The Falconer's Tale (14 page)

“If you searched on just the Saudi guy's name, would it
come up with the document you just found?”

“Yessir, if I go into this system. But in the general system,
no, sir.”

But the Saudi name, Alan knew, was misspelled. In the
other documents, it was al-Hauq, not al-Hack. You'd have
to know about the misspelling to find this document.

He thanked Brakhage and went back to his office. Had he
learned anything that he hadn't known before? Yes, he
thought, he had: he knew now that there was information
in Partlow's reference that was—or had been, because stuff
kept its classification for decades after the reason for it was
dead—so important that DIA wouldn't let the intelligence
community see it. And what had to be in there, besides
possible references to torture, were the headers and footers:
the task number, the operation number, the identity of the
originating office, the number of the operative who had
written the report, and the authorization under which they
had done what they did.

Very
interesting.

The first night in London, Piat found it hard to sleep through
the sounds (love-making? certainly not the telly) coming
from the room next door, and he went out and walked,
ranging as far as the BBC complex. He sat in a pub and had
a beer and tried not to over-analyze why their fucking bugged
him. Then he thought about how little he knew about the
target of the operation. It was one thing to hit a target overseas—
another to turn that meeting into a contact. He tried
to imagine a rich Arab falconer—were they all like Hackbutt?
Driven? Whacked?

He needed Partlow. He needed information, money,
targeting data.

He found that he was thinking about Irene. And the sounds
from their room.

Craik called Dukas at home in Naples. Dukas, he knew, went
to bed late, but Dukas let him know that Craik was pushing
the envelope.

“It's the price you pay for having a secure phone at home.”

“What is it now? You want me to go find Jimmy Hoffa?”

“I think there's something interesting about Partlow's operation,”
Craik said.

“Interesting how?”

Craik told him about the contact report.

Dukas's reaction suggested that “interesting” wasn't the
word he'd have used. When they'd talked it over and had
an idea of what came next, Craik said, “I'm going to have
to talk to Partlow, and when I do, I'm going to have to take
your name in vain. I'm going to tell him you're a very
unhappy special agent.”

“Not far from the truth.”

The first full day in London, Piat was ready to take Hackbutt
to the big time—Pall Mall, the Arcades. Burberry and
Aquascutum. Farlow's.

The change wrought by the haircut was profound—perhaps
the shoes helped. Hackbutt stood straighter, walked better.
Irene fussed while she dressed him. Piat worked to keep him
enthusiastic for another day of shopping.

Before they walked out the door of the hotel, Hackbutt told
them he needed to take a piss. Irene pulled Piat aside.

“I want to know what you're going to make him into,
Jack,” she said. She shrugged. “He can't do power businessman.
You know?”

“Eccentric rich falconer. Old money. I think it's the best
we can do.”

She considered for a few seconds. “And me?”

He gave her an envelope.

“Thousand pounds,” he said. He shrugged. “All I have right
now.” He already needed the extra funds Partlow would bring
to their next meeting. In fact, he was spending his own
money on the op. Good case officers always did.

She raised an eyebrow. “What for?”

“You. Clothes. I can guess at what he ought to wear but
I can't even pretend to know what you ought to wear. Okay?
I need receipts.”

She took the money but she sounded impatient. “Tell me
exactly what you want me to look like,” she said. “Don't
give me a lot of shit. Just lay it out. Who am I?”

Hackbutt was coming out of the washroom. “You guys
have a secret?” he asked happily.

“No,” they said together. All three laughed.

“Irene needs some new things, too,” Piat said.

“That's great!” said Hackbutt. “I can help, too.”

Perish the thought
. Piat nodded. He wondered how fragile
Irene's cooperation was. He had the feeling she had an edge
of resentment under the surface—resentment that he was
changing Hackbutt? Or was that too facile?

“I don't know,” Piat said. He stood appraising Irene. Was
the target gay? Straight? If the target was hetero, Irene could
be a bonus. He shrugged. Or not. He moved his eyes off her.

Irene laughed nastily. “Always a pleasure to hear a man
say that out loud. Listen, Jack—just point to women on the
street. Tell me what you're looking for.”

Piat went back to looking at her carefully. “Skirts?
Stockings?” he said tentatively.

She rolled her eyes.

They walked out into the rain.

In the richest part of one of the richest cities in the world,
it was Irene who stuck out. Piat was invisible—ancient tweed
jacket, serviceable shoes. Hackbutt looked—well, he looked
like an actor learning a role, but the role fit. It was Irene
who missed the mark. Sack-like dresses and heavy wool bags
were oddly appropriate on Mull, or even in Spitalfields. A
statement. In the Burlington Arcade, two hundred years of
snobbery shed her statement like water off an Aquascutum
slicker and left her a past-sell-by-date hippie in an ugly, baggy
dress.

