Code Name November

by Bill Granger

  “I told her it was safe.”

  “It was a risk that had to be taken.”

  And Devereaux knew everything Hanley said was right. He replaced the receiver and stared at his hand on the telephone while he tried to understand what he felt. He had given his word before. What a curious thing for him to say. What did his word mean? Nothing, only as much as he meant it to; he always drew the definitions and the reservations in his own mind.

  But there had been no reservation when he spoke to Elizabeth at Belfast Airport.

  Or when he had held her, naked, in his bed, in the gray morning of that city; when he had promised her there was no reason to be afraid. When he had told her they would not die.

  Now it was past six P.M.

  Was she dead already, on this Sunday? Had they already killed her?

  Wildly, he wanted to ring Blake House, to ask for her. He took the receiver off the hook. And then replaced it.

  Past six P.M. on Sunday night.

  He pushed out of the booth and turned right and left and then ran to a ticket desk at the end of the corridor. But the next flight to London was not for two hours.

  There was nothing he could do, nothing he could control.

  20

  LONDON

  Ruckles was right, thought Green. It had been extremely simple.

  At first, Green was worried about carrying off the deception. He wondered if he would have the courage to kill Elizabeth if she questioned the false cable from Devereaux. Ruckles had said it was important enough for Green to blow his cover if need be; if Elizabeth became suspicious, Green was to eliminate her in the house and then flee.

  Ruckles had assured him that he would be taken care of.

  Still, Green had worried about the cable and about the killing all the way back from The Orange Man.

  Elizabeth had not questioned the cable at all.

  She had only asked how far Victoria Station was and would she be there in time, and he had been at his best, soothing and reassuring. She’d changed her clothing and taken only her purse and passport.

  It was so easy.

  Green hailed a cab in the street and had it waiting at the door when she emerged onto the sidewalk, shrugging into her coat.

  She thanked him. He blushed.

  And then she was driven away.

  Elizabeth sat hunched in the back seat of the cab, thinking of Devereaux, wondering if it was all over now, and what would that mean to her? Would it be safe? But he had said it would be safe.

  The cab swung into the hurly-burly of autos crowded around the entrance of Victoria Station and the cockney driver reached to turn the handle on the back door for her. She paid him, overtipping, and hurried through the crowd at the entrance into the great terminal with its high, soaring ironwork over the tangle of iron tracks.

  Victoria Station was exciting, even on a quiet Sunday afternoon, when one realized it was the main rail terminus for trains to and from the Continent.

  Elizabeth glanced around, confused for the moment at the advertising signs and the bright W. H. Smith Sons magazine kiosks. Then she saw the ticket counter. She did not notice the man who stood behind her, absurdly trying to bury his large face behind a small Sunday Mirror. In fact, she had not noticed the car that had followed her cab all the way from Blake House to the train terminals.

  Devereaux. He must be so close, she thought, as she purchased the second-class ticket for Dover and found the gate for the Dover train. The message had said he would meet her in the last second-class carriage.

  She climbed aboard. It was one of the older British Rail carriages. The seats in the compartments were stiff and musty.

  The train was not crowded; it was late in the fall and this train did not connect with a ferry at Dover. Finding a compartment that was empty, she slid open the door and went inside. She sat down at the window and looked out, expecting to see Devereaux at any moment waving to her, coming down the platform.

  Elizabeth smiled to herself; it was too romantic. But it was a pleasant thought. They would be alone.

  The door of the compartment slid open again and she turned, her daydream shattered by the appearance of a large, middle-aged Englishwoman in tweed skirt and formidable black hat.

  “Hello, dear,” the woman said and lurched inside, throwing a small, flowered satchel on the rack above the seat near the aisle. “Terrible weather, ain’t it.” The woman was loud and vulgar and her breath smelled bad.

  Elizabeth turned away and looked out the window.

  “I hope it ain’t to be overcrowded.” The woman in the black hat chattered on. But Elizabeth didn’t look at her.

