The Falconer's Tale (21 page)

She lifted her eyes, met his, and smiled. She was somewhere
in the mystical realm between forty and sixty—attractive,
perhaps a little bold. Perhaps a little tired.

He took his chance. He went straight to her table and sat,
and thus he vanished off the radar of the security in the
lobby.

Luck. Fortuna. Operational daring.

“You look as if you could use some entertainment,” Piat
said as he sat. “May I buy you a drink?”

She smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Of course,” she said.

Piat rose and walked to the bar. From that vantage point
he caught the very end of the entourages packing the elevators,
a string of Arabic and English invective aimed at the
bird, and the prince, waiting with his falcon and his attendant.

He watched the prince's body language, his aside to the
attendant with the bird as the elevator doors closed. And he
thought,
He despises his uncle and all the rest of them
.

For an entire minute, the prince and his man were alone
in the lobby, without security, without friends. While paying
for two drinks, Piat fumbled finding his wallet. Using his
jacket for cover and working as fast as he could, he managed
to shoot four photos. The bar attendant waited impassively.

As he dropped the camera back into his jacket, he found
that the prince was looking at him.

Piat smiled, collected his drinks, and returned to the table.
His hands were shaking. He sat closer to the woman and
with a better view through the arch, just in time to catch
the prince's back disappearing into the elevator. For the first
time, he believed that the scheme might work.

He set himself to charming his companion.

She declared herself charmed when she went off to bed—
alone. “I'm past having affairs,” she said, laying her hand on
his arm with a smile. “Now I prefer just to enjoy some sleep.”

Piat laughed and told her she was a woman after his own
heart.

Despite the booze and the nerves, Piat rose with the dawn,
put on a disreputable pair of shorts and shoes, and went for
a run. He ran up the hills behind the town until he crossed
the border into France, and then he ran down the main road
along the coast, passing a string of second-rate hotels and
restaurants before turning back to the water and running
back into Monaco on the beach.

In his room, he downloaded the photos from the camera
to his computer. Despite his best efforts, most of them were
useless—too dark, too light, too blurry. But he had one photograph
of the prince and his attendant standing with the bird.

Their faces wore the same expression—disgust—and all three
of them had their eyes fixed on the elevator doors. Piat blew
it up, encrypted it, and saved it. He also had a dark but useful
photo of the four security men on the curb in front of the
Metropole, the first to have got out of the cars. He encrypted
that and saved it as well.

At ten, he arranged to pick Irene and Hackbutt up at their
hotel in a car. By eleven, they were already high in the alps
behind the town, parked at a scenic overlook that faced down
a valley toward the sea.

“That's the target,” Piat said. His laptop was open on
Hackbutt's lap.

“That's the biggest red-tail I've ever seen,” Hackbutt
answered. “No hood, in a hotel lobby. That's a good bird.”

“The guy,” Piat insisted. He pointed at the prince.

“Sure,” said Hackbutt.

“Can you recognize him?” Piat asked after a while.

“I can,” Irene said. She was sitting alone in the back and
looking for attention. Or command. Or whatever she craved.
“I can pick him out of a crowd of Arabs. Eddie's lucky if he
recognizes
me
on the streets of Tobermory.”

Hackbutt shrugged. “I'd recognize the bird. That's one hell
of a good bird. People get all worked up about peregrines
and big hawks and heavy falcons. This guy knows his stuff.
Red-tails—easy to train, they like people, they travel well.
He's got the best one I've ever seen, and he's got it out in
public. Tells me a lot.” Hackbutt glanced at Piat. “Wish I'd
been there. Lots to talk about.”

Piat winced. “I couldn't know,” he said. He shrugged.
“Water under the dam. Today, we just look for a little luck.
Play in the casino. Eat in the Metropole bar. Don't push it
and don't act without my say-so. Let me be clear on this,
folks—if we don't have a solid opportunity to approach the
guy, I
don't
want him to see any of us, and I
don't
want his
security to see us. Okay?”

