The Falconer’s Tale. Gordon Kent

the car, he grinned as Irene appeared in the doorway. She was in another long dress, blue denim, fairly waistless. Piat was wearing a black polo shirt and a sweater and a pair of khakis. He waved. She waved. He took a plastic sack from the car and loped up to the door. “I’m going to try this again,” he said, holding out the bag.

      “For little ol’ me?”

      “For both of little ol’ you.” She hesitated, holding the storm door open for him. He had to go past her, face to face. Going by, he bent his head and kissed her, quickly, lightly. “Good to see you again.”

      “Edgar’s with his birds.”

      “Good chance for me to talk to him?” Make it a question, he told himself; get on her good side. When she didn’t answer, he said, “What’s your dog’s name?” People like you ought to like their dogs, right?

      “No idea,” she said. “He kept hanging around when we moved in.” She was taking things out of the sack. “Greek honey—well!” He’d found the gourmet shelves at the Island Bakery in Tobermory. “Oh—!” She had something clutched between her breasts. “Porcini cream!”

      “Organic.”

      She gave him an odd smile. “You’re a quick learner.” She pulled out other things—balsamic vinegar, olive oil crushed with blood oranges, a set of hemp place mats. She was pleased, maybe only with the effort and not the things themselves, but she was pleased. “Sure, why don’t you go talk to Edgar. I’ll get naked.”

      And if that wasn’t a peace offering, what is? She made sex so overt, however, he was suspicious. He thought that maybe she was performing her sexuality, not being it. Maybe for her it was like a language she’d learned on paper but couldn’t get fluent in. If so, if they actually got to it, there would be a lot of drama—costumes like crotchless panties, oils and perfumes, sound effects like yum-yums to go with the obligatory blow job and glad cries for orgasm, real or simulated, probably the latter. And afterward, the reviews: You were so good. Was it good for you? Was I good? But maybe it wouldn’t be like that at all. But either way, he already wanted to know.

      He was only going to be with them for a few days, and then he’d be on his way, so it wouldn’t be endangering his own operation if he took what she seemed to be offering.

      He went out the rear door and stumbled because of the unexpected step down. Nobody cut the lawn at Hackbutt’s, but a path was worn between coarse grass and a bed of nettles, which Piat knew from Greece and managed to avoid. He tried to remember how to get to the bird pens; giving up, he shouted, “Digger! Digger!”

      Hackbutt appeared, much closer than expected. “Jack! You did come back!” His hands were covered with red goo. “How nice. I won’t shake hands.” Part of the nettle bed was between them. “I’m cutting up some pigeons.”

      Piat steered around the nettles and joined Hackbutt in the remains of an outbuilding. There was bad smell and a lot of feathers. “Where do you get the pigeons?”

      “A kid shoots them for me with an air gun.”

      “That doesn’t sound so vegan.”

      Hackbutt shrugged. “Raptors aren’t vegans.” He had a bucket on the ground half full of pieces of pigeon, partly plucked, bloody. On a rough table that had started life as something else, he was chopping a dead bird with a cleaver.

      “Can’t they do that for themselves?”

      “Sure. They love to do it themselves. But you got to train them not to do it, so they’ll bring you game birds if you fly them at them.” He whacked off a wing. “Falconry’s a sport. Like shooting. There’s a quarry—in the old days, the object was to bring in game to eat. See, it’s hard to get a carnivore to bring meat to you instead of eating it itself. Like using a tiger for a retriever.” He whacked off the other wing. “You see Irene?”

      “She was off to take her bath. I brought you some sort of veggie stuff. She seemed pleased.”

      “Oh, that’s good.” He swept the edge of the cleaver across the blood on the table, then held the bucket under the edge so he could push the blood into it. “Irene’s a wonderful gal, Jack. I want you two to like each other.” He wiped his hands on a rag. “She changed my life. They talk about people reinventing themselves—she reinvented me. Really. I’m still not much, I know that, but I’m a hell of a lot more than I was.”

      “You were always a good guy. And a good agent.”

      Hackbutt looked pleased and said, “Well—” but didn’t really rise to it. In the old days, he would have been like a cat, doing everything but arching his back. He picked up the bucket and pushed past Piat. “The birds are a full-time job. It’s fun, and I love my birds, but, Jeez, man, it’s your life!”

      He went along the pens, talking to birds he told Piat were immature, making noises to them, tossing pieces of pigeon to them. He strapped a guard over his left arm and enticed a young falcon to perch on it by holding up a pigeon neck with the head still attached, and then he gave it to the bird.

      One of the cages was twice the size of the others. So was the occupant. Alone of the birds, the giant received a whole pigeon. Piat watched as the big bird held the head down with both feet and tore out pieces of meat from the neck, plucking as it went, feathers drifting down and now and then getting stuck to its beak.

      “I thought you had to teach them not to rip the prey to shreds?” Piat asked.

      “She’s different. Jeez, Jack, can’t you see how big she is? Bella’s a sea eagle, Jack. I’m in a program for them. We get the chicks—long story there—and raise ’em by hand, then release ’em in the wild. Helps rebuild the population. They’re nearly extinct. Isn’t Bella great?” Hackbutt smiled like a parent with a bright toddler. “I love my birds!”

      “You told Irene I’d want something,” Piat said.

      Hackbutt was picking up another piece of meat with a gloved hand. “Well—yeah, I apologize, Jack. I just meant—”

      “You were being honest. And you were right. I want something.”

      Hackbutt looked at him and then turned so that Piat could see the bird better. He should have said something like What?, and in the old days he would have, but now he kept his mouth shut.

      “How much did you tell Irene about what you used to do?”

      “Nothing! Honest to God, Jack, nothing. I signed that paper, didn’t I? I swore I’d never say anything and I didn’t.”

      “What did you tell her I do?” He put it in the present tense because he wasn’t going to tell Hackbutt that he was long out of the CIA and in fact a kind of renegade.

      “Nothing.”

      “She must have asked.”

      “Oh, she said something like, ‘Does he work for the government?’”

      Irene was a lot smarter than that, Piat thought, although maybe she was one of those people who paid no attention to the worlds of war and politics and tricky shit. Still, she’d have heard of the CIA. “What did you say?”

      “Oh, I just said, ‘Sort of.’” The sea eagle had finished the pigeon and now snatched the next one from the glove and put it under one foot, then tried to disentangle the other foot from the remains of the head. It looked like a swimmer trying to shake water out of its ear. The mangled head fell to the ground and the bird started on the new prey.

      “Tell you what, Digger.” Digger had been an early code name, from the Digger O’Dell of an old comedy program; it had become a nickname when Hackbutt had become more than an incidental source. “I know that anything I ask you to undertake, Irene’s got to know about—right? I see that. I acknowledge that’s the nature of your relationship. It isn’t usual, but we go back and—you two are bonded, right?” He was talking bullshit, but this was his spiel.

      “Bonds