The Falconer's Tale (24 page)

They started out, but he called Mrs Stillman back. When
Swaricki paused at the door, Alan nodded, and the sergeant
went out and closed the door after him.

“Sit down for a second more, will you?” He took the desk
chair again, waited until she sat. “Who's the best Saudi analyst
you've got?”

She blushed. “It sounds vain to say it, but me.”

“You've got enough on your plate. Who else?”

She named a civilian in the office. He remembered the
man's fitness report—all excellent, except for relations with
his coworkers—and his own meeting with the guy, which
had made Craik dislike him but therefore work hard not to
show it. “I want a bio on a Saudi.” He had the name from
Partlow's taskings, Muhad al-Hauq, already printed out. “Get
everything there is. Open source, classified, Google, whatever.
Have him do a Lexis Nexis, the whole nine yards.”

“That's easy.” She got ready to get up. “That it, captain?”

“Just a sec more.” He smiled at her, because he thought
that again she'd think she'd done something wrong. “This
has to stay just between you and me. Not in writing. If that
bothers you, tell me now.”

She looked startled. “Is this something different?”

“I think it's connected. But it's, mm, iffy.”

“I can't say if it
bothers
me till you ask.”

“That's fair. Okay. Three people came to DIA from another
government office a couple of years ago. That office is shown
on the document I've been talking about as the originating
one—that is, before the task number was backdated. I'd like
to talk to those three people, but they're not in the DIA
phone book. The security officer ‘can't comment.' Mrs
Stillman, you've been here since before those people came
on board.”

She blushed and giggled. “
Many
years before.”

“I thought you might have an idea of how to locate them.”

She sat slightly sideways, resting much of her weight on
her right hip. She joined her hands in front of her. She was
wearing pink, a good color for her. She said, “We're not
supposed to know about the HUMINT people or where they
are. Are they HUMINT?”

“I don't know.”

“HUMINT are not in the phone book, that's for sure! And
I don't think Human Resources would have them, either, or
Finance. They pretty much a law unto themselves. Still—”
She smiled.

“Yes?”

“People are people. We talk, and we say things we don't
think about first. You get to know more than you should if you
stay here long enough. You want me to try to find these folks?”

He wrote the three names he had got from Abe Peretz,
the people who had moved from the Office of Information
Analysis to DIA in 2002—Herman Ritter, Alice K. Einhorn,
Geoffrey Lee—on a piece of memo paper and pushed it across
the desk. She read it and shook her head. “Never heard of
them.”

“Could you ask around?”

“Asking's free.” She stood up. “I don't want to get anybody
into trouble.”

“I don't think you will. As you say, asking's free.”

She stopped before she got to the door.

“Are these folks
dangerous
?”

He laughed.

Her made-up eyes met his. “Why do we care so much?
This is office politics, captain. It doesn't seem your style.”
Her pronunciation of the word
style
had three short a's and
a diphthong.

He nodded. “We signed off on this operation,” he said.
“This office did.
I did
. Now, I think the whole thing is illegal.”

Partlow sent a signal giving Piat a meeting in Paris. Piat
declined. The simple codes didn't give him a chance to say
why, but Piat had no intention of going to France again any
time soon.

In less than an hour, Partlow signaled him again, this time
for a meeting in Italy. Piat opened his laptop, did the numbers,
and decided it could be done. He packed in two minutes and
drove to Glasgow. He was at the airport at four a.m. Friday
morning.

All he saw of Milan was the highway ring. He took the
A4 east to Vicenza, pushing his Audi rental to one hundred
and sixty kilometers an hour because no limit was posted.
Having pulled any prospective surveillants into a long tail
behind him, he got off at Vicenza.

Vicenza was an industrial town around a medieval core.

Piat wanted to see the medieval part and he had to make
sure that no one had picked him up at the airport. Monaco
had made him even more cautious than usual. He stopped
and had coffee, admired what was left of the town wall, and
got on the highway convinced that he was clean. He followed
Partlow's directions and drove well out beyond the town's
highway ring to a conference center that had Clyde Partlow
written all over it—it was new and it gleamed, from the black
marble of its two-storey foyer to the black granite of the
conference room tables. Where, in due season, he found
himself.

