The Falconer's Tale

by Gordon Kent

  Piat tried to get a glimpse of the man on the mound. He couldn’t see him, no matter how he shifted his position.

  When Piat returned his attention to the wadi, Hackbutt had the lure. He spun it through the air differently, slowly, the meat at the end making a low whirring noise as it passed through the long circle above his head. Twice, Hackbutt managed to entangle it in thorn trees. The third try, Hackbutt whirled it with the meat almost on the ground.

  The bird shifted his weight, then shifted again, leaned out and gave a low cry of frustration.

  Hackbutt kept whirling the lure. He didn’t let it touch the ground. He didn’t speed or slow his motion. After a minute, Piat wondered how long he could keep it up.

  After five minutes, he wondered how strong Hackbutt was. The bird in the tree was in constant motion now, walking back and forth on his branch, spreading his wings and then furling them, over and over.

  Then Piat saw the prince. He came slowly into the wadi, picking his way down the opposite slope, using cover to hide him from the bird. He moved like an athlete.

  Hackbutt let a little more cord out on the lure and spun it even more slowly, changing his slow circle to an oval so that the chunk of meat on the end almost stopped for a heartbeat at the apex of the oval. And then, as the prince emerged from behind his cover, Hackbutt reversed his lure, a move like a fly-cast with a heavy rod, so that the lure turned over in the air and reversed direction—

  The bird leaped into the air and rolled under a branch, feet already extended for the strike—

  Hackbutt pulled the lure like a fisherman retrieving a cast, so that the lure changed direction again and fell to the ground almost at his feet—

  The bird lunged, turned on a wingtip and struck the lure, two feet from Hackbutt’s leg—

  The prince’s falconer knelt fluidly, passed his hand under the bird’s feet and seized her jesses and the lure in one motion and rose with the bird captive on his fist and yet feeding on the meat. The bird glared around, once, and then put his head down and started to eat.

  The prince, now standing behind his falconer, gave him a powerful slap on the back. He was smiling. He said something with authority in Arabic. Piat’s Arabic had never been that good, but the tone was one of gentle malice. Like You’ve ruined my day’s hunting. But at least you got the bird back. Something like that.

  Before Piat had climbed down the wadi to congratulate them, the prince had asked Hackbutt to dinner.

  “You sure know some swell places,” Craik said. The coffee house was in Adams Morgan, trendy but grungy, hints of iconic hippiedom in the waitress’s unbound breasts and flowered, floor-length skirt. Next door was a defunct African restaurant, its exterior now decorated with panhandlers.

  “Old guys get around.” Peretz had been there ahead of him, was looking down into a cup with a lot of froth. “I think my coffee has hydrophobia.”

  Alan let himself into a chair and said, “We used to come up here for Ethiopian food.”

  “A lot of Ethiopians went home when their war ended. That’s what it means to be the world’s superpower—other people get killed and we get ethnic restaurants. I think we have a lot of Iraqi food in our future.”

  Craik got himself a double espresso and a muffin that was big enough to feed a family of four. It was mid-morning; he’d missed breakfast, what the hell. Back at the table, he said, “I hope there’s a reason why we’re meeting here.”

  “You don’t like my favorite coffee shop? Shame on you.” Abe tried a little of the froth on a spoon, made a face. “You look bad. What’s up?”

  Craik shrugged. “Little business meeting with my boss this afternoon.” He shook his head. “I need his okay on this stuff I talked to you about. Putting my nose in.” He shrugged again. “Fuck him.”

  Peretz started to say something and then seemed to decide it was better to change the subject. “I was right about Leah.”

  Alan looked his question.

  Peretz sniffed his fingers. “I have new neighbors.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “They are, in fact. Really nice. A couple, my age. Funny coincidence, they’re liberal, reformed Jews. What a nice fit.”

  “You don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

  “They want to go to Israel. They’ve never been to Israel, they say. Wouldn’t I like to go with them? Safety in numbers. We can be liberal and reformed together.” He pushed the coffee aside and took a small piece of Alan’s muffin. “I sent a reply to Leah’s email. I put it off and put it off. I was scared, scared of what I’d find. It took me three weeks to get up my courage. Then I had to be half sloshed. I just said I was glad I’d heard from her and I loved her.”

