The Falconer's Tale (39 page)

“I think okay. She settled right down with me. You hung
over, Jack?” He grinned. “You should get more exercise.”

Piat rubbed his eyes. “I'm okay.” He began the final briefing.
Nothing was put on paper. He went through it all three times,
even though they'd been through it in Mull: the meeting
would be at the Tree of Life, a landmark baobab out in the
desert where people sometimes went to fly falcons. The choice
had been the prince's, approved by Piat. Hackbutt had to find
his way there in the van with Bella; Piat went over the route,
but he had made Hackbutt memorize it in Mull, and this was
simply reinforcement.

“How do I behave toward the prince?”

“Respectful but dignified; I let him set the pace.”

“Good. What's your real target?”

“Mohamed.”

“What do you want from him?”

“A meeting if possible, a phone number if not. Phone
number regardless, I mean. But meeting first.”

“Try to find out if the prince is going to stay in Bahrain.
Find out if he has a house here, or maybe he's using a house
of his uncle's. I don't see the prince rising early and sprinting
across the causeway to make an eight a.m. meeting. I think
he's already here. So try to find out where.”

“From Mohamed.”

“Right.” They went through it again, poked at it, looked
at possibilities. Hackbutt asked if he should offer money and
Piat said no, that was later. “But try to find out his real
name. See if you can get a rise out of him by asking about
family. If you get any response, even an expression, maybe
he looks at the prince and shuts up—say something about
maybe you could carry a message for him. You get it? We
want to plant the seed that we're his connection to the
world outside Saudi Arabia. Okay? Nothing heavy-handed,
Digger. Light. Nuanced. If you get anything adverse, back
away. Okay?”

Piat couldn't eat. He couldn't even drink coffee; the first
mouthful was like acid.

“Okay, what's the gimmick—the connection?” Hackbutt,
on the other hand, was putting it down pretty well.

“Bella.”

“Damn right. Is she eating okay? Does he understand how
finicky she is? How varied her diet is? How—”

“I got it, Jack. She's my bird.”

“I just want you to bore in on the idea that you're
Mohamed's expert when it comes to Bella, and he's to telephone
you a lot.”

“Jack, you're like a water drop on a hot pan. I've never
seen you like this? Opening-night jitters?” Hackbutt gulped
coffee. “It'll be all right. I'll be fine. The hard part for me is
saying goodbye to Bella, and I did that overnight.” He patted
his mouth with a napkin. “You're making me nervous, Jack.”

Still, he went over it once more. The mood dumped on
him by the dreams and the surveillance remained, a curtain
through which he tried to be the seasoned professional doing
his job. He was just alert enough to keep from spooking his
agent, turning his own black mood into a virus that would
infect Hackbutt. In the end, it was Hackbutt who looked at
his watch and suggested they move on, and Piat gave up and
walked out with him.

Piat had left the van in his hotel's garage. Now, he drove
it through the waking streets, looking for surveillance, finding
none. He backed it to the loading dock. Hackbutt and the
same porter were already there, nodding as if in approval of
his driving. Piat handed over the keys, helped load the bird
into the van, and walked away.

There was always this moment when you walked away
and left the agent to do it or not do it. He, a man who had
never had a child, thought it must be like leaving your child
for her first day at school.

He was back in his room just after seven.

Something was wrong.

Alone, he knew that something was wrong. It wasn't
Hackbutt and it wasn't the meeting and it wasn't his mood.
It was—

He didn't know what it was. He had got out his running
clothes, meaning to try to run the dreams out of his head, out
of his body. He was sitting on the bed, a T-shirt in his hands.
There had been no hitches after the business about the cage;
there had been no surveillance, no problem with the agent. He
was a basket case, but the briefing had gone okay. What, then?

Something, something that bothered him. He went over
the briefing, then tracked the cat back through yesterday.
Carl, the bird, the trailer, the cage—

The cage.

The damage to the cage. She hadn't been hurt but the
cage had been ruined. Yet they had called him, fixed it with
a new cage; she had been okay, if rattled. Was it the cage?

His mind called up a kind of memory photograph: correspondence
lying on the desk in the trailer.

Force Air.

He put down the T-shirt and picked up the telephone.

A woman answered. Her voice was thick with sleep. It
was only five in Naples.

“Can I speak to Mike?”

“No, I'm sorry.” He could picture her, sitting up, running
her hand through her hair, waking. Pretty woman. “He's not
available right now. Can I take a message?”

Piat contemplated hanging up. She was an NCIS officer,
Dukas had said. Let's see. “Leslie? I doubt you remember
me. We met on Lesvos.”

Silence. “Oh,” she said. Then, “How have you been?”
Without saying a name.

