Gordon Kent - The Falconer’s Tale

“Where?” Partlow was in the room’s tiny front hall, ready to walk out the door, dapper in light tweeds, and somehow, obviously American. “Jerry—I’ll decide the meeting location, okay? Try and remember that I’m your case officer, and not the other way around.”

Piat shrugged. “Whatever. Just not Scotland. London, Antwerp, Dublin. Athens would be nice—I could get some stuff from home.”

Partlow nodded. “Athens it is. I have business there.”

They shook hands. Partlow’s jawline moved, but whatever he had to say, the moment passed, and he was out the door.

Piat lay on the bed and started his shopping list.

5

Piat woke next morning in Oban with a hangover and a mix of foreboding and guilt. The operation was all very well when discussed from the safety of an expensive hotel room, but in the chilly gray air of a Scottish morning all he could think about was Hackbutt—and Irene. Partlow had been cagey about what exactly had cued him to fire Dave.

Hackbutt had changed from the old days in Southeast, but Piat still felt he knew where his mind would go. Betrayal . Personal betrayal of trust by his old friend Jack. From Hackbutt’s perspective, good ol’ Jack had walked off and abandoned him to the tender mercies of Dave.

Piat considered it from a number of angles while he drank grapefruit juice in the hotel’s restaurant. He added to the list in his head—props. Envelopes. Tickets.

On the ferry to Mull he read more about crannogs to keep his mind off his worries.

This wasn’t going to be pretty .

The dog greeted him with silent appraisal, its eyes following him from the car to the door while Piat’s stomach did back-flips in anticipation of Hackbutt’s welcome. He temporized by extending a hand again, letting the dog sniff; and he was about to try petting it again when he heard footsteps and the door opened.

“Look who the dog dragged in,” Irene said as she opened the door. Her face had all the expression of a runway model’s. The sexual performance was not on offer. Piat guessed she was angry. Over his sudden disappearance, or for her husband’s sake? Or was it Dave and whatever he’d botched? Piat had too few cues to do anything but guess wildly, but since he had to guess, he suspected that Hackbutt had told her everything and she had hated it. Not a good start.

He narrowly avoided the trap of asking for Hackbutt. That way lay Dave’s disastrous attempt—excluding Irene.

Piat met her eyes. “I want to try again,” he said.

Irene’s face didn’t move. “Can I offer you anything, Jack? Tea?”

Piat nodded—not too eagerly, he hoped. “Tea would be great.”

Irene was wearing another shapeless bag. The slight sheen of the material and the coarse beadwork suggested that it was an expensive shapeless bag. She was barefoot, and as she walked off to the kitchen, he saw that she had small feet arched like a ballerina’s. Her back remained straight, her shoulders square. Nothing sexual was being shown, and he was grateful.

She put water on. The door to the room she called her “studio” was closed; the photographs were still up in the same places; there was no sign that she was “working” or doing whatever people who thought they were artists did.

“Hackbutt’s up on the hillside. He’s flying his young birds.” She paused, reached into a jar and pulled out a handful of loose tea. “Herbal, or do you run on caffeine?”

Nice to have the right answer made obvious. “I drink coffee when I want caffeine. Herbal, please.”

Irene’s back remained to him. “Good black tea has more caffeine than coffee and is better for you. I’m sorry Eddie isn’t here—but I’m not sure he’d have much to say to you.”

“I fired Dave,” Piat said. It came out easily, smoothly—the foundation lie on which he intended to build his castle.

She was putting leaves in a tea ball. Her hand paused for a moment. “Really?” she said. Her feigned disinterest was the first hopeful sign Piat had detected. “Jack, I’m not sure that you know Eddie very well. He feels that—that you betrayed him.” With her last words, she turned around, teapot in hand.

“I certainly abandoned him. Yeah. I thought it was for the best. Look, can I level with you?”

Irene sat. In one motion, she brushed her shapeless bag under her knees and pulled her legs up under her, so that she sat sideways in a wing-backed armchair. She looked like a yoga master. Her smile was social. “My father told me that the expression ‘can I level with you’ always means the opposite. He was a capitalist pig of the first water, but he knew people.” She poured tea into heavy terracotta mugs.

He was nervous and making mistakes. He shrugged and exhaled hard. “Okay. Point made. I’m done.” He swallowed some tea—good tea. Big gamble. She has to want the money . He must have told her that there’s money. Or I’m out the door .

She smiled again—but it was a different smile. Secret pleasure. “So—why did you fire Dave?”

“He didn’t know how to deal with you,” Piat said, from the hip.

“And you do?” she asked.

“Irene, I know I have to deal with you.” He just left it there. She wanted to be in control—being in control was one of the things that made her tick.

She sipped her tea demurely. “What do you want?”

“Digger’s help. A contact. It’ll require hard work and some lifestyle adjustments for both of you.”

“Like what?” She leaned forward.

Piat sensed the intensity of her interest but misplaced it as revulsion. “It’s just cosmetic, Irene. Like a costume. Like makeup.” She wore a little. Not much, but enough to suggest that she had a human interest in her own looks.

She made a gesture of dismissal with her teacup. “What changes?”

Piat felt a ray of hope—just a single ray, but as bright as the rare Scottish sun. She was bargaining—her body language and intensity said she was bargaining.

“Clothes. Haircut. Table manners. Social interaction. Travel.”

She looked at him over her mug of tea. “And me?”

Piat smiled blandly. “What do you want me to say? I suspect you’re already pretty good at wearing a string of pearls and chatting with debs. Right?”

She leaned back, put her feet up on the old trunk that did duty as a coffee table. Her soles were dirty. “I shit that life out of me with the last meat I ate,” she said in a matter-offact voice.

Irene used words like shit to shock. It had been one of Piat’s first clues to who she was, or might be—that she had grown up with people who didn’t say shit every third word. Rich people. People with culture .

“I need Hackbutt. I need his expertise with these birds. I know he can do this. And Irene—it’ll help him. He can help change the world, and he can spend the rest of his life knowing that he did it.”

She nodded, but she didn’t look very impressed.

“You and the birds—together—have made a more confident, more rounded man than I knew in Southeast. So let him do this. It won’t hurt him—far from it.” Piat tried to hold her eye as he made his little speech, but she glanced away and then back. She’d looked at her photographs, he knew. She had as much as said, What’s in this for me?

“And I’ll pay both of you, handsomely. I know that you guys don’t run on money, but it’s what I have. Give it to charity if you want.” Most people liked to pretend they didn’t want money. He suspected that Irene would pretend pretty hard.

He was wrong.

She swiveled to face him, plunked her bare feet down on the stone floor. “How much money?” she asked directly.

“Fifty thousand dollars,” Piat said.