on his enemies, not a ballpoint pen and checkbook.

  “Trouble with Cascade?” Woods demanded, reaching for a remote control. He thumbed a switch and the windows polarized over until they were darkly tinted. Twilight at noon.

  “Yes and no,” Mannix replied. “Apparently Jimmy failed to do the job in Alaska.”

  Woods snorted in reply. “Big deal. So Jimmy the Dumbass Dunbar had failed. Well, it had been a long shot at best. No real loss.”

  “The hell there ain’t, Chief. Davis has come to Chi.”

  “What?” Woods roared, standing. “Are you sure?”

  “Better believe it. When his plane landed, everything electrical in O’Hare went haywire for a few minutes. Must have been when he was going through security.”

  Sneaking weapons through was what he meant. “So the limey bastard is here,” Woods stated, clenching a fist.

  “And now after us,” Mannix stated. “Who knows what that idiot Dunbar might have told under torture?”

  “How did you find out? Who was at O’Hare when Davis arrived, Harry or Ivan?”

  “Charlie.”

  Charles Raugh, a good man. “At least he knows how to keep his yap shut,” Woods muttered angrily.

  “Damn straight he does. Charlie scooted the moment the lights flickered. He’s racing up 94 right now headed away from us and into Wisconsin. Just in case he’s being followed.”

  That was SOP for any unexpected event. You never ran to base. The Feds obeyed the law, but they weren’t stupid. Rubbing a hand across his face, Wood inhaled deeply, then let it out slowly as a smile.

  “I have a better idea,” he said with a chuckle. “Have Charlie turn around and let him lead Davis to us. Only we’ll be ready to capture him alive. Davis thinks he’s coming to burn us down, but all the asshole is doing is delivering the jamming unit to our doorstep.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Meet me at headquarters. Davis was going to e-mail us the schematics for the jamming unit at ten o’clock.” He glanced at a clock above the bar. “That’s a couple of hours from now. We have until then to get ready before he gets wise.”

  “No sweat. I’ll call in the troops, Chief, and we’ll fill this place with guns. The son of a bitch will have a real fight on his hands when he arrives!”

  “We want him alive,” Woods barked. “Got any stun bags, tranquilizer darts, nets, gas grenades, that sort of shit on hand?”

  “Some,” Mannix said slowly. “Dunbar took our only MM-1, but I know where to get another.”

  “Than do it. Is the turkey doc on hand?”

  “Sure thing. And he’s itching to get to work.”

  “Good,” Woods said, starting across the warm sand for the elevator. “Tell him we’ll let him start scratching real soon now.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Aboard the White Pearl

  Stepping naked out of the steam room, Davis Harrison took a towel from the counter and started to dry himself. His body was smooth and nearly hairless, almost feminine in its contours.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, my dear.” He chuckled, vigorously rubbing his head. “But I wanted our first time to be—shall we say?—special.”

  There was no reply from the next room.

  Drying off his legs, Harrison flinched as always as the towel passed over his genitalia. He had been a courier, merely carrying a message to an SAS commando unit in Beijing when he was captured by the infamous Chinese counterintelligence group Red Star. Harrison was beaten, stripped, tortured and finally mutilated and released to be a warning to other British operatives.

  Unable to reveal what had been done, he got himself cashiered from the service,
and then sold his skills on the world market to anybody with hard cash. Soon, he had enough money, and delicate plastic surgery made him function normally again. But by then he was a wanted criminal on four continents. Unable to risk retirement and chance being found and imprisoned, Harrison found he had no choice but to continue his work. Spy, agent provocateur, smuggler, assassin—they were all the same to him now. Merely jobs to be done without any emotional involvement. That was, unless China was the target, and then he worked with a ferocity that startled even the hardened agents of the Red Star.

  Toweling the rest of his body dry, Harrison wrapped the terry cloth low around his waist. But this mission would be his final revenge. China would never recover from the aftereffects of the Chameleon, and at last maybe he could turn the memory of that night of screaming in his head when the Red Star had strapped him into a cane chair and stolen his manhood with a pair of scissors.

