by Gordon Kent
“I want to go back to my birds,” Hackbutt said again.
Irene nodded. “What are we doing?”
Piat leaned forward again. “Okay. Irene and I are going to go play in the casino for a little while. We’ll walk up into the lobby around eight-thirty, which is my best guess of our guy’s earliest arrival time, and we’ll have a drink in the bar—maybe two, if we have to waste the time. All we’re doing is looking at his entourage—his uncle’s entourage, actually. That may be it. Or I may see something. Digger, you’ve got to stick by the phone in your room. You have something to read?”
Hackbutt shrugged. “I brought Glasier’s Falconry.” He crossed his arms. “But I’m not sure I see why you and Irene are swanning around while I sit in a hotel room.”
“I can’t let the target see you, Digger. And without Irene, I’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”
A waitress—probably the owner—appeared and put a wine list in his hand. He glanced at it and handed it to Irene. “You choose—I think you said you were buying.” The cheapest bottle was seventy dollars.
The wine list stopped her and Piat rescued her. “Let me. Keep the money for your show.” He ordered two bottles of a decent red—actually a pretty good red, ridiculously overpriced, paid for by Clyde Partlow. They all ordered simple variations on the prix fixe. And then they were alone again.
Hackbutt kept his arms crossed. “Fine,” he said. It wasn’t fine. He was on the edge of a tantrum—a tantrum about his need to be with Bella. And, as far as Piat could see, a tantrum about how easily Irene could deal with Monaco.
“Digger, do you guys need some alone time? That’s cool. No problem,” Piat said.
“Really?” Hackbutt asked, sitting up and uncrossing his arms. “I know you need her help—”
“I can handle it,” he said.
Hackbutt smiled. “If you only need her as a cover—well, unless you’ve changed from out-East days, you can find one yourself in five minutes.”
“Find one what? How much sexist crap do I have to take from you two?” She was pulling at the rope of pearls around her neck, tugging so hard that the pearls at the back of her neck were leaving marks. She kicked Piat hard under the table.
Piat turned his head and met her eyes for the first time. “I think you guys should rest up tonight,” he said to her. “And stay by the phone. I doubt we can try anything here—anything at all. But we won’t know until I see the lay of the land.”
Dinner arrived and was eaten quietly.
Piat changed into an antique linen dinner jacket and black wool trousers. He felt like an extra in a Bogart movie, but the clothes, product of the high-end used-clothing shop in London, fit. He watched the man in the mirror—too much shadow on his cheeks, but he couldn’t be bothered to shave again. That guy got older every day. But not so bad. The clothes were attractive. In fact, they were too attractive. He was in danger of standing out. And the bow tie looked daft no matter how often he put it on. He pocketed a slim digital camera and forced himself to walk out the door before his stage fright and the wine in his belly led him to do some more drinking.
He walked to the casino feeling as out of place as a boy going to his first high school dance. The presence of other men on the street in the same rig reassured him, but it was the floor of the casino itself that finally relaxed him—it held the biggest crowd he’d seen in Monaco, and he wasn’t the only man alone. The male from the French couple in the Metropole’s bar cruised by, his eye on a pair of women young enough to be his daughters. His partner was nowhere in sight. Piat wondered if she had moved on or merely developed a headache.
He played roulette, lost, played cards, lost. Gambling in all its forms had always seemed one of the stupidest ways to waste money he’d encountered, but it did facilitate operational activity. It allowed him to move freely through the crowd of people, participating as much as he could tolerate and never sticking out, except that he was conscious of the croupiers and the security men and the undercover dicks and the cameras. Everywhere, the cameras.
At eight thirty-five, Piat got up from the table where he was breaking even at chemin de fer, excused himself to a man who was holding forth on big game hunting, and walked out. He allowed himself a cigar as he walked through light rain to the Metropole. The palm trees had floodlights on them, which symbolized something about how Monaco gilded every possible lily. He stopped and watched one for more than a minute, noting the camera attached to the trunk and the play of the lights on the leaves. Then he went and sat in an outdoor café for ten minutes and drank an espresso while he finished his cigar.