While a smooth shopgirl plied Hackbutt with ties, Irene
squirmed. “I could spend all this on one coat.” She shrugged
in disgust.

Piat agreed. He wasn't mentally prepared for the jump in
prices. He didn't have the funds to support both of them,
even if he spent every dime in his own accounts.

“Get cards. Pick your items—color, detail, size. We'll do
the ordering by phone next week.”

She smiled mockingly. “Promise?” she said. Her eyes did
something—Piat couldn't decide what it was—something
derisive.

Hackbutt loved Farlow's. He loved the staff and the vast range
of green clothes. He loved the fishing flies and the shooting
socks and the flasks and the hats. Especially the hats.

“Why do nerds always love hats?” Piat asked Irene.

She just laughed. “He likes it here. You're on your own.”

They got him fitted for trousers, a decent jacket, some
shirts. The unavoidable hat, an expensive, heavy felt hat with
a broad brim and a puggaree band. The rest Piat decided to
order from the catalogue. He wrote down items, including a
number of things for himself. He paid cash for the trousers
and jacket and gave the address of the farm on Mull. By the
time they were done they'd attracted a lot of notice from
the store staff. Piat didn't like it, but what he did like was
the way Hackbutt was beginning to react.

He seemed to take it as his due.

In another store in the East End, Piat got similar quality
items—the most expensive items on his mental list; two pairs
of heavy walking shoes, an Aquascutum oilskin, a chance-
found tropical-weight suit that fit Hackbutt as if made for
him. These items were all used, which was an advantage in
itself. Piat wondered idly how many spies shopped there.

He also bought two sets of evening clothes, black and black,
no vests, no color. They were cheap, and rich people wore
such stuff. He dropped the whole bundle of used clothing
with a Greek tailor to be altered to fit and paid the man with
the last of his money.

Back in Mull next day, Piat picked up the answers to his
emails. They made him smile. One even made him laugh
aloud. He replied to all three, located a place on the mainland
to get long-term rentals of diving equipment, and fired
off a stream of requests.

Then he caught the ferry to Oban, drove to Glasgow, and
flew to Athens.

On a Monday, Alan Craik telephoned Clyde Partlow. There
was some falsely jocular give and take, then the requisite
short pause, and then Craik said, “You going to have a minute
sometime? I need a little help on something.” He'd started
to say “clarification,” but he knew that the word would put
Partlow off. Even as it was, Partlow's voice was guarded when
he said, “What kind of help?”

“Oh, a common interest. Not for the phone.”

“Well, I'm always glad to share with another member of
the community, Al. Delighted to have you drop by and try
our coffee. Kind of special—a dark roast from Uganda that'll
curl your toes.”

“Sounds great. Want to name a time?”

So it went for another minute, a form of delicate fencing
with foils so thin they were invisible. At last Partlow, no
longer able to put it off, named a time that day, his office,
Langley. They parted the best of friends.

“It's a little hard to talk about, Clyde.” Craik sipped the really
excellent coffee—china cups, a real sugar bowl, a silver
goddam spoon—and smiled and said, “An intelligence officer
never likes to admit he's confused.”

“Is this the Navy asking the CIA for help?” Partlow smiled,
too, checked his watch, and glanced at the suitcase that
stood against a chair, a Burberry raincoat tossed over it.

“Practically throwing myself at your feet.”

Both men laughed.

“You remember Mike Dukas.” Craik kept his face as innocent
as a reality-TV contestant's. “What he did for one of
your operations.”

“Oh, the fellow who got the, mmm, that guy I asked you
to— That one?”

“Mike Dukas, right. Head of NCIS, Naples. He brought in
the guy named Piat for you.” Alan smiled. “Twice.”

“Oh, right, yes, I remember now.” Partlow, every bit as
guileless as Craik, said blandly, “How is he?”

“I guess he's fine, but he's got this problem about that
operation. I felt that I had to share it with him, him being
so close to it. So useful to you on it.” Partlow's smooth face
allowed itself a frown. Alan said, “It's probably nothing,
Clyde, but there's a reference in your plan that doesn't seem
to pay out. Could I have some more coffee, please?”

“Pay out?” It was as if Partlow couldn't grasp the concept
of paying out. “What reference? Cream? Sugar?”

“Black. There's a reference that's meant to support an al-
Qaeda financing link, but when you check it, there's almost
nothing there.”

“You checked it?”

“That's my job.” Not quite true, but close enough.

“Obviously we thought that there was plenty there, or we
wouldn't have used it.”

“Well, have a look at it. Maybe somebody else did the leg
work, didn't understand how important it is. But if you look
at it, you'll see that it's pretty much a pig in a poke. Not
even clear what
country
it came from.”

