by Gordon Kent
“Look—” Ritter pointed a finger. “You’re going to be in trouble. Career trouble. As far as you’re concerned, this office doesn’t exist, and if you want to talk about security violations, you’re committing one by even being here!” He didn’t ask how Craik had found the place or how he knew what Perpetual Justice was. He was too good and too confident for that. He couldn’t be bothered with such questions (although he might later direct somebody else to pursue them).
“The door was open. You people have lousy security. And a lousy legend. If you were at all careful, you’d at least have your cover company in the phone book.” Craik smiled. “And I’m bulletproof, so save your threats.”
Ritter came around the desk and leaned back against it, arms folded. He seemed almost interested. He said, “Do you know who I am?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you know how important what I do is?”
“I know that, however important you think it is, you don’t know how to do it right.” Craik smiled again. He wasn’t aware of it, but he was grinning. Confrontation had that effect on him. “And despite your assurance, you don’t do a very good job.”
Ritter seemed almost amused. He leaned forward, still clasping himself in his arms. “Do you know whom I was just on the phone with?”
“The guys at Force for Freedom?”
For the first time, Ritter seemed threatened. He snapped erect. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“You’ll do better to talk to me now than later. When the GAO goons show up.”
“I said get the fuck out of here!” The voice was rising now. The time for fun, the voice said, was over; the tantrum was on its way. Craik could see the Ritter whom Sarah Berghausen feared.
“No-o-o-o,” Craik answered. He drawled the no. He realized at a remove that he was antagonizing the man, because he’d found his enemy. “Not yet. You haven’t heard what I want.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you want!” Ritter was pumping himself up to full blast. Viewed objectively, it was a significant performance, practiced and yet fresh, deliberate and yet, to many people, frightening. Although controlled, it looked as if he was out of control. The tantrum must have started in infancy when the burgeoning will was frustrated, had evolved into a weapon, perhaps the major one, in the will’s arsenal. Ritter was leaning forward now, then moving two steps closer, now looming over the seated Craik but not touching him, like an attack dog being held on a leash. “You’re a nothing! You’re a fucking nobody! You’re not getting anything here and I don’t give a shit what you want! You’re done, finished; you’re toast! Get out! Get the fuck out!” Screaming now at what was probably the top of his voice—or had he saved a little?
Alan didn’t move. He wasn’t physically intimidated, figuring that Ritter almost certainly didn’t touch people when he was in this state or he’d have a slew of lawsuits and he wouldn’t be in this job. And if Ritter really did get physical, Alan figured he could take care of himself, although that was never certain. Ritter seemed very fit, although fitness and street-fighting weren’t necessarily connected, and street-fighting was what Alan would go to directly if a hand was put on him. “I’d like to see your documentation of the eleven backdated operations, to start with,” he said. “Or shall I just get the GAO?”
Ritter’s face was red. A vein thickened in his temples. He was looming closer, all mouth up close. Shouting, “What did I say? What the fuck did I say? Are you too stupid, you jerk, you nothing, you goddam third-rate military hack? There’s a million of you, captains, Jesus Christ, captains come out my ass when I shit! Are you too stupid to understand what I say? You’re a disgrace; you’re a military moron; you’re—” Spittle flecked Alan’s blazer in little white spots. He didn’t move.
“Get ou-u-u-t!” Ritter did have more voice, now pouring out in an almost operatic scream. Then he lunged back at the desk and hammered the telephone and screamed into it, “Get somebody to my office, now! Now!” He turned to face Alan, his face bloated with his now genuine rage.
“And I’d like to go over with you and your Mister Lee the legal basis for the activities in the tasks that had superseded numbers,” Craik continued. Sometimes, bureaucracy was the weapon.
It seemed to wound Ritter and he started to holler again, now almost an animal scream of deep pain, as if he felt Alan’s words physically, rage now joined by righteous outrage.
