by Gordon Kent
“Mull.” Partlow said the word as if delivering a sentence of doom.
“Mull? Where’s Mull?” Jerry thought the name could even be local. When Icelandic names weren’t an endless chain of harsh consonants, they were often quite simple.
“Scotland, Jerry. The Isle of Mull is off the west coast of Scotland.”
“Scotland? That’s as cold as this place. He used to be cold all the time in Jakarta.” Jerry finished his scotch, rose and poured himself another. Ten thousand dollars and relief from arrest—he had a lot to celebrate. “Whatever—I’ll need a passport.”
“Absolutely not. Your case officer will walk you through immigration.”
“Christ—really? You can do that? The world has changed.”
“The gloves are off, Jerry. People in Washington have realized that we are the most powerful country in the world.”
Piat shook his head. “Most people in Washington couldn’t find their asses with both hands, Clyde. Okay. I go, I meet this guy, I set him up with—who? Same guy who’s running me? That right?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. And no doubt wait around to make sure they get cozy?”
“Absolutely not, Jerry. You set him up and go home.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.” Partlow had returned to sounding smug. Piat didn’t like it, or him, but the money was good.
“So no chance for a little salmon fishing here before I go?”
“Jerry, sometimes I think you are not quite sane.”
“The feeling’s mutual, Clyde. Okay, I guess that’s a no. When do you want this done?”
“There’s a military plane leaving from Keflavik in three hours. I want you on it.”
“What about my fishing equipment? My luggage?”
“I’ll see to it that it’s returned to you when your assignment is complete.”
“Be careful of my rods.” Piat looked out the window at the vividly green grass. The hotel had the largest lawn he had seen outside of Reykjavik, as if a lawn was itself something to watch on one’s holiday. He felt the weight of the fish in his bag again.
He said, “Dukas? He staying here?”
Partlow thought a long time before saying, “Yes.”
“And you’re sending me to Scotland with this case officer, right?”
Again, Partlow took his time answering. “Yes, Jerry,” he said with mock patience.
“Okay.” Piat got to his feet. “I’d like to fetch some clothes.”
“No. You can buy them en route.”
“Not outa my cash, you won’t.”
“Fine, Jerry. As you will. I’ll have your case officer take you shopping. Otherwise, we’re done?”
“Yeah.”
Partlow got to his feet, looked Piat over carefully, and then walked to the bar’s main door to the lobby. Piat followed him to the concierge desk.
“I’d like to leave something for one of the guests,” he said. He ignored the heavyset man who appeared by his elbow and crowded his personal space.
The concierge nodded. “A package, sir?”
Piat thumped his bag down on the counter. “Dukas—Mike Dukas. Not a package. A fish. See to it he gets it for dinner.”
Regrettably, the concierge said, Mister Dukas had already checked out.
Mike Dukas was sitting at a table in an airport bar that was so atmospheric it felt like a film set for the kind of movie he wouldn’t go to see. Still, he knew that the rest of the world might find it warm and comforting and sweet, or at least a relief from Scandinavian modern. The motif was Olde Englande and the beer cost six-fifty a bottle. Dukas, begrudging the money but thirsty, figured the high price was really the admission charge to the Charles Dickens Theme Park, Iceland.
Dukas had kept his khaki raincoat on but placed his waterproof hat on the table. A small puddle had formed around it. Now, he sat with his right elbow next to the hat and his lower lip pushed against the knuckles of his right hand, watching Alan Craik saunter toward him. Craik was smiling. He looked relaxed and pleased, and also, Dukas conceded, handsome in a sort of rugged, fortyish, Hollywood way. What the hell, who cared about looks, anyway? (The ravishing blonde two tables away, that’s who.)
“I think we did that pretty well,” Craik said as he slipped into a chair. He was wearing some sort of weathered corduroy sport jacket and a nubbly shirt, and he had tossed a waxed cotton coat (veddy, veddy English) over the back of his chair.
“Piat didn’t think so.”
“Not pleased to be jerked away from fishing?”
“It costs five hundred bucks a day to fish here, he told me. For salmon, anyway.”