“It's perfectly obvious it's ours,” Partlow snapped.

Craik made a
Gee-I'm
-
sorry
bob of the head, eyebrows
raised. “Maybe it's in the eye of the beholder. I see an Israeli
routing number, I think, whoa! What have we here?”

“I don't remember any Israeli routing number.”

“It's not in your reference; it's if you go into the system
for the document.”

“Anyway, if it was Israeli, it'd be rock-solid. They're as
good as we are.”

“Yeah, sure, but—mmm, well— There's a question whether
the information was got with torture. We both know that
the data you get with torture isn't worth spit.”

“Anything I referenced is solid. Rock-solid. What's the
document?” Partlow swung around to a computer.

“You reffed it by a date-time group in 2001.” Alan read
off the numbers from a slip he had ready in a pocket. Partlow,
head tilted back so he could look through the lower half of
his glasses, tapped on the keys. He looked quite professorial,
somehow, perhaps the tilted head. His clothes, however, were
far more those of a Washington heavy hitter—expensive suit,
the jacket currently off; striped shirt; power suspenders in a
dark red silk; a tie in a fabric heavy enough to have provided
the Medici with drapes. Probably eight-hundred-dollar shoes,
although Alan couldn't see those.

“It looks perfectly fine to me,” Partlow said.

“May I look?”

Partlow swung the flat-screen monitor around to him. Craik
saw exactly what he had seen on Sergeant Swaricki's
computer. “But, see, Clyde, there's the problem—I mean,
look
at it. No headers, no footers, almost everything censored out.”

“The name's there. The al-Qaeda link's there. ‘That's all
ye know and all ye need to know.'”

Alan made a face. “That's not how Dukas sees it. He used
the word ‘bullshit' several times.”

“Dukas doesn't need to know a thing about this operation.
It isn't your job to tell him about it.”

“Well— See, Clyde, Dukas sort of feels he's been had. He
went out on a limb for you—
twice
. He's not going to feel
very cooperative if you ask him for a favor again.”

“It wasn't a favor. He had orders.”

“Oh, come on, Clyde—it was a favor. He did you a favor;
I did you a favor. I was glad to do it. All Dukas is asking is
that this point be cleared up a little.”

“What the hell does ‘cleared up a little' mean?”

“I guess it means that the whole document ought to be
available. It's a reference, after all.”

“Not possible. Negative. No can do.”

“But
you
must have seen the whole document when you
were putting the plan together.” Alan smiled. Partlow was
looking for a way out. Alan said, “You'd never accept information
from a document you didn't trust, Clyde. You're too
good for that.”

Partlow settled himself in his custom-made chair. He studied
a pencil. “I suggest you tell Dukas to have some faith in me.”

Craik sighed. “Clyde, Dukas is two steps away from being
the head of NCIS. He didn't get there by trusting people. He's
a hardnose.”

Partlow would be calculating what the cost might be if
Dukas was unhappy, Alan thought. What could Dukas do to
him? Not so much because of Piat, maybe, although Partlow
wouldn't be sure just how close Dukas and Piat were. But
if Dukas really got to be head of NCIS, and if he held a
grudge against Partlow—yes, that could present difficulties.

Partlow finished his calculations and didn't like the total.
He said, “How much do you need to know?”

“The whole document.”

Partlow shook his head. “Out of my hands. I can't release
it.”

“Headers and footers.”

Partlow shook his head again.

“Task number.”

Partlow creased the smooth skin between his eyebrows a
fraction of a millimeter, then, to Alan's surprise, allowed a
small crease to form at each end of his mouth. A mini-smile.

Not meant for Alan, for Partlow was still looking at his pencil,
but perhaps a smile over someone else's discomfiture. The
mini-smile of
schadenfreude
? Partlow spun the monitor back
toward himself and studied it, then tapped on the keyboard
and waited. Alan watched Partlow's shirtfront in the reflected
light of the screen: it turned mostly blue, then gold, then
gray, the first two with a suggestion of brass in the center.
Exactly the sequence that Brakhage's computer had gone
through when he was trying to recover the document with
a word string. And had got a firm no at the end.

But Partlow didn't get a no. He got a pale green shirt.
“Task number?” he said.

“You bet.”

Partlow was beside himself with satisfaction. “There isn't
one you'd recognize.”

“There has to be one. They'd never have got past the
preliminary vetting without one.”

Partlow smiled quite broadly now. “I'd let you look, but I
can't.”

“So we're back to me taking what you say on faith.”

Partlow was back to playing with his pencil. He tossed it
on the desk and stood up. “I have to excuse myself, Al. I'm
getting to that age where the prostate doesn't do its job so
well anymore. Right back.” He walked deliberately the length
of the office to his private bathroom and closed the door. No
wink, no nod. His way of saying,
If you do it, it's on your head
.

