The November Man

by Bill Granger

  “Her control?”

  “Who can say?”

  “Gorki,” Denisov said. The man in control in Resolutions Committee was always code-named Gorki. Was it the same man who had controlled Denisov long ago? But it had to be: He controlled Alexa, he had controlled Denisov when Denisov had been in the trade.

  Denisov watched Griegel.

  Griegel closed his eyes.

  Denisov wiped at his face again.

  “Gorki,” Griegel said. And opened his eyes. He smiled at Denisov. “That reminds me of an absurd thing. It is too absurd.”

  “What is it?”

  “A nutcracker. A wooden nutcracker.”

  “A nutcracker?”

  Griegel blinked. He was back in the present. “Did you remember the case of the Soviet agent who defected to the West in Italy and then redefected back into the Soviet embassy right in Washington in the United States?” He laughed in a dry voice. “Do you ever wonder that perhaps it is all a great game and that none of the players understands it?”

  “What is Nutcracker?” Denisov said. His voice rose. And Griegel went into a trance again and this time, the voice was dull and slow:

  “Nutcracker is an operation which involves the suspension of certain long-held beliefs: Nutcracker assumes the truth of the game. The truth of the game, which cannot be admitted, is simple: There are no spies. The game exists for its own sake.”

  Griegel shuddered and seemed to fall asleep in the wooden chair. His mouth gaped. His hands were slack on his lap. Was it a trance? Or was it a game played within a game, a little show for Denisov’s money?

  Denisov sat still for a long time, trying to catch his breath. His face felt flushed to the touch of his cold hand. He thought of Alexa then and he was almost feverish.

  He had known her, of course.

  He had slept with her.

  They had been under control of Gorki, together, in Finland. She was Gorki’s pet, it was obvious. She deferred to Gorki when they spoke of the man. Denisov had never been under illusions—about the trade, about Gorki, about the system he served. Denisov had been faithful in his way but he saw the true believer shining in Alexa’s eyes and it had made him wary for a long time. They had business to do in Finland and it was a dirty job and she had been good enough and Denisov had been better. Denisov had shown her certain ways of doing things that had impressed her.

  He was not a beautiful man and he was large and his manners were too shy. He was not at all in appearance what he really was, in his heart, in his mind. Alexa had been like the others—like his old wife even, whom he remembered less and less—she had seen only the external Denisov at first, the clumsy and amiable bear. But then, in the business in Finland, when he had been quite ruthless, she had seen the power and sureness in him and she had loved the power of him and he had taken her as simply as a man takes a streetwalker.

  He had slept with her. He made love as never before. When it was over, the smell of her filled his memory. Back in Moscow, in the small and noisy flat, he had made love to his old wife after the assignment and he still remembered the smell of Alexa. He had made ferocious love, hard and cruel, demanding. He had moved over his old wife and felt her under him, her big belly and sagging breasts, and with his eyes closed and the smell of Alexa in memory, he was making love to Alexa again in Helsinki, before they had parted. He closed his eyes in Moscow and remembered the smell of Alexa beneath him, the firm, straining belly that pushed against his belly until he had to explode, again and again, into her.

  The breasts were firm, and he had felt suspended above Alexa and felt her long, cat’s tongue drag across the flesh of his throat and reach his ear and lick into it like a saucer of milk. His head exploded and this strong woman beneath him—he had been thinking of Alexa—moved and moved and he grasped her buttocks, her back, every beautiful part of her perfect body…

  He was sweating in the coolness of morning in the shadowed street in Berlin. He remembered: He had opened his eyes in the darkness when he made love to Alexa and she had been watching him. He was above her and her body was moving beneath him but she was watching him with an apartness that frightened him.

  Griegel’s voice intruded.

  “No. Nothing,” Denisov replied, though he had not heard what the other man had said. He closed his reverie and looked around him.

  “Quite beautiful,” Griegel jeered. The Berliner always attempts humor, even when it is most inappropriate.

