Bill Granger - The November Man

Hanley allowed the prodding. It was government procedure. Thompson talked and poked and made Hanley cough; he tapped at his back and asked him to urinate into a jar and took a blood sample and talked about the Washington Redskins and laughed too much. Hanley endured it. He wanted not to feel so tired.

For no reason, Hanley began to weep. Thompson stared at him and asked him why he was crying. Hanley excused himself, went to the bathroom, wiped his eyes, and looked at his thin, cold, old sallow face.

“Why are you crying?” he asked himself.

When the ordeal was over, Hanley buttoned his pajama shirt and slipped the gray bathrobe over his thin shoulders and resumed his seat in the large chair by the front windows.

There were books strewn on the floor around the chair. He had been reading Somerset Maugham. He had been reading autobiography disguised as fiction in which Maugham, who had been a British agent in the First War, describes himself as “Ashenden, the secret agent.” And Ashenden takes a ferry one day across Lake Geneva, from France to neutral Switzerland, and…

Hanley had read the story over and over. He didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand why he was so tired.

“You need rest,” Dr. Thompson said. “You need to get some sun, get some color into those cheeks. Stop moping about. You took the pills I prescribed?”

“They seem to make me more tired.”

“They’re supposed to relax you,” Thompson said. “Listen to your doctor.” Smiled. “Go to Florida. Get some sun. Plenty of sun down there. Shouldn’t mope around here.”

Hanley thought of Florida. He had never been there. He blinked and looked out the window at his city, a place he had used and grown to love through use. They were going to tear down the café down on Fourteenth Street where he had gone to lunch every working day. Every working day of thirty-five years of work and they were going to tear it down.

He blinked and his vision was as wet as the rain-streaked windows. Thompson was talking to him. The voice droned.

Hanley thought of all the places he knew so intimately and had never seen. Like Number 2, Dhzerzhinski Square, Moscow. That ugly gray building—the headquarters of Committee for State Security. KGB. He knew it as an old enemy. It was nearly the same as knowing an old friend.

“What do you say to that?”

Hanley looked up and Thompson was beaming his professional beam.

“What do I say to what?”

“Hospitalization. A complete rest cure.”

“No.” Hanley’s voice was quick. “No. If I’m sick, I’m sick. If I’m not sick, I don’t need a hospital.”

“You need rest.”

“You can’t get rest in a hospital.”

Dr. Thompson frowned.

Hanley turned away, stared at the street below, stared at the traffic. The goddamn traffic. The noise pounded at his thoughts day and night. No wonder he was tired. Where were all those people going to? Did they live in their cars?

Hanley blinked and felt his eyes moisten again. He had never noticed the traffic before. His thoughts seemed to go in circles. What had he been thinking of—he had to get well, get back to Operations, see to the delicate business of Nutcracker.

He thought of Nutcracker.

He thought of the toy nutcracker from Germany he had owned as a child. Given to him one Christmas by a long-ago great-aunt. A child’s toy. Fierce and bristling in guard’s uniform, with a mustache and horrible large teeth.

He smiled as suddenly as he wept. He felt warm. He wanted Thompson to go away. The warmth of memory filled him. He had to get back to Section, back to seeing what was wrong with Nutcracker. Director of spies. To play the great game as he saw it in his mind.

“…medication,” Thompson concluded.

Hanley nodded, said nothing. He took the prescription sheet and looked at it. He waited for Thompson to leave.

Yackley listened to Thompson, asked him two questions and dismissed him.

It was the same afternoon. It had stopped raining. The sky was full of clouds and warm winds billowed along Fourteenth Street, cracking the flags on government buildings. Yackley’s office on the sixth floor of the south Department of Agriculture building had a large window that looked across the street at the dour Bureau of Engraving building.

Yackley was not pleased by anything Thompson told him about Hanley.

Yackley was director of R Section. Hanley worked for him. Hanley was letting the Section down.

Yackley stood at his window, looked down at his view, and thought about his Section. He was a political appointment from the early Reagan days. He was an attorney, a Republican, wealthy enough to work for the government. He took a Level Four polygraph examination once a year to maintain his Ultra clearance. He had access to level X in security and in the computer system called Tinkertoy.

Yackley was called the New Man by his derisive subordinates, including Hanley. They thought he was an ass; he knew that. He had replaced Rear Admiral Galloway (USN Retired) as head of Section because Galloway had stubbed his toes badly in some Section business in Florida. Galloway had been the Old Man.

Thompson had told him: “He won’t go.”

“Damn. He won’t go. Did you talk to him?”

“He wasn’t listening to me.”

“This was important, Doctor .” Yackley had put heavy emphasis on the last word, as though he didn’t believe it. He could have saved the sarcasm; Thompson was immune.

He would have to do something else.

Yackley felt nervous when he had to do something. Something on his own. Maybe he needed advice. Maybe he should consult his “rabbi.” Maybe he didn’t have to act right away.

The thoughts flung themselves one after the other through his mind. Yackley went back to his rosewood desk and sat down in the $455 leather swivel chair. He swiveled and put his hands behind his head to aid thought. He frowned. He thought about Hanley and the goddamn agent Devereaux and the business in Florida in which Galloway had stubbed his toes and been fired. It had been Hanley’s doing. And Devereaux’s. Hanley wanted to be head of Section. That’s what Yackley thought from time to time: A goddamned civil servant wanted to be head of Section.

Scheming. Hanley was scheming and it was all against Yackley because Hanley hated Yackley’s success. Yackley had issued a directive saying that, in order to “downtrim” the budget of Section, “cutbacks were needed in every sector” and that the effort would succeed only “if we all realize we are in this boat together and help pull each other’s oars.”

There had been any number of obscene drawings on Section bathroom walls showing Yackley pulling the oars of others.

It wasn’t funny. And Hanley—that was something Hanley would have dreamed up. To undermine his authority.

So Yackley had tapped Hanley for six months. Home and away. The taps were designed by the National Security Agency, which is the “hardware” supplier to the other intelligence services, including R Section. The taps were perfected and installed by Richfield, the Section’s own ELINT man and resident “hardware” genius. As well as the supreme loyalist.

Yackley squinted at the words of the transcript of the taps. Damned good thing he had tapped Hanley; should have done it years before.

February 21, time: 1:02 A.M. Electronic count indicates the telephone number is: Country—Switzerland; City—Lausanne; Number 28-23-56.

HANLEY: Hello?

(Silence for five seconds.)

HANLEY: Hello? Hello?

(Silence for two seconds.)

HANLEY: Hello? Someone say something.

VOICE: What do you want?

HANLEY: There’s a problem and I think I am beginning to understand it and I have to tell someone. I’ve discovered—