The Falconer's Tale

by Gordon Kent

  It took an uncomfortably long time. Brakhage didn’t say whether it was traffic or the age of the program or just density of data in the system. But they had time to talk about baseball and who would make the playoffs and who would win. Brakhage looked at his watch. So did Alan, and he saw that it was quarter to five and Brakhage could have left fifteen minutes ago.

  “I’m sorry, Brakhage.”

  “No biggie, sir.” Maybe Brakhage figured that now Alan owed him.

  “Jesus, at last.”

  The screen was blank except for an unglamorous, unboxed message in the upper right corner that looked as if it had been typed on a manual typewriter that needed a new ribbon. It said, “Access denied. 711140095737.14-3. 52189702. PERPETUAL JUSTICE code-classified.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Yeah, I was sort of afraid of that.”

  “Security classification?”

  “Yessir. That’s the 7111—means it’s got a special classification above the level of the clearance of the search engine. That’s not so unusual, but I usually run into it with stuff out of National Security Council or parts of Defense, like that. CIA not so much. DIA hardly ever, but there it is.”

  It took a while for Alan to digest what he meant. “This is a DIA document?”

  “Yessir—that’s the 737. That’s us.”

  Us. The Defense Intelligence Agency. His own outfit. He said, “The date-time group that was referenced was for December, 2001. So this is a DIA document from 2001?”

  “Yessir, I expect it is. It’d be really rare to change the code in the system, even if another outfit got the document and let’s say incorporated it into something else—they’d still have to classify all of it up to this level, and they’d use the same number.” He looked at the hard copy Alan had given him. “I guess a lot’s been stricken out from it, because what you got here isn’t classified that high.”

  “If you searched on just the Saudi guy’s name, would it come up with the document you just found?”

  “Yessir, if I go into this system. But in the general system, no, sir.”

  But the Saudi name, Alan knew, was misspelled. In the other documents, it was al-Hauq, not al-Hack. You’d have to know about the misspelling to find this document.

  He thanked Brakhage and went back to his office. Had he learned anything that he hadn’t known before? Yes, he thought, he had: he knew now that there was information in Partlow’s reference that was—or had been, because stuff kept its classification for decades after the reason for it was dead—so important that DIA wouldn’t let the intelligence community see it. And what had to be in there, besides possible references to torture, were the headers and footers: the task number, the operation number, the identity of the originating office, the number of the operative who had written the report, and the authorization under which they had done what they did.

  Very interesting.

  The first night in London, Piat found it hard to sleep through the sounds (love-making? certainly not the telly) coming from the room next door, and he went out and walked, ranging as far as the BBC complex. He sat in a pub and had a beer and tried not to over-analyze why their fucking bugged him. Then he thought about how little he knew about the target of the operation. It was one thing to hit a target overseas—another to turn that meeting into a contact. He tried to imagine a rich Arab falconer—were they all like Hackbutt? Driven? Whacked?

  He needed Partlow. He needed information, money, targeting data.

  He found that he was thinking about Irene. And the sounds from their room.

  Craik called Dukas at home in Naples. Dukas, he knew, went to bed late, but Dukas let him know that Craik was pushing the envelope.

  “It’s the price you pay for having a secure phone at home.”

  “What is it now? You want me to go find Jimmy Hoffa?”

  “I think there’s something interesting about Partlow’s operation,” Craik said.

  “Interesting how?”

  Craik told him about the contact report.

  Dukas’s reaction suggested that “interesting” wasn’t the word he’d have used. When they’d talked it over and had an idea of what came next, Craik said, “I’m going to have to talk to Partlow, and when I do, I’m going to have to take your name in vain. I’m going to tell him you’re a very unhappy special agent.”

  “Not far from the truth.”

  The first full day in London, Piat was ready to take Hackbutt to the big time—Pall Mall, the Arcades. Burberry and Aquascutum. Farlow’s.

  The change wrought by the haircut was profound—perhaps the shoes helped. Hackbutt stood straighter, walked better. Irene fussed while she dressed him. Piat worked to keep him enthusiastic for another day of shopping.

