Code Name November

by Bill Granger

  “What are you doing in London?” he asked politely.

  “Working,” she said. She seemed to guard her answer.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “You?”

  “Working,” he said in the same tones.

  She smiled, blushed. He wondered why embarrassment was a charming trait in women and a foolish one in men.

  “There’s no secret about it,” she said. “It’s just that I hate to bore anyone.” She paused, but he said nothing,

  “I’m actually here for a month working with my people. You’ve heard of Free The Prisoners?”

  “Is that something like Amnesty International?”

  “Not the same thing,” she said. She seemed to have a private energy source barely hidden behind her blue eyes. He could feel the pleasurable tension in her. “Amnesty does marvelous work—bringing these things to the attention of the world. Free The Prisoners is more of an activist group.”

  She hesitated. He noticed but pretended not to.

  “I mean, there are just tens of thousands—more than a million in total that we are aware of—men and women languishing in rotten jails all over the world, their crime being dissent or political differences. We don’t lobby for their release. We do something about it.” She said the last flatly and it carried an edge of menace.

  “Such as,” he said. Still politely.

  She was the eager student who stayed after class to talk about world problems and was half in love with the professor. Who joined the Peace Corps. Who protested the war in the streets. Who never grew old. Who never chipped the cup.

  She went on: “You’d think of England—the font of democratic ideals—”

  The professor in him corrected: Ancient Athens. He did not say it.

  “It’s been six years since internment and they still have prisoners who have never been tried or even formally charged—”

  He frowned. Ireland again. He did not want to get into this or discuss August, 1971, when British soldiers had gone from house to house and arrested hundreds of suspected IRA sympathizers in Belfast and Londonderry. The British had locked the men on boats in Belfast’s harbor and kept them incommunicado, without charge, while they tortured them. He knew about it as a professional in the world of information; knew about it the way someone knows about his field but does not concern himself with every part of it.

  He noticed her hands. She gestured like a man.

  “You must know about the efforts to free those men—”

  Protests. Rallies. He had put them out of his mind a long time ago. He was bored by it all, by rhetoric and empty passion.

  “Our people are in negotiation right now with the justice ministry and the Northern Ireland office to do just that. To get the remaining interred freed. And—I can tell you. We are making real progress. Not the kind you hold press conferences about but real progress. The hell with publicity anyway.”

  Did she believe that? He saw a clerk in the justice ministry, polite, offering tea, listening, making notes, nodding his head. Sympathetic to all they said, like Hastings to O’Neill. Did she believe it meant anything to the British government now?

  But she was so intense. There was something a bit frightening about her intensity, which he found attractive. He suddenly wished she would stop talking and just sit with him in the darkness looking at the old travelogue about Asia and about being young.

  He did not remember her, but she remembered him. It was almost enough, almost a perfect imitation of friendship. As close as Devereaux had gotten in years.

  “I’m happy to see a friend, Elizabeth,” he said at last, pronouncing her name formally.

  “And what are you doing?” she demanded gaily.

  “On my way through. To home. From Thailand,” he lied. “Doing stories for Central Press Service.”

  “Oh, God,” she said and did not laugh now. “It is good to see you.” The warmth of her words would have alarmed Devereaux in New York. But there was so little warmth in England, so little comfort. “I mean, you were the reason I got into all this, do you know that? You’re… you were my beginning—”

  She impulsively grabbed his hand. And held it.

  “I was so vapid, so drifting. I can’t believe myself then.”

  He was glad she held his hand.

  “For a long time after Kennedy was killed, I felt it was all uphill—but there were so many just like us who never gave up—”

  Not us. My cup is cracked; I’ve thrown it away.

  “All those kids in Chicago—”

  He felt uncomfortable. He wanted Elizabeth to hold his hand and to share her warmth and energy. And yet he felt the little corners of coldness in himself react against her, against what she said. He would have liked to tell her what he felt about “those kids” in Chicago in 1968 and 1969 and their rhetoric and their minor rebellion which masked their own private fears. Tell her about the faces in Asia then, while caviar radicalism reigned in Chicago. About blacks and hillbilly whites he saw, gaunt and tired and just as frightened, but without the wealth or leisure to understand that it was not their war either—

  “Well, I just never gave up, you know? That’s why I’m here now. Look at me—past thirty and still a radical, still a bomb-thrower.” She laughed at herself.

  “Good,” he said. Maybe that was wrong. Her smile faded. He found it difficult to small-talk anymore. With anyone. He had forgotten the little bridges of words that did not lead anywhere.

  “I didn’t know you were with the media—”

  He hated that word.

  “When you left Columbia to take a government job, I remember I wanted to thank you. After I came back I was in New York, but you were gone. I couldn’t believe it—you were a great teacher. Central Press?”

  Never heard of it, I’ll bet, said Devereaux to himself.

  “Tell me, what do you do? What did you do? For the government?”

  Did. Do. Became a listener, Elizabeth. A professional betrayer of secrets of others. A friend, an enemy. A spy, Elizabeth. I killed nine men and arranged the deaths of others, but that was strictly professional. Betrayed a fat Englishman on a Greek island. Professionally. He was killed, though, much later.