“If you all got to the point of talking about fishing, I’d say he wasn’t too upset.”
Dukas shrugged. Craik ordered a beer. He said, “Partlow telling him what this is about, you suppose?”
“One assumes. Now if they’d just tell me what it’s about. How about you tell me what it’s about, Al?”
“I told you over the phone—if I knew, I’d tell you. All I know is Partlow was looking for Jerry Piat for an operation, and you keep up with Jerry Piat. Our part was to bring him in, period.”
“You’re trusting Clyde Partlow?”
“Not with anything important like my wallet, but yeah, as little as you and I are involved, yeah.”
Dukas drank the last of his beer and stared gloomily at the bottle. “I don’t get you helping a shit like Partlow.”
“It’s called ‘I’ll scratch your back now and you’ll owe me one.’”
“I wouldn’t want Clyde Partlow to owe me one.” Craik shrugged. Dukas gave up trying to save money and ordered another beer and then said, “This is a fine mess you’ve got us into, Stanley.” He waited for a response, got none. “Well?”
Grinning, Craik said, “You know what a working group is?”
“Mrs Luce, I am a Catholic.”
“Okay, I was at a meeting of a working group—sixty people in a big room sharing secrets. Or not sharing secrets, as the case may be. Although, with all the bullshit that’s been said since Nine-Eleven about agencies not sharing intelligence, in fact the amount of sharing that actually goes on is astonishing. Anyway, Partlow is a long-time regular at this particular working group; I’m a regular now because of my new job. When we took a break, Partlow made a beeline for me and asked me if you weren’t a friend of mine.”
“‘Oh-ho,’ you said to yourself, ‘this is suspicious.’”
“No, I said to myself, ‘Clyde Partlow is a good guy to do a favor for.’” Craik was silent for several seconds. “Now Partlow owes me one. And he owes you one—what’s wrong with that?”
“I was building up debts from assholes like Partlow when you were in Pampers.” Dukas waited while a fresh bottle of beer was put in front of him. “You’ve changed.”
“Older and wiser.”
“Where’s the Al Craik who used to say, ‘Damn the torpedoes, we’re going in without a country clearance’?”
“You know what the shelf life of a collections officer is? Short. I figure doing a favor for somebody like Partlow might give my sell-by date a little leeway.”
“I feel like I don’t know you so good anymore.”
“Yeah, you do. Same old lovable Craik, only I’ve wised up about Washington politics. Anyway, Partlow came over to me and asked about you, and I said why and so on, and he finally dropped Piat’s name like he was passing me the secret combination to Bush’s wall safe.” He slipped into a Partlow imitation, cheeks puffed, head back. “‘Might your friend Dukas know how Piat could be reached?’ So I said I’d check. And I did. And here we are.”
“Why?”
“Ah, da big question! I love da big questions! I dunno, Mike—Partlow has an operation that he wants Piat for, that’s all I could get. It’s on the up-and-up—it’s got a task number; and it’s passed the working group. It’s kosher.” He lowered his head, smiled. “But why would he want an untouchable like Piat?”
�
�You mean it smells.”
“N-o-o-o—”
“If it’s passed the working group, you heard it discussed.”
“Unh-unh. Discussion is general—tasks and goals. Peons like me not to know.”
“That’s sure what I call sharing information.” Dukas wiped a hand over his face. “Man, I’m tired. You at least got a night’s sleep. You know what you have to do to fly to Reykjavik from fucking Naples? Now I gotta do it in reverse. You of course feel great and look great, you bastard.”
“A healthy mind in a healthy body.”
Dukas sat looking at him, lips pushed out, eyebrows drawn together “You’re the guy who used to lecture me about honor, duty. Idealism. Now you’re running errands for one of the most political shits in the business.” He shook his head and held Craik’s eyes. “What happened to that fine rage you used to work up when other people did things for slimy reasons?”
Craik’s smile was tentative, apologetic. “My last fine rage got me a call from my detailer saying that if I didn’t can it, I wasn’t going to make captain.”
“And now you’re a captain.”
