The Falconer's Tale (2 page)

Partlow took a deep breath, sucked in his cheeks, and blew
it out in a little explosion of petulance. Rain came against
the big plate glass windows in rhythmic surges. “You know,
Jerry, whole years pass when I don't see you and I almost
forget how much we dislike each other.”

Piat zipped up his coat. Partlow looked sleek and well
dressed, and Piat felt every pull in his sweater and every tear
in his rain jacket. “I never forget, Clyde.”

Partlow shook his head. “Fine, Jerry. Fine. Point to you—
I overplayed my hand. I'll pay you handsomely to bring in
this agent, and I'll drop the line about ‘wanted felon.' Now
be a good fellow for once and sit down.”

Having scored his victory, Piat had a hard time believing
it was true. The shaking in his hands didn't improve. Much
the opposite. He had to struggle to get his jacket back off—
a pitiful performance that made him feel even less secure
in the face of Partlow's careful grooming and assurance.

“How much?” Piat said, reverting to his time-honored role
as greedy man of action.

“Five thousand dollars. In and out. You can be done in
two days.”

“Ten thousand,” Piat demanded.

Partlow shrugged as if the subject pained him. “If you
must.”

“Okay. Who is it?”

Partlow took out a sheet of paper. “I think you are familiar
with the terms.”

Piat read it—a standard agency document for the recruitment
of agents. Piat had always been on the other side of
the document before—the case officer making the recruitment.
Case officers were carefully trained professional spies.
Agents were their amateur helpers. Mostly riffraff and rejects.
That's me these days
, Piat thought to himself.

Partlow slid over an envelope. “I was sure you'd insist on
getting money in advance.”

Piat cursed under his breath, but he took the envelope
and scrawled his name on the agreement.

“Excellent. Welcome back, Jerry, if only as a lowly agent.
You understand confidentiality, etcetera?”

“You'll be running me yourself, Clyde?” Piat already
disliked being an agent.

“Of course not, Jerry. I run a department. A case officer
will come to deal with you and your needs. He's waiting
outside until you and I are finished.”

“I smell a rat already, Clyde.”

“As you will, Jerry. Your man—Hackbutt.” Clyde made a
show of checking Piat's signature before he handed over the
dossier.

“The nerd? Christ, Clyde, what do you want him for?”

“Nerd?”

“Nerd. A hopelessly antisocial geek, Clyde. Who specializes
to the point of obsession.”

“I don't think you ever used that phrase in a contact report,
Jerry.”

“No, I don't think the agency pays its officers to write
reports explaining what a bunch of fucking basket cases their
agents are, Clyde. Nonetheless, he's a handling nightmare
and a freak. I take it there is sudden movement in Malaysian
oil futures?” Hackbutt had been a small-time informer in
Malaysia. Good enough at what he did—report on the oil
industry—but useless otherwise.

Partlow looked at him from under his heavy gray brows.
He steepled his fingers in front of him. He was clearly trying
to decide what to tell Piat. “He's now into falconry—the birds,
you know.” Partlow started in a patronizing tone. “Falconry
is the use of birds for hunting—”

“Thanks, Clyde, I know what falconry is. Eddie was always
into birds—I smuggled him a couple as part payment for one
of his best reports. But no
way
am I getting from here to
Jakarta and back in two days.”

“Mull.” Partlow said the word as if delivering a sentence
of doom.

“Mull? Where's Mull?” Jerry thought the name could even
be local. When Icelandic names weren't an endless chain of
harsh consonants, they were often quite simple.

“Scotland, Jerry. The Isle of Mull is off the west coast of
Scotland.”

“Scotland? That's as cold as this place. He used to be cold
all the time in Jakarta.” Jerry finished his scotch, rose and
poured himself another. Ten thousand dollars and relief from
arrest—he had a lot to celebrate. “Whatever—I'll need a passport.”

“Absolutely not. Your case officer will walk you through
immigration.”

“Christ—really? You can do that? The world has changed.”

“The gloves are off, Jerry. People in Washington have realized
that we are the most powerful country in the world.”

