The November Man (23 page)

“You gave Gorki all the information. It was so good. He knew where to send Alexa. He wanted to get rid of Alexa.”

“I know. She was an embarrassment to him. The old fool had photographs of her naked and dancing. Pictures of them together. Stolen New Year’s Eve from his dacha. He has his enemies in the bureaucracy as we do. I had word that he was coming out when the matter was over. Voluntarily or not. My little reward. After November was dead and the R Section spies were defected, Gorki was coming out. He was tired and old and he had enemies.”

“Which side were you on?”

“I didn’t care about Gorki, except that I could get credit for his defection. R Section was going to be ruined by Nutcracker. Let CIA get credit, NSA, the Brits for pulling in some low-level Soviet flotsam… Gorki set that up as one of his bona fides, to show he was going ahead with the program. The grand prize was Gorki himself from Resolutions Committee. I would arrange the meeting myself—”

“You’re a fool, Weinstein. Gorki gave you crap.”

“They were low-level agents—”

“Gorki gave you a Protestant minister and an opera singer. He targeted innocents and turned them over to half a dozen intelligence agencies. Gorki isn’t coming out. And Gorki was going to take credit for bringing in all the R Section people you were willing to betray. Gorki—whoever Gorki is—is a survivor. He got rid of Alexa—he was going to have her killed in Switzerland and put the blame on me—but it didn’t matter if she killed me first and then you got her. In any case, she was no longer a problem to the man in Moscow. She wasn’t going back to the Soviet Union to cause him trouble just by being alive. An old man learns to survive in a bureaucracy just because he’s practiced all the tricks.”

“We would have her. Ivers. It was pressure on him—”

“You’re a fool in the long run, aren’t you, Perry?” Devereaux’s eyes seemed to glitter in the strong afternoon light. “I was asleep in Switzerland, dead to the world.” For a moment, the two men were silent, considering the image of a sleeping agent, buried in a country at the edge of the world of spies. “You goddamn fool,” Devereaux said at last. “I was on that ship in the Baltic as far as
Gorki knew—and then you let your contact know that I’m still alive in Switzerland, the real agent named November, because Hanley had called me, because Yackley had tapped his line, because you saw the transcript and saw that I had heard something about a nutcracker. One wrong conclusion and all the rest comes tumbling down and you had to believe that your masters would get Gorki out of Moscow, one way or another. Gorki must have a sense of humor, whoever he is. He played you the fool for so long you still don’t understand that’s what you are.”

“Shut up,” Perry Weinstein said. His voice hissed and a vein in his neck seemed enlarged. “Shut the fuck up.”

“And I would have stayed asleep in Switzerland but you sent those chasers after me—”

“Yackley did. To talk to you. They were only sent to talk to you and you killed them and—”

“Killing and killing and everything came down because of it. Because you made so many smart moves that you couldn’t move at all. And you forced me to come back into the cold, into the trade.”

“There is no cold,” Weinstein said. “Don’t you understand a goddamn thing I tried to tell you? Are you as stupid as the rest of them?”

Devereaux dropped his hands on his lap. He was smiling.

A damned smile. A damned smug smile. Weinstein picked up the pistol and came around the desk. “Nothing matters,” he said, regaining a tone he had lost in the last minute. “You’re dead. The real November is dead. And I’ll be more careful in the future. A little setback along the way. I can assure you that Hanley is finished in Section and that’s a victory—one less HUMINT believer.
And we’ll put a new man in for Neumann in CompAn and—”

“You won’t survive,” Devereaux said. He said it so certainly that Perry Weinstein paused. The pistol was fixed in front of him, pointed at Devereaux’s face.

“I’ll survive you. It’s time to kill. End of the game, end of words.”

He held the pistol in exactly the right grip, with the legs in a stance, the pistol in the right hand and the left hand around the right wrist to support its weight. Everything was exactly right.

Except for Devereaux’s size. A petty miscalculation. His legs were longer than they seemed.

Devereaux’s right foot reached the barrel just as Weinstein fired.

