The Falconer's Tale (23 page)

“I never heard of Havers University.”

“Neither did I. But he's the third highest-paid university
president in California. Okay? Okay.

“Under Sasimo at OIA, and in direct charge of the intel
work, was somebody named Frank McKinnon. McKinnon
has been in and out of academe, several books, blah-blah-blah.
In late 2004, he went from OIA to something called
the Petroleum Education Council as ‘director of creative projects.'
If you can figure out what that means, you get a free
box of Crackerjacks.

“Two other people—I'll skip names now because it's late—
one man, one woman, went to Hooper and Gretz. You know
Hooper and Gretz? What we call a ‘K Street firm.' Lobbyists,
to the vulgar. Clients include one major automobile manufacturer
and two oil companies, plus some defense-contract
firms—stars of the military-industrial complex.”

Abe held up his hand. “Now the biggie.” He grinned. “Three
people with OIA connections show up in a security company
called Force for Freedom. You like that—‘force?'” He rattled
one of the newspaper articles. “Two of them
founded
the
company in 2001; the other, a guy named Stern, joined the
board in 2004. The L.A.
Times
did an investigative piece on
civilian contractors in Iraq. Force for Freedom got two no-
bid contracts from the provisional authority, both to provide
‘military-spec' security for entities inside the Green Zone in
Baghdad. They wear camo battledress, reportedly have better
body armor than the military, and they pack weapons all the
time. They're ‘highly respected in the field.'”

“Rent-a Grunt, Inc.”

“Pretty good for a company that was formed within a
month of Nine-Eleven by two guys with no security experience,
wouldn't you say? Two
young
guys with no security
experience—one was twenty-four, the other twenty-seven.
Nothing in their past suggests they had access to big bucks,
either, but they got a PO box and a phone and, so far as my
gal can tell, started making big money immediately. They
now have an office suite in McLean, Virginia, and a ‘training
and exercise compound' in the Blue Ridge. No IPO yet, but
they're making big money, not just in Iraq.” Abe held up
another hot-lined newspaper clipping. “An article in the Post
on private police in New Orleans after Katrina lists them as
having upwards of forty people in Plaquemines Parish to
guard a refinery.” He waved the other clipping again.
“Investigative reporter tracked down a former employee, says
that a ‘typical' Force for Freedom guy is ex-military, either
special forces or operational intelligence, at least five years
of service, young to young-middle-aged, very focused. Typical
pay is seven hundred to a thousand
a day
out of country.
And they get
way
out of country: the
Times
says they were
able to track one guy in Iraq, Bulgaria, and Thailand.” He
handed Alan the newspaper clippings, grunting as he struggled
with the chair. His hand was still trembling.

Alan had his elbows on his knees, his hands joined in front
of him. He was looking at Abe's chest. “So Force for Freedom
was set up in—what, October?—2001, before my suspect
document was written. OIA is listed as the originating source
on the document. Then in the middle of 2002, three OIA
people go to DIA, and about then a task number was generated
that then got put on the document, ‘superseding' a
number that's meaningless to the intel community but could
have been an in-house number, the house being OIA.”

Peretz grunted. “And then they could have put all sorts
of black crap into the pipeline under a legitimate task number
and outsourced the actual ops to Force for Freedom.”

“I don't want to jump to conclusions, Abe.”

“These people deal with black ops the way they deal with
everything else—bury it under the flag! And reclassify it so
nobody else can see it.”

Craik shook his head. “Whether they were doing dumb stuff
like sending Spinner to Tel Aviv, or whether they were really
into black stuff, they'd have to have seen pretty quickly that
they were going to have to get their operations into the system,
much as they might have hated the system. You can hide crap
like that for only a little while before you've got so many
accountability problems you're spending more time covering
up than you are working. That's why they would have ‘superseded'
their own numbers with the legit task number. But that
they even could do so meant that they already had clout in
DIA—they were able to get their shit a DIA code classification.”
He shook his head. “I don't believe it.”

He looked up at Peretz. “The classification code that blocked
my access, by the way, is ‘Perpetual Justice.' I thought that
Perpetual Justice was just somebody's wet dream under one
of those goddam names they pick out of computerized lists.
A single operation. But it could be that it's more like a
program. A way of doing things.” He sat back. “Illegal things.”
Alan was looking at Abe's chest again. “But that raises a
question: would they
still
be doing some sort of Perpetual
Justice thing, or is that over?”