  Shuddering at the recollection, Harrison bent over clutching his stomach. Fighting the urge to retch, he regained control of his breathing and wiped a sheen of sweat off his face. Payback is coming, you bastards, he snarled at his reflection in the foggy mirror. Oh, God, yes, payback like you could never imagine!

  Settling down, Harrison tossed aside the towel and slid on a pair of pants and slippers before going to his open suitcase and choosing a knife from the small assortment hidden inside the lining. Even without the Chameleon, smuggling things into and out of Russia had never really been a problem. Their army was formidable, but their security was a joke.

  Parachuting down into cropland, Harrison had dragged the unwilling flight attendant with him to the nearest farmhouse. After killing the family, he bound and gagged the woman into a trunk, tossed it into the family’s car and drove away into the night. Although Gwen looked English, she spoke Chinese perfectly. For some reason that offended him deeply, so Harrison decided to keep her as both a hostage in case of pursuit, and for some private retribution later on should the opportunity arise.

  At the train station, he stayed with his secret hostage until the diesel locomotive was well under way, and then settled in for a good meal in the dining car. Long gone were the days when Russian food was something to be tolerated, or at worst, simply avoided. Huge corporations were spreading across the wild frontier of Russia, bringing in civilization and modern conveniences as fast as possible. At the end of a gun when necessary, and most of the larger corporations had a sweetheart deal going with the Russian Mob. A little bribery here, a few killings there, and suddenly an entire district now had cable television and washing machines.

  Arriving at the Kamchatka Peninsula, he had the trunk delivered from the train to his stateroom on board the White Pearl, and stood guard until the boat was well under way before releasing the woman and tying her to a chair. His heart beat faster at the thought that a cane chair would have been better, but he would make do. He always did before.

  Then Harrison chuckled at the thought that he was sailing directly toward some of the largest fields of cane in the world. The Kuril Islands.

  For over a hundred years, Japan and Russia had been fighting over possession of the mountainous archipelago, a curved line of islands that almost formed a land-bridge connecting the two nations. But after World War II, America gave the archipelago to Russia as a punishment to Japan.

  The ninety-three islands ranged from small to colossal, and nearly all of them were deserted. Mostly because of the dozens of live volcanoes in the area, both under the water and amid an impassable mountain range set deep in the lush jungles. The mineral wealth of the islands was sparse, the animals were numerous, but not rare or valuable. The wealth of the Kuril Islands lay in the fact that there were underwater volcanoes. The countless steam vents kept the entire surrounding ocean at a pleasant ambient temperature, and the schools of fish bred all year round. There were no better fishing grounds in the entire world than the hotly disputed Kuril Island chain. Tuna, sharks, crabs, whales, everything seemed to like living there, and the Russian fishing fleets pulled in an endless bounty of food from the warm rumbling waters.

  Oddly enough, about a decade ago, the local hatred melted away when a Russian trawler foundered in an unexpected storm and started to sink near the Japanese end of the archipelago. Hundreds of Japanese civilians rushed into the storm to save the Russian fisherman, the bond of sailors overcoming the political machinations of the governments. Now greatly embarrassed, Russia and Japan allowed travel to and from the islands for both sides, and the tourist trade boomed like never before. Ecologists swarmed out to visit the colonies of sea lions, otters and huge pods of whales. Geologists and volcanologists crawled over every inch of the main volcanoes, even though many of them didn’t return from the dangerous climbs up the steep, jagged mountains. And hundreds of the descendants of the original Japanese settlers to the islands returned if only to place flowers on the graves of the ancestors. Finally, a deal was negotiated and one single ship was designated free passage, the White Pearl. Formerly a tramp steamer, the White Pearl was slowly rebuilt into a luxury liner, with sumptuous state rooms and every conceivable amenity—along with a captain and crew who were fiercely determined that no smuggling would ever take place on board the craft to threaten its fragile neutral status.

