The Falconer's Tale (5 page)

Hackbutt didn't get it. He looked as if he didn't get it and
he said so. Piat, his own arms folded now because he was
cold, the early sun behind clouds that were piling over the
whole sky, said, “You're an authority on falconry. No, you
are, Dig, don't deny it. But you also love the birds. That love
comes through in everything—when you handle them, when
you talk about them. It's great—it's nice, it's a good quality.
It's what makes you right for this project and it's what would
make the project easy for you. See—” He looked up where
the sun should have been and saw only a bright smudge
behind deepening gray. “The means to make contact with a
certain guy is through falconry. He's like you—he lives for
the birds”. Piat hoped it was true. He could push invention
only so far.

“He flies them.”

“Exactly.”

“Is he an Arab?”

That caught Piat off guard. It was an obvious leap—It was
the guess on which he was building the tale—but not one
he'd expected Hackbutt to make. “You're getting ahead of
me, man. What's the rule—we find out when we need to
know?”

“Sorry.”

“No, no—” He put his hand on Hackbutt's arm and then
let go. “It would be meeting this individual and talking birds
with him, letting him get to know you a little. Then, if that
goes well, then the powers that be maybe would make a
bird available to you to give him or something. Then—”

“What kind of bird?”

“Well, I don't know birds, Dig—”

“Do I get to pick the bird? There are some
fantastic
birds
out there, Jack, I'd give my left nut just to handle one of
them! Is that the way it would work?”

“That's the way it
could
work, I guess. You're the expert
here, after all. Sure, I'd think you could maybe write your
own ticket about that.” Would Partlow buy it? Did it matter?

Hackbutt was hot-eyed. “There are some
incredible
birds
out there! But Jeez, man, they cost thousands—I mean, big
five figures!”

Piat knew he was overstepping his bounds. Still, what the
hell. “The US is the richest country in the world, Dig.”

Hackbutt looked away, his mouth working. Was he calculating
figures? Almost without voice, he muttered, “Wow,”
and picked up the bucket. He unlatched a gate and then
turned back. “I don't want to seem mercenary, Jack, but—
Irene's installation, and everything—what kind of money are
we talking? For me?”

On firmer ground, Piat said, “Fifty thou?”

Hackbutt's lips moved:
fifty
.

“If you score.”

“God, I'd love to do that for Renie. God, that'd be great.”

They went down the pens, feeding and handling birds,
Piat lying back, letting Hackbutt think it over. They were
heading for the farther pens where the older, trained birds
were, and Hackbutt said as if out of nowhere, “Let's trot it
past Irene. I think it's a fantastic opportunity. Incredible.” He
beamed at Piat.

A woman after her bath was always attractive to Piat. There
was something about the skin, which seemed whiter, cooler,
enormously tactile. If you added to this the baking of fresh
bread, the appeal was overwhelming. He wanted to put her
on the rug and go to it. Unfortunately, her husband was
standing next to him.

Irene smiled at him as if they had a secret. “Almost done,”
she said. She was back in the day's long-skirted dress, without
jewelry, little makeup that he could see on her broad face.
She was a fairly tall woman, not Rubenesque or heavy but
strong. Vegetarianism hadn't made her thin the way it had
Hackbutt. “Surprised?' she said.

“The bread? I guess I am. I didn't figure you to cook.” Piat
was surprised.

“I'm a damned good cook. I do great country ham and
shit like that, or I used to.”

“Bread smells fantastic.” He was laying it on too thick, but
the smell of the bread—he pushed his mind back into the
role of case officer.

“Baking bread is an art.” She opened the oven, looked in,
poked something. “Did you boys talk?”

“We did. Now you two need to talk.” That seemed to please
her.

Hackbutt went into the small living room, leaving the two
of them in the kitchen.

She took the bread out and put it on the already littered
table. One loaf was a low-mounded oval with coarse salt
and something else on the top; the other was more ordinary,
but both were beautifully browned and high. “No
tasting,” she said. “It has to cool.” She came past him, stopped
where he was in the doorway. She kissed him lightly on the
lips. “So do I.” She smiled. “All things in good time.” She
went out.

