The Falconer's Tale (33 page)

“I'd like a way to meet when this is over,” he said.

“Do you mean my life with Edgar, or your spy game?”
She slipped out of his arms.

“Both,” Piat said

She looked at the dog. She looked at Piat. More sweat
trickled down along her nose, and she wiped it away with
a knuckle, the gesture like brushing away a tear. Behind
her, the sound of her “music,” now clearly not the wind,
groaned, menacing and orgasmic. “You better go.” Her voice
trembled.

“Irene.”

“Don't.”
She looked furious, but what she said was, “Not
now.” He wondered if she meant “Not in Eddie's house” or
“Not until my installation is complete.” He wondered if she
knew herself.

“Irene!” He hadn't meant to speak again, but there it
was.

“Not now!” She swallowed hard. “Eddie'd know, and I
won't do that to him!” She shook her head, as if denying
the validity of what she'd just said, her grip tightening on
the edge of the door. “You think he's stupid; you think he
doesn't get things. You're wrong! You think you know all
this crap they taught you about body language and dilated
eyes and
shit
, but you don't know anything about people!”
Her voice dropped. “Eddie's intuitive. He isn't manipulative,
like you; he doesn't look people over for signs and
symptoms and run them through a computer.
But he knows
things
! He doesn't always know them until all of a sudden
they jump out of him, but he knows! His feelings are very
deep—not like you, you don't have feelings; maybe I don't
either—and it takes him a while to sort them out, but he
gets them and he gets them right. Do you know he worries
about your drinking? Do you know he thinks you've got
something else going on on the island? That's how he thinks!
So don't kid yourself he wouldn't know if you and I crawled
into bed while he isn't here.”

“I wasn't suggesting it.” His voice was hard. She had
frightened him with what she'd said about Hackbutt's
thinking he had something else going on; he didn't want
her to see it. And something between them—had it ever
been more than flirtation?—had just died.

She withdrew deeper into the protection of the door.
“Yes, you were.” She said it as if she were pronouncing
sentence. “But not here. Not now. When this is over. When
your operation is over.”

The door closed. Piat took a step backward off the stone
porch. Distantly, her music moaned. He turned to the dog,
snapped his fingers, and it bounded to him. “Never give
your heart to a woman,” Piat said.

Then he went up the hill.

Lying in bed, Alan Craik wanted sleep but couldn't reach it.
He was turning over the meeting with Sarah Berghausen,
his following of her. He had told Rose about it while they
ate. Now, lying beside him, she was quiet, and he listened
for her breathing and, not hearing it, said softly, “You awake?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Thinking?”

“About you.”

They turned toward each other; he put a hand on her
bare shoulder. “What about me?”

“What a good guy you are. And what a foolish one.”

“Ouch.”

“Charging at windmills.” She moved closer. “But don't
try to change. It's who you are.”

He said, “I'm thinking about the stuff Abe Peretz got for
me. It's great if it's solid, but—Abe's seeing far-right conspiracies
everywhere. He's a good friend, but he's just got crazy
on the subject.”

“Abe isn't crazy. He's hurting. What are you doing about
his problem? About Leah?”

“What can I do about Leah?” Craik had his hands on the
muscles in her neck.

“Call your buddy in Tel Aviv.” Craik had met the current
head of Mossad during a diplomatic incident. They had had
some things in common. Craik had all but forgotten. He
said, “Okay. I didn't think about it.”

“Too busy tilting at windmills.”

He massaged her shoulder and neck, an unconscious
action. “I'm trying to figure out what to do next.” He could
feel her breath on his nose and mouth; it was warm, sweet
with toothpaste. He told her about the meeting with
Raddick. “General Raddick warned me. He meant that if I
make a stink, there'll be no promotion.”

“That bother you?”

“It ought to bother you. If I get dropped to the bottom
of the list, so will you. You know how it goes.”

Rose had always been ambitious. Her goal for years had
been to be an astronaut; when that had collapsed, she had
tried to throw herself into staff and command work. Some
of her fire may have cooled, however. Once, after dropping
out of the NASA program, she had said, “You learn a lot
from failure,” and when he had said she hadn't failed, she'd
only shaken her head. Now he said, “What do you think I
should do?”

