Code Name November

by Bill Granger

  Why? Where?

  Finally, O’Neill’s confidence in his own information and its importance sagged under the weight of Devereaux’s question. There were too many things the Irishman didn’t know.

  Too many things for it to be a lie.

  The questioning had continued without interruption into the pale Scottish afternoon: Who else was part of Hastings’ information network? As Devereaux expected, O’Neill knew little. It had been a stab. Hastings had always submitted four names—code names—all with routine retainers and expenses, all paid for their scraps of information. But did they really exist or had Hastings fiddled with the facts again and created a bogus network to pad out his own salary?

  Were some of the names real?

  And why did the Boys want to kill the richest man in England? What would it accomplish? What did any of the chaotic acts of mad bombing of innocent people in Dublin and Belfast and London accomplish?

  At last, O’Neill was allowed to leave, with a single thousand-dollar bill, and four more torn in less than half. They would be mated, Devereaux said, when O’Neill had the answer to his questions. O’Neill would be contacted by someone from the Section in Belfast.

  By two P.M., Devereaux felt drained and confused. O’Neill was a greedy fool and his information—while valuable to an extent—was not worth Hastings’ proposed $100,000 exit money. Hastings was an experienced hand—what had he gathered beyond what O’Neill Knew? And why was O’Neill an important part of the total information that died with Hastings?

  Devereaux tried to sort through his thoughts as he packed and left a five-pound note on the bed for the chambermaid who would inherit a monumental cleaning task. He checked out and had a drink in the hotel bar because the pubs were all closed for the afternoon.

  In the bar, Devereaux noticed a copy of the Daily Mirror with the screaming headline that North Sea oil would make Britain a sheikdom. It read: Suddenly, We’re Very Sheik!

  Sitting at the bar, he sipped his vodka as if it were medicine. It was too warm and the bartender gave ice grudgingly. Scotland was a country of cold rooms and warm drinks.

  Devereaux finally realized he did not want this job and that had led to his confusion. His present laziness was induced by his hatred of the assignment: He wanted to clean it up quickly, to believe that Hastings had flimflammed the Section, that O’Neill’s vague information could be simply passed on to British Intelligence and forgotten.

  But Hastings was dead.

  His killer—very professionally—had garroted him. And then arranged his body to make it look like a fag killing. Hastings was a notorious homosexual and, Devereaux suspected, well known even in Edinburgh for his sexual preferences. Thus the severed penis.

  Why kill him for nothing? Had the IRA done it?

  Devereaux ordered a second vodka. The bartender did not add ice. Devereaux requested ice. The bartender placed the plastic ice bucket on the bar in front of him. Devereaux reached for a handful of cubes and let them fall into his glass with a splash. The bartender shuddered at such visible waste. Americans!

  The IRA would not have killed Hastings that way. And certainly not to suppress something that even O’Neill knew about. Devereaux could not believe that British Intelligence was not onto such a simple plan. On the other hand, they might not be—but it was still not that important. Except to Lord Slough.

  Parts.

  Devereaux knew he had been keeping that word out of his thoughts so that he might not include it this evening when he talked to Hanley and disposed of the assignment. But there it was.

  Parts.

  Hanley had mentioned parts. Parts of information. So much for one part and so much for another. He had given Devereaux the money for both parts.

  Hastings had mentioned parts.

  There was more to this than the planned assassination of Lord Slough. But Slough must have been a key to understanding the rest of the information.

  At last, resigned to the truth he had tried to hide from in his own thoughts, Devereaux took a taxi to the airport.

  There were the usual delays at both ends, which was why he did not arrive at the safe house and the R Section London quarters until midway through the English November evening.

  Blake House was off Hyde Park in what had been the edge of an earlier, quainter London city. The house was the end one in an attached housing block that wound down off the Marylebone Road. All the houses had been built in 1801, and William Blake, briefly, had lived there in later life, conferring his name upon one house.

