The Falconer's Tale (10 page)

Piat cleared a space on the couch and sat, opening his
backpack.

“Okay, folks. Today we start working. First, anybody have
something on their schedule for the next two months?
Weddings? Funerals? Spill it now, because the moment I'm
paying, you're on my calendar. Okay?”

“He's always like this at the start,” Hackbutt said to Irene.

Irene stared at him.

“Good. Digger, you remember these forms?” The forms
themselves were creations from Piat's laptop, but they were
enough like CIA documents to pass muster with an agent.
“You pay US taxes?”

“No,” they said together.

“Then we don't need this one.” Piat crumpled a W-2 invoice
form he'd downloaded. He'd always thought it funny that US
agents paid income tax on black ops money, but they did.
“Contract. Security agreement. Confidentiality. These don't
constitute a security clearance, just an arrangement. Okay?”

“We have to sign,” Hackbutt said to Irene. “It's okay.” He
was reassuring her from his years of experience as an agent,
and he sounded fatuous. She, however, was reading the whole
document and not listening to him.
Looking for a reason not
to sign
, he thought, but there was a resignation about her
that suggested that she was simply going through the motions.
If the idea of actually putting her art on display frightened
her, another part of her very much wanted to do it. That
part, he guessed, had already won.

Piat had looked at her website. She actually had a small
reputation, had done “installations” in Auckland and Ontario
and Eastern Europe. But the website hadn't been updated
in three years, and he wondered if she really was an “artist”—
he couldn't think of the word without the quotation marks—
who'd run out of ideas. Or whatever it was that “artists” had
in their heads.

At any rate, she signed. Looking unhappy. But sexually
interesting.

When they had both signed, Piat handed out envelopes.
“Five thousand each. Okay?”

He'd made a mistake, and he saw it too late. Hackbutt's
face froze and his skin got blotchy again. He followed
Hackbutt's eyes and saw that Hackbutt only now realized
that Piat was paying both of them, and that as much as that
made sense to him and to Partlow, it wasn't the right move
for Hackbutt, who wanted to give her the money himself.
Without much of a pause, he turned to Irene. “Hackbutt
wanted you to have this money for yourself. The contract's
with him—but he wouldn't do it without you. And I'm sorry
to be so crass with both of you but, Digger, you remember
that we have to play for the bureaucrats with money. I can
get you more for both than I can get just for you, Digger.”
He said it all so smoothly that Hackbutt's face was calm again
before he was done.

Hackbutt smiled shakily at Irene. “I thought I'd get to give
it to you myself,” he began, but she launched herself out of
her chair and embraced him. In seconds they were locked
together, kissing like teenagers.

Piat busied himself collecting the documents. After ten
seconds he said, “Okay, kids. Really.”

Irene pulled herself free and shook out her hair, laughing.
Hackbutt laughed, too—a real laugh, not a giggle.

Piat smiled with them and opened a calendar. “Digger—
you first. You need clothes.”

Hackbutt nodded. “Irene's been telling me that for a year.”

“Now Uncle Sam's paying. Irene may need some too. It's
too early to tell you the whole ball of wax—you know the
rules, Digger. But let's just say you're going to meet some
rich, powerful people. You have to be ready to be
with
them.
Okay? I don't expect you to become James Bond, but I need
you to look the part and act the part.”

Hackbutt crossed his arms, his scrawny elbows showing
through rents in his ancient sweater. “Jeez, Jack. I'm not
good at social stuff.”

Piat looked at him without mercy. “If this were easy, we
wouldn't be paying so much money for it. Okay? This is go-
no-go stuff, Digger. You have to do the social stuff. We'll
have training for it—practice, role-play. Just like in Jakarta.
Okay? Same for Irene.” He tossed the last in because he
wanted Hackbutt to feel that he wasn't alone in being targeted.

Irene's frown caused her eyebrows to make a single, solid
line on her face. Piat didn't know her facial expressions yet.
Tension? Anger? Hard to know.

His eyes roved down his list. “Right now, I'm mostly focused
on clothes. Digger, can you wear some real clothes?”

