12

“Rehabilitation,” Hanley said. “Dr. Krueger says it will have to be extensive.”

“The operative word is expensive, not extensive,” Devereaux said. “I want to get out of here. I don’t have access to a telephone, I can’t even call Rita—”

“Miss Macklin doesn’t know about you,” Hanley said. The smell of the hospital room overwhelmed him. It brought back the horrible memories of Saint Catherine’s in Maryland where a high-placed Soviet mole in the intelligence service had committed Hanley long before and where he had nearly lost his mind. Devereaux had saved him from that fate. He didn’t want to think about it. “Dr. Krueger says it would do her no good in her present state to know that you had been injured. Besides, he advised that your access to a telephone be limited, for fear you would do exactly what you intended, to call Miss Macklin.”

“Dr. Krueger gets around,” Devereaux said.

“He’s one of the finest neurologists—”

“—money can buy,” Devereaux said. “He’s a very strange man.”

“The explosion that caused you other injuries also caused trauma to your head severe enough to count as a concussion. You suffered brain damage, to what extent it’s up to Dr. Krueger to learn,” Hanley said. He fell back on the words he uttered with the abandon of a tired man flinging himself on a bed.

Devereaux waited a moment. The silence of the hospital was a palpable buzz. “Do you believe any of that or are you just comforting yourself?”

“We have to face unpleasant facts,” Hanley said, turning toward the window. “You’ve been injured before. That time in Bruges.… The scars of previous traumas are evident on your body. But what about the scars on your mind?”

“What has that got to do with getting out of here?”

“Dr. Krueger is a fine neurologist, one of the best. We wanted the best,” Hanley said.

Devereaux said, “I’ve concluded a neurologist is roughly a psychologist with a machine to back him up.”

“You were… damaged. Your brain suffered injuries that cannot be healed. The brain cells do not regenerate.”

“Then let’s not worry about them,” Devereaux said. “I can’t recover if they keep me on dope twenty-four hours a day. I don’t want any more dope. I’d rather learn to live with the pain.”

Hanley said, “I want to assure you that you will be taken care of. That we don’t intend—”

“Henry McGee,” Devereaux said for the first time.

Hanley blinked.

“Henry McGee,” Devereaux said. “He called me in the hotel before he blew up my room. He shot Rita Macklin. I want you to find out about him. Is he still in the country?”

Hanley wiped his hand across his mouth.

“Devereaux. This borders on obsession. Henry McGee is dead or gone. KGB went after him. We gave them all the clues they needed on that matter of the translator.”

“It was Henry McGee,” Devereaux said. “What does Section want to do about it?”

“Section has no interest in chasing ghosts,” Hanley said. “Do you see what I mean? You bring up a dead man’s name to explain something that you can’t explain otherwise. In all these weeks, you never mentioned that name. Why do it now?”

Devereaux tried a smile. There was absolutely no mirth in it. “Are you saying I’m wrong? I’m one of your agents. I don’t guess about things. I thought Section had an unwritten rule about dealing with acts of terror against its own. It kept the balance in the cold war, one side knowing what the other side would do about a wet contract on one of its own.”

“Devereaux.”

“Of course, perhaps there’s no cold war anymore. I haven’t read the papers lately.”

“The papers assure us we have come through apocalypse unsinged,” Hanley said in the same tone of sarcasm. “These are difficult times in intelligence. We have no need for spies when the world is suddenly so open and honest.”

“It’s the Santa Claus factor,” Devereaux said.

Hanley blinked.

“All the adults thought he really didn’t exist and now they say they were wrong.”

For a moment, they shared the silence like comrades. Hanley was always the control, the puller of strings in Washington, the man who made marks on the map that represented agents and safe houses and operations carried out both legal and black. Devereaux had been code-named November, one of the tacks on the map. And then one day, the world realized the Mercator projection of the earth was distorted and began to question the tacks as well.

“Devereaux. It’s time to talk about some things. Unpleasant things.”

It was the moment he had avoided for the past three weeks. In the beginning, it was simple. There was a question of whether Devereaux would survive at all. If he had not survived, the problem would not have come up. But now he was hallucinating about KGB agents and he needed reality. Dr. Krueger had been firm about that: Mr. Devereaux needs to be reminded of the reality of things so that he does not escape into his other world, the one that is not real. Dr. Krueger said Devereaux was a difficult patient but that he, Dr. Krueger, understood this because people wanted to deny their incapacities in the area of intellect and memory. He saw it all the time with Alzheimer’s patients who wanted to deny that they were suffering from the disease. Did that mean Devereaux had Alzheimer’s disease? Hanley had asked. Dr. Krueger had merely smiled a sad professional smile and spread his hands and said, It’s only a label, it can’t work miracles.

“Devereaux,” Hanley began. He looked at his hands. “Devereaux,” he began again.

Devereaux waited.

“You recall you attempted to retire from active service six years ago. The matter was aborted. It was a different time then. A different world. You came back inside because there was a wet contract on you and because you needed the… security of being part of Section.”

Devereaux said nothing. His large hands were spread on the hospital sheet. This was a private room because intelligence demanded it. There was a twenty-four-hour police guard on the door and the policemen had been screened by both the FBI and R Section, though R Section did not, strictly speaking, have the authority to operate in a security field inside the United States. Devereaux even had a private bath, adjacent to the room. He was sealed from the world.

“We think it is time to consider your retirement again. As I said, this is a different time and a different world,” Hanley said. He wiped his hands on his trousers and looked down at them as he finished the job.

“Why?”

“You were terribly injured,” Hanley said. “Dr. Krueger confirms that you have suffered brain damage that will affect your ability to function effectively in a field environment.”

“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?

Hanley realized he had already abandoned Devereaux. He looked across the desk and saw that the doctor realized it as well.

“Well?”

Hanley said, “No more injections. No more induced hallucinogens or whatever it is that you give him.”

“My treatment methods are conservative, are recognized as—”

“No more talk of restraints,” Hanley bargained.

“All right,” Dr. Krueger conceded.

“He’s not an animal,” Hanley said.

“No one said he was. He’s in a dangerous state. If I had intended him harm, would I be working so hard to save him?”

“So much bad is done for the good of others,” Hanley said. He realized it was something that Devereaux might have said. Yes, he had looked right through Devereaux for a moment and seen the frame of the man’s life in his bones.

“All right. I won’t prescribe further… medications. He’s in pain but that’s his decision. I want to observe his physical progress a few days longer.”

Hanley said, “Is this really necessary?”

“For the sake of Miss Macklin,” Dr. Krueger said. “I’ll release him on… Friday. You can tell him that, that I’ll release him on Friday if his progress is such that I think it’s safe.”

“Why couldn’t it be now?” Hanley said.

But Dr. Krueger was already thinking he had three days to remove Rita Macklin from her hospital and from the way of potential harm from Devereaux. Three days to secure her in a place of safety where he could minister to her and show her that she could learn to rely upon him.