  “Ya like some chocolates, dear?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No, thank you,” she said, not turning.

  “I like me chocolates,” said the woman. “This ain’t the smokin’ carriage, is it?”

  No Smoking signs were pasted on the glass of the door and the windows. Elizabeth pointed to them.

  “Ah, that’s a relief, dear,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to make the mistake I made Friday. I was in a smoking carriage and this gentleman he came in and sat down and he lights himself a great black cigar. Now I says, ‘Can’t ya bloody read it’s no smokin’?’ And he comes back and says, ‘Yer the one that can’t read, it says smokin’, don’t it?’ and he was right.” She cackled then.

  “Sure you don’t want a chocolate, dear?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Elizabeth looked again out the window. The clock at the concourse gate read three minutes to four. He wasn’t out there. No one, except the conductor and a man with a newspaper in front of his face.

  Where was he?

  The Englishwoman pulled a long thin hatpin from the crown of her black hat. But it was not a hatpin. It was too thick. The Englishwoman rose slowly.

  Elizabeth continued to stare out the window at the man with the newspaper. He had lowered it suddenly and was staring back at her. His eyes were wide and frightened behind the rimless glasses. Suddenly, he raised his hand as though he wanted to make an alarm.

  Elizabeth was like a sleeper caught in a nightmare, struggling to cross from the dream to wakefulness. Her movements seemed slow. She saw the Englishwoman reflected in the window glass…

  Turn.

  The face of the Englishwoman was twisted into a hideous grimace as she thrust the stiletto forward, the gleaming tip at Elizabeth’s throat.

  Elizabeth fell back instinctively and threw up her arm against the onrushing form. The deadly thin knife grazed her coat, tore the material, and neatly skewered the seat cushion behind her. The Englishwoman fell forward heavily onto Elizabeth and slapped her in the face with a doubled fist. She heaved the stiletto out of the seat cushion and plunged it again towards Elizabeth’s body.

  This time it entered flesh.

  Elizabeth screamed.

  Blood appeared on the cloth of her coat where the knife had entered her upraised arm. Again, Elizabeth cried out and pushed against the bulky woman with all her strength.

  The face of the Englishwoman was very near, broad and mottled, twisted in some sort of awful mask of hatred. She was so close that Elizabeth saw the little traces of mustache at the ends of lips; her lipstick was crooked and her teeth were stained dark with shreds of chocolate. She seemed overpowering.

  Blood was already staining a dark circle on Elizabeth’s raincoat. Her right arm felt heavy.

  She pulled her knee up and pushed hard against the woman, sliding the point of the knee between the broad thighs and then pulling it up, cracking hard against her public bone.

  The Englishwoman cried out.

  The knife came down again but Elizabeth moved under it and pushed up, lifting the bulk of the large body and slamming the woman’s head against the luggage rack behind her.

  She reached for the wrist with the knife and, twisting, threw her body into the Englishwoman again.

  The knife fell without a sound onto the seat cushions.

  Elizabeth felt th
e blow on the back of her neck and fell forward, onto the seat, the knife under her. She felt the handle pressing against her right breast.

  The next blow would kill her.

  Her teeth ached, her eyes saw flashes of color, her right arm was numb.

  Elizabeth rolled over, grasping the knife with her right arm. The blow came down at that moment onto her collarbone.

  The bulky woman cursed and raised her arms again, together, as though she were a fighter raising his arms in triumph. And then came down again, hands together.

  Elizabeth pushed the stiletto up, into the tweedy fabric of the short coat, into the breast. The weight of the woman’s blow struck Elizabeth again on the shoulder even as her fat body slid on top of her.

  At that moment the train lurched to a start; it was four.

  The Englishwoman only stared at her, as though she were asking if she wanted a sweet. And then the line of blood began to form at the corners of her mouth.