  Happily, people were people the whole world over. A few bribes and his trunks were delivered unopened. Later, Harrison would kill the purser to cover his tracks. But for the moment, he would let the purser enjoy his newfound wealth, secure in the knowledge that the man planned on turning him in as a smuggler anyway once the White Pearl reached Japan. Russia may have stronger prisons, but the Japanese paid larger rewards. Money made the world go around. Money and sex. And revenge.

  “Are you ready, my dear?” Harrison called out, testing the edge of the blade on a callused thumb. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon be with your friends from the plane. Oh, I promise that!” Rocking slightly to the rhythm of the boat, he padded barefoot into the next room humming a tune, but then froze at the sight of the empty chair, its ropes dangling to the floor.

  Snarling in rage, he dived for the dresser only to discover his pistol gone. Along with his wallet. Bloody hell!

  Grabbing a glass off the dresser, he threw it hard on the floor, where it shattered into a million pieces, the shrapnel shooting under the bed. When there was no cry of pain from underneath, Harrison stepped back into the bathroom and grabbed a spare gun from his suitcase. No KGB special this time, just a standard black matte 9 mm Heckler & Koch with a bulbous sound suppressor.

  He pumped two rounds through the closet door, then spun and fired three times into the cabinet under the bathroom counter. But aside from punching splintery holes in the polished wood decor there was no other reaction.

  Starting for the door, Harrison paused and returned to the bathroom. It wasn’t possible. He knew that. But something in his gut told him different. With a nervous hand, he flipped back the cover on the other side of his suitcase. Harrison sighed in relief at the sight of the two shoe boxes lying side by side.

  Chuckling in relief, he nudged the boxes with the sound suppressor of his weapon just to make sure. The lid of the first box came off, exposing a pair of shoes. But when the second lid was knocked aside, Harrison felt his guts turn into water. The box contained only a radio-alarm clock, identical to the one on the table near the bed. But the Chameleon was gone.

  Screaming in rage, he yanked a belt of ammunition clips from the lining of the trick suitcase and stormed out of the suite. Gone! It was gone! Six months’ undercover work stolen by some Chinese bitch! Betrayed. He had been betrayed by the stinking Chinese again!

  “Sir?” a waiter gulped, coming to a ragged halt in the hallway. His hands were filled with a dinner tray covered with a silvery done from which wisps of steam rose.

  Contorting his face in mindless rage, Harrison fired twice, the first bullet slamming aside the dome with a bell-like ring, and the second plowing into the throat of the waiter.

  Staggering away, the young
Russian dropped the tray and grabbed his ruined neck in both hands, gagging for breath. Viciously, Harrison kicked the teenager aside and started shooting off the locks on the doors in the hallway. The first two rooms were empty, but the third contained a young couple sitting in bathrobes clinking champagne glasses. He shot them both in the head and moved onward.

  Suddenly, a woman started screaming in the hallway, and Harrison stepped out to kill a maid holding towels.

  “Where are you, bitch!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, prowling along the corridor. “Give it back, or you’ll beg for death!”

  A door was slammed open by a slim man in boxer shorts who bellowed at Harrison in Russian. Harrison pumped a 9 mm slug into the man’s flat belly, and he crumpled to the thick carpet shaking all over, his face a rictus of shock and pain.

  Yanking open a supply closet, Harrison found only mops and cleaning supplies. Slamming it shut, he kept walking at a steady pace, trying to regain control of his temper. A dozen people would be telephoning the purser by now, and soon ship security would arrive. He could easily kill them all, but he didn’t have enough bullets to terminate everybody on board the White Pearl. The passengers could take him down by sheer numbers. He’d be captured again. Captured. Imprisoned. Helpless as their filthy hands ran over his screaming body…

  Forcing the nightmare visions from his mind, Harrison took a deep breath, and a wave of cool washed over his body. Stay calm, stay low, get the unit, kill the bitch. In that order! Now, move, soldier! Move!

  Slipping the hot pistol into his pants, he returned the room of the Russian man and used his knife to slip the lock. Easing inside, he found the man curled in a fetal position on the floor with bloody towels wadded around his stomach, one hand fumbling to reach the telephone on the nightstand.