by Gordon Kent
Muhad al-Hauq was a devout Sunni but not necessarily (the sources weren’t sure) a dedicated Wahhabist. He was believed to support financially jihadists going into Iraq, but the little that was known of him suggested that he wanted to get an invader out of an Arab state, not that he was either in favor of restoring Saddam or (virtually the opposite case, so weak was the intelligence on him) of helping al-Qaeda. His alleged support for al-Qaeda was based on a CIA list put together in 1997; an intelligence summary of pre-Nine-Eleven 2001 that, if read carefully, used the word “assumed,” meaning that the evidence wasn’t there; and the contact report that had started Alan down this trail.
The information made him wonder why Clyde Partlow thought that al-Hauq was a good target—and for what. The use of falconry as a contact suggested recruitment. Would a devout Sunni who funded Iraqi jihadists be a likely recruit, a likely agent? Or was Partlow cynically using the name and the alleged al-Qaeda link as a way of floating an operation, fulfilling a task, justifying an appropriation?
Or did Partlow have something else in mind?
That question raised the further question of what you might have in mind for the effective governor of the Eastern Province. What might you do in a region that had most of Saudi Arabia’s oil, and on the other side of whose border stood thousands of American troops?
Or, perhaps, what might you do there without him?
Irene made no protest at staying behind at the game lodge. One part of Africa was as irritating to her as another: where she wanted to be was in her studio.
At ten a. m., Hackbutt and Piat were in a white Land Rover Defender, a vehicle so old the Toyota Land Cruisers parked on either side dwarfed it. It had the green shield of the lodge on its doors and a heavy luggage rack on the roof. Piat, dressed in khaki shorts and a khaki shirt, felt as if he were playing a part in a movie. Like Monaco.
Hackbutt had acquired a pair of pants whose legs zipped off—shorts, trousers, and shorts again by turns as the weather changed. He loved them and couldn’t stop talking about them.
Mike felt much the same way about the Land Rover. “This is a car to drive in Africa,” he said. He enumerated its features, most of which amounted to a lack of gadgets and robust engineering.
They drove down the mesa from the lodge, took the main road north, and drove ten miles before Mike turned off the road across the plain.
“I thought we were only going a few miles,” Piat said.
Mike flashed him a smile. ‘I promised the ranger that we wouldn’t be seen from the lodge. And you don’t want the Arab guy to see you, right?”
Piat thought, not for the first or last time, that Mike knew a good deal more than he ought. “No, Mike, I don’t.”
“So we go around,” Mike said, one hand on the wheel and the other tracing a wide arc on the map in his lap.
“Do you have a compass?” Piat asked.
Mike shook his head. Piat produced one out of his bag, but Mike shrugged it off.
Away from the water holes, the plain was a desert. There wasn’t an animal to be seen, and the sun seemed to come through the car’s white roof to grill them inside. Below his shorts, Piat’s knees stuck to the seat every time he tried to change position. He was sweating sitting still.
“There’s another grouse!” called Hackbutt. “That’s what he ought to be hunting.”
“Probably is,” Piat said.
Mike had slowed while he looked at the map and then swiveled his head around, comparing it with the big mesas in the middle distance. He didn’t seem to like to stop the car. Then he drove on a distance, past a dry water hole and a deep wadi, and then he slowed to a crawl again and checked his map.
“Okay, Jack,” Mike said. “See this ridge? See the anthills there—see them? Just past that. They’ll be there.”
There was a ridge that rose eighty meters tall, rich dark red soil and sand and rock. A climber’s paradise. Piat said, “Over the ridge?”
Mike nodded. “There’s a mound—not so tall. This wadi has water in it. So there will be animals. That’s where he will have lunch and fly his bird. And Jack—the talk at the lodge is that tomorrow the other Arab comes.”
“Shit,” said Piat, who knew that the uncle’s arrival meant more security and less opportunity. He looked up the ridge. “We’ll be pretty naked out there.”
“Sure, Jack.”
Hackbutt was restless. “What are we doing?”
Piat looked up the ridge, popped his door, and pulled out his binoculars. “We’re going to climb that ridge.”