Piat shook his head. “Most people in Washington couldn't
find their asses with both hands, Clyde. Okay. I go, I meet
this guy, I set him up with—who? Same guy who's running
me? That right?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. And no doubt wait around to make sure they get
cozy?”

“Absolutely not, Jerry. You set him up and go home.”

“That's all?”

“That's all.” Partlow had returned to sounding smug. Piat
didn't like it, or him, but the money was good.

“So no chance for a little salmon fishing here before I go?”

“Jerry, sometimes I think you are not quite sane.”

“The feeling's mutual, Clyde. Okay, I guess that's a no.
When do you want this done?”

“There's a military plane leaving from Keflavik in three
hours. I want you on it.”

“What about my fishing equipment? My luggage?”

“I'll see to it that it's returned to you when your assignment
is complete.”

“Be careful of my rods.” Piat looked out the window at
the vividly green grass. The hotel had the largest lawn he
had seen outside of Reykjavik, as if a lawn was itself something
to watch on one's holiday. He felt the weight of the
fish in his bag again.

He said, “Dukas? He staying here?”

Partlow thought a long time before saying, “Yes.”

“And you're sending me to Scotland with this case officer,
right?”

Again, Partlow took his time answering. “Yes, Jerry,” he
said with mock patience.

“Okay.” Piat got to his feet. “I'd like to fetch some clothes.”

“No. You can buy them en route.”

“Not outa my cash, you won't.”

“Fine, Jerry. As you will. I'll have your case officer take
you shopping. Otherwise, we're done?”

“Yeah.”

Partlow got to his feet, looked Piat over carefully, and then
walked to the bar's main door to the lobby. Piat followed
him to the concierge desk.

“I'd like to leave something for one of the guests,” he said.
He ignored the heavyset man who appeared by his elbow
and crowded his personal space.

The concierge nodded. “A package, sir?”

Piat thumped his bag down on the counter. “Dukas—Mike
Dukas. Not a package. A fish. See to it he gets it for dinner.”

Regrettably, the concierge said, Mister Dukas had already
checked out.

Mike Dukas was sitting at a table in an airport bar that was
so atmospheric it felt like a film set for the kind of movie he
wouldn't go to see. Still, he knew that the rest of the world
might find it warm and comforting and sweet, or at least a
relief from Scandinavian modern. The motif was Olde
Englande and the beer cost six-fifty a bottle. Dukas,
begrudging the money but thirsty, figured the high price was
really the admission charge to the Charles Dickens Theme
Park, Iceland.

Dukas had kept his khaki raincoat on but placed his waterproof
hat on the table. A small puddle had formed around
it. Now, he sat with his right elbow next to the hat and his
lower lip pushed against the knuckles of his right hand,
watching Alan Craik saunter toward him. Craik was smiling.
He looked relaxed and pleased, and also, Dukas conceded,
handsome in a sort of rugged, fortyish, Hollywood way. What
the hell, who cared about looks, anyway? (The ravishing
blonde two tables away, that's who.)

“I think we did that pretty well,” Craik said as he slipped
into a chair. He was wearing some sort of weathered corduroy
sport jacket and a nubbly shirt, and he had tossed a waxed
cotton coat (veddy, veddy English) over the back of his chair.

“Piat didn't think so.”

“Not pleased to be jerked away from fishing?”

“It costs five hundred bucks a day to fish here, he told
me. For salmon, anyway.”

“If you all got to the point of talking about fishing, I'd say
he wasn't too upset.”

Dukas shrugged. Craik ordered a beer. He said, “Partlow
telling him what this is about, you suppose?”

“One assumes. Now if they'd just tell me what it's about.
How about you tell me what it's about, Al?”

“I told you over the phone—if I knew, I'd tell you. All I
know is Partlow was looking for Jerry Piat for an operation,
and you keep up with Jerry Piat. Our part was to bring him
in, period.”

“You're trusting Clyde Partlow?”

“Not with anything important like my wallet, but yeah,
as little as you and I are involved, yeah.”