The shot singed his hairline and there was blood on Devereaux’s scalp. He went down because the kick pushed him back off balance. His legs went flying. He rolled and Perry Weinstein brought the pistol down and fired again.

The shot destroyed a foot of plaster.

Devereaux braced, kicked out with both feet, making his legs points of a projectile. His feet slammed into Weinstein’s left side. The pain crushed the breath out of Weinstein and the third shot went into the ceiling.

Devereaux was up again, seeming to spring up like a halfback from a tangle of bodies on the football field. He grasped the gun hand and the gun exploded a fourth time.

Devereaux brought Weinstein’s wrist down hard on the edge of the desk and Perry gripped the trigger in pain and a fifth and sixth shot went off.

Devereaux cracked his wrist.

The pain went white, right up to Weinstein’s eyes.

Devereaux moved in close, chopped at the damaged left side.

Weinstein was big and strong but very slow. He was taller than Devereaux. He grabbed the smaller man’s face in his left claw and tore it. There was blood on the cheeks.

Devereaux stepped back.

Weinstein pushed him very hard with his whole body and exploded his body against the north wall. Devereaux hit the wall hard. He went to one knee.

The second pistol—a very light Walther—was on the desk top. Weinstein reached for it and the pain of his broken right wrist paralyzed him.

Devereaux pushed off the wall and slammed again into Weinstein, pushing his body against the desk.

Weinstein had the pistol in his left hand—not his shooting hand. He brought it around and the trigger wouldn’t pull. The safety was on. It was enough.

Devereaux hit him with a very heavy right hand square in the face, breaking his jaw and sending his glasses broken and sprawling across the desk top.

Perry blinked with pain that engulfed him like fear. It rose in his belly and reached for his throat and blinded his eyes.

The room was all sounds without speech. The shots lingered in echoes that nearly deafened both of them. They grunted with pain and effort. Weinstein brought the pistol down hard against Devereaux’s head and he went down.

Weinstein stood over the body for a moment.

He pointed the pistol at Devereaux’s head and unclicked the safety. He went to the outer door and stood there and looked at the twin monitors on the desk.

And then he saw it.

Terror crept over his broken features. The eyes were wide. He saw the horror of it.

It was there, on the monitor, the second screen.

A picture of the room he stood in. A picture of Devereaux on the floor by the desk. The monitor had been turned to the room. Someone had put a goddamn spy camera in his private room. Recording everything he had said to Devereaux. He looked up at the ceiling and still could not see the camera that had recorded everything.

And now they were coming, all of them coming. He saw them in the lobby on the other monitor. He heard the machinery of the elevator whirring beyond his outer office.

It was so damned clever of them.

But there was one way to escape.

He put the barrel of the Walther PPK in his mouth and squeezed the trigger easily. The trigger, unchecked by the safety, slid back to the guard.

He didn’t hear the shot at all.

T
hey sat in one of those coffee shops on Third Avenue in New York City that are full of old men and bored waitresses. The couple sat quietly in the corner. They ate and drank and talked. They talked Russian. It was good to talk Russian, for both of them.

They became lovers, as well.

Alexa disappeared from the game, just as Denisov had and by the same way of escape—through Section. She was a good defector but she knew so little about anything except killing. Gorki had gotten rid of her—the photographs had been stolen from his dacha at Christmas and Gorki knew that his enemies intended to use them against him—and yet he had betrayed very little because Alexa knew very little. She was a disappointment to the Section but not to Denisov.

Denisov had cut off two of Ivers’ fingers before Ivers learned to talk. To tell Denisov about his various errands for Perry Weinstein. Ivers had exceeded his authority and Ivers was in disgrace; worse, he was going to prison. The
thought of prison terrified Alexa when Denisov explained what would happen to Ivers.

But Alexa had been drawn to Denisov that night in the room in the motel outside Alexandria. He had been utterly cold, ruthless, and without any compassion at all. He was cruel without pleasure.

It had given her great pleasure to see his power over Ivers.

