Bill Granger - The November Man

“It was like war,” Quentin agreed.

“A lot of war is trading prisoners,” Perry said.

“Is that what’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know. You can’t always predict the Opposition.”

“I thought we could,” Quentin said. “Isn’t that why we have intelligence services and why we finance estimates?”

Perry cleared his throat. He got up.

“I’m fifteen minutes behind as usual,” he said to Quentin, who had not moved at the desk. He reached for the photograph.

“Don’t you have a copy?”

Perry smiled.

He left the picture of the naked Soviet courier on the desk.

The car was streaked with dirt and road salt. The suitcases in the trunk were crammed with dirty clothes. Ends of vacations always look like this. The car growled up to the garage door in the last of the afternoon light—the muffler had been pierced by a rock on the road somewhere in Pennsylvania.

The garage door opened automatically and the car crept into its space.

Leo Neumann turned the key in the ignition and the engine dieseled into silence with a few sputtering coughs. For a moment, no one said anything. There had not been many words in the last five hours, in the last 150 miles.

Lydia Neumann sighed and reached for the door handle and pulled herself out.

Margot Kieker took it as a clue. She pushed at her handle, was confused a moment, and then found the right lever. The rear door opened with a groan.

“I’ll bring the bags in,” Leo said.

“Leave them for a moment. Let’s open the house. I could use a beer,” Lydia Neumann said. She really meant it. Her voice was more hoarse than usual; she had been fighting a cold. And now this. This thing that had happened in the morning, at St. Catherine’s.

A great fuss. Sister Mary Domitilla had to consult with Sister Duncan, and then Dr. Goddard himself had come into the matter. But the matter had been settled by Finch, a small-faced man with large ears and a way of talking through his nose that made everyone around him want to offer him a handkerchief.

Finch was clearly in charge, though no one deferred to him. He was like a janitor in a corporation who has executive pretensions. He had to interrupt conversations to be heard.

But he was heard.

It didn’t matter about Miss Kieker being next of kin or not next of kin. Yes, she had proof. Yes, she had rights. Get a lawyer, Finch said at one point. It didn’t matter. Not to Finch and not to the good ladies who ran St. Catherine’s.

No one could see Mr. Hanley.

Not at all. Not at this time. Not at all.

But Margot Kieker was his only living relative.

Mr. Hanley is in a bad way, miss.

But I want to see my great-uncle—

You wouldn’t want to see him the way he is now, miss.

Finch went on and on, reasonable and wheedling and talking wetly through his nose. His little eyes shifted back and forth across the globes of white and watched the faces of Leo and Lydia Neumann.

They were all travelers, all tired by the eight-hundred-mile journey from Chicago.

And somehow, Mrs. Neumann had expected this. She had expected it because she had this very bad feeling about what was really going on in St. Catherine’s.

They entered the house like burglars. As though they did not belong there. Then Mrs. Neumann shook herself out of the gloom. She went from room to room, turning on the lights. She turned on all the lights. The house looked so unlovely because it had been closed for nine days and everything in it was too perfect. She and Leo had lived there for twelve years and it fit them to a T.

Because Mrs. Neumann led the way, lighting the house, she saw him first.

He was not at all changed. She almost smiled. She knew him, had known him; and then the absurdity of it struck her. He had intruded on her house.

“What do you want?”

He said nothing. He sat on a plain wooden chair near the front window. His hands were on his knees, he sat very still. He put his finger to his lips and looked up at the chandelier.

Leo came in then. He didn’t know the man. He reached for a poker at the fireplace and took a step.

“Leo,” Lydia said in annoyance. He paused.

“Put the poker down,” Mrs. Neumann said. “He’s not here to do anyone harm.” She looked carefully at Devereaux. “Are you here to harm anyone?”

Devereaux shook his head no. It was like a game. They were real; Devereaux was the ghost. The spook who sat by the door. Devereaux got up then and walked to the telephone on the side table and pointed to it. Mrs. Neumann watched him. Devereaux looked at her. She nodded. She understood. The other two merely gaped. It was like a game suddenly going on between two people in a crowded room that involved no one else.

Leo Neumann put down the poker into the holder next to the brick fireplace. Margot Kieker stood at the door, uncertain about what to do with her hands. She stared and would have been surprised at how young she looked. There was a natural grace to her, beneath the clumsy artifice, and it was clear in that moment.

Mrs. Neumann pointed to a door. They crossed the room. The door led to the paneled basement. Devereaux smiled to her and she flicked on the light at the top of the stairs. They went down to the basement, the two of them.

Basements are secure, packed with earth and surrounded by a moat of concrete. Even the sophisticated listening devices trained on houses are not made to work efficiently on basements.

There was a telephone in the basement room and Devereaux unplugged it from the wall. And then Mrs. Neumann spoke to him:

“Do you know what has happened to Hanley?”

“Yes,” Devereaux said. “Part of it.”

“He called you, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“His telephone was tapped. He told us that. He implied all our telephones might be tapped—”

“They probably are,” Devereaux said.

“You get accustomed to this, in the field. I am not accustomed to this. I understand secrets; I do not understand spying. Not on your own people. Not on Hanley.”

Lydia Neumann went to the stairs and called up. “Go on, Leo. Get the cases out of the trunk, show Margot the spare room, will you? And get her towels?”

Leo said, “You just said—”

“Please, Leo,” Lydia Neumann said.

They even ate in the basement, for the sake of their visitor.

Devereaux and Lydia Neumann sat at a cardtable at the south end of the basement, in the direction of the highway. There was a reason for that as well.

All was secure. The room was paneled and dominated by a large felt-green pool table with carved legs. It had been a gift from her to her husband six Christmases ago. He had expressed a vague interest in the game, which he had played in his youth. Now they used it to store things on.

Lydia Neumann thought about security: Devereaux was an agent in the field, retired, and Yackley said he had killed two chasers in Lausanne. Lydia Neumann had thought about that for a long time, as she prepared a dinner of sandwiches and coleslaw and beer in the kitchen. They ate in silence—for a while. Margot Kieker came out of herself enough to talk about her mother and what life had been like in the Nebraska of her growing up, so different from Hanley’s Nebraska.

Devereaux had watched her during the meal.

There is a way a man can watch a woman which does not frighten her. It is a watching that implies interest, even attraction, but it is not dominating. It implies that the man is watching out of some respect, some physical attraction, and he is attentive to the words of the other.

Devereaux had the trick of watching like that. It can be acquired and practiced, like all tricks.