The November Man

by Bill Granger

  Yackley sat down in one of two side chairs pulled up to Perry Weinstein’s desk.

  “We have a problem,” he began in that way of his that indicated a long recitation of the facts. Yackley was a careful man who carefully screened his own words before uttering them.

  “I know. How is Hanley?”

  “It’s too early. He’s still being tested—”

  “It’s a shame. The best sort of bureaucrat—no strong partisan stance, devotion to duty beyond and above. I think I met him the first time when I moved in. Two years ago. A strong 201 file—”

  “You read his 201?” Yackley seemed amazed. It was such a pedestrian thing to do. There must have been 150 bureaucrats at Hanley’s level in the intelligence establishment, counting all the agencies.

  Weinstein nodded. There was no color in his face. His eyes were light blue. Everything about him spoke of innocence, of straightforwardness. Naturally, everyone was suspicious of that.

  “I’ve read everyone’s,” Weinstein admitted with a smile and a blush. “Two years. It doesn’t seem that long. I’m still not moved in.”

  Yackley said nothing to that.

  “Well, what’s it about?”

  “You saw the transcripts I sent over. When Hanley tried to make contact with this former agent—”

  “Sleeper named November,” said Weinstein. Perfect memory. Mind like a steel trap. Never misses a trick. Every cliché in the large book kept in Washington applied to Weinstein. And Yackley, a master of clichés, was just the man to apply them.

  “November’s come awake again,” said Yackley. He spoke the words with care and precision. He said, “There were two incidents in two days. We sent two agents—contractors—to make contact with Devereaux, to see what his game was. I indicated in my memo that I was disturbed about Hanley. Lest there was a breach of security. I’m afraid we have troubles—”

  Weinstein waited. There was no judgment on his face. He might have been waiting for a bus.

  “Devereaux apparently killed both men. On a mountain road outside of Lausanne. The details are incomplete and we have a stationmaster from Zurich down there—”

  “It would seem better to have sent someone from Geneva or even France. I suppose a German speaker will seem odd in Lausanne.”

  Perry Weinstein said this softly and quickly, also without judgment. But Yackley blushed. “He was the easiest man—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Weinstein said. His voice said that it did.

  “Then there were two more men killed. This time in Devereaux’s apartment in Lausanne.”

  “And who were they?”

  “We don’t have the faintest idea. Except that it’s obvious that Devereaux is on some sort of rampage. I mean, we sent two agents to make inquiries—and they’re killed and—”

  “How killed?”

  “He arranged an auto accident. I don’t have details. He was in a car on a road, apparently the car driven by our two chasers was—”

  “This seems botched, doesn’t it, Frank?”

  Yackley felt acute embarrassment. There was silence. Weinstein stood behind his desk, his hand fiddling with some papers. The desk was littered with papers, some of them secret. Behind Yackley was the window that opened to a view of the White House. The White House occupied a bucolic space in the middle of crowded Washington with its littered streets full of hurrying office workers and the shuddering roars of planes bombarding the suburbs from National Airport. Life and noise and layers of society pretending other layers did not exist—and in the middle of it all, the quaint White House with the porticos and plain windows and the gentle lawn where the children gathered to roll Easter eggs with the President. Only the ugly concrete bunkers at the edges of the lawns reminded you of the absurd importance of it all.

  “Yes. I was concerned from the beginning, I was in a hurry to see if there had been a breach. I think there has been—”

  “How? Your tapes don’t show anything.”

  “Hanley had other ways to reach Devereaux—”

  “Why Devereaux? I mean, what is the importance of this agent except that he doesn’t exist anymore?” Weinstein softened all the hard words. You might have missed them if you weren’t listening closely.

  “He killed two men. Chasers from Section.”

  “Oh, yes, the chasers,” Weinstein said. “What was it the chasers were going to do when they contacted Devereaux?”

  Yackley winced. “I didn’t send them. Hanley—”

  Weinstein ignored that. “Wasn’t this a bit drastic? Why not send down your stationmaster from Zurich?”

