Bill Granger - The November Man

On Sundays, he would drive down to the school near Lugano and take Philippe out for the day. They might go to Italy and they might, in good weather, rent a sailboat on Lac Leman and sail down to Vevey and to the castle at Chillon. The man and the boy did not speak much to each other. It was all right; they both understood the value of silence.

Besides, they both felt the absence of Rita on those Sundays when she was away. She warmed them both, a cold black child who had seen murder and war and a cold white man who had made murder and war. They felt damned unless she was with them.

“Encore, s’il vous plaît,” Devereaux said to the woman behind the bar. It was just noon on the fifth of March.

She was a pleasant-faced Swiss with small eyes and an intent expression. She thought she had a nose that was too large but she was wrong. She thought that Monsieur Devereaux, who came to the little café nearly every day, might be a professor at the university. He was always reading.

She opened a bottle of Kronenbourg and poured it into the new cold glass. He liked chilled glasses and cold things. He had requested the chilled glass and she had been pleased to refrigerate his glasses for him.

Devereaux sighed, put down the very funny column by William Safire in the Herald-Tribune , and tasted the new beer. It was sweet and bitter at the same time, the way beer can be when it is very cold and very welcome.

He saw his face in the mirror behind the bar. He had been lost in newspaper words and had tried to forget about Hanley. Something had jarred him to think of Hanley again. So he had called Hanley yesterday and Hanley was gone. Gone.

He called Hanley at home. He had never been to Hanley’s home but he knew all the numbers he needed to know. He had called and the telephone rang briefly and then an operator interrupted to explain, with a recorded voice, that the telephone number had been disconnected. Disconnected with no forwarding number.

Hanley was gone; where had Hanley gone?

Devereaux tasted the beer again. He stared at nothing at all and tried to picture Hanley in his mind and hear again the disjointed words of those two telephone calls, the first when he and Rita were making love, the second when she was gone.

Claudette, who was the girl behind the wide oak bar, gazed at M. Devereaux and thought she might be in love with him. Why not? Didn’t he come every day to see her? Didn’t he give her extravagant tips? Exactly as a lover might do. He was shy; he wanted her attention. She was so ready to please him. Dear man.

“That’s just it. No November. There are no spies. I think I can tell you. I need to tell you. And did you know that your November is on his way to Moscow?”

Warning. Or threat?

Rita had sprawled in bed, in afterlove, her nakedness warm and open, her body ajar. She had stared at him as he listened to Hanley that night, listened to the mad words: Warning. Threat. It didn’t matter.

And then Hanley spoke of a nutcracker and that made no more sense and Hanley was truly mad, Devereaux had thought. Nearly two weeks before.

Now, in the Herald-Tribune , he saw a little essay on the editorial page, arguing that the day of the spy was passed, that electronic devices had made the work of spies irrelevant. He had smiled as he read it and then he had thought of Hanley. He had decided to call Hanley. And Hanley was gone.

Devereaux felt a peculiar chill growing inside the coldness already inside him. Rita Macklin was a million miles away. He felt the prickle on the back of his neck that signified awareness and the presence of danger. And yet, what was all around him but this dull life and the girl behind the bar with the small, secret smile?

Devereaux did not trust R Section or Hanley. It was a matter of survival. It was a wise course.

He frowned. Claudette saw the frown and frowned in sympathy, worried for the professor. She hurried along the polished oak bar to him and asked him, in French, if everything was all right.

He tried a smile. He said yes. He looked away, back to his newspaper.

So shy, Claudette thought. She blushed. She felt warm, thinking of him. It didn’t matter even if he was married. It didn’t matter. All right, she thought: Take me. He needs comfort and I am comfortable. I will make no demands; I earn my own way, I can do as I please. She thought of him holding her and his weight pressing down on her the length of her body, pressing her breasts and opening her legs. So close together.

Devereaux stared at the paper and only thought: There was Hanley, Mrs. Neumann, who had buried the files, and Yackley. But had any of them told the others? Was Hanley saying that Colonel Ready convinced Moscow to come after him again? Spies were terrible at keeping secrets. Secrets were meant to be broken and exposed.

There are no spies.

Could it mean: There are no secrets?

Hanley was dull, stable, and the most predictable man in the world. Was he drawing Devereaux back into the trade with riddles and puzzles? It was childish and very much like Hanley.

Claudette decided she would surrender herself on the first night because the professor was too shy to be flirted with. He had to know he did not have to be shy. She would be the bold one.

She offered him a bowl of pretzels.

He was startled. He looked up at Claudette. She was young and fair and her eyes were empty and shining. He said no in a polite way and shut her out of mind.

But she hovered now. “Another beer?”

No. No. No.

He rose from the chairlike stool with back and arms and put down a note that was probably too much to leave as a tip.

She thanked him and tried to put meaning into her voice. She smiled at him. She had beautiful teeth.

He tried another smile on her. He used smiles like disguises. He nodded and took his papers and walked out of the café.

March was chill and damp and bright. Clouds brooded above the snowfields in the mountains. The lake at Ouchy below was choppy and bright. The day was a promise of warmth, which, after a long winter, was good enough. It was a day to be with friends and find warm places to drink in and find laughter. Devereaux only knew the old man from Ouchy who played chess as though it were war. All the Swiss men played at war all their lives. And they only took those things seriously that were not war.

He wondered if Hanley had a new game.

He walked up the steep streets to the upper town and was lost in thought and the exertion of the climb. He walked along the Rue Mon Repos and failed to see as clearly as he was trained to see. He was so preoccupied with thoughts of Hanley that the two men in the Saab who followed him had no trouble at all.

Hanley was not given clothing. He understood the technique. Everyone in intelligence knew the technique and used it. The naked prisoner is like the naked patient or the naked captive: They are all rendered defenseless by their nakedness.

Hanley sat on the vinyl side chair in the examining room. His naked bottom pressed against the vinyl. He wondered if it was cleaned with disinfectant after each use.

It was the first full day of his captivity. They had given him oatmeal with prunes for breakfast. He had wanted to gag.

And no coffee.

“Coffee isn’t good for you,” chirped the nun who had brought his tray.

“Where is this place? Why am I—”

“When you see the doctor,” she said, smiling and flitting about the room like a nervous bird. She said “doctor” as though saying “God.”

He sat on the vinyl chair and stared at the man at the empty desk. He guessed there was a tape recorder set up somewhere. On the cheerful blue wall behind the desk was a very bad print of a painting by Modigliani in which a reclining woman is represented in bright colors. Hanley did not like modern art. Hanley did not like sitting on a vinyl chair wearing a ridiculous hospital gown. He wasn’t sick; he was tired. He had felt frightened and confused last night; now he felt anger.