  Elizabeth pushed—once, twice—and threw the staring body off her. Scrambling up then, she looked down at the stiletto stuck into the fat woman’s body.

  She wanted to scream and then she wanted to run and then she wanted to be sick. The feelings came over her quickly and fled as quickly; instead, she pushed her way into the corridor. Empty. Running to the exit door at the end of the carriage, she pushed furiously at the latch. The door opened with a groan.

  She was in the last car of the train; the engine was already out of the station’s canopy of iron and glass. The car was near the end of the long platform.

  She dropped off the slow-moving train, falling onto the concrete, and rolled forward for a moment. She had lost a shoe as she fell. She scraped her hands and knees and felt dizzy. For a moment, she lay at the end of the platform, in the dusky light of the sky filtering through the glass roof. The train moved on, unconcerned; she saw the red lamps of the last car winking off into the twilight.

  Slowly, Elizabeth rose.

  There was no one near her. She found her shoe on the track and put it on.

  Money and a lipstick tube had fallen from her purse. She picked them up slowly and replaced them, as though still in a dream.

  The telegram lay on the platform.

  From Belfast. From Devereaux. A telegram sent to kill her. She had worried about Devereaux and the Section; what would they decide about her? Devereaux had said it was safe; that it would be decided later.

  She saw the blood darken on the sleeve of her raincoat.

  So they had decided. Devereaux and the Section.

  Slowly, she began to limp down the platform, back towards the main concourse.

  She felt drained, used up. She had killed the one sent to kill her.

  Sent by Devereaux.

  They had slept together and traded promises. It would be safe. They would not die. He had wrapped his arms around her and she had felt the hardness of his body press against her, his legs against her legs; she had formed herself in the fork of his body. And then they had made love. He had opened her legs and placed himself in her, deeply into her, and stayed there for a long time, holding her, filling, surrounding her.

  She saw the dead, staring face of the Englishwoman. Sent by Devereaux. She had never killed before. Killing was something they spoke of in training; she had seen death a long time before, in the dust of Addis Ababa, a slow death of bloated bellies and cries in the night.

  And David’s death. So still, lying on the street where he had been struck.

  There was no more horror left in her.

  Now there was no safe house or way to end the game except to die; there was no way out.

  She had betrayed R Section and the ghost Section; or were they the same? It didn’t matter. She was beyond both: Both wanted her dead and there was no way to stop it.

  Not that death mattered.

  She reached the concourse. A couple stared at her and then walked away quickly. A little girl with a Raggedy Ann doll stared at her and sucked her thumb.

  Why did he send someone else?

  She would have let Devereaux kill her, easily. She would have waited in the train for him to come to her. They would have gone to a place where he would have made love to her and then fallen asleep with her. She would have slept in the curve of his body, next to him, trusting and open in her nakedness. He could have taken her life as lightly as a whisper. She would have been a gentle victim, taking death like a gift.

  Goddam him.

  Now there was no safe house; there was no one to go to anymore.

  At midnight, the great clock in the dim hallway sounded the sixteen notes of the Westminster chime and then began to boom the hours. Almost unconsciously, Green counted them while he sat in the library with his large glass of vodka in ice and orange juice. There was no more time for posturing drinks or for wearing the façade of an Englishman.

  Of course, it was impossible to sleep; impossible to think since the signal from Ruckles.

  He had been awakened from a drink-induced stupor an hour before.

  The beeper beside his bed had begun the strange chirping sound—rather like a mechanical bird—which meant Ruckles wanted to contact him urgently.

  He had struggled out of sleep with foreboding. His mouth was dry. He realized he had been dreaming about the woman with brown hair. Elizabeth. A traitor.

  He called Ruckles at the special number.

  “She got away,” was all the Virginian said.

  Green waited, his hand trembling.

  “Took out our agent,” said Ruckles.

  No. It was part of the dream. He opened his mouth but could not speak.

