The Falconer's Tale

by Gordon Kent

  The female figure had no arms. Springing almost from each side of the BX cable was a yellow rubber glove of the kind women used in washing up. He touched one and found it wasn’t rubber but fiberglass. Even he could see that the work was meticulously done.

  “The Body Electric,” he said.

  “What? Oh, God, I gave that title up ages ago.”

  “What does it mean?” He was pointing at the rendering.

  “I’m not a conceptual artist, Jack.”

  “What’s it called, then?”

  She looked at the central figure. “Fucked if I know. The gallery wants a title, though. I’ll have to think of something.” She made a gesture toward the door. “Okay, you’ve seen it, now I have to go to work. You guys, too, I’d think.”

  Hackbutt walked to the door and stood there. He looked back at her, then at Piat, jiggling something in his pocket. Piat said, “I thought it was finished.”

  “It has to get from here to France by Saturday. That means I have to pack up every bit of it, including the rough drawings and the rendering. If you think I’d trust the packing to somebody else, you’re out of your mind.”

  A bell went off when she said “Saturday.” He murmured, his tone as light as he could manage, “We’ve got to set up another meeting with the prince by then.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll be in France.”

  So he knew what she and Hackbutt had been squabbling about. He was angry but hid the anger. “Irene, if you’d told me—”

  “I’ve told you for the last two weeks that the gallery had moved the date up to the twentieth! But you don’t listen!”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But nothing. I have to be there! I’ve got three flat-screen TVs that have to be ceiling-mounted. Do you think I trust anybody else to do that right? I haven’t even bought the materials for the standards to hold the photos yet—for Christ’s sake, I’m going to have to make them on-site! I’ve got a month of work to do in one week after I get there, and I don’t give a fuck about another meeting with your fucking prince!” Hackbutt was looking miserable. Piat was standing his ground. She moved a step toward him, dropped her voice. “I hated that sonofabitch. And he hated me! So I drank too much wine—big deal! What was I supposed to do, put on a burka and ask him to stone me to death? Fuck him. And fuck you and your operation!”

  “Well, Irene—we had a contract—”

  “Sue me.”

  Hackbutt looked as if he was going to cry. Piat realized that he was making a probably bad decision because he didn’t want to lose her. He said, “I’ll work it out.” He managed a smile.

  Outdoors in the sunlit cold with Hackbutt, he said, “What’re the flat-screen TVs for?”

  “Oh, they go overhead. To show the video of the dead sheep being boiled down. It plays on a loop the whole time the show is open.”

  * * *

  He went back to the farm when he hoped Hackbutt would be busy with the birds. He touched the dog’s nose, then crossed to the porch. Distantly, Irene’s “music” seemed to be playing—or was it the wind in the trees along the stream? He turned his head, saw the trees were indeed blowing, and behind him the door opened.

  Irene had a kerchief on her head; a rivulet of sweat ran down along her nose, another down her throat into the unbuttoned V of her shirt, hugely provocative but not intentionally so, he knew: she had been packing the installation. She would be off soon.

  She looked at him, glanced over at the dog still lying in the grass, back at Piat. “Eddie isn’t here.” She apologized to him for the day before, but she didn’t say she was going to take part in the third meeting. She simply said that she was sorry she’d got angry but her mind was made up.

  He followed the established line. “I’ll miss your help with Edgar.”

  She smiled. It wasn’t phoney. The smile said, We could still be on. She said, “You’re still getting my help with Eddie. I told him he should sell Bella to the prince. We had kind of a fight about it, in fact.” She grinned. “I’m glad the prince didn’t want me. I think Eddie’d let me go before he’d give up that bird.” She held his eyes. “Let’s hope so, anyway.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s on the hillside with Bella,” Irene said. “Saying goodbye. Be gentle, Jack. I hate the fucking bird and I still feel for him.”

  Piat nodded, but he stood in front of the door with his hands in his pockets. For the first time in a month, he wanted to smoke. Instead, he stepped into the half-open door and kissed her.

