The Covenant Of The Flame

'Perhaps he was,' the broad-shouldered fourth man said. 'I still don't understand. What was your mistake?'

'My responsibility was to follow the woman. My team's responsibility was to pursue and capture the man.' The chameleon shook his head in distress. They failed.'

'What?' The sixth man, the electronic-security specialist, glared. 'They saw him leave the shop and…!'

'He was brilliant. From reports I was given, he seemed to sense immediately that he was being stalked. He ran. My team gave chase. He darted down alleys. He rushed across streets, veering through traffic. Still he was chased. He entered a restaurant.'

'And?'

The chameleon raised his hands. 'He vanished.'

'How?'

'If my team had been able to determine that, they certainly would have continued to chase him. I repeat, I accept responsibility for their failure.'

'But that does no good,' the sixth man continued. 'Accept as much blame as you want. The ultimate fact is, the enemy was within your team's grasp, but they didn't succeed.'

'Yes.' The chameleon lowered his head. 'That's the ultimate fact.'

'He must have had an escape route planned.' The third man pursed his lips again.

'No doubt,' the solidly built fourth man said. They're like ferrets. They can dodge and squirm and find holes where you'd never expect. How else could they have eluded us for so long?'

'That's not the point,' the overweight sixth man objected. Their survival skills are well known. But we're supposed to be better.'

'And we are.' The second man adjusted his glasses. 'Because virtue is on our side. But sometimes it appears that providence tests our determination.'

'I don't accept rationalizations. If what you're telling me is that the Lord helps those who help themselves, then we're obviously not trying hard enough!' The sixth man glowered toward the chameleon. 'Or in this case, you and your team aren't trying hard enough. Certainly I've done my part. I installed a tap on the woman's phone and on the policeman's phone within an hour of your instructions. I also arranged for our people in Washington to be able to monitor calls made from car phones. Every important government executive has one these days, although I don't understand why they use them, given the security risk.'

'What more do you want me to say? I can't change the past. However, I can resolve to do better in the future.'

'But this isn't the first time you've made mistakes!' the sixth man added. 'When you managed to find our target, you should have arranged immediately for his abduction and interrogation!'

'I disagree.' The chameleon gestured. 'Since the target didn't realize he'd been discovered, I thought it prudent to continue watching him in case he might lead us to other targets or…'

'But why would he have done such a foolish thing? The man was a fugitive from his group. They wanted him as much as we did.'

'Exactly,' the chameleon said. 'We waited in case his group caught up to him. As a consequence, we'd have had other vermin to capture, question, and eliminate.'

'Regardless, the tactic failed,' the sixth man complained. 'His group did discover where he was, and instead of being captured, they succeeded in eliminating him.'

'It was raining that night. The weather interfered with-'

The sixth man scoffed, 'The weather. How did the target's fellow vermin catch up to him?'

The chameleon scowled. 'Probably using the same method we did. The target was skilled in hiding. He constructed a new identity for himself. He never stayed longer than six months in any city. He arranged for elaborate smoke screens to conceal where he lived. In theory, he was undetectable. But human nature is imperfect. There were certain things about the man that he couldn't or wouldn't change. Specifically his fascination with video documentaries. That's how we found him the first time in Los Angeles, by checking the video companies. Of course, he'd moved on before we found his employer. But then we picked up his trail once more, the same way, in Chicago. Yet again he'd moved on. But finally, after using all the resources at our disposal, we located him at Truth Video in Manhattan. And if we could find him that way, I take for granted that the vermin he was running from could.'

'Still, that raises another question,' the muscular fourth man said. 'After they executed the target, appropriately by fire, the same method we would have used, why did they also set fire to his apartment, and why did they wait several days before they did it?'

'My surveillance team tells me that the target's hunters never entered his apartment the night they killed him,' the chameleon said. 'From Friday evening onward, he acted with greater caution, as if he suspected he'd been located. He broke an appointment with the woman, Tess Drake, on Saturday morning. He remained in his apartment all that day. Saturday night, he apparently decided to flee under cover of the storm. My team had concluded that his behavior was too erratic. They planned to grab him while they could, in the middle of the night as he slept. But that plan was interrupted when other targets arrived, with the same intention as our group. Events occurred quickly. The hunters discovered their quarry when he rushed down the stairs. As we know, the man was in superb physical condition.'

'Well, aren't they all?' the second man asked rhetorically.

'But he was also skilled in hand-to-hand combat,' the chameleon said. 'He fought with his hunters, eluded them, raced from the building, but during the fight, he'd injured his leg and-'

'Yes, yes,' the electronics expert said impatiently. 'They trapped him and burned him alive before your team could formulate a new plan and, if not capture and interrogate, at least exterminate them all. Another nest would have been wiped out.'

'You weren't there. Don't make judgments,' the chameleon said. 'My team was composed of three men, sufficient for their original mission. But the target and his hunters amounted to six. The only equalizer would have been pistols. But in so heavily guarded an area as the mayor's house near Carl Schurz Park, if there'd been shooting, the police would immediately have been put on alert and blockaded the district. My team could not take the risk of being captured and questioned by the authorities.'

'What risk?' the sixth man growled. 'Your men knew the rule. If they were captured, before they could be interrogated, they had an obligation to kill themselves.' He tapped his ruby ring and the poison capsule hidden beneath the stone on his and every other ring.

'I wonder,' the chameleon said. 'In my team's place, would you have been eager to take a chance that you knew would fail, with the certainty that you'd have to kill yourself?'

'You bet your soul, I would.'

'No, not my soul. Yours,' the chameleon said. 'I doubt you'd have risked being captured. You're a technician, not a combat operative, and your pride makes you want to live too much.'

'Maybe you don't hate the vermin as much as I do,' the sixth man said.

'I doubt that as well.'

'You're evading the issue. The fire in the apartment. What about it?'

'My assumption is that the other targets had made such a commotion in the apartment building that they didn't dare go back right away for fear of being found by the police. Also it may be that the targets concluded that the man who called himself Joseph Martin had been so scrupulous about hiding his true nature that he wouldn't leave anything incriminating in his apartment. That's all speculation, but this is not. We know that they decided to watch the woman he'd befriended, in case she behaved in a way that suggested she knew his secret. We, of course, watched the woman because she was the only connection we had with the target. She went to the morgue and managed to identify his body. The next day, the detective from Missing Persons took her to the target's apartment. Immediately afterward, she left a roll of film at a one-hour developing service. It doesn't take a genius to conclude that she must have found something of such interest in the target's apartment that she took photographs there and wanted them developed at once. When one of the target's executioners failed to get the photos, he and the others decided that the apartment now had sufficient priority for them to risk going back. Whatever they found, they needed to destroy it. And fire, of course, not only purifies. It conceals theft.'