Tom Smith - Agent 6

Nelson looked her in the eyes, saw her expression, registered her tone and nodded.

– Is there something wrong?

– No, nothing’s wrong. There’s something my husband has to do and I have to be there with him.

– All right, Anna: do whatever you have to do. Don’t worry about this place, I’ll serve the food myself if I have to.

At his kindness, Anna kissed him on the cheek.

– Thank youquo; d p›

She turned around, taking off her apron, leaving the restaurant and heading back as fast as she could. She ran all the way home, across the street, through the men playing cards, through the haze of cigarette smoke, reaching the stairs up to her apartment building. On her way up, striding up two steps at a time, she felt the eyes of her neighbours. They pitied her, imagining that she’d suffered because of Jesse. They were wrong. She was the luckiest woman alive to have shared her life with him.

She threw open the apartment door. Jesse was standing on the bed, addressing the open window as though it were an audience of ten thousand. Around his feet were the handwritten pages of all the speeches he’d ever performed.

Jim Yates slipped into the back of the hall and watched the performance. Communists mingled with American students, dressed identically: boys in white shirts and black pants, girls in white shirts and black skirts, nothing distinguishing one nationality from the other. According to the programme, framed with a multitude of international flags, the songs had been composed by musicians from around the world. Not even the liberal organizers of this event could allow Communist propaganda songs, Soviet hymns about being the strongest nation ready to crush all enemies including the United States. The Communists would save them for when they got home, as soon as they stepped off the plane in Moscow. As the Russians weren’t able to sing their songs, neither were the Americans for fear of offending their guests. Not allowed to sing their own songs in their own country! Of course, this wasn’t his country – the United Nations Headquarters did not fall under the authority of the United States, even though it was in New York. Without a shot being fired the land had been handed over to an international organization. Yates wasn’t even an FBI agent here. He was a guest.

As the song came to an end and the audience applauded, Yates regarded the diplomats. White people seemed to be a minority. Several envoys stood up to applaud. Yates couldn’t make them out clearly from where he was standing – probably Cubans or South Americans. The truth was that while the students sang on stage, arm in arm, their nations planned the other’s annihilation. The charade was grotesque. He was appalled that there were American parents who’d agreed to put their children into this concert. Those mothers and fathers warranted further investigation.

Yates checked his watch, fingernail tapping the dial face. The real performance was about to take place outside.

Jesse Austin was carrying an apple crate that he’d taken from Nelson’s restaurant kitchen. He’d spoken on street corners before and without elevation of some kind he didn’t stand a chance of being heard, even as a tall man and a practised orator. Every performer needed a stage and though an apple crate wasn’t much of one, it was better than a sidewalk. Arriving from the subway, he saw that part of 1st Avenue was closed to traffic. Instead of subduing the atmosphere, the absence of cars heighteed the sense that the demonstration was out of the ordinary. Surveying the scene before him, set against the backdrop of the United Nations building, he saw hundreds of people gathered, far more than he’d expected. Anna took hold of his free hand. She was nervous.

The police were positioned in a perimeter formation: some were wearing full riot gear, several were on horseback, patrolling the front line of the protest, their horses snorting as if disgusted by the rabble. The protestors were barricaded in, like cattle, garish homemade banners rising up among the crowd: bed sheets stretched tight over wooden posts, brilliant colours – a tapestry of different material. Letters had been cut out individually, unevenly, giving them a childlike naivety. Reading the slogans, Jesse deduced the protestors were a muddle of different groups. There was something he’d never seen before in New York, anti-Vietnam-War demonstrators with guitars and drums side by side with clean-cut men and women in starched shirts attacking the Communist Party, some with placards demanding that Hungary be liberated from Soviet rule, others using the tired phrase: THE ONLY GOOD RED IS A DEAD RED

It was reproduced so many times that Jesse wondered why they couldn’t think of something else to say – it made him want to speak even more. The more they threatened him, the stronger he became: that’s what he’d always believed.

He was too late for the most prominent locations in the demonstration, and he wouldn’t be able to plant himself near the gate as Elena had requested. He and Anna would have to make do with the far side, down towards the scraggly end of the crowd. It was less than ideal and he was annoyed with himself for not getting there earlier. As they began to walk down the length of the demonstration, a voice called out:

– Jesse Austin!

Turning around, he saw a man near the gate gesturing for him to come over. They obeyed, despite having no idea who the man was. He was young, with a pleasant smile.

– This spot is for you! I saved it!

The space was beside the main entrance, as Elena had requested. He took hold of Jesse’s crate, lifting it over the barricade. He tested it to see that it was stable, before looking up at Jesse.

– Climb over!

Jesse laughed.

– Thirty years ago maybe!

Holding Anna’s hand, he moved into the crowd, slowly working his way through the people until he reached the crate. The man was protecting the makeshift stage from other protestors, several of whom were trying to push their way onto it. Seeing Jesse, he put a hand on his shoulder.

– This is your time. Give them everything! Don’t hold back!

Jesse shook his hand.

– Who are you?

– A friend. You have a lot more of them than you know. ing Jeht="0"›

Yates left the United Nation’s premises before the concert finished. Normally a demonstration wouldn’t have been allowed so close to the headquarters, but redirected to Ralph Bunche Park or Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at 47th Street and 1st Avenue, one block away from the visitors’ entrance, four blocks away from the entrance used by top-level diplomats. The decision to allow the demonstration unprecedented proximity to the United Nations was symbolic, the idea being that unlike the Soviet Union, America had nothing to fear in the face of open criticism. And there he was – Jesse Austin, making full use of the liberties granted by this nation, freedom of speech, a freedom that didn’t exist in the nation he so extolled.

Exiting onto the street, Yates saw a uniformed cop approaching Jesse, interrupting his speech and pointing at the crate he was standing on. Yates hurried forward, grabbing the supervising officer by the arm and shouting over the din:

– Tell your officer to pull back! No one moves Jesse Austin!

– Who is Jesse Austin?

The name meant nothing to this police officer. Yates was pleased.

– The tall man, the Negro standing on the box! He stays where he is!