  After insistently ringing the bell for several minutes, Devereaux was finally admitted. A surly housekeeper with an unpleasant Midwestern accent let him into a bare foyer, where he was told to wait. He stood in the overstuffed warmth and waited while, he knew, someone watched him.

  After another ten minutes, the door opened and he was taken silently into a second room and provided with a chair. He was asked to wait again. This time, he sat for a half hour until suddenly the door burst open and a cheerful young man with red hair and—yes, by God—freckles strode in to greet him.

  “Sir, this is a real honor, sir,” the younger man said in an accent that sounded insincere because of its apparent sincerity.

  Devereaux was unused to handshaking but he let the young man do it.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Martha had to find me, you know. Slipped down to the park for a walk and then to the pub for an… evening drink. Like this kind of weather. This is my first winter in London and I want to savor it all.…” He went on like that for some minutes as he led Devereaux into the library and poured him a liberal Scotch on the rocks. Devereaux noticed the young man was also liberal with his own drink—without the ice.

  His name was Green. Not fancy Greene with an E, he bubbled on, just plain Columbus, Ohio, Green, and so he was Devereaux, something of a legend to the younger men, predicted the Tet offensive, a real Asia hand, a bit out of your element here, what brings you to London? No, we never received a message from Hanley—

  On and on.

  Devereaux found Green’s rattling on did not distract him as he sat in the leather wing chair and mentally composed his message to the Section. It would be difficult to explain to Hanley, especially in code. He decided it would be a very long message. Glancing at his watch, he saw it tick toward 9:15 P.M., 4:15 P.M. in Washington. He would have to catch Hanley before he left for the day. Devereaux asked for the coded transmitter.

  “Oh, sir,” said plain Green brightly. “We don’t have one now. Have one of the new double scramblers—scrambles your voice going out twice through two voice baffles and then reverses the process at the other end. Much easier than coding and those tedious signals—”

  “What do you do when you want to commit something to paper—”

  “Oh, sir,” laughed Green, a member of the nonwriting generation. “Rarely, rarely. And then we use the machine at the embassy, on Grosvenor Square.”

  Devereaux was annoyed with Green’s faint trace of English accent. Or perhaps with Green.

  “The embassy’s handy—” Green continued.

  For you, thought Devereaux—and for the CIA, which undoubtedly read every message transmitted there.

  “Right this way, sir,” said Green. He led him to a small, obviously, soundproof room where a simple telephone rested conspicuously on a box with many dials.

  Devereaux did not like it but there was no choice. It was already November 14—little more than a month until Boxing Day.

  Surprisingly, the long-distance connection with Hanley came off smoothly. Allowing for the distance the voices had to travel and the echo that always occurred—and allowing for the disagreeably tinny voice alteration done by the baffles—it was satisfactory.

  For five minutes, Devereaux filled Hanley in quietly, step by step, from the meeting with Hastings in the buffet through the first meeting with O’Neill and the discovery of Hastings’ body in his room. At least Hanley knew how to listen and absorb information. Devereaux could imagi
ne Hanley sitting at the cold steel desk in the unnaturally cold office (the temperature never rose above sixty degrees on Hanley’s special order) tucked in a dead-end corridor in the Department of Agriculture building. He would not be taking notes but listening with his eyes closed and his free hand drumming quietly on the glass top of the steel desk. Hanley remembered everything and was not loath to tell you so.

  Finally, Devereaux did not speak anymore. He waited and pressed the receiver to his ear and listened to the pop and crackle of the cable buried beneath the cold North Atlantic.

  “What are your recommendations,” Hanley asked at last.

  “My first recommendation is that I return. I have no expertise here. My assignment was contact with Hastings. That’s completed.”

  “Hardly satisfactorily,” said Hanley. Whatever sarcasm he hoped to transmit in his tone did not communicate itself. Except that Devereaux knew the sound of Hanley’s normal voice.

  “My second recommendation is that Hastings’ death implies his information has already been compromised. By the IRA? Possibly. But certainly by someone. And I suggest we turn what we know over to British Intelligence.”

  Hanley waited. He knew Devereaux’s computer of logic was undergoing a systems search.

