Code Name November

by Bill Granger

  What did Hanley drink?

  She would shrug and say she did not remember.

  He would come back to it again, circling back, edging the conversation: What did Hanley drink?

  Scotch, she thought. He didn’t seem to like to drink.

  Elizabeth had been given the codes and tested on them. She had studied at one of the four schools in the East in which R had set up special sections for their agents in training. Her instructor had been a Sixth Man named Petersen.

  Devereaux didn’t know him.

  She had been to R Section once, walked through the offices. Agents rarely appeared at the Section—it was a rule established by Stapleton when he had been the chief of R. He did not want clerks to know agents or the other way around.

  Devereaux was convinced finally that Elizabeth told him the truth. Or her part of the truth.

  But he could not believe that Hanley had set up a ghost organization in R Section to spy on the spies. It was too bizarre; there had been only one serious defection from R in nearly fifteen years—when Dobson had defected while serving as field agent in Cambodia. That had been nearly seven years before.

  Still… the facts: An agent named Blatchford had attempted to kill him; Blatchford had identification that seemed authentic; now Elizabeth confessed she worked for Hanley as well. But Denisov had said Blatchford was a CIA agent. Did the CIA, then, have a ghost R Section? Perfect down to the details of Hanley’s drinking habits? And why?

  Finally, he could not shake Elizabeth’s story, so he left her; Devereaux was confused and tired and felt disoriented by the knowledge that there existed a ghost Section, even a “ghost Devereaux”—whom Denisov had killed.

  Devereaux walked slowly back to the hotel, along the wet pavement, dimly aware of shapes of buildings and hills through the mists swirling down upon the city. He was surprised to discover he felt a sliver of pain because of Elizabeth’s betrayal—betrayal of his bed and his little bit of love and their common pasts. When he identified the reason for his pain, he dismissed it; it was no more than another of the inexplicable aches he carried.

  For a long while after Devereaux left, Elizabeth sat still on the single wooden chair in her room and looked at the photograph on the desk; he had left it in her purse and she had removed it. She stared at the picture of the child and at her younger self; she tried to catalogue her feelings but could not.

  She could have told Devereaux about why she joined R Section—or what she had believed to be R Section. But she did not; she understood that Devereaux was not interested in her emotions or in her vague feelings of needing some sort of occupation to fill up the empty corners of her life and sweep out all that had been in the past.

  Including the little boy and the happier time.

  She was not so pale then, she noticed; her face was fuller and smiling. She would have judged her younger self even unfashionably plump, as though her contentment then had settled itself in her body and made it ripe and blooming. Like a flower.

  The little boy stared at her from the photograph; she might be a stranger. Would he have known her now? Would he have said “Mother”? Of course not. It was maudlin to think about death and after death. There was no little boy anymore; he was a memory imperfectly captured by an old photograph, a photograph kept by a lonely young woman to provide wounds when needed. Was she so masochistic, then? Of course not. But she needed the pain of remembering all that had happened.

  After a long time, Elizabeth rose and began to take her clothes off. She let the wet clothes fall in a pile at her feet. Then she trudged like a sleepwalker into the bathroom and took all the things he had torn apart and dumped them in the waste can under the sink. Turning on the shower, she waited until the steam of the hot water filled the room and then she stepped into the tub, hoping the water would restore her.

  When she got out, she did not feel better or worse.

  She wrapped the towel around her.

  She had wrapped the towel around her body in that anonymous room in London and gone to him, lying on the bed, had stood by him and let him caress her until it was time for them to make love to each other; he had opened her legs and touched the lips of her sex and she had closed her eyes at the touch, gentle touch; she had waited and let him touch her until they knew they must hold each other.

