Bill Granger - The November Man

She was intelligent; but she was too visible. She was very beautiful and she was noticed wherever she went. Her Moscow accent was slight when she spoke English; her Moscow manners might have made many people mistake her for a New Yorker or a Parisian. She had the right mixture of rudeness and grace.

But it was no good having your informant fall in love with you or having your network of agents desire you sexually. Or have the watchers from the other side find it too agreeable to watch you. And suspect you, even as they fell in love with you. Besides, she could never change her eyes.

She stared at the man with graying hair who sat at the wide window, gazing into the gloomy night of the Baltic Sea. Alexa was the death-giver. It was not so bad, it was over so quickly, it was part of a large game. She never felt bad afterward. In fact, she had felt bad just once, when her victim had lived.

Two years ago. She was sent up through the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, which was the usual route of spies working on the West Coast of the United States. In that area south of San Francisco called Silicon Valley—where they made computers and invented wonderful things—she had seduced a somewhat shy, certainly amoral security guard who was twenty-four years old and made $7.23 an hour guarding the great secrets of M-Guide Computer Laboratories in Palo Alto.

His name was Tony. Poor Tony. He was now in the very harsh maximum security prison at Marion in southern Illinois. He was kept in a narrow cell most of the time and his only recreation was reading and working with weights. She felt bad afterward not because she had loved Tony at all—that had been business—but because she thought of herself caught in a cell for the rest of her life. She pitied herself. It would have been a merciful thing to kill Tony. She had considered it, the night he put his face between her legs and she had the Walther PPK under the pillow and she thought about it because Tony was very close to being caught. But he had pleased her and she had been merciful. Too bad for Tony.

Better to die like the man at the window in the bar. She studied his face, his lean chin, his glittering eyes. Dead man, she thought.

The Finlandia slid down the open sea passage between the islands that are flung out in a stream east from Stockholm, almost to the coast of Finland. In the bright moon of the starry night, here and there, above the snow, poked roofs or sticks of summer homes on the islands. The islands were the perpetual retreats of middle-class Swedes in summer; the islands, some no more than an acre or two in size, promised summer even now at the end of the long Scandinavian winter.

The Finlandia was a huge ship, the largest car ferry in the world. She might have been an ocean liner but was trapped in the dull passage every day between Stockholm and Helsinki. She always passed at night because the trip took exactly thirteen hours. It was midnight and the ship was halfway to the lights of Helsinki.

The man at the table was Colonel Ready. He had been chased for 400 days. He had killed three “contractors” sent by KGB. He had disappeared in Copenhagen five months ago and despite the large network of Soviet agents working in that city he had not been found.

Until he surfaced four weeks ago. With messages to the Soviet courier. He wanted to sell secrets; he wanted to sell himself. After all, the KGB knew he was an agent of R Section called November. He had many secrets.

The bartender was in love with her. He was a large blond Swede and he spoke good English. He thought his good looks impressed her. When she treated him with reserve, even coldly, he adored her. Her eyes always lied; her eyes always told of passion and unbelievable lust. The coldness of her manner only framed the passion promised in her eyes.

“Please, another drink for you?” he said, not sure of himself, fawning. He was too large and handsome to fawn.

“Perhaps,” Alexa said, as though deciding. “Yes, I think,” she said, deciding, giving him one small smile as a reward. “Glenfiddich.” She had her preferences: single-malt Scotch whisky, and the Walther PPK, a very small automatic with a deadly accurate field of fire at short range. She worked in very close because she was not afraid of killing or feeling any passion at the act of giving death.

It was just as well that Alexa was so good in the matter of wet contracts.

She had been contracted to November four days ago. There had been confusion for a long time inside KGB over who November was. He was supposed to be the man who kidnapped KGB agent Dmitri Denisov six years ago in Florida; who had wrecked the IRA plan to kill Lord Slough in his boat off the Irish coast; who had caused enough troubles and embarrassment—all outside the rules of the trade understood by both sides—that Gorki had “contracted” him. He had to be killed. Which is why he wanted to come to the Moscow side. Gorki said it was too late. Gorki said November—who was this man, Colonel Ready—had to be killed because he could not be trusted.

Alexa thought of Gorki, head of the Resolutions Committee. Her mentor. A gnome with yellow skin and sandpaper hands. He had used her; the only man who had truly used her. When he was finished with her—in the dacha, long ago—she belonged to him. He knew that and never made great demands on her again. She was a painted wooden doll upon his shelf. He had opened her and found the doll within and the doll within the third doll and so on. He had gone to her core. She had shuddered at his touch and needed it. She had danced naked for him.

Gorki was not his name. Alexa was not her name. They were named by computers and codebooks. They were puppets, all of them. But some puppets danced naked for the others.

Alexa had been at Moscow University when KGB approached her. She had been afraid at first and then curious. What if she ended up in the translation pool that worked in one of the buildings adjacent to KGB headquarters in Dhzerzhinski Square? She knew what the pool was. She would be plucked from the pool as though she were a piece of fruit, by some KGB major to serve as his mistress, to feed his ego and maleness, to be discreet so that when he had to escort his plain, quite fat official wife she would understand and say nothing. She would be taken to Paris by him but not to the Black Sea because the Black Sea was for the family. She didn’t want that to happen to her, not at all. And it had not happened. She had been placed inside the Resolutions Committee and her superior, who was not permitted to make love to her, an obnoxious man named Mikhail, had said of her: “Women cannot kill, except in fury.”

She had proven him wrong in a brilliant bit of business in Finland. She had attracted the attention of Gorki.

She thought of Gorki now and shivered as she drank the Scotch. The Scotch flooded her with warmth. Her loins were warmed. Gorki commanded her.

And she was very good at what she did.

Which is why he had full confidence in her to wet contract the annoying American agent called November.

November had limped and left a trail until he disappeared in Copenhagen. Then he made contact with the Soviet courier chief in Copenhagen. His code name was Stern. He played November along until he got instructions. They came from Gorki. The wet contract was still in force, Gorki said. Tell November we will negotiate with him—but in neutral Finland. Give him money to get to Finland. Tell him the running is over. And I will send Alexa to intercept him and to kill him once and for all.

November had no choice but to believe them.

Alexa had flown to Stockholm for the intercept at eight in the morning. She had spent the day in the splendor of the Birger Jarl, which was a warm hotel. In the afternoon, she took a walking tour through the narrow old streets of the Gamla Stan, the island of Stockholm that contains the oldest parts of the city. She had never been in Stockholm and found it charming. She bought a pair of leather boots at a shop in the Old Town. The clerk had very dark hair and an innocent face. He knelt before her to put the boots on her legs. She had felt the warmth build in her then and nearly considered it. But there was business to take care of. She had no doubt the clerk would have obeyed.