Even through his panic, Piat thought,
That's one quick girl
you've got there, Mike
. “I need to talk to Mike. Could you tell
him that? Something's a little—off—and I'm trying to reach
him?”

Pause. She was chewing on something—a pencil? And
writing, he thought. “Is there somewhere that he can call
you?” she asked.

Piat wasn't that desperate. “No. But listen—it's just something,
a name, maybe he'll recognize. Tell him ‘Force Air.'
Okay? Not Forced—Force, no D.” She was waiting for more.
He hadn't intended to give more, but he said, “Tell him I'm
in a place that has one of your offices and a lot of sand.”

“Oh, sure.”

After he'd hung up, he thought he'd done a stupid thing.
He should have called the emergency number that Partlow
had given him, but he had dismissed that idea without even
thinking it through. This wasn't an emergency. This was a
feeling.

He ran. He headed out the way Hackbutt must already
have headed, not meaning to go anywhere near the meeting,
only being drawn that way by it. He ran hard; he wanted
the mindlessness that comes with exertion. He wanted his
brain to let go, the mood to let go; he wanted relief. Instead,
the dreams seemed to come with greater clarity, and he found
himself running in the early heat, sweat pouring down him,
and seeing the Bella of the dream, dead on a beach and
wrapped in wire.

They'd called him because she was sick. Except that, aside
from losing a little weight, she wasn't sick. The cage was
ruined—the fork from a forklift had gone right through it.

Bullshit
. He'd helped Hackbutt select the damn thing. To
get a forklift to spear it, it would have had to be welded to
the floor. Otherwise, it would just move. Not to mention
how unlikely it was that an Arab would hurt a falcon.

He was well out of the nice parts of Manama, running
through a district that mixed low-income Shia and warehouses.
He turned, following old pavement marks for a hash
run, a local expat running sport. He automatically took the
opportunity of the left turn to check his back trail.

He was under surveillance. The knowledge went through
his brain like a lance of ice. The red Toyota crawling along
the side street had been around his hotel earlier. Same driver.

Simultaneous with that realization came another.

Bella
.

Wire
. There had been wire in the trailer. He had used it
to make her something. It had been thin, braided of many
strands. He could see it wrapped around the dead bird in the
dream. Communications wire.

Bella is wired
.

It came to him in that form—the dream as pun. And he
saw it all. Including the reason an American in a Toyota was
watching him.

Bella, wire, the wrapping for two new pagers in the wastebasket,
the new cage.

The new cage was a bomb.

“Craik.” It was the middle of the night to him; he had been
deeply asleep in his London hotel room.

“Al, Mike Dukas.”

He started to say,
What the hell time is it and what are you
doing to me
? but he knew that Dukas was calling because he
thought something was important—Dukas would have called
Rose, who would have given him the number. He looked at
the bedside clock. It was not quite three-thirty in the morning.
“Shoot.”

“Get on a STU and call me back. My office.”

“Sunday? At this hour?”

“We never close.”

Cursing, he plugged in the STU he'd brought with him
and thought would be useless, got the tinny buzz of encryption.

“That was quick,” Dukas said.

“I didn't want to ruin my entire night. What's up?”

“Piat called me. Something's going on.”

Craik groaned aloud. “What happened?”

“Leslie talked to him.”

“He say anything specific?”

“He asked what I know about Force Air. I didn't but I
checked—it's the air wing of a security company called Force
for Freedom. That ring a bell with you?”

“I'm afraid it does.”

“Looks like he was in Bahrain when he called. That significant?”

Craik thought about how much to tell. “Bahrain could be
a meeting site.”

“Al, I don't want to find I've got one foot in the shit just
because I helped Partlow with Piat. If Partlow's running something
that's got Piat worried, I need to know.”

“That makes two of us. I'll get back to you.”

The Tree of Life was Bahrain's most uninspiring landmark.
Except that it was far from anything else in the desert, and
people went there to fly falcons. And it was overlooked by
cliffs more than a mile away. Cliffs where a man with a cell
phone could sit and remotely detonate a birdcage.

Piat knew where to find the Tree of Life.

And Piat knew what to do with his surveillance, too.
Walk
.
Or in this case, run.

It was a long run. It wasn't the longest run of his life, but
it seemed that way, and he hadn't run in the desert enough
to recognize the difference between good footing and bad,
or the difference between short distances and long. He ran
easily on hard-packed gravel, and then he was twisting his
ankles in shifting sand.

Of course, the well-groomed man in the red Toyota and
his partner in the little Mercedes couldn't, or wouldn't, come
across the sand. Piat was careful to run toward the sea until
he crossed a small ridge and disappeared from their sight.
Then he turned east.

He peeled his jacket over his head and tied it around his
waist. And ran on.

After three miles, he was winded, his ankles hurt, and he
didn't have much hope of arriving on time. His watch told
him that he had eighteen minutes until the meeting.

