The Falconer's Tale

by Gordon Kent

  Partlow shook his head. “That’s why we want him, Jerry. Don’t be simple.”

  “I’m not simple. I just know what can and cannot be done. This guy cannot be done. He didn’t like Hackbutt, he didn’t like the girl, he doesn’t drink, he hated going to school in the US, and he doesn’t have any easy vices or handles.”

  “Gay?”

  “What’s gay? What’s gay in Saudi?”

  “Point taken.”

  “The biggest problem with our approach is that our fundamental information was flawed. He’s into birds—but they’re not his life. In fact, our falconer didn’t think much of him.”

  “Oh, Jesus. How bad was that?”

  “Not bad at all. I’m telling you, the falconer was great. He went out with the prince the morning after we had dinner—a really bad evening—and they flew birds together, and he was great. No, I’m saying a different thing. I don’t have any evidence for this, but if I had to guess, I’d say the target was seriously into falconry until his conversion opened a wider world for predatory power. He’s not a nice guy.”

  “Terrorists so seldom are.” Partlow offered a thin smile.

  “Hmm. Terrorist? Whatever. He’s a tough target, and I don’t think he’s worth an approach—which, if I read you and this op right, means no go. Because if he listens politely and burns us to the king, careers end. Right?”

  Partlow turned his head away, avoiding eye contact. “Something like that. Jerry, I’m sure you’re bang on the money, but I fail to see how this adds up to eight out of ten. I confess that you’ve done your part—admirably—but it appears to me—”

  “Not there yet, Clyde. Stick around for the good part. He has a servant—more like a slave. His personal gofer. Also his falconer. Sudanese. If I had to guess, I’d say a south erner, either a convert to Islam or a forced convert.”

  Now Partlow leaned forward.

  “I thought that would interest you. The sale of the bird—if it goes through, if you care—gives us opportunity to contact the servant. The falconer—that’s our guy—made excellent personal contact with this guy. It was really our guy and this guy who flew the birds; the prince just stands around and watches with a sneer on his face. In my report, I call the Sudanese ‘Bob.’ Bob’s young, he doesn’t seem to love his master, and his master doesn’t seem to see any of the resentment. ‘Bob’ went to Monaco and to Mombasa—I think he travels everywhere with the target. And, Clyde—I think he’d take the hook as soon as it was offered. Money and a US passport for some stated time in place and a retrieval.”

  Partlow nodded. “Will he have access, though?”

  Piat crossed his arms. “I don’t know. He stands behind his master’s chair at meetings. What do you think?”

  Partlow smiled. “I think you may have just pulled a pearl out of a cesspool.”

  “Me, too. I look forward to the bonus. Listen, Clyde. This isn’t in my report. It’s just between us.”

  Partlow crossed his legs. “Go ahead.”

  “The prince was never recruitable, Clyde. No way. In fact, without luck and more luck and some brilliant improvisation by me and my hand-built African network, we’d never even have got a shot at this guy. He’s big league, he doesn’t like Westerners or the West, he has his own contacts—he’s beyond hard, Clyde. He’s fucking impossible.” He held Partlow’s eyes. “Who told you this could be done?”

  Partlow’s look was bland and unreadable. “Need to know, Jerry.”

  “Sure—whatever. Keep it to yourself. But I only see two possible scenarios, Clyde. Let me lay them out for you. One—you’re so fucking desperate to get a counterterrorism op that you sent me, because I’m totally expendable, to contact an impossible target in the vague hope that somehow I’d make it fly. That’d be annoying and flattering at the same time, but it’s bullshit, because you couldn’t take the blowback if I fucked it away, and because you were going to have Dave run it—and Dave would’ve died the real death just now in Mombasa. Right?”

  Partlow’s face was as readable as a gravestone.

  “Two—somebody else turned you on to this op and you really had no clue what you were up against. In which case, something stinks,’ cause I think we—or is it you—were set up to fail.”

  Partlow poured himself a plastic cup full of mineral water. “Both fascinating scenarios. Why didn’t we ever send you to the Ranch as an instructor?”

