The Falconer's Tale (27 page)

Piat nodded. “Except that we bribed him.”

Mike shook his head vehemently. “No bribe, bwana Jack.
We paid for tickets. Perhaps we overpay or perhaps it slips
his mind to give us change. Perhaps he doesn't
have
change.
Perhaps he doesn't know the exchange rate for US dollars.
But there was no bribe.” He gave Piat a look that he knew
well from the corridors of the Agency, a look that meant
Please cooperate with me in this little deception.

Piat said, “My brochure says everyone has to show a passport
to enter the park and put their name down on some
sort of register.”

Mike drove for a few minutes, avoiding the mammoth
potholes that nearly filled the road and pointing out the first
watering holes to the north of the track. His eyes were flicking
between the horizon and the surface of the road. Finally he
cracked a smile. “I think maybe you'd rather not show passport,”
he said.

Piat could see why Mike came with such recommendations.

Before they had driven for forty minutes they had seen two
prides of lions and enough zebra to satisfy every tourist in
Africa.

“I didn't know they were all so fat!” Irene shouted over
the noise of the car. “I thought they were just fat in zoos!”

Piat turned around. “Zebras are the method nature uses
to store protein for predators,” he shouted.

Hackbutt thought it was funny, and Irene did not.

For an hour the terrain had grown more broken, the flat,
dry savannah giving way to the first hills of the plateau. A
small river crossed their track. The ford was flooded and
deeply cut by heavy tires and tracks. Mike drove well north
of the ford to spare his undercarriage. In the process they
found a herd of more than a hundred elephants, and they
stayed with the animals for another hour. Irene was delighted,
alternatively speechless and then babbling with something
like ecstasy—so many, all together, the old bulls and the
young bulls and the matriarch and her daughters, eating and
playing and walking.

Hackbutt was less interested in the elephants than in the
birdlife. He kept up a running commentary on a migrant
falcon he saw in a tree and couldn't identify, and he kept
interrupting Mike's dissertation to Irene on elephant habits
with questions about nesting birds.

“That looks like a grouse,” he shouted.

Mike stopped the car.

“What do you call it? It looks like our grouse at home.”

Mike glanced at the bird and said patiently, “We call it a
sand grouse, bwana.”

“But it's
different,”
Hackbutt said with a hint of his old
whine. “It has a black face. Look at it, Jack. That's a big
bird.”

Piat, despite his impatience, hadn't torn his eyes off the
elephants. He followed Hackbutt's eyes and saw nothing.
Mike, old in the ways of tourists, pointed accurately at the
bird in the dust. “Sure looks like a grouse,” he said, since
Hackbutt seemed to expect a reply.

“That's a good prey bird,” Hackbutt said, as if satisfied that
Africa had something to offer.

Mike got the vehicle across the river on a gravel shingle.
His crossing didn't wet the hubcaps. “This car—not really
tough enough for safari. No clearance. I have to drive carefully,
okay?”

“Sure, Mike,” said Piat. “How far to the lodge?”

“Not far, now.”

They drove for another hour over hard-packed gravel
and dusty rock with mesas rising in the distance, cone-
shaped hills rising from the flat plain. Piat didn't know
whether Mike was lost or taking great care with his driving
because of the car, a small Suzuki, and while he was considering
the possibility of asking outright, Mike's shoulders
relaxed and they bounced down a steep incline and arrived
on a road.

“Not far now,” Mike said again.

Ten minutes later, they rounded the spur of a low mesa
to see a much greater mound rising from an alien landscape
studded with bigger cone-shaped hills, as if the
anthills of the open plain had grown to fill the horizon.
The man-made shapes of the lodge hotel and the white
walls of its compound contrasted with the smooth organic
shapes of the biggest mesa and the table-flat plain at its
base. Two small lakes filled the near end of the plain,
surrounded by lush green grass—and herds of zebra and
antelope.

High above, two vultures circled, but even they were
not as high as the top of the mesa that held the lodge.
And above them, turning circles, there waited another
predator.

“He's here!” Hackbutt shouted. He had his head out the
window.

