The Falconer's Tale (40 page)

Hackbutt heard him this time. He looked once at Piat, and
then he reached and wrestled with the latch of the cage's
door. Piat was screaming but didn't hear himself. He was
trying to shout
Run, run
! but he wasn't making the words.

Hackbutt pulled Bella out of the cage by the jesses, and
then, a huge effort made possible only by adrenaline and
passion, he swung the big bird up, up, running two steps
forward, and threw his arms at the sky, and she clawed for
the air, at first feebly and then more strongly, seeming to
sink and then to rise, up, up, sweeping up into the first circle
that would carry her far above them all, and Piat saw Hackbutt
simply stand there to watch her, his arms still raised as if he
were accepting some tribute, his long hair blowing, until he
was wrapped in the flame of the explosion.

Piat had got out of Bahrain hugger-mugger, not sure who
might be after him or even if anybody cared. His clothes
were thrown into his bag; his sweaty running clothes were
still on him under a five-dollar Ahmadinejad jacket and blue
jeans. He took the first flight he could get a ticket for and
flew to Karachi, from there started backtracking. He tried to
call Irene twice from Karachi, again from Prague. He practiced
old routines of evasion.

He called again from Frankfurt. This time, she was in her
hotel room in Arras.

“Oh, my God!” she said. “At last!” Before he could say what
he had to say, she was rushing on. “It's fantastic, the show's
fantastic! It hasn't even opened yet and a Paris gallery wants
it; it's going to be even better, they're promising me much
better lighting—the lighting here sucks; but anyway it's fantastic!
The local rag, which isn't really bad, the art critic has a reputation,
she came yesterday even though I wasn't ready, she
called it ‘a profound meditation on death and womanhood!'
How's that for meaning!” Excited, happy, she stopped. He said
her name, but she interrupted, her voice now almost harsh.
“Where the hell is Eddie? He was supposed to call me. He was
supposed to call hours and hours ago. Where's Eddie?”

Piat cleared his throat. Even so, his voice was hoarse.
“Edgar's dead, Irene.”

She didn't say anything for what seemed like minutes,
could have been only seconds. Then: “How can that be?”

“I can't tell you anything over the phone. I'll tell you when
I see you.”

She said nothing. He didn't hear breathing or sobbing—
nothing. He said again, “I'll tell you when I see you. All
about it.” He waited. “Irene?” He waited again. “Irene—I'm
going to see you. Right?”

She was silent for so long he thought they had been cut
off, and then he heard her mutter, “Jesus Christ,” and she
hung up.

Later, sitting numbed in the airport lounge, he knew that
she had meant that they were never going to get together.
She had meant what he had known from the moment the
bomb had gone off but hadn't been able to admit to himself:
she could fuck him if Hackbutt was alive, but she couldn't
go near him if Hackbutt was dead, because that would be
fucking on his grave and being glad he'd died.

He had hoped he'd be changing his flight to Paris, a train to
Arras. Now, he went on to London, then Glasgow. He picked
up his rental car there and caught the last ferry to the island.
He didn't go to the farm or the Mishnish but made a phone
call and then went to the cottage in Dervaig and sacked out
on the divers' floor.

He didn't know who might care about what had happened
or what they might do. “Carl” wouldn't be happy about his
screwing up the bombing. The prince might not be happy,
either, although if he had any sense he was thinking that
Hackbutt was a hero, and so was the man in the running
shorts who'd done the shouting. But one or the other might
be vindictive, and Piat didn't want to be surprised by somebody's
lust for revenge.

In the morning, he told the two divers that he wanted
them to cover his back for a day or two.

“Wot? We're supposed to be humping that gear down from
the crannog.”

“Give me a day or two. I want to see who shows up.”

He still had a hope—or a fear—that it would be Irene—
that she would come back to the farm for things she valued,
for the money she was owed. He didn't want her to arrive
and find a couple of “Carl's” tough guys or a couple of Saudi
specialists.

He drove out to the farm with the divers tailing him, pulled
off where he had waited the first time he'd ever come there,
and watched the house. He was pretty sure that nobody had
got there before him, or the dog and the birds would be
showing signs. Nothing happened for several hours; then,
Annie came down the hill on her bike, stayed for an hour,
walked the dog, and pedaled her way back up the hill.

“Come on.”

“Now what?”

