Bill Granger - The November Man

“Oh, God, dear, we know that,” Ivers almost laughed. “Everyone’s known that. That’s a given. You’re a spy, he’s a spy, everyone’s a spy. So you tell me, dear, tell me if November was part of this scheme with you and… and who else? That’s what we have to know, dear. Who else?”

She sat very still. She was locked in a room, in handcuffs, and she was speaking to a madman. Her head was ringing with pain. She felt isolated and alone and afraid. She could smell the fear in her breath.

“This is the way it is,” Ivers said. “You are a Soviet agent in the United States. You were involved in the seduction of a security guard in California a couple of years ago. That’s felony, dear. You have no diplomatic status. We could lock you up for the rest of your life.”

“No,” she said. “No.” Softer.

“And think of pain, dear,” Ivers said. “I have no aversion to that. I like my work. I do jobs for people and I do them well and I said, ‘You can leave her to me, I can take care of her.’ I saw your photograph. Very nice, all those photographs that Gorki took of you.”

The photographs.

On a spring morning six years ago.

So inventive. Why would she agree to such a thing? Because he was Gorki and there was power in the glittering lizard eyes and the yellow skin was parchment to the touch and, in those moments with him, alone, he controlled her utterly.

And now he had abandoned her.

And thrown her to people like this man.

“Now, let’s try this again,” Ivers said.

The door opened.

Ivers looked up. It was too soon for sandwiches. Didn’t the idiot understand anything?

Denisov said, “Will you take the handcuffs off?” The voice was as mild as a vicar speaking of children and flowers. The eyes swam behind rimless glasses and the right gloved hand held a Walther PPK.

“Who are you? This is government—”

“Shut up, please. Take the handcuffs off.”

Ivers reached for the key.

“Slowly.”

Alexa stared at him. He said to her, in Russian, “Why do you let yourself be trapped by dull people?”

She said nothing.

The wrists were freed and she felt for her face with her right hand. She felt the bruise.

“Who has sent you?” she said in Russian.

“I have come out of gallantry,” he said. The approximate English could not explain the degree of mockery built into what he said in Russian.

“This is a fucking double-cross,” Ivers said in plain English, without any subtlety at all.

“Perhaps,” Denisov said in English. “Alexa, will you put him in the restraints? Behind his back, please?”

“There is no escape,” she said.

“There is always escape. We are in America. There is always another way.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“No. No one does at all. But that is the beginning of understanding, to admit you are ignorant.” And Denisov smiled at his own cleverness.

Ivers learned to talk in a motel room outside of Arlington, Virginia, on a Sunday afternoon. It was amazing, Alexa thought. Denisov appeared so mild and the means were so brutal and direct. Ivers was eager to talk after only a few hours. Alexa thought it was the sense of patience that Denisov brought to the task; also, the sense that it did not pleasure him, any of it. Denisov was so powerful and controlled.

Alexa thought she was falling in love.

Devereaux found Dr. Thompson and Dr. Thompson agreed, after a lengthy explanation, and persuasion of short duration, to talk about part of Hanley’s treatment. He was not so jolly when it was over. Dr. Thompson was left alive because Devereaux could not think of any reason to kill him.

The city of Washington was sunk into the calm of its usual Sunday.

The President had returned from Camp David in the mountains. He had an extraordinary ability to rest completely in a short period of time. He had shouted out answers to the hordes of photographers and newsmen awaiting his arrival by helicopter on the White House lawn. He had waved at them in that characteristic way and shrugged off those questions he did not wish to hear. The helicopter blades kept whirling until the President was inside the White House.

Across the city and into the suburbs, people dozed in front of their television sets, read the remains of the Sunday Washington Post , dined on sandwiches made with leftovers from the big dinner meal, sank into the torpor of the day.

Nothing was happening in the city. Even the police stations were unusually quiet. There was a small mattress fire reported on Eastern Avenue shortly after seven but no one was hurt and it was quickly doused. Washington was calm; therefore, the world was sleeping.

Hanley spoke rationally at nine P.M. He recognized Devereaux. He was able to understand the questions.

Quarles had said this might happen. Hanley was weak but the passages of clarity were frequent. The doctor had summoned Devereaux from downstairs.

Dr. Quarles, unchanged in appearance from the afternoon, sat at the foot of the bed in the spare room at the top of the narrow house. He said, “The body is free of drugs but there’s been abuse. Definitely. They gave him tranquilizers in the last week but there’s nothing active now.”

Hanley said, “They gave me electroshock treatments.” He remembered it so well. His voice was weak but the train of thought was clear.

He had been fed twice. The portions were small but the soup was very rich. The liquid had warmed him. He felt vague and weak, as one does at the end of an illness that fevers the brain.

“They were killing you.”

“Yes,” Hanley said. “I didn’t expect that. Not that part of it. I thought they just wanted to get me out of the way. I really didn’t think this was going to come to murder.” The thought of murder—his own murder at the hands of others—was compelling to him.

Quarles stood up. “Time now for shop talk, is it? The evil you do is never worth the good it brings.”

Devereaux said nothing.

Hanley watched Devereaux’s face.

Quarles wanted some reaction and there was none. “Goddamnit. There should be rules.”

“But there aren’t. There never were,” Devereaux said. It was the first time he had responded to the doctor’s rages and sermons.

Quarles stared at him with the face of Moses for a moment. And then he opened the door, stepped out, and closed it. They heard his heavy tread on the stairs.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be rational,” Hanley said. Very soft. “I think they’ve done some damage to my mind. I was quite rational in the last week. I was dying and weak and I was trying to think of a way to get out of that place. Or at least, tell someone.”

“Why didn’t you tell Mrs. Neumann when she came?”

“I wanted to. You see, the drugs, they had this effect on me. They must have drugged me all along.”

“You were given medication by Dr. Thompson. When you were still functioning in Section,” Devereaux said. And he told him everything Thompson had finally told him.

“So that explained…” Hanley trailed off. “I was trying to figure it out. And I thought about you and decided you must have been part of it, part of the trade. Or maybe, because I was drugged, I thought of you.”

“You were reading Somerset Maugham. You were reading Ashenden . All set in Lausanne and Ouchy and across Lake Geneva.”

Hanley blinked. “Yes. That’s it.”

“It was a mistake about me. I wasn’t supposed to be awakened. They tapped your phone and they made a mistake.”

“There’s a mole. In Section,” Hanley said.

“Yes.”

“You understand that?”

“Yes.”

“I felt it for the last nine months. It’s been terrible. It could have been anyone. It could have been Mrs. Neumann. My God, even her. I suspected her. I thought the day she called up, she called me at home, I thought she was setting me up. I suspected everyone. I was paranoid. We lost two agents—two damned good men and their whole networks—in three months last fall. They defected. Can you believe that? The networks were blown up. All that work wasted. All those lives… They defected to the goddamn Soviet Union.” Hanley tried to sit up. He was exercised and his face flushed.