Alan’s voice rose to counter it as he went on. “If those activities were illegal in 2001 and were backdated under a different task number, then there are further violations—”
Three men burst into the office. They weren’t going to be amused and they weren’t going to be impressed by anything Alan said or did. One of them—the least threatening—was from building security; the other two were either serving or former military. Alan held up the DIA badge that had been hanging from his pocket. “Craik, Captain, US Navy.” He had to say it three times. It did keep them from jumping on him, but it didn’t keep him from getting hustled out. Ritter followed them, still screaming. Nobody came out of the offices to see what it was about. Maybe they were used to it. Three women in the corridor shrank back against the walls.
Outside the code-locked door, Ritter now inside and seeming to wind down, they checked his ID. They weren’t sympathetic—he’d been in their space without authorization—but they had to admit he was a Navy captain.
“So you were here without authorization, sir, and Mister Ritter says you were abusive, sir, and a report will have to be made, sir. So get out of here and don’t come back, you follow me? Sir?”
He laughed. “I’ll be back,” he said.
It was barely nine when he got to his office. The work was piled up; people wanted to see him; the phone was ringing. He didn’t take off for lunch but used the time to write a report of his encounter with Ritter, then filed one copy and sent another off to the security officer. Late in the day he looked up the number of the Director of Naval Intelligence and dialed it on his telephone. He had worked for the Director when he was younger, and he could call him by his first name. Then he called Mike Dukas on a STU.
The breakfast table in Dervaig was covered in artifacts. There were as many of them as there were pancakes. Piat ate and fondled, ate and read from a book, ate and tried to talk. He was tired, running on nerves, and pretty much unable to form a coherent thought.
“Wow,” he said for the third time.
Dykes turned a chair backwards, put his own tower of pancakes down on the table, and started to eat.
McLean didn’t light his pipe, but he fondled it. “What do you suggest we do, Jack?”
Piat stared at a lapis pendant and a perfectly preserved wooden plate. They were the best items. The plate had a clean break across the surface, but the heavy oak was otherwise untouched by a few millennia of immersion.
“Wow,” he said for the fourth time. He drank some coffee and rubbed at his chin, where two scars reminded him of his accelerated awakening process, prompted by the alert on his pager and the seven codes contained on it. He couldn’t remember shaving—just bandaging the result.
“I think it’s all Bronze Age.” Piat fingered his chin again. He picked up the lapis pendant. “You think there’s more?”
Dykes stopped chewing for a minute. “I’m not an archaeologist. Fuck, man, I’m not even a grave robber. But I read books, and McLean knows a thing or two. We think it’s a trove-like, somebody dumped the family treasures off the patio ’cause the barbarians were at the gates.”
Piat rubbed his eyes. “Okay. So there’s more.”
“What do you suggest we do?” McLean leaned forward.
Piat shrugged. “It’s going to get pretty complicated if we come up with more stuff. I’ve got a guy selling the other stuff. The stuff I bought to sell off this dig. You with me?”
Both of the divers nodded.
“I never expected there to be actual artifacts. Or rather, I hoped there might be some, but I was prepared for the other eventuality.” He
rubbed the lapis pendant again. It was good enough for the Louvre.
“Obviously,” Dykes said.
“I’m worried that too much stuff will make the dig look fake. Trust me—irony and all, if we dump all this into the pot with the other items you found and the stuff I bought to sell, the whole thing will look like a put-up job.”
“Which it was,” Dykes said with a slow smile.
“But now it isn’t,” McLean said. He took a match out of his pocket but just stopped himself from lighting the pipe.
He really wants to smoke. “Go ahead and smoke,” Piat said.
McLean jerked his chin at Dykes. Dykes shook his head. “No way. I mean, no way. I put up with twenty-four years o’ that shit in the Nav. Smoke when I’m done eating.”
McLean looked at Piat and shrugged.
Piat filled the ensuing silence by eating more pancakes. The he scraped his plate and sucked the golden syrup off his fork. “Okay. Fuck it. I’ll get my guy to sell this stuff, too. It’s funny in a way—the stuff you guys found is better than the stuff I seeded. This pendant—it’s a home run.”
McLean set his pipe down. “I want somebody real to be notified. Back door. So the site gets salvaged.” He looked at Dykes.
