Bill Granger - The November Man

“We need some orchestra music for this one,” Reed was saying. The room was modern, dull, white, windowless, and devoid of charm—exactly like Reed.

“We’ve worked OT,” Perry Weinstein said. It was not his style at all. Clichés fell by the bushelful in this administration. Jargon clogged the corridors of power. Everyone had slang or invented it. Yackley was probably chosen to head R Section because of his inability to speak in anything but clichés.

“Play me some,” Reed continued. He assumed a pose of power that required him to lean back in his swivel chair and feign defenselessness.

“I’m coordinating with Section, Langley, Puzzle—” He stopped. Was it too much jargon? But Reed nodded as though he understood. “We have a scenario ready for a road show three weeks before the Pow-Wow.”

Pow-Wow was Summit; the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union were scheduled to meet in one month’s time in Berlin—in both sections of the city to symbolize a new beginning to peace. Peace was full of new beginnings.

“Two years ago, we started our exchange program,” Perry said. He lapsed out of jargon, to Reed’s annoyance:

“We picked up their agent in Italy and the Brits picked up one in the Isles; they defected two West Germans into the East. I think we rattled our sabers effectively. It set the tone.”

“But the one from Italy—what’s his name—that was badly handled by Langley. He redefected into the Soviet embassy right on Mass Ave.”

Perry let that one go. Reed sighed, shifted the swivel, tapped his fingertips together to make certain they were still there, and continued:

“I don’t want a fuck-up like that this time. That’s why you’re in place on coordinating this thing. And I don’t want to see the Red Machine come back as quickly.”

“I’ve tried to explain to you, Quent,” Perry Weinstein said, brushing at his rep tie again. “We can’t absolutely control the Opposition. All we can do is hold our own.”

“I’d like to see a better scenario than that.”

“It can’t be guaranteed,” Perry said, his voice on edge. “We have identified nine agents, all very top drawer, very KGB and GRU upper echelon. Including, I might add, the director of the Resolutions Committee.”

Quentin stared at him. The eyes had no comprehension.

“His code name is Gorki. He’s an old man, he made contact with us in the last eighteen months through the CIA. He wants to come over to our house. He has some health problems and he needs us. I think it’s less a matter of ideology than just wanting to live longer.”

“I like this—”

“It’s timed for the summit exchange.”

“I like this very much, Perr.”

“We have our little Indians all lined up. There’s a cipher clerk in SovEm in Rome, there’s an East German intelligence director in Potsdam, there’s—”

“More and more,” enthused Reed, cutting off the litany. “How do we begin?”

“The best one is a Resolutions courier named Alexa. Really attractive. I thought you’d like this.” And he slipped the photograph out of his pocket and dropped it on Quentin Reed’s empty desk top.

Extraordinary face, without any doubt. The eyes held you.

But the body. The sheer, voluptuous nakedness of that body. She stood quite naturally, not posing at all, not hiding anything either. Reed felt an urge and hid it by slamming his body forward into the kneehole of the desk and plunking his elbows on the desk top. The picture required several more seconds of careful study.

“This girl is naked,” said Quentin Reed.

“Her name is Alexa. Rather, her real name is Natasha Podgorny Alexkoff. But she’s Alexa, which is a good name for a killer. She seduced that security guard in Silicon Valley a few years ago. She’s been active. Considered their best ‘Resolutions’ courier.”

“And she’s here?”

“Reasonable supposition. She crossed the Canadian border into Niagara Falls three hours ago.”

“We have her?”

“Not yet. It’s better to bait your trap. You see, she’s sort of a gift to us. From Gorki. The old man who’s coming across on Summit eve.”

“That’s one helluva gift,” Reed said. His tongue licked at his dry lips. He had gray eyes to match his suit, and right now he felt he could take on this Alexa-Whatever. It was only ten in the morning and he was thinking about the bedroom. Hell, the top of his desk.

Perry Weinstein appreciated the spectacle of Quentin Reed. Reed was looking at the photograph of Alexa and could not see the contempt in Perry’s eyes.

After a salacious moment of silence, Perry spoke again: “Gorki took that. He had her. About five years ago, in his dacha.”

“But what does she do? Besides this, I mean?”

“She kills,” Perry Weinstein said.

The cold word fell between them. Perry dropped the photograph on the desk top. “What does that mean?”

“It means she kills. She’s a courier. That’s their slang for Resolutions agent. She killed a man on a ferry in Helsinki two weeks ago. She killed three people in Lausanne a week ago. She kills people, that’s what she does.”

Perry repeated the word because of the effect it was having on Quentin Reed. The spirit was drooping. The gray eyes became old again. The hands left the desk top. The photograph was an orphan.

“I can’t believe it.”

“Yes. Apparently, that’s one of the reasons she’s effective. So many can’t.”

“Why is… why has she come here?”

“We guess she’s here to kill somebody.” Perry Weinstein said it without emphasis and watched the effect on Quentin Reed.

“My God, this doesn’t involve the President, does it?”

“No. That would be so unlikely, so crude, so—”

“It wasn’t so goddamned unlikely when they put those assassins on the Pope, was it?”

“We are monitoring her constantly.”

“Why not just pick her up?”

“We’d like to see what she had in mind.”

“How did you get this photograph, Perr? How do we know about her?”

“That’s why we have spies, Quent,” Perry Weinstein said.

“Spies? Spooks?” Quentin smiled. “Are you going to give me that booga-booga stuff? You’re coordinating Changeover, aren’t you?”

“Joke, Quent.”

“Changeover. I think the budget director outdid himself. Save five bill over five years.”

Perry nodded. Changeover was the newest idea in intelligence since the invention of invisible ink. Cost analysts had figured out that information gained through fixed investment enterprises—satellites, computers, machine analysis—was far more cost efficient than information gained by agents in the field. The agents would be cut back over five years to avoid the sort of bloodletting that had crippled CIA during the Carter administration.

“But what about this dish of Russian ice cream? Tell me about her.”

“There’s nothing to tell—so far. She’s a gift from our man in Moscow Center. She’s already cut off from her control, she’s flying blind. She has some sort of S&D here—”

“S&D?”

“Search and destroy, Quent,” said Perr.

“Right.”

Silence.

The jargon machine was on hold. The room was silent. Being this close to the most powerful man in the country—he was 150 steps away at the moment, sitting in the Oval Office, reading briefing papers for tonight’s live press conference—awed them both, awed everyone. The reality of the presidency was borne by the sense of awe.

“I think this is going to put the President in a strong position. At the summit.”

“It did at the first one. We had spies and they had spies and there were defections all over the place. They started it with that couple pulled out of West Germany. And we aced the game with the agents in Italy and Britain. We won the battle of the magazine covers.”