  Piat rolled his eyes. “Because I’d have been drunk and disorderly every night in the bar, and I’d have tried to make all the chicks. Oh, wait—that’s what all the other instructors do, too.”

  Partlow glanced at his watch. “I assume you have a plan to carry on?”

  Piat waved at the memory stick. “In my report. We shift focus to ‘Bob.’ We sell the target the bird. We use the negotiations and the sale to make contacts with ‘Bob.’ We pull the trigger and see what we get. Our falconer can probably work up an extended relationship with ‘Bob,’ if only by email—and we use that for comms if we land him. Worst case, ‘Bob’ burns us to his master—and he’s a no-status, third-country national, and nobody gives a rat’s ass. The ambassador in Saudi mumbles an apology while he’s handing over parts for their F-15s.”

  “You realize that now I have to go back and sell a new target and a new budget.” Partlow rubbed his chin. “But I like it. It can be done.”

  Piat had done it. Partlow was going to buy the operation—now Piat’s operation. He said, “I need to arrange to move the bird—that’s all very, very illegal and you can fix it with a phone call.”

  Partlow looked pained. “More than one phone call.”

  “Sure, whatever. Make a dozen. I need the bird moved to Bahrain. You know what that means—I need legal-looking paper to show to Hackbutt, and we’ll need it to move the bird—there’s got to be some sort of export license, a waiver of shit like the CITES treaty, permission of the Royal Ornithological Society—Christ knows what all. You’re going to take care of all that, right, Clyde?”

  Partlow nodded.

  “Okay, I need to set up another meeting with the prince. For the sale. Once it goes down, we tell ‘Bob’ to call if he needs help—if the bird gets sick, for instance.”

  “And we just wait?”

  “If I do it right, he’ll call. He wants us—he just doesn’t know we exist yet. I mean it, Clyde. Some guys are born to be agents. ‘Bob’ is one.” He paused, not wanting to oversell, but needing to make sure that Partlow understood. “I think he hates the prince, Clyde. I think he’d love to see him take a fall.”

  And Partlow grinned.

  Half a bottle of scotch later, Partlow asked, “How much difficulty will the Brits make about the bird?”

  “Lots.” Piat shrugged again. “Hey, I can’t sugar-coat it. The bird is protected, there’s about four hundred breeding pairs out there, and she’s a magnificent specimen. So give the Brits a share of the take. What the hell, they must be in on it, anyway, if it’s all terrorism stuff.” He grinned. “You didn’t run an operation on British soil without asking their permission, did you?”

  Partlow said, “I think you are in danger of telling me how to do my job.”

  Piat thought of all the usual jibes. Somebody has to do it came to mind. But he passed. Again. Instead he said, “I want to do the recruitment on Bob. Myself.”

  Partlow raised his eyebrows. “How much will that cost me?”

  Piat grinned. “Lots. But nothing compared to somebody else fucking it away.”

  Partlow almost grinned back. “I’ll take it under advisement. It may be time to take you off this, Jerry. I’m not made of money.” Partlow straightened his tie. “I’m of a mind to let you do the recruitment, nonetheless,” he said. “But I make no promises. As I said, it may be time to retire you.”

  “Hey, I just got you a fucking miracle.”

  “Eight out of ten, Jerry.”

  Jerry threw his head back like a disgusted teenager. “When will I find out if I can do the recruitment?”


  Partlow scribbled a number. “Call. It’ll take a while.”

  “It can’t take very long. We’ve got to move the sale of the bird along or he’ll lose interest. I’m going to set up that meeting for the soonest date I can get. If you dick around, it’ll be too late and you’ll lose ‘Bob.’ And me.”

  “We certainly wouldn’t want that to happen, Jerry.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Craik’s time with his family was too short, he knew—he should be spending hours with them, not minutes—but he squeezed in what he could. Coming home at nine, he saw each of his children, then clumped downstairs to eat something and was met by Rose at the bottom of the steps.

  “I was just going to call you.” She kissed him. “There’s store-bought meat loaf and frozen green beans. Without a microwave, we’d starve.”