Hackbutt pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay! Then what?”
Piat looked at Hackbutt. “We wait until we get lucky.” Or we try something desperate.
Despite its forbidding appearance, the ridge was an easy climb. It was so easy that Piat narrowly avoided crossing the central contour line into full view of the party at the wadi on the far side. He and Hackbutt found a pair of rocks that looked like rubble from a glacier (unlikely at the top of a mesa in Africa) and hunkered down with their binoculars.
The prince, his falconer, and two men with rifles were on a twenty-meter-tall mound in the valley below, the men with rifles squatting in the shade of rocks. The prince and the falconer stood under the full weight of the sun. The bird had the only shade on the mound, a parasol set up just for him. Beyond, in the shade of the big trees on the wadi, were three vehicles: a gleaming white Toyota Land Cruiser, a dingy green Land Rover with KWS markings, and a small rental truck. There’s the truck, Piat thought.
“They still haven’t fed him,” Hackbutt said. “He must intend to try him on something really big. A vulture? No, that’s silly. Maybe a mammal? I’ve heard Arabs fly falcons at ground game.”
“Like antelope?” Piat could see a handful of wary animals moving through the thorn trees to the covered water of the wadi at the base of an enormous, castle-shaped baobab tree.
Hackbutt took the binoculars from his eyes with weary patience. “Give me a break, Jack; you know better than that. That’s a big red-tail, but he can’t take an antelope. He wouldn’t know what the hell to do with it.” Hackbutt put the binoculars back up to his eyes. “Bella wouldn’t know what to do with an antelope.”
Piat went back to staring through his own binoculars. “They have some small antelope here. Dik-diks.”
After fifteen minutes of watching the prince eat his lunch, Hackbutt sat back. “So—now what?”
Piat continued to watch. “We wait.”
“What are we waiting for?”
Piat said, “Something. I don’t know what. We’re as close as I dare get. If we don’t get lucky, we’ll just drive up and ‘encounter’ them. Hey—Digger—don’t wave your binocs around. Somebody might see the dazzle off the lens.”
“Pretty boring, if you ask me. He’s not even flying his bird.”
“What does that tell you?” Piat asked.
“He’s waiting for something. He’s probably waiting for a particular prey. Maybe even your miniature antelope.”
Piat raised his glasses and peered off into the middle distance. “I don’t know anything about big-game hunting in Africa,” he said. “Fuck, I wish I knew something about all this. What’s he waiting for?” Piat changed position, restless, angry at his own shortcomings. “Digger, what’s he doing?”
“Eating lunch. Not a bad idea, if you ask me.” Hackbutt started to use his binoculars to watch birds in the valley behind them. “I really like these,” Hackbutt said. “Better than my glasses at home. Can I keep them when we’re done?”
Piat peeked at the party below them. Despite the cover of the rocks and anthills, he felt exposed, and had a presentiment of doom. His whole idea was based on Hackbutt’s prediction that the prince would lose his bird. In the hot light of day, it was revealed as a stupid idea.
Piat changed position four times in an hour. The prince and the falconer continued to eat. Then they drank tea from a thermos. They stroked the bird and watched the plain at their feet and were in turn w
atched.
Piat fidgeted and tried not to infect Hackbutt with his anxiety. He felt less and less confident in his luck.
“How about some lunch?” Hackbutt whispered.
Piat sent Hackbutt down to the car and he returned with their lunches. They retreated partway down the ridge and ate them. Piat drank off two bottles of water in a few seconds, and climbed across the scree to find a place to take a piss. His watch said that it was a quarter to three in the afternoon. It was a magnificent day with high, clear skies. He was starting to think about high-risk approaches to the prince. He had to set a time—five o’clock sounded about right. If they hadn’t got lucky by five—or maybe they should just drive home and lurk in the bar. Maybe the prince would fly the bird at the hotel at dusk.
So many intangibles. So many opportunities to make the wrong guess.
Sound carried thinly from the valley on the other side of the ridge. Clear as a bell on Sunday morning came the cry of a hawk, and voices—shouting. Piat froze in mid-thought and placed his hand on Hackbutt’s shoulder.