  “British Intelligence,” Devereaux continued, as though talking to himself.

  “They may have known that he was our agent now and killed him. They may have known parts of Hastings’ information—parts we do not know—and sought to get the rest from him. The IRA or British Intelligence—those are the two possibilities I can think of now. The death was obviously a professional job despite the clumsy attempt to make it seem a homosexual killing—”

  Devereaux paused. Saw Hastings’ mutilated body again. Wiped away the image of blood and death.

  “What about the Russians—”

  “What about them? This seems purely an internal British matter and I suggest we keep it that way. I suggest we turn over our information to British Intelligence to show that we’re good boys, and then we quietly keep a tab on O’Neill and share information with CIA—in case they have any interest in Irish terrorists these days.”

  There was silence. Hanley broke it.

  “That seems unacceptable.”

  “The Section is thin enough without getting involved in the Irish situation,” said Devereaux. “Ireland is England’s problem, not ours. I see no interest in the situation from our end.”

  “Lord Slough is an important man—”

  “So are half the Italian politicians shot or kidnapped daily by the Red Brigade. So was that Egyptian journalist assassinated by the Palestinians on Cyprus. But—”

  “I admit that the irrational actions of terrorists is a fact of life,” Hanley said. “And I admit that it would seem we have little interest in the events in Northern Ireland. But I keep thinking about Hastings. Why the secrecy? Why did he think he could flummox us out of a hundred and thirty thousand dollars? O’Neill’s information is not worth it.”

  Hanley had put his finger on the same piece of the puzzle that disturbed Devereaux.

  Hanley went on: “We have been trying for years—with little success—to establish our own rapprochement with British Intelligence, separate from the Langley firm. This might be an opportunity, if we could present them with a fuller picture. Perhaps they know of the plot on Lord Slough’s life, perhaps not; but if we could give them the who, what, where, when, why, and how of it—well, perhaps we would have a wedge with them. Which would give us a wedge back home—”

  “The CIA owns British Intelligence—”

  “There are signs of strain in their relationship of late. And with the North Sea oil business, Britain is not as weak as she looks today. In ten years, she will be a major oil-exporting country. They know that over there. And we’re just beginning to realize what that means.”

  “Perhaps we don’t have time,” said Devereaux. He did not want this assignment. He wanted a winter night on the mountain in Virginia, sitting in the dark front room, the fireplace making ghosts for him to stare at for hours. He wanted warmth. “O’Neill said the Boys will act between November fifteenth and Boxing Day, December twenty-sixth. It’s the fourteenth.”

  “I will have to talk to the Chief about this.”

  Devereaux said, “And what if Lord Slough is shot in the meantime?”

  “That would be a great loss,” Hanley said in a voice that did not express sympathy.

  “Yes,” Devereaux said.

  “This may take a little time. The Chief was in San Francisco this morning. He’s due back later this evening. It may not be until midnight—”

  “Five A.M., here,” said Devereaux.

  “Yes. Sorry. Did you have a good trip?”

  “Awful.”

  “Sorry.” Politely. “Well, I think we must have twelve hours at least. I’ll get through tomorrow morning. Let’s say seven A.M. here and noon there. You may sleep late.”

  There was no way of not delaying, Devereaux knew. Still, he was restless and he wanted to be out of this country and this sordid business with the Boys and their fucking Lord Slough. He hated the victim in that moment. Plain Green was right. This was not his milieu, He was too far afield. Since Asia had closed down to the extent of becoming a series of China-watching or Cambodia-watching listening posts, Devereaux had felt cut adrift. Asia had been his world and he had traveled in it with the familiarity of a realtor in a small town. He knew the properties. It had been his real country, his people, his smells. He had been alive then in the red-sun mornings and the hut-level villages living precariously for a thousand years in a valley or on the side of a hill.…

  Something like homesickness threatened to overwhelm him. But where was his home? Letting his face fall slack and his eyes dull, he replaced the telephone receiver. Asia faded like a watercolor painting left in the rain.