“We're going down to that farm. Park the van around back
where it can't be seen from the road.” He drove down. The
dog was ecstatic. He let himself in and went straight to
Hackbutt's bedroom and the closet where he knew Hackbutt
had kept a shotgun. He found it leaning in the corner behind
clothes that smelled of dead chickens and bird lime. Two
boxes of shells sat on the floor beside it.

“One of you take the shotgun. The other go up on the hill
where we stopped and keep an eye out.” He handed over
his own cell phone. “You see anything headed this way from
either direction, you call. I don't want to be surprised.”

McLean looked like a man who was ready to bail out.
“How serious is this, chum?”

“You've been getting your money for doing nothing the
last week.”

“Yeah, but there's jobs and jobs. I've done a tour with the
hard ones. That was enough.”

“Then take off. Leave me the gun.”

But they didn't go. Instead, both of them went up to watch
and Piat was left with the shotgun. Not the kind of backup
he'd hoped for.

In the middle of the afternoon, he let the dog in. It was
suspicious of the house. It went from room to room, sniffing,
backing away from things, suddenly trotting, then standing
still. In the end, it threw itself down at his feet, ears alert.
When he touched it, it winced.

“Hey, it's me.”

One car passed in the whole day. It was Annie's dad,
heading out and then returning two hours later. The divers
took turns coming down to eat. They foraged in the kitchen
cupboards, found cans and frozen things—Irene food. They
were apologetic, but they weren't going to change their minds
about getting killed for him. At nine, with darkness falling,
he told them to go home. He'd call them if he wanted them
next day.

“Sorry to draw the line, chum.”

“It doesn't matter.”

Dykes lingered in the door. “How bad is it?” he asked. He
had I'm sorry written all over him.

Piat shrugged. “Like McLean didn't say, it's not your
problem. Not your op. Something else went very, very wrong.
Go home, Dawg. Get out of here.”

Dykes hesitated. They went back together, and he was
thinking about that.

Suddenly Piat realized he didn't want Dykes and his wife
and college-bound daughter on his conscience. “Seriously,
Dawg. As soon as the lapis sells, I send you a cut. Get gone.”

He ate standing in the kitchen; a canned potpie of some indeterminate
meat that said it was beef. He washed it down
with beer, then took out a bottle of single malt that he had
brought when the dietary rules had started to crumble. It
seemed a long time ago—the two of them just starting to eat
meat, nibbling at it; then Irene drinking more, smoking.
Coffee. A long time ago. Teaching Hackbutt stuff that didn't
matter a damn now.

Role model.

For a dead man.

He went into the sitting room with the dog and the bottle
and the shotgun. The dog, he thought, would hear anybody
who came close now; he'd certainly see any car lights himself.

He sat in an armchair in the dark. He drank the salty,
seaweedy scotch. After a while, he slipped down next to the
dog, sat with his back against the chair.

“He was a good guy, Ralph,” he said aloud. His voice was
rough with whisky and emotion. The dog lifted its ears; he
could feel the movement under his hand. “He was a better
man than I am, Gunga Din.”

He was drinking the scotch from the bottle now; his glass
was up above somewhere. “You think you're pretty good,
and you think you do something just right, and then—” He
swallowed hard. His eyes felt hot. “I was behind it the whole
time. He did all that shit, put up with all my shit, so that he
could—so he could stand there and let his fucking bird go.
And I didn't protect him.” He put his face down into the
dog's long, silky hairs. The dog was warm and responsive;
his breathing rose and fell, and, answering Piat's contact, he
rolled back, exposing his side and part of his belly.

“Oh, Christ, doggie, doggie—!” Tears ran into the dog's fur,
and Piat sobbed. Only for seconds, but he hadn't cried in a
long time and he was surprised. He said, “Shit.” He sat up,
exhaled, wiped his eyes on his sleeves. “My God.” He still
had a ball in his throat, his nose now stuffy. “Oh, God,
doggie!”

That was his mourning for Edgar Hackbutt. And for himself,
because, as Hopkins more or less made clear, it is always
ourselves we weep for.

* * *

He woke at six on the floor. The bottle was mostly empty.
The dog lay against him, snoring lightly. Piat was cold, but
the dog was warm where they touched. He remembered the
tears, added them to the list of things he wouldn't tell other
people. Now, he knew, came the hardening of the heart: first,
an instant of surrender to feeling, then the hardening. You
hardened your heart against women you were going to leave,
against death, against the claims of other people's lives. It
takes practice.