  She opened her eyes now and shook her head and went into the bedroom; nothing of the nightmare present had changed, not even its reminders. There was the pile of dirty clothes on the floor where she had dropped them and the photograph of the little boy and her opened dresser drawers, all her clothes and possessions violated and abandoned. She went to the bed and wanted to lay down and sleep; but she could not sleep, she knew, and the room was closing in on her, forcing the past and present together, and the jumble of thoughts pushed against her as physically painful as a wound.

  She cleaned the room suddenly and compulsively, whirling through the work, making the bed, putting clothes away, like a housewife suddenly caught unawares by unexpected company. When she finished, she began to cry.

  On the other side of the city, in the blackness, there was an explosion.

  It wasn’t any good; she was going to drive herself mad.

  Elizabeth got up finally and pulled on a dress and her coat and left the room. She made sure all the lights were on.

  She rode down to the lobby in an empty elevator.

  When the doors opened to the lobby, she heard distant noises in the streets beyond the hotel: The cry of ambulances and the curious relentless ringing of the police cars. Someone had died, someone had been hurt, there had been another bomb; it was the usual symphony of Belfast at night.

  Elizabeth went into the hotel bar and ordered a double whisky with ice and drank it while the bartender watched her, disapproving.

  She finished it and ordered a second; she wanted to feel the whisky inside her.

  At first, Elizabeth did not even notice the man next to her until he spoke. He was an American with a flat voice.

  He was pretty, she decided as she sipped her whisky. He had blond hair and small, almost delicate hands. He was the sort of man some strong women keep as pets, the sort who would be weak and wasteful but too charming to get rid of.

  The second whisky had no warmth; it only eased the pains. She ordered a third and realized she was going to be drunk and that was what she had wanted.

  The man next to her was speaking to her and the Irish bartender stared at her.

  It didn’t matter. She finished the third double and, feeling unsteady, signed her room number on the tab and left a careful tip. She realized she always left a tip, even when they didn’t like her or were rude to her or gave poor service; she was afraid not to tip.

  The American beside her spoke again.

  What was he saying? The voice was plastic, smooth, without seams. When Devereaux spoke, it was flat and harsh, like winter.

  He suggested they make love?

  She looked at him; no, she wanted to be warm and there was no warmth in the young, blue eyes, so sure of themselves. She felt old with him.

  “Go ’way,” Elizabeth said, surprised by the slur in her voice: Though the thoughts still raced through her mind like a speeded-up film, they were becoming dimmer. It didn’t hurt now.

  She climbed off the stool awkwardly and went back to the lobby. She fumbled for her key and then walked slowly across the lobby—slowly and carefully, pretending not to be drunk—and waited at the elevator door.

  She did not notice the American had left the bar as well.

  She did not see him go to the stairs.

  When the elevator came at last, she entered the cubicle and pushed her floor number; the doors closed uncertainly and the elevator began its slow ascent. It creaked as it moved, cables and wheels straining as though the elevator had not been used for a long time.

  At last, the doors reopened and she stepped into the dim-lit corridor.

  There was a pop, like the explosion of a light bulb.

  Then
she felt pain from the spray of wood. The bullet had thudded into the balustrade at the stairs behind her.

  She thought of Devereaux: Had he returned to kill her? He had promised twenty-four hours. It was so unfair—

  The young blond man stepped out of the shadows. She saw the pistol, the pale blue eyes that were too young.

  Some instinct forced her back into the elevator, and the doors hissed shut again just as the second bullet struck them. At the level of her face.

  Frantically, she pushed the “L” button. Slowly and reluctantly, the elevator grumbled to the main floor.

  She stared at the doors with wide, frightened eyes; her naturally pale face had turned ashen. Yet, a part of her was calm—who had come to kill her? Why?

  She knew he was running down the steps that surrounded the elevator shaft, running to meet her in the lobby. To kill her.

  The doors groaned open at the lobby; the night concierge, at the desk across the floor from the elevator, looked up, startled.

  The blond man emerged from the staircase. She could not see the gun. He smiled to her. “Come here, Elizabeth,” he said.

