Bill Granger - The November Man

Lydia Neumann would glance at him from time to time and then at Margot and then at Leo, who was enjoying the mystery of it all.

No, there was something wrong with security that put Hanley away, that denies him visitors; something wrong with the way things were going inside Section. She said this to Devereaux. It was a matter of making a judgment about Devereaux.

They sat at the cardtable with the flimsy top and rickety metal legs and she began her story, which began about six months before, when the new budget message came down from the National Security Council. There was to be an increased emphasis in the coming years on electronic intelligence gathering. And a think tank study—coming from one of the vaguely conservative institutions—had concluded that the weakest link in the chain of intelligence security was the case officer.

“Machines don’t lie,” Lydia Neumann rasped. “Machines cannot do anything but tell the truth.”

Devereaux stared at her a moment. “Is that true?”

“No, of course not. ‘Garbage in, garbage out.’ But if they think it’s true, it’s true. Yackley had everyone in and we talked about Section, about how much a field agent costs us. A half million a year in Section. Do you believe that?”

“As much as I believe in thirty-seven-thousand-dollar coffee pots,” Devereaux said.

“The point is, it got to Hanley. I mean, it was his division they were talking about.”

“Operations.”

“The director of spies, chief spook. They were talking about heavy cutbacks over the next five years. Not the kind of bloodbath that Stansfield Turner did at CIA, but the same sort of cutback. He was supposed to start a list and—”

Devereaux started. Just for a moment, he betrayed himself. Lydia Neumann saw it.

A list of names of agents.

“It got to Hanley, as I said,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Poor Hanley.”

“What got to him? You mean, he had a breakdown?”

“Of course. That’s why he was committed to St. Catherine’s. Except it gets worse and worse. I’m afraid. I’m afraid he’s going to die.”

“Yes,” Devereaux said. “I didn’t understand it. I thought it was Hanley. But it wasn’t Hanley at all. That means he’s going to die.”

Mrs. Neumann blinked, stared. Devereaux’s voice had not changed at all; the pronouncement was routine. It was a matter of life and death all along and now the verdict was death.

“What is it?”

“‘There are no spies.’ I remember he said that to me. His line was tapped. He was babbling and I thought he was drunk. Perhaps he was drunk; perhaps he was drugged.”

“Drugged?”

“He complained about the doctor. About medicine. I didn’t quite understand it because I thought he was drunk at the time. Two men came after me in Switzerland. Chasers from Section.”

“Yackley said you killed them.”

Devereaux almost shrugged. His eyes never wavered. “There was an accident on a country road. The point was: They were chasers. I was asleep. Let sleeping agents lie. That’s always a good policy.”

“What is going on?”

“What is Nutcracker?” Devereaux said.

She stared at him.

“Is there an operation? Is there something called Nutcracker?”

“No. I’m not aware—I would be aware of it if it existed in Section.”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Damnit, I would be aware of it—”

“If it existed in Section,” he said. The voice was quiet. The furnace thumped on and the fan began to send surges of warm air through the vents. They felt the chill first and then the waves of warm air. The house was absolutely silent, save for the sounds of the furnace.

“Why did Yackley have Hanley committed?” Devereaux said.

“I don’t know. He said it was on the advice of the houseman. Dr. Thompson. But Thompson is a fool; I mean, he’s not a shrink even. Hanley went home in February. He told everyone he was tired.”

“He was on medication.”

It was not a question.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“He was on medication. It explains what he was saying to me.” He paused, thought of something else. “Who runs Operations now? On a day-to-day?”

“Yackley. I mean, there are the sub-directors. A lot of it is automatic.”

He said nothing. He seemed to be looking beyond her. “They’re killing him,” he said. Then he paused. “Perhaps I should prepare him for his death.” And smiled.

Alexa adjusted her length in the car. The car was large, larger even than a Ziv, but she had been waiting for four hours.

Her muscles ached across her back beneath the silken shirt. She wore very dark slacks stuffed into the tall leather boots she had purchased in Stockholm. The day that she had gone to kill November; it seemed a million days ago.

The night had stars.

She stared at the stars and felt pity for the child from Moscow who had wanted to count the stars and contain heaven.

She felt pity for herself. As she had been, as she was.

She felt pity for her own fear. She was bereft, alone in the West, adrift in a foreign place she would never escape from.

Even after she killed the target tonight.

He was contained in this suburban house that was grander than Gorki’s dacha outside Moscow. The Americans lived like such profligates. Every home was an estate. Yet she saw the people in Washington, in the city, at night: They came with cardboard for warmth and also newspapers and they bedded down under the bridges and in alcoves of doorways, in alleys where there was some warmth. She had contempt for Americans and their ways.

And fear for herself.

The target was at hand and there was nothing more to be done. She had delayed the inevitable too long. She had not wanted to decide her own fate while deciding the life of another. Gorki had abandoned her and done it cruelly. He had not transferred her, not posted her abroad to another assignment, not banished her from Moscow. He had decided she would die. She was sure of it and could not understand the wrath of the man who had been God to her.

She had danced for him.

She had been naked for him.

Not for any favor from him. Because he had so much power in him and she had been attracted to the power in him. It was a palpable thing to her.

Four times in two days—four times in forty-eight hours exactly—she had seen Devereaux. He was the target; the second November that came once in a blue moon. And when she killed him, as she would do tonight, she would have killed herself. Somehow, this was implied in the assignment. There would be no escape or there would be a botched escape; in any case, she would die when November died.

Once every six hours, she contacted the source at a phone with a New York City area code. The voice assured her this last time that the target was in this suburban house in Bethesda, Maryland. The voice was always right. He knew everything, Alexa realized: He really knew.

Which made it so sinister.

This was a script, she thought. This was a play with Alexa as an actress in a role assigned long before to her. It was all made easy for her. Which meant that it was all a trap—a death for November, a death for Alexa.

Gorki had ruled her passions but not her mind. Gorki thought he could pat her hand at a table in a restaurant in Prague and tell her that everything was all right. That she would believe him.

She was not a fool. Not even when she had danced naked on the Afghan rug that night, before the crackling fire, the fire lighting up her loins and her breasts and making her skin a tawny color. Not a fool when she had heard music that was unplayed and danced to it, intoxicated by drugs shared and the wine and all the making of love that had gone before. Danced in bare feet on the Afghan rug and showed him her power to arouse him. But in that mad moment, she had not been a fool. Not that.