  “I was thinking about Nutcracker.”

  “Ah, she’s cracked a few nuts in her time,” said Griegel. The English pun startled Denisov. It was something he wished he had the skill to say. Even the puns of Gilbert had to be studied and had to be explained for Denisov.

  His head filled with music then. He rose.

  He nodded in a correct German way at the old man at the table and saw, from his height, the East German agents in the street below. Berlin was not so difficult and neither was Prague; the past that had been an agent named Denisov had been obliterated long since. No one looked for him anymore or even suspected he existed.

  If you think we are worked by strings,

  Like a Japanese marionette,

  You don’t understand these things:

  It is simply Court etiquette—

  The music pounded as he pounded down the stairs, round and round the balconied marble stairs. What was the reason for so much music?

  But Griegel had made a pun.

  The pun had given him Gilbert and Sullivan’s wonderful tunes.

  He saw the players again of the old D’Oyly Carte company before it disbanded in London. He saw them go round and round with the music. He saw the strutting English actors in Japanese costumes and the strains of the opening of The Mikado.

  He was on the street, hurrying along to his car parked illegally at the corner of Unter den Linden. He would be in West Berlin in ten minutes; he could be in Washington in ten hours.

  Did this matter affect him?

  Yes.

  He saw it clearly now. And the danger to Alexa, the danger so palpable that he was certain he could see her dead in the streets.

  It was a price worth paying, to save her. To have her gratitude.

  He saw the images and rushed past the security forces in their trench coats loitering in dark doorways.

  When he reached the car, he had a ticket.

  And he thought—in one blinding moment—he had the key to Nutcracker. If only he could keep it in his head.

  23

  REPORTS

  You are a busy little fellow, Yackley thought. The reports were coming on a regular basis now. They had picked up on him at the border when he crossed from Ontario into upstate New York at Niagara Falls. But the report from U.S. Border Patrol had not been correlated into Devereaux’s running file (NOVRET) until Sunday morning. He had been granted two days of mischief.

  There had not been any luck involved in finding Sellers in the trunk of the car at National Airport. The arrogant bastard had parked the car in one of the stalls designated for use by Congress and staff. Obviously, it would have been found as soon as a Congressman complained about someone using a privileged space.

  By then, someone thought to secure Hanley’s apartment. It was too late. The place had been wrecked. Devereaux must have gone there sometime Friday.

  The problems were multiplying as well. Mrs. Neumann had apparently pulled a copy of Hanley’s 201 file. That was discovered Thursday night by Claymore Richfield, who hadn’t even been looking for it. She had left a trail in the computer and she had been gone on leave for four days. She would be back Monday. There would be questions to be answered Monday.

  Yackley felt the Section was falling away from him and that Devereaux was suddenly on the periphery of every action, waiting for Yackley’s move. Yackley knew he was the target.

  There was a name in the 201 file—the will section. Margot Kieker, whoever she was. They had run that through the National Credit Center in Virginia and the information was thi
n. She lived in Chicago, she was a salesperson for IBM—she sold computers.

  Computers, for Christ’s sake.

  Two agents from the Section hit the sales center in Chicago on Thursday. They were told that Ms. Kieker had been called to Washington. They said it like that, very proudly: She had been called to Washington by the director of a top secret computer design program and would be gone for several weeks. It was quite an honor for everyone in the sales center.

  Yackley read through the reports, fingered them as though they might speak. He glanced at the photographs on his desk. His wife still smiled at him as she always did, even in life. She thought none of it was terribly serious. He had tried to impress upon her the changes going on in government, the changes going on in the business of intelligence. He was on the cutting edge of those changes. He always used terms like cutting edge in trying to explain to Beverly. She would have none of it. She made apple pies from scratch and read USA Today and thought baseball was boring and wore cotton dresses during the week. She didn’t understand a damned thing. If she hadn’t supported him through law school, he would have felt he owed her nothing.

