Bill Granger - The November Man

The Assistant National Security Adviser was the less formal contact between the executive branch and the various intelligence agencies that operated under the umbrella of the Director of Central Intelligence. These included R Section.

Yackley had not been kept waiting. The assistant adviser was not a rude man. His name was Weinstein and he was more intelligent than most of the people he had to deal with.

His office on the sixth floor of the Executive Office Building—the ornate hunk of Victorian architecture that squats between Seventeenth Avenue and West Executive Place, just off the White House lawn—was the office of a transient. There were no photographs on the rather plain government-issue metal desk; there was not the requisite couch or even two upholstered chairs set off to the side for informal tête-à-têtes. Everything in the office seemed careless and temporary. There were cardboard boxes and a battered Selectric II typewriter on a rickety metal typing stand. The assistant adviser might have been his own aide-de-camp. He projected a sense of energy, of wearing shirts two days in a row, and of being a bachelor who probably did not eat very well. He wore horn-rimmed glasses that made his thin face seem thinner. He was forty-one years old and looked thirty.

“Hi, Frank,” he said, as his secretary led Yackley into the office. “Get you something? Coke or coffee or something?”

“No thanks, Perry,” Yackley said. He felt uncomfortable with the informality yet thrilled by the intimacy. Everyone did. The administration projected a sense of order, tuxedos and gray business suits. Perry Weinstein might have been a holdover from the Carter administration. Save that his accent was West Coast and his politics were the kind satisfying to readers of National Review .

Yackley sat down in one of two side chairs pulled up to Perry Weinstein’s desk.

“We have a problem,” he began in that way of his that indicated a long recitation of the facts. Yackley was a careful man who carefully screened his own words before uttering them.

“I know. How is Hanley?”

“It’s too early. He’s still being tested—”

“It’s a shame. The best sort of bureaucrat—no strong partisan stance, devotion to duty beyond and above. I think I met him the first time when I moved in. Two years ago. A strong 201 file—”

“You read his 201?” Yackley seemed amazed. It was such a pedestrian thing to do. There must have been 150 bureaucrats at Hanley’s level in the intelligence establishment, counting all the agencies.

Weinstein nodded. There was no color in his face. His eyes were light blue. Everything about him spoke of innocence, of straightforwardness. Naturally, everyone was suspicious of that.

“I’ve read everyone’s,” Weinstein admitted with a smile and a blush. “Two years. It doesn’t seem that long. I’m still not moved in.”

Yackley said nothing to that.

“Well, what’s it about?”

“You saw the transcripts I sent over. When Hanley tried to make contact with this former agent—”

“Sleeper named November,” said Weinstein. Perfect memory. Mind like a steel trap. Never misses a trick. Every cliché in the large book kept in Washington applied to Weinstein. And Yackley, a master of clichés, was just the man to apply them.

“November’s come awake again,” said Yackley. He spoke the words with care and precision. He said, “There were two incidents in two days. We sent two agents—contractors—to make contact with Devereaux, to see what his game was. I indicated in my memo that I was disturbed about Hanley. Lest there was a breach of security. I’m afraid we have troubles—”

Weinstein waited. There was no judgment on his face. He might have been waiting for a bus.

“Devereaux apparently killed both men. On a mountain road outside of Lausanne. The details are incomplete and we have a stationmaster from Zurich down there—”

“It would seem better to have sent someone from Geneva or even France. I suppose a German speaker will seem odd in Lausanne.”

Perry Weinstein said this softly and quickly, also without judgment. But Yackley blushed. “He was the easiest man—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Weinstein said. His voice said that it did.

“Then there were two more men killed. This time in Devereaux’s apartment in Lausanne.”

“And who were they?”

“We don’t have the faintest idea. Except that it’s obvious that Devereaux is on some sort of rampage. I mean, we sent two agents to make inquiries—and they’re killed and—”

“How killed?”

“He arranged an auto accident. I don’t have details. He was in a car on a road, apparently the car driven by our two chasers was—”

“This seems botched, doesn’t it, Frank?”

Yackley felt acute embarrassment. There was silence. Weinstein stood behind his desk, his hand fiddling with some papers. The desk was littered with papers, some of them secret. Behind Yackley was the window that opened to a view of the White House. The White House occupied a bucolic space in the middle of crowded Washington with its littered streets full of hurrying office workers and the shuddering roars of planes bombarding the suburbs from National Airport. Life and noise and layers of society pretending other layers did not exist—and in the middle of it all, the quaint White House with the porticos and plain windows and the gentle lawn where the children gathered to roll Easter eggs with the President. Only the ugly concrete bunkers at the edges of the lawns reminded you of the absurd importance of it all.

“Yes. I was concerned from the beginning, I was in a hurry to see if there had been a breach. I think there has been—”

“How? Your tapes don’t show anything.”

“Hanley had other ways to reach Devereaux—”

“Why Devereaux? I mean, what is the importance of this agent except that he doesn’t exist anymore?” Weinstein softened all the hard words. You might have missed them if you weren’t listening closely.

“He killed two men. Chasers from Section.”

“Oh, yes, the chasers,” Weinstein said. “What was it the chasers were going to do when they contacted Devereaux?”

Yackley winced. “I didn’t send them. Hanley—”

Weinstein ignored that. “Wasn’t this a bit drastic? Why not send down your stationmaster from Zurich?”

“Hanley must have ordered the chasers. Before he… went away. It was done without my knowledge. But they existed, they were sent from Section. Hanley must have—”

Weinstein seemed to consider this, fixing his pale eyes on a spot somewhere above Yackley’s head. “Hanley,” he said. “Hanley is very ill, I think you said?”

Yackley cleared his throat. “He is being tested,” he said. “It’s not possible to discuss the thing with him now… At least I don’t know if we…”

Weinstein’s eyes focused full on Yackley’s face then. “I see,” he said.

Yackley seemed confused and reached for a metaphor to help him: “I would have preferred to let sleeping agents lie; I wouldn’t want to disturb the fabric.”

The mixed metaphor amused Weinstein. He let the trace of a smile float across his pale, soft features. He pushed the horn-rimmed glasses up his long nose until they reached the bridge.

“Well, what about Devereaux? Where is he? After his murderous rampage?”

Yackley looked up sharply. Was Weinstein mocking him?

He wanted to use just the right words. He thought he found them: “We don’t know.”

“I see.”

Struggled on: “As far as I can tell, from signal section, the Swiss are puzzled as well. And they’ve got a lot more men looking for him.”