The Falconer's Tale

by Gordon Kent

  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no task number as he knew them, but there were actually two numbers: PJ12 and 11X97-02 and a superscript annotation, “superseded.” He thought that 11X9702 looked like a legitimate task number, but PJ12 didn’t. And which one was superseded—and how?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?”

  Partlow looked around him, his head bobbing to acknowledge the truth he now perceived. “Okay,” he said after a minute’s reflection. “So—how are they doing?”

  Piat sat back, wondering if his current state of mental and physical fitness could stand a cigar, even a small one. “They’re fine. Better than fine. The woman is working so well that I have to expect there’s a control fight coming—she’s so cooperative she’ll have to revolt soon. You know?” he said, making a hand gesture to indicate the way agents had to be.

  Partlow nodded. “What does she want?”

  Piat shrugged. “Money? Power? Her show to be a success in the art world? I don’t know what she wants because she doesn’t know herself. She needs to be motivated, and I don’t have the handle yet.”

  “And the falconer?” he asked.

  Piat slid a digital photo across the table—a snapshot he’d taken after London. It showed Hackbutt in his new guise as retired U-boat commander—in a heavy turtleneck, a gold signet ring from Bermondsey Market glinting on his ring finger.

  Partlow whistled—and pocketed the photo. He gave Piat the same smile that he’d had when he greeted him back in Oban—a real smile of happiness. “Well done, Jerry.”

  Piat drank off the rest of his ouzo. “Don’t cheer yet. Too much could fuck up now—as ever. I have a pile of requests, and the top one is money.”

  Partlow nodded. “I have money now.”

  Piat let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good to hear, Clyde, because I’ve been spending my own. Here’s the receipts.” Piat handed over the whole batch—the “contracts” for both of his charges, the receipts for every dime spent in London. On another sheet he had his anticipated expenses for the next phase, all typed out neatly with bland line items, no dates or names. And some serious padding.

  Partlow flipped through the receipts, nodding, then glanced at the expenses. He stopped at the cost of the hairdresser in London. “That’s quite a lot of money for a haircut,” he said carefully.

  Piat shrugged. “Look at the picture again and tell me I wasted the money.”

  Partlow straightened in his chair. “Point taken.” His finger was running down the anticipated expenses. “I’m not made of money, Jerry.”

  Piat shrugged. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and walked up to the bar. The Greek woman behind the bar was forty, handsome, oddly at home in a white evening shirt and a man’s black vest. Piat got two more drinks and a small Dutch cigar. He over-tipped her. She was apparently unimpressed by his Greek or his tip, but one corner of her lip unbent just enough to signal him that he was not totally wasting his time.

  When he came back to the table, Partlow had put all the receipts away and had the expenses in front of him. He had glasses on his nose. Piat had never seen Partlow with glasses before and had to fight an atavistic urge to needle Partlow, but this was a new age and he kept to his intention. The good agent. He put another scotch by Partlow’s hand.

  “This is all rather high-end, Jerry.”

  “Clyde, I could argue money item by item, okay? And you could play the good manager. Let’s just skip that part. Tell me about the target, and then let’s talk money.”

  Partlow sat back with his new scotch. His eyes moved around the roof garden—one last check to see who could hear them. “We’re just not there yet, Jerry.”

  Piat fought with a quick flare of anger. He didn’t completely win. “Fine. Play spy games. Let me lay this out as I see it, Clyde. Either you’re going for some two-bit creep, i
n which case this whole op is a waste of time and money, or you’re going for a big shot, a serious player, in which case—let’s face it, Clyde, you wouldn’t waste your own time on a cheap trick. Right? So this guy is somebody who matters. Arab. Falcons. Rich. Right? Do I have to lay this all out? I lived with those people out East, Clyde. They don’t stand around in airports. They don’t go out on the town. In fact, they don’t do anything that Americans or Russians or even Chinese would do. They rent whole hotels. They surround themselves with layers of flunkies and courtiers. They have their own planes and their own staffs.”

  Partlow was looking around the roof again. “Make your point.”

