Bill Granger - The November Man

Places that were secure.

Places that were under control.

Hanley was a director.

There are no spies. Hanley’s words suddenly surged into consciousness from wherever they had been buried and floated like a leaf.

“You went to a building about five or six weeks ago. It was in northwest Washington. There was a pickup. A man about fifty-five or sixty, man was bald, had big eyes. A man with blue eyes.” He began the careful description of Hanley, creating the photograph from memory.

Sellers waited again. “Is that what this is about?”

“Yes,” Devereaux said.

“This is about that one old man?”

“Who gave the order? And where did it come from?”

“Mr. Ivers. Like always.”

“Where did it come from?”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You see. That’s where you fail me. You fail to tell me exactly what I want to know.”

He saw the other man rise. He felt the pressure of Devereaux’s foot on his left hand.

“No, man,” Sellers said.

“Where did it come from?”

“All right. Let me think. Just give me a damned minute, will you? Let me think about it.”

He closed his eyes and tried to see the order.

He opened his eyes.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Devereaux repeated.

“I didn’t remember because I never heard of it before. Is that okay?”

“All right.”

“Department of Agriculture,” said Sellers. “Isn’t that a kick? How the hell does the Department of Agriculture have any secrets? Can you figure that out for me?”

“What section in the Department of Agriculture?”

“Man, gimme a break. I don’t read the whole damned thing. It goes on for pages. You know, name and judgment and all that jazz. I just look at the place I’m supposed to take him and if I’m gonna need to use restraints. We had to use restraints.”

“I suppose you did,” Devereaux said. It was broken. At least the part of it that would involve Sellers. The problem was what to do with Sellers.

Sellers lay on the floor, blinded and gagging on his own blood. He never realized that Devereaux was deciding his life in that moment of silence. Sellers thought it had all been settled.

Devereaux counted on his own survival—alone—once. And there was now that unfinished conversation in mind with Rita Macklin. She would say:

And you want to go back to that?

And he would say:

I protect myself. I make decisions for my own survival.

And she would say:

The good agent. (He knew her tone of voice.) Well, maybe it’s not good enough for me. No, not good enough at all.

They found Sellers on Saturday afternoon, locked in the trunk of a Budget rent-a-car parked in the crowded lot at National Airport, in the spaces reserved for Congressmen.

He was really upset and very frightened when they found him.

Kaplan died shortly after dawn on Saturday.

Hanley had been unaware of his death, though they shared the same room.

Kaplan had made a noise, started, been still.

Kaplan was the tax accountant who worked for IRS and had devised the Church of Tax Rebellion, also incorporated as the Church of Jesus Christ, Taxpayer. The death of the prophet went unnoticed for two hours.

Hanley had awakened suddenly at seven and pressed the button. The button was all-important. It was his last link to life. He was sinking away, into himself; he would be dead in a little while.

His arms were scrawny and his eyes bulged.

He did not read or watch television.

He would stare in the darkness at night; and into the light during the day. He would see nothing. His eyes seemed to react very badly to the things around him. He knew smells: The smell of Sister Domitilla, the smell of Dr. Goddard. He heard voices but they were from far away.

There was the voice of his sister Mildred. And his mother. And the voice, very deep and very slow and very certain, of his father.

There was the voice of the Reverend Millard Van der Rohe in the pulpit of the plain wooden Presbyterian church on Sunday. The smell of dust on summer afternoons coming through the plain windows. Women with paper fans from a funeral home fanning themselves. The sweat breaking in stains across their broad backs. Men sitting as solemn as the church, listening to the words of the Lord.

And sometimes, he heard the Lord as well.

The Lord explained things to him in such a simple and wonderful way that Hanley felt glad.

He freely confessed his sins to the Lord and the Lord was as kind as the face of his mother. The Lord reached for his hand and took it and made it warm. The Lord spoke of green valleys.

Hanley became aware again.

They were closing the curtain that divided Mr. Kaplan’s bed from his own in the small white room. The room did not have a couch. No one in the room was expected to stay for a long while. There were no restraints. No one needed them. Age restrained; illness restrained; the weakness that comes at the end restrained.

Hanley waited for them to feed him. He felt like a baby again and that was comfortable. In a little while, he would go to the Lord, who had the face of his mother. The Lord smelled of his mother’s smells. The Lord comforted him. He would lie down in green pastures. There was a summer storm coming across the meadows and he was a child in the pasture, watching the magnificent approach of the high black thunderclouds eating up the blue sky, tumbling up and up with power and majesty and glory.

He had never felt so close to God.

William said she did the right thing. Of course, she called him by his nickname but when she thought of him, she thought of him as William.

William was a software programmer and he wore very white shirts to work every day.

They had met at one of those little group parties that form after computer conventions. She had been attracted to him by his stern face, his light brown hair, and the expanse of white covering his chest. He seemed very serious and sincere. They had shared Virgin Marys together and made a date that first meeting.

They both liked music in the little clubs on Lincoln Avenue. They both lived in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and cared for plants that insisted on dying anyway. William had a cat named Samantha, which Margot Kieker thought was real cute, and it was rather touching in William to have a cat at all. The cat didn’t like Margot. She was used to that. At least William liked her.

He had theories about the seriousness of the world. He didn’t like black people very much because he had never met very many of them; but he wasn’t prejudiced at all. He once voted Democratic and then stopped voting until Reagan. He was twenty-eight and he owned a condo and a BMW.

William said Margot did not owe a thing to some distant relative she barely remembered. Someone named “Uncle Hanley.”

For two days, she carefully cleaned her apartment, thought about William, sold $32,000 in hardware and software for the new PC line of computers, played her complete file of Boston Pops records, and thought about an old man named Hanley.

Lydia Neumann met her at 8:30 in the coffee shop of the Blackstone Hotel, where the Neumanns were staying. Leo was up and about already but he was not involved in this; it was better to keep it separate. Leo and Lydia had a lot of separate compartments and that kept them together.

Margot Kieker was drinking a Coke. Actually, a Diet Coke. And carefully applying strawberry jam to her whole wheat toast.

Lydia Neumann sat down heavily and saw no change in Margot Kieker. The hair was precise, the makeup muted, the face unlined, the eyes unclouded. No worry, no sleepless nights, no fears of tomorrow. The future was perfectly assured. Lydia Neumann felt disgust for the creature in front of her. And yet, there was curiosity as well.