  He blinked then and warned the self-pity away; he told the coldness in him to stay in its dark corner. He would not give in to these things, even if he was tired and alone.

  “Dull things,” he said at last. He thought his voice sounded a little stagy. “But an opportunity came from the State Department to study Cambodian culture and I took it. When the war came along—I found myself stringing for a few magazines and then I fell into this Central Press Service. There’s not much to say—I’ve been dabbling for a long time, treating everything like a hobby, and then one day I looked up and found myself a forty-three-year-old dabbler—”

  No, that was not what he should have said; but she didn’t seem to hear him.

  “And you still love Asia so much,” she said. She invested the remark with such enthusiasm that he could not hide it in himself; he let her see, by a gesture, by the color of his eyes, that it was true: He did still love the East of the world.

  “I wish I had something like that,” she said. He looked up, surprised by her tone; the remark, so banal, sounded true.

  Or was he only imagining it for the sake of his own self-pity?

  “Staying here?” He hated fake-casual the way he asked it.

  She pretended not to notice. “Not here.” She smiled. “Too grand for our organization—we have a bank of rooms at the Shelbourne Arms. It’s a decent enough place. I suppose you’re staying here—”

  “It was the first place—” He realized that he was apologizing. She smiled.

  “Would you like a drink?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m too tired.” Her signal to leave? But she did not leave, did not release his hand. Another signal. He was flattered by her attention. He realized again he was not handling it very well. So he did not say anything further.

  She looke
d at him.

  Speak. “Elizabeth, I would like to say all the right things,” he said. “But it’s impossible because I don’t seem to have the gift for small talk anymore. Or seduction.” He tried a smile at the last.

  The smile seemed to give a lie to the rest of his face, to the cold eyes and the flinty features. For a moment, the smile said he was no longer so certain.

  He had been very sure of himself at Columbia. In a way, it had made him oddly off-putting. The world is too bound up in its own uncertainty to very much like a winner, Elizabeth thought, returning his smile, making it truer.

  Pulling his hand away, he removed three single-pound notes from the pocket of the brown corduroy coat; he was a little surprised to see that the money barely covered the price of the drinks.

  They didn’t speak, of course; no one does at such moments. She rose; her pale face, lit by the low yellow lamps in the place, was warm and soft, and he thought: Thank God she’s older; at least the years took their toll on her as well. Thank God for the spidery lines at the corners of her blue eyes.

  The sex was not particularly satisfying but neither of them had really expected it to be. The ghosts of old relationships—with others—intruded on their lovemaking and each was generous at the wrong moments and too little selfish.

  They fell away at last and lay side by side on the unsoft hotel bed, staring at the ceiling. Devereaux really could not remember Elizabeth as she had been—there had been so many of them—those students—full of Kennedy fervor and a kind of idealism not yet tainted by smugness. And there was himself, the way he had been—so singularly interested in himself.

  They lay together and thought separate thoughts.

  “It really is absurd,” Elizabeth said.

  Outside, the darkness buffeted the windows of their room. They could not hear traffic or church bells or the sounds of cabs or anything that might have placed them in London instead of a million other places. Yet the slight, familiar wail of the wind forced around the skyscraper was comforting, too, because all hotel rooms are alike and familiarity can be home.

  “Yes,” he said. After a very long time. “It would have been easier not to have known each other.” He turned and looked at her. “Although then, you would not have agreed to sleep with me.” He felt somewhat eased by saying that.

  “I would have preferred not to be so grateful,” Elizabeth said.

  She really was quite beautiful, Devereaux thought. He kissed the first lines of age on her neck; her skin was cool, pale, fine and smooth, like marble in the shade on a hot day.

  He kissed her then; but Elizabeth gently pushed him down and turned and kissed his chest; she kissed his nipples, surprisingly pink and vulnerable beneath the matted gray hair. She kissed his navel and licked it.

  Yes, he thought. He put his hands in her hair and tried to touch her face. He felt her lips; he felt the inside of her mouth.

  She continued until she heard him moan, softly, almost with a trancelike reverence for the act.

  He lifted her face; her eyes were shining, greedy and dark.

  He pulled her atop him and fitted himself into her, gently feeling the softness of her breasts; she closed her eyes and moved on him, her mouth on his.

  What did she remember now?

  He pushed up—once, twice, again and again—into her, hard, almost without tenderness.

  It was not expert at all; it was all moaning and thrashing.

  But all traces of the past had been swept out and they made love like strangers. Which suited them and gave them comfort.

  5

  BELFAST

  The slight, mean figure hurried quickly up the Crumlin Road while a light rain coated the broken street. He swung himself along harshly, angrily, pushing his bad leg forward and lunging with his good one. He was a little man with harsh, sunken cheeks like God’s wrath and high cheekbones full of righteousness. His restless black eyes went from doorway to post to the occasional passing car. He was not looking for a friend. His eyes carried a message of contempt and watchfulness. For who in bloody London would not like to have Faolin himself in Her Majesty’s stinkhole prison?

  He walked past the house and then turned, swinging around on his lame leg, and walked past it again. Slowly, unobtrusively, he stopped and looked around.

