The Falconer's Tale

by Gordon Kent

  Partlow had both hands up in front of his face. “Sold—sold—sold before you told me. We need the woman. If we didn’t, Dave would still be here. How do we keep her?”

  Piat shrugged. “Money?” he asked. “Works for most people.”

  “Dave thought she was ‘anti-American.’ Said she hated everything about the administration—” Partlow gave a little half-smile. “I gather she’s Canadian.”

  “She’s sounding better by the second, isn’t she? Come on, Clyde.”

  “How much for her?” Partlow asked. The word “soul” lingered invisibly in the air at the end of his sentence.

  “Hundred thou?” Piat guessed.

  “Christ Jesus!” muttered Partlow, in Anglican agony.

  “Let me promise Hackbutt a new bird.”

  Partlow hesitated, his hand on his chin. Piat drove over his caution.

  “You want this guy? Promise him a bird. It’ll help, both as a control tool and as a bargaining counter. And it can stand in lieu of payment, I’ll bet. Promise him a bird at the end and he’ll be happy. Besides, we’ll need a McGuffin for the Arab.”

  “I’ve never said the potential target was an Arab.”

  “You never said your wife was the daughter of an Anglican minister, either.”

  “Sometimes I find you just a little scary, Jerry.”

  He saw the challenges and the roadblocks ahead and he had to swallow a laugh.

  “You can work for me, Jerry?”

  “Yep.” Piat looked around the room. “Got anything here to drink? Yeah, Clyde. As long as I get to write the contract and as long as you let me consult on operational issues, I can work for you. Just this once, old times’ sake, all that jazz.”

  “Scotch in the bedroom. Laphroaig and a local—try it. You just added two hundred thousand to my operational budget.”

  “Air travel. Probably six trips—three for training, three for real. Three contact attempts—he’ll fuck up the first one, so I’ll plan it for him to fuck up—third one just to have a fallback.” Piat was feeling a little high. The scotch settled him.

  “You still don’t know what the op is. Aren’t you curious?”

  Piat spread his hands. “No. Yes. Listen—first I lay out my terms. Then you accept them and we sign something. Then you brief me. Right?” He shrugged and waved his glass. “Or you reject them and I walk away.”

  Partlow made a moue of distaste. “Not much chance of that, is there, Jerry? Which you bloody well know.”

  Piat raised his glass to Partlow and drained it. “I think I’m being damned good about the whole thing, old boy.”

  Partlow leaned forward. “That’s what worries me.”

  Piat laughed. One scotch had hit him and his adrenaline high like a hammer. “You know what, Clyde?”

  Partlow looked a little pained.

  “I think I want to do it. One more time.”

  Partlow went into the bedroom and poured them both more scotch, and then they raised their glasses and drank.

  And then they signed some papers and made a plan to communicate. They discussed Piat’s cover and Partlow’s role and the nature of the target—“no names yet, Jerry, we’re not there yet”—and Piat, despite three glasses of scotch, had no difficulty dictating notes on targeting possible meeting venues.

  Partlow handed over ten thousand dollars, mostly in pounds. “All I have. I want hand receipts on that. Deduct your travel here. I’ll meet you in a week and we’ll see where we are on cover and money.”

  Piat had a faraway look in his eyes. “Don’t come near Scotland again, Clyde.”

  “Where?” Partlow was in the room’s tiny front hall, ready to walk out the door, dapper in light tweeds, and somehow, obviously American. “Jerry—I’ll decide the meeting location, okay? Try and remember that I’m your case officer, and not the other way around.”

  Piat shrugged. “Whatever. Just not Scotland. London, Antwerp, Dublin. Athens would be nice—I could get some stuff from home.”

  Partlow nodded. “Athens it is. I have business there.”

  They shook hands. Partlow’s jawline moved, but whatever he had to say, the moment passed, and he was out the door.

  Piat lay on the bed and started his shopping list.

