2 Oct 90—WASHINGTON, D.C.–SANTA BARBARA
Hanley sat in his office. It had a window, unlike his old office when he was chief of Operations. Now he was senior advisor to the director of R Section, Lydia Neumann. The post was as meaningless as the view. He had always been her advisor but Pendleton’s takeover of Operations had been a blow to both of them. Lydia Neumann felt out of touch with the way things were going in Section, in the field, at the dozens of stations around the world. Pendleton did not consult with her except as he was formally required to do.
Hanley looked at the telephone number on the slip of paper again. It had been in his pocket for two days. What was Devereaux doing again? Hanley had checked his 201 file. He was still on disability; he was retired from active duty. What was he doing now that involved a German Stasi officer who probably was home safe in Moscow now that the GDR had ceased to exist?
The telephone number of a hotel in Santa Barbara.
Hanley folded the paper again and put it in his wallet. He had been in Section from the beginning, in the Kennedy administration, and he had never felt so alienated in his life. Pendleton expected him to retire, to face down the barrage of boredom and meekly submit his recommendation. Pendleton was clever, very clever, and crude beyond belief in the exercise of power. His subtlety was in knowing when brute pressure would work just as well as finesse.
The light on the phone winked. The phone made a sound.
He picked up the phone and placed it on the double-scrambler and picked up a second receiver.
“Yes.”
“November,” said the operator inside the classified switchboard on the next floor.
“Put him through.”
“Her,” said the operator.
The line was switched.
Her?
“November,” the female voice said.
“Who is this?”
“Hanley? Rita Macklin.”
“You have no access to a code name—”
“I’m in Los Angeles. I have to get in touch with him and I don’t know anything, any address or phone—”
“Miss Macklin, I am not your matchmaking service. This is—”
“I know what he’s doing, not where. He told me about Denisov. I have the thing. I actually have the thing.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying—”
“A sailor in Hawaii named Peterson was the link. Devereaux had the name because Connors told him.”
Hanley pursed his lips in a priggish way. This woman was a journalist and he had an instinct about journalists that he thought was usually right. And she was the woman who lived with Devereaux. Why didn’t she know where Devereaux was?
“I can’t tell you anything, Miss Macklin.”
“I need to know where Denisov is. Somewhere in Santa Barbara County, I know that. I have a package and an address but maybe it’s not the right place. Or maybe I shouldn’t deliver it. I don’t know. I know that there’s violence connected with it. Murder.”
“Call the police then, Miss Macklin.”
“I want to—”
“No, Miss Macklin.”
Silence. The slight buzz of the double scrambler danced on the line like an echo. “Mr. Hanley,” she began.
Hanley said nothing.
“I don’t want to call Pendleton. He’s… working for Pendleton against his will. I don’t understand everything but he doesn’t trust Pendleton and Pendleton has some terrible hold over him. Maybe he can break it with this package.”
“What is the package?”
“The code machine. The Japanese code machine.”
Hanley blinked. Of course he didn’t know. Pendleton had a very small loop. Sometimes the loop was no bigger than himself. He never advised Mrs. Neumann about anything of substance.
What was Hanley defending except his own ignorance of what was going on around him? He took out his wallet and unfolded the slip of paper.
“He gave me a number,” Hanley said. “I trust your discretion. This is not a matter of journalism.”
“Do you think I’d hurt him with a story?” she said.
“This is a matter I know nothing about.”
“But you have Denisov’s address?”
“I have a telephone number.”
“For Denisov.”
“For the man you choose to live with.”
He recited the number slowly and only once.
“Where is he?”
“In a hotel in Santa Barbara,” Hanley said, amazed as she was. Hanley felt the perfect frustration of the outsider caught inside a company that has shunned him.
And felt a little of the outsider’s retaliation: Anger and a sense of hitting back. He was breaking his own rules and he didn’t care in that moment.
Devereaux stretched on the bed, his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Mickey Connors and the ox named Kevin were gone. He thought about them and about Pendleton. The last thing he would have thought about in that moment was the person who called.
He reached for the telephone on the nightstand and picked it up. He didn’t utter a word. And then he heard her voice.
She was very good. She gave a fill exactly in the way that it had to be given. She started with the trip to Honolulu to work on phony stories and to find out what she could about a man named Peterson. She told him about Ernie Funo, whom she was unable to raise on the phone. She told him about Peterson and about the machine. And she told him that Peterson had mistaken her for some kind of spy and that Peterson was afraid of Japanese gangsters on his trail.
When she was finished, there was such a long pause that she asked if he was still there.
“Where are you exactly?” he said.
“I’m exactly in the terminal at LAX,” she said.
“You’re in terrible danger,” he said.
“I can handle it.”
“You can’t handle it. No one can. If the Japanese are this close to recovering the machine, they’ll be on a feeding frenzy.”
“I’ll come to Santa Barbara—”
“Don’t think about it. Get the first commuter flight you can out of there. And keep going. I’ll meet you at Santa Maria Airport. It’s about fifty miles north of here. Just don’t fly into Santa Barbara. And get a wig.”
“A wig?”
“A wig, a wig. Get something to cover your hair. They’ll have Peterson by now. They’ve got your name and description. Buy a ticket for cash and give them a phony name and get a wig when you can.”
“This is silly,” she said.
“This is as bad as when they almost caught up with you after Florida. You shouldn’t have gotten involved.”
“I got the machine. I got the goddamned machine,” she said. “You sound like I did something wrong.”
But he couldn’t tell her how wrong everything was turning.