  The reality of the White House is always so much less. A thousand books and movies have given the public the image of a great manor with a full staircase that reaches and reaches upward to a heavenly second floor. The Oval Office—which had begun life as the presidential library—is a gigantic room in image; in reality, it is very much of the eighteenth century, small cozy and able to be heated by a single fireplace.

  Perry Weinstein considered the vulnerability of the place every time he crossed the underground corridor to the White House proper from the Executive Office Building.

  He was coatless with his tie askew. His glasses had been patched that morning with a paper clip inserted at the place the screw fell out. He looked like a man on fire. His eyes were wide with interest in some idea percolating inside him and when he talked, he brushed at his rep tie with nervous fingers, as though the fire had spilled ashes on him.

  The man on the other side of the narrow desk was Reed. Reed was about four or five in the hierarchy, if anyone paid attention to numbers like that. In fact, a good-sized forest was felled each week to print just such speculation.

  Reed was Eastern, which was unusual; he was old money but he made more of it in new ways; even though his funds were in blind trusts, it didn’t matter because what was good for Quentin Reed was good for the U.S.A.

  “We need some orchestra music for this one,” Reed was saying. The room was modern, dull, white, windowless, and devoid of charm—exactly like Reed.

  “We’ve worked OT,” Perry Weinstein said. It was not his style at all. Clichés fell by the bushelful in this administration. Jargon clogged the corridors of power. Everyone had slang or invented it. Yackley was probably chosen to head R Section because of his inability to speak in anything but clichés.

  “Play me some,” Reed continued. He assumed a pose of power that required him to lean back in his swivel chair and feign defenselessness.

  “I’m coordinating with Section, Langley, Puzzle—” He stopped. Was it too much jargon? But Reed nodded as though he understood. “We have a scenario ready for a road show three weeks before the Pow-Wow.”

  Pow-Wow was Summit; the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union were scheduled to meet in one month’s time in Berlin—in both sections of the city to symbolize a new beginning to peace. Peace was full of new beginnings.

  “Two years ago, we started our exchange program,” Perry said. He lapsed out of jargon, to Reed’s annoyance:

  “We picked up their agent in Italy and the Brits picked up one in the Isles; they defected two West Germans into the East. I think we rattled our sabers effectively. It set the tone.”

  “But the one from Italy—what’s his name—that was badly handled by Langley. He redefected into the Soviet embassy right on Mass Ave.”

  Perry let that one go. Reed sighed, shifted the swivel, tapped his fingertips together to make certain they were still there, and continued:

  “I don’t want a fuck-up like that this time. That’s why you’re in place on coordinating this thing. And I don’t want to see the Red Machine come back as quickly.”

  “I’ve tried to explain to you, Quent,” Perry Weinstein said, brushing at his rep tie again. “We can’t absolutely control the Opposition. All we can do is hold our own.”

  “I’d like to see a better scenario than that.”

  “It can’t be guaranteed,” Perry said, his voice on edge. “We have identified nine agents, all very top drawer, very KGB and GRU upper echelon. Including, I might add, the director of the Resolutions Committee.”

  Quentin stared at him. The eyes had no comprehension.

  “His code name is Gorki. He’s an old man, he made contact with us in the last eighteen months through the CIA. He wants to come over to our house. He has some health problems and he needs us. I think it’s less a matter of ideology than just wanting to live longer.”

  “I like this—”

  “It’s timed for the summit exchange.”

  “I like this very much, Perr.”

  “We have our little Indians all lined up. There’s a cipher clerk in SovEm in Rome, there’s an East German intelligence director in Potsdam, there’s—”

  “More and more,” enthused Reed, cutting off the litany. “How do we begin?”

  “The best one is a Resolutions courier named Alexa. Really attractive. I thought you’d like this.” And he slipped the photograph out of his pocket and dropped it on Quentin Reed’s empty desk top.