She had slept with him. She had made love to him with great skill. She had done so many things to please him and he had come awake to her. She needed him so desperately because he was like her in this damned and strange and hostile world. She felt sadness because Russia was denied them and all the Moscow nights she had yearned for as a child—when she had wanted to count the stars—were over. She needed Denisov, the Russian words, the shared remembrances. If Denisov left her, she would be utterly alone and she could not stand that.

And Denisov, sitting across from her, his eyes mild and kindly behind the rimless glasses, understood her need. It very nearly frightened him.

R
ita Macklin unsnapped her seat belt when the plane hit the runway with a thump. The airlines all caution you not to do this. Old travelers always do. She was so damned tired of traveling. The story hadn’t been in the Far East at all.

She reached under her seat for the travel bag that had been home, office, comforter, and dresser for four weeks. She thought she wanted a bath and then about three or four days of sleep. But she had only a day here and then it was back to Europe.

Back to him.

Because she was thinking of him being in a place that was not here in the bright and sterile concourse of Dulles Airport, she didn’t see him at first. And then she realized what it must have meant, his being here. She felt a coldness rise inside her.

She crossed the terminal to him.

She stood apart from him for a moment. She was so damned tired and she didn’t look her best. Her short red hair was mussed and she hadn’t worried about lipstick.
Her wide green eyes took him in. Nothing ever changed in him, she thought.

“Where are we going?” she said.

“I got you a room.”

“All right.”

It was all they said. They had too much to say to each other. He wanted to touch her. He took her bag instead and led her to the waiting car.

“Are you back?” she said, getting in the car. Her voice was dull, tired.

“Yes. In a way.”

“That’s the end of it,” she said.

“I want to talk to you,” he said.

And she did not answer him.

Rita Macklin slept in the afternoon and into the evening. When she woke up, in the darkened bedroom, she was alone. She stumbled to the bath and took a long shower to ease the coldness that pressed between her shoulders. She held her sharply etched face up to the shower and let the water stream down on her. The water did not warm her.

She dressed in her “press conference” clothes. The skirt was washable—everything was washable and unwrinkleable—and so was the blouse. They were blue. He liked the way she looked in blue, though he never said these things to her.

She wasn’t angry with him. She was just saddened.

She put on earrings. She brushed her hair. Her body was tanned by the Oriental sun. He had spoiled everything by being here, in Washington. She had wanted him so much. Not words, not tears, just touch and tasting. To be next to him when they slept. To have his arm draped
over her shoulders. To burrow into him. To go to sleep with the smell of him next to her and awake and lick him awake. My God, she just had wanted him and not words and this stupid conversation that was going to have to be finished.

The note on the desk said he was sitting in the lounge off the lobby.

“Why?”

“Because they woke me up. Killers. Come to kill me in Switzerland. It was just a mistake. They made an error in judgment.”

“I want a beer,” she said.

She sat next to him at the end of the long, weekday-empty bar. It was nearly nine at night. She was wide awake.

He started at the beginning and told her everything. She didn’t ask any questions. She drank beer and listened and after a while she looked at him.

“What about the girl?”

“Margot? She went back to Chicago.”

“You used her,” she said.

He waited.

“You’re good at using people.”

“When there’s no other way.”

“But do you know what everything means, everything you told me?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing,” she said. “It doesn’t mean a damned thing. All that maneuvering, all the dirty tricks and betrayals and murders and all this booga-booga spy stuff you pretend you don’t love… it comes out not meaning a damned thing.
I go halfway around the world and I hear the same leaders, the same revolutionaries, all the same words. The rhetoric never changes, the stupid lurching from one disaster to another. There isn’t enough suffering to satisfy humanity. Death isn’t horrible enough, there have to be varieties of death. Babies cry but it’s not enough—we have to drop napalm on them to increase their tears. Someone I never heard of who’s a ninth-rate bureaucrat becomes a Soviet agent and then gets found out by our man November—hurrah, hurrah!—and blows his face off and what the hell does it mean? Tell me one thing it means.”