More shouting. Another hawk cry.
Piat climbed back to his rocks and lay full length on the sandy scree. As soon as he put the binoculars to his eyes, he saw that everything had changed while they ate.
The prince was still on the mound, his gestures dramatic. He was shouting orders. The black falconer was down in the wadi.
The bird was not under the parasol.
The two game rangers were also down in the wadi. One of them was sitting on a branch of the baobab tree. The other was climbing the far bank.
Hackbutt slid up to his elbow and pulled out his own binoculars.
“I knew it!” he said with the satisfaction of seeing someone else fail—not an attractive trait, but one Piat could forgive. “They lost her. They got her too hungry and they flew her from that mound and she’s treed.”
Piat started sweeping the tree line with his glasses. “If we can find her before they do—”
Hackbutt was looking up. “They think she’s in the trees by the wadi.” After a minute he said, “They’re probably right. She’s not up high and she’s not going to go out on the plain. See the falconer? He’s making noise—trying to flush her out of the trees. I guess he’s trying to get the guides to help.”
The prince was standing alone on the mound, arms crossed. The falconer stopped shouting and waving his arms and came up the mound, climbing quickly. He asked a question, pointing to the trees. The prince hit him across the face, a single blow, and after a second elapsed, the sound carried to them like the breaking of a twig.
The falconer continued asking, apparently indifferent to the blow.
“I don’t think I like that guy,” Hackbutt said. Hackbutt’s views of the world were often reduced to the simplicity of adolescent black and white. His moral disapproval was reduced to dislike.
Piat had learned to appreciate Hackbutt’s apparent simplicity.
“I don’t like him much either,” Piat said. “If we went down there, could we help him recover the bird?”
Hackbutt nodded. “Sure. Those two goons are useless. A couple of falconers to help him and we can lure the bird down in no time.” Hackbutt was assured. His body inclined to the situation below like a pointer’s at a pheasant.
Piat nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.” Win or lose, this is the throw, he thought.
As they climbed down, Hackbutt asked, “What do we tell them about why we’re here?”
Piat had thought about that all morning. “Nothing,” he said. “They won’t ask, at least now. Later, we make it sound like chance. Listen—” as they climbed into their truck, “just let Mike handle the first contact. He’ll talk to their driver—right? Until then, we act like we don’t know what’s wrong.”
Hackbutt looked at him wryly. “I think that’s pretty obvious, Jack. We certainly don’t want them to know we were watching them.”
Piat sighed inwardly. Then he crossed another line of the hundreds he had crossed in making this operation. “Mike?”
Mike smiled in the rearview mirror. “Ya, Jack?”
“Play it cool with the drivers, Mike. Okay? Ask if something’s wrong. Get them to tell you.”
Mike’s answering nod and smile were eloquent of just how much Mike understood of what was going on. The book said that unless Mike was a recruited agent, Piat couldn’t use him like this, giving specific direction on operational issues. Piat just chucked the book out the window.
Piat picked up a book on the birdlife of Tsavo and pretended to read. In fact, he could barely breathe.
Three minutes later, Mike pulled the Land Rover up next to a gleaming Toyota Land Cruiser and called out to the driver in Swahili.
The driver laughed and gesticulated at the patch of trees by the water. Mike handed him a cigarette—an American Marlboro—and the driver called to the truck. The driver from the truck came trotting up to Mike’s window but stopped when a shout came from the trees. He shouted back—Piat caught the verb “take”—nataka something something. Mike lit a cigarette and tossed it to the newcomer, who caught it and put it in his mouth. He pointed down the wadi and laughed and talked, and Mike laughed with him.
Piat leaned forward. “What’s happening, Mike?”
Mike turned around. “Bwana, the drivers work for a man who has a special license to hunt. He’s hunting with a bird. The bird has become lost.”
Piat thought that Mike was being a little too thorough, like all newcomers to deception. Nonetheless, he was effective. “Tell them one of your passengers is a falconer—a hunter with birds. Ask them if they need help.” Piat knew that the drivers wouldn’t take it on their own authority to agree or disagree. In fact, he was counting on it.