  “I was going to get a sandwich.”

  “God doesn’t want you to eat a sandwich.” She put an arm around his neck. “You look so tired.”

  “God knows why; all I do is sit on my ass all day.” He debated telling her about the meeting with General Raddick and decided it was the wrong time. They put their arms around each other’s waist, steering themselves into the kitchen. It was a big room, tiled halfway up with white ceramic in the twenties, the suggestion that it might be an operating room mitigated by antique copper pans and baskets hanging from the ceiling. They had meant the kitchen to be the center of their family, and they had succeeded: the room was warm and profoundly, usually untidily, informal.

  “This is the best house we’ve ever lived in,” he said. He sank down on a stool by the island, where she had set two places, two glasses of dark wine. “You haven’t eaten yet?”

  “Sure, but I thought I’d be friendly. I’ll suck on a piece of bread or something.” She put a heaped plate in front of him. “I’ve got a confession to make.” She was standing close to him, wearing blue jeans and a putty-colored sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up. She was forty-two, and he thought she was gorgeous.

  “How’d you like to have sex with a sailor?” he said.

  “I’m shocked, shocked at the very idea! And both of us captains.” She leaned on him. “Eat first, and no nuzzling until I confess.” She removed the hands that had slipped under the sweatshirt.

  “Okay, confess.”

  “Eat.”

  “Confess.”

  “I forgot to tell you that you had a phone call.”

  “Oh, Christ, not the unit!”

  “Some woman. She wouldn’t say who she was. Somebody you got on the side?”

  “Southern accent?” He was thinking of Mrs Stillman.

  “God, no, more like Syracuse.” Rose was from Utica, New York; Syracuse was to her the poor relation. She made her voice lugubriously heavy. “‘Sorta like dey talk in de old prison flicks.’”

  “That’s Chicago.”

  “No, she had the Upstate nose. Very nasal. Anyway, she’s going to call back. I apologize. I should have told you when you came in.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t—one less thing to think about.” He was shoveling in the food. It was pretty much like what he got at the DIA cafeteria. “If it’s important, she’ll call back. Otherwise, what the hell.”

  “She sounded nervous.”

  “I have that effect on women. They go all weak.”

  She was sitting opposite him now. She crossed her eyes and tipped her head. She said, “I’m going to drink this wine and then I’m going to be squiffed and I’m going to bed. Not alone.”

  She had ice cream and frozen strawberries for dessert, and she was just putting them together when the telephone rang and they both shouted, “I’ll get it!” and Alan got to it first. It was a wall telephone right in the kitchen, left there by some earlier owner from the days when telephones came with the house. Its location allowed them to communicate—looks, grimaces, hands—while he talked.

  “Alan Craik.”

  “Captain Craik?” Rose had been bang on. The voice was both nasal and heavy, not at all Chicago but quite possibly Syracuse.

  “Speaking.”

  Pause. Then, “You don’t know me.” Pause. “I called earlier.”

  “I’m sorry; I was working.”

  “This isn’t—I’m not a telephone salesperson or anything.”

  Pause. Alan yawned. He made a face at Rose, who was eating his ice cream and strawberries.

  “I need to talk to somebody.” He didn’t know what to make of that. Some wacko? Why him? “I guess you need to tell me who you are and what this is about.”

  “No, no, I can’t do that. Not over the phone. That’s why I called you at home. I figured—” She didn’t say what she figured. Rose had certainly been right about the nervousness, too—her words came in bursts, jagged, her voice sinking sometimes almost to inaudibility. “This is very sensitive.”

  “Well, mmm, unless I know something about you—”

  “I’m an Air Force officer, okay? This is straight, Captain, nothing funny about it. This is serious. Would you meet me someplace so we can talk?”

  Rose was halfway through his ice cream. He was thinking of their being in bed. It had better be soon, he was thinking; he was really tired. “You’ll have to tell me what you want to talk about.”

  Pause. Then: “Perpetual Justice.”

  His fatigue was pushed back by a jolt of adrenaline. He frowned. “What do you know about that?”

