by Gordon Kent
“See you Sunday,” Hackbutt said.
“Play some cards, Digger,” Piat said from the doorway. Irene was in the kitchen, standing at the sink, doing nothing.
I’ve fucked this up, Piat thought. But there was nothing to be done right here, right now, so he got in his car and drove for the ferry.
“I like this place, Jerry,” Partlow said as he took Piat’s hand. “This place” was north of Torino, Italy.
“We aim to please,” Piat said.
They were standing in the stone-flagged courtyard of a Renaissance chateau that was in the process of being converted to a very expensive hotel. The ornate building and its more pragmatic defenses occupied the top of a mountain that looked out over the Piedmont. The Dukes of Savoy had used it as a hunting lodge, and now the Italian government was rebuilding it to house the elite of the thousands of tourists who would descend on northern Italy for the 2006 Winter Olympics.
Most of the work was done. The courtyard was immaculate, from the bronze sculptures in alcoves along the walls to the perfect herringbone of the brick and stone underfoot. Only the strong smells of paint and new masonry indicated that all might not yet be ready.
Light snow was falling.
They walked up to Partlow’s room together, unnoticed among the bustle of workers and arriving guests. Partlow had a suite, and the sitting room already had his stamp on it—the furniture moved into the approved arrangement, the suitcase standing ready. All nicely by the book. He had a stone balcony that looked out over a three-hundred-foot drop. Piat thought Partlow looked tense. Worse than tense.
“Scotch?” Partlow asked.
“Please.”
“Tell me about the falconer,” Partlow said as he sank into a leather armchair.
Piat toyed with his scotch. “He’s in good shape. He can do the job—if we get a little luck.”
“Something you’re not telling me, Jerry.”
“Irene—the woman.”
Partlow nodded. “You always said she’d be a problem. Are you in control?”
Piat shrugged. “Most days.”
Partlow leaned forward. “How bad is it?”
Piat looked out over the drop. “I really don’t know, Clyde, and that’s no bullshit.”
“I can’t remember seeing you this tired—this down.” Partlow put his glass down and clasped his hands over his knee. “You’re worrying me.”
Piat nodded. “I need a rest, and there’s no rest in sight. It’s fucking exhausting, Clyde. His issues, her issues, their issues. It’s like herding cats. Training them is like training cats.”
“They sound like agents,” Partlow said with a smile.
Piat was thinking about Hackbutt and Bella. “It’s pretty thankless.”
Partlow poured them another scotch. “You want my thanks? You have them.”
“Spare me.”
“That’s rather what I thought you’d say.” He handed Piat his glass, refilled to the brim. “Are they ready for Monaco? Are you?”
Piat nodded. “Yeah. They’re ready. Hackbutt’s okay—better than okay. He can do a cold meeting. All he can talk about is fucking birds, but what the hell. That’s what we wanted him for. And he’s smoother than he used to be—more mature. It’s deeper than the haircut.”
“You give him a good role model.” Partlow smiled.
Piat rubbed his jaw. “You know, Clyde, just when I think you and I must have hit it off all wrong, you say something so fucked up that I know I was right all along. Role model? What the fuck, Clyde!”
Partlow didn’t back down. “You’re a man of action. An individual. I’ve read every report you’ve written on the falconer, Jerry. I made the time. He wants to be you.”
Piat waved his glass dismissively. “Can we cut the pop psychology?”
Partlow shrugged. “If you insist. I thought we were being professionals, analyzing the tools of our operation.”
Piat thought about that for a few seconds and reminded himself of his new role vis-à-vis Partlow. He was in danger of slipping into the old role. Role model. That stung.
He took a deep breath. “Sorry, Clyde. I’m too into it, okay? Too fucking close for analysis. What I need right now is money and the target. I’ll settle for the target.”
Partlow had a briefcase. He’d had the briefcase outside in the snow, and it hadn’t left his hand. He opened it, and produced three sheets of paper, a passport, and some credit cards.