  Before they walked out the door of the hotel, Hackbutt told them he needed to take a piss. Irene pulled Piat aside.

  “I want to know what you’re going to make him into, Jack,” she said. She shrugged. “He can’t do power businessman. You know?”

  “Eccentric rich falconer. Old money. I think it’s the best we can do.”

  She considered for a few seconds. “And me?”

  He gave her an envelope.

  “Thousand pounds,” he said. He shrugged. “All I have right now.” He already needed the extra funds Partlow would bring to their next meeting. In fact, he was spending his own money on the op. Good case officers always did.

  She raised an eyebrow. “What for?”

  “You. Clothes. I can guess at what he ought to wear but I can’t even pretend to know what you ought to wear. Okay? I need receipts.”

  She took the money but she sounded impatient. “Tell me exactly what you want me to look like,” she said. “Don’t give me a lot of shit. Just lay it out. Who am I?”

  Hackbutt was coming out of the washroom. “You guys have a secret?” he asked happily.

  “No,” they said together. All three laughed.

  “Irene needs some new things, too,” Piat said.

  “That’s great!” said Hackbutt. “I can help, too.”

  Perish the thought. Piat nodded. He wondered how fragile Irene’s cooperation was. He had the feeling she had an edge of resentment under the surface—resentment that he was changing Hackbutt? Or was that too facile?

  “I don’t know,” Piat said. He stood appraising Irene. Was the target gay? Straight? If the target was hetero, Irene could be a bonus. He shrugged. Or not. He moved his eyes off her.

  Irene laughed nastily. “Always a pleasure to hear a man say that out loud. Listen, Jack—just point to women on the street. Tell me what you’re looking for.”

  Piat went back to looking at her carefully. “Skirts? Stockings?” he said tentatively.

  She rolled her eyes.

  They walked out into the rain.

  In the richest part of one of the richest cities in the world, it was Irene who stuck out. Piat was invisible—ancient tweed jacket, serviceable shoes. Hackbutt looked—well, he looked like an actor learning a role, but the role fit. It was Irene who missed the mark. Sack-like dresses and heavy wool bags were oddly appropriate on Mull, or even in Spitalfields. A statement. In the Burlington Arcade, two hundred years of snobbery shed her statement like water off an Aquascutum slicker and left her a past-sell-by-date hippie in an ugly, baggy dress.

  While a smooth shopgirl plied Hackbutt with ties, Irene squirmed. “I could spend all this on one coat.” She shrugged in disgust.

  Piat agreed. He wasn’t mentally prepared for the jump in prices. He didn’t have the funds to support both of them, even if he spent every dime in his own accounts.

  “Get cards. Pick your items—color, detail, size. We’ll do the ordering by phone next week.”

  She smiled mockingly. “Promise?” she said. Her eyes did something—Piat couldn’t decide what it was—something derisive.

  Hackbutt loved Farlow’s. He loved the staff and the vast range of green clothes. He loved the fishing flies and the shooting socks and the flasks and the
hats. Especially the hats.

  “Why do nerds always love hats?” Piat asked Irene.

  She just laughed. “He likes it here. You’re on your own.”

  They got him fitted for trousers, a decent jacket, some shirts. The unavoidable hat, an expensive, heavy felt hat with a broad brim and a puggaree band. The rest Piat decided to order from the catalogue. He wrote down items, including a number of things for himself. He paid cash for the trousers and jacket and gave the address of the farm on Mull. By the time they were done they’d attracted a lot of notice from the store staff. Piat didn’t like it, but what he did like was the way Hackbutt was beginning to react.

  He seemed to take it as his due.

  In another store in the East End, Piat got similar quality items—the most expensive items on his mental list; two pairs of heavy walking shoes, an Aquascutum oilskin, a chance-found tropical-weight suit that fit Hackbutt as if made for him. These items were all used, which was an advantage in itself. Piat wondered idly how many spies shopped there.

  He also bought two sets of evening clothes, black and black, no vests, no color. They were cheap, and rich people wore such stuff. He dropped the whole bundle of used clothing with a Greek tailor to be altered to fit and paid the man with the last of his money.