“Good to see you again, Jerry,” Partlow said. They shook
hands. They were the only people in a conference room big
enough for a meeting of the Joint Chiefs. There was no bottle
of scotch and no sign of happiness from Partlow. “This place
is secure. It was built for NATO.”

“That's reassuring,” Piat said with an artificial smile. He
wanted to say that just driving up to such a place was bad
security—but what the hell. “Good to see you, too, Clyde.”

“You turned down my French venue, Jerry. That puts me
on the hot seat—I'm due for a meeting in Paris in twelve
hours.” Partlow raised an eyebrow. “Do we have a control
problem, Jerry?”

Piat shook his head. “It's not like that, Clyde. Wait'll you
hear it before you decide I'm a control problem.”

Partlow nodded—the renaissance prince withholding judgment.
“Please tell me.”

Piat flopped back in his chair. It was a nasty chair—hard,
angular, shiny. “I said Monaco was a rotten venue. It was,
and I got burned by the casinos. I'm not trying to ditch the
blame—whatever it was, I probably did it.” He shrugged.
Partlow watched him, impassive.

And angry.

Piat told the story. The cameras. The problems. And the
denouement in his hotel room.

Partlow spread his hands on the table. It was not a gesture
that Piat had ever seen him make. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

Piat sat still.

Partlow clasped his hands over one knee. “We're dead,
then. And I'll have to tell the chief of station in Paris—something.”

Piat smiled. “Blame me. I'm a well-known loose cannon.”
Only after the words left his mouth did he remember that
he was no longer that well-known loose cannon. Now he
was a man who shouldn't be involved in operations at all.

But Partlow had moved on. “No. No, it's not your fault,
Jerry.” Partlow was making a real effort not to shout or pound
his hand on the table. “I'd never have expected them to be
on to you so fast.” The content of his statement was “How
did you fuck this up?”

Piat hesitated. Partlow was bristling—looking for a fight
about the passport and about security. Piat didn't see anything
to be gained by giving him one. “I agree. So let's move on.
I saw the target, I saw his uncle and the entourage, and I
saw the target's bird. We can do it. The falconer can do it.
The venue in Mombasa is as good as we'll get. I want to fly
down and see it, scout it, and get the right rooms. In Africa,
that can be done with straight-up bribes.”

Partlow raised an eyebrow. “We have acquired the interest
of French intelligence and you want to go on?”

“This is your new world order, right? Screw 'em, Clyde.
They probably thought I was there to run a game on the
casinos. Right? If they thought I was there to scam a guest,
that's okay, too. Right? Otherwise, who gives a fuck? By the
time the wheels of the Deuxième Bureau grind, we'll have
this guy on the payroll.”

Partlow nodded, but his mind and his eyes were elsewhere.
“I think perhaps it's time to pull the plug, Jerry.” Partlow
spread his hands again.

Piat didn't like that physical sign one bit. Partlow only
spread his hands when his resources were depleted. So Piat
shrugged. “Sure, Clyde. If you've got cold feet, let's ditch it.”

Partlow rubbed his eyes, ran his fingers through his hair.
“I just don't think it's going to work, Jerry. And I don't want
the scrutiny. Not now.”

Piat leaned forward. “Sure, Clyde. Look, you've kept me
out of all that—and you've also kept me out of the background
data. I don't know what you have on the target—
whether it's solid, whether he's tertiary to the terrorist thing
or a heavy hitter. But I do know this, Clyde—it can be done.”

Partlow sat, elbows on the table, his forehead resting on
his left hand. “So you say,” he said wearily.

“I have other stuff to talk about. If we're not going forward,
it doesn't matter.” Piat sat back and watched Partlow, who
wasn't meeting his eyes and looked like hell. Partlow looked
worse every time he showed up.

