Tom Smith - Agent 6

The men stood up. It was her cue to leave. Raisa couldn’t believe it, standing uncertainly.

– You don’t have any comments?

Trofimov smiled.

– Comments? Yes, good luck! I’m looking forward to the concert. It will be a great success. A triumph, of that I have no doubt. We will see you tonight.

– Won’t you be attending the dress rehearsal this afternoon?

– No, that won’t be necessary. And it might spoil the experience. We trust you. We trust you completely.

Trofimov stepped forward, showing Raisa to the door. The young guide was waiting outside, ready to escort her to the General Assembly Hall. Trofimov said goodbye. Evan Vass said goodbye. Raisa nodded, heading towards the elevator, perplexed by their response. They hadn’t interrogated her. They hadn’t imposed their authority. They’d behaved as if the concert that they’d spent so long seeking diplomatic permission for was of absolutely no concern.

She touched the arm of her guide, saying in English:

– Where is the bathroom?

He changed direction, taking her to the bathroom. She entered, checking that she was alone before leaning on the sink and looking at her reflection, regarding her ugly, unfashionable set of clothes, registering the tension in her shoulders. Leo’s instincts about this trip had been correct.

FBI agent Jim Yates stood beside his sleeping wife, looking down at her as if she was a corpse and he was the first officer on the scene. She was wrapped up in a thick comforter in the height of summer, in a bedroom that was as hot as a sauna. Hypersensitive to noise, twirls of cotton wool spiralled out of her ears like wisps of campfire smoke. A thick black eye mask protected her in perpetual darkness, closing out the world, for she despised even this brilliant sunny morning. He leaned down, his lips hovering above her forehead and whispered:

– I love you.

She rolled onto her side, turning away from him, creasing up her face in irritation, shooing him awaywith the furrows of her brow. She didn’t lower her eye mask and didn’t reply. As he straightened up, the image flashed through his mind of taking off that mask, placing his fingertips on her eyelids, forcing them open and making her look at him – repeating, calmly, in a measured voice, not shouting, or losing his temper: I. Love. You.

He’d keep repeating it, louder and louder until she said it back to him. I. Love. You. Too.

He would say thank you. She would smile sweetly. And that was how a normal day should begin. A husband tells his wife he loves her, she should tell him she loves him back. It didn’t even have to be true but there was a formula to follow. That was how it worked in every other household, in every decent suburb, in every normal American family.

Walking to the window, Yates pulled back the curtain and looked out onto their garden – it was overrun, the flowerbeds choked with knee-high weeds knotted together like witch’s hair. The lawn had died a long time ago, the earth split into rock-hard chunks: jagged fissures between clumps of lank yellow grass, like the surface of some inhospitable moon. Set among the perfectly tended gardens of their neighbours it was an abomination. Yates had proposed hiring a gardener but his wife had refused, unsettled by the idea of a stranger moving in and out of the house, making noise, talking to the neighbours. Yates had suggested asking the gardener not to speak, never to come inside and to make as little noise as possible, anything so that their house wasn’t such a vision of shameful neglect. His wife had refused.

Ready to leave, he went through the exit routine, checking the windows, making sure they were shut. He stopped by the phone, making sure it was unplugged. With these checks complete, he descended the stairs. At great expense they’d been carpeted with the thickest and finest material, of exotic foreign origin, to muffle any noise. Yates left the house, pinning a note on the door: PLEASE DO NOT RING THE BELL PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK ON THE DOOR

Originally he’d concluded with the explanation that no one was at home. But that line had been cut since his wife was worried it might attract burglars. When he returned after work he’d take the note down. Whenever he went out, even if it was for an hour, even if it was for five minutes, he went through the checks and put up the note. His wife did not react well to disturbances of any kind.

Yates got into his car, grabbed hold of the steering wheel, but did not start the engine. He just sat there, surveying his home. He’d loved this house when he’d bought it. He’d loved the street with its beautiful front yard, located near parks and a range of stores. In the summer it smelt of freshly cut lawns and always seemed to be cooler than the city. People would wave and say hel. Nothing angered him more than people who didn’t appreciate how lucky they were to live in a country like this. The race riots in Jersey City in August last year were a disgrace, men and women destroying the very place where they lived. Those riots proved he’d been right to oppose the desegregation of public schools in Teaneck. Many people had been proud of this development, which they called social progress. Yates hadn’t said anything in public but he was sure it would lead to an influx of outsiders and that would lead to tensions. Paradise doesn’t need progress. The photographs of Jersey City had shocked him – smashed shop windows, burning cars. Maybe there were some legitimate complaints in that part of town, problems with employment, there were always problems, but only a sick man, a blind man, would trash his own home rather than trying to fix it. Yates would fight to stop the same happening here.

He pulled out of the drive, heading towards Manhattan, thirty minutes away. He’d been in the city until late last night, wanting to be certain that every member of the Soviet delegation staying in the Grand Metropolitan was accounted for. Once the final checks had been completed and he was sure that they were in their rooms, he should have returned home, to his wife. Instead, he’d visited a basement bar called Flute, off Broadway, where a part-time waitress worked, a woman he’d been seeing for the past three months. Twenty years younger than him, this waitress was beautiful and interested in the mostly made-up stories he told about the FBI. She would lie on the bed, naked, holding her head in her hands while he sat, shirt unbuttoned, recounting his adventures. Almost as good as the sex was the way she hung off every anecdote, saying Un Be Lieve Able at the end of each story, pronouncing it as though it were four words, as though being unbelievable were the highest compliment a man could be paid.

A real wife would’ve been suspicious. He’d arrived home at four in the morning, silently ascended the carpeted stairs to see his wife, Diane, curled under the blankets like a sick animal. Days went by and he never saw her in any other position. It had been too hot to sleep and he’d lain on top of the comforter, naked, still smelling of Rebecca. He hadn’t ever wanted to be a cheat. He didn’t romanticize infidelity. He’d wanted to be a good husband: he’d wanted nothing more in the world. He’d tried not to blame Diane for the guilt he felt every day. There were times when he was so frustrated he wanted to rip their house apart with his hands, take it down plank by plank and brick by brick. He wished he could start his life over again – he’d do everything the same, everything single thing except for Diane.

Last year his parents had celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They’d held a party in their garden. Over two hundred people turned up. People had travelled from other states. Several had caught a plane. Diane hadn’t been able to make it. After two hours of pleading, after banging his hands on the table-top, after smashing the bottle of twenty-year-old wine intended as a present, after punching his hand through a glass cabinet and cutting his knuckles, Yates had been forced to go without her, turning up late, knuckles bandaged and having already downed a quart of Scotch. He’d taken over the barbecue and stood there like a dumb mute servant, staring as the meat sizzled and spat globs of fat onto the fire. Yates had ended up in the most miserable, rotten relationship in the entire neighbourhood and everyone knew it. Some days the humiliation was enough to make him want to die, literally die, his heart to clog up, his lungs to turn as dry as dust.