  “A lot. But we have to be careful. Please. All I want to do is talk. I’ve got to talk to somebody!”

  She wanted him to meet her right then, but he said he couldn’t, and he said it in a tone that made it clear he wouldn’t. She wanted to meet him in a parking garage at White Flint Mall, an idea that told him that she’d seen too many spy movies but wasn’t in operational intel herself. He suggested lunch the next day at a fast-food joint near Bolling, but she said that was too far for her, and she named one in Bethesda. He named a Chinese restaurant in a ratty shopping center farther around the Beltway toward his office, guessing that she was in the Maryland part of the DC sprawl and the Chinese place would be halfway between them. She said reluctantly that she’d meet him there tomorrow at noon and hung up.

  When he had settled the phone into its cradle, he shook his head at Rose. “I’ve made a lunch date with a strange woman.” He went over and put his arms around her. “I’m nuts.”

  “I ate your ice cream.”

  “Fuck the ice cream.”

  “That would be so messy. And cold.”

  “You’re warmer.”

  “And not messy. Come on.”

  18

  Alan got to the Chinese restaurant where he was supposed to meet the woman almost fifteen minutes late. He was thinking that she should be grateful he had got there at all; at the same time, he knew that if she was really an Air Force officer, she was busy, too, and she might have given up and left. Sheer nervousness might have made her do that anyway.

  He looked around. The place was only a quarter full—a bad sign at the busiest time of the day. It wasn’t much: tatty paper lanterns and the little paper parasols that went into drinks that came in things like coconut shells, Formica tables, tubular-steel chairs from the sixties. Still, the place had been there for years; he’d had it filed away as a good spot for a semi-clandestine meeting. He thought of Abe Peretz.

  A broad-faced Oriental woman was smiling and half-bowing at him and saying something that suggested that she wouldn’t bother to learn English, no matter how long she stayed in the restaurant trade. He had already spotted a woman sitting alone, and, when the woman ducked her head away as their eyes threatened to meet, decided she was the one. Craik grinned at the Chinese restaurateur and headed for the lone woman’s table.

  She was in civilian clothes, an unremarkable dark dress that was a nod toward dressing for success but didn’t put much faith in the idea. She had swagged a blue and beige scarf around her neck and one shoulder; she had brown hair, shiny, probably washed that morning; small, neat hands with
chewed nails and only clear polish; an expression of fear when she looked up at him.

  Alan sat down. He had his Navy ID card ready in a pocket, and he put it down on the table as if he were trumping her hand. “Alan Craik,” he said.

  She licked her lips. She had food in front of her but hadn’t touched it. She put her head out a little so she could look at the card. “Thank you.”

  “Now I’d like you to return the favor.”

  “Oh, no—” Her hair swung back and forth as she shook her head.

  “I need to know who you are. You know how it goes—my security officer gets to know who I talk to. Sorry.”

  “I’m not going to report this to my security officer.” The voice was definitely nasal, the t’s and d’s hard and punchy.

  “Bad move.”

  “I don’t want people to know.”

  “Ma’am, the security officer is the best friend you’ve got if you’re doing something on the sly. At least if you report it, you’ve got it on the record if it goes bad later.” The idea of something’s going bad shook her; her eyes went to her shoulder bag, which was standing on the table next to her. She was ready to bolt. “We’ve both come all this way,” he said. He made his voice sound pleading. “Please. I have to know who you are.”

  She chewed on her lower lip, ruining what was left of the pale lipstick there, and then she went into the shoulder bag and burrowed until she came out with a wallet, from which she extracted an ID card. Craik retrieved his own ID and looked at hers. Sarah Berghausen, captain, US Air Force. The photo matched.

  He gave it back. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  She snatched the ID and forced it back into the wallet. The Chinese woman came up then—she had been lurking back by the kitchen door, perhaps thinking she was watching a marital spat—and put down a menu and a pot of tea, and he glanced at the menu so fast that he was able to say “Number sixteen” before she had moved away again. When she was gone, he said, “Okay, what can I do for you?”