She sighed and stretched and moved over to make contact
with him down the length of their bodies. “Two retired
captains. We could raise our kids like normal people. Live
in the same house for the rest of our lives. Have a dog.
Three dogs.”

Rose had said she'd never have another dog after a black
Lab named Bloofer had died. But time and what she called
failure might have changed her mind. “Write our memoirs,”
he said.

“Start a business.”

“Not security.”

“A country store. Or a gas station. In the middle of some
desert, where nobody ever came.”

“Tough on income.”

“Nah. We could retire to Utica tomorrow and be the
richest couple on any street in the city. And low on taxes.”

He felt her breathing smooth out. The small, warm breeze
was on his throat. He thought she was asleep, and then
she murmured. “I can live with it.” She settled her head
on his shoulder and fell asleep.

It took three sets of phone calls to and from Saudi Arabia to
complete arrangements for the transfer of the bird and the
payment of the money. Hackbutt handled the calls well
enough—he was distant and touchy on the first one, but the
prince delegated the rest of the matter to his falconer, and
Hackbutt and the African talked longer than circumstances
required both times—until, in fact, Piat all but punched his
fist in the air. Mohamed was like a ripe fruit ready to be
picked.

He got on to Partlow to do the paperwork and the moving
of the big eagle from Mull to Bahrain, the only location the
prince would consider.

Craik was back in the parking garage opposite Sarah
Berghausen's building at seven-thirty the next morning. He
had a cup of convenience-store coffee in the cup holder and
a bagel he'd taken from his own freezer. Home had been the
usual morning frenzy. It was supposed to be his day to take
Annie to day care, but he'd traded with Rose for the week
after he got back from London. She had been too busy to
argue.

He watched other cars come in for a while, noting the
physical types of the people and the old stickers on the rear
windshields. He was looking for ex-military. For a while,
there were none, and then a man in his forties showed up
in a Taurus with a Cherry Point logo on the rear window.
Then several women drove in, none military that he could
identify, and then three guys in an Explorer with a
Bush–Cheney bumper sticker. They had sidewall haircuts and
discreet middle-aged spreads, and Craik got out of his car
and headed for the exit behind them.

He was wearing a blue blazer and chinos and a blue button-
down with a mostly gray tie. He carried his Navy attaché
case, which had no markings but would be as recognizable
as a tattoo to other military. This time, he didn't linger in
the lobby but followed the three right into a fast-filling
elevator and up to the sixth floor. Other people got off at
lower floors. Some people knew each other, the usual
workday chatter. The three got off with him on six.

He followed them at a little distance straight to Elastomer
Engineering, saw them go in. He'd noted the door's coded
lock yesterday; now, he wanted somebody careless enough
to open it for him. And he knew somebody would. There
was a war on terrorism and blah, blah, blah, but many people
were generous or craven or both, and if you smiled at them
and looked white and middle-class, they'd let you in and
never think about it. They'd let in Osama bin Laden if he'd
shave his beard and join a car pool.

She was about thirty and flirtatious. There he was, a pretty
good-looking guy, government attaché case, good shoes. She
gave him a questioning look that meant, “Coming in?” and
he grabbed the edge of the door and held it for her, and they
went in together.

“Thanks.”

“You new?”

“I'm meeting Ritter.”

“Oh, wow. Well—see you around—”

The offices were mostly empty; it was early. There was no
receptionist and no security guard. Where a corridor branched
from the entrance vestibule, an unattended desk stood. It
would be the night duty officer's, he thought; nearby would
be an office with a cot. Mostly, security began and ended
with the coded lock and the phoney corporate name on the
door.

He walked the quiet hallways. The long corridor from the
vestibule ended in a T, the two shorter arms running from
the back to the front of the building. They were functional,
drab; no attempt had been made to carry out the fiction that
elastomers or engineering were of any interest here. Craik
walked the long hall, then the short ones, poking his head
into open doors and smiling when he found somebody looking
at him. By the time he headed back he could smell coffee,
and more people were filtering in. He hung his DIA badge
on his breast pocket but didn't put much faith in it—some
of the people coming in had badges, and they didn't look
much like his own.

“I'm looking for Herman Ritter.”