  “And?”

  Peretz’s voice got angry. “Comes back an answer. ‘plzplz cum 2 c me luv luv.’ Broke my heart.” He looked away, blinked, sniffed his fingers. “Then my new neighbors showed up.” He tightened his mouth and looked off through the shop’s window at the grubby street. “We eat dinner together sometimes.”

  “You think they’re a plant?”

  “Do cows give milk?”

  “Abe, you don’t know that.”

  Peretz snorted. “I told one of my buds from the Bureau; he checked them out. In fact, they’ve been to Israel nine times. They’re nice people, but they’re lying to me.” He shifted gears. “Enough about me. Let’s talk about what I’m doing for you.” He opened the small paper napkin that had come with his coffee. “I’ve been looking into the OIA–Force for Freedom–K Street circle jerk. It’s practically neoclassical, it’s so symmetrical.” With a felt-tipped pen, he drew a circle. “You want to hear this?”

  “All ears.”

  Peretz made a mark on the circle. “Hooper and Gretz. Lobbying firm. Two OIA people signed on with them. One of their clients is—” he made another mark—“the Petroleum Education Council. OIA’s McKinnon went there as a biggie, you remember.” He blacked in an arrowhead pointing at Hooper and Gretz, then drew another arrowhead pointing the other way. “Part of lobbying these days is buying Congress members with what are wink-wink, nudge-nudge called political contributions.” He made another mark on the circle. “Congressman Kwalik, Ohio. Got sixty thou from the Petroleum Education Council. Two OIA people went to him as staffers, you’ll recall.”

  “I’ve seen Kwalik at DIA. He’s on the House intelligence committee, so maybe it’s legit.”

  “Probably checking to see that everybody has enough rubber bands. Our elected representatives never sleep.” He made another mark on the circle. “Force for Freedom is also a Hooper and Gretz client.” He drew more arrowheads. He drew another arrowhead pointing at Kwalik. “Force for Freedom gave Kwalik eighty thousand of its hard-earned dollars over the last two years.” Peretz looked at his diagram, improved a couple of arrowheads, put in dollar signs in several places. “A cynic would say it works this way: lobbyists work on congressmen to get what their clients want, and the clients kick in the bucks to the congressmen to make sure it happens. The congressmen use their oversight to forward the client’s agenda. The agencies that actually get the job of forwarding the agenda farm out some of the work to private companies that then—surprise!—employ the lobbyists and give more money to the congressmen. And the money goes round and round.”

  “I don’t believe it’s about money.”

  “I don’t either. It’s about political theory and ideology and conviction, but it’s sweeter if everybody makes money in the process.” He tapped the paper. “Not to brag, but when they got the White House and the House and the Senate, I said this would be the most corrupt administration since U. S. Grant. Was I wrong?”

  “What’s your idea of the agenda?”

  “Power. US power. More, more, more. And oil, without which a military force can’t operate. F-18s don’t fly on solar.”

  “American power isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Abe.”

  “No nation’s power is a bad thing until they get too much of it. Lord What’s-his-name was right:
absolute power corrupts absolutely. And always in the name of the most admirable goals. Democracy! Homeland security! Justice!” Peretz sniffed his fingers, smiled. “We’re a flawed species, Al. We have intellect but we don’t have the wisdom. We always blister our fingers because we build our fires too hot, ever since we discovered that fire makes meat taste better.” He sighed. “Even us. Even the good guys. Even the best of the good guys.”

  Craik sat slumped in his chair. He picked up muffin crumbs with a wet finger and ate them. “I always feel so cheered up after I’ve been with you.”

  All the way back to the lodge, Hackbutt refought the luring of the red-tail in extraordinary detail. Piat had expected Hackbutt to be excited, but this level of postmortem combined the operational details and his passion for falconry into a monologue that was still droning on when Mike stopped the car in the lodge’s drive.

