The Falconer's Tale (34 page)

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.”

Piat was full length on the bracken, a cup of tea in a trembling
hand. He waited for Hackbutt to go on but the other
man was suddenly silent. As if aware that the silence was
wrong, Hackbutt snatched up the binoculars and began to
search the rocks and the sky. Piat, exhausted, was happy to
let him do it; it was just Hackbutt being Hackbutt.