The November Man

by Bill Granger

“Who am I seeing?” Hanley said. “Yes, yes. I’m up to seeing him.” He felt a nervous shiver of anticipation.

  “You’ll see soon enough,” said Sister Domitilla. “Come with me.”

  He followed her out of the room. Her dark habit flowed down the hallway, accompanied by the clattering of the large rosary she wore at her belt. She was not as tall as Hanley and she was fat. She spoke in a musical voice in a way that most women have not spoken for years. Her voice had the notes of a toy xylophone.

  Hanley shuffled behind. He wore bedroom slippers most of the time. They seemed more comfortable than shoes. What was the point of shoes? Or wearing trousers? He wore his pajamas and the hospital robe—it was gray and carried the insignia St. Catherine’s above a small cross—and he hadn’t brushed his hair for days. His hair was turning white, what was left of it.

  “In there,” said Sister Domitilla. She stopped by an unmarked door. She nodded to the door. Hanley opened the door.

  He blinked.

  The man who sat on the edge of the table in the small, windowless room was lean and edgy and wore glasses. Hanley felt certain he knew him but he could not place him for a moment. The puzzlement crossed his features and made him frown.

  “Perry Weinstein,” the man said, to jog memory. “You remember me?”

  “Perry Weinstein,” Hanley repeated. “You’re the Assistant National Security Adviser.” There, it clicked into place just like that.

  “Yes,” Perry said. He paused and studied Hanley’s face. “You all right?”

  “Yes. I’m fine.” And Hanley smiled the smile they all expected.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” said Hanley.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” Perry said.

  “Yes. Yes, let’s talk.”

  “Could we go outside? Take a walk?”

  “Yes. If you want.”

  “Do you want to dress?”

  “I am dressed.”

  “I mean… well, it doesn’t matter.”

  “No, not at all. I’m fine, I tell you.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No, not at all.”

  They walked out of the room, down the hall, out into the yard. Into the open front yard, not the yard behind the building where the others walked. Dr. Goddard glanced out his window at them and frowned. It wasn’t a good thing, to see Dr. Goddard frown. Dr. Goddard only frowned when he had a problem.

  The air assaulted Hanley. He shivered and Perry Weinstein said: “Are you cold?”

  “No, not at all. I’m fine.” Could he explain that the air was a woman’s perfume and the smell of trees and buds growing on bare branches and the smell of the earth itself aroused him? He could bury his face in the earth and lick it. He thought of that and he was embarrassed again and fastened his robe tightly around him. He walked painfully along.

  Perry Weinstein said nothing for a long time. They walked down the gravel drive toward the other buildings. Toward the gate. Hanley saw the gate and thought about it. Beyond the gate was the valley and beyond the valley was the world.

  “There are no spies,” Perry Weinstein said. He said it in an offhand voice, as though saying it was a fine day.

  Hanley blinked and said nothing. They stopped walking. Perry pointed to a green bench and said, “Let’s sit down.”

  They sat down. Hanley folded his hands over his crotch to hide his erection from the other man. He felt foolish and embarrassed. He blushed and stared at the gravel and then, once, looked up and saw the gate down the path.

  “Why did you say that?”

  “Why did I say what?”

  “ ‘There are no spies.’ ”

  “Did I say that?”

  “You said it in a telephone conversation. Do you remember?”

  “My memory… is failing. I remember events of thirty or forty or fifty years ago quite clearly but I forget so much. I think I might be going blind. Not outside but inside.”

  “Are you on medication?”

  “Don’t you know?” Hanley said in a quick, sly voice.

  “I don’t know. I came up here to see you.”

  “What day is today?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “There are no visitors on Tuesday. Visitors come on Sunday after the last mass.”

  “What do they do to you here, Hanley?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do they do to you here?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should know.” And there was a sudden and unexplainable sob in his voice. “Yackley sent me here. You should know.”