He'd picked out another over-pretty woman. A little too
made up, a little too dressed, like one of the women from
Friends
.

“Oh, hi!” Smile. Toss of the head. “The
big
office down
the hall, hang a right, third door on the left.” She opened
and narrowed her eyes like a flashing light. “Corner office!”

He said that was great and tried to imply that she'd lighted
up his day. As he was walking away, she called, “He's already
in there! He comes in at six!”

I'll just bet he does
. He walked the corridor, turned right,
counted doors. Bingo. The door was unlocked. Inside was a
small space with a desk that probably belonged to an assistant;
this bunch clearly didn't go for receptionists. The room
had no windows. In the back wall was another door—Ritter's
office, he thought. Probably L-shaped, with a private bathroom
jutting in this direction and denying the little outer
office a window.

He opened the inner door.

A big, rather strikingly good-looking man in his late forties
was sitting at a large desk with his crossed legs up. He had
a telephone at his ear. He looked up at Alan and frowned
and then ordered him out with a gesture—the sort of gesture
that comes from never having people disobey. Here was a
man who had been imposing his will on the rest of the world
since infancy.

Alan went in and closed the door behind him and sat down.

It was, indeed, a corner office, and there was, indeed, a
door back there that would put the bathroom about where
he'd thought. Ritter hadn't hired a decorator to do the place,
so it didn't look as if it belonged in
Architectural Digest
; on
the other hand, it looked a lot classier than a government-
issue DIA office. The wall behind the desk was hung with
trophies—Ritter with the vice-president, Ritter with the new
secretary of state, four diplomas, five plaques displaying
awards for illegible accomplishments, a Yale pennant that
you were probably supposed to know was from some period
well before Ritter's youth, and various framed things that
couldn't be puzzled out at a glance.

“Get the hell out of my office.” Ritter had covered the
telephone to say that.

“I'm Captain Craik, DIA Collections.”

“Get-out-of-my-office!”

“We need to talk. When you're off the phone.”

Ritter thrust his lower jaw forward. Craik suspected that
Ritter liked confrontation, wasn't really upset yet. Perhaps
was even looking forward to a good shouting session to get
the day going. He growled into the phone, “Get back to you,”
and reached way over to put it down where it belonged, not
taking his eyes from Alan. “Harry!” he called. “Goddamit,
Harry!” He had a good, loud voice. But Harry, who was probably
the assistant, wasn't there yet. “I'm going to throw your
ass out of here,” he said to Alan.

“Perpetual Justice.” He gave Ritter a full second to react,
but the man didn't. Ritter seemed utterly confident but bad-
tempered. Alan went on: “Eleven task numbers backdated
to cover operations that in fact weren't DIA's.”

“Who the hell
are
you?”

“Oh, you know who I am, Ritter. Come on! Backdating
task numbers is strictly illegal and can be—”

“Get a life! What the fuck are you talking about?” The
words brought his feet off the desk and his torso upright,
head forward. He really was a good-looking man—dark hair
with some gray; tall, lean body; a good tan; clothes several
notches above whatever GS rating his job had. “Just get the
fuck out, will you?”

“Backdating task numbers is illegal and can be prosecuted.
It's a security violation. However, it tends to include money
crimes, as well, because task numbers drive both appropriations
and expenditures. Want to tell me about it?”

Ritter stood. Framed by his trophy wall, his old Yale
pennant above his head like the banner in a Renaissance
engraving, he looked great. Alan thought of his own meager
office and his chinos and wished he could look half as good.
A quarter as good. Ritter said, almost chattily, “I don't have
time to waste on trivia. We do important work here. Go do
whatever it is you do. I don't want to have to have you
thrown out.”

“Why not?”

“Look—” Ritter pointed a finger. “You're going to be in
trouble.
Career
trouble. As far as you're concerned, this office
doesn't exist, and if you want to talk about security violations,
you're committing one by even being here!” He didn't
ask how Craik had found the place or how he knew what
Perpetual Justice was. He was too good and too confident
for that. He couldn't be bothered with such questions
(although he might later direct somebody else to pursue
them).