  Enough.

  Getting up, Devereaux stretched and walked out of the room. Plain Green had a fresh drink in his hand when Devereaux returned to the library. There were not enough books to cover the shelves. Devereaux noticed the boy’s hands were not steady. He placed that information somewhere in his memory bank.

  “Well, everything all right then?”

  “Yes,” said Devereaux. “I’ll be back in tomorrow. At noon. For another message. Thanks for the drink.”

  “Oh, any time. You’re welcome to stay—” Devereaux’s single leather bag had been brought into the library.

  “No, thanks. I’m a little restless. I prefer a hotel tonight. Thanks anyway.”

  Green nodded, smiled idiotically. Who was he? Why had they chosen such an unprofessional youth to be a station keeper? And in London?

  Devereaux checked in at the Inn on the Park and showered and shaved and still felt restless. Finally he went down to the lounge and permitted an underdressed waitress to offer him a vodka martini with ice. It was after eleven and the pubs were closed, but the hotel bar was still all hearty good-fellowship in the clubby, insincere—and yet warm—way of the English when they meet as strangers. Devereaux sat at a ridiculously small table and sipped a cold drink. They catered to Americans here. He looked around at the fake English-pub furnishing, designed no doubt by a California consulting firm and made in plastic Japan. Just the thing to make Yanks feel at home. After a second drink, the murmur of voices faded and allowed him a sort of reverie. He let his guard down. He began to think about Asia again—

  “Mr. Devereaux? I’m sorry. But aren’t you Professor Devereaux?”

  For a moment, he thought his silent travelogue had taken on a soundtrack. It could have belonged to that time when he was Professor Devereaux and Asia was a new present to him.

  He had, of course, noticed her when she came into the lounge, but she had drifted out of his field of vision. Now the question, uttered softly with a shy confidence, brought her back to him. He turned off the lights of Asia and looked at her. Still, he could not remember her except from the moment before.

  “Yes? I
’m sorry—”

  “My God,” she laughed, shaking her head and letting her brown hair beat softly around her pale, oval, open face. She laughed as though she had rehearsed it, which was all right. “I don’t expect you to remember me but it’s—it’s just such a coincidence that I had to say hello after all these years.”

  He tried out a smile and decided it would not do, so he turned it up several degrees. That was better—she was responding. Her own smile did not need fine-tuning. It was just right. He encouraged her to speak with a little professorial nod of his head that he thought he had forgotten.

  “You wouldn’t remember me. It was fifteen years ago at least. You were teaching a course in Chinese history at Columbia and you had just come back from the Peace Corps—Asia—and you were so… enthusiastic. And, well, I kept asking you about the experience, I was just eighteen and you were—”

  She hesitated. Was what?

  So she was part of the travelogue in his mind, he thought. No one had mentioned the Peace Corps to him since—since then, he supposed. That was his last full year of a kind of idealism; although, as these things happen, it did not go away all at once. Like a once-prized ceramic cup, whatever had been inside him merely got chipped a little more each year, and one day it was cracked so badly it was thrown away because no one cared anymore.

  “Elizabeth?” She said her name the way a television game show contestant might offer a guess.

  “Of course,” he lied. “Elizabeth. My God,”—he did not attempt to laugh but managed a smile—“fifteen years later and we’re here.”

  She looked delighted and the delight seemed genuine enough to be out of place in the atmosphere of the plastic pub.

  “So what did I do?” she went on. “Joined the Peace Corps and they sent me to Addis Ababa for two years—which is not Asia. Not what you said it would be.” She smiled. “You were so enthusiastic. But you know something? You were right. It was the best thing I ever did for myself.”

  The Peace Corps. Those old ideals that had seemed so fresh and sophisticated to him. Before Vietnam and Watergate. He called up the Peace Corps in the theater of his mind and saw himself, the younger Devereaux, squatting in the rain, new Asia hand, extending himself for the poor and wretched in black pajamas. But the Peace Corps, unlike the rest of the travelogue, did not move him. He had edited out that segment for too long.