The Falconer's Tale (32 page)

She shook her head without any other last word and
headed for a silver Hyundai in the middle of the mall's
scruffy parking lot. Craik headed for his own car but kept
an eye on her. He saw her repairing her lipstick with the
help of her rearview mirror, and by the time he was behind
the wheel of his own Toyota she had her backup lights on.
He waited until she was ready to exit to the highway and
then pulled slowly out of his parking spot.

He let her get well ahead of him. He risked being wrong
about where she was going and took the ramp to the Beltway
heading west. Within a mile, he saw the silver Hyundai
ahead, and he pulled in several cars behind her and waited
for her to take an exit ramp. She got off at Silver Spring,
and he followed her down to Georgia Avenue, then toward
Bethesda. When she turned into a parking garage, he cut
into a side street, couldn't find a place to park, went on
around the block, and came out in time to see her go into
an office building that might have been put up in the seventies
by somebody short on money.

He went into the same parking garage and stowed the
car, then walked to her building. The street side stood on
massive pillars with aluminum facings, ugly as could be.
Craik went in through the glass doors and found a one-
storey lobby with two elevators. No security desk. A
building directory that took up part of one wall told him
that the Office of Geophysical Excellence occupied one of
the building's seven storeys. A couple of dozen other enterprises
were scattered through the upper three floors. He
guessed that a lot of the building's space had no tenants—
just the kind of place the government looked for. He
studied the names, rejecting any that were clearly things
like law firms or one-man shows. That still left more than
a dozen, most with made-up names like Gotrex and
ExcelHunt, or old-fashioned, iron-assed names like
Spalding Machine Imports and Fawcett Human Services
Management. He leaned toward the made-up names but
thought that a classified DIA operation might disguise itself
as something like a human services firm, although it would
be embarrassing if somebody came in looking for career
counseling. In the end, he scribbled the room numbers
and the names of all fourteen in his notebook and headed
for the elevators.

The corridors had the look of all unclassy buildings—
floors with too much polish slopped on the baseboards;
flotsam lines of dirt that had hardened into the old wax;
lettering styles that had missed the last twenty years. Still,
he was able to reject most of the offices on his list—some
had unlocked doors; some were obviously too small; some
were too well maintained. In the end, he settled on three—
Gotrex, on five; Franzen Acoustics, also on five; and something
called Elastomer Engineering Limited, on six.

Back in his own office at Bolling, he looked the three
firms up in the civilian telephone directory. Gotrex and
Franzen were there. Elastomer Engineering wasn't.

Score one for low-tech investigation.

Craik stayed late to write a one-page report on the meeting
with Sarah Berghausen for his security officer. He was
specific and factual. He included what she'd said about Ritter
and the others from OIA, and what she'd said about
financing. He mentioned his following her and the building's
address. He said that she'd “heard” about his own meeting
with Raddick and suggested that there had been a violation
of security, because he and Raddick had discussed classified
matters. He didn't say that only Raddick could have
committed the security violation.

He printed out two hard copies of the report. One went
into a file called Perpetual Justice. The other went into
inter-office mail for the security officer, but it wouldn't
reach her until at least noon tomorrow, and by then it
wouldn't matter if she went to somebody with it and the
shit hit the fan.

The after-effects of the Mombasa trip were to stay with
them, although Piat didn't see that it would be that way.
When they got together for the first time after they returned,
he thought that there was new tension. It might be Irene's
guilt about having drunk too much during dinner with the
prince; some of it might be Hackbutt's irritation with her
because of the drinking. But under it all was something
new: the prince's offer to buy Hackbutt's sea eagle. The
offer—actually a demand—had come during that dinner.
The prince had made it quite clear that it was the only
reason that any relationship between him and Hackbutt
could continue. He had as much as said that he didn't like
Americans and he didn't like Western men whose wives
got drunk and pushy. It was going to be Bella or nothing.
Sell the bird or abort.

