The Falconer's Tale (41 page)

Dukas grunted. “Because you aren't in Greece and you
aren't in Bahrain and the cousins say you were on your way
here as of last night.”

He remembered the probable MI6 man who'd picked up
Bella. Of course. “You know who lives here?”

“The falconer.”

“Yeah.” He decided then to stop being a horse's ass and
tell them. What the hell. “Well, he's dead.”

“In Bahrain?”

“Yeah.” Piat lifted one side of his mouth in a mock-smile.
“He died for love.” He scratched the dog's ears and told them
the story of the bird.

When he was done, Dukas was incredulous. “They killed
an American citizen as part of an operation?”

“First-class clusterfuck.” Piat shrugged, watching the hillside.
“From what little I saw of them, they were idiots. Except
that they fooled Partlow, but maybe he wanted to be
deceived.”

“What the hell were they thinking of? No, belay that, they
weren't thinking. Jesus! Who were they?”

“The ones I saw were all Americans. Force Air.” Piat shook
his head. “It probably looked neat on paper—kill al-Hauq,
hustle me and Hackbutt out of country, fade away. They
didn't even get the first part right—what they got was kill
Hackbutt, miss al-Hauq, scare the shit out of me, and leave
evidence all over the place.”

“Why the hell did you come back here, then?”

Piat could have said several things, but he didn't see any
point in dragging all that into it. “The crannog,” he said. He
patted the dog.

Craik took a small tape recorder from his pocket. “Let's go
inside. We want you to go through it in detail, and then I
want it in writing, longhand, signed, and we'll witness it.”
He glanced at Dukas. “Both of us want it.”

Piat held the door to make it perfectly clear he could keep
them out if he wanted to. He suspected that Craik didn't care
what he wanted. Dukas looked solemn and perhaps pitying.

They sat in the kitchen, the dog under the table among
their legs, his tail slapping the floor. Piat turned the heaters
up, which were in the energy-saving phase and would
respond only slowly. He made more coffee. Craik fussed with
paper and a pen and the tape recorder, and then Piat gave
each of them coffee and got ready to rat out his own operation.

“Expecting company?” Dukas said.

Piat realized he had been looking out the windows a lot.
He thought he'd been discreet. “That's my business.”

“Anybody from Bahrain likely to come after you?”

“Why?” Piat glanced out the window at the end of the
kitchen. “I didn't kill anybody, they did.”

“Witness?”

“There were lots of witnesses.”

“The Saudis?”

“The Saudis probably want to give Edgar and everybody
who was connected with him a medal. He saved their guy's
life.”

“What about the wife?”

“She's in France. She's an artist.”

Craik turned on the tape recorder and said who he was
and where they were and who Piat was, only he called him
by his cover name, Michaels, surprising Piat. Dukas, watching
him with the pitying look, turned the tape recorder off.
“You're going to sign the paper as yourself. That's for Craik's
personal safe, photocopy for mine. The tape's for DNI.” Dukas
kept a hand on the tape-recorder switch. “Jerry, we're sorry.
About your guy. I know what it's like when you lose an
agent.” The pitying look got more so.

Piat shrugged. Harden your heart. But then he thought
that he'd never have a better chance to say the words, so
he said them. “He was my friend.”

And Dukas nodded. He said, “Like that, uh?”

Piat nodded back, and said, “Just like that.”

Craik had never run an agent. So he just sat quietly for a
minute.

Dukas turned the tape recorder on again and they went
through the whole tale, or as much of it as Piat wanted to
tell. He gave everything about Edgar's death, maybe was even
a little maudlin, he thought, leaning hard on the nobility of
saving the bird. “He was heroic.”

“Did he know he was going to die?”

“I suppose he did. Or he thought saving the bird was what
mattered and he didn't care.”

Then he answered Craik's questions about the attackers.

“Were they pros?”

“At the bomb part, yes. Blindsiding me, not so good—if I
hadn't had my head someplace else, I'd have put it together.
I should have put it together. They weren't all that good.”

They talked some more and Craik said, “That's it,” and
snapped the tape recorder off. He nodded at the paper and
pen. Piat had gone on looking out the window, checking.
Maybe for Irene, maybe for somebody else, because no matter
what he'd told himself about the attackers, one of them might
have a bean up his nose and decide that taking revenge on
whoever was in or near Hackbutt's farm would ease the pain
of failure. He started writing but kept checking the window.
He was still a little worried, was the truth.

Edgar's shotgun was still outside.

“I gotta piss.”

Piat walked to the bathroom, the dog at his knee—he
wasn't going to let Piat get away from him again—flushed
the toilet, stepped out of the back door, and got the shotgun.
He left the gun open and put it on the kitchen table. “Think
I was going to shoot you?” he said.

“No.”