“Like what?” Hackbutt sounded suspicious.

“Wool trousers, for a start,” said Irene. “Green like your
eyes, Eddie.”

Piat felt as if Irene were speaking lines he'd written for
her, except that he hadn't. What a fool Dave had been to
ignore her. “Exactly. Clothes. I don't want to overdo it—
you're an American, you'd look silly in breeks—but the Arab
idea of a Western gentleman is an Englishman. I need you
to look the part.”

“What're breeks?” Hackbutt asked.

“Knee breeches. For shooting.” Piat paused to see if
Hackbutt would respond.

“Sounds kind of faggy,” Hackbutt muttered. He clearly
thought Piat was making fun of him.

“You both have to eat meat. Not all the time. Okay? But
enough so your systems don't reject it.”

“No way,” Hackbutt said. “I've given all that shit up.” He
looked at Irene for confirmation.

She gave Piat a considering look. “I won't eat pork. Lamb
or beef I can probably hack.”

Hackbutt stared at her.

Piat nodded. “Fair enough. Okay. I won't hide from you
that our target is Arab. He won't eat pork, either. It'll probably
actually help his subconscious cues with you two if you
don't eat pork. Fine. Pork's off the training menu. Anyway—
you're game for the clothes and food. Right? Okay.
Conversation.”

Hackbutt all but cringed. Irene put a hand on his knee.

“Here's the plan. We three eat together three nights a
week. Okay? At dinner we play a game. It goes like this.
Irene and I speak only when we're spoken to. Understand,
Digger? We'll answer questions. If encouraged, we can
respond and ask questions of our own, but otherwise, we
just sit there. Boring dinners, Dig, unless you come to them
with some prepared topics and you get them started.”

Hackbutt looked back and forth between them. “Why you
and Irene? I mean—when does Irene get the training? You're
not helping her.” He trailed off.

Piat nodded, wondering just what to say.

Irene picked up the ball immediately. “Sweetie—I know
how to make conversation. How the hell do you think I deal
with agents and gallery owners and buyers? It's you, dear
man, who can't make small talk with a telemarketer.”

Hackbutt nodded. “Why would anyone want to make small
talk with a telemarketer?”

“And three days a week you give me some training with
the birds,” Piat said.

Hackbutt sat up. “Really? That's great, Jack. I didn't know
you were interested!” Then more slowly, “Oh, for the op,
you mean.”

“I have to travel with you. I'll be with you most of the
time. So I need to know enough to pass.”

Hackbutt frowned. “The birds'll know in a second if you
don't want to be with them, Jack. If you're—afraid. Or fake.”
He realized what he'd said. “Oh, Jack—sorry.”

“Why? Why be sorry? You're right. But let me have a go
at it. They're beautiful and I imagine I can make my way.”
In fact, Piat was not at all sure he'd be steady with those
killers flashing their beaks a few inches from his nose, but
he had to try, and he'd done worse in the line of service.

Later at the car, Piat nodded toward the dog and said,
“Why's he so unfriendly?”

“Is he unfriendly?” Hackbutt looked at the dog as if he'd
never thought about it. “He's a nasty animal.”

“Well, shy.”

“Before I knew what he was like, I left the gate open and
he got in with the birds and scared them. He went crazy—
running around and barking and stressing them. I kicked his
butt right out of there.” He was proud of himself. “I mean,
I
kicked
him.” He thought about that, apparently with satisfaction,
and then said, “Then I chained him up.”

“Do you walk him?”

“Annie does. Sometimes.”

“Who's Annie?”

“Oh—a kid who helps with the birds sometimes. Sort of
an apprentice. She
likes
the dog. I've told her, if that dog gets
in with the birds again, I'll take my shotgun to it. I won't
have the birds stressed.”

Piat suppressed the things he might have said.

Over the next couple of weeks, Piat, coming every other day
to the farm, made more progress with the dog than he did
with Hackbutt or Irene. The falconer didn't want to become
a social creature, it turned out, and he dug in his heels; Irene
didn't want to be an agent and stayed in her “studio;” the
dog, on the other hand, wanted to be a real dog, and he
accepted Piat's fingers, then his hand on his head, and then
a caressing of his ears. After several days of it, Piat took him
off the chain and opened the derelict iron sheep fence and
let them both through and up the hill. To his surprise, the
dog stayed at his left knee.

