“Wallenberg.”
“There are similarities,” Hanley admitted. “But what was his mission? And why does Langley want to play games about a file that is forty years old?”
“How did his name come up?”
“During a routine assignment in Helsinki. We got a flutter from our man that Crohan is still alive and that he can come out now.”
“Is it valid?”
“If it isn’t, I don’t think we’re at risk in the matter. But I just don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“It is so unexpected.”
“Life is full of surprises,” Mrs. Neumann said.
“No, Mrs. Neumann, it is not. It is terribly predictable.” He placed his forearms on either side of his coffee cup and leaned forward across the soiled plates and bowls. “When the unexpected happens, it is always a nasty shock. That is why I did not expect Crohan. Now I know that it presages something bad.”
“You’re a pessimist.”
“A realist, Mrs. Neumann, and a careful one. There is the smell of a trap in all this.”
“A trap for who? For your agent? For the Section?”
“I don’t know. Why this reluctance at the Competition? The OSS file is their responsibility only insofar as they have it. Langley has no reason to obfuscate—”
“It’s the nature of the beast, Hanley, you know that.”
“I never expected anything out of Helsinki.” Hanley bit his lower lip and chewed on it a moment like a schoolboy faced with a difficult mathematical puzzle in an examination. Mrs. Neumann studied him not unkindly. Something in her dark brown eyes suggested amusement at his problem.
“I sent November there,” he said at last.
For the first time, Mrs. Neumann appeared startled. She knew the identity of “November.” In fact, some of the code names were a bit of a joke inside the Section because of the way they had come about. All the prime functioning agents and stationmasters in the field had been coded by name after months, days of the week, and other elements of time. There was a Winter, a Summer, a March, a Twilight. After the system was in place and working, it was discovered that the GS-11 inside the Section who had provided all the new nomenclature was a practicing astrologist and had consulted charts and dates before matching the code name with the real agent. He explained that such names would “augur good vibrations for the Section.” In any case, there was no money that fiscal year to change the system and then a sort of indolence set in. November remained November because no one thought it worthwhile to change anything again.
“What was he supposed to do there?”
“Nothing, Mrs. Neumann. We had a flutter a few months before that a KGB sort wanted to come to our side. I thought there might be something wrong with it. Langley was burned last year, you know. I told November to check his bona fides.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Neumann said harshly. “You could have sent anyone from the Scandinavian station. That fellow in Copenhagen, he’s competent for a job like that.”
“It was a legitimate mission. I wanted evaluation.”
“Not for November.”
Hanley flushed. “Yes, damn it. I wanted to get him out of the way.”
She was startled. “What on earth for?”
“Out of harm’s way.”
“How touching of you,” she said. “What were you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” he said.
“You wanted to get Devereaux out of the way,” she said, breaking security by uttering his real name in a public place. The cafeteria was rapidly clearing out. Plates were being scraped noisily at the serving counter and banged into dishwashers. Nine-to-five official Washington was finishing lunch.
“I put him on ice as far away as I could. Some of the headhunters can’t forget that Devereaux cleaned up that business in Paris last year despite Galloway and that Galloway lost his job because of it.”
Galloway was Rear Admiral Galloway, who had been the Old Man at R Section until he stubbed his toe on the business of the Paris terrorists and the plot to subvert the computers inside the Section.
“Who wants to get him?”
“The New Man for one. I stashed Devereaux in Jamaica for a year to watch the new government. Devereaux was a good man once, but the ambition has gone out of him.”
“This doesn’t sound right,” she said.
“All right, Mrs. Neumann. I’ll give you another story. He wants an Asian posting.”
“So?”
“The New Man says no.”
“Why?”
“He wants Devereaux to quit.”
“Why?”
“Because Devereaux is what he is. He is dangerous.”
“Nonsense. We’re not running a day camp.”
“I put him in Helsinki because I had to put him someplace.”
“You put him in Helsinki so that nothing would happen and eventually Devereaux would realize that he was never getting out.”
“Never is a long time.”
“You were his rabbi; you were supposed to take care of him.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Cover your ass,” Mrs. Neumann said. Hanley appeared shocked for a moment but it passed.
“Now this Crohan business. It needs an answer.”
“No, that’s not it. You’re afraid Devereaux is going to act without an answer.”
“Yes.”
“All right. Pull him back. Have a heart-to-heart. Lay out the feelings of the New Man. He can ride it out, he’s a big boy. Send in Solstice from Copenhagen to relieve him and tell Solstice not to do a damned thing.”
“Solstice is out of pocket,” Hanley said, slipping into more slang. “He went deep cover on that Soviet matter at Nordkapp. For all I know, he’s in the black now, in Russia. I can’t alert Norwegian Intelligence about it without alerting everyone else up there, including the Swedes.”
“The Swedes couldn’t find their ass with a flashlight and a map,” Mrs. Neumann snorted in her rough voice. “The Soviets practically ground submarines on their beaches and they can’t see them.”
“They see what they want to see,” Hanley said mildly to counterpoint her raspy whisper.
“So you’re stuck with Devereaux for now.”
“For the moment. I just don’t want him to do anything.”
“Tell him.”
“No. Then he will know it has all been for nothing. Besides, there’s a trap working here. I can feel it.”
“Your bones? It’s merely old age, Hanley.”
“No. First the defector. Then he offers a gift and when we start poking at the gift, it begins to smell. There is a trap working here. I can smell it.”
“So what are you going to do then?”
“Nothing, Mrs. Neumann. Nothing at all.” It was all he could think to say.
8
Nothing.
Devereaux waited in a doorway across the wide plaza near the bus depot. He was watching the entry of the state Alko store across the way. In the afternoon, the Finns, numbed by winter and the dark days, pushed into the stark large store and bought inexpensive vodka that was still too costly. In the evening blackness, they could numb their minds as their bodies had been numbed by cold. The windows of the store carried posters warning of the dangers of alcohol abuse. The posters were to salve the conscience of the state that derived vast revenues from controlling the liquor trade. State taxes made the alcohol so costly that few Finns could afford to drink their own famous Finlandia vodka, which was mostly exported. The vodka they consumed was not made for taste but for effect.
An hour passed and still there was nothing.
If there was a contact, it would be signaled here in front of the Alko store — contact from either Tartakoff or Hanley. Instead, for the eighth day, there was silence.