  Slowly, she walked across the lobby toward the desk. “I want a telephone,” she began. The young clerk pushed a telephone towards her. “You can use this, miss, or the telephone booth in—”

  “This will be fine,” she said. She turned away from him as she dialed—was zero the number for operator in Britain?

  It was. She heard the tired voice at the other end of the line.

  “Please. I’m in the Royal Avenue Hotel and there’s a bomb in the lobby. Please notify the police.” She said it calmly and reasonably. Then she put down the telephone and turned back to face the blond man across the lobby floor. She smiled to him, returning his pasted-on smile.

  He did not understand; he glanced nervously around him.

  She waited, staring at him.

  And then he saw the first policemen at the door, pushing into the hotel. The night clerk ran to the door in greeting. And so did Elizabeth. The blond man ran up the stairs as unobtrusively as he could.

  Elizabeth hurried past the policemen into the street. “There’s a blond-haired man in there, up the stairs. He told me he hid a bomb in the hotel. He has a gun,” she cried.

  The startled police ran for the stairs. There was confusion on the street. No one looked at her. The bartender came out of the lobby bar and stared at the policemen.

  And Elizabeth ran.

  Down the wet, glistening street. She ran until she felt the stitch in her side traveling up into her back. She kept running until she had no more breath.

  Her heels clicked on the pavement. There were no cars, only the ringing bells of the police wagons coming from far away.

  A church bell banged the hour of one, solemnly.

  Devereaux had not come to kill her.

  They had sent someone else.

  The Section wanted to kill her. As they wanted to kill Devereaux. The Section was mad; the world was mad; she was going to die.

  She stood at the last intersection on Royal Avenue by the ornate city hall and shivered; there was a mist over the city but a kind of calm with it. No rain, no more wind.

  She felt utterly alone.

  The city waited for her, bleakly; the stupid stones stared at her. She touched the lining of her coat for the money. The lining was ripped; the money was gone. She did not even have her purse. Only the key to her room.

  She couldn’t go back. Would they catch him? Would they kill him?

  There was no place to run to.

  He was responsible; Devereaux was responsible; he had stripped her past from her; he had killed her.

  She remembered the photograph she’d left on the dresser. She yearned for it.

  The Section wanted to kill her and kill Devereaux.

  Devereaux heard her knock; heard her voice at the door.

  He was not asleep. He had been sitting in the chair by the window, dressed, staring at the mist from the hills. There was a long open cable on his lap. It confirmed that Elizabeth worked for the CIA and that Free The Prisoners was a CIA front. And it asked, in Hanley’s faintly sarcastic way, what all this had to do with the matter at hand? Now that R Section was too late to uncover the plot against Lord Slough? Or did he ever read the newspapers? All the last had been archly worded, in a kind of jargon code. The cable and the paper had been waiting for him when he returned to the hotel.

  Devereaux had read about the assassination attempt on the life of Lord Slough and about the murder of the Irish tutor and of Lord Slough’s English bodyguard. He had read about a man named Toolin. And he had been sitting, wondering about why someone would try to kill him to prevent him learning about an isolated event taking place three thousand miles away.

  He had not resolved the question when he heard her knock. Getting out of the chair, Devereaux took his gun from the dresser and went to the door. He heard her voice. He waited.

  “Dev,” she said again. “They tried to kill me.”

  He let the catch on the door fall; he pulled off the deadlock and twisted the door handle. The door opened inward slowly, of itself and of Elizabeth’s weight against it. She rushed into the room. He stood against the wall with the gun and looked at her.

  He pushed the door shut again with his foot and rolled back the deadlock. “Take your coat off and stand away from it.”

  She turned to stare at him. She took her coat off and threw it on the floor and backed away.

  “Turn around.”

  She turned to the window.

  He went to the coat, felt it, dropped it. He went to her. He held the gun to her head as he felt along her body. He touched her legs, her breasts, without a feeling of really touching. She stood still and let him search her. Finally, he was through. He walked to the other side of the room.