  Piat leaned forward. “The falconer has to look rich. He has to mix rich. He has to taste rich. Even then—even if I do this perfectly, Clyde—getting alongside the target you are so busy keeping from me is going to take a fucking miracle.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Don’t be a prig, Clyde.” Piat stayed forward, his elbows on the table.

  Partlow looked at the Parthenon and then back into Piat’s eyes. “Again, point taken, Jerry. Your surmises are, as usual, eerily accurate. But that’s as far as I can go right now.”

  Piat blew out a gust of breath in frustration. “Have you got venues? A schedule?”

  Partlow opened his briefcase and withdrew a day planner. It was a plain black book, without gold edge or affectation. Piat flipped through it. Someone—probably Partlow—had copied dates and places in careful block letters. It spoke volumes for Partlow’s level of commitment to the operation that he’d gone to the trouble of creating such an artifact. “He only leaves his home infrequently. You’ll find the dates and times.”

  Piat already had found one. “Monaco? You’re fucking kidding me. You want me to try Digger at Monaco?”

  Partlow shrugged. “We don’t have much choice.”

  Piat flipped forward. The Derby in England. A date in Mombasa—that caught Piat’s eye. He couldn’t think of a reason for a member of the ultra-rich to go to Mombasa. A date in Barcelona, ten months away.

  Piat looked up. “Jesus, Clyde, how long do you think this thing’s going to go on?”

  Partlow rubbed the corners of his mouth. “Until it’s done.”

  Piat leaned all the way forward, until he was almost touching Partlow’s nose. He spoke quietly. “What the fuck, Clyde? What’s the goal?”

  Partlow leaned away from Piat. He was back to watching the Parthenon, now silhouetted against darkness. “Need to know, Jerry.”

  Piat leaned back. He sipped his third ouzo and lit his cigar. The nicotine hit him. “Okay, Clyde,” he said, drawling the words. “I’m a mushroom.”

  Partlow was still looking at the Parthenon. “Don’t be like that, Jerry.”

  Piat shrugged. “You want me to prepare two fucking unstable twits to meet a heavy hitter with no prior dope, no research. You want me to pull this off with venues that would challenge a fucking professional to make the contact. The Derby!” Piat’s snort was contemptuous.

  “Keep your voice down, Jerry.”

  “Think it through, Clyde. What are we going to do, put him out there with a fucking bird on his wrist and hope this rich fuck waltzes up and initiates?” Piat took a quick swig of his ouzo and subsided. He changed his posture, climbed off his mental high horse, checked his temper. He leaned forward again. “Clyde, have you ever done a contact on a big shot?”

  Clyde was obviously stung. He put both hands on the table. “This isn’t really about my credentials—”

  “No, fuck that,” said Piat. “I’m not challenging your authority. This is not a control fight. I want you to think about it, Clyde. Have you ever done a contact op with a heavy hitter? The kind that comes with a mistress and a dozen bodyguards and fifty flunkies?”

  Partlow considered. He rubbed at the corners of his mouth again, and then ran his hand back over his hair. “No. I have not.”

  Piat sighed. “Okay. Forget my tone and my three drinks and all that shit. Just put yourself there. Forget the falconer and his total lack of social graces. Picture it was you. You against a wall of bodyguards and courtiers, just to get—unnoticed, of course—next to the target. And then you have what, three seconds? To turn him on.”

  Partlow straightened his tie, a gesture Piat hadn’t seen him make in ten years. Partlow took a drink of his scotch, swirled the ice in the glass. “I see,” he said. And it was obvious that he did. He met Piat’s eyes. “So do we forget it?”

  “Your call, Clyde.”

  “Can it be done at all?” Partlow asked.

  Piat looked into the cloud of the ouzo. “With luck? A little daring? Yeah.” He smiled. Piat believed in luck. You made it with work, you earned it, you courted it. Sometimes, you even got it.

  Partlow took a deep breath and let it out. “I need to think.”

  “Sure.”

  “Can you do tomorrow?”

  He meant a meeting, another meeting. Piat looked at his watch and then, rather ostentatiously, at his airline ticket. “Has to be breakfast.”

  “Done. I’m sorry, Jerry. Really sorry. I think I misjudged—something.”

  “Don’t confuse me by being a good boss, Clyde.”

