The Falconer's Tale (17 page)

“Maybe it isn't theirs. Maybe it just has their code on it.”

“What're you saying?”

“I don't know. I'm offering options—isn't that what you
want me to do? I'd ask the question differently, Al. Is anybody
dumb enough to have got an operation going without a task
number, meaning without going through the process?”

“Nobody.”

“But maybe somebody. Somebody who's never done it
before.” Peretz got a new expression on his face, something
approaching a fanatic's gleam. “Somebody who doesn't even
know there
is
a process. Somebody who never heard of task
numbers. Somebody who doesn't know dick-all about intel
but thinks he knows everything!” He poured more beer into
his glass, sipped, licked his lips. “Take that kid who got me
shot.”

“Spinner?” Craik hadn't been there, but he'd heard the
story from Dukas, later from Peretz. “He isn't a kid, and he
didn't get you shot, Abe. He got suckered by Mossad because
he was too dumb to walk and chew gum at the same time,
and your shooting was an accident.”

Peretz checked himself, then apparently thought better of
getting angry. “My point is, he got sent to Tel Aviv to gather
intel and he sure as hell didn't go under any task number.”

“Yeah, but—” Craik thought about it. “You think?”

The fanatic's face returned. “The DIY Intelligence Agency,
aka the Department of Defense Office of Information Analysis.
The brilliant stars of the new regime. Those guys were so
smart they sent Little Running Dumb-Fuck off to Tel Aviv
with no cover, no country clearance, no nothing. And I got
shot.”

“You're a little bitter.”

“More than a little.” Peretz got up. “I shouldn't drink beer.
I have to change my Pampers.” He'd had about a quarter of
the bottle.

While he was gone, Craik ordered a second beer and
thought about the possibility of the contact report's having
come out of a rogue Defense Department operation. In that
case, why would it be classified under a DIA code? And did
“OIA” on the version he'd seen in Partlow's office really mean
Office of Information Analysis? He was still worrying over it
when Peretz came back.

Abe said, “Al, a lot of stupid stuff was done right after
Nine-Eleven. People were scared shitless. They were also in
shock. There was a feeling of, ‘Forget dotting the i's and
crossing the t's; forget the fine print—go for it!' A missing
task number wouldn't touch some of it.”

“The contact report sounds like there was torture.”

“Tell me about it! There was also a feeling of ‘No more
Mister Nice Guy.' International law was out—batten down
the hatches, do it ourselves, get tough. And they had clout.”

“Not enough clout to ride roughshod over the whole intel
community.”

“Oh, really? Al, sweetheart, look around you! Who's been
blamed for Nine-Eleven? The intelligence community. Who
wasn't defending America until the current administration
came along? The intelligence community. Who favored criminal
prosecution of terrorists instead of military action? The
intelligence community. Who needed reforming and got a
new Galactic Intercontinental All-Powerful Czar to clean
things up? The intelligence community!” Peretz's voice had
risen; the waitress looked over at them. “By contrast, the
geniuses in the White House and DoD were white hats—
never committed intelligence in their lives! Virgins!
And
true
believers.”

“Off-the-books operations cost a lot of money.”

“This administration has money up the wazoo.”

“But no professionals. Even the DIY Detective Agency
wouldn't send an amateur like Spinner to
torture
somebody.
Or to shoot you. They sent him to Tel Aviv on a collection
mission—okay, that was stupid. But a black op would be
something else.”

Peretz tapped the table with a fingertip. “I wouldn't put
anything past them! If you offer a thousand bucks a day,
you'd be amazed how many private contractors there are
just waiting to rip somebody's fingernails out.”

Craik said nothing, not wanting to provoke a tirade.

Peretz said, “If we were playing Let's Pretend, I'd look for
a private company that's got a lot of traction with the administration.
Probably one that's post-Nine-Eleven.”

“That'd take big bucks.”

“What did I just say?”

Craik stared at the bar without seeing it. He raised his
eyebrows as if to say that even stranger things were possible.
He tried to make it a joke. “Well, I wanted to talk to you
because I knew your take on it would be cynical. I didn't
know just how cynical.”

Peretz tapped the Formica tabletop again. “Look to see
where the hotshots went for their payoff after the second
term started. First term, you do the service; second term,
you leave government and make big bucks. These people
believe that patriotism is everything, but it should pay well.”

Craik was silent. He didn't want to listen to another tirade.
He said, “Let's stop talking about it for now. What are you
going to do about Leah?”

“What can I do? I don't know how much freedom she
has. I doubt she can leave Israel.”

“I thought you said it came from Mossad.”

“I don't
know
. If I knew—” His face got the bitter look
again. “I can't trust them.” He didn't say who “them” was.

They left the bar separately.