And then there was Irene's “art.” She had been back at
work before Piat got to the farm. Hearing the sound of a
power tool from the studio, he looked at Hackbutt, got
raised eyebrows and a pursed mouth. These were signals;
they suggested to him that Hackbutt and Irene had been
fighting. It might be about the drinking; it might be about
her show; but it was probably, he thought, about the sea
eagle. Which side was Irene coming down on, he
wondered—sell, or abort? And he was a little amused that
Hackbutt had used those signals with him, signals of intimacy
and a kind of established code, suggesting that the
two men had the sort of intimacy that Piat envied in
Hackbutt and Irene. Things had got
very
complicated.

But they said nothing about the bird that day. Piat knew
he had to get the commitment, but he'd have to go at it
delicately. And he didn't want Irene around when he did.
He wanted her neutral, at the worst, preferably pro-selling,
but he wanted Hackbutt to himself. He spent that day
reviewing what had happened at Mombasa, stroking
Hackbutt and asking his advice for the next step. Both of
them avoided mentioning the bird. They sketched the possibilities
for another meeting with the prince. Piat didn't say
that he was sure that the prince was a lost cause and the
only point in going on was to get next to Mohamed, his
falconer.

When he came back next morning, the sun was shining—
a rarity—and the house was bright. To his surprise, the
studio door was open. He heard Hackbutt's voice; he could
tell from the tone that he was trying to please Irene.

“Come on in, I won't bite you.” She was standing by the
far wall with Hackbutt. She had on her working clothes
but she wasn't working. The two of them had been looking
at a colored drawing that was pinned to the wall. The floor
had been cleared, even swept, and what Piat took to be the
“installation” was laid out on it.

“It's finished,” he said.

“That it is.”

“Come look at this, Jack. It's incredible.”

Her finished drawing of the piece was done with the skill
and precision of an architect's rendering. It showed the
installation as it would be, the perspective perhaps a little
exaggerated: the floor with the large, mounded piece somewhere
near the center, the other things in an undulating
line leading to and away from it; three big rectangles overhead,
their planes slightly angled to the floor; ranks of
uprights on each side with small rectangles set into them.

Piat looked at the big central mound, which he knew
now was really humanoid and incorporated some of the
sheep skeleton that Hackbutt had boiled down for her.
“Where are the photos?”

“In the standing mounts.” She tapped the uprights along
the sides.

“I thought they were going to be attached to the center
thing.”

“Oh, that was a lousy idea. I gave that up.”

He turned to look at the real thing. The bloated-looking
mound that he had once taken for a mass of jelly was now
a glistening pinky-white that looked both lustrous and
horrible, like something almost phosphorescent with decay.
Seen up close, it showed swirls and cloudy loops almost like
writing. Seen from the same vantage point as her drawing,
it was a woman's bloated belly, the spiral core of a seashell
set into the navel, the vagina shading into deeper pink and
blue, then purple, the labia like fronds, like sea anemones.
Two thighs, equally monstrous, quickly shrank before getting
to where the knees should have been; one disappeared
altogether, as if into the floor; the other shriveled down like
dried skin and became a sheep's thigh bone which, in its
turn, seemed to plunge out of sight. At the shape's other
end, BX cable curled to become a kind of spinal cord ringed
with the sheep's vertebrae, leading to the sheep's skull, the
nose pointed skyward, the back flowing into a big piece of
driftwood that spread like hair. Beyond the figure were, at
intervals, the condoms, a block of diseased-looking styrofoam,
other detritus—but all now crafted from fiberglass.
Seeming to have emerged from the vagina and leading down
the room were a plastic baby doll, the pearls and diamonds
she had said her father had given her, a board with rusty
nails, shells. Most of the objects, like the legs, seemed to be
half buried in the floor. As if in sand.

The female figure had no arms. Springing almost from
each side of the BX cable was a yellow rubber glove of the
kind women used in washing up. He touched one and found
it wasn't rubber but fiberglass. Even he could see that the
work was meticulously done.

