Bill Granger - The November Man

“But you don’t have pity for me.”

He thought it was over then. He felt sick because the words were too brittle.

“I would have done anything for you,” Rita said.

She got up. She stared at him as though fixing him in memory.

Her green eyes turned to liquid emeralds. And they were cold as gems. “Anything.”

She turned from him and walked out of the lounge on the lush red carpet. Her steps were quiet and then she was gone, into the lobby.

The sickness overwhelmed him for a moment and then he saw his face again, in the mirror. He stared at the empty eyes.

He got up and dropped money on the bar.

He walked out of the lounge and saw her. She was heading toward the elevator bank. The lobby was bright with people who spoke in loud voices.

She waited for the elevator and he was behind her. She turned. She looked at him. The emerald eyes were still wet and the coldness in them was gone.

“More talk?” she said. “More facing the truth?”

“No more talk.”

“We finished the conversation. I always knew we would have to come to the end of it,” she said.

“No. It’s not over.”

“What’s left?”

“I don’t have arguments. Or words. I tried to show you.”

“What?”

“I love you.” He tried to say it right. The words were magic to him but they were so common to others. Everyone loved everyone else. No one else ever understood that Devereaux had not loved another creature in his life. He had existed on pity until he met Rita Macklin. But not pity for himself; it was the thing that kept him apart from the world. He could pity life and keep the cold thing inside himself to make him apart from everything he did or said.

“Don’t I get to be happy?” she said. “Don’t you?”

“No guarantees.”

“There ought to be rules of behavior. There really ought to be.” And she stroked his face then with one lazy gesture of her hand. Her hand touched his face as though it were no part of her words, her eyes, her thoughts. Her fingers raked gently across his cheek. “But there are no rules, are there?”

“No,” he said.

“Dev.” The hand lingered on his shoulder. The elevator door opened. The cage was empty. The bright lobby full of loud people was around them; they were alone in the middle of her gesture. He felt the weight of her hand on his shoulder and his hand touched her hand then, covering it, holding it. They crossed into the cage and the door closed on them and they were alone. He held her hand.

It was the end of a conversation that had been unfinished for too long.

There was a tail car and a police car and then this thing. A 1973 Rambler.

Dave stared out the window of the rooming house and then rushed to the door and down the stairs. He paused on the first landing. What the hell was this about? If it came down to it, he could deny he owned the thing. But they had his name on the registration and the plates and—

He opened the door and crossed the sidewalk. It was a warm day in May.

The man in the tail car got out while the driver got out of the Rambler. The driver didn’t seem too happy.

“David Mason?”

“What’s this about?”

“Are you David Mason?”

“Yeah.”

“This is your car.”

“Maybe.”

“It is your car.”

“All right, it’s my car.”

“We found it.”

“So, you found it.”

“We’re bringing it back to you.”

“What are you, the tooth fairy?”

“Yeah, I’m the tooth fairy.” He seemed bored. “Look, this is your car and here it is. Also, here’s the bonus.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The bonus for use of the car. Twenty-two cents a mile and forty-two dollars per diem. It comes to four hundred twelve dollars thirty-one cents.” He produced a pen. “Just sign.”

“Sign what?”

“Expense account form.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Government. Got any objections to four hundred twelve dollars thirty-one cents?”

“Not one.”

“Man who rented the car from you.”

Dave caught on. “Yeah. What about him?”

“He works with us. Our… section.”

“Yeah. What do you do?”

“We’re spies,” the man said.

“Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, you’re spies.”

The man held the paper while he signed. He took back his pen and popped it into his shirt pocket. He looked at Dave as though he didn’t like what he saw.

“Boss says I got to ask you.”

“Ask me what?”

“You want a job with us?”

“You’re spies, right?”

“That’s right.”

“James Bond? Cloak and dagger?”

“Yeah. And we all wear trenchcoats.” In fact, he was wearing a trenchcoat, even though it must have been 85 degrees.

“Sure,” Dave said.

“Sure what?”

“Sure, I’ll take a job.”

“Come on, then,” the man said.

And that was that.

By June, Hanley was back, a little thinner but still back. He was examined by three psychologists who said his mind was perfectly sound. Of course, if the Section had wanted to prove the other argument, it had three psychologists ready to testify that Hanley was deranged.

St. Catherine’s federal subsidy was withdrawn because of certain abuses noted in a report filed with the budget office and the General Accounting Office.

Not noted in the report was the fate of Dr. Goddard. Hanley knew the signature. Dr. Goddard had been found with his throat slit. Hanley thought about it—and then put it from his mind. There was work to do. Operations was still… well, operational. Nothing had changed. Yackley was out of course, but quietly. Same with Richfield and the other division directors. The new boss of R Section was quite ruthless in the matter of personnel. Hanley understood that and appreciated it. Who could have appreciated Mrs. Neumann better than Hanley?

Even Quentin Reed, who had escaped any blame in the Weinstein affair, thought it was terrific. As he told the National Security Adviser, “What could be better? A computer whiz to put software on the right track and at the same time score points in the FBM derby?” It meant: Female, black, minority.

The National Security Adviser had trouble with that—with all of Quentin’s jargon—but he understood the gist of it. Mrs. Neumann was the right sex for a change. And she’d ride herd on Operations, too.

The tourists were in Copenhagen. It was summer and the air was filled with their English chatter. They all seemed to speak English.

They came by the trainloads into the quaint dark station in the center of Copenhagen, across from the Tivoli Gardens. They filled the streets and shops. They came in surging gaggles, they filled the sidewalks, they bought everything, and the Danes smiled with good humor at them.

The English language sounded good to the man at the table in the café on Vesterbrogade, west of the train station. The café was not a usual tourist place, but now and then a couple wandered in and spoke loud English and it felt good to hear it. The Carlsberg was very cold and he drank quite a bit of it every afternoon, reading the papers in the way of an exile with a lot of time on his hands. He had been waiting all winter and spring for the time to be spent, to watch the trail, to see who might still be on it.

He spoke Danish fairly well. They knew he was a foreigner of course but they appreciated him all the more for taking the trouble to learn that difficult language.

He read the Herald-Tribune and the Wall Street Journal ’s European edition. He read the Journal de Genève , the French-language paper from Switzerland.