Piat started Hackbutt on role-playing. Piat played various
targets, sometimes with Irene to help him, sometimes with
Irene as Hackbutt's other half. They played at being in airport
bars and dinner parties, both equally hard to imagine in the
slovenly confines of the cottage. Hackbutt's attempts to make
a contact were forced. Transparent. Laughable. And they made
his hands shake. The more he screwed it up, the more impatient
Irene got. She drummed her fingers on the arm of
her chair. She fidgeted. One afternoon, she got up and went
into her studio, slamming the door.

The only subject that Hackbutt could start and maintain
was falconry. He used it on them at dinner, at breakfast, in
pretend ticket lines and in make-believe rail stations. He had
assimilated only enough of Piat's teaching to be able to turn
any subject, any hint, into a conversation about falconry. He
could talk about raising young birds when children were
mentioned; he could discuss Frederick of Hohenstaufen's
manual of falconry when the Middle Ages surfaced. Food,
wine, sex, music—all led him to falconry.

Piat decided that it would have to do. But it certainly was
boring.

Then Piat began to give them some basic understanding
of the methods and means of espionage. It wasn't an obviously
important part of the training; Piat couldn't imagine
either one of them engaging in lengthy counter-surveillance
routes, making carefully timed meetings, or servicing dead
drops in dangerous foreign countries. The importance of the
training was to remind them of the real purpose of the clothes
and the conversation, to focus them both on the target and
the goal.

With most agents—like Hackbutt—the espionage training
served both to sober them up and to understand the depth
of the commitment they had made. It was a trick of the
trade.

It had the opposite effect on Irene. The professional paranoia
and counterintuitive nature of routine tradecraft made
her laugh. It wasn't her fake, self-conscious laugh, but a
genuine amusement that angered Piat and raised resentment
in Hackbutt.

She and Hackbutt scrapped about it, and then she became
bored. After that, she got tense and impatient and said she
could be spending her time better at her own work.

They drove around the island, crammed into Piat's Renault,
as he pointed out the possibilities of landscape and road
layout—where a meeting could be held, the turn that would
allow them to see a potential surveillant, another set of turns
that would sort a real pursuer from a random encounter.
The training irritated Irene (stupid games, sweetie, and don't
you forget it, and I'm a busy woman now, and don't forget
that
, sweetie). Hackbutt loved it, of course.

Tension, irritation, bickering—Piat wasn't sure what to call
it, but it began to run through the little house like some
low-voltage, barely felt current. At first, he blamed Irene,
thought it was her “work,” her “art,” her self-induced
stress. Then he saw that some of it came from Hackbutt,
as well. One evening, he and Hackbutt came in from dicking
about with the birds; Hackbutt went into the kitchen, and
abruptly there was a slamming of cupboard doors, and
Hackbutt was screaming Irene's name. It was unusual
enough that her studio door popped open and she looked
out, her eyes wide.

“Goddamit, where's my cup? I can't find my cup!” He had
a favorite cup with a hawk on it.

“Oh, Eddie, I'm sure it's around—”

“Jesus Christ, is it asking too much that my fucking cup
be put back in the same place? For Christ's sake!”

“Eddie, please—”

“Don't Eddie
ple
-
e
-
e
-
ze
me! Find my fucking cup!”

It was a childish tantrum. Rare—in fact to Piat unique.
Even he was infected by its violence; he got up and went
into the kitchen, hands spread. “Jeez, it's my fault, Digger, I
helped put the dishes away last night. My fault.” He tried to
make a joke of it. “‘New girl, new ways.'”

Hackbutt's voice changed to a whine. “Well, where
is
it?”

Piat found it in the cupboard with the plates and saucers.
He remembered putting it there. He apologized again;
Hackbutt poured himself tea, then went into the sitting room
and sulked, his silence extending into the evening as embarrassment
at what he must have known was childishness.

Then Piat saw that the tension came from him, or from
him and Irene and their mutual attraction-avoidance. By
then, he had begun unwittingly to merge into their lives.
Trying at least to seem sympathetic with Irene's work (to
keep her happy as the agent's girl, but also to keep her
happy), he had offered to cook one night. He wasn't a very
good cook, mostly man-who-lives-alone stuff, but he could
manage by multiplying the quantities by three. Then he did
it again; then he was helping with the dishes, then the shopping.
Irene didn't seem particularly grateful: “Well, you're
the one that gets every other day off. It wouldn't kill you to
drop by a shop now and then.”

Three days a week should have been enough to train them
as agents. He found himself coming more often, however—
for Irene and for the dog. Coming for a woman was understandable;
coming for a dog was laughable. He took it with
him to the loch one day, let it sit on the bank while he fished.
It had taught him the flat-palm-out gesture that meant “stay,”
and when he used it, Ralph stayed—sitting or lying down
with his head on his paws, alert to the bend of the rod,
ecstatic when a fish flopped on the bank.