  Extraordinary face, without any doubt. The eyes held you.

  But the body. The sheer, voluptuous nakedness of that body. She stood quite naturally, not posing at all, not hiding anything either. Reed felt an urge and hid it by slamming his body forward into the kneehole of the desk and plunking his elbows on the desk top. The picture required several more seconds of careful study.

  “This girl is naked,” said Quentin Reed.

  “Her name is Alexa. Rather, her real name is Natasha Podgorny Alexkoff. But she’s Alexa, which is a good name for a killer. She seduced that security guard in Silicon Valley a few years ago. She’s been active. Considered their best ‘Resolutions’ courier.”

  “And she’s here?”

  “Reasonable supposition. She crossed the Canadian border into Niagara Falls three hours ago.”

  “We have her?”

  “Not yet. It’s better to bait your trap. You see, she’s sort of a gift to us. From Gorki. The old man who’s coming across on Summit eve.”

  “That’s one helluva gift,” Reed said. His tongue licked at his dry lips. He had gray eyes to match his suit, and right now he felt he could take on this Alexa-Whatever. It was only ten in the morning and he was thinking about the bedroom. Hell, the top of his desk.

  Perry Weinstein appreciated the spectacle of Quentin Reed. Reed was looking at the photograph of Alexa and could not see the contempt in Perry’s eyes.

  After a salacious moment of silence, Perry spoke again: “Gorki took that. He had her. About five years ago, in his dacha.”

  “But what does she do? Besides this, I mean?”

  “She kills,” Perry Weinstein said.

  The cold word fell between them. Perry dropped the photograph on the desk top. “What does that mean?”

  “It means she kills. She’s a courier. That’s their slang for Resolutions agent. She killed a man on a ferry in Helsinki two weeks ago. She killed three people in Lausanne a week ago. She kills people, that’s what she does.”

  Perry repeated the word because of the effect it was having on Quentin Reed. The spirit was drooping. The gray eyes became old again. The hands left the desk top. The photograph was an orphan.

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Yes. Apparently, that’s one of the reasons she’s effective. So many can’t.”

  “Why is… why has she come here?”

  “We guess sh
e’s here to kill somebody.” Perry Weinstein said it without emphasis and watched the effect on Quentin Reed.

  “My God, this doesn’t involve the President, does it?”

  “No. That would be so unlikely, so crude, so—”

  “It wasn’t so goddamned unlikely when they put those assassins on the Pope, was it?”

  “We are monitoring her constantly.”

  “Why not just pick her up?”

  “We’d like to see what she had in mind.”

  “How did you get this photograph, Perr? How do we know about her?”

  “That’s why we have spies, Quent,” Perry Weinstein said.

  “Spies? Spooks?” Quentin smiled. “Are you going to give me that booga-booga stuff? You’re coordinating Changeover, aren’t you?”

  “Joke, Quent.”

  “Changeover. I think the budget director outdid himself. Save five bill over five years.”

  Perry nodded. Changeover was the newest idea in intelligence since the invention of invisible ink. Cost analysts had figured out that information gained through fixed investment enterprises—satellites, computers, machine analysis—was far more cost efficient than information gained by agents in the field. The agents would be cut back over five years to avoid the sort of bloodletting that had crippled CIA during the Carter administration.

  “But what about this dish of Russian ice cream? Tell me about her.”

  “There’s nothing to tell—so far. She’s a gift from our man in Moscow Center. She’s already cut off from her control, she’s flying blind. She has some sort of S&D here—”

  “S&D?”

  “Search and destroy, Quent,” said Perr.

  “Right.”

  Silence.

  The jargon machine was on hold. The room was silent. Being this close to the most powerful man in the country—he was 150 steps away at the moment, sitting in the Oval Office, reading briefing papers for tonight’s live press conference—awed them both, awed everyone. The reality of the presidency was borne by the sense of awe.

  “I think this is going to put the President in a strong position. At the summit.”