The Falconer's Tale (38 page)

Yessir, yessir.

Piat walked into the airport and went straight to a washroom,
where he sat on the can and thought about the potential for
disaster that faced him. He'd wanted these hours to think
about recruiting Mohamed, and instead he had an operation
that could fall to pieces because of a bird. On top of that, he'd
compromised his own security by going to a military base and
was going to do it again by letting Carl call him a second time,
and then he'd have to get Bella—if she was alive and well—
and transfer her to Hackbutt without letting Carl see Hackbutt
or even know about him. What he needed, he thought, was
a backup team; in fact, he had needed one to check Carl out
before he had even let the little man pick him up.

Too late, too late.

He had about fifteen minutes before Hackbutt was due to
land. He drank some water form the tap, splashed some on
his forehead and washed the chicken off his hands. He felt
used up, and his brain wouldn't work. He had the terrible
feeling that he was too old for what he was doing.

He thought
This is the last time I do this
.

Hackbutt was one of the last people off his flight, appearing
just as Piat had begun to think that he might have missed
his plane. He looked more dignified than the other passengers,
older, better dressed. And not much like Edgar Hackbutt.

“Digger,” Piat said, taking his hand.

“Jack. Nice of you to meet me.” Hackbutt was wearing a
tropical suit and had a leather case over his shoulder. He
looked like an ad for senior adventure travel.

“Something's gone haywire, Digger.” Piat spoke low, steered
Hackbutt away from the rush to the exit and into a coffee
shop. “Something's come up.”

Hackbutt went right to his main concern. “Is it Bella? Is
she okay?”

“How long can Bella go without food?”

Hackbutt started and got red. “What are you saying? Where
is she? What's the matter?”

Piat put a hand on Hackbutt's. “She's fine. I just saw her.
She didn't like the shipping process, that's all, and she's pissed.
I sang to her and gave her half a chicken. Was that too
much?”

“Too much to fly, but fine after a long time without feeding.
What d'you mean, she didn't like the shipping?”

Piat cut him off. “Can she make it until tomorrow on that
feed?”

Hackbutt nodded. “A week, if she had to. Jack, what's
happened
?”

Piat rubbed his chin. “There was some screwup with the
cage. It's okay, it's okay! I checked her over; she's not even
bruised—she didn't react when I touched her, nothing like
that. But they cracked the cage.”

“Cracked it! You couldn't crack it with a sledgehammer!”

“Apparently they used a forklift. Anyway, she's okay, but
we're getting a new cage.”

Hackbutt didn't like that at all. “She was just getting used
to the one we had.” His face was puckered up like an angry
baby's.

“You can't give the prince a goddam million-dollar bird in
a cage that looks like a cracked egg, Digger! Jesus! We're
getting a new cage. Suck it up.”

“I'm just thinking of Bella, Jack.”

“Well, start thinking about Mohamed. Focus, Digger!”
Christ
,
it's getting to me
! He changed his tone. “I'm sorry, Dig. I got
a lot on my mind.”

“It's my last night with her, Jack.”

“Yeah. Right. I understand. Of course, you're absolutely
right. So, here's the deal: I'll get her and the new cage at
five o'clock; I'll bring her—”

“You haven't
got
her?”

“Jesus, Christ—! Dig, the transport guys have to buy a
new cage. Bella's in an air-conditioned space; I saw to it that
she had water and a perch and she's
okay
. Give it a rest, will
you?”

Hackbutt pouted. “You seem awfully jumpy, Jack.”

“Yeah, pre-menstrual tension. It's Mohamed, Dig. That's
where I've got to focus.” He met Hackbutt's eyes. “You, too.
Okay?”

Hackbutt looked away. He was hurt. He slumped. “She's
my
favorite
.”

