Bill Granger - The November Man

“And we know it,” Lydia Neumann said in her barking whisper. “We know everything.”

“Only God knows everything,” said Claymore Richfield in his vague and scientific way, as though he might be on intimate terms with the Almighty. “We guess we know.”

“We know who they are. They know who we are. We trade our agents from time to time. A long time ago, we had a field agent, he said there was so little worth knowing and so many people bent on finding it that it mixed us up. We had too much information.”

She thought of an agent called November, long buried now in dead files.

“I’m not going to let the Langley Firm or the Sisters make us dance to their tune. I am not going to be embarrassed by discovering the first Section agent who has gone over to the Opposition,” Yackley said. He was using the voice he used on Capitol Hill during the budget hearings in the clubby privacy of the ornate Senate Conference Room.

“So this is about politics, not about Hanley’s mental health—”

“It is about reality.”

“Hanley didn’t give up his human rights when he joined the Section. And I add he joined it a long time ago, before any of us.”

“This is not a matter of depriving him of his rights,” Yackley said. With patience. “It is a matter of helping him. Of restoring him. Of finding the best way to treat him.”

“But he’s committed no crime—”

“Indiscretions—”

“But how can you order an evaluation, a psychiatric evaluation—”

“—done all the time—”

“But he’s not crazy—”

“—we’re not talking about crazy. The word is meaningless. People aren’t crazy, people have psychological problems they have to become aware of to solve—”

“—Hanley has the right—”

“That’s it, Mrs. Neumann.” Yackley never spoke in a loud voice. The room was jarred to silence. Yackley’s face was as round as that of a wizard; he thundered and spoke fire:

“It is done. It is going to be done. Hanley is a security risk until further notice. He is a problem. We are going to resolve our own problems. Until I make a further decision, I will take over active directorship of operations, pending selection of a successor. To Hanley. The rest of you remain at your posts, carry on as before. We are all going to have to bend to the oars to make this work. The loss of Hanley diminishes us.”

Franz Douglas said, “We understand, sir.”

Claymore Richfield mumbled assent. Richfield was working on an equation that might be able to link CompAn with Translations, eliminating an entire division inside the Section. It was fantastic, and it was being worked out right now on a sheet of paper during a long and tedious meeting in the office of the director. Richfield never looked up, even when the others filed out of the room in silence. Yackley left him alone because it was obvious that Richfield was lost in thought, on another plane. Not of this world, as poor old Hanley had said once.

She was not allowed back into the Soviet Union. The message had been left for her at the dock by a seaman in a dark-blue pea coat and stocking cap and full blue-black beard. The message puzzled her. There was a dead man on the Finlandia who would be found in time. Alexa had wanted to be back in Moscow in time for dinner.

She took a taxi to the Presidentti Hotel in the center of Helsinki, near the bus depot and down the street from the red granite walls of the imposing Central Railroad Station. There was a train every day from Helsinki to Leningrad. The journey took eight hours because of the procedures at the border crossing. It was the route that Lenin had taken in 1917 to return to the Soviet Union and lead the Revolution.

Alexa waited in the lobby for a long time. She amused herself by playing the slot machines and watching the herds of Japanese tourists check in after their numbing flight over the polar cap from Tokyo. They all appeared to be dressed in thin clothes with cameras and a need to bunch together, chattering like birds.

She drank Scotch at the bar. It was very expensive. After a while, an American began to talk to her but he was rather old and portly and she pretended to be French, It worked because she knew Americans never spoke foreign languages.

At noon, the contact arrived. He was a man called Alexei. She had worked with him once before and he had presumed too much based on the similarities of their code names.

He was a large, bluff man and carried the accents of Georgia. Like all Georgians, he was rather brutal, loud and crude, and Alexa worked around him carefully until she was in a position to explain her independence from him and his goodwill. He had been reprimanded, that last time, by Gorki himself.

They sat in the inner lobby of the hotel. It was a place of dark woods and square architecture and large spaces.

He had to have a drink. He sipped the chilled Stolichnaya like a thirsty man.

Alexa watched him drink with her deep, dark, glittering eyes and noted it. That would be useful sometime as well. Everything was useful to a careful woman.

“It is too late,” he began.

“Everything went all right,” she said. The responses must be kept at a minimum.

“All wrong,” Alexei said. He had thick eyebrows that bridged his nose and hostile blue-gray eyes and the overwhelming smell of cologne of the sort smuggled into Moscow in attaché cases.

Alexa had never worn perfume. Her body was clean and pure. She drank a little Scotch whisky at times and, at dinner, wine. She ate vegetables. She did not smoke. Her breath was sweet. Her body smelled like fields of flowers and she thought the smell of her body was more beautiful—even to herself—than the appearance of it.

She waited, attentive, her hands on her lap, her legs slightly apart because it was amusing to sit in such a way and no less comfortable to her.

“You have taken care of the wrong man.”

“No,” she said. “I was certain.”

“I have information from the Committee. They could not reach you on the ship. In any case, it doesn’t matter.”

“What doesn’t matter?”

“You killed a man named Ready.” He pronounced the name with a long e sound and spoke it again. “He was not November.”

“I killed November—”

“Like a blue moon,” Alexei said suddenly and she saw that he was smiling. “Gorki is embarrassed.”

“What embarrassment?”

“The wrong man. There were two men called November. One was the shadow of the other. But the man we were to have killed was not the man on the Finlandia . He was another man. Your task, my dear, is not over.”

“I am not at fault—”

“You know how it is,” Alexei said, still smiling. “Everyone must share responsibility.”

“I was sent to fulfill a contract. I fulfilled a contract.”

Her voice was absolutely clear and chill, chips of arctic snow on a tundra at the edge of the world. It was without mercy. It had no anger in it because she could hide anger. Or fear. Or desire. She was very good at what she did.

“Like a blue moon,” said Alexei. “You were in London Station? The English have a saying for this, it is very amusing. It is the second moon that comes in a month. Two full moons in one calendar month. It is called the blue moon and because it is rare, the English—they call this rare thing, ‘once in a blue moon.’ It is rare. But it happens all the time in nature.”

“I don’t know English expressions. I prefer the sayings of my own country. There is no more rich language than Russian.” She was annoyed by the situation. “Besides, why do they call the moon blue? Does it become blue? Of course not. I am Russian; speak Russian.”