The Falconer’s Tale. Gordon Kent

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СКАЧАТЬ overwork back and forth, and they parted friends. Dukas, when he had hung up, looked at Triffler with an expression of disgust. “I’ve been drafted,” he said. His hand was still on the secure telephone.

      Triffler, an elegant African American who played Felix to Dukas’s Oscar, merely smiled. “Al got another wild hare running?”

      Dukas grunted and held up a finger, as if to say Wait until I check something. He picked up the phone, and, shaking his head at Triffler’s pantomimed offer to leave, called his boss in Washington. After a few pleasantries, Dukas said, “I hear I’m being ordered to run an errand for the CIA.”

      A brief silence, then his boss’s voice: “Not my doing.”

      “Higher up the line? The DIA?”

      After another hesitation, “Higher than that.”

      When Dukas had put the phone down in its cradle, he turned to Triffler. “What’s the Pentagon’s interest in sending me to do the CIA’s work?” He cocked a cynical eye at Triffler. “You remember Clyde Partlow?” Dukas told him about the Iceland trip and the new request to find Piat. “Piat isn’t exactly my asshole buddy.”

      “So you send him an email, and if he doesn’t answer, you’re off the hook.”

      “Well—” Dukas hitched himself around toward his pile of paper. “Apparently I’m getting orders to bring Piat in. I may have to leave the office.”

      “And put me in charge for a day? Lucky me!”

      Dukas waved a hand at the pile of paper. “My son, one day all this will be yours.”

      “What’s your wife going to say?”

      Dukas groaned.

      Piat’s Ukrainian deal went down without a hitch, and the seller paid up, just like that. He’d been home for ten days, and Mull seemed very far away. Now Piat sat on the precarious balcony of his favorite chocolate shop and drank his second Helenika of the day, closed his laptop with a snap, and contemplated the archaeological report he had bought on Mull about Scottish crannogs. He was bored and he had nothing better to do than read it. He’d glanced through it on the plane—very dry, almost no analysis at all—and now he turned to the color plates of the finds. Most of them were dull, and worse, unsaleable—who would buy a three-thousand-year-old bundle of ferns once used as bedding? But there were valuable items, as well: a single gold bead, a copper axe head, a remarkable slate pendant shaped with sides so well smoothed he could almost feel them under his hands.

      Crannogs were late European Bronze Age. And the cold water preserved things very well indeed. Piat sipped coffee and ordered a third. He felt rich.

      Lesvos was full of tourists. Piat had avoided them for a year by leaving the island during the height of the season—one of the reasons he’d headed off for Iceland, and devil take the consequences. Now Molyvos was crawling with them, and his chocolate shop perched on the edge of the town with a hundred-foot drop to the old Turkish gate below was filling up. Soon enough, Sergio would give him the eye and suggest that he move along and make room for more customers. Piat looked into the shop. There was a big, dark guy at the counter with a very pretty woman with a baby. Piat admired the woman’s backside for a moment, and then—

      “Jesus,” Piat said, out loud. The man at the counter was Mike Dukas. Again.

      Dukas led the woman out on to the balcony. The whole structure moved under their weight—it was sturdy, but it did protrude well out over the cliff. Dukas looked embarrassed.

      “Jerry?” he said. His hand was out.

      There wasn’t anywhere to run. Piat shook hands. “Mike.” He gave the woman a smile. She smiled back, and then looked up at Dukas as if exchanging a joke.

      Dukas said, “This’s my wife, Leslie.” Leslie Dukas was twenty years younger than her husband, rather stunningly pretty next to such an ugly man despite the pack full of baby that she carried.

      Piat indicated his table and waved through the window for Sergio.

      Leslie stood for a moment, shaking hands with Piat. “You guys can just do the guy thing. We’ll go have a feed, won’t we, kiddo?” A tiny pudgy hand reached out of her baby pack and tweaked one of her nipples. She laughed. “Gotta go, guys.”

      Piat was left with Dukas. Dukas ordered coffee and a big pastry. He made a joke to Sergio in decent Greek.

      “Your wife’s lovely,” Piat said.

      “Yeah,” said Dukas. And again, “Yeah.”

      “That’s the small talk, then. What are you doing here?”

      Dukas still looked embarrassed. He doesn’t want to be here, Piat thought.

      “Partlow wants you back,” Dukas said. He shrugged.

      “Dave’s already fucked it away?” asked Piat.

      Dukas shrugged again, looking as Greek as a local, his arms spread wide on the bench back, his weight slumped a little. “Did you expect it?”

      “Phff.” Piat’s noise was contemptuous. He had realized himself that he was still smarting under the speed with which he’d been tossed aside. “I don’t know what Clyde was thinking. The guy couldn’t handle a hooker.”

      Dukas snorted. His eyes were on Piat’s book, but they flicked up and met Piat’s quickly. Piat was off thinking about Dave and Partlow. “So where do I meet Clyde? Is he hiding in a hotel in Mytilene?”

      Dukas passed Piat a slip of paper. Piat disappeared it into his pack with a minimum of fuss. Dukas said, “Not as far as I know.”

      “Still in Scotland?”

      It was the look on Dukas’s face that finally warned Piat—a little look of interest, almost triumph, at “Scotland.” Dukas had been looking at the book—Dukas hadn’t said anything—

      “You don’t know, do you?” Piat said.

      Dukas hesitated and then shook his head. “Nope,” he said. And then he smiled and said, “But I bet it’s in Scotland.”

      Piat leaned closer to Dukas. “I thought you were in on this.” He shoved the crannog book into his pack and glanced at the slip of paper—just a DC telephone number.

      “Partlow doesn’t know where to find you.” Dukas rubbed his nose and his eyes met Piat’s. “I thought you might prefer it to stay that way.”

      It wasn’t said as a threat, or at least it didn’t sound like a threat to Piat, and he had been threatened by experts. But it did speak volumes. Dukas was saying I could have fucked you and I didn’t, so you owe me.

      “I do. I like it here.” Piat glanced out over the cliff to the brilliant blue sea and the black volcanic beach. It all flitted around his brain—Hackbutt and Irene and the birds and Dave and Partlow and the sea trout in the loch. On balance, it didn’t look very attractive from here. It looked like work. “How much?”

      “I’m just the messenger.” Dukas was looking over the balcony. Piat realized СКАЧАТЬ