When he left, Piat paused at the dog again. This time, it
sniffed his extended hand, then looked at him. He tried to
pet it, but it withdrew its head; something like a warning,
no more than the sound of the most distant thunder, came
from its throat.

“You're a tough sell, doggie. Thank God you're not the
falconer.”

Explaining Irene and her importance (tactically, not sexually)
didn't go down so well with Dave.

“It was great until she got involved,” Piat said as if he hadn't
planned it that way. “Then I had hell's own time with it.”

“What the fuck did you even let her near it for?” Before
Piat could answer, Dave shouted, “It's not the way you do
it! You don't recruit the fucking girlfriend!” His broad face
was red. Dave had been to the Ranch and had taken the
courses, and so he knew at least in theory how things were
done. Piat again had the feeling that he hadn't put the theory
into practice much.

“This ‘girlfriend' is different.”

“You deal with the guy alone and keep her out of it. That's
how it's done!”

“There'd be no deal if I had.”

Dave made a contemptuous sound. Piat said, in a voice
that meant
See how hard I'm working to keep from calling you a
stupid asshole
, “Dave, you don't know this guy or this woman.
They don't do things without each other.”

“You've blown security and you've saddled me with a big
fucking problem. I've got to run this guy!”

“Yeah, now thanks to me, you do.”

“Christ, if I'd known you were going to tell the girlfriend,
I'd have aborted you right the hell out. Jesus, what a bush-
league thing to do. You know what Partlow would do to you
if he knew?”

“Yeah, Dave, I know what Partlow would do. He'd say,
‘Well, if that was your judgment call, okay.'”

“He wouldn't! He'd tell you you blew it and to get lost.
Now
I'm
stuck with it.” Dave was standing by the window
of his room in the Western Isles Hotel, his fists clenched, his
face blotched with rage. He was scared, Piat realized. Scared
because he was going to have to do something that wasn't
in the book. Dave said, “You're a fucking loser.”

Piat didn't miss a beat: he didn't raise his voice or get red
or insist on the challenge of eye contact. He said, as if he were
lecturing a beginning class, “You get to him through her, at
least at the start. Hackbutt will take a lot of stroking. Pass some
of it through her. It'll please both of them and—”

“Don't tell me how to do my fucking job!”

Piat waited for him to stop and then went right on.
“Hackbutt'll need a makeover. Clothes. A decent haircut.
You're going to have to teach him how to—”

Dave lumbered toward him. “Get the fuck out of here!
Stop talking to me! Get lost!”

Piat waited for him to come close. He thought it would
be nifty to put Dave on his back. Maybe Dave saw that
that was a possibility, too, because he pulled up before he
was quite close enough. He shouted “Get lost!” again. Piat
looked him in the eye and, in the same tone of somebody
doing a routine, file-it-and-forget-briefing, said, “You're
meeting Hackbutt at lunch tomorrow. I've made a reservation
at a restaurant called the Mediterranea in Salen,
partway down the island. Noon.” He waited for Dave to
take it in. “The hardest part of all was getting Hackbutt to
agree to anybody but me as his CO. It took me an hour.
You're going to have to turn on all the charm when you
meet him, Dave.”

“I know how to do my job.”

“Hackbutt's prepared to dislike you, because you aren't
me. Hackbutt thought it was going to be me. He's a one-
man man.”

“That's fucking laughable—that we'd trust a job like this
to you.” Dave jabbed with his finger, but not very far, because
there was always the possibility that Piat was fast enough to
catch a flying finger and break it. “You're an agent! You're
nothing but a goddam pissant agent! And don't you forget
it!”

Piat put his hands up a little above his waist, palms out.
Dave's hands jerked as if he expected a blow. Piat said,
“There's an old Patsy Cline song—‘Why Can't He Be You?'
You might want to give it a listen to understand Hackbutt's
position. Or you can just go on being an asshole and lose
him and then you can tell Partlow why your agent won't
work with you. I won't be around to blame, unfortunately
for you. Lucky me. See you at noon tomorrow,
Dave
.”

