“You reassured him.”
“No. I told him.”
They could feel the thrusts of the engines as the plane now descended, pushing down against the waves of air that held it aloft, catching that balance between speed and attitude and altitude that made the whole thing work. Hanley gripped the seat again, forcing the blood from his knuckles.
“Manning was shot down and his body dumped into the Seine. Felker was killed in Venice, he was supposed to have Red Brigade friends there so that’s where he hid out.”
“How was he taken care of?”
“A water bus, actually. He was dumped in the Adriatic by someone and a water bus ran over him.”
Devereaux smiled.
“Nothing in this is funny.”
“Manning in the river, Reed in the broads, Felker in the Adriatic Sea. Perhaps the connection to all this is death by water.”
“Sarcasm,” Hanley said.
“What do you want from me?”
“We…need you.”
“Because I’m outside,” Devereaux said coldly. “Because you’re afraid of what might be inside the Section.”
“Yes. Something is wrong. Everything we do seems to be known. And yet we don’t know what is really going on.”
“Why did you send Manning back to her?”
Hanley appeared startled. “You knew then? About the first mission? Fifteen years ago?”
“Manning was a fool.” Devereaux spoke with weariness clouding the words. “He fell in love with her.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Did you expect him to tell you?”
“Why did he tell you then?”
“Because I didn’t matter to him.” Devereaux paused, stared at the plastic interior of the plane. He saw beyond the plane and this place, perched ridiculously on waves of wind in the middle of an endless sky. “Manning came to Saigon. It was June. After Tet, after everything. It was all over for us but we dragged it out for another seven years. He hated Saigon, he hated the heat and the corruption of the place.”
“But not you.”
“No.” Quietly. “Not me. But I wasn’t staying; I was pulled back.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“I didn’t matter to Manning. He wanted to tell me about this woman he had known in Paris. We got drunk one night; I think we got drunk. Maybe only Manning got drunk.”
“It was against security for him to tell—”
“After a while, no one in Saigon believed in security.” Devereaux’s voice was flat and yet soft. “No one believed in anything. Saigon was all illusions, and so after a while no one had illusions anymore.”
“I asked him if he thought it would work,” Hanley said. “Going back to Paris, I mean. He said he would try.”
“He wanted to see her again,” Devereaux said. “He must not have gotten over her.”
“That’s romance,” Hanley said. “I can’t believe that.”
Devereaux did not speak. His face was cold, pale, crosshatched with lines; his eyes were gray, reflecting the partial graying of his brown hair. “November” was his code designation in the closed files of R Section; the name suited his appearance and manner, the bleakness of his voice.
“If it goes bad,” Devereaux began.
“You’re on your own. You aren’t on file. I have money from contingency funds. For…special payments. You don’t have sanctions for or against; you’re outside the rules.”
The no-smoking sign flicked back on; they felt the flaps of the jet drag at the air rushing past the sleek metal fuselage; a fog-shrouded patch of ground loomed below. The landing gear whirred down and locked.
“There never were any rules,” Devereaux said softly as the plane rushed down. “You never understood that.” He paused. “Now start at the beginning, about Tinkertoy. And about Jeanne Clermont.”
14
Garishenko woke as soon as Lieutenant Baliokov touched his shoulder in the darkened command room. His eyes adjusted a moment to the gloom and he wondered, like a child, where he was. His eyes glittered in the light of a single lamp on his desk.
“Sir.”
“What time is it?”
“Morning 11, 0500 hours,” the young officer replied.
Garishenko sat upright. He slept on a cot during the games. He was clad in underwear; his uniform was carefully hung in the closet. Next to the bed was a cup of cold tea. Cigarette butts littered a wide ashtray. He had read the orders of battle until he fell asleep. That had been three hours ago. He felt drained, cold, frightened; the game had turned against him in the last six game days — that is, the last forty hours — and the weight of impending defeat seemed to shackle his body. The headaches had returned, and so had a dull, aching feeling in his joints, as though the defeat of the NATO forces would be the defeat of his body as well.
“What change?” Garishenko said, blinking his eyes to regain a sense of consciousness.
“Naya says Amsterdam and Rotterdam have fallen and the eastern approaches to the North Sea are taken,” Baliokov said.
“Then it’s over. And still no response from France.”
“No, sir. The premier — of the Soviet Union, sir — sent this message to the British this morning at 0430 hours.”
He handed him a computer printout. Garishenko stood up and went to the desk and placed the piece of paper beneath the light of the single lamp. The words blurred for a moment, and he blinked his eyes again.
ALL MILITARY ACTIVITY OF THE WARSAW FORCES HAS CEASED FROM THIS MOMENT AND WE ARE ENGAGED IN SECURING PURELY DEFENSIVE AND TEMPORARY POSITIONS IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. I URGE, FOR THE SAKE OF PEACE AND FOR THE COUNTLESS NUMBERS OF OUR PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN MADE THE VICTIMS OF THIS FOLLY, TO BEGIN THE PROCESS OF PEACE TALKS IMMEDIATELY WHILE EACH SIDE HAS ITS MUTUAL ADVANTAGES IN THE MILITARY SECTORS…
Garishenko looked up. “The British won’t accept this response.”
“Sir, there were riots in Liverpool against the war two hours ago, as well as in Brixton and in London at Chipping Green and Nottingham.”
“This is madness, what does Naya say?” But he had come to dread the response of the computer.
“Naya says the British commanders have ordered their forces to hold their positions.”
“But time is crucial. If Warsaw is allowed to secure their gains in the Netherlands, the next move will be a pincer against France.”
“The French have not responded, sir.”
“Damn. Damn.” Garishenko wiped one cold hand across his forehead. He was sweating, his face was drawn, the pain of perpetual headache pushed at his skull. “This can’t be. Even they can see that. They are dreaming, they are making their own wishes come true despite reality.”
Baliokov stared at the general in his underwear. “Sir, do you remember the revelations last year? In America? The Central Intelligence Agency was revealed to have lied about enemy troop estimates before the Tet offensive, as well as to exaggerate the number of Viet Cong troops in the field? Simply to tell the politicians what they wished to know?”
“But this is a computer. We programmed the computer ourselves. It is the most secure in our country. Who tampered with it? Who would believe that anything could be done to our program? Unless we did it ourselves.”
“You can call the Game Master, you can—”
“I have done that, Lieutenant. I have called him three times, and three times he has turned me down. He will not accept the perfidy of the computer as a reason to stop the game. Don’t you see?” He looked up, his face drawn and pale. “They have a chance to fulfill their fantasy and they cannot accept the reality. General Garishenko is to be defeated; that is cause for celebration for them. I am haughty and arrogant. That’s what they believe. They don’t want an enemy, they want a shadow, one that will move as they want him to move. If they wish to devise a strategy believing that the French will not come in on the NATO side in an armed crisis, then they are delighted to have such a France given to them. If they wish to believe the English will sue for peace after all their military goals are achieved, then Naya gives them such an England. My protests are the protests of the losing commander. ‘Something must be wrong, I didn’t make that program.’”