  “I’d like a way to meet when this is over,” he said.

  “Do you mean my life with Edgar, or your spy game?” She slipped out of his arms.

  “Both,” Piat said

  She looked at the dog. She looked at Piat. More sweat trickled down along her nose, and she wiped it away with a knuckle, the gesture like brushing away a tear. Behind her, the sound of her “music,” now clearly not the wind, groaned, menacing and orgasmic. “You better go.” Her voice trembled.

  “Irene.”

  “Don’t.” She looked furious, but what she said was, “Not now.” He wondered if she meant “Not in Eddie’s house” or “Not until my installation is complete.” He wondered if she knew herself.

  “Irene!” He hadn’t meant to speak again, but there it was.

  “Not now!” She swallowed hard. “Eddie’d know, and I won’t do that to him!” She shook her head, as if denying the validity of what she’d just said, her grip tightening on the edge of the door. “You think he’s stupid; you think he doesn’t get things. You’re wrong! You think you know all this crap they taught you about body language and dilated eyes and shit, but you don’t know anything about people!” Her voice dropped. “Eddie’s intuitive. He isn’t manipulative, like you; he doesn’t look people over for signs and symptoms and run them through a computer. But he knows things! He doesn’t always know them until all of a sudden they jump out of him, but he knows! His feelings are very deep—not like you, you don’t have feelings; maybe I don’t either—and it takes him a while to sort them out, but he gets them and he gets them right. Do you know he worries about your drinking? Do you know he thinks you’ve got something else going on on the island? That’s how he thinks! So don’t kid yourself he wouldn’t know if you and I crawled into bed while he isn’t here.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting it.” His voice was hard. She had frightened him with what she’d said about Hackbutt’s thinking he had something else going on; he didn’t want her to see it. And something between them—had it ever been more than flirtation?—had just died.

  She withdrew deeper into the protection of the door. “Yes, you were.” She said it as if she were pronouncing sentence. “But not here. Not now. When this is over. When your operation is over.”

  The door closed. Piat took a step backward off the stone porch. Distantly, her music moaned. He turned to the dog, snapped his fingers, and it bounded to him. “Never give your heart to a woman,” Piat said.

  Then he went up the hill.

  Lying in bed, Alan Craik wanted sleep but couldn’t reach it. He was turning over the meeting with Sarah Berghausen, his following of her. He had told Rose about it while they ate. Now, lying beside him, she was quiet, and he listened for her breathing and, not hearing it, said softly, “You awake?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Thinking?”

  “About you.”

  They turned toward each other; he put a hand on her bare shoulder. “What about me?”

  “What a good guy you are. And what a foolish one.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Charging at windmills.” She moved closer. “But don’t try to change. It’s who you are.”

  He said, “I’m thinking about the stuff Abe Peretz got for me. It’s great if it’s solid, but—Abe’s seeing far-right conspiracies everywhere. He’s a good friend, but he’s just got crazy on the subject.”

  “Abe isn’t crazy. He’s hurting. What are you doing about his problem? About Leah?”
/>   “What can I do about Leah?” Craik had his hands on the muscles in her neck.

  “Call your buddy in Tel Aviv.” Craik had met the current head of Mossad during a diplomatic incident. They had had some things in common. Craik had all but forgotten. He said, “Okay. I didn’t think about it.”

  “Too busy tilting at windmills.”

  He massaged her shoulder and neck, an unconscious action. “I’m trying to figure out what to do next.” He could feel her breath on his nose and mouth; it was warm, sweet with toothpaste. He told her about the meeting with Raddick. “General Raddick warned me. He meant that if I make a stink, there’ll be no promotion.”

  “That bother you?”

  “It ought to bother you. If I get dropped to the bottom of the list, so will you. You know how it goes.”