“And you'll see her in about an hour.” He tapped on the
Formica tabletop. “I get the bird and the new cage and I
bring her to your hotel. Now listen up, Dig—unless you hear
otherwise from me, I want you at the loading dock of the
hotel from five-thirty in the morning on. Got me? With a
handcart or something to move the cage with. And maybe
somebody to help. Yeah, get a porter with a handcart or a
dolly; it doesn't look good for you to be moving a big object.
You're rich; you pay other people to move your stuff. The
hotel's expecting a bird, okay? They won't be expecting a
fucking eagle. Try to go up in a freight elevator—get a porter
who understands you, okay?” Piat was sweating. He thought
he was making it up as he went along, although he'd always
intended to do it this way, had in fact briefed Hackbutt on
it before they'd left. But it was different now because of the
cage and the bird's condition. And because he was spooked.

“I'll meet you at the loading dock. Then she's yours for
the night. Okay? Just focus on how great she'll feel when
she sees you. She'll know. It'll be great for both of you.”

But Hackbutt wasn't cheered. “The last night.”

Oh, Christ, don't have second thoughts
! Piat touched
Hackbutt's hand. “Five-thirty? Loading dock, porter, hand
truck. Act like a king, Digger. Act like you expect people
to do things your way, and they will.” He lowered his head
so he could look into Hackbutt's eyes. “Are we together on
this?”

Hackbutt stared at him, then broke out of his mood and
straightened. “Sure, Jack. It'll all be fine!”

“Good.” Jesus Christ, they'd switched roles—now it was
Hackbutt supporting
him
. He took out a piece of paper with
the number of a cell phone he'd bought in the souk. Another
one-time—or two-time or three-time if he couldn't pull his
socks up. “You can reach me any time at this number. Once
I've turned Bella over to you. Okay? If there's anything,
anything
,
you call me. Okay? I don't want any surprises in the morning,
Dig. Okay?” Hackbutt was nodding. They had been over and
over this stage. Did he get it? “In the morning. We meet at six
outside the front door of your hotel. Okay? It's like a drive-by,
only I'll be on foot. You come out, you see me, you walk to
your left—your left, okay?—and I'll check your back trail. Go
four blocks and stop and wait for me. If I don't show right
away, call me on the number I gave you. Okay?”

“This is so you can brief me.”

“Right.”

“Just like we planned.”

“You got it.”

“Where's Bella all this time?”

“In your room.”

“What if somebody says I can't keep her in the hotel?”

Piat suppressed a sigh. “Be a king, Dig. Tell them it was
all arranged and don't take no for an answer.”

“But what if they won't?”

“Then call me.”

He went over it again. And then again. And then he said
they'd see each other at the loading dock between five-thirty
and six, and he hoped that he was telling the truth.

In the event, it went like a well-tuned car. Carl called him
just before five and was at the meeting place Piat had picked
out a few minutes early—Piat knew because he was earlier
still. He parked where he could watch Carl's approach and
check around them for a bubble. All this, when there was
no reason why there should be a bubble or why he should
feel the unease that seemed to have gripped him.

He waited another five minutes and then pulled his rented
van behind Carl's car. The transfer took two minutes, the
slowest part getting the cage out. Carl was driving a Land
Cruiser this time; the rear seats had been taken out, but still
getting the cage out was like pulling a worm out of a hole.

“Big cage,” Piat said.

“The best.”

Also a heavy cage. Through wire mesh that would have
resisted bolt-cutters, Piat saw Bella's angry eye. She looked
okay.

Getting her into the van was easier, but the two men were
winded when they were done.

“We're really, really sorry,” Carl said.

“The new cage looks okay.”

“We try to do the right thing. It's how we do business.”

Carl seemed eager to please. Piat wanted to pat him on
the head and tell him he was a good dog, but instead he
held his hand out for a pen and began signing his cover
name to manifests and insurance forms. He looked up from
one and said, “If she isn't one hundred percent, your
company's ass is grass.”

Yessir, yessir.

He drove a careful countersurveillance route back to
Hackbutt's hotel. He couldn't leave the car to make real stops,
and it limited his observations. Bella kept him pinned to the
car.