He went to the kitchen and put on coffee, then went to
the bathroom and tried to vomit but couldn't; he took four
aspirins from the medicine cabinet, showered, rubbed himself
hard with the towel, felt like hell.

“How about a walk, Ralph?”

The dog jumped up. He quivered, wagged, raised his head
and made barking motions but no sound. He backed toward
the door and sneezed. It was raining out, but he didn't care.

“I think the answer's yes.”

They went up the hill as far as the place where Edgar had
flighted his birds. Up here, he had told Edgar about wanting
Bella for the operation. Now Edgar was dead, and Bella was
soaring over the desert or the Arabian Gulf, or she was sick
and hungry and hiding somewhere. Mohamed, he thought,
would try to coax her down the way Hackbutt had coaxed
the red hawk in Kenya. It had all gone to shit—the prince,
Mohamed—and it was his operation and it was his fault, and
he was back to thoughts he was trying not to think.

He came back down the hill, head pounding, nauseated.
He clipped the dog to his chain again and went inside. He
put the shotgun across the arms of a chair and sat in another
one with the rest of the coffee. He didn't believe anymore
that anybody was coming. He'd panicked because of the shock
of his failure.

And she wasn't coming back, either. Maybe she'd come
back eventually, two or three months or a year from now,
but not now. Not for so long as she thought there was a
chance that he might be there.

He was sitting there, the cup empty, when the dog started
barking. Piat stayed low, looked out the window, saw a car
he didn't know. He went out the back door and hung at the
corner of the house until he saw who was in it.

He waited until the men were out of the car and dealing
with the dog's enthusiasm before he set the gun against the
house and stepped into view. One man—the Navy captain,
Craik—was wearing the same thing he had been the last
time Piat had seen him: yellow slicker, bucket hat, old
corduroys. Craik looked up from the dog and saw him, smiled.
Dukas, lingering behind, stared around him. Then he started
toward Piat.

Dukas came close enough to speak, then came a step closer
and said, “What happened?”

“You're late,” Piat said. “Too late.”

“You know what I mean, Jerry. With your agent and the
Saudi. Hackbutt. What happened?” Craik, still kneeling by
the dog, was listening.

“Is it on the news yet?”

“Al-Jazeera says there was an attack on a Saudi official in
Bahrain and an unidentified man was killed. We think the
Bahrain government and the Saudis are sitting on it.” Dukas
hunched his shoulders and pushed his fists deeper into his
pockets. The rain was like cold spray. “You were in Bahrain.
What happened?”

“I got blindsided.”

“Muhad al-Hauq. What happened?”

Piat looked up at the gray sky. “Ask Partlow.”

Craik came over, shook his head the way a dog does, fast,
as if he were trying to shake the water off his hat. “I don't
think it's Partlow. The people who did it have been in it since
the beginning. They've been waiting. You got them to al-
Hauq. What did they do?”

It wasn't that he saw any professional reason not to tell
them. It was that the moment was so wrong—he wanted
time to be alone, time to get over Hackbutt. Time to get over
Irene. He didn't want the little obscenity of talking about it.
“I'll put it in my final report. When Partlow pays me.”

Both men looked at him. Craik shook his head again and
then took the hat off and shook it with his hand. Piat guessed
that water had been dripping down his neck. Craik put the
hat on a little off-line. He said. “I know about your archaeological
dig up at the loch. I've already been by there today.
Didn't see your car so figured we'd find you here.” He squinted
into the rain, as if somebody else might turn up to make
trouble, and he said, “I was up at your crannog on Saturday,
too. I got enough from what I found up there so I guess I
can pull in the people who're working for you. They'll rat
you out to save themselves. Tell me what happened.”

Piat let the possibilities speed through his mind—tell Craik
to fuck off and risk the cops; run for it; or tell Craik what
he wanted to know, the unseemliness of it, but on the other
hand the symmetry of it, because Craik was the first one
he'd seen when all this had started in Iceland.

“That's rich,” he said. “You got me into this. Now, you'll
burn me to the cops to make me talk about it.” His bitterness
filled his voice, so that he sounded like a stranger even
to himself. “Why'd you come looking for me here?”