Dukas drank the last of his beer and stared gloomily at
the bottle. “I don't get you helping a shit like Partlow.”

“It's called ‘I'll scratch your back now and you'll owe me
one.'”

“I wouldn't
want
Clyde Partlow to owe me one.” Craik
shrugged. Dukas gave up trying to save money and ordered
another beer and then said, “This is a fine mess you've got
us into, Stanley.” He waited for a response, got none.
“Well?”

Grinning, Craik said, “You know what a working group
is?”

“Mrs Luce, I
am
a Catholic.”

“Okay, I was at a meeting of a working group—sixty people
in a big room sharing secrets. Or
not
sharing secrets, as the
case may be. Although, with all the bullshit that's been said
since Nine-Eleven about agencies not sharing intelligence, in
fact the amount of sharing that actually goes on is astonishing.
Anyway, Partlow is a long-time regular at this particular
working group; I'm a regular now because of my new
job. When we took a break, Partlow made a beeline for me
and asked me if you weren't a friend of mine.”

“‘Oh-ho,' you said to yourself, ‘this is suspicious.'”

“No, I said to myself, ‘Clyde Partlow is a good guy to do
a favor for.'” Craik was silent for several seconds. “Now
Partlow owes me one. And he owes you one—what's wrong
with that?”

“I was building up debts from assholes like Partlow when
you were in Pampers.” Dukas waited while a fresh bottle of
beer was put in front of him. “You've changed.”

“Older and wiser.”

“Where's the Al Craik who used to say, ‘Damn the torpedoes,
we're going in without a country clearance'?”

“You know what the shelf life of a collections officer is?
Short. I figure doing a favor for somebody like Partlow might
give my sell-by date a little leeway.”

“I feel like I don't know you so good anymore.”

“Yeah, you do. Same old lovable Craik, only I've wised up
about Washington politics. Anyway, Partlow came over to
me and asked about you, and I said why and so on, and he
finally dropped Piat's name like he was passing me the secret
combination to Bush's wall safe.” He slipped into a Partlow
imitation, cheeks puffed, head back. “‘Might your friend
Dukas know how Piat could be reached?' So I said I'd check.
And I did. And here we are.”

“Why?”

“Ah, da big question! I love da big questions! I dunno,
Mike—Partlow has an operation that he wants Piat for, that's
all I could get. It's on the up-and-up—it's got a task number;
and it's passed the working group. It's kosher.” He lowered
his head, smiled. “But why would he want an untouchable
like Piat?”

“You mean it smells.”

“N-o-o-o—”

“If it's passed the working group, you heard it discussed.”

“Unh-unh. Discussion is general—tasks and goals. Peons
like me not to know.”

“That's sure what I call sharing information.” Dukas wiped
a hand over his face. “Man, I'm tired. You at least got a
night's sleep. You know what you have to do to fly to
Reykjavik from fucking Naples? Now I gotta do it in reverse.
You of course feel great and look great, you bastard.”

“A healthy mind in a healthy body.”

Dukas sat looking at him, lips pushed out, eyebrows drawn
together “You're the guy who used to lecture me about honor,
duty. Idealism. Now you're running errands for one of the
most political shits in the business.” He shook his head and
held Craik's eyes. “What happened to that fine rage you used
to work up when other people did things for slimy reasons?”

Craik's smile was tentative, apologetic. “My last fine rage
got me a call from my detailer saying that if I didn't can it,
I wasn't going to make captain.”

“And now you're a captain.”

Craik nodded. The same small smile was still on his face
“‘Honor, duty, idealism.' Right.” He looked up. “But I believe
you gotta pick your battles and your battlefield. And lost
causes get you nowhere. Isn't it okay to scratch the itch of
my curiosity about Partlow's wanting Piat, and maybe have
Partlow owe me a favor at the same time?”

Dukas stared at his friend, then finished his second beer.
Setting the bottle down carefully on its own old ring, he said,
“It sure is comforting to know you're still an idealist.”