“Tell me. I might as well hear it all.” Partlow crossed his
hands over his knee, but he did it slowly, like an old man
with aching joints.

“The woman spotted an American in contact with the
target. I didn't want to make anything of it at the time, but
it raises some concerns.”

Partlow shrugged. “Most Saudis know some Americans.”

Piat tossed a computer printout on to the table. “His name
is George Kwalik. That's Congressman Kwalik to the likes of
us. He's quite prominent on the internet—has his own blog,
gets a lot of play.”

Partlow leafed through the printout. “I know who he is,”
he said carefully. His face flushed and his eyes dilated. “Jesus
Christ. Jesus—Jerry, he was
in contact
with the target?”

Piat knew he had hit Partlow very hard. He hadn't
intended to, and he didn't know what the connection was,
but Partlow was reacting as if he had been punched in the
gut. “They were seen talking together. Mano-a-mano. Tête-à-
tête. Pick your cliché.” Piat leaned forward. “Come on,
Clyde. We're not exactly buddies, you and me—but we're
on the same fucking side this time.
Who is this guy, and why's
he talking to my target, and why does that make you turn
as red as a beet?”

Partlow shook his head. “Jerry—I'd love to. I really would.
But some secrets aren't mine to tell.” He sat, still turning the
pages from Piat's download of data. “Jesus—
what are they
doing
?”

“Who, Clyde? What is who doing?” Piat hushed his voice.

Partlow shook his head. “Forget you heard me say that.”
He sat up, shot his cuffs, rubbed a hand through his hair
again. “You think this can be done in Mombasa? Let's try it,
then. I'll trust you implicitly. What do you need?”

Piat was a little stunned by the change in Partlow's
manner—and attitude. “Just like that, we're back on?”

“Just like that.” Partlow opened his briefcase and withdrew
a laptop. From around his neck he took a crypto-key.
“I have most of the reservation information you requested
for Mombasa.”

“Whoa, horsey. Thirty seconds ago we were done.”

Partlow spread his hands, palm up. “Now we're not.”

“Because of George Kwalik?” Piat asked.

“Need to know, Jerry. Need to know. You don't, I do, and
that's the equation.” Partlow raised an eyebrow. He was trying
to convey something.

Piat didn't get it. And his curiosity was fully aroused. He
sensed that Partlow was using the operational data on the
laptop to lead him away from the subject. But there wasn't
much he could do about it. So he read the target's travel
information on the computer. Flight reservations, hotel reservations,
cars, a truck. “Who rented the truck?” he asked.

Partlow got up and looked over his shoulder. “No idea.”

Piat shrugged. “It sticks out. What do they need a truck
for? It's not big. I'll check with the rental agency. Can you
afford for me to go down in advance?”

Partlow shook his head. “Go a day or two early, Jerry, I'll
pay for that. But—I can't afford to have you buy another set
of tickets. Do you know how far over budget this thing is
already?”

Piat shrugged again. “Operations cost money. Good operations
cost lots of money.” He glanced up at Partlow. “Do I
get a cup of coffee, or are you still so pissed at me we're just
going to sit in this basketball court until I'm done reading?”

Partlow raised an eyebrow. “Basketball court?”

Piat waved his arms to draw attention to the size of the
room.

Partlow disappeared and came back with a tray of coffee
and pastries.

Piat took one, bit into it, and kept reading.

Partlow poured them coffee.

Two sips and two bites later, Piat raised his head. “Clyde,
do you like food?”

Partlow was still looking at the Kwalik information. “Of
course.”

Piat held up his styrofoam cup and waved it. “We're in
fucking Italy, Clyde. The home of the finest coffee in the
Western world. A place where bakers make pastries that
make French pastries look lame. Why the
fuck
are we drinking
Maxwell House and eating microwaved American shit?”

Partlow leaned back and drank some coffee. “This is a
secure facility.”

“Yeah?” Piat asked. “Secure from who?”

When he was done, Partlow gave him an email address
for more frequent communications. And he said, “I don't
imagine I'll see you again before—before it's done. Before
you make contact.”