He went back to writing, finished, read it over, signed his
cover name and threw the pen down. Craik read it over, got
to the signature, shook his head. “Real name.”

“Suppose I tell you to fuck yourself.” Piat realized he
wanted an opportunity for anger—maybe violence.

“Your crannog is still there, with all the evidence your
guys left. I took photos.”

Dukas said, “Look, Jerry, Partlow's got to be pissing his pants
because he's afraid he'll be tagged with your guy's death. The
tape pretty much exonerates him of the worst of it, although
he'll get hit for being suckered out of his own operation. Your
real signature on the paper nails it down. I'll go before Congress
and swear, I'll go to court and swear, that the tape is genuine
and I have it in writing, but I won't give it up. If you'll feel
better, I'll let Craik bury it somewhere in ONI.”

“And someday somebody will put your back to the wall
and say we want the signed statement or you're doing ten
years in Leavenworth.”

Dukas shrugged.

Piat thought it over. “What the fuck.” He signed his real
name.

Craik folded the paper and put it in an inner pocket and
climbed into his yellow slicker. “How long you going to stay
here?” he said.

“I want to square things away. There's a kid comes in to
feed the birds, I need to pay her. There's the dog.” The dog,
now under the table again, thumped his tail on the floor.

“What about the wife?”

Piat shrugged.

“There's stuff at the crannog.”

“Mind your own business.”

Craik and Dukas went down the corridor and opened the
front door. The rain had turned to a finer drizzle. They stood
in the little porch, looking out at the vast, wet landscape.
Craik said, “Believe it or not, I think I'd like to live here.”

“That's the first likable thing I've heard you say.” Piat almost
smiled. He found Craik easy to dislike.

Craik lifted the corners of his mouth. “The beginning of a
beautiful friendship.”

Dukas gripped Piat's shoulder. “Jerry, I know it's tough.
It'll get better, okay? Stay in touch.”

They got in the car and drove away.

Piat spent the rest of the day cleaning his own things out of
the house and trying to conquer his hangover. He slept that
night in a bed, the dog stretched out at his feet. In the
morning, he went to the loch with the dog in the car. It was
a cold, windy day; the rain was gone but heavy cloud lingered.
When he parked, he couldn't see the tops of the hills.

He and the dog made the climb. His legs still hurt from
the run in Bahrain.

From the top, Mull spread away to the north. He could
see the mountain where Bella's parents lived, and he could
see the opening of the Great Glen, and everywhere, the sea.

With the dog, he walked down to the crannog. He walked
around the beach. The cleanup was good, and by now, Dykes
and McLean were gone.

Piat drove back to the farm and made a last check around.
When he came out, Annie was just wheeling her bike in.
She was startled but looked severe.

“I didn't expect you, Mister Michaels.”

“I was just getting a few things, Annie.”

“Where's the Hackbutts, then?”

He had the story prepared, went through it smoothly:
Hackbutt had been in an accident and was now in a hospital
in France. Irene was with him.

“Oh, that's terrible. How bad is he?”

“I think he'll be back in a week or two. She wasn't hurt.”

“Oh, the poor man.” Then she asked what had become of
Bella, and he told a prepared tale about the ornithological
society and a breeding program in another country. Even if
she believed him, she didn't like the story much.

“Irene wanted me to ask you if you can go on caring for
the birds for a couple of weeks.” She looked annoyed—there
were only four birds now, but she had a long ride each way,
and taking care of them was a lot. It had been Hackbutt's
full-time job, after all. He said, “She knows you deserve more,
so she asked me to give you this.” He held out a hundred
pounds.

“Yes, well.” She took it and looked at the money and then
shoved it into her wind-cheater. “Well, goodbye, then, Mister
Michaels.” Her severity was for him—the severity of the superior
morality you get to practice at sixteen. Piat thought
of the moralist he had been at that age, the idealist—the
war-lover too young to go to Vietnam and for whom, when
he was old enough to go, there wasn't any more war. He
had settled for spying, which had suited his adult morality
better, as it turned out.

He went back inside and waited until she was gone. He
put the shotgun and the shells down, then stood in the
doorway of Irene's studio and looked around at it. Inhaled
it. Some of her beach combings were thrown into a pile
against a wall: he saw the arm of a doll, a bottle, a battered
log. He'd never understood what it was she did or how she
decided what to put in and what to leave out. He never
would.

After Annie had left, he took the dog outside. He walked
it to its improvised kennel, stopped over for the chain, and
clipped it to the collar.

“Time to go, Ralph.” He caressed the silky ears. “You're a
good, good dog. Somebody'll take you, for sure. A dog like
you, you can't miss.” He stood up. There was no point in
trying to find something final to say to a dog. “So long.” He
turned away and walked to the car.