Piat had never had a case officer before. Case officers are
the men and women who recruit agents and then handle
them—long hours of manipulation, a shoulder on which to
cry, a voice when it is dark. Piat was used to being the
shoulder and the voice.

“Dave's” was not the shoulder or the voice that Piat would
have chosen. Dave was clearly the man's cover name—he
didn't always respond when the name was called. His voice
was rough, assertive, yet with a surprising repertoire of high-
pitched giggles and nervous laughter. He had had trouble
parking his rental car. He had shown considerable resentment
while walking Piat through some shopping in Oban.
Piat had been tempted to start coaching him then and there.

Two hours later, Piat sat next to the man on the cafeteria
deck of MV
Isle of Mull
and tried not to gnaw on the sore
ends of how little he wanted to do this. He'd taken the
money, and there wasn't much he could do about any of it,
but it smelled.

Partlow should have run him himself. They loathed each
other, but Partlow was a competent case officer and would
have made sure that things got done on time and under
budget. Dave was so clearly a second stringer that Piat wanted
to ask him what other agents he'd run—if any. It was as if,
having recruited Piat, Partlow was now distancing himself
from the operation. That wasn't like Clyde. He didn't usually
let go of anything once he had it in his well-manicured hands.

Piat was sure that if he wanted to, he could ditch Dave at
Craignure, the ferry terminal he'd already noted on the map
of Mull. And then he'd walk. It was a tempting thought.
Dave struck Piat as the type who'd order a lot of searches
done by other people and spend a lot of time in cars. Piat
thought it might be fun to walk away. In Piat's experience,
the way to lose Americans was to walk. It worked on Russians
and Chinese, too.

He'd been paid half the money and he'd discovered that
the Agency really didn't have much on him—or had buried
the evidence to protect themselves. He could probably manage
a day's fishing before he flew—

Pure fantasy. He had one passport—his own—and they'd
come looking for him. Mull was an island cul-de-sac with
only a couple of exits.

Ten thousand dollars for two days' work, no matter how
dirty, would get him back to Greece. If he was careful, the
money would see him through the winter. By then it was
possible that he would find something in the antiquities
market to sell.

Because Dave had taken the window seat, Piat got up and
pulled a sweater out of his bag. It was a very nice sweater—
Burberry, more than a hundred pounds in Oban on the High
Street. Piat had never been able to resist spending other
people's money. He had purchased a wardrobe that would
last him five years—good stuff, if you liked English clothes.
Piat liked anything that lasted. He pulled the sweater over
his head and added the clothes to his list of positives. He
could leave Partlow holding his baggage now—there was
nothing in it worth as much as the clothes he had just encouraged
Dave to buy for him. Scratch that thought—Piat wanted
the rods back. He sat and admired his wool trousers and
smiled again.

Dave didn't even look up. He was reading
The Economist
with an air of self-importance that Piat longed to puncture.
He shrugged internally. Why bother? Piat took out a guide
to the early European Bronze Age and browsed it, trying to
separate the useful facts from the clutter of drivel about
prehistoric alphabets and runic stones. The early European
Bronze Age was the hottest market in antiquities. Piat tried
for fifteen minutes, but the book didn't hold his attention.

Why does Partlow need me?
Piat chewed the question.
Hackbutt was a handling nightmare—did Partlow know that?

He looked at the cover of his book and wondered if any
of the Roman authorities had commented on the world before
Greece. All too damned speculative. He allowed his eyes to
skim past the usual photos; a bronze breastplate, a helmet, a
spectacular sword with an early flanged hilt, some badly decorated
pottery. He knew all the objects. They decorated major
museums. It needed a remarkable coincidence of durability,
placement and luck for anything that old—the second millennium
BC—to be found in northern Europe. Even to survive.

Partlow is doing something around the rules
—above, below,
whatever. He had to be. He'd involved Dukas—Piat went
back with Dukas, not exactly as pals but with some respect.
He'd involved Alan Craik. Piat didn't love Craik but he had
seen him in action. Dukas and Craik were buddies. Dukas
and Partlow were not buddies at all.