The countersurveillance route didn't make him feel better.
He wasn't sure he was clean, nor had he seen anything to
prove that he was dirty. The ambiguity of the situation wasn't
the result of nerves. Piat was a careful spy, to whom trade
craft and precaution were a lifestyle. He felt that he was
under surveillance, and the feeling was on the edge between
intuition and observation.

If Carl had brought somebody to the exchange, then they'd
have been all ready to follow him. Ideal surveillance conditions.
Piat sat in the parking garage of his hotel, rubbing his
face.

So he drove a second route to Hackbutt. It made him late.
That was too bad. He still didn't see anybody and he couldn't
shake the notion that he was being watched, or that the
watchers had picked him up when he took the bird.

On his second pass, he tucked into the mean street that
led to the loading dock and saw Hackbutt, in tropical suit
and safari hat, standing there with one hand in his jacket
pocket and the other on a big dolly whose other end was
being tended by an Arab in what appeared to be a French
Zouave uniform. The two of them went together pretty well—
an image of imperialism past and present.

Piat felt better.

The transfer was peaches and cream. Hackbutt stood by,
hand in pocket, looking like a monarch trying to decide which
of them deserved the Order of the Garter and which a lashing.
Piat and the porter handled the big cage with a certain amount
of grunting. Hackbutt resisted rushing to Bella. Nobody came
screaming out of the hotel to say that they didn't take sea
eagles.

For any onlookers, Piat gave Hackbutt some papers to sign.

“The van will be here tomorrow at seven, sir,” he said.

Hackbutt nodded almost absently, as if to say, “Of course
the van will be here at seven.”

Piat was impressed, as much with the success of his teaching
as with Hackbutt. It had worked. It was all going to work.
Why, then, did he feel so worried?

Piat slept deeply, woke to stagger to the bathroom, realizing
that he was exhausted. By the last few days in Mull, by Irene,
by tension. And by sleep that, while deep, was horrible—
dream-ridden, hag-ridden. He felt as if he were getting sick.
A terrible gloom hung over him, certainly the result of the
dreams, none of which he could remember. Trying to recall
why they were so unsettling, he fell asleep again and into
their toils.

He struggled up toward his wake-up call at five-fifteen, the
last dream like some gluey fluid in which he was drowning.
Irene had been in the dream, something erotic but bad that
he recoiled from. But there had been a lot more—a memory
of looking for a place, a room, a place where things would
be all right, then experiencing its constant withdrawal as the
city or town around him changed its shape and he could
never find his way back. And then a beach. Horrible things.
Stuff on the wet sand—yellowing foam, ugly seaweed with
stems like tubing. Something dead—a child? A dog?

Bella
.

He was up by then, trying to shave without looking at
himself. He looked dreadful—old, baggy, burned out. He tried
the shower.

Bella
. Bella was on the beach. Dead. That had been it. The
sea eagle half-awash in the tide. Tangled in wire the way
seagulls got tangled in monofilament. Her feathers were wet
and bedraggled; one eye was gone, pecked out or rotted out.
Wire wrapped around her.

He tried a cold shower to bring him out of it. The aftereffect
of the dream was smothering him. Pushing him down.
Dragging at him.

At twenty before six, he was sitting in a taxi in a line of
three up the street from Hackbutt's hotel. He studied the
street, windows, cars. He tried to ignore his depression. It
was terrible.

Hackbutt came out at six. He looked spry, almost dapper,
his long hair a nice touch of eccentricity. Without looking
around for Piat, he turned right and walked away.

Piat looked for somebody to follow him, looked again at
the street, windows, cars. Nothing. Of course there was
nothing. Who would care? Unless the prince wanted to run
an advance surveillance on them, who gave a damn what
they did on the streets of Manama at six on a Sunday morning?

Except that Piat's effort to detect any surveillance was both
passive and simple. He'd catch an amateur. He suddenly
wished he'd laid on a mile of intense shopping and switchbacks.
He wanted to be reassured.

Piat paid the taxi driver and followed Hackbutt. He found
him where he was supposed to be and led him into another
hotel and another coffee shop. One that, he had already
determined, opened at six.

“You don't look good, Jack.”

“How's Bella?”