  Piat couldn’t give enough, nor could Hackbutt get enough. When Hackbutt slid off the seat to find Irene, Piat turned to Mike. “Brilliant, man.”

  “Sure,” Mike said.

  “You’re doing a great job, Craik.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t mess it up.”

  “Sir?”

  “Let me give you some advice. There are, what?—eight captains in naval intel? One of them, maybe two, will get promoted. The rest will get honorable retirements. You’re on the track to be the one. When you get to this level, you’re good or you wouldn’t be here. From here on, it’s political. Take it from me.” He smiled. “Don’t waste time on stuff out at the periphery.”

  He was an Air Force two-star general with movie-star looks and a good smile. He looked a lot younger than he was, and even then, he was young for his rank. He hadn’t got to be the commanding officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency by bothering with things on the periphery. “You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Are you telling me to back off, sir?”

  “I’m telling you to focus on your job, which you’ve been doing really, really well. A hundred and ten percent. ‘Top officer of a thousand’ kind of fitness report.”

  Craik had made an appointment with General Raddick and had laid out what he had found about Perpetual Justice. The general’s answer seemed to be that it was out there on the periphery, and he should look straight ahead.

  “I believe that everything involving task numbers falls under my responsibility, sir.”

  “What you’re doing with the Green Book is great. Great! Concentrate on that.” General Raddick shifted a brass elephant two inches to his left on his desk. “I’m not going to ask you how you know what you know, because it’s on my periphery. But Perpetual Justice is highly classified, something unauthorized people shouldn’t even know exists. You’re a dedicated officer; you stumbled on this; you’ve brought it to my attention. Good.” The general had pale blue eyes that added to his handsomeness but didn’t do anything to suggest warmth. “Now you want to go back to your own home ballpark.”

  “Are you telling me to drop the matter, sir? Even if I suspect that my office signed on for an illegal operation?”

  “I’m giving you some career advice. Focus on getting two stars and taking my job.” The smile flashed. “Okay?” Raddick stood. “I’m glad we had this talk. In this job, I don’t see enough of the officers who really run things. Come to me any time.”

  A few seconds later, Craik was out in the corridor.

  Piat had gathered Irene and Hackbutt in his room before they went to have dinner with the prince. He found that he was nervous, tried to keep his tension out of his voice. “We need another meeting with him—somewhere else, and at least a week from now. We’ve talked about this, Digger. This is the operational plan. We’ve made the contact. Now we need to build a relationship.”

  Hackbutt nodded. “Okay.” He was still high on the success of the day; he looked wonderful in the used dinner jacket that Piat had bought for him in London. Admiring himself in the mirror, he said, “I’m ready.”

  Piat walked them down the corridor and then across the lodge’s atrium toward the restaurant. Hackbutt paused in front of another mirror and tweaked his black bow tie. “What do I talk about?” he whispered.

  “Birds,” Piat said with a little too much force.

  Irene hissed.

  The restaurant had vanilla walls and heavy teak tables the color of cinnamon, scraps of African tribal décor and white linen, and an unparalleled view of the valley and the parkland beyond. A red sunset tinted the room a rich salmon.

  The prince was waiting at a corner table. A young Saudi man in a business suit stood at the corner of the broad windows, watching the patio outside, while another stood at the bar without a drink in front of him. His falconer stood behind the prince’s chair.

  The prince rose to his feet

  One shot, Piat thought, again. It’s this or it’s over. He said, “Show time,” and they walked in.

  17

  Piat walked into the bar of Stuttgart’s Le Meridien exactly on time, at least according to the signal he had sent. The walls were painted a deep red brown, like bloodstains, and all the furniture was black. It was a disconcerting room.

  And Clyde Partlow wasn’t in it. Piat wandered through the empty bar, presided over by a stunning blond, and ordered a beer. Still no Partlow. Piat finished his beer and ordered a second one. The window to meet Partlow closed on his third gulp, and he began to consider the fallback meeting a day later in a different location. He didn’t think he had a day to waste. In fact, despite the quality of the bar and the woman behind it, Piat couldn’t help running through all the things that might happen with Hackbutt—or Irene—while he cooled his heels in Germany.