  “Wake up, boy,” said Ruckles. “Our bird has flown. We can’t find her. The agent was wasted.”

  No, not a dream. “What can I do?”

  “This is our last contact,” said Ruckles slowly. “We’ve just received orders to close down Operation Mirror.”

  “But.” Green began to sputter, stopped, glanced around the darkness of his bedroom.

  “Sorry, old man,” Ruckles said. “I wanted to tell you myself. Better get rid of the tape transmitter in the scrambler box. For your sake.”

  “You’re closing down the operation?” Green was unable to comprehend the current sentence, only the previous one.

  “It’s blown,” said Ruckles.

  “Then I’m blown,” said Green. He was awake now. The horror of it began to strangle him.

  “Probably. Although I don’t suppose our bird will surface for a long time, if ever. We don’t know though. But the company wants to close it down. We got the message an hour ago.”

  “But you were going to take me in—”

  “We can’t do that,” Ruckles said reasonably. “It didn’t work out. We were going to take you in when Mirror succeeded.”

  “But it’s not finished.”

  “Nope. That’s the way it goes sometimes.”

  Green held the telephone receiver with two hands in fear he might drop it. “But Ruckles. I’m out here alone. You’ve got to take me in. If they know it was me.”

  “It’d be easier if you were with the opposition. But we’re part of the same government. We can’t do it.”

  “But we served the President, we—”

  “Easy now, Green. It’s a rough stick, old pal. I had to call you myself, let you know.”

  “They’ll kill me.”

  There was a pause. “Not necessarily.”

  Not necessarily. Green could not speak, so Ruckles interpreted his silence.

  “Don’t go catatonic on me, Green. Be calm. Just get rid of the tape transmitter in the scrambler box and you’ll be just f—”

  Green let the receiver fall. He sat for a long time in his pajamas and stared into the darkness. They would get him; they would make the connection. And now the company wouldn’t take him in.

  So he fumbled downstairs in the darkness, the whole of Blake House silent save for the relentless tick-tick-tick of the clock. Would Uncle Hubert be able to save him? Would he w
ant to save him?

  Green felt ashamed though he hadn’t betrayed anyone; he had merely served his country and worked against his country’s enemies. Against traitors like the woman and like Devereaux.

  He made his first drink. And then a second.

  He went to the library and turned on a small table lamp and waited in the shadows; outside, it was raining, a cold, remorseless rain of winter.

  When he looked up again and saw him in the doorway, Green was beyond surprise. He had been expecting him. He sat in the red leather chair and stared at the apparition in the doorway.

  “Devereaux.”

  He did not move out of the doorway into the light. “Where is she?”

  “Gone.”

  It was so hopeless. He took the glass from the table and drank and then put it down again. Even the booze didn’t work anymore.

  “Where has she gone?”

  He needed to explain; it wasn’t his fault. “They told me to give her a message. It was from Belfast. From you.”

  The rain lashed against the panes of glass; the window rattled. “Where is Elizabeth?” The voice was low and almost still, like a dark pool.

  Green looked up. He couldn’t see Devereaux clearly. “How did you get in?”

  There was no answer.

  “This is a safe house.”

  “There are no safe houses.”

  Green shrugged. “You’re right.” He looked at the ice cubes in the glass, melting into the yellow liquid. “Not for me anymore. Or for her.”

  There was a snap.

  He had heard that sound before. The click of a gun’s hammer. “Where is she?”

  The hall clock sounded the quarter-hour with four notes of the Westminster chime. Then nothing but the stately tick-tick-tick.

  “I gave her the message. To meet you. On the four o’clock Dover train at Victoria Station.”

  Almost imperceptibly, Devereaux moved; Green could see the black gun in his hand.

  “I don’t want to die,” Green said quietly.

  “No one wants to die.”

  “No. Of course. You’re right.”

  “She went to Victoria Station to meet me?”

  “Yes. She thought that. They sent someone to eliminate her. I don’t like that word.”