  Back in Mull next day, Piat picked up the answers to his emails. They made him smile. One even made him laugh aloud. He replied to all three, located a place on the mainland to get long-term rentals of diving equipment, and fired off a stream of requests.

  Then he caught the ferry to Oban, drove to Glasgow, and flew to Athens.

  8

  On a Monday, Alan Craik telephoned Clyde Partlow. There was some falsely jocular give and take, then the requisite short pause, and then Craik said, “You going to have a minute sometime? I need a little help on something.” He’d started to say “clarification,” but he knew that the word would put Partlow off. Even as it was, Partlow’s voice was guarded when he said, “What kind of help?”

  “Oh, a common interest. Not for the phone.”

  “Well, I’m always glad to share with another member of the community, Al. Delighted to have you drop by and try our coffee. Kind of special—a dark roast from Uganda that’ll curl your toes.”

  “Sounds great. Want to name a time?”

  So it went for another minute, a form of delicate fencing with foils so thin they were invisible. At last Partlow, no longer able to put it off, named a time that day, his office, Langley. They parted the best of friends.

  “It’s a little hard to talk about, Clyde.” Craik sipped the really excellent coffee—china cups, a real sugar bowl, a silver goddam spoon—and smiled and said, “An intelligence officer never likes to admit he’s confused.”

  “Is this the Navy asking the CIA for help?” Partlow smiled, too, checked his watch, and glanced at the suitcase that stood against a chair, a Burberry raincoat tossed over it.

  “Practically throwing myself at your feet.”

  Both men laughed.

  “You remember Mike Dukas.” Craik kept his face as innocent as a reality-TV contestant’s. “What he did for one of your operations.”

  “Oh, the fellow who got the, mmm, that guy I asked you to— That one?”

  “Mike Dukas, right. Head of NCIS, Naples. He brought in the guy named Piat for you.” Alan smiled. “Twice.”

  “Oh, right, yes, I remember now.” Partlow, every bit as guileless as Craik, said blandly, “How is he?”

  “I guess he’s fine, but he’s got this problem about that operation. I felt that I had to share it with him, him being so close to it. So useful to you on it.” Partlow’s smooth face allowed itself a frown. Alan said, “It’s probably nothing, Clyde, but there’s a reference in your plan that doesn’t seem to pay out. Could I have some more coffee, please?”

  “Pay out?” It was as if Partlow couldn’t grasp the concept of paying out. “What reference? Cream? Sugar?”

  “Black. There’s a reference that’s meant to support an al-Qaeda financing link, but when you check it, there’s almost nothing there.”

  “You checked it?”

  “That’s my job.” Not quite true, but close enough.

  “Obviously we thought that there was plenty there, or we wouldn’t have used it.”

  “Well, have a look at it. Maybe somebody else did the leg work, didn’t understand how important it is. But if you look at it, you’ll see that it’s pretty much a pig in a poke. Not even clear what country it came from.”

  “It’s perfectly obvious it’s ours,” Partlow snapped.

  Craik made a Gee-I’m-sorry bob of the head, eyebrows raised. “Maybe it’s in the eye of the beholder. I see an Israeli routing number, I think, whoa! What have we here?”

  “I don’t remember any Israeli routing number.”

  “It’s not in your reference; it’s if you go into the system for the document.”

  “Anyway, if it was Israeli, it’d be rock-solid. They’re as good as we are.”

  “Yeah, sure, but—mmm, well— There’s a question whether the information was got with torture. We both know that the data you get with torture isn’t worth spit.”

  “Anything I referenced is solid. Rock-solid. What’s the document?” Partlow swung around to a computer.

  “You reffed it by a date-time group in 2001.” Alan read off the numbers from a slip he had ready in a pocket. Partlow, head tilted back so he could look through the lower half of his glasses, tapped on the keys. He looked quite professorial, somehow, perhaps the tilted head. His clothes, however, were far more those of a Washington heavy hitter—expensive suit, the jacket currently off; striped shirt; power suspenders in a dark red silk; a tie in a fabric heavy enough to have provided the Medici with drapes. Probably eight-hundred-dollar shoes, although Alan couldn’t see those.