  Perry Weinstein studied the older man through his horn-rimmed glasses. His eyes were mild and quick. He slowly rubbed the bridge of his nose, back and forth.

  “There are no spies,” Perry Weinstein said.

  “Yes. That’s true. And all of what we do means nothing. It is pointless, fruitless, hopeless. The Section means nothing. We are to spy upon the spies. Well, there are no spies, are there?” And Hanley smiled and was crying.

  “Of course there are spies,” Weinstein said. His voice was cold.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Perhaps you don’t have a need-to-know.”

  “Cut that bullshit, Hanley.” Weinstein came close to his face. “Why is November in Moscow?”

  “Is he in Moscow?”

  “You said he was—”

  “I wanted to warn him,” Hanley began quickly.

  “Warn who?”

  “November.” Hanley waited. “November was in Denmark, he was going to Moscow, he had put out feelers to Moscow Center. He wanted to go over. I had to tell November—”

  “The real November,” Weinstein said.

  “Of course. He was sleeping. I had to tell him to come awake. The words were all wrong. I realize that. I wanted to tell him that none of it mattered, there were no spies in any case—”

  “That’s crazy talk,” Perry Weinstein said. “Why are you talking crazy?”

  “Burke in Romania. They had him on a string for three years and pulled him in and traded him for Rostenkowski who we had. We had Rostenkowski in Paris for four years. Three for four.” Hanley smiled.

  “Are you crazy, then?”

  “No, I’m not crazy. It is difficult to explain,” Hanley said. “I was tired, it was the shock of it all, I suppose. I wasn’t crazy. Every day I went to the same bar on Fourteenth Street and they closed it down. So I had to find a new place. I started to eat in the cafeteria. Can you imagine doing that? The food was awful.”

  “It has to be awful up to GS 13; then it improves,” Weinstein said. And he smiled at Hanley.

  Hanley realized he was smiling back. A tight and typical Hanley smile, the smile of the bureaucrat who does not wish to be amused about jokes concerning the bureaucracy. The smile that Hanley had not smiled in Ward Seven in the three weeks he had been there; or three months; or three years. Eventually.

  The smiles faded.

  “Tell me about the two Novembers,” Perry Weinstein said.

  Hanley shrugged in his robe, as though to recede into it. The air was still and very cold for the time of year. When he spoke, his breath was puffed.

  “Do you have a need-to-know?”

  Perry Weinstein nodded. His face was grave.

  Hanley thought about it for a long time. The spring seemed too sultry to him; he did not realize it was cold. The spring caressed him. The woman of the season blew into his ear and licked inside his ear and it made him shiver; another person would have thought it was cold. He could smell perfume and the peculiar touch of a woman’s fingers running up and down his arm. The woman in the season put her wet tongue into his ear and he shivered because she promised so many pleasures to him.

  Hanley blinked. The reverie disappeared. The tongue and woman and smell were gone. He stared at Weinstein. “What did you say?”

  “Tell me about November. Tell me what is wrong w
ith Section,” Weinstein said.

  “Wrong with Section,” Hanley said.

  Weinstein waited. He was a listener.

  “I have thought, for a long time, that someone inside Section does not mean us well. Does not mean well to Section.”

  “Tell me,” Weinstein said.

  “Nutcracker was taken from me. My nutcracker is gone,” he said. “I was given it and it was mine. My sister took it.”

  “What about Section?”

  “I see teeth and that face that will kill you to see you. It was my nutcracker,” Hanley said. He began to cry.

  “I can get your nutcracker back to you,” Perry Weinstein said.

  “No. You’re telling me that but you can’t. It was lost a long time ago.”

  “Tell me about the Section. Tell me what’s wrong with Section.”

  “Is it safe to tell you?”

  Weinstein waited.

  “I tried to tell November. He wouldn’t listen to me. I think he knows, though.”

  “Knows what?”

  “That there is something wrong. With Section.” Hanley felt the cold around him, pressing on his pale skin. “I need to tell someone.”