“Your cover. I took the liberty of keeping the name Jack.”
Piat leafed through the passport. It was a superb job—Macedonian, with cachets for twenty countries. It claimed to be three years old. “I can’t pass for native,” he said.
“Lots of semi-stateless persons have Albanian and Macedonian passports.”
Piat nodded. “Cover?”
“Two layers. Outward, you’re a petty antique dealer. That way, if anyone knows you, you’re covered. Shady character like you—of course you have two passports. Right?”
Piat nodded.
“Second level, I’ve put a code out that this passport is held by an undercover cop. Stolen art—Interpol. You won’t ever have to live that cover, but it’s there to backstop you if you get picked up in an airport.”
Piat smiled. “Interpol thing sounds like a great job.”
Partlow laughed. “Maybe for your next lifetime. Will it do?”
“I like it. Nice job, Clyde. I have some concerns about flying into the Middle East, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Cash on the cards?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
Piat smiled. “That’ll have to do.”
Partlow raised his glass. “I need you to read the target information. No notes, no takeaways.”
Piat was already reading.
The three pages were clearly an assembly of paragraphs cut and pasted from other documents. There were no headers or footers, no identifying data, but Piat could detect the work of three or perhaps four authors. What he read stopped his breath. It almost stopped his heart.
“He’s a fucking royal, Clyde.” Piat flipped back to the start and began memorizing. He didn’t intend to have any connections to these documents, and the vague sense of unease he had felt since his first contact with the operation now crystallized into a solid mass sitting in the bottom of his stomach.
“Not precisely a royal, no.” Partlow had his fingers steepled. “His family have historic connections to the Saudi family.”
“Could the fucking president tell the difference? Clyde, isn’t there a fucking executive order from the President of the United States that puts all of these guys out of bounds?” Piat took a hit of scotch.
“Not precisely. No.” Partlow leaned back and looked out into the snow. More quietly, he whispered, “Not precisely.”
“This is what we call a ‘gray area?’”
“Exactly.”
“Just how fucking gray is it, exactly?” Piat asked and then he started rolling his neck and stretching his back. Calm down. Be the good agent. Don’t go back to old roles. He told himself that while another, older, more paranoid part of his mind screamed fall guy. Clyde is trying to run an illegal op against a member of the Saudi royal family and he’s going to leave me holding the bag.
“Somewhat gray,” Partlow conceded. He shrugged. “They want to penetrate terrorism. At the highest levels, they talk about it all the time. At my level, there’s a pressure—you know what I mean, Jerry? A relentless pressure to produce. As if we can press a button and make a loyal, dependable source appear inside al-Qaeda.”
Piat nodded to indicate that he knew what Partlow was talking about. He did. He also knew that most of the real loser ideas in intelligence were generated from just that political pressure.
Partlow continued as if he were addressing a class. “Since Nine-Eleven, the pressure has become immense. People in the business know where the money comes from. It comes from Saudi. I’ve decided to find a way to follow the money.”
“
Sure,” Piat said, meaning the opposite. “Except that this is outside the box, Clyde. I mean, even for me, this is outside the box. We’re going to try and recruit a member of the Saudi family.”
“He is not, strictly speaking, a member.” Partlow spoke primly.
“Right.”
“Are you asking for more money, Jerry?” Partlow said. He smiled.
Piat had noticed Partlow’s stress, but now he read the signs differently. He had lines around his eyes and around his mouth, and his left hand, where it rested on the arm of the hotel chair, was white with tension. He poured himself—both of them—more scotch. His hand shook a little.
Piat examined Partlow’s statement. “If you’re offering more money, I’ll be happy to take it,” he said. ‘But—no. Not money.” He flipped through the three pages on the target. “His uncle rules the Eastern Province. The oil. And all the angry Shia.”
“That’s right. A gold star to you, Jerry.”
“You want me to put my guy next to him. Okay. Can do.” Partlow nodded. Piat took a swig of scotch and then took a deep breath. “Then what?”