And Hackbutt was into falconry—and Partlow had said
right out that's why they wanted him. Most of the Arab
bigwigs were into falconry, too. No big leap of logic there.

Like speculating on what classical authority might have a
bearing on the Bronze Age, speculating on Clyde Partlow's
motives from the deck of the ferry wasn't getting Piat
anywhere.

I can find a partner and a dig when I get back to Lesvos. Worst
case, I'm a few thousand richer, and I have some new clothes
.

Piat shrugged, this time physically. It made Dave glance
up at him from his magazine. For a moment their eyes met.
Piat smiled.

“I'm trying to read,” said Dave.

Piat nodded, still smiling. He started to prepare himself to
meet Edgar Hackbutt, bird fancier, social outcast, and ex-
agent.

Piat swung the rented Renault down into Tobermory's main
street, reminding himself to get over to the left, toward the
water. The morning was brilliant, with thin, pale-blue mare's
tails high up against a darker blue sky. The tide was in, and
big boats rode alongside the pier; as always when he saw
them, he thought,
I could live on one of those
, but in fact he
never would. Too much a creature of the land, or perhaps
too suspicious of the predictability of a boat, too easy to find.
On land, you could always get out and walk.

He drove along the waterfront, brightly painted buildings
on his right, memorizing them—hardware store, chandler's
shop, bank, grocery—and then pulled up the long
hill out of town and around a roundabout to the right,
heading not down the island's length but across its northern
part. A sign said “Dervaig”; he followed it, passed a chain
of small lakes (
Mishnish Lochs, fishing, small trout
—he'd pretty
much memorized a tourist brochure) and, with a kind of
fierce joy, drove the one-lane road that twisted and switch-
backed up and down hills. He played the game of chicken
that was the island's way of dealing with two cars driving
straight at each other: one would have to yield and pull
into a supposedly available lay-by. Locals drove like maniacs
and waved happily as they roared past; tourists either went
into the lay-bys like frightened rabbits or clutched the
wheel and hoped that what was happening to them was
an illusion. Piat, flicking in and out of lay-bys, waving
when he won, giving a thumbs-up when he didn't, had
the time of his life.

He climbed past a cemetery above Dervaig and, following
a map in his head, turned left and south. Halfway down the
wide glen would be a road on the right; from it, a track went
still farther up and then briefly down. At its end, Dave had
assured him, Hackbutt's farm waited. Piat drove slower, head
ducked so he could look out the windscreen. He'd have said
that landscape didn't interest him, but in fact, it fascinated
him, only without the sentimentality that led other people
to take photos and paint watercolors. He always saw possibilities—
for escape, for hides, for pursuit. Here, the sheer
scale of the place surprised him: this was an island, and
Tobermory was almost a toy town, but out here was a breadth
of horizon that reminded him of Africa. Even with the mountains.
The glen was miles wide, he thought, the mountains
starting as rolling slopes that careened abruptly upward and
became almost vertical climbs to their summits.
Strong climber
could shake anybody up there
. The landscape was brown and
green and gray; grass, not heather; bare rock and bracken.
You could walk and walk. Or run and run. If the footing is okay
.

He found the road to the right and drove it more slowly;
it was ancient tarmac, crumbling along the edges, potholed,
hardly wider than the car. He came over a rise and almost
ran into a goofy-looking runner, some old guy wearing what
looked like a giant's T-shirt that flapped around him in the
crisp wind. Hardly noticing him, the runner plodded on. Piat
thought,
I could give you half a mile and still get there first
. After
another mile, the road forked and he went right.
Almost there
.
When he had gone half a mile farther, he pulled up just
short of a crest and got the car into a lay-by and stopped.
“Please do not park in the lay-bys,” the tourist brochure had
said.
You bet
.

Piat got out and spread an Ordnance Survey map on the
hood, traced his route from Tobermory, found the fork,
followed with his finger, and judged from the contour lines
that if he walked over the crest, he'd be looking down on
Hackbutt's house. Or farm, or whatever the hell it was. His
aviary, how would that be?

