Bill Granger - The November Man

He did not know about Ready. He did not know that KGB and an agent named Alexa had killed the agent mistakenly called November.

Four hundred days before, he had laid a careful trail to move the wet contract against him to a man named Colonel Ready. He had reason to hate Ready, enough to kill him. Ready had been his enemy. Ready had raped Rita Macklin. Devereaux had cut his Achilles tendon and tagged him November in the eyes of Moscow and the world of spies and sent him limping down the trail, trying to get away from the killers sent after him. It was the cruelest thing Devereaux had thought to do; and it still did not make up for his violation of Rita Macklin.

In the long list of things he did not know, the last item—the death of Ready—might have amused him. It was what he had wanted: to be retired, to acquire anonymity at the edge of the world of spies, to go to “sleep” in the terms of the old trade. November was dead; long live the man who had been the real November.

It was a curious thing that he had never questioned the wet contract put out against him. KGB had its reasons. He had been an agent who had played outside the rules of the game. Hanley had once pointed that out. Hanley had once said, “There are procedures to be followed.”

Devereaux had replied. Usually, he said nothing because he thought Hanley was a fool, a petty bureaucrat to be endured and not trusted. But he had replied once: “There are no procedures to be followed; there are no limitations; there are no rules.”

“But that is chaos,” Hanley had said.

And Devereaux said nothing more.

Devereaux had retired because he could force Section to let him go to sleep.

Three people knew of his existence: Hanley, Mrs. Neumann, and Yackley. They had to know, to make the scheme work. They had disinformed files and reports on Colonel Ready to make it seem he was really November. The reports and files had fooled the KGB into shifting its focus on Ready. Ready could protest but he did not have anything but the truth on his side and the truth was rarely enough.

And the three in Section would keep the secret because they had to.

That was what Devereaux believed on the fifth of March.

He was a man alone. He had always been.

He had been a child of the streets in Chicago and had killed a gang member when he was twelve. He had grown tired of the trade long before he could leave it. He had never wanted a thing in his life except Asia—except the view of blood-red suns over morning paddies and farmers squatting in their pajamas to tell stories to one another. He had loved the idea of the East and joined Section to find the East and, because of the trade, lost the East forever. After that, he had found Rita Macklin.

She was thirteen years younger than Devereaux. She had red hair and green eyes and a face of openness that was beautiful. She was very tough because she thought she was tough. She spoke the beautiful lilting accent shared by some people in Wisconsin and Minnesota. There was a song about her presence that always made people smile.

Devereaux had met her; used her; slept with her; left her. And all the time, he fell in love with her more deeply than he had loved anything or anyone else in the world. Because of her—because it was possible—he had quit the trade and gone to sleep at the edge of the world.

They lived together in Lausanne. They slept together. They went everywhere together and shared silences with each other. When she was away on her long assignments in far places, he was truly alone: The cold thing in him came back as before. When she was away, he was transformed back into what he had been.

He walked the crooked streets of Lausanne every day and saw everything and filled his mind with the images of the trained spy. He saw too much, as a spy will if he becomes good at the trade.

He walked down the hills of the city to the train station where he bought the newspapers every day from the same kiosk just inside the entrance. He was there nearly every day at ten in the morning—though he had not noticed he was now a man of fixed habits.

He was tall, rugged, with deceptively large shoulders and flat, large fingers. His square face, creased with care lines, suggested the cold thing inside him. His hair was gray mixed with dark brown. He wore an old corduroy jacket most days now and shoved his hands deep into the pockets when he walked. His gray eyes watched and watched and saw too much; and saw nothing because the world held no consequences when you were withdrawn from it.

He bought Le Monde , the Herald-Tribune , the European Wall Street Journal . Sometimes, because it was so well written, he bought Libération . He thought he should interest himself in the world for the sake of Rita Macklin and for the child they had taken in, Philippe.

It was hard work. He was a man of silences who preferred the world to be a separate place. He read books that others might find gloomy, the kind of works of philosophy that are never fashionable. He felt solace in them. He had not expected much from existence for a long time. And then Rita had changed that. So he read newspapers to learn about the world.

Philippe was the third member of the ménage. He was black and very tall for his age, which was now thirteen. He attended boarding school near Lugano, by the Italian border. He loved snow and he knew how to ski. He said he wished to be a sailor when he grew up—but he said it in the way of boys who are being boyish to please their fathers.

Devereaux had taken him off the island of St. Michel at the last moment, almost by instinct, as the boy stood in the waters and pleaded to leave that place of hell. It had been another business in another time. Rita had understood that gesture, though no one else would have. Philippe did not love Devereaux because Devereaux did not expect love, not even from Rita Macklin. It was enough to love her.

Rita was now in the Philippines. There was an election to cover, a riot and an assassination. It was an old story but Rita told him that all the stories were old ones. “Everything has been written before,” she said.

“Shakespeare’s advantage,” Devereaux had replied.

“Yes. Something like that. A cliché is only something well said in the first place.”

He had been alone for three weeks; she would leave the Philippines for America then, to see her mother in the city of Eau Claire, in Wisconsin; and then to Washington, to see Mac, her old editor at the newsmagazine; and then back to Paris. They would meet again in Paris in four weeks’ time.

He sat in the bar of the Continental Hotel and drank Kronenbourg poured into a cold glass and tried to understand the world according to Le Monde . It seemed that France was at the center of this world, just as it seemed the United States was at the center of the world portrayed in the Herald-Tribune .

Devereaux said once to Rita Macklin that Switzerland was never at the center of the world. It was a good place to be.

He spent his days like this: Walking, reading, seeing as much as he could, playing chess with the old man in Ouchy who came down to the chess pavilion on good days. They moved the large pieces around and walked on the board and considered all the moves and problems from the perspective of almost being participants. The old man said that he and Devereaux were the two best in the world because they had so much time to practice.

Devereaux wondered if he could do this for the rest of his life. He had buried himself by making someone else assume his identity. He was safe, detached from R Section. He read and read and read, absorbing the worlds of Montaigne and Kierkegaard and Hegel. He read Dickens all the time because it represented a world more real to him than the one he was in.