  “Tell me,” said Perry Weinstein.

  And Hanley began then, in a slow voice, to tell him everything he could remember.

  15

  ASSIGNMENT

  The cities of the Eastern Bloc are dark at night. There is light but just enough. In the center of old Prague was a red star, illuminated at night, revolving slowly around and around. From the top story of the restaurant in the Intercontinental Hotel—the only modern hotel in Prague—the Soviet visitors and their women of the evening could view the red star revolving above the old church spires. Even above the spires of the old cathedral on the hill.

  The restaurant was expensive and glittering. The wines served were from Hungary and Romania and were not very good. The cuisine was French with a heavy touch. Everything about the restaurant was a parody of poshness because parody is the only thing possible in such a society.

  Alexa thought it was crude. She honestly loved Paris, for example, and all its excesses; she loved Moscow out of an inborn love for the ancient city that seemed part of her roots; but she saw the rest of the world for what it was. And Prague was a sad old city, neglected too long and full of sorrows buried in the ancient stones.

  Perhaps Gorki would have understood. Gorki was a complex man and she was his protégée in the Resolutions Committee. She would have explained her feelings to him on any night but this one. She was too nervous.

  He had seduced her in the beginning, as she expected, but had never treated her as his mistress or even his property. Gorki was a detached man who sampled pleasures, never gorged on them.

  She thought Gorki had sent men to have her killed. She wanted to understand why. He had seemed surprised to hear her voice when she telephoned.

  Prague was a short plane ride from Moscow and from Zurich. They had agreed to meet there because Gorki did not want her to return to Moscow. Not yet.

  Gorki put down his glass of brandy—French, not the Hungarian version offered on the menu—and looked across the white tablecloth. Her eyes had never left his face. He was a small man with the delicate manners of the Oriental Soviet. No one who worked for him knew his past and no one wanted to speak too much about it.

  He stared at Alexa until she looked away, out the wall of windows.

  “All organizations have their duplications,” Gorki said in a quiet voice as though summarizing some lesson. “I have wanted this American agent dead for a long time. The two men you killed—by mistake, dear Alexa—were backup to you and the unfortunate agent in Helsinki failed to explain that to you.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “Alexei claims no knowledge of the two men but the truth is quite different.” He spoke Russian with patient clarity, as though each word had been painfully learned and was reluctantly released in speech.

  “I could have been killed,” she said.

  “It was such a waste—”

  “I still don’t understand—”

  “Nor I,” interrupted Gorki. “But I understand this: November is still alive and that is not acceptable.”

  “So I go back to Lausanne,” she began. She had eaten very little. She wore a dark dress with long sleeves that framed her pale features and made her skin seem more like porcelain. She watched Gorki as though she felt she had to be certain that he was telling her the truth; it was the first time she had felt suspicious.

  “No. He has left Lausanne.”

  “What happened?”

  “He left Lausanne. He left the country after four days. He talked to Swiss police. He went to London, we think. Today or tomorrow he flies to New York on the Concorde. We think. We have this information—”

  “What are you going to do?” Alexa said. Her words were soft, but she stared at him very hard.

  “You,” said Gorki. His lynx eyes glittered at the table. The wine steward came and Gorki waved him away.

  “You have watched him so closely, then why—”

  “Because this is a delicate matter,” Gorki began.

  She saw that he was lying to her. Why was he lying? What part of what he said was a lie and what was the truth?

  She felt the same coldness she had felt the first day in Zurich, after the killings, when she tried to decide what to do next. Her first thought had been to contact Moscow but she had elected to do nothing at first. The newspapers were full of information about the killings. She could not understand who the men had been. Even now. She did not believe Gorki at all; she had flown to Prague as though flying to a rendezvous with her own death.

  “Who is November?”

  “He was our mole in the R Section,” began Gorki.

  She waited, her disbelief suspended. Her long fingers held the edge of the white tablecloth as though holding on to reality.