Piat glanced back at Hackbutt and then out his passenger
window and up into the sky. “Who's here, Digger?”

“The prince!” Hackbutt shouted. “Can't you see his bird?”

Irene pulled him back into the car. The shoulder of the
great mesa now cut off the view. The car was toiling up the
switchbacks to the lodge. “You can't tell that's his bird, silly
man.”

Hackbutt shook his head. “I can.”

Piat asked, “How?”

Hackbutt shrugged. “Like you can tell someone you know
way off on the hillside. Hard to say. Big bird, not a vulture,
keeping station over the mountain? That's his bird. Okay?
Want to make a bet? That's the big red-tail he had in
Monaco.”

Piat wanted to ruffle his hair. “No bet, Digger. I hope you're
right.”

“I am,” Hackbutt said.

He was.

Irene decided to have a bath. Their rooms were festooned
with signs recommending caution in water use, and Irene
allowed as she would accept a quick shower.

Piat and Hackbutt hurried to the bar.

From the bar, they could see the prince and his tall black
falconer standing alone at the edge of the escarpment.
A few tourists on the bar's deck were already watching
them. Hackbutt and Piat bought drinks and joined them.

Hackbutt turned to a small man who was watching the
falconers through a pair of low-light binoculars—very expensive
optics indeed. Hackbutt waited until the man took the
glasses from his eyes.

“What prey is he finding?” Hackbutt asked.

The man looked at Hackbutt as if he had spoken a foreign
language. “Huh?” he said.

“Has the bird killed?” Hackbutt asked.

Piat felt as if he were watching a sitcom. He was glad—
very glad—that Hackbutt was bold enough to approach a
stranger and ask a question, but he could see that Hackbutt,
the same old Hackbutt, seemed to think that every onlooker
would share his knowledge and passion for falconry. Why
not?

“I should hope not,” said the man with the expensive
optics. “This is a game park. It's not here to allow the slaughter
of wild things.”

That's what you think, bud,
Piat thought. The report had
said that the uncle would be hunting here. Hunting what—
elephants, perhaps? It had certainly happened before. But
even Piat, who was against such shenanigans, couldn't see
that a single red-tailed hawk, regardless of size, could do a
lot of damage to a park the size of Wales.

Hackbutt chuckled. “I can see you aren't a falconer,” he
said. “He's got the bird off the fist—that means she's free to
hunt. What she makes of all this—the height, the wind, the
strange animals—I don't know. But when she's hungry
enough, she'll kill, even if it's only a mouse.”

“Shouldn't be allowed,” grumbled the man, whom Piat
now had pegged as a birder.

In fact, Piat was surprised to see the bird hunting so
publicly. On the other hand, that's just what the prince's
falconer had done in Monaco. Piat wondered if this was a
character thing—if the prince liked to make these kills in
public. A demonstration? A gesture of contempt? Or perhaps
he was so much a prince that it never occurred to him to
do otherwise?

The rich are not like you and me.
That wasn't Shakespeare,
but somebody had written it, and it stuck in his head all
evening as they watched the bird hover and land on her
master's fist, go aloft and land again, all without a kill.

“She doesn't really know where she is,” Hackbutt
murmured. “She doesn't like it here. The falconer—the black
guy—he gets it. He's trying to gentle her. And I think he
wants to feed her. The prince isn't having it.”

Piat sipped his scotch. “What would you do?”

Hackbutt shrugged. “I'd give her a feed and let her settle
for a day. She's going to spook at this rate. The falconer
knows it, too.”

Eventually the falconer said something. He must have been
speaking strongly, because for the first time in an hour the
prince looked at him while he spoke. Then the prince nodded,
turned on his heel, and walked back up the brick walk to
the bar.

Piat's heart began to beat faster. He touched Hackbutt's
elbow.

The prince entered the bar and glanced at the group of
people watching his bird, his face expressionless.

Piat willed Hackbutt to move. The prince—
the target
—was
ten feet away, and his eyes flicked over Piat. Piat stood immobile,
like a hare on a hillside, hoping that the predator would
not notice him.