  “Hanley must have ordered the chasers. Before he… went away. It was done without my knowledge. But they existed, they were sent from Section. Hanley must have—”

  Weinstein seemed to consider this, fixing his pale eyes on a spot somewhere above Yackley’s head. “Hanley,” he said. “Hanley is very ill, I think you said?”

  Yackley cleared his throat. “He is being tested,” he said. “It’s not possible to discuss the thing with him now… At least I don’t know if we…”

  Weinstein’s eyes focused full on Yackley’s face then. “I see,” he said.

  Yackley seemed confused and reached for a metaphor to help him: “I would have preferred to let sleeping agents lie; I wouldn’t want to disturb the fabric.”

  The mixed metaphor amused Weinstein. He let the trace of a smile float across his pale, soft features. He pushed the horn-rimmed glasses up his long nose until they reached the bridge.

  “Well, what about Devereaux? Where is he? After his murderous rampage?”

  Yackley looked up sharply. Was Weinstein mocking him?

  He wanted to use just the right words. He thought he found them: “We don’t know.”

  “I see.”

  Struggled on: “As far as I can tell, from signal section, the Swiss are puzzled as well. And they’ve got a lot more men looking for him.”

  “Devereaux makes trouble, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Disturbed,” Weinstein said.

  “Crazy,” Yackley said.

  “Outside the rules.”

  “Not a team player.”

  Weinstein blinked. “This isn’t polo, Frank.”

  “I meant—”

  “Hanley tells him about Nutcracker. What about Nutcracker, Frank? You said it was important. What is in that old man’s mind?”

  “We’re trying to find out—”

  “And why did he say to Devereaux ‘There are no spies’? Tell me that, Frank.”

  “I… I.” But there were things Frank Yackley did not know. Or did not seem to know.

  “Code? Was he making a joke out of it? Like the graffiti in your washrooms over at D.A.?”

  Yackley was amazed that Weinstein knew about the oars on the walls. He had had the walls scrubbed clean in two days. Weinstein really was on top of things.

  “I wish you had come to me earlier,” Weinstein said. “Before all this mess with Hanley. When you first had suspicions about Hanley.”

  That was a warning, Yackley thought. “I don’t see what else I could have done. It was so unusual. Nutcracker was such a strange idea.”

  “No one denies that,” Weinstein said. He turned from Yackley to the window and clasped his hands behind his back. The White House below was bright under a bright March sky. Washington was warm with the approach of spring. The coming season seemed to move visibly from day to day. The blossoms would be blooming soon on the Japanese cherry trees that surrounded the tidal basin south of the White House.

  “Why has Devereaux gone crazy?” Perry Weinstein said in a soft voice, still facing the window.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hanley. And Devereaux.”

  “Hanley isn’t crazy. I think he’s been under a strain, I think—”

  “You think security may have been breached—”

  “I think it is my duty—”

  “Yes, of course.” Perry Weinstein turned aro
und and faced Yackley, who fidgeted in the small side chair. “So what do we do about our long-sleeping agent?”

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  “You want a sanction, is that it?”

  “I… I don’t know. I really don’t know,” Yackley said, dancing away from the word.

  “There is no sanction,” Weinstein said. “The term does not exist. It cannot be authorized. It isn’t in law or in case studies. It is illegal to sanction anyone, let alone a former employee of the government. It is impossible to authorize a sanction.” The words were delivered without tone, softly, as though a child in first grade, without understanding, were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

  Yackley waited.

  “What do you suppose he will do?”

  “Go to the Opposition,” Yackley said. “He has committed himself. He killed our chasers.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I think so. It is my best guesstimate,” Yackley said. “I have asked Mrs. Neumann for the full file, 201 and appendages. Here it is.” He handed the file in the folder to Weinstein but Weinstein did not take it. “Put it on the desk,” Weinstein said, staring at Yackley with curious eyes.