  “It is very complex. Seemingly, over the years, he had performed a number of actions against our interest but that was to be expected. He had to be useful. To them and to us. However, most importantly, we began to suspect two years ago that he had changed allegiances—that he had been found out and that he was being used now by R Section to feed us disinformation that we would believe, because we would believe him to be our man. Much as the British did with the German spy network in Britain in the Patriotic War.”

  She nodded; she knew the reference to World War II when British intelligence managed to triple every German agent in Britain, creating an entirely traitorous network of German spies working for the British and still feeding their German controls information.

  “The important matter now is that he has to be dealt with. It was to be done in Switzerland, before he had any warning. Unfortunately, he has been warned now by the killings and by R Section itself. His cover is blown as far as we’re concerned.”

  She waited and the cold feeling grew in her. Gorki spoke in a sharp whisper, the words glittered, he was constructing a story that seemed entirely plausible. And yet Alexa knew it was a lie, it had to be a lie from the beginning. And if it was a lie, then it meant Gorki wanted to eliminate her.

  He wanted to kill her.

  The thought fastened to her like a leech. She felt the blood draining from her face. She went very rigid and pale and cold in that moment. He wanted to kill her.

  “You have had the training of an illegal agent and that is what you will become again,” Gorki said, staring at his cognac. It seemed he did not want to look at her. “In the packet is identification. A French passport, papers, driver’s license… all the paperwork. It seems better to travel to Montreal from Paris first and then shuttle to Washington. The Canadian entry is much easier.”

  “But our own people… in Washington—”

  “This is not a matter for them. It is too delicate for more usual channels—”

  She felt the words like blows; they were all lies. Gorki was isolating her and there was nothing she could do about it.<
br />
  He had sent the killers in Lausanne not to kill the American but to kill her.

  A rush of guilt overwhelmed her. It must be some flaw in her that exacted this punishment; some failure.

  She was a woman of great beauty and cunning. In that shaken moment, she fell back on her resources.

  She reached her hand across the white linen and touched the parchment fingers.

  Gorki looked at her for a moment, as though he could not understand the gesture. He looked into Alexa’s glittering eyes. Eyes that could not be disguised, he thought. Eyes that will always give her away.

  Gorki smiled at her as though she might have been a child.

  “My dear Alexa,” Gorki said, removing his hand. “I fly back to Moscow in an hour. There is so little time. Believe me—” He spoke in a soft voice and then interrupted himself with silence. His eyes spoke regret. He smiled. “Perhaps—” Again, silence intervened. He rose and she saw he had left a packet on the table. Instructions and identification and money—the usual precautions.

  But Alexa felt failure. Acute and cold. He was instructing her to follow a trail of lies to her own death. What was her failure?

  And what was her alternative?

  She shuddered. She looked up. Gorki was already threading his way through the tables, past the Party officials and their girlfriends, his thin frame silhouetted against the black window that looked out on blackened Prague. And the great red star turning slowly, slowly, above the church spires and the steeples.

  16

  AMONG FRIENDS, AMONG ENEMIES

  For a long time, the bulky man in dark cashmere coat and homburg hat walked along the seawall that jutted out into the Channel in Dover.

  Dover was having a British spring with drab days and the threat of rain in the air. The Channel was choppy and gray, the way it always seemed to be. The great gulls groaned madly above the waves crashing into the seawall and the chimney pots of the town boiled up with curls of smoke. It was a day for hot tea and cold sandwiches and the huddled conversations of the public house. It was a day for dampness, wet wools, and the red noses that come with sniffles and deep spring colds.

  The bulky man in dark had his hands folded behind his back as he patrolled the seawall and felt a touch of spray now and again on his ruddy face. His eyes were mild as a saint’s behind rimless glasses. He looked like a man of great kindnesses. He might have been one of those millionaires who gives all to the poor. In the case of Dmitri Ilyich Denisov, all those assumptions about him would have been wrong.