Craik nodded. The same small smile was still on his face “‘Honor, duty, idealism.’ Right.” He looked up. “But I believe you gotta pick your battles and your battlefield. And lost causes get you nowhere. Isn’t it okay to scratch the itch of my curiosity about Partlow’s wanting Piat, and maybe have Partlow owe me a favor at the same time?”
Dukas stared at his friend, then finished his second beer. Setting the bottle down carefully on its own old ring, he said, “It sure is comforting to know you’re still an idealist.”
2
Piat had never had a case officer before. Case officers are the men and women who recruit agents and then handle them—long hours of manipulation, a shoulder on which to cry, a voice when it is dark. Piat was used to being the shoulder and the voice.
“Dave’s” was not the shoulder or the voice that Piat would have chosen. Dave was clearly the man’s cover name—he didn’t always respond when the name was called. His voice was rough, assertive, yet with a surprising repertoire of high-pitched giggles and nervous laughter. He had had trouble parking his rental car. He had shown considerable resentment while walking Piat through some shopping in Oban. Piat had been tempted to start coaching him then and there.
Two hours later, Piat sat next to the man on the cafeteria deck of MV Isle of Mull and tried not to gnaw on the sore ends of how little he wanted to do this. He’d taken the money, and there wasn’t much he could do about any of it, but it smelled.
Partlow should have run him himself. They loathed each other, but Partlow was a competent case officer and would have made sure that things got done on time and under budget. Dave was so clearly a second stringer that Piat wanted to ask him what other agents he’d run—if any. It was as if, having recruited Piat, Partlow was now distancing himself from the operation. That wasn’t like Clyde. He didn’t usually let go of anything once he had it in his well-manicured hands.
Piat was sure that if he wanted to, he could ditch Dave at Craignure, the ferry terminal he’d already noted on the map of Mull. And then he’d walk. It was a tempting thought. Dave struck Piat as the type who’d order a lot of searches done by other people and spend a lot of time in cars. Piat thought it might be fun to walk away. In Piat’s experience, the way to lose Americans was to walk. It worked on Russians and Chinese, too.
He’d been paid half the money and he’d discovered that the Agency really didn’t have much on him—or had buried the evidence to protect themselves. He could probably manage a day’s fishing before he flew—
Pure fantasy. He had one passport—his own—and they’d come looking for him. Mull was an island cul-de-sac with only a couple of exits.
Ten thousand dollars for two days’ work, no matter how dirty, would get him back to Greece. If he was careful, the money would see him through the winter. By then it was possible that he would find something in the antiquities market to sell.
Because Dave had taken the window seat, Piat got up and pulled a sweater out of his bag. It was a very nice sweater—Burberry, more than a hundred pounds in Oban on the High Street. Piat had never been able to resist spending other people’s money. He had purchased a wardrobe that would last him five years—good stuff, if you liked English clothes. Piat liked anything that lasted. He pulled the sweater over his head and added the clothes to his list of positives. He could leave Partlow holding his baggage now—there was nothing in it worth as much as the clothes he had just encouraged Dave to buy for him. Scratch that thought—Piat wanted the rods back. He sat and admired his wool trousers and smiled again.
Dave didn’t even look up. He was reading The Economist with an air of self-importance that Piat longed to puncture. He shrugged internally. Why bother? Piat took out a guide to the early European Bronze Age and browsed it, trying to separate the useful facts from the clutter of drivel about prehistoric alphabets and runic stones. The early European Bronze Age was the hottest market in antiquities. Piat tried for fifteen minutes, but the book didn’t hold his attention.
Why does Partlow need me? Piat chewed the question. Hackbutt was a handling nightmare—did Partlow know that?
He looked at the cover of his book and wondered if any of the Roman authorities had commented on the world before Greece. All too damned speculative. He allowed his eyes to skim past the usual photos; a bronze breastplate, a helmet, a spectacular sword with an early flanged hilt, some badly decorated pottery. He knew all the objects. They decorated major museums. It needed a remarkable coincidence of durability, placement and luck for anything that old—the second millennium BC—to be found in northern Europe. Even to survive.