“Need to know, Jerry.” Partlow waved a finger to indicate that Piat did not, in fact, need to know.
Piat nodded. “Okay.” He took another breath. “What shall I tell the inspector general when he comes around?”
“It won’t come to that. It’s all Nelsonian, Jerry. If we win, no one will ask how. If we lose, no one will even know we tried.” Partlow’s strain showed even in his voice.
“Fuck, that’s reassuring,” Piat said. “I’ve changed my mind. I want more money.”
Hours passed. Piat studied the three pages until he had them memorized. Partlow was patient. He knew what was involved.
In the end, Piat simply nodded. “Want to burn them yourself?”
“Yes,” said Partlow. He took each page and folded it in half-inch accordion pleats, placed it in the hotel sink, and set fire to it. Each page burned to ash. Not a scrap was left and the smoke detector missed the whole event.
Piat watched the first page go and then went and stood facing the windows to the balcony, his eyes resting on the snowflakes as he tested his new knowledge. It was all there. Names, dates, places, a biography, some leads. Falconry. He was nodding to himself when Partlow emerged from the bathroom.
“You’re ready, then?” Partlow asked. His voice betrayed his eagerness.
“I’ll look at him in Monaco. I’ll send you a simple signal—go or no go, after I look at his arrangements. One or zero. If it’s a go, I think we’ll try Mombasa. I take it you didn’t get me anything on his itinerary there?”
“Not much,” Partlow admitted. “His uncle goes to the game parks and shoots animals. He pays an enormous bribe to do it, which is why we know. As to the target—nothing.”
“I’ll bet he’ll fly his birds there, then.” Piat tried to imagine the mind of the Saudi falconer. A Saudi Hackbutt. What would Hackbutt do with unlimited power and money? He’d fly his birds every day in the most interesting environments he could reach. “Ask about it. There ought to be people in Kenya who know.”
Partlow made a one-word note in his day book. He handed Piat an envelope with money in it. They both counted the money and Piat signed. Then Piat rose to go.
Partlow stayed in his chair. “Good luck in Monaco,” he said. His words were faintly slurred. They’d finished half the bottle of scotch.
Piat shrugged. “Luck’s what we need,” he said from the door. And then he drove through the snow to Monaco, with a box in his trunk from Athens.
13
Monte Carlo had no snow and was merely chilly. The jagged rocks of the coast stuck out into the iron sea, and the overcast sky made the doll’s town of pastel buildings look gaudy.
Not cheap, though. Nothing in Monte Carlo was cheap.
Piat left his new rental car with the valet service at the Hermitage and carried his single bag into the desk. He signed in with his new passport. The system worked as it should have, and in ten minutes he was in a room. Eleven hundred euros a night. Piat’s meager belongings couldn’t begin to fill its empty luxury. It depressed him, and rather than drink, he changed into jeans and a heavy sweater and went out to walk.
Piat walked around Monte Carlo for three hours. The city had the same effect on him as the room. The obvious wealth, the heavy security, and the lack of taste all oppressed him together.
Worse, it was a dreadful operational venue. Every building had cameras. The casinos had more security than the headquarters of the CIA. The restaurants had both automated and human security. There were no back alleys, few blind avenues, and most of the walkways, however secretive they appeared, had cameras and human security.
The target was supposed to arrive later that evening at the Hotel Metropole. Piat walked into the Metropole’s lobby via the shopping center, sat in an alcove, and read the Herald Tribune. He watched the movement of the lobby. He walked out to the street and back to the bar, taking his time, counting his paces. Then he went to the concierge and did his job, asking a handful of questions. He got the concierge to let him look at a room. His worst suspicions confirmed, he went to the bar and drank a scotch that cost Partlow thirty-six dollars. Then he had another.
All the other people in the bar seemed to be on display. Women, regardless of age, were dressed and made up as if for a movie set. Most of the men were trying to look too young. None of them was particularly attractive, despite their best efforts, and Piat christened them the Pretty People—not quite good enough to be beautiful.
