The Falconer's Tale (29 page)

“They still haven't fed him,” Hackbutt said. “He must
intend to try him on something really big. A vulture? No,
that's silly. Maybe a mammal? I've heard Arabs fly falcons
at ground game.”

“Like antelope?” Piat could see a handful of wary animals
moving through the thorn trees to the covered water of
the wadi at the base of an enormous, castle-shaped baobab
tree.

Hackbutt took the binoculars from his eyes with weary
patience. “Give me a break, Jack; you know better than
that. That's a big red-tail, but he can't take an antelope.
He wouldn't know what the hell to do with it.” Hackbutt
put the binoculars back up to his eyes. “Bella wouldn't
know what to do with an antelope.”

Piat went back to staring through his own binoculars.
“They have some small antelope here. Dik-diks.”

After fifteen minutes of watching the prince eat his lunch,
Hackbutt sat back. “So—now what?”

Piat continued to watch. “We wait.”

“What are we waiting for?”

Piat said, “Something. I don't know what. We're as close
as I dare get. If we don't get lucky, we'll just drive up and
‘encounter' them. Hey—Digger—don't wave your binocs
around. Somebody might see the dazzle off the lens.”

“Pretty boring, if you ask me. He's not even flying his
bird.”

“What does that tell you?” Piat asked.

“He's waiting for something. He's probably waiting for
a particular prey. Maybe even your miniature antelope.”

Piat raised his glasses and peered off into the middle
distance. “I don't know anything about big-game hunting
in Africa,” he said. “Fuck, I wish I knew something about
all this. What's he waiting for?” Piat changed position, restless,
angry at his own shortcomings. “Digger, what's he
doing?”

“Eating lunch. Not a bad idea, if you ask me.” Hackbutt
started to use his binoculars to watch birds in the valley
behind them. “I really like these,” Hackbutt said. “Better
than my glasses at home. Can I keep them when we're
done?”

Piat peeked at the party below them. Despite the cover
of the rocks and anthills, he felt exposed, and had a presentiment
of doom. His whole idea was based on Hackbutt's
prediction that the prince would lose his bird. In the hot
light of day, it was revealed as a stupid idea.

Piat changed position four times in an hour. The prince
and the falconer continued to eat. Then they drank tea
from a thermos. They stroked the bird and watched the
plain at their feet and were in turn watched.

Piat fidgeted and tried not to infect Hackbutt with his
anxiety. He felt less and less confident in his luck.

“How about some lunch?” Hackbutt whispered.

Piat sent Hackbutt down to the car and he returned with
their lunches. They retreated partway down the ridge and
ate them. Piat drank off two bottles of water in a few
seconds, and climbed across the scree to find a place to
take a piss. His watch said that it was a quarter to three
in the afternoon. It was a magnificent day with high, clear
skies. He was starting to think about high-risk approaches
to the prince. He had to set a time—five o'clock sounded
about right. If they hadn't got lucky by five—or maybe
they should just drive home and lurk in the bar. Maybe
the prince would fly the bird at the hotel at dusk.

So many intangibles. So many opportunities to make the
wrong guess.

Sound carried thinly from the valley on the other side
of the ridge. Clear as a bell on Sunday morning came the
cry of a hawk, and voices—shouting. Piat froze in mid-
thought and placed his hand on Hackbutt's shoulder.

More shouting. Another hawk cry.

Piat climbed back to his rocks and lay full length on the
sandy scree. As soon as he put the binoculars to his eyes,
he saw that everything had changed while they ate.

The prince was still on the mound, his gestures dramatic.
He was shouting orders. The black falconer was down in
the wadi.

The bird was not under the parasol.

The two game rangers were also down in the wadi. One
of them was sitting on a branch of the baobab tree. The
other was climbing the far bank.

Hackbutt slid up to his elbow and pulled out his own
binoculars.

“I knew it!” he said with the satisfaction of seeing
someone else fail—not an attractive trait, but one Piat could
forgive. “They lost her. They got her too hungry and they
flew her from that mound and she's treed.”