  A wretched boy with a green woolen scarf stood in the middle of the street and looked at him. The scarf was wet with the rain. Behind the boy, on a crumbling brick factory wall, was the whitewashed message: Up the IRA.

  It had been painted a long time ago, perhaps before the boy was born.

  “So what’ve ya seen, lad?”

  “I seen nothin’,” the boy said in a heart-rending squeak.

  “Ya know a soldier, boyo?”

  “I know a fuggin’ soldier,” he said and spat on the wet road.

  “Ah, good lad,” said Faolin. He pulled a gleaming coin from his pocket. “Ten bob. Here’s ten bob to watch for ’em.” He held the coin out. “And whaddaya do when ya see a soldier?” He almost sang it. He understood the boy and the boy him.

  “Bang the dustbin lid,” the boy said promptly.

  “Ah,” Faolin laughed. For a moment, the perpetual contempt in his eyes was softened by something he saw in the child. He sailed the fifty-pence piece high into the air and admired the boy as he caught it on the fly.

  “You’ll be here when I come out?” Faolin asked.

  “Oh, aye,” said the boy.

  And, with a final glance around him, Faolin disappeared into the doorway.

  Three others were already in the bare room when Faolin walked in. The odor of foul cigarettes clouded the room—it was a front sitting room with doilies and pictures of the Blessed Virgin on the mantel. Faolin frowned at the three men in greeting and going to the table, threw his cloth cap down on it. He pulled the front of the heavy tweed coat from his frail body and they clearly saw the .45 automatic stuck in the thick, black trousers belt.

  “Captain Donovan?”

  There were no formalities in meetings chaired by Faolin. Or grace. He leaned his tone on the word “Captain,” making it full of a heavy irony. He was addressing a thick-shouldered, sea-brown man with a sailing cap perched on the back of his head. Donovan stood up like a child in recitation class.

  “They’ve moved it back again, Faolin,” he said.

  “Again?”

  “Trouble with the trials on the bloody thing. One of the engines fouled. They’ve moved it back to December first—”

  “A wonder they don’t wait for spring—”

  “Indeed,” said Donovan. “A force-ten wind and it’s no go fer her.”

  “Ah, well, we can expect the great Lord Slough will have a personal word with the Almighty about holdin’ the wind down fer the crossin’,” said a third man. He had smiling eyes and a calm manner, as though the bluffness of Donovan and the sarcasm of Faolin called for a steady middle hand. His name was Tatty.

  “Indeed, Tatty,” said Faolin, who was almost deferential in manner to the mild, quizzical man in his battered old cap. Tatty’s perpetual Gallagher cigarette hung from his lip.

  “Will yer be on her?” asked the fourth man. His name was Parnell and he wore a regular shirt over the blue trousers of a Liverpool policeman.

  “Oh, aye,” said Donovan. “I’ve had the trainin’, y’see. I’m quite indispensable t’her.” He said it proudly.

  “Oh, aye,” said Faolin. “But y’re more need to us.”

  Donovan grinned. But Faolin moved on. “Tatty, y’ll apprise our friends in Liverpool of it, then?”

  “Oh, aye. They probably know by now anyway,” said Tatty. “It’ll be in the papers, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “P’raps not. It is somewhat an issue and they’ll want to throw us off by keepin’ the date secret for as long as possible—”

  “Not secret enough not to get mention of the first hovercraft service in the Irish Sea—”

  Parnell nodded. “He’s right, is Tatty. They’ll want England’
s eyes all on her as she crosses—”

  “The eyes of the world if we do it right,” said Faolin.

  “The world,” repeated Donovan dreamily. He could not conceive it.

  Faolin let them talk on about the details of the plan. Details were not important to him a month before the event. Faolin would cut through the details at the proper time. He thought of them as children, like the boys of the old days who had worn trench coats and dark hats in imitation of American gangsters.

  The plan was his, really; and it was perfectly matched in his mind’s eye.

  He had come to the chiefs of the IRA Provos with a plan they were willing to accept.

  The IRA was in desperate trouble after nearly a decade of civil war and urban-guerrilla actions in Northern Ireland. The bombings in England had not cowed the English and had not made them weary of their dirty little war. Likewise, the bombings in the South had not stirred the Irish public to support—rather the opposite. The greatest mistake of all had been the bombing in the center of Dublin which had killed nearly two dozen poor shoppers.

  Faolin had argued persuasively that such bombings did not finally terrorize but rather enervated people and made them accept the horror of random death with the fatalism of people who must live with it every day. The way the Londoners were in the Second War, he had said: Each day that passed made them stronger, more resistant to the Nazi terror from the sky. The same thing appeared to have happened to the Americans in their war in Vietnam, he said.

  The hearts and minds of the Irish must be rallied again to the Cause by a bold and stunning action which would both finance the future—and direct the attention of the ordinary people toward their true enemies.

  The council had listened gravely—spellbound—to this glittering, twisted man as he laid the plan out to them.

  No more bombings, he had said. Not just to end the horror, but to lull the British into thinking the IRA was giving up.