The Falconer's Tale (13 page)

“Yessir.” Swaricki was in his late thirties, one of the Marine
Corps' tactical intel specialists, rotating through on a shore
tour. He didn't think a lot of paperwork, had at first been
irritated by the Green Book review, then had come around
when he began to see it as clearing the crap out of a complex
system. He was about six feet, lean, big-handed, like a basketball
player from those long-gone days when six feet was tall
and the pros wore short shorts and neat haircuts. Now he
said, “Problem with one reference.”

“You couldn't find it?” That would be odd, and bad for
Clyde Partlow.

“Found it, sir, but no headers or footers. Can't tell much
about it that way.”

Craik wasn't sure he saw the problem; what he thought
he wanted would be in the text, not the frame. Still, because
he respected Swaricki, he said, “Why?”

“You read it, you'll see.”

Craik moved into the cubicle and stationed himself behind
the Marine. “Bring it up here and show me.”

Swaricki brought up a document that was almost entirely
blank. Two-thirds of the way down the screen it said, “after
twenty-five minutes, subject alluded to individual named
Mohad al-Hack and told this interrogator particular individual
is financier for al-Qaeda.”

“That's it?”

“Well, you get this—” Swaricki scrolled up to what would
have been the beginning of the document if there had been
one. After a space, it said, “8 A. M. in the morning. Subject
sleep-deprivationed previous 24. This interrogator entered
the space and”. Three inches below that, it said, “broke for
lunch and”, and another four inches down, “decided not to
break for dinner and”. Swaricki scrolled to the end of the
document, which said, “subject's condition not conducive to
further interrogation, so called [deleted] to [deleted] subject
back to his [deleted] and ended interrogation for then.
Instructed [deleted] to continue with [deleted].”

“Not real helpful,” Craik said.

“Fucking disgrace, excuse me, sir. They got no more business
referring to this pile of shit than I got playing on the
Pittsburgh Steelers.”

Craik read the scattered words again and said, “What do
you make of it?” He thought he knew, but he wanted the
Marine's opinion.

“Torture, sir. Sleep deprivation followed by something
worse. ‘Condition not conducive to blank'—that's
torture
.”
Swaricki said it with disgust. He was a rigidly moral, maybe
self-righteous man, a Roman Catholic who might as easily
have been a priest, the type not unknown in the military.

“Depends on what ‘blank' means, doesn't it?”

“I read ‘blank' to mean ‘further interrogation.'”

“Could mean ‘persuasion' or ‘a liking for jelly beans.'”

“‘Called blank to blank subject back to his blank'—‘called
guards
to
carry
subject back to his
cell
.'”

The Marines had their rules. If it wasn't in the Code of
Military Justice or the Geneva Conventions, they were against
it. The Marines had enough trouble in Iraq as it was. Still,
he said, “That's one reading, Sergeant. But not the only one.”

“Why all the deletions? He's describing what he did, is
why. Brass can't allow that. Deleted it. Cleaned it up.”

“Then why leave the little that's there?”

“You can't put one sentence in the middle of a page, which
is the sentence they needed for the reference, and cut
everything
else. See, the stuff they left in gives it a sort of reality.
Authentication. Like, ‘This really happened and this is the
straight skinny.'”

Alan looked at it again, then took the mouse and scrolled
up to where the header should have been. Above that was
nothing but the reference, a date-time group that showed
that the report dated from the very end of 2001. “Damned
early,” he said.

“Afghanistan.”

Alan nodded. “December Oh-One's damned early for
torture, too, if that's what's in there. There weren't any findings
on torture until a littler later.” He leaned back against
a desk that stood at right angles to the computer table.
“Anyway, that's a different story.
This
thing—” he stabbed a
finger toward the screen—“may be about torture and maybe
it's not. But it's a lousy reference to support an operation.
Print me out a copy of it and I'll take it with me.”

“Mostly blank paper,” Swaricki grumbled.

“Yeah, but not entirely. Maybe there's enough words to
take it another step.”