“He’s been saying that for three days. I say we hold it for a year and then sell it off,” said Dykes. “But I admit, I been paid, and you never said shares. I only say that you never said shares ’cause there wasn’t anything to share. Or so you said.”
Both men were watching him carefully. It was a dangerous kind of watching—the kind of intensity that meant that the wrong answer would have serious repercussions. Piat’s problem was that he didn’t know what the right answer was. Thinking was like walking in a dark fog.
“How long to clean up and get out?” Piat asked.
“A week. Maybe more, because I have to go down south for two days and Dykes can’t do it on his own. And we can’t work in the daylight.” McLean had his pipe in hand again.
“And it is fucking cold,” Dykes put in. “We got to clean up around the stack—the crannog. And that water is cold.” McLean shoveled his last forkful into his mouth and chewed.
Piat rubbed his eyes again. “Okay. I need sleep. Sure, I can find a way to tell somebody in the halls of academe. When the coast is clear. And I’ll give you both shares in the pendant—you found it. And what the fuck, gentlemen—there’s really going to be plenty of money to go around.” Piat looked at the assortment of artifacts—the pendant was much more like a work of art, and he thought briefly of Irene—and thought I probably won’t ever have to work again. The pendant might earn seven figures. Other items, already sold—the two gold beads, a polished stone axe head, and the fakes—had already filled his Greek bank account. He shook his head, unable to get his mind around so much success. He looked up at them. “My own free pass to move this stuff could expire any time now. Yeah. Pull the plug.”
Apparently, it was a good answer. Both men nodded. Dykes swallowed his last bite and nodded. McLean scraped his match on the scarred wooden tabletop and waited while the sulphur burned away before lighting his pipe.
“Of course, you’re going to help carry it all down,” McLean said.
Piat rolled his eyes. “After I make a little trip that’s coming up.” He wanted to keep them there until he was done with Hackbutt and the prince. Talismans? Good luck tokens? Muscle, at any rate. “Hang around for a week or so, okay?”
“It’s your penny.”
The next morning, Hackbutt announced that the weather was perfect to check his eggs.
Piat looked blank, and Hackbutt gave him a big grin. “I’m part of the sea eagle project, Jack. Remember? I have a nest that I watch up on Glen More. It’s a hell of a climb—takes me half the day. Annie’s coming over to feed the birds.”
Piat still had to struggle with all of the differences between the new Digger and the man he had known in Southeast Asia. He glanced at Irene. “Go ahead. I can have a day without spy shit in the studio. Praise the Lord.”
The dog was less forgiving. He wanted to go where Piat went now. Twice, Piat had taken him in the car and then up the long haul to the loch. Ralph had thought it was heaven.
So Piat found himself driving to the great glen of Mull without the dog and with Hackbutt babbling happily about the sea eagle reclamation project. “I’ve had two birds.”
Piat was negotiating a lay-by. He wanted to make a point about how useful such enforced stops could be for locating surveillance, but he didn’t like to interrupt Hackbutt, especially the new Hackbutt.
Piat was enjoying the road—it was early, and he had the glen road all to himself. He was going too fast, and he knew it. Hackbutt was boring him, but listening to Hackbutt was part of the game. Listening, being interested, being involved. “I remember the program, Digger. So what’re we doing today? Looking for another chick?”
Hackbutt shook his head. “No—nothing like that. This time of year, I just keep an eye on the nest. I try and check every month. I feel like I know them.”
“Are these birds Bella’s parents?” Piat asked, glancing by habit down at the river below. Water was high. Good fishing.
Hackbutt grunted assent, eyes on the mountaintops.
As soon as Piat had the parking brake on, Hackbutt was out of the car, a pair of binoculars up to his eyes. Piat took out his heavy walking boots and put them on.
The day was bright and clear, with some high clouds moving fast from the east. The mountains rose into the clear air, the sun sparkling off the water on their rocky slopes. The great glen seemed as vast as the steppes of Russia. From where Piat sat tying his laces, he could see nine miles to the most distant mountain slope.