He had borrowed a pair of binoculars from good old Dave—
Swarovskis, 10x50, nice if you didn't have to carry them
very far—and walked the hundred feet to the top of the hill.
He made his way into the bracken and moved toward a rock
outcrop, keeping himself out of sight of the house he'd
glimpsed below, until he reached the outcrop and put his
back against it and turned the binoculars on the house.

It could have been any house on the island—central
doorway, two windows on each side, a chimney at one end,
second storey with two dormers. The color of rich cream but
probably stone under a coat of paint, possibly an old croft
fixed up but more likely built in the last hundred years. At
the far side of the house, clothes blew in the wind on a
circular contraption with a central metal pole. Behind it, as
if to tell him it was the right house, were pens and little
shacks like doghouses that he took to be sheds for the birds;
beside a half-collapsed metal gate, a dejected-looking black
and white dog lay with its head on outstretched paws, beside
it what was apparently supposed to be a doghouse made out
of boxes and a tarp. The bird pens seemed to have been set
out at random, the hutches put together by somebody who
didn't know which end of a hammer to hit his thumb with.
That'd be Hackbutt, for sure
.

Piat studied the place. He hoped to actually see Hackbutt
so he'd go in with that advantage. They hadn't seen each
other in fifteen years; let the other guy feel the shock of
change. Hackbutt would have an idea he was coming but
wouldn't know when: Piat had sent him a postcard with a
picture of a bear on the front, a nonsense message on the
back signed “Freddy.” From “ready for Freddy.” It meant “get
ready;” the bear was the identifier, an old code between
them. Would Hackbutt remember? Of course he would. In
fact, Piat thought, he'd piss his pants.

After fifteen minutes, nobody had appeared near the house.
Piat eased himself around the outcrop and walked back
through the bracken to the car. He leaned on the roof and
trained the binoculars around him, idling, not wanting to go
down to the house yet.
Apprehensive? Cold feet?
He looked
down the road. The goofy runner was coming back. He was
making heavy going of it now, his feet coming down as if
he were wearing boots, his hands too high on his chest. The
too-big T-shirt blew around him. He had a beard and long,
gray hair, also blowing, the effect that of some small-time
wizard in a ragged white robe. Smiling, Piat put the binoculars
to his eyes to enjoy this sorry sight, and when the focus
snapped in, he realized with a shock that the runner was
Hackbutt.

The last time he had seen Hackbutt, he'd weighed about
two-thirty and had had a sidewall haircut, smooth cheeks,
and eyes like two raisins in a slice of very white bread. Now,
there was the beard and the long hair, and the face had been
carved down to planes that made his eyes look huge; his
skin was almost brown, and he had lost a lot of weight—so
much that his legs looked fragile. The T-shirt, Piat realized,
must be one of his own from the old days.

He still can't run for shit, at least
.

Hackbutt toiled up toward him. Piat moved around to the
rear of the car and leaned back against the trunk. The runner
came on, his breathing hoarse and hard, his eyes on the
crest. He was going to pass Piat without looking at him, Piat
knew—eye contact had always been hard for the man,
confronting new people a torment. Now, as he came almost
even, Piat said, “Hey, Digger.”

Hackbutt was the kind of nerd who actually did double
takes. He might look like a wizard now, but inside was the
same insecure fumbler. Still running, he looked aside toward
Piat, looked away, then
really
looked back and, finally
believing the evidence of his eyes, came to a stop with his
mouth open and his T-shirt flapping. “Jack?” he said,
breathing hard. He'd always known Piat as Jack Michaels.

“Hey, man, you look good. Putting in the miles, that's
great.” Piat was still leaning on the car. He held out his hand.
“Sight for sore eyes, Digger.”

“Jeez, Jack, this is—” Hackbutt took a death grip on Piat's
hand. The guy was really strong. “I got your card, but I didn't
know when you were coming!” He grinned. “Wow, this is
unbelievable!” Then they both said it was great, and unbelievable,
and a long time.