  Partlow came in midway through the third beer. He was twenty minutes late—millennia in espionage terms, an unsafe margin. Piat himself should have been long gone, except that he didn’t have anywhere to go.

  Partlow sat at the other end of the bar, ordered a beer, asked the bartender in accurate German if he could smoke. She shook her head. He drank his beer while reading a paper and walked out, leaving his black pack of Canadian cigarettes on the bar.

  Piat ordered chips, and while the bartender was distracted, lifted the cigarettes. Fifteen minutes later, he followed the directions on the inside flap of the packet to Partlow’s room. The level of tradecraft worried him—Partlow was seldom so careful about such stuff, and the extra effort suggested that something was very wrong indeed, especially in Germany.

  The door was open with the bar lock folded against the jam. Piat pushed in silently. Partlow was sitting facing the door, looking as well groomed and well-to-do as ever. He rose when he saw Piat and extended a hand. “I gather congratulations are in order?” he said as soon as Piat had the door shut.

  “Eight out of ten. What’s with all the spy shit?”

  “Additional precautions may be called for.” Partlow sat, waved Piat into a facing chair at a table piled high with food.

  Piat poured coffee from a flask and took a fat-laden croissant sandwich from the pile. “Better than the food at that place in Italy.”

  “My choice of venue in Italy was a mistake. The food was the least of it.”

  Piat, his mouth full, shrugged and chewed.

  Partlow sat back. When Piat took another bite, Partlow started to drum his fingers on the table.

  “You in a hurry?” Piat asked.

  “I’m more than a little eager to hear what ‘eight out of ten’ means,” Partlow replied.

  Piat nodded and took another bite, savoring the reaction he was going to get, setting up his arguments in his head. He popped a mineral water with his thumb, drank half, and used a napkin on some crumbs. The he smiled.

  “I was hungry. Okay, here it is. The target is not recruitable. We contacted him, he bit, we got a second meeting on the spot, made social contact, all that jazz. He didn’t like us, didn’t like what we had to say or how we said it. Despite that, using the bird I told you about, we arranged a follow-on. He’s off
ered the falconer a million dollars, cash and carry, for the bird.”

  Partlow, whose face had slumped at the first news, brightened. “That’s great, Jerry. Well done.”

  “The falconer was incredible, if I do say so myself. I’d like to take all the credit, but a lot of the stuff he did himself. It’s in my contact report.”

  Partlow stiffened. “Your what?”

  Piat tossed a cheap 56K memory stick on the table. “Contact report. You know, the kind of thing case officers file. I know—I’m just an agent. But you needed more than just a debrief. I wrote the report. It runs forty pages and it’ll give you a blow by blow of the meetings.”

  Partlow picked up the memory stick. “Bad security.”

  Piat shrugged. “You’re welcome. I just saved you five hours of work. Seriously, Clyde, this is complicated shit, and I wanted it in writing.”

  Partlow nodded. “Try not to do it again. What if you’d been picked up in German customs?”

  “Well, first they’d have had to find it, and then they’d have had to open it without my crypto-key, and then they’d have had to gather what it all means. Give me a break, Clyde, it’s done.” Piat picked up a second sandwich, this one with a lot of Brie. “Do you want to hear this, or not?”

  Partlow sighed. “Go on. Why is he not recruitable?”

  “He doesn’t like the West, Clyde. I could tell you all kinds of pop-psych crap, but let’s just take that as read, okay? He shows all the signs of a serious convert. I kept expecting him to tell me that America was the far enemy, or something. He’s a gunner, and he’s into some heavy Islamic stuff, and that’s that.”

  “Fundamentalist? Wahhabi?”

  “I can’t put a tag on it, and the leopard doesn’t change his spots overnight—he went hunting on Friday, ate dinner with us, showed no signs of fasting I could see. But he’s in it—in the political shit. I’d swear to it.”