He was watching the promenade in front of the Metropole.
When the six big cars pulled up, he had plenty of time to observe the retinue as it extricated itself from the limousines and began stacking its luggage and bullying the staff. He gave them five minutes, watching every detail of their numbers, movement, and security, until it became plain that the whole party was finally moving inside. He took six photos just the way he had been taught twenty years before, from the camera resting on the table, without ever bringing it up to his eyes. Leaving a euro on his saucer, he got up and ground the butt of his cigar under his heel, swore to run the next day, and walked slowly toward the hotel, cursing the rain. He jogged up the steps to the Metropole’s lobby and passed rapidly through the party of Saudis. None of the women were veiled, and their shrieks of appreciation and amusement drowned all other sound. He saw four security professionals, all of whom saw him. He saw the uncle, and the uncle’s immediate circle of “friends,” and then he finally saw the nephew.
The prince was not a tall man, but he was alder-thin and very plainly dressed, the only man in the entourage who did not have a gold watchband. He wore jeans and a blue rain jacket and he looked, amid the bustle of the arrival of forty people, as if he were alone. He had a bag in his hand, and near him stood another man, an African, with a bird on his wrist that Piat thought was an American red-tailed hawk.
Piat knew that he had missed an opportunity. The reserved man in the Gore-Tex, the attendant with the bird—easy targets for a chance encounter. Hackbutt could have had a minute or more to try and charm the prince—with the bird as the setpiece.
Earlier in the day, Piat had counted the steps from the baroque entrance to the bar. He had timed himself on his movements. He didn’t deviate. He didn’t stare at the prince or move his head.
Sometimes, Fortuna smiles on a good operator. Ten feet from the Baroque archway of the bar’s entrance, Piat spotted the argumentative Frenchwoman from his earlier visit. She might never have moved from her table.
She lifted her eyes, met his, and smiled. She was somewhere in the mystical realm between forty and sixty—attractive, perhaps a little bold. Perhaps a little tired.
He took his chance. He went straight to her table and sat, and thus he vanished off the radar of the security in the lobby.
Luck. Fortuna. Operational daring.
“You look as if you could use some entertainment,” Piat said as he sat. “May I buy you a drink?”
She smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Of course,” she said.
Piat rose and walked to the bar. From that vantage point he caught the very end of the entourages packing the elevators, a string of Arabic and English invective aimed at the bird, and the prince, waiting with his falcon and his attendant.
He watched the prince’s body language, his aside to the attendant with the bird as the elevator doors closed. And he thought, He despises his uncle and all the rest of them.
For an entire minute, the prince and his man were alone in the lobby, without security, without friends. While paying for two drinks, Piat fumbled finding his wallet. Using his jacket for cover and working as fast as he could, he managed to shoot four photos. The bar attendant waited impassively.
As he dropped the camera back into his jacket, he found that the prince was looking at him.
Piat smiled, collected his drinks, and returned to the table. His hands
were shaking. He sat closer to the woman and with a better view through the arch, just in time to catch the prince’s back disappearing into the elevator. For the first time, he believed that the scheme might work.
He set himself to charming his companion.
She declared herself charmed when she went off to bed—alone. “I’m past having affairs,” she said, laying her hand on his arm with a smile. “Now I prefer just to enjoy some sleep.”
Piat laughed and told her she was a woman after his own heart.
Despite the booze and the nerves, Piat rose with the dawn, put on a disreputable pair of shorts and shoes, and went for a run. He ran up the hills behind the town until he crossed the border into France, and then he ran down the main road along the coast, passing a string of second-rate hotels and restaurants before turning back to the water and running back into Monaco on the beach.
In his room, he downloaded the photos from the camera to his computer. Despite his best efforts, most of them were useless—too dark, too light, too blurry. But he had one photograph of the prince and his attendant standing with the bird.