“Don't you want to run?” Piat said. The dog looked up at
him. The dog expected something but couldn't tell him what.

“Run,” Piat said. “Get some exercise.”

The dog looked at him.

“Run!” Piat said. He made a sweep with his arm to suggest
the openness of the world, and to his surprise the dog took
off. Later experiments showed that it was the gesture. All he
really had to do was point ahead, and the dog went; if it
went too far, he found he could whistle it back—it would
dash to his feet and then sit, head up, ears alert.

“What does he want?” Piat said to his new friend, the
owner of the tackle-and-book shop. He'd made the shop part
of his off-duty routine, cruising the books every few days
and usually buying something. “The dog comes back and sits
and looks at me and I don't know what to do.”

“It sounds like quite a good dog. Probably a herder: you
get a lot of those here. They'll herd anything—sheep, children,
ducks. Quite smart, is he?”

“Well, he sure seems to know things I don't.”

“Ye-e-e-s.” The man stroked his long, unshaven chin.
“Sounds as if he's been trained and expects you to know the
signs. Or partly trained, perhaps—young dog, is he? Tell you
what, carry a few treats in your pocket; try one on him when
he sits down like that. He may be used to the odd reward
for coming back. Not every time, mind—if you do it every
time, he'll use it as a dodge to gorge—but often enough.”
He talked about hand signals that the dog might know.
“Friend's dog, is he?”

“They neglect him.”

The shop owner laughed. “Mind he doesn't become
your
dog, then.” He grinned. “You know what Kipling said.” He
waited. Then: “‘Don't give your heart to a dog.'”

“Kipling also said, ‘He travels the fastest who travels alone.'
I travel fast.”

But he bought a packet of something called Bow Wowzers,
and when he gave the sitting dog one, a new relationship was
forged. He became the replacement for some earlier man, the
trainer, the giver of treats, the divinity. The dog ran for him,
returned for him, herded for him, waited for him. Every day.

It was Annie who gave him a name. “I call him Ralph,”
she said, “because it's what his bark sounds like—Ralf! Ralf!”
Annie was perhaps sixteen, not pretty, but, despite her big
shoulders and heavy hips, she had the kind of complexion
that was imitated in decorating china figurines and postcards.
She also appeared to be as strong as an ox, and her handshake
was firm. She was more or less Hackbutt's apprentice,
apparently as daft about falcons as he was. If she felt any
jealousy of Piat over the dog, she certainly didn't show it.
She was basically a good kid who liked animals.

“Ralph,” Piat said. The dog wagged his tail. What the hell,
he'd be Ralph or Emily or Algernon if this man would just
be his human being.

Piat bought Ralph a green tennis ball. And then a chewing
toy.

Irene was sardonic about Piat and the dog. Amused, but
sardonic. In fact, he didn't see her as much as he'd expected
to, as much as in fact he'd hoped. He found himself responding
to that tall body, the more so as she toned down her sexual
advertising—the shock words, the wet kisses with Hackbutt—
as Piat became part of her landscape. Whatever her fears of
her “art” were, she'd grasped the nettle. Every day he came
to the farm now, she was “working.” Mostly, she was shut
away in her “studio” and he didn't see her, and he increasingly
found he wanted to. He sensed that increasingly she
didn't
want to see him.

In his hindbrain, he wanted to see more of her. In his
professional brain, he was satisfied that she kept her distance.
When he was bringing Hackbutt in to Partlow as a one shot,
the thought of fucking her had been exciting, but Piat had
rules, and one of them was that sex and operations didn't
mix. This was his operation now.

The rules didn't always penetrate his hindbrain.

When she came out of her isolation, it was to cook and
take part in the training sessions, which started by not going
very well and then got worse.

“I don't know
how
!” Hackbutt's voice would quaver like
the whine of a housefly. “Why won't you
talk
to me?”