“They’re not certain how serious the break is. A chip. Breaking your neck is a layman’s term,” she said. She was clutching and Hanley knew it.
“And I’m a layman and he broke his neck,” Hanley said again.
She knew. She had called as well, before Hanley made his report. She knew and Hanley had to repeat the words to try to put them in perspective.
Agents died on duty. Not as often as one might think but they died in action. Or they disappeared. Networks were blown and agents with fanciful file names like Beethoven and January and Lion were suddenly stricken from active duty and presumed dead. Or lost to Moscow Center. Even in the age of glasnost, the war remained.
But this agent was Devereaux and Mrs. Neumann knew him and Hanley had been his control. In the 201 file, he was identified as November. The code name suited him. He had been morose and difficult and contrary at times, questioning the bureaucracy of Section in all his actions. But he had seemed very indestructible to Mrs. Neumann.
Had seemed. Had been. Was he really past?
She shook her head to rid herself of the thought and then crossed the spartan office to her desk. She picked up the FBI dossier. “Semcon was used and a simple electric prime hooked to the wall switch. He entered the room, turned on the lights, and was blown up. The materials smell of Libya, Iraq, in that neighborhood.”
“All Middle East stations are alerted and the reports are starting to come in. I’ve destroyed the budget on this one,” Hanley said. “Our network in Tripoli is more difficult to contact. The stationmaster at Naples is trying to make a connection with them.”
“Who is Naples?”
“New man. Echo. Do you want his two-oh-one file?”
“No.” She put the file down. “Miss Macklin was doing a story on the crime syndicate…”
“What on earth would the connection be to November?”
“Perhaps they thought she was a government agent—”
“The syndicate does not pick fights with federal agents. Or journalists, for that matter.”
“Except for the man killed in Phoenix,” she said.
“That was a long time ago,” Hanley said. He studied the tent of his fingers. “Everything was a long time ago.” He looked up. “It has nothing to do with us, with Section—”
“The government mixes itself up at times. Why not the crime syndicate?” Said with weariness or hope. Everyone needs an answer sometimes. Straws were grasped.
“What are we going to do?” she said after a moment.
Hanley was prepared. He began to speak about alerting the network liaison with the Israeli Mossad and Mrs. Neumann held up her hand to interrupt.
“About Devereaux.”
Hanley blinked.
“He broke his neck, man,” Mrs. Neumann said. “Probably paralyzed. If he survives. A piece of wood a half inch thick pierced his lung. He isn’t coming back. What are we going to do if he does? I mean, what can we expect to ask him to do?”
It was the difference between them. Hanley saw it without bitterness. In length of service, he should have been named director of Section. Instead, he was still director of operations, still old control to the first tier of agents. Hanley was tactics, Mrs. Neumann was strategy. She would let Hanley take care of the chase for Devereaux’s assassin. What about after? If he recovered? With his bag of secrets firmly in memory? What would they do for him then? The British had made a bad habit of cheaping out old agents and controls and it had come back to haunt them more than once, like the man in Australia who had revealed all his British intelligence secrets in the bitterness of his impoverished retirement. Devereaux must not be allowed to be bitter. Section would do the right thing.
Hanley admired such foresightedness.
“Yes.” He almost smiled. “A solid pension, solid disability payment. He’s earned it.”
Mrs. Neumann seemed surprised. It wasn’t the answer she wanted at all.
“No. I mean… inside. For him to come in, become an inside man.”
Hanley let his smile fade. “I don’t know, Mrs. Neumann.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Mrs. Neumann. November is difficult. A good man but difficult. Not a team player. We need team players. In the… central office. He could disrupt…”
Mrs. Neumann let him stutter off into silence. It wasn’t Hanley’s fault either. The square peg and round hole were not met.
“Disability.”
“He tried to retire once. There was a wet contract on him.”
“He did,” she admitted.
“He needed us. Then. And we needed him. He’s been around a long time.”
“A pension. A disability.” Repeating words like automatic prayers. “The best thing.”
“If he survives.”
But she didn’t want to think of the other possibility.
7
“Where were you?”
“All over,” Henry McGee said. He touched her face with what passed for affection in him. She had cleaned up nice and he wasn’t ashamed of showing her. There was grit in the girl, too, and he could use that. He had someone do her hair and he got someone to buy her clothes. She would look good on the Champs-Elysées. A skinny girl, but skinny was always in fashion and, in a curious way, fashion counted a lot to Henry McGee. And she screwed about as well as anyone he had ever had.
Marie Dreiser — that is what she called herself most of the time — smiled at his touch. She wore the bright silk dress just for him.
They sat in the café in Rome that is less than a hundred feet up the Via Veneto from the United States embassy. Two marines were on the gates of the embassy and they looked all spit-and-polish in the warm Roman sun.
Marie Dreiser. He had met her in Berlin and stayed with her during the months he had been hiding from KGB. Henry had been set up for his old employers by Devereaux and damned Section, and they had almost got him more than once.
The irony was that Marie was a gift from Devereaux. Henry smiled every time he thought of that. She didn’t know it and Devereaux didn’t know it even when he was alive but it was enough that Henry knew it.
“Why are you smiling, Henry?”
“Thinking about things, honey.”
“About America?”
He had been gone three weeks. Had to set things up, first for Rita, then for Devereaux. Took care of them both in one day. It would have been nice to spread it out but Devereaux was dangerous — emphasis on the was — and Henry had been burned by him before. Waited for her three mornings before she used the damned car and then took her down with one shot. He saw her go down and he wasn’t sorry she was still alive because he might run across her sweet ass again. But Devereaux. Had to kill the sonofabitch twice to make sure he was dead. He was dead this time, all right.
The smile spread. “Just the business I had in the U.S. Worked out fine, even if it cost me some money. We gotta have some ready, honey; we’re dipping into reserves.”
“Will you take me to America, sometime?”
“Take you everywhere, honey,” Henry said. He felt good, felt affectionate, felt like finishing his espresso and taking Marie up to the Excelsior and giving it to her all afternoon. In every way he could think of and some he hadn’t thought of yet. “But now we gotta rustle up some money because I had to spend some in the States. Yes sir. Gotta spend money to make money, but now we gotta make it.”
“I can always steal. I’m a thief, a good one. Didn’t I steal for you in Berlin when you were hiding?”
It had been very frightening at first, to be seeking a hideout in a strange city. To be a helpless dependent on this strange girl. She was a tough Berlin gamine who had grown up on the streets and been raped at twelve. Or so she said.
For six months, KGB had hunted him and he had survived because of Marie Dreiser in the dirty old city of Berlin that she knew so well. He had lived in two rooms beneath the elevated railroad tracks, listened to the rumble of passing trains every hour of the day, felt his claustrophobia return as it had nearly strangled him the two years he was in prison. Two years of his life, thanks to Devereaux and R Section. Two fucking years.