  Partlow gave a cautious smile and offered his hand. They rattled though the tedious formalities required for the next day’s meeting codes, and Partlow took his briefcase and left.

  Piat, who had let two of his vices off the leash for the evening, decided to tickle the third. He went and sat in the bar.

  Despite a late night, Piat was up early. He ran through the deserted Plaka, climbed the hill of the Acropolis, fought the hill and the gas fumes and last night’s various sins to the top, then ran around the theaters and back down to a shower. By the time he checked Partlow’s signals and walked into his hotel, he felt great.

  Partlow looked great, too. He had on a superb suit and a pair of very expensive shoes. An equally expensive suitcase, a Burberry tossed over it, stood waiting. His room was immaculate—in fact, a cursory glance showed Piat that Partlow hadn’t slept here. A few seconds with Partlow suggested that he hadn’t slept anywhere. He looked a little fuzzy around the edges.

  “Here we all are, then,” Piat said.

  Partlow indicated a chair and sat himself. The chairs were carefully arranged, with a table to the side—not between, just available. “Okay, Jerry. Let’s go over this again. Let’s assume for a moment that all of your surmises are correct, shall we? The target is a rich, powerful Arab, with all those people around him. His own plane, all those things. Yes?”

  “Sure, Clyde.”

  “The venues as noted.” Partlow tapped the little day book.

  “Sure.”

  “Can the falconer do it?”

  “Maybe. No, don’t get like that, Clyde. Maybe’s all you get. It’ll take ferocious planning and then it’ll take luck.” Piat wanted to say Jeez, Clyde, it’s all luck—where have you been? But that would have been counterproductive.

  “So we’ll go forward.” Partlow tapped an expensive mechanical pencil on the day book, then slid it over the table. “Yours.”

  “Good.” Piat took the day planner.

  “I’ll give you a briefing on the target before you hit the first venue.”

  Piat shrugged. “Spy games.”

  Partlow bore the shrug without reaction. “Need to know.”

  Piat said, “Okay. Let me try this on you. Monaco, then Mombasa. Monaco for a look—check his entourage, check his situation. Frankly, give our boy an outing to fuck up, without letting the target see him.”

  Partlow put his hand on his chin. “Sounds risky.” He poured coffee from a thermos for both of them, held out a bagel which Piat refused in favor of a scone. “I could quote chapter and verse from the ops manual.”

  Piat waved that away. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Without a look at the target’s lifestyle and his people, I won’t have a clue.”

  Partlow took a bite of the bagel, chewed, swallowed. “Let�
�s work toward that. I’m not saying yes or no, Jerry. I need to think it through. But yes—scouting was always your métier, wasn’t it? I can see the logic. And Mombasa? Why Mombasa?”

  Piat was in mid-scone. He gave a big shrug, swallowed, and followed the shrug with another. “Woman’s intuition? It’s out of the way, and there’s not much cover for the rich. I guess my gut feeling is that the target won’t have anywhere to hide in a town that poor. Even out at the beaches.”

  Partlow sipped coffee.

  “Can I ask you to get me all you can on those venues, Clyde? Monaco and Mombasa? Like, why? And where the guy stays? And who he fucks while he’s there?”

  “Not that kind of Arab, Jerry.”

  “Whatever. Tell me when you’re ready to tell me. Okay. Let’s talk money.”

  “Jerry, I always have the feeling you’re not sure which of us is the case officer.”

  Piat looked at his watch. “Fair enough, Clyde, but I have to get my bag and get on a plane.”

  Partlow opened his brief case and slid a credit card across the table. “Fifty thousand for future ops expenses. Sign.”

  Piat signed. The card was in his true name. A two-edged sword—every payment on the card would allow Partlow to watch him, track the op, ticket the expenses. On the other hand, it was a damned convenient way to keep the money.

  “Here’s a month’s pay for you—forty-five thousand dollars. Sign.” An envelope, thick with cash.

  Piat signed. Piat could make that much money last two or three years.

  “Repayment of personal funds spent on operational expenses to date. Seven thousand, two hundred and five dollars and sixteen cents. Cash and hand receipt. Sign.”

  Piat signed. This envelope jingled—Partlow had actually included the sixteen cents.