  Rose had always been ambitious. Her goal for years had been to be an astronaut; when that had collapsed, she had tried to throw herself into staff and command work. Some of her fire may have cooled, however. Once, after dropping out of the NASA program, she had said, “You learn a lot from failure,” and when he had said she hadn’t failed, she’d only shaken her head. Now he said, “What do you think I should do?”

  She sighed and stretched and moved over to make contact with him down the length of their bodies. “Two retired captains. We could raise our kids like normal people. Live in the same house for the rest of our lives. Have a dog. Three dogs.”

  Rose had said she’d never have another dog after a black Lab named Bloofer had died. But time and what she called failure might have changed her mind. “Write our memoirs,” he said.

  “Start a business.”

  “Not security.”

  “A country store. Or a gas station. In the middle of some desert, where nobody ever came.”

  “Tough on income.”

  “Nah. We could retire to Utica tomorrow and be the richest couple on any street in the city. And low on taxes.”

  He felt her breathing smooth out. The small, warm breeze was on his throat. He thought she was asleep, and then she murmured. “I can live with it.” She settled her head on his shoulder and fell asleep.

  19

  It took three sets of phone calls to and from Saudi Arabia to complete arrangements for the transfer of the bird and the payment of the money. Hackbutt handled the calls well enough—he was distant and touchy on the first one, but the prince delegated the rest of the matter to his falconer, and Hackbutt and the African talked longer than circumstances required both times—until, in fact, Piat all but punched his fist in the air. Mohamed was like a ripe fruit ready to be picked.

  He got on to Partlow to do the paperwork and the moving of the big eagle from Mull to Bahrain, the only location the prince would consider.

  Craik was back in the parking garage opposite Sarah Berghausen’s building at seven-thirty the next morning. He had a cup of convenience-store coffee in the cup holder and a bagel he’d taken from his own freezer. Home had been the usual morning frenzy. It was supposed to be his day to take Annie to day care, but he’d traded with Rose for the week after he got back from London. She had been too busy to argue.

  He watched other cars come in for a while, noting the physical types of the people and the old stickers on the rear windshields. He was looking for ex-military. For a while, there were none, and then a man in his forties showed up in a Taurus with a Cherry Point logo on the rear window. Then several women drove in, none military that he could identify, and then three guys in an Explorer with a Bush–Cheney bumper sticker. They had sidewall haircuts and discreet middle-aged spreads, and Craik got out of his car and headed for the exit behind them.

  He was wearing a blue blazer and chinos and a blue button-down with a mostly gray tie. He carried his Navy attaché case, which had no markings but would be as recognizable as a tattoo to other military. This time, he didn’t linger in the lobby but followed the three right into a fast-filling elevator and up to the sixth floor. Other people got off at lower floors. Some people knew each other, the usual workday chatter. The three got off with him on six.

  He followed them at a little distance straight to Elastomer Engineering, saw them go in. He’d noted the door’s coded lock yesterday; now, he wanted somebody careless enough to open it for him. And he knew somebody would. There was a war on terrorism and blah, blah, blah, but many people were generous or craven or both, and if you smiled at them and looked white and middle-class, they’d let you in and never think about it. They’d let in Osama bin Laden if he’d shave his beard and join a car pool.

  She was about thirty and flirtatious. There he was, a pretty good-looking guy, government attaché case, good shoes. She gave him a questioning look that meant, “Coming in?” and he grabbed the edge of the door and held it for her, and they went in together.

  “Thanks.”

  “You new?”

  “I’m meeting Ritter.”

  “Oh, wow. Well—see you around—”

  The offices were mostly empty; it was early. There was no receptionist and no security guard. Where a corridor branched from the entrance vestibule, an unattended desk stood. It would be the night duty officer’s, he thought; nearby would be an office with a cot. Mostly, security began and ended with the coded lock and the phoney corporate name on the door.