Too much time was passing. This had to be just right.
Both men listened to Mike and both started talking. To Piat, they seemed to talk for a long time. Then the second man, the truck driver, pinched out his cigarette and tucked it behind his ear and ran off toward the wadi. A dusty African with a rifle emerged immediately and held his hand up, palm outward—stop.
This is not the way this is supposed to go.
“What’s he saying?” Piat asked.
Mike ignored him. He shouted to the man with the rifle, who cupped his ear to listen. That was the action that gave him away—it was an elaborate pantomime. Piat saw through it in a second and hoped that the prince was not so perceptive. Mike and the truck driver had arranged it.
For fifty dollars.
Mike smiled at him. “He says a bird has been lost—a valuable bird. He asks us to help.” His face said, Isn’t this what you wanted?
Piat wanted to hug him. Instead, he slapped Hackbutt on the thigh. “Hey, let’s go help find this bird.”
Hackbutt was out of the car as fast as Piat. Piat’s knees were weak and his heart was pounding.
They jogged to the edge of the wadi. Piat looked for the bird, but Hackbutt located the slim shape of the prince’s falconer and called out.
“Hallo there!” Hackbutt called. “Your driver says you’ve lost a bird!”
It was remarkable. Digger had just spoken exactly the right line.
The slim black man in the wadi glanced over his shoulder—toward the prince still standing on the mound, invisible to Piat. And of course Piat wasn’t supposed to know he was there.
Then the black falconer made up his mind—a balance of things that would anger his master, Piat suspected. His English, when he called, was heavily accented but fluent. “Please move quietly!” he called. He sounded more Indian than African.
Hackbutt slid down the slope of the wadi and moved carefully to the falconer’s side. Piat took his time. It was now all down to Hackbutt, and Piat wanted Hackbutt to know it.
Hackbutt joined the other falconer, and Piat could see them both pointing up into the branches of the baobab tree. The prince’s falconer was speaking quickly, and Hackbutt was nodding.
Piat watched the tree.
The prince’s fal
coner went up the wadi at a trot, headed toward the mound, leaving Hackbutt standing at the base of the tree, watching it. He backed away slowly, still looking up, almost tripping over a rock and never taking his eyes off the tree.
Piat, his attention divided three ways—Hackbutt, the African falconer, the tree—yet caught a flicker of pale movement in the tree, close to the inverted cone of the trunk. And another. He even recognized the motion, nearly identical to Bella’s shows of anger and bafflement.
In a low voice, he called, “Digger?” No response. He didn’t want to take his eyes off the bird. “Digger?”
“I hear you, Jack.” Hackbutt was at his elbow, his binoculars on the tree. “Good eyes, Jack.”
“She’s mad.”
“He, I think. Yes. Mad as hell. Going to be quite a piece of work to get him down.” Hackbutt sounded pleased with himself and the challenge. Piat was reminded of Hackbutt on the birds in Scotland. And Mike, talking to the other drivers.
“What do you want me to do?” Piat asked.
Hackbutt kept his binoculars on the bird. “Clear the wadi, Jack. Get the drivers and the rangers back by the vehicles.”
“Where’s the prince’s man?”
“He went for his bag. Fancy coming down here without it. I think he’s scared, Jack.”
Piat nodded, which, of course, Hackbutt couldn’t see. “Okay, Digger,” he said, almost whispering. “Clear the wadi. Anything else?”
Hackbutt smiled beneath the binoculars. “No. I’ll take it from here.” That, too, was like Hackbutt with his birds, a sudden, surprising authority.
Piat cleared the wadi with the help of Mike’s voice and Mike’s language. Then he confined his activities to handing out cigarettes and watching Hackbutt and the prince’s falconer work. They laid out a long lure and cast it, the falconer whirling it over his head like a sling and then letting it travel until the chunk of meat at the end hit the dust of the wadi floor. The first three casts, the bird shifted his weight and opened his wings, clearly interested, but anger and bewilderment overcame hunger and training, and he stayed in his tree.