London was just as wet as Scotland, without the vistas or
the fish. Piat didn't know London very well—to him, it was
a city he flew through, not a city he flew to. But it met his
criteria—far enough from Mull to be foreign and secure, close
enough to save money and time.

He landed them at a small tourist hotel off Russell Square.
It was simple and spare and didn't cost much by London
standards. They were in their rooms as soon as the concierge
let them—noon—and out the door again. Irene looked like
a certain kind of American tourist. Piat looked like another.
Hackbutt looked like a refugee. The three of them were incongruous
together and that worried Piat. Hackbutt looked so
odd that he was going to be memorable—too tall, too scraggly,
too ill dressed. And he looked odder for having Irene and
Piat in tow.

Irene hadn't wanted to come. She was going to lose two
days of work. Piat thought she was complaining too much—
maybe was setting herself up to be able to back out of the art
show and say it was his and Hackbutt's fault. He'd insisted she
be there. He knew that Hackbutt wouldn't go along with everything
unless she was there. Hackbutt had to be transformed.

The process was a simple one, and one that Piat had used
before. First, dress Hackbutt like a human being. Then take
him shopping for real—once he wouldn't stick out like a
clown from a circus. And in between times, try to get him
to make small talk on some subject other than birds.

Spitalfields had a sporting goods store that catered to a
twenty-something clientele of up-and-comers who did things
like rock climbing and mountain biking. In thirty minutes,
Piat piled the counter with three shirts (colors chosen by
Irene, neutral, microfiber, expensive), a single pair of hard-
wearing hiking trousers with a minimum of cargo-pockets,
a Gore-Tex windbreaker. Shoes were a problem.

Hackbutt didn't resist the shirts or the trousers, but he
wasn't really interested until Irene started moving him
through the shoes. He had on his feet a pair of “running”
shoes so ancient that the nylon mesh fabric had ripped away,
and the logo, the most prominent part of the design, was
unrecognizable. The rubber internals had broken down and
the shoes didn't sit right on his feet. Their color was somewhere
between that of mud and that of pigeon blood. Even
Hackbutt recognized that his shoes were disgusting. Piat
suspected that they were the only pair he owned.

Hackbutt, suddenly enthusiastic, cruised the racks of waiting
shoes and boots with an air of childlike wonder. Irene prattled
at him, fussed while he tried boots on, chided him when
he was attracted by colored laces. But in the end, it was Piat
who made the choice for a pair of Vasque shoes, built like
running shoes but with heavier, leather uppers. Hackbutt was
so delighted that he put them on immediately. Piat threw his
old shoes into the box as soon as he paid and tossed the box
in the first dumpster they passed when they left.

Hackbutt walked through Spitalfields with his eyes on his
new shoes. “They're so comfortable!” he said. For the third
time.

Irene smiled. “That was easier than I expected,” she said
quietly.

“That was the easy part,” answered Piat.

* * *

The contact report was on Craik's computer when he got
to his office in the morning. With it, however, was a note
from Swaricki that the Marine hadn't bothered to tell him
about the day before—Swaricki apparently didn't like to
repeat himself. It had the same charge of torture and the
Marine's disgust with the heavy censoring, but it also had
something new. “This material was not in our system before
about two months ago. It appears to have been part of a
big take from Mossad that included all that stuff on Shiite
politics, but this is sort of off the wall—different subject.
But it comes with the routing number of the Mossad take.
Maybe they swept up a lot of stuff to pad the take, give us
a thrill. My question would be, is it an Israeli report? I
thought it was US.”

Mossad cleaning house? A small voice said,
Well, the
Israelis
use torture. Even though their supreme court said it's illegal
.

Or somebody screwing up? Not screwing up big-time, but
making one of those little mistakes that everybody does. And
saying when it was discovered, “What the hell difference
does it make? It's a nothing.”