Partlow is doing something around the rules—above, below, whatever. He had to be. He’d involved Dukas—Piat went back with Dukas, not exactly as pals but with some respect. He’d involved Alan Craik. Piat didn’t love Craik but he had seen him in action. Dukas and Craik were buddies. Dukas and Partlow were not buddies at all.
And Hackbutt was into falconry—and Partlow had said right out that’s why they wanted him. Most of the Arab bigwigs were into falconry, too. No big leap of logic there.
Like speculating on what classical authority might have a bearing on the Bronze Age, speculating on Clyde Partlow’s motives from the deck of the ferry wasn’t getting Piat anywhere.
I can find a partner and a dig when I get back to Lesvos. Worst case, I’m a few thousand richer, and I have some new clothes.
Piat shrugged, this time physically. It made Dave glance up at him from his magazine. For a moment their eyes met. Piat smiled.
“I’m trying to read,” said Dave.
Piat nodded, still smiling. He started to prepare himself to meet Edgar Hackbutt, bird fancier, social outcast, and ex-agent.
Piat swung the rented Renault down into Tobermory’s main street, reminding himself to get over to the left, toward the water. The morning was brilliant, with thin, pale-blue mare’s tails high up against a darker blue sky. The tide was in, and big boats rode alongside the pier; as always when he saw them, he thought, I could live on one of those, but in fact he never would. Too much a creature of the land, or perhaps too suspicious of the predictability of a boat, too easy to find. On land, you could always get out and walk.
He drove along the waterfront, brightly painted buildings on his right, memorizing them—hardware store, chandler’s shop, bank, grocery—and then pulled up the long hill out of town and around a roundabout to the right, heading not down the island’s length but across its northern part. A sign said “Dervaig”; he followed it, passed a chain of small lakes (Mishnish Lochs, fishing, small trout—he’d pretty much memorized a tourist brochure) and, with a kind of fierce joy, drove the one-lane road that twisted and switch-backed up and down hills. He played the game of chicken that was the island’s way of dealing with two cars driving straight at each other: one would have to yield and pull into a supposedly available lay-by. Locals
drove like maniacs and waved happily as they roared past; tourists either went into the lay-bys like frightened rabbits or clutched the wheel and hoped that what was happening to them was an illusion. Piat, flicking in and out of lay-bys, waving when he won, giving a thumbs-up when he didn’t, had the time of his life.
He climbed past a cemetery above Dervaig and, following a map in his head, turned left and south. Halfway down the wide glen would be a road on the right; from it, a track went still farther up and then briefly down. At its end, Dave had assured him, Hackbutt’s farm waited. Piat drove slower, head ducked so he could look out the windscreen. He’d have said that landscape didn’t interest him, but in fact, it fascinated him, only without the sentimentality that led other people to take photos and paint watercolors. He always saw possibilities—for escape, for hides, for pursuit. Here, the sheer scale of the place surprised him: this was an island, and Tobermory was almost a toy town, but out here was a breadth of horizon that reminded him of Africa. Even with the mountains. The glen was miles wide, he thought, the mountains starting as rolling slopes that careened abruptly upward and became almost vertical climbs to their summits. Strong climber could shake anybody up there. The landscape was brown and green and gray; grass, not heather; bare rock and bracken. You could walk and walk. Or run and run. If the footing is okay.
He found the road to the right and drove it more slowly; it was ancient tarmac, crumbling along the edges, potholed, hardly wider than the car. He came over a rise and almost ran into a goofy-looking runner, some old guy wearing what looked like a giant’s T-shirt that flapped around him in the crisp wind. Hardly noticing him, the runner plodded on. Piat thought, I could give you half a mile and still get there first. After another mile, the road forked and he went right. Almost there. When he had gone half a mile farther, he pulled up just short of a crest and got the car into a lay-by and stopped. “Please do not park in the lay-bys,” the tourist brochure had said. You bet.
Piat got out and spread an Ordnance Survey map on the hood, traced his route from Tobermory, found the fork, followed with his finger, and judged from the contour lines that if he walked over the crest, he’d be looking down on Hackbutt’s house. Or farm, or whatever the hell it was. His aviary, how would that be?