Somewhere within a couple of miles, Edgar Hackbutt would
be wondering where his good friend Jack was when it
mattered.

Piat put his head down and ran faster. He was covered in
sweat—lathered in it. He was thirsty and hungry and the
curry he'd eaten didn't agree with the running.

He pounded on, stretched his stride, cursed the sand and
his lack of recent exercise and all the thousands of mistakes
he had made in this operation, in this year, in his whole life
that had led him to this moment.

Then he saw the tree.

Partlow was staying at the same London hotel and was
even less happy than Craik to get his telephone call. At
the same time, Craik thought that Partlow sounded awake
and alert and as if he was expecting a call from somebody
else. He was, however, irritated to find that this one was
Craik. Craik cut him off and said, “I need to talk to you.
Right now.”

Partlow was wearing pajamas, a velour robe, and slippers
that cost more than most shoes. He didn't look like a man
who had been sleeping; in fact, he looked like a man who
needed sleep. And he was annoyed. He swelled up and vocalized.
But he was worried, too.

Craik said, “Tell me what you know about what Jerry Piat's
doing right now.”

Partlow dropped that quick half-beat that meant he'd been
surprised. “I can't possibly—”

“Piat thought enough of Dukas—not you—to call him from
Bahrain. Something's going on. Tell me about it, Clyde.” He
waited. Partlow looked at his watch and gave a little jerk.
“He mentioned Force Air, which is the in-house airline of
Force for Freedom. I'm mentioning Perpetual Justice. What
the hell is going on, Clyde?”

Partlow's face started to contract; then, through some
exercise of will, it smoothed again, but he looked at his
wristwatch, and Craik would have sworn he was feeling
something like panic. They were still standing, as if Partlow
was going to give him ninety seconds and go back to bed.

“Clyde, if you've involved Dukas and me in an illegal op,
you're dead meat. If Dukas doesn't see to it, I will. And don't
tell me I haven't got the clout!”

“Nothing I do is illegal.” But he sounded unsure—as if he
were listening to some other conversation that was more
important and what he said to Craik was on autopilot.

“Something smells. Smells enough that you let me see
some information about it so maybe you could share the
blame with me if it went bad. Perpetual Justice, Clyde—tell
me about it!”

Partlow pulled himself a little together. “I've no idea why
Piat would be so irresponsible as to call Dukas about anything,
but it's nothing to do with me.”

Craik changed his tone. “Clyde—I did you a favor. I brought
Dukas in; together, we got Piat for you—twice. ‘Give a little
to get a little.' As a favor to me, then. Please. Clyde, I'm
asking you as nicely as I can—what is Piat is doing?”

“I'm awfully afraid I don't know what you're talking
about.”

Craik pulled up two chairs. He sat. After several seconds,
Partlow sat, but he looked at his watch again. Craik said,
“Perpetual Justice is a DIA setup, Clyde. They do a lot of
business with Force for Freedom. What is Piat into in
Bahrain?”

“Even if I knew, I couldn't tell you, of course.”

“Perpetual Justice gave you a backdated contact report on
an interrogation that probably involved torture. So far as I
can find, that report is the original source of interest in Muhad
al-Hauq. Isn't it? Did Perpetual Justice set you up in this
operation? Are you just the front guy for a DIA clandestine
op that smells enough that the point man has to call on an
outsider?”

Partlow murmured, “So far as I know, DIA doesn't do clandestine
operations.”

“Have they known the details of your operation all along?
About me, Dukas—Piat?”

Partlow laughed. He had found his groove—comradely
condescension. “You ask the most remarkable questions!”

“Contact reports? So they knew exactly what was going
on day by day?”

Partlow looked pained. “I've no idea who ‘they' are.”

“I thought you said DIA,” Craik said patiently. “I know
every approved tasking that DIA touches. This is something
else. And you know it. This is the bunch over on Mulholland
Avenue.”

Partlow looked at him. He hadn't been able to keep his
eyes from reacting. But he was able to laugh again, not very
convincingly. “You have a frame of reference I just don't
understand, Craik.”

“They've screwed up, Clyde. They've screwed up their
paperwork and they've screwed up their finances, and maybe
now they've screwed up your operation. Maybe they've
screwed you, too. But they're not going to screw me and
they're not going to screw Mike Dukas!”

Partlow waved his hands. He might have been trying to
quiet an unruly crowd. “You don't have— I really can't—”
He dropped his arms. He looked hard at Craik, a kind of test
run of one Partlow style, found it wasn't going to work. “I
have no comment to make.”

Craik studied him, gave up. Partlow might have known
more, might tell it another day, but probably wouldn't now.

