“Dr. Krueger would tell you that cats bark if you asked him,” Devereaux said.
“It’s quite common for a patient… in your circumstances… to exhibit hostility toward his physician,” Hanley said.
Devereaux let the silence settle between them. He looked at his hands and was surprised to see that he had clenched his right hand into a fist.
“Hanley, I don’t really give a damn whether I stay in Section. I want to get out of this place. I want to see Rita and see that she gets well. And then I’m going to kill Henry McGee.”
“Devereaux. Your active status has been terminated. In a sense, it was terminated the night you were… injured.”
“You mean I have no status to perform a sanction?” Devereaux said, and suddenly, grinned. Then the grin faded and Hanley saw there was pain behind the gray eyes, pain in the color of the ashen face. He had lost weight. He looked like what he was, a sick man. The day before, when they came to inject him, he had struck out at the doctor and knocked the needle and syringe to the floor. They had talked about restraining him. They had talked to Hanley about a mental hospital and Hanley had been so shaken that he had actually shouted at Dr. Krueger. There would be no mental hospital, no restraints. Hanley could remember his own restraints, could remember the enforced humiliation that was daily life in the mental hospital he had been sent to. Against his will, as though his will had ceased to matter.
“You have no status. You’ll get out of here in time. Rebuild that place you had in Front Royal; I can arrange a transference of assets.” Section had bought the place of Devereaux’s retreat when the retreat had been penetrated by KGB agents on a wet contract against Devereaux. It all seemed so long ago, the cold war rhetoric, the belief that the enemy was singular and very knowable. Or such was the euphoric mood in current Washington politics that shoved the professionals in intelligence now into dark corners. It was a bitter time for intelligence agencies and Devereaux had to understand that Hanley was trying to get him the best deal he could. A full pension and disability. And he’d even fiddle a way to return that property on the mountain in Virginia back to him. To pretend that there had been nothing in the past to warn against the future.
“All right, Hanley,” Devereaux said, and the quiet words startled him. “I want to get out of here. You know about being locked up in a place like this.”
“I was drugged against my will that time,” Hanley began. “I… was set up; I was set up by a Soviet mole working in National Security. I wasn’t really ill.”
“Against my will,” Devereaux said.
Hanley saw it. What was the difference?
“Get me out of here. You can do it.”
“Dr. Krueger.”
“Dr. Krueger is to healing what Typhoid Mary was to kitchen sanitation,” Devereaux said.
“I can talk to him.”
“Goddamnit, Hanley. You owe me this.”
And Hanley, unexpectedly, looked at the man on the bed and saw through him as though his eyes had turned to X rays and all emotions and memories were bones, broken and healed, forming the skeleton of the man’s life. In that moment, for the first time, he really understood Devereaux, and it shook him because he had no real capacity for understanding others — it was the quality that had made him very good at his job in the espionage bureaucracy all these years.
“I’ll do something,” Hanley said.
“When?”
“You still have a broken bone.”
“It’ll be broken in or out of the hospital,” Devereaux said.
“Dr. Krueger said your brain wave patterns are interesting.”
“So is macramé,” Devereaux said. “I want to get out of here. Today.”
“I’ll talk to Dr. Krueger.”
“Tell him.”
“He’s the doctor.”
“You’re the payer.”
“Your concern for saving Uncle money is sudden and touching,” Hanley said. “All right.” He nodded, not to the man on the bed but to the man in memory who had taken him out of Saint Catherine’s when they were killing him. “All right. I’ll tell him.”
Devereaux did not speak and, after a moment, Hanley realized he could not stand the silence a moment longer. He rose and went out the door of the private room without saying a word. He nodded to the policeman. He walked down the corridor past the nurse’s station, toward the elevators. He took the elevator down to the basement.
Dr. Krueger sat in a windowless office at the end of a corridor. They had arranged this meeting for the time after Hanley confronted Devereaux with his recalcitrance and his violent behavior. Dr. Krueger did not smile at Hanley when Hanley walked into the room. He acted as though it were all Hanley’s fault.
“He wants to be released,” Hanley said.
“That’s impossible. He’s on the edge of a breakdown, he is hallucinating—”
“He said he didn’t want any more dope. What is it that you give him?”
“A mild sedative—”
“He says he dreams he is out of his body when he has been… sedated.”
“That’s what I mean. The man is going through a very critical time right now. He’s hallucinating, he needs—”
“I want you to release him.”
Dr. Krueger was a very young man with black hair and a white beard and cool blue eyes. Every time he saw Rita Macklin — and it was every day now — she would either ask why Devereaux did not visit her or where he might be. Devereaux was a very bad influence on Rita Macklin, in terms of her full recovery. Her body was healing nicely and he loved to look at her, at her soft, unlined face and at those beautiful green eyes and to look at the swell of her breasts beneath the soft hospital gown and to think of her in terms of perfect love, to wonder about her.
“I can’t release him. It wouldn’t be responsible,” Dr. Krueger said.
Hanley scowled. “I don’t give a damn about that. He’s to be released immediately.”
“I can’t take that responsibility.”
“I’ve taken it.”
“You’re not qualified.”
“Damnit, man. He’s to be released.”
Krueger stared at him. “If I release him on your authority, I can’t have him bothering other patients. You understand what I’m saying? Miss Macklin is not in the government employ. As far as I’m aware. Her eventual recovery is at stake. Your… agent… or whatever he is, that’s your responsibility. But Miss Macklin is my responsibility.”
“Dr. Krueger. They were… lovers.”
“All the more reason. Why was she nearly assassinated in the parking lot of her building? What sort of game is this? I can assure you, the authority of you — of your agency — extends only to your agent. You don’t have any right to harm a civilian or put her in harm’s way.”
“Why would he harm her?”
“She’s become… very dependent on our therapeutic sessions, our talks, and it’s important that the distraction of her trauma, of remembering her trauma, and your… agent is part of that memory, not be brought back to her attention. If I release your… agent, and your agent causes harm to Rita, to Miss Macklin, then I hold you responsible. And your agency. I can’t tell you what might be the consequences of that. All in all, it would be wiser for your… for you and for R Section, whatever R Section is, not to cause further harm to an innocent woman.”
Hanley understood the meaning behind the fog of words. Understood the distaste in Dr. Krueger’s voice every time he used the soiled word agent. There was a threat here and Dr. Krueger could make good on it. What would he use? The newspapers? Television. He would be very good on television, very photogenic with his very black hair and his wispy beard and penetrating eyes. In another time, Hanley might have dismissed him. But Devereaux was yesterday in any case; why not allow the treatment to continue here a little while longer?