“I can see them!” said Hackbutt. “They’re on the nest! Jack, I’m going to be able to show you something extraordinary. You’ll be amazed. Come!”
Piat was pushing spare socks into his pack. “Lunch? Water? You have all that?”
Hackbutt plucked his pack out of the trunk. “Of course. Water, thermos of tea. Irene made us a crock of guacamole. Jack, I never knew you to be so slow. Come on.”
The Hackbutt he had known in Asia would never have remembered to pack a lunch, much less to pack for someone else. Piat rolled up a rain jacket, checked that he had a compass and map (old habits die hard) and pulled a sweater on.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Hackbutt thrust an arm into the sky. “Look for a tree—the only tree on the hill. Just below the last big rock outcrop. See it?”
Piat looked and looked. He raised his own binoculars, found the peak, and then located a single tree growing precariously from the crotch of a washed-out chimney just a few hundred meters below the peak. “Jesus, Digger. We’re going all the way up there?”
Hackbutt raised an eyebrow—a gesture Piat had never seen him use before. Just for a second, Hackbutt, in his tweed trousers and vest, looked a little like Clyde Partlow. “I told you it would take us half the day. Are you ready? Can we get started?”
And they were off.
It was hard walking. The solid gravel-based path gave out in fifty meters and was replaced by sheep trails of the kind that Piat had experienced getting to the crannog. The grass was the same coarse stuff he’d seen elsewhere. Generations of sheep had cut the turf down to bedrock in places, so that a misstep could plunge a hiker knee-deep in mire.
There was no one path, and sometimes the two men diverged, choosing different lines to get up the slope. After the first mile, Piat called a halt to pull off his sweater and swallow tea from his thermos. Hackbutt stood by like a pointer waiting for the first bird. The paths continued up and up, steeper and steeper as they climbed, until around midmorning they encountered the first sheer rock face. Hackbutt skirted the boulder field and stayed with the sheep, moving quickly and confidently from hummock to hummock until he found a better line up the slope. Piat took a different route born of years spent rock climbing—he went straight up a fissure, skinning his knee but gaining
ten meters on Hackbutt as he shinnied over the top of the outcrop.
It was a race. Piat hadn’t realized it until that moment, but Hackbutt was off again up the slope, sparing Piat just one glance. He hadn’t imagined Hackbutt would attempt to compete with him—Hackbutt had always been such a nerd that he didn’t do macho at all.
Until today.
Piat had done some rock climbing—enough that he could take a straighter line to the tree, but every face he negotiated squandered energy, and Hackbutt didn’t seem to slow or tire. Somewhere on the top third of the mountain, Piat had to concede that Hackbutt was in better physical shape than he. Piat’s arms were burning; his upper thighs felt as if they were made of lead; and he had to take a Hackbutt route around a rock face because he didn’t think his body could take another rock climb without a rest.
“Jack!” Hackbutt was suddenly above him. “Bear left, Jack! We don’t want to scare them. Follow me!” And he was off again.
Piat hauled himself to his feet, defeat conceded. Hackbutt was still bounding with energy. Piat was at the point of glancing too often at the tree to see if it was any closer. His breath was coming in gasps.
“You’re not tired? Jack? Are you all right?” Hackbutt was close above him now, and whispering.
Piat took two deep breaths. “I’m fine,” he said.
“We have to be quiet from here, Jack. Take it easy—and don’t climb the rocks. They know we’re here—but we don’t want to upset them. I have a hide up here, just on that stream—follow the line—other way. See? I’m going to cast farther left to keep the hide between us and the birds. Follow me. Okay, Jack?”
“Okay,” Piat said.
The hide consisted of a dark green PVC tarp covered in dry bracken with a thick layer of cut grass on the floor for comfort. It sat on a miniature bluff over a deep cut in the rock where one of the mountain’s hundred burns rushed under their feet.
“The sound of the water covers me. I can move around, change position, take pictures—the birds won’t care. Like I said—they know we’re here, but we’re not in their faces.”