Hackbutt's attention was still on the bird. Piat had time to
think,
He's going to blow it,
and then the prince walked through
the bar and into the lodge.

Neither Piat nor Hackbutt saw him again that night.

“Digger—why the hell didn't you say something?” Piat paused
in his pacing.

Hackbutt was peering through the drapes of Piat's room
at the watering holes, now deep in shadow.

“Say what?” Hackbutt muttered. “There are a lot more
birds here than I first thought. Look at those vultures! They're
huge!”

“Digger,” Piat said softly. He couldn't let himself be angry.
“Digger, why are we here?”

Hackbutt rubbed his jaw with his right hand. He avoided
Piat's eye like a kid caught out by a teacher. “Uhh—to contact
the Arab guy. Right?”

Piat nodded and sat heavily on the bed. “You watched him
for an hour. You had all kinds of comments to make about
his falconry and his bird. How hard would it have been to
approach him? Say something like—hey, your bird's nervous,
isn't she? Something like that. Right?”

Hackbutt leaned against the window, the red light spilling
across his face and making him look very young. “I'd hate
it if somebody said something like that to me,” he said. “I
mean—I'd be criticizing him. He probably knows the bird is
nervous. Why tell him that? He's got his own ways. I can
see that.”

Piat was tired, and the air-conditioning was giving him a
chill, and he'd already had too much to drink and maybe
too much of Hackbutt. He wanted to put his head in his
hands. “Digger—we're here to contact the guy. You've got
to find a way to pull the trigger.”

Hackbutt nodded. “Not a criticism, though. It's got to come
naturally.”

Piat shook his head. “It's never natural. It isn't natural to
approach a stranger when you do it from the most innocent
of motives. There won't
be
a natural moment. This is a
powerful man who we'll hardly ever get to see, much less
talk to. We'll be lucky if we get another shot at him at all.
He was
alone
in the bar. No security, no falconer, just him,
standing ten feet away!”

“Why didn't
you
do it?” Hackbutt said. It was real
curiosity, not the Hackbutt nerd whine. “You're so much
better than me. I used to watch you in Jakarta—girls,
guys—they
want
to talk to you. Even Irene—” Hackbutt
trailed off.

Piat got a jolt from his adrenal gland at Irene's name,
but he stuck to his subject. “Digger—listen, man. Listen
up, as they say on sports teams.
You
have to do this one.
Just you. I shouldn't even be standing near you. I look
like what I am—a spy. I know a little about falcons and a
lot about people and I'm smooth. Smooth will not cut it
with this guy. You aren't smooth—but man, you love your
birds. So does he. That can't be faked, Digger. It's got to
be real.”

Hackbutt nodded. “I guess I could go to his room and ask
to help with his bird,” he said.

Piat shook his head. “Too abrupt. It's a subtle thing—as
natural as you can make it.”

Hackbutt looked distraught. “I blew it. I could have just
asked if she was off her feed. Just like that.” Hackbutt sagged.
“I didn't even think about it. I was worried about the bird.
If they keep flying her, she's going to bolt. And because we're
so high, she'll be able to go a long way.”

“What do you mean, bolt?”

“You know what it's like to lose a bird. She flies too far
from you, and then she can't see you, and bang—she's gone.
Some guys use radio collars.”

“I suspect the prince is too traditional for radio collars.”
Piat rubbed his forehead. “Okay, tomorrow is another day
and all that. I'm wasted.”

“I need to call Annie. I have to know that Carla is better.”
Hackbutt was back to looking out the window.

“Digger.” Piat caught himself on the edge of doing something
stupid, like yelling. “Digger, we're operational.” Even
as he said it, he thought—fuck it, Digger's not in any cover
here. Why can't he call home? “Okay,” he said. “Call Annie.
Do it soon. Then get some rest.”

Hackbutt said, “Thanks.” He grinned. “Not sure why I need
your permission—but there we go.” He let the drape slide
shut. “I wonder where they'll go tomorrow?” he asked.
“They're just too high up here. They need to get down on
the plain.”