Bill Granger - The November Man

“When it’s done, I’ll tell you,” Devereaux said.

“And if I kept you here?”

“For what reason?” Devereaux said.

“We found a pistol taped in the toilet in the apartment. Is it your pistol?”

“No,” Devereaux said. “It was planted there.”

Boll turned. “You lie to me.”

“Perhaps.”

“This is not some joke. You should not have involved an innocent person. Like Claudette Longtemps. She was very shaken, I can tell you, to identify those two men in the morgue. She thought they had killed you. I had to assure her that you were alive. You live with one woman and you have a black child—God knows where you got him—and you have this young girl from the countryside who is so much in love with you. I tell you, you disgust me.”

Devereaux waited.

“Damn you, man,” Boll said and came around the desk and struck Devereaux very hard on the face. When he drew back his hand, there was blood at the corner of Devereaux’s lips. The blood trickled down, dropped on the dark fabric of the corduroy jacket. Devereaux did not move. He looked at Boll. His eyes were mild and waiting, as though Boll had to finish some private game he was involved in.

“I could lock you up a good long time.”

“That’s one way to do it,” Devereaux said. Now the voice was flat, without any tone at all. The gray eyes were steady.

“That would suit you?”

“I can take it, if that’s what you mean. If I were in your prison, it would be up to you to keep me safe. You believe the woman came to kill me. You didn’t get her, so she will try again. Or others will try again. If you want to make this a Swiss matter, then I’ll oblige you by going to prison.”

Boll thought about that.

There were birds in the trees and both men could hear them clearly.

“And if I expel you—”

“On what grounds?”

“I can find grounds.”

“I have an attorney retained in Geneva. There are laws in Switzerland.”

“You are a guest of the country and you abuse the country’s hospitality.”

“It was not me, Herr Boll,” said Devereaux. “I will leave the country. I’ll resolve this—this is an American matter. In a little while, when it’s resolved, then you’ll know what happened.”

“Are you so sure you won’t be killed?” Boll smiled.

“Not at all.” Devereaux waited. “If that happens, then it’s resolved. If I’m not killed, it’s resolved. But it has to be finished. You choose where it will be finished—in Switzerland or not here.”

“And your son? Or whatever he is, the black child?”

“He’s in school. The lawyer has his trust. If things happen… then he’s taken care of. He’s fourteen. He understands.”

“And Rita Macklin? Will you arrange for her as well?”

But Devereaux had run out of words. The conversation with Rita—the one in mind—always ended at this point. He had broken free twice; twice he had been dragged back.

He didn’t know. Any more than Boll.

Hanley was falling into himself. He had been in Ward Seven for three weeks and each day grew more indistinct in mind and memory. Was today Wednesday or was it the day before? Was it spring? Was it this year or last?

In lucid moments, he knew that it was the medicine. There were pills in the morning and at night and there were pills as part of therapy and there were pills to ease the pain and to encourage sleep and to end anxiety and to modify behavior. He felt drugged all the time and yet the dependency was restful to him. He needed it.

Hanley began to speak to himself for company. He knew they didn’t care. They were very tolerant of the gentle patients and he was a gentle patient. He was learning all the lessons they wanted him to learn.

He sat at the window in his room and looked through the bars and watched the inmates walk to and fro in the exercise area. They were insane, he knew; at least, most of them. He was not so certain about Mr. Carpenter, who had been in the place for six months and who said he had been an assistant security chief at NASA and that he had been placed in St. Catherine’s after he had made certain allegations about the safety of the shuttle program. Like Hanley, he had been a bachelor. The place was full of bachelors, divorced men, and homosexual men. That was an oddity, Hanley thought in lucid moments. Hanley knew that he had few lucid moments now. It was why he sat at the window and spoke to himself; he thought the sound of his own voice might keep some sanity in the broken bowl of his mind.

He felt an almost physical sense of losing control. He felt spastic at times, as though his limbs might begin to work or shiver without his instructions. He finally mentioned this phenomenon to Sister Duncan, who relayed the information to Dr. Goddard, who talked to Hanley in a chummy way and changed Hanley’s daily dosage of drugs. The condition worsened.

Hanley said aloud, “It feels as if my body has become very small and the world has become very large. Not as though I am a child but that I am much much smaller. As though I am shrinking. Is that why they call psychologists shrinks?”

He smiled at that. A smile was not such a rare thing anymore. Much in the world amused him; at least, the part of the world that did not frighten him.

He thought of Washington, D.C., and it seemed to him a long time ago. Not so much a place but a memory of something that had once been an important experience to him.

It was absurd now, in his present state, to believe he had been a director of espionage. Espionage was such a ludicrous idea. Look around: What would a spy have to do with a place like this? That world must be as insane as this one, he thought with great satisfaction.

He had bananas and corn flakes for breakfast. The taste of the food lingered in memory. When he had been a child, he had eaten cold cereal and fruit for breakfast.

Tears came to his eyes. He thought of the child he had been. He thought of that often now in the dim days of faltering images. The child he had been was gangly, alone on a farm with elderly parents, a watcher who was slow to speak. When he was a child, he would awaken each morning to go to the window in hopes there was some change in the endless, flat Nebraska landscape. The only change was weather. There was snow and blistering summer heat and, in the fall, a brief and beautiful time of color that was melancholy even to an eleven-year-old boy. He wept and watched out the window. The day was warm and bright, almost sultry. The spring came like a woman waiting for sex. There was a perfume that haunted the world. The day was lascivious, almost wanton. Hanley thought of a woman—once, a woman in memory—and open legs on a narrow bed, a woman with the smell of sex on her lips.

Hanley realized he was aroused again. Sometimes, now, he was aroused five or six times a day. The experience was not pleasant finally because the arousal—and his masturbation—had eventually chafed his penis. He had not masturbated since he was a child. Arousal was pain. He thought he should tell someone but there was only Sister Duncan, who would blush, and Dr. Goddard, who would give him more medicine.

Am I sick? he thought. He watched Carpenter walk around and around the yard with large, angry strides. How did Carpenter resist?

Resist, he thought, turning the word over and over in mind until it almost tumbled out of mind.

He blinked.

He was still aroused and he could smell the perfume of spring all around him. He touched himself and felt pain. Pain and pleasure; arousal and sleepiness; memory and failing images all around. He blinked his eyes. They were wet.

“Mr. Hanley.”

He removed his hand, turned, saw Sister Mary Domitilla, a large nun shaped like a cookie. She was smiling and sweet-faced and it frightened Hanley because he did not think she was a sweet woman. He blinked and the wetness was almost gone. He said nothing.