“Perpetual Justice may just be a way of
thinking
, Al, not
a way of doing. If in OIA you thought preemptive war is
swell and your enemies have no rights, then yeah, you'd still
think it if you went to DIA. Like I said to you before, these
people are true believers. They're
committed
. This isn't the
nutcase fringe, muttering about black helicopters and close
encounters. These are very smart, very,
very
sincere people.”

Alan thought about that, then smiled. “I have a hard time
believing they're breaking the laws that real intel people have
to live by.”

“That's why they hate people like us.”

Alan looked at the newspaper clippings and the typed page,
his frown deepening as he read. “There were also people
who went to other parts of DoD?”

“Yeah—DoD, a couple to State, one woman to NSC, some
to jobs here and there. Two of them—where is that? It's on
the typed stuff—” He tried to read upside down, and Craik
spun the page around and Peretz jabbed with a finger and
said, “There—Crennan and Kravitz. They went to a congressional
staff. Congressman—Kwalik. Ohio.” He tapped a newspaper
photo. “House Intelligence Committee.”

“Just good people moving to other jobs, or true believers
spreading the gospel?”

“No way to know.” Abe pushed himself out of the chair's
embrace. “I've got to go.”

They found Rose, and then they stood there talking for a
few last minutes, the Craiks sounding apologetic about never
being home: Rose saying she had to go to Germany with her
admiral for five days, Alan adding that he had a London trip
coming up. Rose said she had to work tomorrow. Abe said,
“How come you two are such lousy parents and have such
great kids? It isn't fair.”

They all laughed. It was a good joke, if painful.

“He's with Bella,” Irene said from the doorway. “Naturally.”
She was back in work clothes, her hair wet, her cheeks
flushed in the cold air.

The dog nuzzled his hand and barked, pushed its head
into his thigh and barked again and ran in a circle. Piat
wanted to avoid Irene as much as possible. He knelt by the
dog and started to give him a good scratch. Piat looked up
at Irene and smiled. “I—” he managed before she gave him
a thin smile and closed the door.

Piat found Hackbutt half a mile up the ridge that loomed
over the cottage by the simple expedient of looking for the
bird. He had no trouble guessing what Hackbutt was doing,
either. He was trying Bella at “waiting on.”

He prepared himself during the climb. While his eyes
watched the ground in front of him, seeking the easiest path
between the damned tufts of coarse grass, his brain was evaluating
what he had seen of Irene (puffy eyes, pot smoke,
anger) and guessing at what he would find in Hackbutt, and
how he could make them work. Together. Apart. Whatever.

Hackbutt hailed him when he was still more than fifty
meters below them. Piat cast well to the south of the pair
and then came back to them carefully. He'd learned not to
spook a bird or a falconer.

“Did you see her?” Hackbutt said as he came up. “Did you
see her?” Of course, he didn't mean Irene. He meant Bella.

“Sure did, Digger.” Piat smiled at him. “Waiting on. I saw
her do it for what—five minutes?”

Hackbutt stroked the eagle on his wrist and cooed at her,
and then cocked his head at Piat, his face still split by his
smile. “I told her! I said you knew birds, that you listened
to me. That you'd know just what I was doing. She said you
didn't give a shit about birds, and I said you did. And look!
You knew what we were doing from the valley!”

“You training with the lure?” Piat asked. He knew that big
birds like eagles seldom took to waiting on in captivity when
there was so much food available so close by and with less
work. Because he'd just read about it.

“You really know your stuff, Jack. You have a glove?”

Piat pulled one from the pocket of his oilskin coat. He
flourished it and put it on.

“Take her. This'll be better with the two of us. I wanted
to call Annie, but Irene's in such a mood—”

“I noticed.” Piat took the weight of the eagle on his wrist.
She had her jesses, decorated with the new silver bells, but
no hood, and she looked at him, turned her head as if to
consider him from another angle, and then started nipping
at his glove. Piat took a little tube of chicken from Hackbutt's
bag, squeezed it in his gauntlet so that only a fraction was
visible, and Bella began tearing at it.

“Don't give her too much—I want her keen. She's smart,
Jack—smartest bird I've ever seen. But unless she's hungry,
she'll just watch you like you're a show.

“The new command is ‘up!'” Hackbutt said. “Give her a try.”

Piat rolled his fist to hide the chicken. Bella turned her
head and gave him a look—anger, disappointment.

He raised his fist smoothly, not so much throwing her as
indicating the way to the sky. He'd never flown Bella before,
and for a second he thought she wouldn't rise, but just at
the top of his fist's arc she exploded off his wrist.