  “It looks perfectly fine to me,” Partlow said.

  “May I look?”

  Partlow swung the flat-screen monitor around to him. Craik saw exactly what he had seen on Sergeant Swaricki’s computer. “But, see, Clyde, there’s the problem—I mean, look at it. No headers, no footers, almost everything censored out.”

  “The name’s there. The al-Qaeda link’s there. ‘That’s all ye know and all ye need to know.’”

  Alan made a face. “That’s not how Dukas sees it. He used the word ‘bullshit’ several times.”

  “Dukas doesn’t need to know a thing about this operation. It isn’t your job to tell him about it.”

  “Well— See, Clyde, Dukas sort of feels he’s been had. He went out on a limb for you—twice. He’s not going to feel very cooperative if you ask him for a favor again.”

  “It wasn’t a favor. He had orders.”

  “Oh, come on, Clyde—it was a favor. He did you a favor; I did you a favor. I was glad to do it. All Dukas is asking is that this point be cleared up a little.”

  “What the hell does ‘cleared up a little’ mean?”

  “I guess it means that the whole document ought to be available. It’s a reference, after all.”

  “Not possible. Negative. No can do.”

  “But you must have seen the whole document when you were putting the plan together.” Alan smiled. Partlow was looking for a way out. Alan said, “You’d never accept information from a document you didn’t trust, Clyde. You’re too good for that.”

  Partlow settled himself in his custom-made chair. He studied a pencil. “I suggest you tell Dukas to have some faith in me.”

  Craik sighed. “Clyde, Dukas is two steps away from being the head of NCIS. He didn’t get there by trusting people. He’s a hardnose.”

  Partlow would be calculating what the cost might be if Dukas was unhappy, Alan thought. What could Dukas do to him? Not so much because of Piat, maybe, although Partlow wouldn’t be sure just how close Dukas and Piat were. But if Dukas really got to be head of NCIS, and if he held a grudge against Partlow—yes, that could present difficulties.

  Partlow finished his calculati
ons and didn’t like the total. He said, “How much do you need to know?”

  “The whole document.”

  Partlow shook his head. “Out of my hands. I can’t release it.”

  “Headers and footers.”

  Partlow shook his head again.

  “Task number.”

  Partlow creased the smooth skin between his eyebrows a fraction of a millimeter, then, to Alan’s surprise, allowed a small crease to form at each end of his mouth. A mini-smile.

  Not meant for Alan, for Partlow was still looking at his pencil, but perhaps a smile over someone else’s discomfiture. The mini-smile of schadenfreude? Partlow spun the monitor back toward himself and studied it, then tapped on the keyboard and waited. Alan watched Partlow’s shirtfront in the reflected light of the screen: it turned mostly blue, then gold, then gray, the first two with a suggestion of brass in the center. Exactly the sequence that Brakhage’s computer had gone through when he was trying to recover the document with a word string. And had got a firm no at the end.

  But Partlow didn’t get a no. He got a pale green shirt. “Task number?” he said.

  “You bet.”

  Partlow was beside himself with satisfaction. “There isn’t one you’d recognize.”

  “There has to be one. They’d never have got past the preliminary vetting without one.”

  Partlow smiled quite broadly now. “I’d let you look, but I can’t.”

  “So we’re back to me taking what you say on faith.”

  Partlow was back to playing with his pencil. He tossed it on the desk and stood up. “I have to excuse myself, Al. I’m getting to that age where the prostate doesn’t do its job so well anymore. Right back.” He walked deliberately the length of the office to his private bathroom and closed the door. No wink, no nod. His way of saying, If you do it, it’s on your head.

  Alan reached over the desk and swiveled the monitor toward him. He glanced over the document on the screen, saw that it was unedited, saw that the Saudi’s name was properly misspelled, checked out the last line for the stuff about “subject’s condition not conducive to further interrogation,” and saw that Swaricki had not been too far wrong: “subject’s condition not conducive to further interrogation, so called guards to take subject back to his detention facility and ended interrogation for then. Instructed guards to continue with sexual stuff.” The rest of the document made it clear enough that the subject had been hooded and that water had been used.