Bill Granger - The November Man

In the conversation—which they both believed they had never actually taken part in—Devereaux replied, “I would never go back. That’s what we went through all that for. That’s why we can be together.”

Rita said, “But if you had to go back. To survive?”

“I wouldn’t do it. But if I had to go back, to survive, what would it do to us? I mean, what would you do then?” Because they both knew the linchpin that held them together was that he was quit of the old trade.

It was a conversation that always stopped at that point—if it ever took place in reality or only in their separate thoughts. It had to stop there. Neither of them wanted to know the end of the conversation.

Devereaux turned in at the gate and crossed the walk lined with tulips to the door. He expected what he found there.

He opened the door to the lobby and the large policeman in bulky blue seemed to have been studying him through the glass. The Swiss are not subtle about their weapons. The policeman had already produced an automatic weapon—it looked to Devereaux like a variation on the Uzi—and had it pointed at Devereaux when he entered the lobby. The policeman had some words and Devereaux gave him some others.

The journey to the police station was framed in silence. Devereaux had made all the necessary calls abroad from the hotel in Lugano, during the three days of his hiding.

The police station of Lausanne smelled exactly like all the other police stations in the world. There was sweat, a certain musty sense of hopelessness, and the smell of despair that is mated with the sounds of iron doors closing shut very hard.

Captain Boll was on the second floor and his room was spare. The window faced south, toward the lake, and you could even see the lake through the trees. The trees were gaining foliage quickly in the warm sun and thickening above the red rooftops on the terraces below.

Captain Boll was even bulkier than the policeman who had been waiting in the apartment building. He did not wear a uniform and he seemed put out. His eyes were small, not particularly shrewd, and his brows beetled together above a long, wide nose that betrayed some liking for Swiss wines.

Boll indicated a hard chair in the middle of the room—directly in front of the large, bare desk. Devereaux sat down and waited. His face was wreathed in wrinkles and calm. His eyes were steady and cool. He felt ready—which was not the same as feeling in charge. To do something was to exist. He had begun the process.

Boll said his name and Devereaux waited.

“This is about murder. Three people killed in your building. Two of them outside your apartment.”

Devereaux said nothing. Words were not really expected, he thought. Captain Boll had something to say.

But Boll surprised him by waiting as well, his hands flat and placid as rowboats on the desktop.

“I was in Lugano,” Devereaux began. “Three days. Visiting my son.”

“I know that,” Captain Boll said, surprising him for a second time. “It was convenient to be in Lugano, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The policeman said you didn’t seem surprised to be arrested.”

“I am rarely surprised. Or perhaps my innocence reassures me,” Devereaux said.

“You aren’t accused of anything.”

“Of course I am,” he said.

Silence again. There was a wonderful warm breeze from the south that brought smells of the lake and the trees through the window. The bare room warmed with the sun. The two men waited. The silence was complete.

Captain Boll sighed. He got up and went to the window and looked down at the housetops. “I should be sailing today. It’s early but it is running good and no one is in the lake,” Captain Boll said. His voice was surprisingly soft, Devereaux thought. Devereaux was on guard now because the soft voice did not seem to fit the big man or the situation they were talking about.

“You are an American agent.” Boll turned as he said it.

“Was,” Devereaux began.

“Peterson,” said Captain Boll.

“That’s one of the names,” Devereaux said, giving ground a little the way a fisherman feeds the line after the hook goes in.

“How did this killing concern you?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it did concern you?”

“It must have,” Devereaux said. “There would be too much coincidence to suppose it didn’t.”

“You are retired. From your… profession?”

“Yes.”

“You are much too young.”

“I am much too tired to continue.”

Boll smiled. The smile might have meant anything.

“The same with me. But I have not grown rich enough yet to sail every day.”

“I was in Lugano,” Devereaux said.

“Yes. And the woman at the brasserie, Claudette Longtemps, she said two men came for you the day before. They questioned her and threatened her. Very nasty people. They were killed. But you were in Lugano. So. Did you have someone kill them?”

“No,” Devereaux said.

“A woman, perhaps?”

For the moment, puzzlement crossed Devereaux’s face. That made Boll frown. Was he such a good actor?

“A woman, M. Devereaux?” said Captain Boll.

“I don’t understand.” The words came out simply, like the truth.

“A half hour before this horrible thing, a woman—a woman who was noticed with great interest by so many men in the area that their descriptions make me believe she is quite beautiful—hired one of our young thugs in Lausanne to break the window of the lobby of the building in the Rue de la Concorde Suisse. The woman wanted to draw the concierge from the lobby briefly enough to pass into the building. To go to your rooms, M. Devereaux.”

“What description?”

“It is not your wife, M. Devereaux. We have had a good long time to check on everything. Your wife is a journalist?”

“Yes. She is not my wife,” he added, automatically trying to separate Rita from this though he knew that was not possible.

“She is in Manila. She booked Swissair. She left a wide trail.”

Devereaux twisted in the chair. He realized it was designed in such a way that it would never be comfortable, like one of those modern stools attempted from time to time by famous architects which never work out.

“Rita is a journalist, nothing more. I came to Switzerland to live, to be on the edge of things and not in them anymore.”

“Do you think I’m a policeman, monsieur? I am something more than that. The Swiss are prepared for nearly everything, monsieur. That is our nature. That is why nearly nothing ever happens. And then something like this. Do you have an idea of what has happened?”

Devereaux waited for a long moment to pass between them. He spoke in a monotone. He knew the tone of voice that would satisfy both of them.

“The woman, whoever the woman was, went to the apartment to kill me. The two men, whoever the men were, went to the apartment for the same purpose. Apparently, neither of them was aware of the other.”

“And the woman killed all three—”

“No. Not the concierge. She wouldn’t have hired whoever she hired to lure the concierge out of the building just to end up killing her.”

“Yes,” said Captain Boll. “What I thought as well.” And he started at Devereaux for a long time. “They want to kill you.”

“It would seem so,” Devereaux said.

“Are you so cool to face death?”

“I did not invite it,” Devereaux said.

“What will you do?”

“Not impose on the hospitality of the Swiss in this matter. I am going back.”

“Is this so?”

“Yes.”

“Then why come back here to face me?”

“Because it had to be done this way.”

Boll was perplexed. He crossed again to the window and looked down enviously at the long finger of the lake that stretched to the mountains.