Hackbutt nodded. “So—all three of us? Today? In the
casino and the bar?”

Piat nodded. The bird had got Hackbutt interested.

Irene leaned forward from the back seat. “You boys have
fun. I'm going for a swim and a massage.” She widened her
eyes at Piat. “This place is duller than I thought it would be.”

Piat and Hackbutt walked and played, ate, talked, and played
some more. There were Saudis in the Casino—one woman
who had definitely been in the entourage the night before,
others who seemed to be her attendants. But not the uncle
and not the prince. Piat drank a glass of wine and wished
for a surveillance team and the cooperation of the local security
service, both far beyond his means. So he was doing
what he could.

Despite his efforts, no chance encounter materialized.
Whatever the uncle and the nephew were doing in Monte
Carlo, they were doing it behind closed doors. The other
Saudis circulated, gambled, swam, read books, and walked
along the promenade. Piat and Hackbutt saw them all.

At three o'clock, the prince's attendant appeared in the
lobby with the bird on his fist. Piat and Hackbutt were in
the bar.

“Look at that bird,” said Hackbutt, moving to rise.

“Don't move a muscle.” The elevator behind the attendant
remained frustratingly empty. Taking his time, Piat paid
their tab and took Hackbutt out the bar entrance. Twenty
meters away, the man with the bird emerged from the main
doors. He walked toward the beach with the bird on his fist.
He was a curiously medieval figure in a very modern place,
and he drew stares.

“He's going to exercise it,” Hackbutt said, pointing.

Piat wanted to restrain him, but Hackbutt wasn't the only
person on the promenade pointing at the hawk.

“How often does he have to do that?” Piat asked.

Hackbutt looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Every day,
of course. Jack, sometimes I think you don't listen to a word
I say. Hawks and falcons need to fly every day to stay in
shape. A big bird like that needs a lot of exercise to be in
top form.
Oh!
”

The African had walked down the ramp to the beach,
apparently uninterested in the attention he was getting. He
slowly unwrapped the bird's jesses from his gloved left hand,
talking to her as he walked. And then he raised his fist.

Hackbutt was pointing again. The bird was climbing rapidly,
free of the wrist. Every eye on the beach watched it climb.
Habit made Piat glance around—but the hawk was the only
show to watch.

“He's going up—he's waiting on. That's wonderful; I don't
think I've ever seen a red-tail waiting on.” Hackbutt flicked
his eyes off the bird to Piat. “Waiting on—it's like being in
ambush. Up high. It requires patience, which most birds don't
have much of. Right?”

Piat nodded, his eyes on the hawk.

The big bird was circling over the beach, the curling feathers
at its wingtips just moving in response to changes in the wind,
the head moving back and forth, the rest of its body still, gliding.

“To fly that bird here—on the beach, with all these noisy
people—that's trust. That guy trusts his bird completely.”
Hackbutt was shaking his head. “Or he's a complete idiot.”

“Or he can just get another one,” Piat added. He'd known
a few Saudis.

Hackbutt shook his head. “No way. Not that size.”

The big hawk rose and rose, riding the sea breeze, flying
without any apparent effort. He rose high enough that Piat
had trouble following the bird's motions. The Pretty People
on the beach began to lose interest. A single gull flapped past
from the landward side and started to watch the shallow
water for its own prey.

“There he goes!” Hackbut shouted.

The hawk plummeted, caught the gull and pulled it from
the sky. The gull thrashed once, tried to turn, and died in
the air. In five seconds, the gull was on its belly in the sand
with the big hawk standing on its neck, head bobbing to
seize more meat. The attendant approached and lured the
bird off its prey, knelt to feel the bird's crop with a thumb,
and began speaking rapidly.

The spectators had shied away.

A small man in dirty white overalls appeared and began
to clean up the remnants of the gull. The crowd went back
to their conversations and the joys of a cool winter beach.
The bird's handler walked back up the ramp to the hotel,
talking to the hawk all the way and smoothing her feathers
with his right hand.