“The Body Electric
,” he said.

“What? Oh, God, I gave that title up ages ago.”

“What does it mean?” He was pointing at the rendering.

“I'm not a conceptual artist, Jack.”

“What's it called, then?”

She looked at the central figure. “Fucked if I know. The
gallery wants a title, though. I'll have to think of something.”
She made a gesture toward the door. “Okay, you've
seen it, now I have to go to work. You guys, too, I'd think.”

Hackbutt walked to the door and stood there. He looked
back at her, then at Piat, jiggling something in his pocket.
Piat said, “I thought it was finished.”

“It has to get from here to France by Saturday. That
means I have to pack up every bit of it, including the rough
drawings and the rendering. If you think I'd trust the packing
to somebody else, you're out of your mind.”

A bell went off when she said “Saturday.” He murmured,
his tone as light as he could manage, “We've got to set up
another meeting with the prince by then.”

“Go ahead. I'll be in France.”

So he knew what she and Hackbutt had been squabbling
about. He was angry but hid the anger. “Irene, if you'd told
me—”

“I've told you for the last two weeks that the gallery had
moved the date up to the twentieth! But you don't listen!”

“Yeah, but—”

“But nothing. I have to be there! I've got three flat-screen
TVs that have to be ceiling-mounted. Do you think I trust
anybody else to do that right? I haven't even bought the
materials for the standards to hold the photos yet—for
Christ's sake, I'm going to have to make them on-site! I've
got a month of work to do in one week after I get there,
and I don't give a fuck about another meeting with your
fucking prince!” Hackbutt was looking miserable. Piat was
standing his ground. She moved a step toward him, dropped
her voice. “I hated that sonofabitch. And he hated me! So
I drank too much wine—big deal! What was I supposed to
do, put on a burka and ask him to stone me to death? Fuck
him. And fuck you and your operation!”

“Well, Irene—we had a contract—”

“Sue me.”

Hackbutt looked as if he was going to cry. Piat realized
that he was making a probably bad decision because he
didn't want to lose her. He said, “I'll work it out.” He
managed a smile.

Outdoors in the sunlit cold with Hackbutt, he said,
“What're the flat-screen TVs for?”

“Oh, they go overhead. To show the video of the dead
sheep being boiled down. It plays on a loop the whole time
the show is open.”

* * *

He went back to the farm when he hoped Hackbutt would
be busy with the birds. He touched the dog's nose, then
crossed to the porch. Distantly, Irene's “music” seemed to
be playing—or was it the wind in the trees along the stream?
He turned his head, saw the trees were indeed blowing,
and behind him the door opened.

Irene had a kerchief on her head; a rivulet of sweat ran
down along her nose, another down her throat into the
unbuttoned V of her shirt, hugely provocative but not intentionally
so, he knew: she had been packing the installation.
She would be off soon.

She looked at him, glanced over at the dog still lying in
the grass, back at Piat. “Eddie isn't here.” She apologized
to him for the day before, but she didn't say she was going
to take part in the third meeting. She simply said that she
was sorry she'd got angry but her mind was made up.

He followed the established line. “I'll miss your help with
Edgar.”

She smiled. It wasn't phoney. The smile said,
We could
still be on
. She said, “You're still getting my help with Eddie.
I told him he should sell Bella to the prince. We had kind
of a fight about it, in fact.” She grinned. “I'm glad the prince
didn't want
me
. I think Eddie'd let
me
go before he'd give
up that bird.” She held his eyes. “Let's hope so, anyway.”

“Where is he?”

“He's on the hillside with Bella,” Irene said. “Saying
goodbye. Be gentle, Jack. I hate the fucking bird and I
still
feel for him.”

Piat nodded, but he stood in front of the door with his
hands in his pockets. For the first time in a month, he
wanted to smoke. Instead, he stepped into the half-open
door and kissed her.