A woman and a dog. It was bad practice to have a relationship
with your agent, but nothing was said about her
dog.

But the more he was there, the more uneasy he found
the atmosphere. Something was happening to them—to
them
,
he thought, not to himself—some process that was changing
them. He thought he was the catalyst, not himself one of
the reagents.

* * *

He came in one day and smelled coffee. An old-fashioned
percolator sat on the stove, half full. He had a cup, found
it not bad, later saw Irene pour herself some. She looked
at him, shrugged. Maybe it was the meat she was eating
now, changing her metabolism. Something, certainly, was
changing.

The house had a covered porch that protected the front door
from the local climate. Stone-floored, the porch was a last
clutch at dryness before you plunged into the rain to make
the sprint to your car. The coal box sat out there; so did
mops and a shovel and an axe with a broken handle.

He found Irene there one day. She was in her work clothes.
Smoking a cigarette—another change. Seeing him, she blew
smoke sideways and said, “All my bad habits are coming
back. Soon I'll start fucking strange men.”

He smiled, took the cigarette and puffed and gave it back.

“You're not a stranger. Would that you were.”

“That one hurt.”

“Everything's different since you came.” She took a pack
out of a front pocket of her jeans. It was already half empty.
She took one out, lit it, put it back, then remembered to
offer him one.

“I'll just puff on yours. Next best thing to kissing.”

She looked at him, puffed, blew smoke to the side. “We're
doing all this stuff. All this shit. Eddie goes to his goddam
birds every day like he's running away from home; I go into
that room and work my ass off.” She shook her head.
“Changes.”

“You were working before I got here. All those photos.”

“Those photos had been up there for a year. Eddie and
Irene's little fantasy—Irene's an artist; Irene's going to be a
household word! I hadn't done squat for a year, two years,
three, Jesus, until you— I'd lost it. What do jocks call it? My
drive, my edge. Now look at me.”

“You should thank me, then.” As soon as he said the words,
he wished them unsaid.

She shook her head. “Change scares me.”

“It's only temporary.”

She dropped the cigarette on the stone and ground it out
with a toe. “Everything's temporary, isn't it?”

She went inside; he went to walk the dog.

Hackbutt was beginning to learn—maybe it was the clothes—
but had another tantrum, this one aimed at Annie—maybe
that was the clothes, too, the squire and the slavey. Piat
wasn't there but heard about it when he found that the dog
hadn't been fed. Irene and Hackbutt had forgotten. Annie,
it appeared, hadn't been back for two days.

“She upset Bella,” Hackbutt said. “She's a stupid little bitch.
I don't want her around anymore.”

But Hackbutt found he couldn't really get along now
without Annie, who, as well as helping with the birds, fed
and watered and walked the dog when Piat wasn't there and
did the washing-up when Irene or Piat didn't have the time
or the inclination.

Annie came back after Hackbutt drove to her father's farm
and apologized to the entire family, but she wasn't the same.
Like the rest of them, she was altered by whatever Piat had
brought to the house.

One day, she said to him, “Are you taking the dog for your
own, then?”

“You mean, home with me? No, Annie, of course not.”

“It's fair cruel to lead him on then, isn't it?”

“I'm not leading him on.” He laughed. “I'm giving him
some attention.”

“I saw you and him on the road, he was sitting up in your
car with you like he was a ship's captain or something. You
take him about with you everywhere. He'll be that brokenhearted
when you go away.”

“Why don't you take him, then, Annie? He likes you.”

“I'm not staying one day after I leave school. Next day,
I'm off to Glasgow.”

“I thought you were daft about the birds!”

“There's birds in Glasgow. And
people
!”

“No dogs?”

“Poor tyke.” She tossed her hair back and looked him in
the eye to say, “I've as much right to go my way as you,
Mister Michaels. And it isn't me will be breaking the doggie's
heart.”

Then Irene was drinking more. It was part of the smoking
and the coffee-drinking, he supposed, a return to an old,
perhaps more genuine pattern. He cooked two or three nights
a week now; she helped sometimes, a glass of wine always
close by. When they touched, she didn't jump away; sometimes
she responded with a light bump or an elbow. But
nothing more. One night, they were cleaning up; Hackbutt
was in the sitting room; they passed each other close, both
with dishes in their hands; neither could have grabbed the
other even if grabbing had been on the menu. She looked
at him. He looked at her. She chuckled. “You, too?” She was
a little drunk.