But he was silent. He watched her. He watched her eyes and saw pain at the corners of her pretty green eyes.

“Everything that happened didn’t mean a damned thing to the world,” she said at last.

Silence was a bond. They were the only people at the bar. She finished her beer and stared at the glass, at the foam coating the inside of the empty tumbler. She thought about the first time together, when she had slept with him in that old motel room on Clearwater Beach. He had slept with her only to use her and when she knew it, it wasn’t enough to leave him. Use me. I’ll do anything for you, Devereaux. You bastard.

Damnit, she thought. Why was there always pain between them?

“Is it finished? I mean, is it finished?”

“I can’t finish it,” he said.

“I thought you could do anything.”

“I thought I could. I thought I could say no and walk away from it. With you.”

“Make it finished,” she said.

“I can’t. Not anymore. Not in the way I wanted. The way we wanted it.”

“Make it finished,” she said again.

“I can’t force you to agree to anything. I told you everything. I told you the truth.”

“Is that right? Did you tell me everything? Did you tell me you love it? Tell me that. Tell me you love it. The trade, the business, whatever you call it. The spy who goes into the cold because it’s the only thing that amuses him. Tell me.” Her voice was bitter and her eyes were wet. “Tell me you love it.”

“No.”

Waiting. Quiet.

“I’m good at the trade, that’s part of satisfaction, I suppose.” He saw his face reflected in the mirror behind the bar. “No. I don’t love it.”

“Do you love any goddamn thing in the world?”

“You.”

“What about Philippe? You saved his life. You took him off that island. What about that little boy?”

“No. I don’t love Philippe.”

“You cold son-of-a-bitch.”

“I pitied him.” He would not touch her. She had to understand him and the truth of things without tricks. “Perhaps I pitied myself. When I saw him. When I heard him plead. Pity is not such a small thing, Rita.” He wanted to touch her, to smell her. But this conversation had to be finished now; it had been suspended between them for too long. “Pity is a good thing to feel as well.”

“But you don’t have pity for me.”

He thought it was over then. He felt sick because the words were too brittle.

“I would have done anything for you,” Rita said.

She got up. She stared at him as though fixing him in memory.

Her green eyes turned to liquid emeralds. And they were cold as gems. “Anything.”

She turned from him and walked out of the lounge on the lush red carpet. Her steps were quiet and then she was gone, into the lobby.

The sickness overwhelmed him for a moment and then he saw his face again, in the mirror. He stared at the empty eyes.

He got up and dropped money on the bar.

He walked out of the lounge and saw her. She was heading toward the elevator bank. The lobby was bright with people who spoke in loud voices.

She waited for the elevator and he was behind her. She turned. She looked at him. The emerald eyes were still wet and the coldness in them was gone.

“More talk?” she said. “More facing the truth?”

“No more talk.”

“We finished the conversation. I always knew we would have to come to the end of it,” she said.

“No. It’s not over.”

“What’s left?”

“I don’t have arguments. Or words. I tried to show you.”

“What?”

“I love you.” He tried to say it right. The words were magic to him but they were so common to others. Everyone loved everyone else. No one else ever understood that Devereaux had not loved another creature in his life. He had existed on pity until he met Rita Macklin. But not pity for himself; it was the thing that kept him apart from the
world. He could pity life and keep the cold thing inside himself to make him apart from everything he did or said.

“Don’t I get to be happy?” she said. “Don’t you?”

“No guarantees.”

“There ought to be rules of behavior. There really ought to be.” And she stroked his face then with one lazy gesture of her hand. Her hand touched his face as though it were no part of her words, her eyes, her thoughts. Her fingers raked gently across his cheek. “But there are no rules, are there?”

“No,” he said.

“Dev.” The hand lingered on his shoulder. The elevator door opened. The cage was empty. The bright lobby full of loud people was around them; they were alone in the middle of her gesture. He felt the weight of her hand on his shoulder and his hand touched her hand then, covering it, holding it. They crossed into the cage and the door closed on them and they were alone. He held her hand.

It was the end of a conversation that had been unfinished for too long.