Craik stood, thinking about flying time from Bahrain to
Glasgow, then the trip to Mull. Would Piat come back to
Mull with his falconer? And there was a woman—was she
with them? He said, “I'm going to have to miss some of
tomorrow's meeting. You're going to cover for me.” He smiled.
“As a quid pro quo.”

“I'm sorry, my friend, but—”

“I have a good officer to stand in for me; I'll clear it with
DNI. He won't like it, but I'll persuade him. This officer can
handle most of the stuff, but if it gets sticky, you're going to
make it happen that everybody waits until I get there. Okay,
Clyde? To keep me from being unhappy?”

Partlow smoothed his robe over his thighs. He stood. “I
suppose so.” He checked his watch.

Craik headed back to his room and the STU. Maybe Dukas
could track Piat and the others out of Bahrain. Or maybe
they were still there.

Or maybe Piat's call had been ado about nothing—but
Craik didn't believe that. If Piat had called Dukas, he thought
something was going on.

He knew the tree was huge, alone on the floor of a desert
valley dominated by low, rocky ridges. He knew, too, that it
was home to a swarm of flies and not much else. He'd been
there before.

But now he could see it.

Twelve minutes. Two miles at his best running pace. How
big did a big tree look at two miles?

At the eight-minute mark he picked up a gravel road and
stayed on it. He was taking long strides, was running as well
as he had ever run over such a distance. He was aware, like
a man gambling his last chip, that at the end of this run,
whenever he stopped, he'd have nothing left—that the
running was all that was holding him up, even now, and
when he stopped it would be to fall.

Tough shit.
Suck it up, princess
.

Four minutes to eight. Might get a minute or two if he
was lucky or some part of the op—the other op, the enemy
op—was slow. His thinking was completely clear, his head
was clear. He saw the whole thing. Somebody—it didn't
matter who—had played Partlow from the start, because the
op, the contact op, was never a recruitment. It was an assassination.
Except that Partlow—and Piat, of course—had done
such a good job that instead of walking away, they'd found
a way to make it work, and so here he was.

Partlow was in it, but knew nothing of the bomb.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have been so pleased by “Bob.”
Partlow had a good poker face, but he couldn't hide pleasure.

Piat wished he knew who it was who wanted the prince
dead.

Now he could see two clusters of tiny people near the tree.
A white SUV. A van like a toy car.

Don't jump the gun. Don't just hand over the bird, Digger, or
you're dead. Stand there. Don't let the prince near the cage—that's
when they'll trigger it—

Five hundred meters. More than a quarter of a mile. The
human body looks like a speck at that distance. A good high
school athlete can run it in just a little over a minute.

Four hundred meters. Where was the man with the pager?
Was Carl with him? Carl of the eyeglasses and the yessirs
and the shit-eating manner? Carl, who'd blindsided him?
Led surveillance right to him?

They could be anywhere on the north–south ridges.
Anywhere within sightline. They'd have wonderful optics
and the pager and nothing else to give them away.

Three hundred meters. Carl must see him—except that he
was on foot, running—not what Carl would expect. Except that
their surveillance should have alerted them that he had run off.

If Carl cared about him at all. Almost close enough to
shout now.

Two hundred and fifty meters, and the human body is as
tall as the distance between the quick and the tip of a thumb
held at arm's length.

Two hundred and twenty meters, and two of the minuscule
figures were bending to take something big from the
van. Wired Bella.

Piat threw himself forward into the stumbling remnant of
the sprint he didn't have left in him, but he covered ground
until he could recognize Hackbutt's face and Hackbutt's
straight back as he and Mohamed carried the heavy cage in
both arms toward the white SUV. The prince, recognizable
by the men clustering around him, was standing to receive
them.

Fifty meters. Five seconds for a world-class sprinter. More
for a tired spy of fifty. The standing figures were as tall now
as the whole nail of a thumb held at arm's length.

Piat knew that the man on the ridge would need several
seconds to dial the number that would detonate the bomb.
Seconds
.

He stopped running. He was gasping. He wanted to put
his hands on his knees, rest. He tried to get enough breath
to shout. “Digger! The cage is a bomb!” His voice seemed to
stay in his throat. He fought for air. “Digger!
Bomb! Get out!”

Mohamed did hear him—younger ears. Hackbutt didn't.
Mohamed turned his head, looked at Piat, and dropped his
end of the crate. And ran.

The prince heard him as well. He focused on Piat, and
then he was running for the white SUV, and his security
men were trying to get between him and Hackbutt.

Hackbutt had held on to his end of the cage and had even
tried to catch Mohamed's end before it hit the ground. The
thing was too heavy. He staggered and lost his hold, and the
cage hit the sand and tipped back, and Hackbutt kept it from
tipping over with an effort that almost pulled him down.

Piat wanted to run to him, but he was done. Panting, he
managed to shout, “Digger! The cage is a
bomb
!”