Alan reached over the desk and swiveled the monitor
toward him. He glanced over the document on the screen,
saw that it was unedited, saw that the Saudi's name was
properly misspelled, checked out the last line for the stuff
about “subject's condition not conducive to further interrogation,”
and saw that Swaricki had not been too far wrong:
“subject's condition not conducive to further interrogation,
so called guards to take subject back to his detention facility
and ended interrogation for then. Instructed guards to
continue with sexual stuff.” The rest of the document made
it clear enough that the subject had been hooded and that
water had been used.

He looked at the header. Partlow had told him the truth,
but not the whole truth: in the space for the task number,
there was, indeed, no task number as he knew them, but
there were actually
two
numbers: PJ12 and 11X97-02 and a
superscript annotation, “superseded.” He thought that 11X9702
looked like a legitimate task number, but PJ12 didn't. And
which one was superseded—and how?

The toilet flushed in Partlow's john, a discreet sound rather
like the clearing of a throat. Alan glanced over the rest of
the header, saw nothing that was going to help him—an
acronym, OIA, in the slot where the controlling entity was
supposed to be listed; a November, 2001 date; no references
whatsoever; a subject number that meant nothing to him;
and a number for the writer of the report that he just had
time to write on a cuff with Partlow's pencil before the man
himself came out of the bathroom.

“Sorry to have been so long,” Partlow said. His shoes did,
indeed, look expensive.

“No problem.”

“Can you put our friend Dukas's mind at ease now?”

“I think I can make him see that you've done the best you
could.”

Partlow smiled. The smile looked genuine, but who could
tell? He put out a hand. “Any time.”

Craik got up and shook the hand. They parted, if not
friends, at least allies. Or non-belligerents. Alan went out
wondering whose ass Partlow was biting by letting him see
the document. It was actually as intriguing a question as
what those numbers meant.

The lobby of Athens's Attalos Hotel was done in marble and
mirrors that failed to hide that it was small. Very small. Ten
guests could pack the lobby to discomfort. In effect, the lobby
was just a front hall. But the rest of the hotel was vast, with
a web of corridors opening off the minute and cranky elevator,
so that every level represented another adventure in mapping,
and the infrequent visitor or yearly tourist could discover
new territory on every visit. Different floors were in different
stages of reconstruction, each started in a different époque
of hotel decoration—mirrors, paint, wallpaper; quaint,
moderne, baroque. The process never seemed to end.

Piat liked the Attalos. He liked the rooms, both small and
large, and the lobby, and the staff. Most of all he liked to sit
in the roof garden and stare at the marvels of the Acropolis
towering in the distance, filling the sky at night with the
reflected white of two-and-a-half-millennia-old marble. He
didn't use the hotel too often—native caution—but this
seemed the right time.

“You take me to the oddest places, Jerry,” Partlow said as
he sipped his scotch. Aside from the bartender, out of earshot
in the roof bar, they were the only tenants on the roof.

Jerry drank ouzo. He watched the clear alcohol cloud as
the water and the impurities mixed, a swirling white that
suddenly filled the glass. Some sort of a moral lesson there,
he thought. “Good to see you, too, Clyde.”

Partlow looked at the Acropolis. It was evening, and the
sun's glow was just dying away in the west, and the Acropolis
stood in splendor against a dark pink sky. Partlow watched
the colors change for five minutes.

Piat drank a second ouzo. He'd become abstentious in
Scotland—avoiding drink because his agents didn't drink
much. It was that simple. But Athens was a different world,
and here, Piat wanted to drink.

Finally, Partlow tore his gaze away from the Parthenon
and turned to the matter at hand. “First, Jerry, please give
me your passport.”

Piat reached into his pocket and took it out. He caught
himself hesitating, calculating—just what Partlow no doubt
intended and was now watching. He forced himself to slide
it across the glass top of the table as nonchalantly as he could
manage.

Partlow collected it and put it in his pocket. Then he
produced another and slid it back. “Bona fides, Jerry.”

It was a new passport in Piat's real name, with an expiration
date ten years hence. Piat knew that Partlow would
have had to walk that through at State Department himself,
using up favors. He hadn't done anything illegal, of course—
just something tedious and difficult. How unlike him, Piat
thought.

“Thanks, Clyde,” Piat said. He was smiling like an idiot.

“Don't mention it, Jerry. May we move on to business?
Perhaps we should go to your room?” Partlow looked at the
bar and the door from the elevator significantly.

Piat shook his head. “This is better. Trust me, Clyde. Look
around you. Unless we're unlucky, we won't be interrupted
until the after-dinner rush. Nobody can listen. No lasers on
windows, none of that shit. Okay?”