Piat started sweeping the tree line with his glasses. “If
we can find her before they do—”

Hackbutt was looking up. “They think she's in the trees
by the wadi.” After a minute he said, “They're probably
right. She's not up high and she's not going to go out on
the plain. See the falconer? He's making noise—trying to
flush her out of the trees. I guess he's trying to get the
guides to help.”

The prince was standing alone on the mound, arms
crossed. The falconer stopped shouting and waving his arms
and came up the mound, climbing quickly. He asked a
question, pointing to the trees. The prince hit him across
the face, a single blow, and after a second elapsed, the
sound carried to them like the breaking of a twig.

The falconer continued asking, apparently indifferent to
the blow.

“I don't think I like that guy,” Hackbutt said. Hackbutt's
views of the world were often reduced to the simplicity of
adolescent black and white. His moral disapproval was
reduced to dislike.

Piat had learned to appreciate Hackbutt's apparent
simplicity.

“I don't like him much either,” Piat said. “If we went
down there, could we help him recover the bird?”

Hackbutt nodded. “Sure. Those two goons are useless.
A couple of falconers to help him and we can lure the bird
down in no time.” Hackbutt was assured. His body inclined
to the situation below like a pointer's at a pheasant.

Piat nodded. “Okay. Let's go.”
Win or lose, this is the throw
,
he thought.

As they climbed down, Hackbutt asked, “What do we tell
them about why we're here?”

Piat had thought about that all morning. “Nothing,” he
said. “They won't ask, at least now. Later, we make it sound
like chance. Listen—” as they climbed into their truck, “just
let Mike handle the first contact. He'll talk to their driver—
right? Until then, we act like we don't know what's wrong.”

Hackbutt looked at him wryly. “I think that's pretty obvious,
Jack. We certainly don't want them to know we were
watching them.”

Piat sighed inwardly. Then he crossed another line of
the hundreds he had crossed in making this operation.
“Mike?”

Mike smiled in the rearview mirror. “Ya, Jack?”

“Play it cool with the drivers, Mike. Okay? Ask if something's
wrong. Get
them
to tell
you
.”

Mike's answering nod and smile were eloquent of just how
much Mike understood of what was going on. The book said
that unless Mike was a recruited agent, Piat couldn't use him
like this, giving specific direction on operational issues. Piat
just chucked the book out the window.

Piat picked up a book on the birdlife of Tsavo and pretended
to read. In fact, he could barely breathe.

Three minutes later, Mike pulled the Land Rover up next to
a gleaming Toyota Land Cruiser and called out to the driver
in Swahili.

The driver laughed and gesticulated at the patch of trees
by the water. Mike handed him a cigarette—an American
Marlboro—and the driver called to the truck. The driver
from the truck came trotting up to Mike's window but
stopped when a shout came from the trees. He shouted
back—Piat caught the verb “take”—
nataka
something something.
Mike lit a cigarette and tossed it to the newcomer,
who caught it and put it in his mouth. He pointed down
the wadi and laughed and talked, and Mike laughed with
him.

Piat leaned forward. “What's happening, Mike?”

Mike turned around. “Bwana, the drivers work for a man
who has a special license to hunt. He's hunting with a bird.
The bird has become lost.”

Piat thought that Mike was being a little too thorough,
like all newcomers to deception. Nonetheless, he was effective.
“Tell them one of your passengers is a falconer—a hunter
with birds. Ask them if they need help.” Piat knew that the
drivers wouldn't take it on their own authority to agree or
disagree. In fact, he was counting on it.

Too much time was passing. This had to be
just right
.

Both men listened to Mike and both started talking. To
Piat, they seemed to talk for a long time. Then the second
man, the truck driver, pinched out his cigarette and tucked
it behind his ear and ran off toward the wadi. A dusty African
with a rifle emerged immediately and held his hand up, palm
outward—stop.

This is not the way this is supposed to go
.

“What's he saying?” Piat asked.

Mike ignored him. He shouted to the man with the rifle,
who cupped his ear to listen. That was the action that gave
him away—it was an elaborate pantomime. Piat saw through
it in a second and hoped that the prince was not so perceptive.
Mike and the truck driver had arranged it.