They put their dishes down and he turned toward her and
she half-dodged away, a move like the overtly sexy Irene of
the first time he'd seen her. She giggled, kept her voice low.
“When you first got here, I thought you were going to be
the Zipless Fuck. You know that book? I read it—a woman
author— Anyway, the Zipless Fuck. Then we didn't, and now
everything's complicated.” She took out a cigarette. “And
now you can't because it'll ruin your operation, and I can't
because—” She jerked her head toward the room where
Hackbutt was still sitting. “Why can't things ever be simple,
eh?” She laughed at having used the Canadian “eh?” and
ran out of the room.

* * *

Then, briefly, Irene gave up her “art.” She said she couldn't
make the deadline she'd been given. The agent and the show
could go fuck themselves. She wasn't going to be their gallery
slave.

For a day, she sat around in one of her baggy dresses and
read an old book that had come with the house. Then, a
couple of days later, her door was closed and Piat heard
hammering, and everything went on as before.

One afternoon there was a fierce thunderstorm. Hackbutt
dragged Piat out to help him comfort the birds; Piat didn't
know what “comfort” meant, so he went and held the dog
and nuzzled him because the dog was frightened. After the
storm came cold and brilliant sunshine; when they went
inside, new sounds were coming from the studio. Mostly,
an almost rhythmic groaning; then a throaty scream, drawn
out and guttural. The moans might have been sexual but
suggested pain, too, even death. Then another scream
would come, and he thought of rape, but the pitch was
wrong.

“Irene's music,” Hackbutt said. He knew all about it. She
had recorded hours of the waves on the rocks where the
Atlantic broke against the island, then had paid somebody
in Glasgow to re-record and overlap and slow everything
down.

“The screams were gulls,” Hackbutt said.

“Sounds like the track for a horror movie.” But he didn't
say that to her.

It was late morning in Naples, a brilliant day that felt as if
it had been washed overnight and laid out in the sun to dry.
Dukas had for once got seven hours of sleep. He was sitting
a leg-length away from his desk with both feet on the desktop,
a six-cup Moka Express perched within reach and a cup in
his hand. On the computer table were the remains of a box
of honey-covered fried dough. Without looking, Dukas took
one and brought it to his mouth, still reading.

“You should have a bed moved in,” Dick Triffler said from
the door. He crossed to the far side of the desk from Dukas
and leaned over to look into the pastry box. “Those things
will kill you.”

“Promises, promises.”

“You eat too many of them.”

“I'm an addict and I'm not responsible for my actions.”

Triffler was munching one as they talked. Dukas scowled
at him, looked into the box, and took the last one. “Did you
come in here just to steal my last zeppole?”

“No, I came to ask why Al Craik wants me to stand by a
secure phone at eleven-thirty.”

“Because I told him you're the world authority on the
Office of Information Analysis.”

“They're out of business.”

“Al's interest is historical. Post-Nine-Eleven. I told him
you'd got me an OIA personnel roster when I was having
my adventure with their jerk-off in Tel Aviv.”

“Aha.” Triffler leaned over and looked in the box again.
Finding crumbs, he tipped them into a corner and then
dumped them into his palm. “Italian food is addictive. What's
A's interest in OIA?”

“Can you see that I'm reading?”

“Yes. Are you worried about my eyesight?”

“I'm worried that I got a week's work on my desk and
you're keeping me from doing it!”

“Anybody who can't read and talk at the same time doesn't
deserve to be in NCIS. Some of us can read, talk, and
think
all
at the same time. My theory is you should be promoted out
of this busy posting and let me take over. You go to DC, I stay
here, and we'll mail you care packages of Neapolitan pastry.”

“Al will want the OIA personnel list. You still got it?”

“Nothing is ever created or destroyed.”

A woman poked her head in the door and said that Triffler
had a secure phone call. Dukas said, “Thanks, Jesus.” Triffler
said he was a blasphemer but likable and went out and along
the corridor to his own office. “Triffler,” he said into the STU.

“Hey, Dick—Al Craik.” It didn't sound like Craik, but that
was the effect of the STU.

Triffler said, “The great man just told me what you want.
I got an OIA personnel list as of the end of 2001. That do
you?”

“Just what I want.”

“This didn't come to me exactly through channels, Al, so
don't put it on CNN, okay? A couple people did me favors.”

“This is just for me. Can you secure-fax it to me?” He gave
Triffler a number. “What else have you got on OIA?”

“Only open-source stuff. It was in a few papers, couple of
magazines for a while, then the story died. Nobody was getting
his jockey shorts wet over it back then. From what I read,
it was a small bunch of people in DoD who agreed with like-
minded folks elsewhere in the administration that intelligence
was not something that should be left to people who
spend their lives at it. They were going to be a fresh eye, a
fresh voice. Welcome to Iraq.”

“Anything about them ever being operational?”

“Never heard that. People who wrote about it said it was
into ‘purifying' what the White House saw. And I can understand
where they were coming from—after Nine-Eleven, the
intel community wasn't looking too good. I'd have voted for
something new, myself.”