The Falconer’s Tale. Gordon Kent

congratulations well and he censured well, right up to and including firing people. They always left thinking that there was nothing personal about good old Clyde. So now, instead of doing what his adrenal gland and the atavistic, caveman part of his brain wanted to do, he sat back and read the entire four-page document with care.

      When he was done, he called up his address book, picked a name, tapped it into his telephone and waited. When a voice at the other end said, “Defense Intelligence Agency, Petty Officer Clem speaking this-is-not-a-secure-line, sir, to whom may I direct your call, sir!”

      “Captain Alan Craik, please.”

      Mike Dukas was sitting late in his office because he was the Special Agent in Charge, Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Naples, and he and about half of his responsibilities were behind schedule. Down the hall, his assistant, Dick Triffler, was spending valuable time filling out paperwork for a three-year antiterrorism self-study that nobody would ever read; beyond him, two special agents were together in an office, trying to hammer out the charges against a sailor who had got drunk and beaten up a Turkish police cadet.

      Dukas heard the ping of his secure telephone; he hit the button without taking his eyes off what he was reading. He was always reading now—reading or writing or going to meetings; the good days of getting out into the field were over. He sighed, looked up at the screen of the secure telephone, and read, “From: Defense Intelligence Agency, Captain Craik.”

      He hit the talk button and said, “Al, that you?”

      The answer came like static from deep space, Craik’s voice laid over it like an alien signal. “Mike?”

      “Yeah. Al?”

      “Hey, Mike.”

      “Would you like to move to a conversation, or you want to stay with IDing each other?” He heard Craik laugh, and then they spent thirty seconds on how-are-you-how-are-thekids-how’s-your-wife. Their spat—if that was what it had been—in Reykjavik was forgotten. Then Craik said, “I just got off the phone with Clyde Partlow.”

      “Better than getting on the phone with Clyde Partlow. Now what?”

      A barely perceptible pause, but enough to sound a warning. “He wants Piat back.”

      “Oh, shit. What the hell for?”

      “Wouldn’t I like to know! Of course he didn’t say. He just asked if I knew where I could get hold of Piat again.”

      “And you said, ‘Oh, sure, my pal Dukas carries him around in his back pocket.’ Right?”

      “I said I’d see.”

      “Al—” Dukas had been trying to read a report while they talked; now, he tossed the stapled papers halfway across his desk. “I’m not Piat’s personal manager.”

      “Chill out, okay?”

      “Once, as a favor, I found him for you. Twice is too much like a job.”

      “I think he wants him again because something’s wrong.”

      “Contact didn’t work.”

      “Or it worked for a while and then it went bad. It’s been more than a week, after all.”

      “Piat could be anywhere.”

      “Yeah, but I’ll bet you know how to reach him.”

      Dukas saw his number two, Dick Triffler, appear in his doorway, and he waved him in and pointed at a chair. “So maybe I know an address in cyberspace where sometimes he takes messages. So?” He mouthed “Al Craik” at Triffler, who raised his eyebrows.

      Craik’s artificially tinny voice said, “Get a message to him.”

      “What—‘Go see Clyde Partlow’? That wouldn’t even get him off a bar stool.”

      “Persuade him.”

      “Al, I know where you’re coming from, but why should I persuade Jerry Piat to do anything? The man’s a loner, a renegade, a goddam outsider! He doesn’t want to go see anybody! Piat’s opted out and he knows the price and he’s willing to pay it.”

      “Will you try?”

      “Al, I got an NCIS office to run!” He winked at Triffler. “Sitting right here is Dick Triffler, who would take my place if I took the time to persuade Jerry Piat. Do you want the US Navy to have to depend on Dick Triffler?”

      “Say hello for me.”

      “Al says hello.”

      Triffler smiled. “Tell him I said hello.”

      “Triffler says hello. We all cozy now? Okay. Listen, I’ll do this much: I’ll send Piat a message. If he’s willing to listen, I’ll try to talk to him. By phone. But I can’t devote my life to this, Al. Neither can you, for that matter. It isn’t as important as running the Naples office of NCIS. It isn’t as important as being the collections officer for DIA.”

      “It’s important enough for Partlow to have messaged the head of NCIS to ask for special cooperation, attention Michael Dukas, NCIS Naples.”

      Dukas flashed Triffler a look of disgust. “This was your idea?”

      “This was Partlow’s idea. He asked me to call you before the message got to you so you wouldn’t take it the wrong way. Mike, I know it’s an imposition; I know you’re working your ass off; but so am I. I’m just the messenger here. Don’t take it out on me.”

      Dukas sighed. “So Partlow wants me to bring Piat in. Even if I have to take time away from my job. And NCIS has already said that’s what I should do. Are you in it with me?”

      “Not this time. I got no authorization, no orders.”

      “You know, I thought I might actually take Saturday off this week and take my wife to Capri, which I’ve been promising to do for two years?”

      Craik made sympathetic noises, and they tossed stories about 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