Their faces wore the same expression—disgust—and all three of them had their eyes fixed on the elevator doors. Piat blew it up, encrypted it, and saved it. He also had a dark but useful photo of the four security men on the curb in front of the Metropole, the first to have got out of the cars. He encrypted that and saved it as well.
At ten, he arranged to pick Irene and Hackbutt up at their hotel in a car. By eleven, they were already high in the alps behind the town, parked at a scenic overlook that faced down a valley toward the sea.
“That’s the target,” Piat said. His laptop was open on Hackbutt’s lap.
“That’s the biggest red-tail I’ve ever seen,” Hackbutt answered. “No hood, in a hotel lobby. That’s a good bird.”
“The guy,” Piat insisted. He pointed at the prince.
“Sure,” said Hackbutt.
“Can you recognize him?” Piat asked after a while.
“I can,” Irene said. She was sitting alone in the back and looking for attention. Or command. Or whatever she craved. “I can pick him out of a crowd of Arabs. Eddie’s lucky if he recognizes me on the streets of Tobermory.”
Hackbutt shrugged. “I’d recognize the bird. That’s one hell of a good bird. People get all worked up about peregrines and big hawks and heavy falcons. This guy knows his stuff. Red-tails—easy to train, they like people, they travel well. He’s got the best one I’ve ever seen, and he’s got it out in public. Tells me a lot.” Hackbutt glanced at Piat. “Wish I’d been there. Lots to talk about.”
Piat winced. “I couldn’t know,” he said. He shrugged. “Water under the dam. Today, we just look for a little luck. Play in the casino. Eat in the Metropole bar. Don’t push it and don’t act without my say-so. Let me be clear on this, folks—if we don’t have a solid opportunity to approach the guy, I don’t want him to see any of us, and I don’t want his security to see us. Okay?”
Hackbutt nodded. “So—all three of us? Today? In the casino and the bar?”
Piat nodded. The bird had got Hackbutt interested.
Irene leaned forward from the back seat. “You boys have fun. I’m going for a swim and a massage.” She widened her eyes at Piat. “This place is duller than I thought it would be.”
Piat and Hackbutt walked and played, ate, talked, and played some more. There were Saudis in the Casino—one woman who had definitely been in the entourage the night before, others who seemed to be her attendants. But not the uncle and not the prince. Piat drank a glass of wine and wished for a surveillance team and the cooperation of the local security service, both far beyond his means. So he was doing what he could.
Despite his efforts, no chance encounter materialized. Whatever the uncle and the nephew were doing in Monte Carlo, they were doing it behind closed doors. The other Saudis circulated, gambled, swam, read books, and walked along the promenade. Piat and Hackbutt saw them all.
At three o’clock, the prince’s attendant appeared in the lobby with the bird on his fist. Piat and Hackbutt were in the bar.
“Look at that bird,” said Hackbutt, moving to rise.
“Don’t move a muscle.” The elevator behind the attendant remained frustratingly empty. Taking his time, Piat paid their tab and took Hackbutt out the bar entrance. Twenty meters away, the man with the bird emerged from the main doors. He walked toward the beach with the bird on his fist. He was a curiously medieval figure in a very modern place, and he drew stares.
“He’s going to exercise it,” Hackbutt said, pointing.
Piat wanted to restrain him, but Hackbutt wasn’t the only person on the promenade pointing at the hawk.
“How often does he have to do that?” Piat asked.
Hackbutt looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Every day, of course. Jack, sometimes I think you don’t listen to a word I say. Hawks and falcons need to fly every day to stay in shape. A big bird like that needs a lot of exercise to be in top form. Oh!”
The African had walked down the ramp to the beach, apparently uninterested in the attention he was getting. He slowly unwrapped the bird’s jesses from his gloved left hand, talking to her as he walked. And then he raised his fist.
Hackbutt was pointing again. The bird was climbing rapidly, free of the wrist. Every eye on the beach watched it climb. Habit made Piat glance around—but the hawk was the only show to watch.