For fifty dollars.

Mike smiled at him. “He says a bird has been lost—a valuable
bird. He asks us to help.” His face said,
Isn't this what
you wanted
?

Piat wanted to hug him. Instead, he slapped Hackbutt on
the thigh. “Hey, let's go help find this bird.”

Hackbutt was out of the car as fast as Piat. Piat's knees
were weak and his heart was pounding.

They jogged to the edge of the wadi. Piat looked for the
bird, but Hackbutt located the slim shape of the prince's
falconer and called out.

“Hallo there!” Hackbutt called. “Your driver says you've
lost a bird!”

It was remarkable. Digger had just spoken
exactly
the
right line.

The slim black man in the wadi glanced over his
shoulder—toward the prince still standing on the mound,
invisible to Piat. And of course Piat wasn't supposed to
know he was there.

Then the black falconer made up his mind—a balance
of things that would anger his master, Piat suspected. His
English, when he called, was heavily accented but fluent.
“Please move quietly!” he called. He sounded more Indian
than African.

Hackbutt slid down the slope of the wadi and moved
carefully to the falconer's side. Piat took his time. It was
now all down to Hackbutt, and Piat wanted Hackbutt to
know it.

Hackbutt joined the other falconer, and Piat could see
them both pointing up into the branches of the baobab
tree. The prince's falconer was speaking quickly, and
Hackbutt was nodding.

Piat watched the tree.

The prince's falconer went up the wadi at a trot, headed
toward the mound, leaving Hackbutt standing at the base
of the tree, watching it. He backed away slowly, still looking
up, almost tripping over a rock and never taking his eyes
off the tree.

Piat, his attention divided three ways—Hackbutt, the
African falconer, the tree—yet caught a flicker of pale
movement in the tree, close to the inverted cone of the
trunk. And another. He even recognized the motion, nearly
identical to Bella's shows of anger and bafflement.

In a low voice, he called, “Digger?” No response. He
didn't want to take his eyes off the bird. “Digger?”

“I hear you, Jack.” Hackbutt was at his elbow, his binoculars
on the tree. “Good eyes, Jack.”

“She's mad.”

“He, I think. Yes. Mad as hell. Going to be quite a piece
of work to get him down.” Hackbutt sounded pleased with
himself and the challenge. Piat was reminded of Hackbutt
on the birds in Scotland. And Mike, talking to the other
drivers.

“What do you want me to do?” Piat asked.

Hackbutt kept his binoculars on the bird. “Clear the wadi,
Jack. Get the drivers and the rangers back by the vehicles.”

“Where's the prince's man?”

“He went for his bag. Fancy coming down here without
it. I think he's scared, Jack.”

Piat nodded, which, of course, Hackbutt couldn't see.
“Okay, Digger,” he said, almost whispering. “Clear the wadi.
Anything else?”

Hackbutt smiled beneath the binoculars. “No. I'll take it
from here.” That, too, was like Hackbutt with his birds, a
sudden, surprising authority.

Piat cleared the wadi with the help of Mike's voice and
Mike's language. Then he confined his activities to handing
out cigarettes and watching Hackbutt and the prince's
falconer work. They laid out a long lure and cast it, the
falconer whirling it over his head like a sling and then
letting it travel until the chunk of meat at the end hit the
dust of the wadi floor. The first three casts, the bird shifted
his weight and opened his wings, clearly interested, but
anger and bewilderment overcame hunger and training,
and he stayed in his tree.

Piat tried to get a glimpse of the man on the mound.
He couldn't see him, no matter how he shifted his position.

When Piat returned his attention to the wadi, Hackbutt
had the lure. He spun it through the air differently, slowly,
the meat at the end making a low whirring noise as it
passed through the long circle above his head. Twice,
Hackbutt managed to entangle it in thorn trees. The third
try, Hackbutt whirled it with the meat almost on the ground.

The bird shifted his weight, then shifted again, leaned
out and gave a low cry of frustration.

Hackbutt kept whirling the lure. He didn't let it touch
the ground. He didn't speed or slow his motion. After a
minute, Piat wondered how long he could keep it up.