  5

  Piat woke next morning in Oban with a hangover and a mix of foreboding and guilt. The operation was all very well when discussed from the safety of an expensive hotel room, but in the chilly gray air of a Scottish morning all he could think about was Hackbutt—and Irene. Partlow had been cagey about what exactly had cued him to fire Dave.

  Hackbutt had changed from the old days in Southeast, but Piat still felt he knew where his mind would go. Betrayal. Personal betrayal of trust by his old friend Jack. From Hackbutt’s perspective, good ol’ Jack had walked off and abandoned him to the tender mercies of Dave.

  Piat considered it from a number of angles while he drank grapefruit juice in the hotel’s restaurant. He added to the list in his head—props. Envelopes. Tickets.

  On the ferry to Mull he read more about crannogs to keep his mind off his worries.

  This wasn’t going to be pretty.

  The dog greeted him with silent appraisal, its eyes following him from the car to the door while Piat’s stomach did back-flips in anticipation of Hackbutt’s welcome. He temporized by extending a hand again, letting the dog sniff; and he was about to try petting it again when he heard footsteps and the door opened.

  “Look who the dog dragged in,” Irene said as she opened the door. Her face had all the expression of a runway model’s. The sexual performance was not on offer. Piat guessed she was angry. Over his sudden disappearance, or for her husband’s sake? Or was it Dave and whatever he’d botched? Piat had too few cues to do anything but guess wildly, but since he had to guess, he suspected that Hackbutt had told her everything and she had hated it. Not a good start.

  He narrowly avoided the trap of asking for Hackbutt. That way lay Dave’s disastrous attempt—excluding Irene.

  Piat met her eyes. “I want to try again,” he said.

  Irene’s face didn’t move. “Can I offer you anything, Jack? Tea?”

  Piat nodded—not too eagerly, he hoped. “Tea would be great.”

  Irene was wearing another shapeless bag. The slight sheen of the material and the coarse beadwork suggested that it was an expensive shapeless bag. She was barefoot, and as she walked off to the kitchen, he saw that she had small feet arched like a ballerina’s. Her back remained straight, her shoulders square. Nothing sexual was being shown, and he was grateful.

  She put water on. The door to the room she called her “studio” was closed; the photographs were still up in the same places; there was no sign that she was “working” or doing whatever people who thought they were artists did.

  “Hackbutt’s up on the hillside. He’s flying his young birds.” She paused, reached into a jar and pulled out a handful of loose tea. “Herbal, or do you run on caffeine?”

  Nice to have the right answer made obvious. “I drink coffee when I want caffeine. Herbal, please.”

  Irene’s back remained to him. “Good black tea has more caffeine than coffee and is better for you. I’m sorry Eddie isn’t here—but I’m not sure he’d have much to say to you.”

  “I fired Dave,” Piat said. It came out easily, smoothly—the foundation lie on which he intended to build his castle.

  She was putting leaves in a tea ball. Her hand paused for a moment. “Really?” she said. Her feigned disinterest was the first hopeful sign Piat had detected. “Jack, I’m not sure that you know Eddie very well. He feels that—that you betrayed him.” With her last words, she turned around, teapot in hand.

  “I certainly abandoned him. Yeah. I thought it was for the best. Look, can I level with you?”

  Irene sat. In one motion, she brushed her shapeless bag under her knees and pulled her legs up under her, so that she sat sideways in a wing-backed armchair. She looked like a yoga master. Her smile was social. �
�My father told me that the expression ‘can I level with you’ always means the opposite. He was a capitalist pig of the first water, but he knew people.” She poured tea into heavy terracotta mugs.

  He was nervous and making mistakes. He shrugged and exhaled hard. “Okay. Point made. I’m done.” He swallowed some tea—good tea. Big gamble. She has to want the money. He must have told her that there’s money. Or I’m out the door.

  She smiled again—but it was a different smile. Secret pleasure. “So—why did you fire Dave?”

  “He didn’t know how to deal with you,” Piat said, from the hip.

  “And you do?” she asked.

  “Irene, I know I have to deal with you.” He just left it there. She wanted to be in control—being in control was one of the things that made her tick.

