Bill Granger - The November Man

“But that’s not right,” she said. “I mean, I’m not being naïve. But what’s the point of doing things wrong for all the right reasons?”

Because that is the way things are done, Devereaux thought. Because there is no morality in this, any of this; that morality is something for afterward, the sermons and soda water that follow the frenzy of the game. The politicians who preach about the amoral code of the intelligence establishment don’t believe in what they say but like to hear themselves say it. The morality comes at the end of the game; when it is won.

No, not won.

Merely not lost.

Devereaux drove and said none of these things. The fog pressed against the car and intensified the silence.

“Why would he leave everything he had to me?”

“Because you were all he had.”

“That’s really pitiful, isn’t it? Someone he doesn’t even know? All he had.”

And Devereaux thought of Rita Macklin. There was a conversation they were going to have to have. They both knew the form of the conversation but they never let it play out to the end because the end might really be too bad. What would Rita Macklin think of the morality in this? About rooting out a mole inside R Section for the love of government and country?

She would see through that.

When they had the conversation, they would have to be honest at least. He could never fool her anymore; that’s what made it so good to be with her. Pretense was down and the careful agent could be careless. It was just that good between them.

He rehearsed in his mind: I had to do this. To save myself, to find out what had happened—

And she would say: What will you do now? It’s not enough to go back, is it? You’re going to have to stay inside, aren’t you? Everything we arranged—it’s not enough.

And he would say:

What?

What exactly would he say?

The silences in the car lasted the rest of the morning.

Finch looked at the priest. He saw the nuns on the steps already.

“Look, Father, this is a restricted area here, we are talking about the government—”

“I am a priest. I understand you have a dying man here, and his niece has called me.”

“We don’t have a religious preference on his card and—”

“He’s a Catholic,” Margot Kieker said. “Sister, Sister!” She shouted to the fat nun who waddled over. She saw the nun had cuts on the ends of her fingers and she wondered why.

Finch thought: Terrific.

“Sister, my uncle is dying and I want him to have the last rites. Extreme unction. Father Peterson was his priest, his friend, I had to ask him—”

“I hadn’t seen Mr. Hanley for months, I thought he was out of the country, if only I had known—” Devereaux dithered. He stared hard at Finch and thought about how much Finch knew about anything going on around here.

They were at the main house and the morning fog was still thick and white around them. They might have been ghosts in a Scandinavian film.

Sister Domitilla looked confused. She looked at Finch—a man lately attached to the establishment by the government—and then at Sister Gabriella. “I don’t want… I don’t want to be responsible for denying the last rites to Mr. Hanley.” She bit her lip. “Why can’t they see him, Mr. Finch?”

“There are orders—”

“There is God’s order, which is greater,” Sister Domitilla blurted, surprised by her eloquence. She had felt very badly about Mr. Hanley. He had deteriorated so quickly, especially in the last week after Dr. Goddard began the electroshock treatments. The treatments were designed to help “resettle” the random electrical patterns in the brain. Hanley was sliding now; he would be dead in a matter of days.

“Look, I don’t take orders from anyone but Mr. Ivers—”

Devereaux looked up at mention of the name. Who the hell was Ivers? It was the same name Sellers had mentioned.

“Mr. Finch,” Devereaux said. “I am a priest. I want to help my old friend in his last moments—if these are his last moments. You can come with me. I am a man of secrets, as you are, as poor Hanley was.” He paused, looking at Margot. “This poor creature is worried about her family. I am worried about my friend. But God is worried about his soul.”

Devereaux’s eyes were mild and he nodded solemnly to Sister Domitilla, who looked as though she might fall on her knees in prayer at any moment. Instead, she did something else.

“Come with me, Father, child,” she said. “And don’t interfere with me, Mr. Finch. This is St. Catherine’s and I am in charge here and not you. You take care of security and Dr. Goddard will take care of the medical ills but I will take care of souls. Even the least of these, the most demented, is a creature of God.”

“Let me see what’s in the bag—”

It was all right, Devereaux thought, as Finch sniffed at the vials and replaced the tops, as he felt in the purple confessional stole for a hidden pocket. It was going to be all right.

Hanley had awakened after dawn and the room was vague in the watery morning light and he thought he might be dead at last. And then he had managed to focus well enough to see the crucifix on the opposite wall, above the place where Kaplan had died.

He felt unusually clear. He had felt this way for days. Ever since the beginning of the electroshock treatment. He was quite certain that he had been in this room all his life. He was now six or seven years old. Kaplan had been an old man. For some reason, he was supposed to die very soon, though he was quite young. His mother was due to visit him any day now. He was in Christ Community Hospital in Omaha and they were going to remove his appendix in a little while. They explained to him that it would hurt afterward but it would hurt much less than the hurt he suffered now. He had tried to explain yesterday—to Dr. Goddard—that he was feeling no pain at all. But Dr. Goddard only smiled at him.

He smiled when the door opened.

It was his sister, Mildred.

“Hello, Mildred,” he said.

His sister seemed strange. As though she had something to say and didn’t know how to say it. That was Mildred. The quiet one. And what was wrong with her eyes?

“Mildred? Is there something wrong with your eyes?”

“What?”

“It looks like someone has given you a black eye,” Hanley said.

“He thinks you’re his sister,” said a nun.

Of course this was his sister. Who did she think it was? He was six years old and he was having an operation tomorrow.

“Hello, old friend,” said a man.

He stared at the man over him.

He blinked and could swear he knew that man. He saw that man and part of him knew him. The man was a reverend.

“Reverend Van der Rohe,” said Hanley. “You came all the way to Omaha for me? Am I going to die?”

“No. You’re not going to die, old friend.”

“I was good. I missed Sunday school that one time but I was really sick, I wasn’t just playing hooky.”

“Go ahead with it,” said another man. He was at the back of the room. “The guy’s crackers.”

“Mr. Finch,” said the nun.

He had not seen a nun until he was twelve. He was certain of that. So how old was he? He couldn’t be seeing nuns now. He was only five or six. No, at the time of the operation, he was seven. A terrible pain in his belly, they had been at the state fair, which is how he came to be in Christ Community Hospital. He didn’t know anyone. They were so kind.

Hanley blinked.

“Mill? Are you there?”

“It’s me, it’s Margot.”

“I don’t know Margot,” Hanley said. He thought of a name on something. What? A form of some sort? Margot Kieker. But this person was Mill. Mildred Hanley. She would marry Frank Knudsen and have a daughter named Melissa and up and die. Cancer. So young. It broke your heart. And then Melissa died. And then there was Margot. Now, was this Margot?