“The door was open. You people have lousy security. And
a lousy legend. If you were at all careful, you'd at least have
your cover company in the phone book.” Craik smiled. “And
I'm bulletproof, so save your threats.”

Ritter came around the desk and leaned back against it,
arms folded. He seemed almost interested. He said, “Do you
know who I
am
?”

“Absolutely.”

“Do you know how important what I do is?”

“I know that, however important you think it is, you don't
know how to do it right.” Craik smiled again. He wasn't
aware of it, but he was grinning. Confrontation had that
effect on him. “And despite your assurance, you don't do a
very good job.”

Ritter seemed almost amused. He leaned forward, still
clasping himself in his arms. “Do you know whom I was just
on the phone with?”

“The guys at Force for Freedom?”

For the first time, Ritter seemed threatened. He snapped
erect. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“You'll do better to talk to me now than later. When the
GAO goons show up.”

“I said get the fuck out of here!” The voice was rising now.
The time for fun, the voice said, was over; the tantrum was
on its way. Craik could see the Ritter whom Sarah Berghausen
feared.

“No-o-o-o,” Craik answered. He drawled the no. He realized
at a remove that he was antagonizing the man, because
he'd found his enemy. “Not yet. You haven't heard what I
want.”

“I don't give a fuck what you want!” Ritter was pumping
himself up to full blast. Viewed objectively, it was a significant
performance, practiced and yet fresh, deliberate and yet,
to many people, frightening. Although controlled, it looked
as if he was out of control. The tantrum must have started
in infancy when the burgeoning will was frustrated, had
evolved into a weapon, perhaps the major one, in the will's
arsenal. Ritter was leaning forward now, then moving two
steps closer, now looming over the seated Craik but not
touching him, like an attack dog being held on a leash. “You're
a nothing! You're a fucking nobody! You're not getting
anything here and I don't give a shit what you want! You're
done, finished; you're toast! Get out! Get the fuck out!”
Screaming now at what was probably the top of his voice—
or had he saved a little?

Alan didn't move. He wasn't physically intimidated,
figuring that Ritter almost certainly didn't touch people when
he was in this state or he'd have a slew of lawsuits and he
wouldn't be in this job. And if Ritter really did get physical,
Alan figured he could take care of himself, although that was
never certain. Ritter seemed very fit, although fitness and
street-fighting weren't necessarily connected, and street-
fighting was what Alan would go to directly if a hand was
put on him. “I'd like to see your documentation of the eleven
backdated operations, to start with,” he said. “Or shall I just
get the GAO?”

Ritter's face was red. A vein thickened in his temples. He
was looming closer, all mouth up close. Shouting, “What did
I say? What the fuck did I say? Are you too stupid, you jerk,
you nothing, you goddam third-rate military hack? There's
a million of you, captains, Jesus Christ, captains come out
my ass when I shit! Are you too stupid to understand what
I say? You're a disgrace; you're a military moron; you're—”
Spittle flecked Alan's blazer in little white spots. He didn't
move.

“Get
ou-u-u-t
!” Ritter did have more voice, now pouring
out in an almost operatic scream. Then he lunged back at
the desk and hammered the telephone and screamed into it,
“Get somebody to my office, now! Now!” He turned to face
Alan, his face bloated with his now genuine rage.

“And I'd like to go over with you and your Mister Lee the
legal basis for the activities in the tasks that had superseded
numbers,” Craik continued. Sometimes, bureaucracy was the
weapon.

It seemed to wound Ritter and he started to holler again,
now almost an animal scream of deep pain, as if he felt Alan's
words physically, rage now joined by righteous outrage.

Alan's voice rose to counter it as he went on. “If those
activities were illegal in 2001 and were backdated under a
different task number, then there are further violations—”

Three men burst into the office. They weren't going to be
amused and they weren't going to be impressed by anything
Alan said or did. One of them—the least threatening—was
from building security; the other two were either serving or
former military. Alan held up the DIA badge that had been
hanging from his pocket. “Craik, Captain, US Navy.” He had
to say it three times. It did keep them from jumping on him,
but it didn't keep him from getting hustled out. Ritter followed
them, still screaming. Nobody came out of the offices to see
what it was about. Maybe they were used to it. Three women
in the corridor shrank back against the walls.