  She sipped her tea demurely. “What do you want?”

  “Digger’s help. A contact. It’ll require hard work and some lifestyle adjustments for both of you.”

  “Like what?” She leaned forward.

  Piat sensed the intensity of her interest but misplaced it as revulsion. “It’s just cosmetic, Irene. Like a costume. Like makeup.” She wore a little. Not much, but enough to suggest that she had a human interest in her own looks.

  She made a gesture of dismissal with her teacup. “What changes?”

  Piat felt a ray of hope—just a single ray, but as bright as the rare Scottish sun. She was bargaining—her body language and intensity said she was bargaining.

  “Clothes. Haircut. Table manners. Social interaction. Travel.”

  She looked at him over her mug of tea. “And me?”

  Piat smiled blandly. “What do you want me to say? I suspect you’re already pretty good at wearing a string of pearls and chatting with debs. Right?”

  She leaned back, put her feet up on the old trunk that did duty as a coffee table. Her soles were dirty. “I shit that life out of me with the last meat I ate,” she said in a matter-offact voice.

  Irene used words like shit to shock. It had been one of Piat’s first clues to who she was, or might be—that she had grown up with people who didn’t say shit every third word. Rich people. People with culture.

  “I need Hackbutt. I need his expertise with these birds. I know he can do this. And Irene—it’ll help him. He can help change the world, and he can spend the rest of his life knowing that he did it.”

  She nodded, but she didn’t look very impressed.

  “You and the birds—together—have made a more confident, more rounded man than I knew in Southeast. So let him do this. It won’t hurt him—far from it.” Piat tried to hold her eye as he made his little speech, but she glanced away and then back. She’d looked at her photographs, he knew. She had as much as said, What’s in this for me?

  “And I’ll pay both of you, handsomely. I know that you guys don’t run on money, but it’s what I have. Give it to charity if you want.” Most people liked to pretend they didn’t want money. He suspected that Irene would pretend pretty hard.

  He was wrong.

  She swiveled to face him, plunked her bare feet down on the stone floor. “How much money?” she asked directly.

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” Piat said.

  “We’ll need more than that. I’ll need more than that. You pay for my installation—materials, transportation, insurance, chai. The works.”

  Piat shook his head, apparently reluctant. “I’m sorry, Irene. I can’t make open-ended financial commitments. I can offer you a lump sum—I can set a payment schedule. I can’t just say I’ll pay for every expensive hotel you book in Paris—or wherever you get your show.”

  Irene leaned forward over the table, her breasts visible almost to the nipple under her dress, her well-defined arm muscles in high relief. She’s tense. “Fifty thousand each, then.” Her voice was low, a little raspy. “I love the irony—the military-industrial complex paying for my installation. I might have to add some new pieces.” But the tension remained, and only when it was too late did he realize that she was, perhaps unconsciously, trying to set her price too high. She wanted him to say no. She wanted—what? She wanted not to have to follow through with her “art.”

  But by the time he’d understood, the moment was past. He hadn’t flinched at the amount. He’d kept his tone businesslike. “Five thousand each when Hackbutt agrees. Ten thousand each when Hackbutt completes the cosmetic part to my satisfaction. The balance when we’re done. Either way, success or failure—but not until we’re done.”

  She looked at the photographs and then at the front door, as if she were looking for an escape, and said, “You have ten thousand dollars on you?” she babbled. “This is all happening too fast—my God, we just met you—really, I think you’re moving us too fast—”

  So.

  Piat opened his blazer and took out four envelopes. He laid them out on the old trunk. Two said “Irene.” Two said “Hackbutt.” He pointed. “Five thou.” He moved his hand. “Tickets to London. For shopping.” He waved at the other two. “Ditto, for you.”

  “I don’t get all giggly at the prospect of shopping.”

  He knew he had to push. “Deal, Irene?”

  She rose to her feet. “More tea?”

  He drove away from the farm without having seen Hackbutt but with a sense of release from danger. And a little elation. The next part—making up with Hackbutt—would be messy and difficult and emotional, but that was life in the business.