They had conversations without looking at each other, their eyes wandering the room to see if they had attracted the regard of someone new. At a center table, a French couple had an argument that lasted through both of Piat’s scotches. Between shots of vitriol, the woman looked at Piat. She wasn’t the only one, and after too many seconds spent staring at the bottom of his tumbler, Piat picked up his jacket and walked out.
Tough operational environment.
He had to use his passport to get into the casino. The attractive Indian woman at the counter looked at it and at him for too long before pressing it to a scanner and wishing him bonne chance. He found Hackbutt and Irene inside, almost where they were supposed to be. He watched them and their environment for ten minutes. They were doing a fair job of imitating people who were having a good time. Irene chatted with another woman while she played cards. Hackbutt placed very small bets.
It was off-season, and they had the place mostly to themselves. Middle-aged Brits were playing bridge for serious stakes at a central table, and the wheels were going. A handful of Pretty People were playing games to show that they could. Otherwise, the casino was quiet.
He went and stood behind Irene. She was playing chemin de fer with complete concentration.
He waited until she had finished a hand, casually brushing her winnings into the chip holder set into the table, and then he sat down.
“Why, Jack!” she said. “You didn’t say you were coming to Monaco!”
It was a nice little performance. The only audience were the dealer and the younger woman seated to her left, but the line was delivered very well.
Piat put some chips on the table. “Plans changed. Here I am.”
Irene introduced him to Michelle, the young woman to her left, who was going to school in Paris and had come down to collect some cash from her father. Piat nodded as often as required, lost two hundred dollars while they chatted, and left her to find Hackbutt.
Hackbutt was standing at a roulette table now, watching the spins of the wheel and paying attention to the board marked by the croupier indicating the last forty spins on the wheel. He bet very little.
“Digger—you’re not trying to play a system?” Piat asked, putting his hand on Hackbutt’s shoulders.
Hackbutt looked around. “Shhh!” he said.
Piat smiled. “Digger, they only care if your system wins.”
Hackbutt smiled back. “I’d just like to win a few times.
Irene is—well, she’s won quite a bit of money.”
Funny how she hadn’t mentioned that at all. “How much money?”
Hackbutt shrugged. “I don’t know, really. Two thousand euros?”
Piat whistled. “I think we should all go out and have dinner.”
Irene materialized at his elbow. “I’d like that,” she said. “My treat.”
Piat hadn’t been to Monaco in twenty years, but he remembered a cluster of decent little restaurants in the streets above the casino. They were still there, some closed for the winter. A few were open, featuring prix-fixe menus and at most three tables for service. The prices were on par with everything else in the town, but what Piat was looking to buy was privacy.
“I’m bored,” Hackbutt said as soon as they were seated. “I want to get back to my birds.”
Piat nodded. “I don’t like this town, either,” he said. He meant it, but he also said it to show some empathy for Hackbutt.
Irene said, “It’s like a temple built to money. It makes me sick—makes me remember each and every reason I turned my back on this. And these people. Fuck—it’s hard to find my center here. It’s like they have a machine to suck souls built under the Metropole’s mall.”
“Okay, we all hate Monaco. Let’s do our jobs and get the hell out of here,” Piat said.
His agents both nodded.
“Our guy arrives tonight.” Piat leaned forward and kept his voice low. He spoke rapidly. It was the only defense he could muster against eavesdropping, and it would have to pass, because he preferred the privacy of the restaurant to the professional eavesdropping in the hotels. “His name is Prince Bandar Muhad al-Hauq. His uncle is the governor of a Saudi Province. He’ll be staying at the Metropole and he’ll have most of a floor, exclusive access to an elevator, and his own security arrangements.”
Hackbutt shrugged. “How do people live like this?”
Irene squeezed his shoulder. “They think they like it,” she said. “Okay, Jack. What are we doing?” She was playing a game, and Piat didn’t have the energy.