  Yackley let the file drop onto the papers already littering the desk.

  “You want a judgment.” Weinstein did not say it as a question.

  “Yes.”

  “All right.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “I understand.”

  “It’s important… that—”

  “That it be handled inside the Section, you mean? Not by NSA? Not by CIA?” Weinstein’s voice, for the first time, took a tone that might be considered mocking. “Yes, I figured out why you wanted to see me. The buck stops here. It was the only true thing Harry Truman ever said. And then I doubt he said it in the first place.” Perry Weinstein smiled. He took Yackley’s hand though it had not been extended. “I’ll get back to you by morning,” he said. His eyes were cloudy now.

  11

  HANLEY’S GAME

  It was March 11. Hanley had been held for a week and a half. He had learned to adjust to life at St. Catherine’s.

  Sister Mary Domitilla thought his progress was absolutely wonderful. She began to include Mr. Hanley in her prayers and in her sacrifices, including the sacrifice that involved the pain of cutting her nails severely almost every night. Her fingers were always raw and she refused to put salve on them.

  Spring was not ready to come to the valley. There had been snow the previous morning and the valley was enveloped in whiteness from the streets of the old town all the way up the hill to the St. Catherine’s grounds. The four-wheel-drive vehicles marched through the hilly streets and people with ordinary cars did the best they could. They were all accustomed to hills and slick streets and the sense of isolation in endless winter.

  Hanley was given clothing as a gift for good behavior on his sixth day. The clothing consisted of blue denims and a blue shirt marked with his name above the left pocket. He looked like a prisoner.

  They ate in their own ward at night but there was a time, between three and five, when they went to the enclosure between the two fences for exercise. They could run along the enclosure or they could just stand around and breathe the clear, damp air of the valley. Hanley chose to run. Dr. Goddard said he was pleased because his response to the situation was “appropriate.”

  The truth was, Goddard was puzzled.

  The dose of HL-4 prescribed for Hanley from the first day was enough to render him harmless, perfectly docile, drowsy and enfeebled. Hanley was certainly more compliant than he had been—but why should he show such extraordinary energy in the afternoons in the yard between the electrified fence and the inner fence?

  The electricity was never shut off for these afternoon excursions but the killing voltage was turned down. Now and again, one of the patients would make a bolt for the fence and touch it and be knocked down by the force of the electrical charge.

  Hanley had been given a battery of examinations that showed he was in reasonable health for a man of his age. Dr. Goddard, in his second interview, said the absence of any physical cause of Hanley’s illness proved Dr. Goddard’s thesis that Hanley suffered from depression. The depression was induced by a chemical imbalance, Dr. Goddard said, as well as a “cross-wired burnout” in the brain.

  Hanley had blinked at that.

  “The brain is like a computer,” Goddard said. “The information it can process is controlled by the raw data fed to it. But computers can go haywire. That’s why computer owners have service contracts. That’s why you have government health insurance—it’s your service contract, in a sense.”

  Hanley was given pills twice a day, at the morning and evening meals. He and the other patients stood in line at the nurse’s station outside the mess hall and docilely received the pills prescribed by Dr. Goddard. These were issued by the nurse on duty. In the morning, it was Sister Duncan, a simple soul of pressed habit and acne-infested features who could not be more than twenty, Hanley thought. In the evening, it was Nurse Cox, a formidable beast in a nurse’s white pants suit. The difference in their techniques helped Hanley’s game.

  Both issued the pill and waited for the patient to swallow it.

  There was a technique of slipping the pill under one’s tongue and throwing the paper cup of water back on the tongue and making a swallowing noise. The nurse then was to examine the mouth, to see that the pill had been actually swallowed. The patient opened wide and made an “ah” sound and then lifted his tongue, first on one side and then the other, to show that the pill was not being concealed.

  Fortunately, Sister Duncan hated to look into people’s mouths. She was still a nurse in training and she thought there might be matters of human anatomy she might be able to avoid in the future: Men’s sex organs, blood, and bedpans.