Except that this nothing was supposed to be an
American
intel report. Partlow hadn't given any indication that it was
otherwise. And it sounded American—American jargon,
written by somebody who'd been at it long enough to write
in army-speak. But if it was American, it must have been
sent to Israel in the first place. Which was not at all unusual—
allies trade intelligence. But getting it sent back was.

Craik put his hand on his internal phone and called
Swaricki. “Did you get
any
indication that that document had
been in our system before two months ago?”

“No, sir. If we had the headers, we might pick up a number
we could look under, though. It could have been here all
the time that way.”

Craik put the phone down and tried to walk the cat back:
Partlow would have been looking for a target to match an
existing antiterrorism task. Maybe he had already had some
names, had pinged on the one in this document because it
connected to al-Qaeda—a great selling point. Partlow was
being a good bureaucrat. Looking for an operation that would
support a task and bring in money and medals.

Except that it was awfully convenient that the document
had turned up just in time to serve Partlow's purpose. Unless
Partlow had known another way to access it in the system—
a way he hadn't indicated in referring to it.

“I don't have time for this shit,” Craik said out loud. He
had E-6 fitness reports coming up. He jotted some notes on
a yellow sticky and stuck it to his screen amid a forest of
other such notes. The process of writing made him uneasy.
The note said only:

But the words hung there. That was when he knew in his
gut that he was looking at something bad.

A London hairdresser was a more difficult proposition altogether
for Hackbutt than clothes or shoes. He couldn't
explain
why
he was so resistant, but he was. Because he had
no rational reason to resist, it was almost impossible for Piat—
or Irene—to convince him to go.

Piat resorted to force. He called the salon he had selected
and made an appointment—a late appointment.

Hackbutt wouldn't look up. “I don't want to,” he said. He
was pleading.

“Too bad,” Piat said. “The appointment's made, Digger.
Here's the deal. If we miss it, the op's off. That simple.”

“You're trying to make me into somebody else!” Hackbutt
said.
Point for Hackbutt. Maybe game, set, and match, too
.

Irene brushed Hackbutt's lips with a finger. “He's trying to
make you into
yourself
,” she said.

Once again, Piat had the feeling that she was speaking
lines he'd written for her. Case-officer lines.

Hackbutt looked up at her, and they hugged. He looked
miserable, but he hugged.

They made the salon on time.

The difference afterward was so remarkable that Piat had
to keep himself from looking at Hackbutt the way that
Hackbutt had looked at his new shoes. His beard was trimmed
now, neat; his moustache was full and dark, his hair
groomed—still a little wild, but disciplined. The man with
the scissors had been gifted. He'd cut like a sculptor, revealing
rather than excising. Going into the salon, Hackbutt had
looked like a street person in expensive shoes. Coming out.
he looked like a retired U-boat commander.

Irene glanced at Piat. “How did you find that place?”

“I liked the sound of the guy's voice and the style of his
website. He never used the word
art
.” Piat shrugged again.

“As if you'd know art,” Irene said. Then she ran her fingers
through her hair and raised her eyebrows.

“Of course,” Piat said.

Near the end of the Washington work day, not too long
before most people would leave (but Craik wouldn't; he'd
be there until eight or nine), he headed downstairs, down
past the ground floor and the nominal basement to the B-2
level. Two floors below ground. The burrows of the computer
geeks, the real masters of the intel universe.

Down here were IT support people from all the services.
The Navy specialists were DPs—data processing ratings. Craik
made a point of spending time down there, both to understand
how things were done and to get to know a few of
the people. One, a DP second class named Brakhage, had
proven to be a familiar face, a young black guy who had
spent six weeks on his team prepping an exercise in India
several years before. Now, Craik headed for the big room
where Brakhage and fifteen other people sat all day at
computer monitors.

“Hey, Captain.”

“Hey, Brakhage, how you doing?”

“Not as much fun as planning that war game. But sort of
fun.”