She was a big, heavy bird and she didn't climb like a hawk.
She climbed in circles that grew and grew with every pass.
For the first few seconds, she didn't appear to gain any real
altitude at all, and then suddenly she was climbing away.

“That was beautiful,” Hackbutt said. “I've never watched
her—I've always been the one.”

Piat realized that he still had his left hand sticking up in
the air. He felt foolish, but he understood about falconry. It
was in that one, explosive moment, when Bella left his fist
and reached into the sky, her wings tearing the air with such
strength that every beat fanned a wind through his hair.

She climbed for a long time. “That's excellent—most birds
will never go beyond a hundred feet or so. Look at her!”
Hackbutt couldn't keep still. “I should have done this months
ago.”

Piat watched her. “What if she sees real prey?”

“All the better!” Hackbutt exclaimed.

“Digger,” Piat began.

“I'm going to leave her for six minutes, and then I'm going
to start the lure going.”

Piat set his watch alarm. It was like a student exercise at
the training school.
You have six minutes to make your pitch.
“Digger,” he said again.

Hackbutt flicked his eyes to Piat and then went back to
watching Bella. “She's so high, I have to worry that she'll
just fly off. I'm not sure we've ever been this far apart before.”

Piat had planned a speech. He dumped it. Instead, he said,
“Would that be so bad?”

Hackbutt gave Piat his full attention. “What are you saying,
Jack?”

“The purpose of raising her is to release her into the wild.
Right? And she's almost at her full growth—she's huge. She's
fully trained. Right? So what would be so wrong with her
flying away? You're going to release her in—what, two
weeks?”

Hackbutt nodded slowly, as if a harsh truth had been
revealed—perhaps a terminal cancer. And then he raised his
eyes to the sky. “Sure, Jack. You're right.”

He's going to cry.

“I need Bella, Digger.” That statement had been meant to
be the cap of an emotional appeal, but to hell with it. “I need
her for the operation, Digger. And if you agree, she'll be with
us for a lot longer. At least a month. Maybe longer.”

Hackbutt's face turned back from the heavens. Tears were
running down his cheeks, but his voice was strong. “The
wildlife program would freak out, Jack.”

What Hackbutt had really said was “I really want to do
what you suggest, but—”

“I can fix that.” Piat spoke with authority.

Hackbutt's eyes were back on the sky. “She's the best thing
I've ever done, Jack. I don't want to lose her. But—but I've
only
done
it when I let her go. When she has a mate and a
clutch of eggs.”

Piat nodded. “I need her, Digger.”

High above, Bella turned suddenly but took no other action.
She had caught a hint of movement far below. A hare,
perhaps, just a little too bold on the hillside.

“She sees something. What do you want her for?”

“As the lure. For the target. To get him to come out of his
tree,” Piat said. “Only if we have to.”

Hackbutt watched Bella. He raised his binoculars, shutting
Piat out. “And the wildlife people would agree?”

“Sure,” said Piat.

“And when we're done, you'll help me let her go?”
Hackbutt asked.

“Sure,” Piat lied.

High overhead, Bella saw the hare again. It had tried to
become invisible by immobility, but it was young and it moved
too soon. This time, its movement was much too bold, and
she dropped.

The hare bolted from its cover and ran along the hill,
bounding a meter in every stride.

Bella made a minute course correction.

The hare sensed her. He changed his direction, heading
uphill at right angles to his original path.

He did it too soon, while she was still well up in her flight
envelope with room to maneuver and lots of speed.

Her wings spread like a parachute and her talons reached
for the hare while her wings reached for the sky, and in one
beat of the terrified heart of the prey she had him in her
talons and in the air.

When he got back to his room, Piat left a message for his
divers requesting a meeting. Then he spent the evening on
the internet, learning about a conservative American
congressman named George Kwalik.

Alan Craik had called the Marine analyst, Sergeant Swaricki,
and Rhonda Hope Stillman, the Southern earth mother, into
his office. He made a point of asking Swaricki to close the
door; a flicker of something—panic—passed across Mrs
Stillman's face. One reason that she was so good was that
she was afraid she'd do something wrong, and now, Craik
saw, she thought she was going to be reamed out.

“This is something that I don't want to travel,” he said.
He hoped to mollify her with that. It didn't. He added, “This
isn't personal or about anybody's performance or anything.”

She settled her pretty bulk. “Well, that's a
considerable
relief!
I thought you were going to scold us!”

“You're the two best people I've got—why would I scold
you?” He had the fitness reports approaching final draft. They
had both seen theirs, as they had to by law; what had they
to fear? Swaricki, nonetheless, was scowling, which Craik
put down to Marine culture.