  Hanley could not fool Nurse Cox. He didn’t even try.

  And so, during the days, his strength increased and the nausea and sense of profound depression only returned at night, when the evening pill took effect. He slept badly because of the pill; he would awake at three in the morning, sweating, shivering, wondering where he was.

  He knew he would never ask Dr. Goddard about the pills he was forced to take. Dr. Goddard did not invite questions because he had all the answers. Dr. Goddard, Hanley thought, knew exactly what the pills were doing, to Hanley and to the other patients.

  They were a sad lot.

  Kaplan had been the third-ranking officer inside the Internal Revenue Service until it was revealed he was the self-ordained founder of the Church of Tax Rebellion, a nonprofit enterprise in Falls Church, Virginia. Kaplan had not paid income tax for fifteen years—and somehow this fact had escaped the computers which constantly cross-checked the tax forms for those in IRS to make certain the collectors were collecting from themselves as well. Poor Kaplan: If it had been a simple matter of fraud, it would not have been so bad. But his scheme was perfectly legal, according to at least six experts in the department. There was the matter of freedom of religion, even for IRS employees. It was important to cure Kaplan of his delusion that the Lord had not meant that one should render to Caesar anything more substantial than a Bronx cheer.

  Kaplan, Hanley thought, was crazy. And then he learned that Kaplan had been in the place for two years. He had disintegrated in mind and body in that time. He scarcely weighed more than a hundred pounds. He spent his days reciting scriptural verses and summarized rulings from Tax Court.

  Hanley thought he would not last as long as Kaplan.

  There were no women, save the nuns and Nurse Cox, in Ward Seven. Hanley had inquired about that and been told that women were treated at St. Trinian’s in Ohio.

  There’s a network of these places, Hanley thought with horror then. And he had been unaware of them.

  It was the second Sunday of his incarceration. The model patients from Ward Seven were taken to the chapel for the “Patients’ Mass” at nine in the morning. The
chapel was segregated at this mass and no outsiders were allowed. There were no services of other denominations. Kaplan conducted his own services in his room inside Ward Seven but he had only three converts who joined him for the ceremonies involved. He tore up symbolic 1040 forms (actually, since he was not permitted forms, sheets of writing paper with “1040” inscribed on them) and distributed them to the members. They ate them.

  On Saturdays and Sundays, Sister Duncan handled the administration of the morning and evening pills. Hanley, by Sunday morning, began to feel much better. The poison of the pills was having less effect on his body.

  It was cool and damp and the clouds clung low in the valley. At two in the afternoon, the patients—except those locked in their rooms for various infractions of the rules of St. Catherine’s—were permitted visitors.

  Hanley was surprised to see them.

  There were Leo and Lydia Neumann, emerging from a large, dirt-streaked gray Oldsmobile, crossing the gravel path that crunched beneath their feet.

  He felt so grateful that he realized he might weep. He could not weep. It was more than a sign of weakness now; it was a sign of craziness.

  On Sunday afternoon, they were allowed to walk on the grounds beyond the double fence. On Sunday, a special effort was made by staff and patients to show the normality of the surroundings and the institution.

  Hanley led them down the path through a grove of elms. Buds decorated the thin branches of the elms. It would be spring, even if there was snow on the valley floor.

  Leo Neumann was not in government service. He was a mechanical engineer and he cut his wife’s hair, which is why it was short and spiky and looked terrible. Leo Neumann was a man unaware of his faults; everything he did was a matter of love or self-respect. Cutting his wife’s hair every three weeks was love and Lydia Neumann understood that and accepted it. Leo Neumann knew what his wife did and never said a word about it. They couldn’t talk about their jobs in any case: Lydia did not understand engineering and Leo was horrified by computers.

  The gravel path circled back, almost to the double fences, and they did not speak beyond greetings. At the fences, Hanley paused and gazed at the path between the fences where he was confined with the others in Ward Seven on their daily outings during the week.