The dog lay with his head on his extended paws for a long
time. The Man had gone away before and had come back,
so now he was gone away and he would come back. Before
The Man there had been somebody else, somebody he no
longer remembered but would know if he saw or smelled
him, but now there was The Man and that was enough. He
would lie here and wait and The Man would come back.

He slept. He smelled a fox going by far up on the hill and
he woke. Sat up. Sniffed. He filled his mouth with the scent,
but it was weak and it came and went with the wind. He
smelled the birds in their hovels, smoke from a house a mile
away, something dead down the burn. He smelled the
remnants of the man and woman who had been here and
who hadn't liked him. He smelled the girl and the tires of
her bicycle, even though she had ridden away.

He lay down. Dusk began to fall. He put his head on his
paws and slept.

He woke to the sound of the car. It was almost dark now,
and he saw the lights as they turned into the farm and came
toward him. The car stopped. The door slammed.

The Man stood over him. “Well, come on, then,” he said.
He unsnapped the chain from his collar, and the dog raced
for the car.

Craik led Abe Peretz across Mulholland Avenue and through
the entrance of the building where Perpetual Justice had its
offices. Peretz had trouble keeping up because of his left leg,
and Craik turned and waited for him inside the door. He led
the way to the building directory and pointed out Elastomer
Engineering.

“Their front company. They're sloppy about it. Somebody
even held the door for me to go in.”

“They going to hold the door for you today?”

“Probably not. Unless it's on the way out.”

They went up in an elevator and got out at the sixth floor
and walked along the corridor. It was the middle of the day,
but nobody seemed to be about. Nothing looked any different
until they got to Elastomer Engineering's door, and then
Craik saw that the electronic keyboard was gone.

“Shit.”

He pulled on the door's handle. The door swung open.
Inside, the floors were uncarpeted. The night duty officer's
desk was gone. The place was empty. Stripped.

“My guess is it wasn't like this the last time you were
here,” Peretz said.

Craik strode down the long corridor to the T and turned
to the door that had led to Ritter's office. It stood open. The
room beyond was bare—no carpet, no desk, no nothing. The
inner door was open, too. Inside Ritter's office, a man in a
white cap and paint-spotted coveralls was leaning over a
bucket.

“Hi,” Craik said.

“Hi, there. You not the new tenant, I hope. It ain't ready,
if you are.”

“No, no—in fact, I'm looking for the old tenant.”

“They're gone.”

“Since when?”

“I been here since yesterday. Nobody here then. I paint
the walls; I don't ask questions.”

“Fast work.”

“They come and they go.” He thrust the end of a wooden
pole into a roller and began to roll paint across the ceiling.

Craik backed into the lee of the doorway and said to Peretz,
“The guy died in Bahrain only four days ago. Jesus.”

“Fast work, as the man said.” Peretz shifted his weight to
look around Craik at the painter. “This kind of shop, the shit
hits the fan, they're very fast.” He grinned. “‘They fold up
their tent like the Arab, and as silently steal away.' Except
that they weren't Arabs, were they.”

Craik walked back through the offices, looking in every
door, staring out of windows and studying up close the nail
holes where somebody's photos or diplomas or posters had
hung. “Right to the floors.”

“Lot of shredding, I imagine.” Peretz looked pained. “My
bladder needs a john. How much nothing do you want to
go on looking at?”

Craik directed him to a men's room he'd looked into. “Or,
there's a ladies' room the other way.”

“I'll stick with convention.” He limped off. When he came
out, Craik was standing by the front door. They went down
in silence, crossed to the parking garage, and climbed to
Craik's car. Peretz said, “Is Dukas going to investigate?”

“DNI has everything. He's going to pass it off to Dukas if
Dukas wants it. The connection with NCIS is thin—it looks
as if the bomb was made on the Bahrain navy base—but it's
enough.”

“FBI?”

Craik looked down the long, gritty gloom of the garage.
“I think there's a feeling of ‘Who can be trusted?'”

“You going to push it with DIA?”

Craik smiled. “I've been relieved of my duties at DIA.” He
leaned back on the vehicle and folded his arms. “I'm going
to DNI for my final tour. Two years and retirement.”

“Al, I'm so sorry.”

“Me, too. But you pays your money and you takes your
choice. I made my choice. And I still have some friends.” He
put his hand on the door handle. “Where can I drop you?”

“Oh, my office,” Peretz said.

They got in and Peretz, once settled, said, nodding in the
direction of the building where Perpetual Justice had had its
offices, “You going to follow these guys?”

“Well, as the painter said, ‘They come and they go.'” He
eased the car backward, then drove down the ramp and to
the exit. He stopped with the car's nose almost in the street.
“They come and they go.” He looked left and right, turned
his head back to the right toward central Washington and
its highways and byways of power. “The question is,” he said,
“where do they go?” He turned left.