Chameleon by William Diehl Page A

hallway which was painted a dazzling white. Its indirect lighting was so bright it was hard to tell where walls and floors joined. Now even the beat of the music was a memory. But the scene was etched in Gruber’s brain and he could not dismiss the fantasy that continued to play out in his mind.
    Kei led the big German to one of the doors and ushered him into an immaculate dressing room with six teakwood lockers and a long teak bench. Kei pointed to a door directly across the hail. ‘Steam bath. Door on other side of steam room leads to massage room, okay?’
    Gruber was getting nervous again.
    ‘Vere are you going?’ he demanded.
    ‘When you finish, Suji will show you exit door. I will wait for you there,’ Kei said and was gone.
    The little son of a bitch, Gruber thought, he is probably going back up to see the end of the show.
    Gruber took off his clothes, hanging them neatly in the locker, and draped his shoulder holster over a hook in its side and wrapped a towel around his middle and tucked it in place. His body was hard and his skin tight and there were two round scars in his side, .38-caliber scars, constant reminders that once, in another time and place, he had become dangerously reckless.
    He stared at himself in the mirror for a few moments and then looked down at the scars. His mind was like the blip in an electronic game, bouncing back and forth, from the arena above, to the woman on the other side of the steam bath who supposedly would lead him to Chameleon.
    Almost as an afterthought, he took the .25-caliber Beretta from the shoulder holster, held the small gun in the palm of his hand, and checked the clip, then tucked it into the towel at his waist. He draped a second towel over his shoulders, letting it fall at his side to conceal the pistol. He entered the steam room.
    It was like being lost in a cloud. He had never seen steam so thick. Gruber groped his way along the wall to the benches on one side and sat down. Driblets of sweat trickled down and began to gather at his waist in the tuck of the towel. He took the Beretta and laid it on the bench beside him.
    The room was larger than Gruber had expected. He could vaguely make out its perimeters from the haloed glow of the lights recessed in the walls.
    God, he thought, it must be a hundred and twenty degrees in here. I’ll give it two or three minutes and then get the hell out.
    He took the towel from his shoulders and dipped it in a bucket of ice that sat melting on the floor near the wall and wiped his face with it.
    The sound of a sudden shower of water, followed immediately by a harsh burst of steam, jolted him. It came from across the room. Someone had just pulled the cord and released a water shower on the hot coals that wore obviously over there somewhere on the other side of the room.
    The mist swirled and grew thicker.
    To his right, he heard the other door open and thunk shut.
    His hand edged closer to the Beretta. He was jumpy, his pulse still hammering from the opening minutes of the show in the arena above.
    Then the mist on the far side of the room seemed to clear for a moment and he saw briefly, as though through gauze, the shaggy figure of a man, staring at him.
    It jolted him. He sat upright, instantly alert. But the steam immediately obscured the figure. He took the Beretta in hand and stood up and took a few cautious steps across the slippery tile floor toward the figure. Was he large or small? Fat or thin? Gruber wasn’t sure.
    He sensed, but never actually saw, the figure. It materialized for an instant, tore off his towel and ‘vanished back into the mist. The Beretta clattered on the floor. Gruber stood in the room, naked. Panic began to gnaw at his stomach. He bent his knees and lowered himself slowly down toward the gun, peering into the thickening mist.
    Another hiss of steam from across the room. It distracted him for a moment. The kick came from nowhere, a sudden jarring pain from out of the mist, bang! Just like that.
    He