  From a roadside phone kiosk, Piat dialed the number he and Partlow had arranged to use for routine communications and left an eight-digit code that he typed out on the stainless steel keypad. Then he spent three hours counting his remaining money and renting a room in Tobermory. The woman at the front desk of the Mishnish remembered him. He told her he was back for the fishing.

  “Oh, aye,” she said.

  Piat believed in living his cover. He spent the rest of the evening on the estuary of the Aros River, fishing.

  In the morning, he didn’t go straight to the farm. Instead, he put on his boots and first drove, then climbed to his loch. He took a rod, but he didn’t set it up. Instead he took a cheap digital camera. Then, from the pub in Craignure, he accessed his “Furman” account online. Furman was the identity he used in Athens to sell antiquities. He uploaded three digital images of the crannog from the cheap camera and sent them to three different addresses; one in Sri Lanka, one in Florida, and one in Ireland. He wasn’t sure just what he was meaning to do yet. So he was testing the water.

  * * *

  As he drove back down the gravel road to the farm, he caught a flash of Hackbutt among the cages behind the house. His stomach rolled over. He pulled around the house, parked, and took a deep breath.

  As he got out of the car, Hackbutt came around the house and waved. Hackbutt’s wave said it all, he hoped. Piat gave up the idea of trying to make contact with the dog and faced him.

  “You really pissed me off,” Hackbutt said from thirty feet away. His tone was high, almost falsetto. As he walked toward Piat, he said, “It’s not that I can’t be your friend. Not that I’m angry—really angry. But it wasn’t decent, leaving me like that.” He looked like shit. He looked like a beggar in the wilderness—beard uncombed, hair wild.

  “No, Digger. No. I abandoned you. It’s not the way I meant it to be, but I did it. I’m sorry.”

  Hackbutt’s hands were trembling. He rubbed them together. “Why? Irene says I should forget it. That it’s not our business. But I can’t—I think you have to tell me.”

  Piat had forgotten how Hackbutt really was—the pile of insecurities and grandiosities. Piat put an arm on the other man’s shoulders. Lies that he might have told other agents wouldn’t work on Hackbutt—lies that he had been busy, that he had had to use Dave, that he’d been somewhere else saving the world. Waste of breath. To Hackbutt, there was only Hackbutt—and maybe Irene. Instead, he said, “I needed to get you guys the money. That’s all I can say, okay?”

  Hackbutt’s
face was blotchy. “Dave said you weren’t coming back. That you didn’t give a shit about me or Irene. That you only worked for money and that he was my real friend.” He was almost crying. He was very much the Hackbutt that Piat had run in Malaysia.

  Piat nodded, hugged Hackbutt a little harder. He could imagine the vitriol that Dave must have spewed. He could see how a fool like Dave would think that he could achieve control that way.

  “But I came back, Digger.” Piat didn’t care that he could see Irene at the window, that he was practically hugging her man on the driveway. “I came back. I should never have left.”

  “And you won’t leave again?”

  “Not until the end.” Piat believed in being prepared for the end, right from the beginning. “And then we’ll just go back to being friends.”

  Hackbutt was crying now. But he was returning the hug. Piat was patient, almost tender.

  “Irene will think we’re making out,” Hackbutt said after a full minute. He giggled.

  That laugh’s got to go, Piat thought.

  Irene had made tea. The door to her studio was still closed, but a third of the photographs had been taken down, and some lay in untidy piles on the furniture. Irene was taciturn, seemingly nervous. Regretting it?

  Piat cleared a space on the couch and sat, opening his backpack.

  “Okay, folks. Today we start working. First, anybody have something on their schedule for the next two months? Weddings? Funerals? Spill it now, because the moment I’m paying, you’re on my calendar. Okay?”

  “He’s always like this at the start,” Hackbutt said to Irene.

  Irene stared at him.

  “Good. Digger, you remember these forms?” The forms themselves were creations from Piat’s laptop, but they were enough like CIA documents to pass muster with an agent. “You pay US taxes?”