“If your work is fun, you've got it made.” Alan pulled a
rolling chair over from an empty station and sat down.
Brakhage was inputting data from what looked like handwritten
notes. Rather a contradiction, that anybody worked
by hand to give stuff to a computer. Some old-timer. Brakhage
kept working, but he said, “Do something for you, sir?”

“I've got a sort of peculiar problem.”

“Just give me a minute, sir.” Brakhage tapped the keyboard,
turned a page, tapped some more. What appeared on the
screen was gobbledygook to Alan Craik.

“Encrypted?” Alan said.

“Yessir.”

Brakhage stopped typing and studied the screen, his eyes
screwed up as if he needed glasses. Craik thought of asking
him if he did, decided it was none of his business. Then Brakhage
swung around to face him. “Yessir, what can I do for you?”

Alan took the folded printout of the contact report.
Unfolding it, he said, “This is kind of strange.” He handed
the paper over.

Brakhage eyeballed it and looked up. It didn't take long to
read the almost blank page. Craik explained, “It's the contact
report on an operation I signed off on. I'm just dotting the
i's now.” He leaned back. He wanted to seem casual but assured
that what he was asking was okay. “It's got no headers or
footers, so I don't know where it's from or who did it. I
thought maybe you could do a search on the text and find
the original.”

“Been really redacted.”

“Sure has. Can you search on the sentence that has the
Arabic name in it?”

“Might do that,” Brakhage muttered.

“Not much to choose from.”

“Any unique string'll do.”

“Can you do it?”

“You're gonna authorize it?”

“You want it in writing?”

Brakhage sucked air through the space between his front
teeth and said he guessed not. The implication was that Craik
was asking for something that was probably not quite legit
but that would pass muster if anybody ever checked. Which
was exactly the way Alan saw it. It didn't hurt that they'd
worked together before and that Brakhage had seen then
that Craik was a straight shooter.

“Shall I come back?”

Brakhage shook his head. He clicked his mouse, and the
current screen disappeared; he clicked some more and apparently
got out of the encryption program, and then he called
up a vivid screen with the DIA seal in the middle. From that,
he progressed to one with the Department of Defense seal,
and finally to a fairly drab one on which Craik was able to
read only “CETIX Search” and a multiple password window.

“Don't look,” Brakhage said with a grin. He began to tap
the keyboard. He muttered, “Short string.” He clicked his
mouse and fell back in his chair and watched the screen. So
did Alan.

It took an uncomfortably long time. Brakhage didn't say
whether it was traffic or the age of the program or just density
of data in the system. But they had time to talk about baseball
and who would make the playoffs and who would win.
Brakhage looked at his watch. So did Alan, and he saw that
it was quarter to five and Brakhage could have left fifteen
minutes ago.

“I'm sorry, Brakhage.”

“No biggie, sir.” Maybe Brakhage figured that now Alan
owed him.

“Jesus, at last.”

The screen was blank except for an unglamorous, unboxed
message in the upper right corner that looked as if it had
been typed on a manual typewriter that needed a new ribbon.
It said, “Access denied. 711140095737.14-3. 52189702.
PERPETUAL JUSTICE code-classified.”

“What the hell?”

“Yeah, I was sort of afraid of that.”

“Security classification?”

“Yessir. That's the 7111—means it's got a special classification
above the level of the clearance of the search engine.
That's not so unusual, but I usually run into it with stuff out
of National Security Council or parts of Defense, like that.
CIA not so much. DIA hardly ever, but there it is.”

It took a while for Alan to digest what he meant. “This is
a
DIA
document?”

“Yessir—that's the 737. That's us.”

Us. The Defense Intelligence Agency. His own outfit
. He said,
“The date-time group that was referenced was for December,
2001. So this is a DIA document from 2001?”

“Yessir, I expect it is. It'd be really rare to change the code
in the system, even if another outfit got the document and
let's say incorporated it into something else—they'd still have
to classify all of it up to this level, and they'd use the same
number.” He looked at the hard copy Alan had given him.
“I guess a lot's been stricken out from it, because what you
got here isn't classified that high.”