  “They sent someone to kill me after you left.”

  He stood and watched her. She did not turn around.

  “A man with blond hair. He had a gun. And a silencer, I suppose. He fired but it hit the elevator door and I went back inside and I went down. I called the police and said there was a bomb and then I ran. They tried to kill me. It was your fault. They tried to kill you. I ran here.”

  He just stared at her.

  “My God, they’re going to kill us,” she said.

  Putting the gun in his overcoat, he took it to the closet and hung it up. Slowly, he took off his corduroy jacket, draping it over the back of a chair.

  She turned around at last and leaned on the window ledge.

  He sat down in a chair without speaking. Then he looked at her. She looked frightened and brave, he thought. But looks lie; eyes lie; words lie. Even bodies do not tell the truth, or affection or lovemaking. Was she lying? Did it matter?

  He got up and went to her.

  He took her hand. He looked at her.

  Does it matter?

  “I don’t want to die, Dev,” Elizabeth said.

  Devereaux held her then. Felt her tremble. Felt her yielding softness. Felt a little of her fear and all of his own; of his own loneliness and confusion. His thoughts were in anarchy; he did not understand. He could not keep track of the lie or counterlie anymore; he could not tell what had happened or would happen.

  Only what was. Now.

  What could he tell her? What words would be balm?

  He stood, finally, just holding her in the half-darkness of his room, while the mists from the mountains came down into the city and obscured the steeples of the churches beyond his window.

  12

  LONDON

  They slept together finally, not as lovers—they did not make love—but as tired animals, huddling for warmth against the cold. Holding each other in sleep, the rhythm of their breathing became as twins, waiting for the world beyond in a womb of sleep and dreams. Elizabeth cried out once and Devereaux heard her. He cupped his body around hers, belly to back, arm over arm. He felt her naked body and it was part of his own; she felt him, smelled him, l
et his arms encircle her shoulders, and fell asleep in a kind of dream of awakeness. She had cried out not when the man shot at her but when David died.

  Morning broke, full of wintry foreboding. A new, more cruel wind seemed to come down from the ring of watching hills.

  Devereaux awoke first, waited.

  Heard her breath. He kept his eyes opened, smelled her hair. When she awoke, finally, and stirred and felt him next to her, she did not speak. He had to say the first thing.

  They lay, cupped, and waited.

  He would not speak.

  He knew there were words in him but he could not say them. He wanted them to be spoken, wanted to give her what she wanted to hear.

  “Devereaux,” she said at last. The cloudy light flooded the room and made all the colors only shades of black and white. She did not move but was still in his encircling arms. She looked at his wrists.

  “Devereaux,” she said again. “Are we going to die?”

  “No, Elizabeth,” he said, as if he were telling a child there is no death and that morning always follows darkness.

  “Dev,” she said. “I didn’t know I could be afraid. I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore. And then that man with the gun. I was afraid of you, too. Last night.”

  Don’t be afraid. I wouldn’t have killed you. It didn’t happen. He said none of those lies.

  “Dev.” Pause. She could not see him, only feel his body next to her. “I didn’t care. The first night. When I met you. I didn’t care about. About this—about going to bed with you. It was just… just the job.”

  Don’t speak. Don’t speak.

  She seemed to understand. She was quiet. He held her tighter. Then he kissed her. Once. Tenderly. Behind her ear. He kissed her once again, on her neck. Then he was quiet, too, lying still in the bed, watching nothing. Waiting and listening until it would be all right.

  You can’t wait for that, he thought; it’s never all right. The cold doesn’t end. The darkness has no morning on the other side.

  She felt him pulling back from her, turning in the bed; felt her body falling toward him on the sheet. She closed her eyes; felt him kiss her on the eyelid, then on her breast. Softly and then clumsily, in want. He kissed her belly.