The November Man Read Free Page B

Illinois. He was kept in a narrow cell most of the time and his only recreation was reading and working with weights. She felt bad afterward not because she had loved Tony at all—that had been business—but because she thought of herself caught in a cell for the rest of her life. She pitied herself. It would have been a merciful thing to kill Tony. She had considered it, the night he put his face between her legs and she had the Walther PPK under the pillow and she thought about it because Tony was very close to being caught. But he had pleased her and she had been merciful. Too bad for Tony.
    Better to die like the man at the window in the bar. She studied his face, his lean chin, his glittering eyes. Dead man, she thought.
    The
Finlandia
slid down the open sea passage between the islands that are flung out in a stream east from Stockholm, almost to the coast of Finland. In the bright moon of the starry night, here and there, above the snow, poked roofs or sticks of summer homes on the islands. The islands were the perpetual retreats of middle-class Swedes in summer; the islands, some no more than an acre or two in size, promised summer even now at the end of the long Scandinavian winter.
    The
Finlandia
was a huge ship, the largest car ferry in the world. She might have been an ocean liner but was trapped in the dull passage every day between Stockholm and Helsinki. She always passed at night because the trip took exactly thirteen hours. It was midnight and the ship was halfway to the lights of Helsinki.
    The man at the table was Colonel Ready. He had beenchased for 400 days. He had killed three “contractors” sent by KGB. He had disappeared in Copenhagen five months ago and despite the large network of Soviet agents working in that city he had not been found.
    Until he surfaced four weeks ago. With messages to the Soviet courier. He wanted to sell secrets; he wanted to sell himself. After all, the KGB knew he was an agent of R Section called November. He had many secrets.
    The bartender was in love with her. He was a large blond Swede and he spoke good English. He thought his good looks impressed her. When she treated him with reserve, even coldly, he adored her. Her eyes always lied; her eyes always told of passion and unbelievable lust. The coldness of her manner only framed the passion promised in her eyes.
    “Please, another drink for you?” he said, not sure of himself, fawning. He was too large and handsome to fawn.
    “Perhaps,” Alexa said, as though deciding. “Yes, I think,” she said, deciding, giving him one small smile as a reward. “Glenfiddich.” She had her preferences: single-malt Scotch whisky, and the Walther PPK, a very small automatic with a deadly accurate field of fire at short range. She worked in very close because she was not afraid of killing or feeling any passion at the act of giving death.
    It was just as well that Alexa was so good in the matter of wet contracts.
    She had been contracted to November four days ago. There had been confusion for a long time inside KGB over who November was. He was supposed to be the man who kidnapped KGB agent Dmitri Denisov six years agoin Florida; who had wrecked the IRA plan to kill Lord Slough in his boat off the Irish coast; who had caused enough troubles and embarrassment—all outside the rules of the trade understood by both sides—that Gorki had “contracted” him. He had to be killed. Which is why he wanted to come to the Moscow side. Gorki said it was too late. Gorki said November—who was this man, Colonel Ready—had to be killed because he could not be trusted.
    Alexa thought of Gorki, head of the Resolutions Committee. Her mentor. A gnome with yellow skin and sandpaper hands. He had used her; the only man who had truly used her. When he was finished with her—in the dacha, long ago—she belonged to him. He knew that and never made great demands on her again. She was a painted wooden doll upon his shelf. He had opened her and found