“He’s going up—he’s waiting on. That’s wonderful; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a red-tail waiting on.” Hackbutt flicked his eyes off the bird to Piat. “Waiting on—it’s like being in ambush. Up high. It requires patience, which most birds don’t have much of. Right?”
Piat nodded, his eyes on the hawk.
The big bird was circling over the beach, the curling feathers at its wingtips just moving in response to changes in the wind, the head moving back and forth, the rest of its body still, gliding.
“To fly that bird here—on the beach, with all these noisy people—that’s trust. That guy trusts his bird completely.” Hackbutt was shaking his head. “Or he’s a complete idiot.”
“Or he can just get another one,” Piat added. He’d known a few Saudis.
Hackbutt shook his head. “No way. Not that size.”
The big hawk rose and rose, riding the sea breeze, flying without any apparent effort. He rose high enough that Piat had trouble following the bird’s motions. The Pretty People on the beach began to lose interest. A single gull flapped past from the landward side and started to watch the shallow water for its own prey.
“There he goes!” Hackbut shouted.
The hawk plummeted, caught the gull and pulled it from the sky. The gull thrashed once, tried to turn, and died in the air. In five seconds, the gull was on its belly in the sand with the big hawk standing on its neck, head bobbing to seize more meat. The attendant approached and lured the bird off its prey, knelt to feel the bird’s crop with a thumb, and began speaking rapidly.
The spectators had shied away.
A small man in dirty white overalls appeared and began to clean up the remnants of the gull. The crowd went back to their conversations and the joys of a cool winter beach. The bird’s handler walked back up the ramp to the hotel, talking to the hawk all the way and smoothing her feathers with his right hand.
“I want to talk to him,” Hackbutt said.
“Nope. This isn’t the time. You’ll get your chance.”
“I want to talk to him, Jack. You got me all the way here, dressed in all this stuff, away from my birds that need me, you show me a performance like that—god damn it, Jack, that was one of the slickest displays of hawking I’ve ever seen, and bam—the guy just walks away and you aren’t going to let me talk to him!”
“That’s right,” Piat said gently. “He’s not the target. He might talk to you all day and never get you closer to the prince. Okay?”
Hackbutt pursed his lips and blew out some air in frustration. “Targ
et-shmarget. I want to talk birds. That guy knows stuff.”
Piat nodded. “I’ll bet he does. Later.” He put a hand on Hackbutt’s shoulder. “We’re waiting on.”
Hackbutt’s head snapped around, eyes locked on his, and then he laughed. “I get it,” he said.
Irene was waiting in the casino. She looked her part, but her posture and the constant motion of her hands said there was trouble before they were in hailing distance.
“I want to go for a walk,” she said. Up close, she looked clean and bright and very much on edge.
Piat shook his head.
“I mean it, Jack. This is important.” Her eyes were going back and forth—to the entrance, to the croupiers.
Piat knew that all of them had bad body language just then. Somewhere on the casino security monitors, they were all being marked—three nervous people standing in a group.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s walk.”
Irene’s idea of security was to get outside in the sun and then to scrutinize everything she saw while talking too fast.
“I just saw your prince,” she began. “In the lobby. With somebody I know.”
Hackbutt was staring down the beach. “You should have seen this guy fly that red-tail, Irene.”
Piat didn’t stop in his tracks—quite. “Someone you know?”
“George Kwalik. Republican. Ohio. A big shot in certain circles. He was—probably still is—a congressman. Very conservative. Did business with my father.” She continued looking around her. Piat could see that she was spooked and wished she could hide it better. Finally she said, “Oil business.”
“He was with the prince?” Piat asked.
“I’m sure. They were talking. Kwalik was talking. The prince acted as if he was barely listening. He was looking out the windows. I was afraid Kwalik would look at me.”
Piat glanced back at the lobby windows. “When was this?”
She looked at him with irritation, her flow broken. “Thirty minutes ago. Kwalik—what’s he doing here? I think he saw me, Jack.”