  He walked the quiet hallways. The long corridor from the vestibule ended in a T, the two shorter arms running from the back to the front of the building. They were functional, drab; no attempt had been made to carry out the fiction that elastomers or engineering were of any interest here. Craik walked the long hall, then the short ones, poking his head into open doors and smiling when he found somebody looking at him. By the time he headed back he could smell coffee, and more people were filtering in. He hung his DIA badge on his breast pocket but didn’t put much faith in it—some of the people coming in had badges, and they didn’t look much like his own.

  “I’m looking for Herman Ritter.”

  He’d picked out another over-pretty woman. A little too made up, a little too dressed, like one of the women from Friends.

  “Oh, hi!” Smile. Toss of the head. “The big office down the hall, hang a right, third door on the left.” She opened and narrowed her eyes like a flashing light. “Corner office!”

  He said that was great and tried to imply that she’d lighted up his day. As he was walking away, she called, “He’s already in there! He comes in at six!”

  I’ll just bet he does. He walked the corridor, turned right, counted doors. Bingo. The door was unlocked. Inside was a small space with a desk that probably belonged to an assistant; this bunch clearly didn’t go for receptionists. The room had no windows. In the back wall was another door—Ritter’s office, he thought. Probably L-shaped, with a private bathroom jutting in this direction and denying the little outer office a window.

  He opened the inner door.

  A big, rather strikingly good-looking man in his late forties was sitting at a large desk with his crossed legs up. He had a telephone at his ear. He looked up at Alan and frowned and then ordered him out with a gesture—the sort of gesture that comes from never having people disobey. Here was a man who had been imposing his will on the rest of the world since infancy.

  Alan went in and closed the door behind him and sat down.

  It was, indeed, a corner office, and there was, indeed, a door back there that would put the bathroom about where he’d thought. Ritter hadn’t hired a decorator to do the place, so it didn’t look as if it belonged in Architectural Digest; on the other hand, it looked a lot classier than a government-issue DIA office. The wall behind the desk was hung with trophies—Ritter with the vice-president, Ritter with the new secretary of state, four diplomas, five plaques displaying awards for illegible accomplishments, a Yale pennant that you were probably supposed to know was from some period well before Ritter’s youth, and various framed things that couldn’t be puzzled out at a glance.

  “Get the hell out of my office.” Ritter had covere
d the telephone to say that.

  “I’m Captain Craik, DIA Collections.”

  “Get-out-of-my-office!”

  “We need to talk. When you’re off the phone.”

  Ritter thrust his lower jaw forward. Craik suspected that Ritter liked confrontation, wasn’t really upset yet. Perhaps was even looking forward to a good shouting session to get the day going. He growled into the phone, “Get back to you,” and reached way over to put it down where it belonged, not taking his eyes from Alan. “Harry!” he called. “Goddamit, Harry!” He had a good, loud voice. But Harry, who was probably the assistant, wasn’t there yet. “I’m going to throw your ass out of here,” he said to Alan.

  “Perpetual Justice.” He gave Ritter a full second to react, but the man didn’t. Ritter seemed utterly confident but bad-tempered. Alan went on: “Eleven task numbers backdated to cover operations that in fact weren’t DIA’s.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Oh, you know who I am, Ritter. Come on! Backdating task numbers is strictly illegal and can be—”

  “Get a life! What the fuck are you talking about?” The words brought his feet off the desk and his torso upright, head forward. He really was a good-looking man—dark hair with some gray; tall, lean body; a good tan; clothes several notches above whatever GS rating his job had. “Just get the fuck out, will you?”

  “Backdating task numbers is illegal and can be prosecuted. It’s a security violation. However, it tends to include money crimes, as well, because task numbers drive both appropriations and expenditures. Want to tell me about it?”

  Ritter stood. Framed by his trophy wall, his old Yale pennant above his head like the banner in a Renaissance engraving, he looked great. Alan thought of his own meager office and his chinos and wished he could look half as good. A quarter as good. Ritter said, almost chattily, “I don’t have time to waste on trivia. We do important work here. Go do whatever it is you do. I don’t want to have to have you thrown out.”

  “Why not?”