Piat went out and closed the door very softly.

It rained most of the night and was still raining when they
started for the meeting with Hackbutt, a depressing dribble
from the low overcast, as if the universe above was saturated
and had to let the water leak out somewhere. Dave
was driving. Piat, in the left-hand seat, wasn't sure how he
was supposed to get back to Tobermory after lunch if Dave
took off with Hackbutt, but there was a bus, at least; asking
Dave what he had in mind would prove too explosive, he
thought, and anyway he didn't want Dave to get the idea
that he could plan Piat's day.

Dave was still angry; maybe he'd been chewing on the
scene in his room all night. He had bitched about the island
roads all the way down, and he had come close to hitting
another car more or less head on because he hadn't gone
into the lay-by that opened next to them, and instead he
had thought the oncoming car would be terrorized into getting
out of his way. It hadn't been.

“Nice move,” Piat couldn't resist saying when they were
as far off the road as a stone wall would let them. The other
car was vanishing behind them. The passenger-side fender
was crumpled against the wall, and Piat couldn't have opened
his door more than inch even if he'd wanted to.

It hadn't helped that another car had passed and the driver
had laughed.

When they got out in the drizzle at Salen, Dave was in
the silent phase of anger. He didn't bother with his raincoat
but hunched his shoulders and walked toward the restaur
ant—if you can't punish somebody else for being stupid,
punish yourself. Piat regretted having said what he'd said,
because he knew he had made things worse, and it would
all rub off on the meeting with Hackbutt. He didn't know
why he cared that the meeting go well, but he did. Maybe
for Hackbutt's sake. Maybe some vestigial pride of craft.

“Reservation,” Dave growled to the smiling man behind
the combination bar and reservation desk.

“Name?”

Dave ground his teeth. He didn't know Piat's cover name.

“Michaels,” Piat said. “Jack Michaels.”

“Oh, yes, right—we chatted on the phone about running.”
They had, in fact; now they chatted a bit more while Dave
secreted bile. Piat had run a route the day before that this
young man had suggested. “Fantastic,” Piat said now. “Great
scenery. Great run.” The young man talked about hamstrings.

Hackbutt wasn't there yet. They sat at a table for four,
from which the young man whisked a table setting. Dave
folded his arms and looked around as if he expected somebody
to call him a bad name. Piat ordered a glass of Brunello
and bruschetta, which wasn't on the menu but didn't raise
any eyebrows. He tried to mollify Dave by offering him some
of the toasted bread when it came, but Dave simply looked
at it. He wasn't going to allow himself to enjoy anything.

Hard on poor old Hackbutt
.

“We could order,” Piat said when Hackbutt was twenty
minutes late.

“We'll wait.”

Piat shrugged and asked the young man if by any chance
they had some roasted pepper in olive oil. He was enjoying
that when at last Hackbutt stumbled in, looking as if he'd
just come from Lear's blasted heath—hair soaked and tangled,
beard dripping, ancient drover's coat glued to his legs by the
wet.

“I walked.”

All three of them were standing by then. Hackbutt looked
only at Piat. Piat saw Dave stick out his hand, and he said
quickly, “This is the guy I've told you so much about, Digger.
You two will really get along.” He ducked out of the way of
Dave's paw and went behind Hackbutt to help him off with
the enormous and very wet coat. Hackbutt tried to turn to
keep eye contact as if it were his only contact with reality.
Piat gently turned him back and eased the coat off his shoulders,
preventing Hackbutt from putting out his own hand.
By the time he was able to do so, Dave had withdrawn the
offer and was pulling back his chair.

“Siddown,” Dave said.

Hackbutt looked at Piat for permission. Piat nodded.
Hackbutt sat.

So did Piat. He picked up his fork and stabbed it into a
piece of glossy roasted pepper and prepared to say something
light and conversational about the weather, and Dave said
to him, “You're done here. Bug out.”

Piat looked at him. Dave, he thought, was incredible. He
put the pepper in his mouth and picked up his last piece
of bruschetta and mopped up some of the olive oil. When
he looked at his old friend, Hackbutt's face showed frozen
panic.