“I've got a task that I'd like done,” Craik said. “It's over
and above what you're both already doing, which I know is
a lot. But this has to be done, and I want it done right.” He
looked at her, then at him. They were waiting before they'd
commit themselves. “This has grown out of a recent tasking
we signed off on.” He twirled a yellow pencil between his
fingers, watching the gold lettering flash past and then wheel
up toward him again. His left hand was missing two fingers;
once, that damage had made him wince every time he saw
it, but now he hardly noticed. He glanced up at Swaricki.
“Sergeant, you've already seen a little of it.” He leaned back
in his desk chair and turned to Mrs Stillman. “There was a
reference in a tasking that seemed a little funny. No headers
or footers, and the contents were pretty well blocked out.
The sergeant thought that one of the lines that was left
referred to torture.”

He let that settle in. Mrs Stillman was frowning again, now
probably over the reference to torture. Everybody was pretty
gun-shy about torture by then—Abu Ghraib, White House
legal quibbles, the Senate trying to hammer out an anti
torture statute and getting blindsided by a presidential signing
letter. He linked his hands behind his head and looked at
the ceiling. “I ran the date-time group past one of the DPs
downstairs. He came up with a limited-access classification
named Perpetual Justice.” He looked at them without
changing his position. “Ever hear of it?”

They moved their heads from side to side.

“I went to the CIA officer of record on the tasking. I learned
two things: the document does refer to torture, and it does
have a task number. But the task number looks like it was
added to the document after the fact.”

Mrs Stillman's breath hissed in. She lived for accuracy, and
postdating was not only illegal, it was also
inaccurate.

Craik pulled himself up and put his elbows on the desk.
“Torture isn't our business. I'll say personally I think it's
wrong, and I think the sergeant believes the same thing, but
this office isn't here to deal with torture. Okay? So it isn't
the torture part. It's the task number. ‘It's the task number,
stupid.' Where did that come from? Anyway, if it's true that
somebody's been backdating tasking approvals, then this office
has a problem. The whole system has a problem. If a task
number was backdated, then the activity was done without
approval—it didn't go through the process—and there's been
opportunity for breaking laws and opportunity for misusing
funds, because, as you both know, when you don't go through
the process, there's no oversight. Mrs Stillman?”

She had been fidgeting. Now she said, “Is this one of
our
taskings?”

Alan knew he had to be cautious. He said, “I don't know.
The limited-access classification appears to be ours. Other
than that, I don't know.” He was twirling the pencil again.
“Here's what I want.” He looked at both of them. “I want
the two of you to go through the system looking for the task
number that was added to that document, and looking for
anything that has ‘Perpetual Justice' in it. I want you two
to do it because you're the best and because you're discreet,
and I want two of you because two heads are better than
one. Plus you'll check each other.” He looked at Mrs Stillman.
“Can you do it?”

“We don't farm it out?”

“No. I want this kept close to the vest. Just the three of
us.”

Swaricki said, “I don't mean to question you, sir, but, uh—
this is a legal order?”

“It is, and I'll give it to you in writing if you want.” Swaricki
nodded: he wanted it in writing. Another victim of Abu
Ghraib—trust.

Mrs Stillman said, “This is on top of everything else we're
doing?”

“I see it as part of the Green Book review. So I suggest
that Sergeant Swaricki put aside some of his Green Book
work while he does this, and, Mrs Stillman, you can hand
off the training sessions to somebody for a while. I mean,
this isn't going to take all year, is it?”

Mrs Stillman looked at Swaricki and back at Alan and said,
“Part-time, maybe a week, I'd think. If it's limited-access classified,
we're gonna be closed out of a lot. It's really a computer
search.”

Alan looked at Swaricki. “Can we say a week?”

Swaricki shrugged. “I don't even see a week. If it's all
limited access, we'll be done in an hour.”

“Well, try. Okay?” He looked at Mrs Stillman. “Okay?”

“Starting now?”

“You'll both have to carry all your other duties, remember.
All but the Green Book work. Just fit this stuff in.” He was
writing “Perpetual Justice” and the task number he had seen
on Partlow's computer on two slips of paper. “Report to me
verbally when you've got something, and then I'd like a
report in writing when it's over. Sergeant—well, both of you—
you'll get a written request for the information from me later
today.” He handed over the pieces of paper and stood. “Make
notes. Keep a paper trail. If this turns into anything, I want
it all on the record.”