“I want to
talk to him
,” Hackbutt said.

“Nope. This isn't the time. You'll get your chance.”

“I
want to talk to him, Jack
. You got me all the way here,
dressed in all this stuff, away from my birds that need me,
you show me a performance like that—god damn it, Jack,
that was one of the slickest displays of hawking I've ever
seen, and bam—the guy just walks away and you aren't
going to let me talk to him!”

“That's right,” Piat said gently. “He's not the target. He
might talk to you all day and never get you closer to the
prince. Okay?”

Hackbutt pursed his lips and blew out some air in frustration.
“Target-shmarget. I want to talk birds. That guy
knows
stuff.
”

Piat nodded. “I'll bet he does.
Later
.” He put a hand on
Hackbutt's shoulder. “We're waiting on.”

Hackbutt's head snapped around, eyes locked on his, and
then he laughed. “I get it,” he said.

Irene was waiting in the casino. She looked her part, but
her posture and the constant motion of her hands said
there was trouble before they were in hailing distance.

“I want to go for a walk,” she said. Up close, she looked
clean and bright and very much on edge.

Piat shook his head.

“I mean it, Jack. This is important.” Her eyes were going
back and forth—to the entrance, to the croupiers.

Piat knew that all of them had bad body language just
then. Somewhere on the casino security monitors, they were
all being marked—three nervous people standing in a group.

“Okay,” he said. “Let's walk.”

Irene's idea of security was to get outside in the sun and
then to scrutinize everything she saw while talking too fast.

“I just saw your prince,” she began. “In the lobby. With
somebody I know.”

Hackbutt was staring down the beach. “You should have
seen this guy fly that red-tail, Irene.”

Piat didn't stop in his tracks—quite. “Someone you know?”

“George Kwalik. Republican. Ohio. A big shot in certain
circles. He was—probably still is—a congressman. Very
conservative. Did business with my father.” She continued
looking around her. Piat could see that she was spooked
and wished she could hide it better. Finally she said, “Oil
business.”

“He was
with
the prince?” Piat asked.

“I'm sure. They were talking. Kwalik was talking. The
prince acted as if he was barely listening. He was looking
out the windows. I was afraid Kwalik would look at me.”

Piat glanced back at the lobby windows. “When was this?”

She looked at him with irritation, her flow broken. “Thirty
minutes ago. Kwalik—what's he doing here? I think he saw
me, Jack.”

“So what?”
So what
wasn't on the list of Agency-approved
phrases in dealing with an overwrought agent, but all of Piat's
balls were in the air.
While we watched the damned bird, the prince
was right there in the lobby, watching through the window. Watching
his bird. Or watching us. And talking to some American heavy hitter
about something
. Reason said that there was no way the prince
could be on to him so quickly. Reason said it, but that didn't
calm the bubbles in his belly or the sweat under his arms.

Irene was glaring at him, and he suspected that there was
something here he ought to know and didn't—was she on
the lam? Had she done something really fucked up before
leaving mom and dad?

Christ, the things he didn't know.

He made a snap decision. Actually, he made a whole series
of decisions, on the wing, right there on the promenade.
“Okay, let's get out of here,” he said.

Irene's face relaxed as soon as he said the words. It was
Hackbutt's turn, however, to be annoyed. “We just got here.
I want to meet this guy!”

Irene was dismissive. “Last night all you wanted to do was
get back to your stupid birds.”

Stupid birds
hung in the air between them like a veil of
poison gas.

Piat stepped between them—literally. “Okay, everybody.
Keep your voices down. We're all wound up tight and in a
minute we're going to start drawing attention. This is
not the
time
, Digger. Okay? Everybody saddle up and go. We'll go
together—we haven't tried to hide anything, no need to start
now. My car. Go to your room, pack, and check out. Don't
rush. Don't get panicked. There's nothing at all to be afraid
of.” Both of them were spooked.

Hackbutt looked past Piat at Irene. “Birds aren't stupid,”
he said quietly.