Tom Smith - Agent 6

– They told me you’d defected? That seems normal for a Communist. In my experience, Communists generally end up betraying their country. You Reds can’t stay faithful for long. Loyalty is a virtue I prize. I’m certain the United States has the most loyal citizens in the world, which is one of the reasons why we’re going to win the Cold War. Take me, for example: I looked after my wife right up until the day she died, long after she stopped loving me. It didn’t matter that she didn’t love me. It didn’t matter that I didn’t love her. I never left her. I knew her every need. I designed this house around her needs. Hard as it might be for some people to accept but I knew my country’s needs too – she needed strength against her enemies. I gave her strength. I never compromised. I never pulled my punches. I did whatever it took and I’d do the same again.

Leo listened as Nara translated. Yates interrupted:

– You’re here to kill me?

Leo understood the English. Before he could reply, Yates laughed:

– Don’t be shy!

Leo used a phrase he’d practised.

– I wish to find out who killed my wife.

– And you wish to kill them? I see it in your eyes. You and me, we’re not so different – we do whatever it takes.

Yates slipped a hand into his pocket, taking out a small revolver and putting it on the arm of his chair. He studied Leo’s reaction to the gun carefully, then continued speaking as if the gun weren’t there.

– You’ve travelled a long way, so I want to be as helpful as I can. Who killed your wife? Who killed your pretty Russian wife? She was pretty, wasn’t she? She was a beauty. No wonder you’re sore about losing her. I bet you couldn’t believe your luck, marrying a pretty woman like that. Hard to understand why she was a teacher. Seems a waste to me. She could have had a real career in America – a model, an actress, her face in all the magazines.

Leo said:

– Who shot her?

Yates swirled the remains of his beer, as if mixing a potion.

– It wasn’t me.

Leo had heard thousands of denials in his career. To his disappointment he was certain that Yates was telling the truth.

Same Day

Yates raised three fingers.

– Three people died that night: Jesse Austin, Anna Austin and your wife. A lot of Negroes believed it was me that pulled the trigger on old Jesse. They think I’m the devil and I was the one who shot him even though I was standing on the other side of the street when Austin was killed, with my hands in my pockets surrounded by witnesses, real witnesses too, not the kind in line for a promotion, or trying to duck jail time. Over the years I’ve received hundreds of death threats.

Yates gestured towards the bookshelves and Leo turned, presuming there to be a bundle of these letters tied together. But there were none and no proof that any death threats had been sent. Yates continued without producing them.

– Negroes complain about lynching but what they’re really complaining about is that they don’t get to do it to white folks. That’s what equality means to most of them: the right to lynch us back. Lynching for all, regardless of colour.

Yates laughed while Nara translated. He was greatly amused by his own joke, which he seemed to consider profound wisdom. He didn’t wait for her to finish, keen to carry on with his story.

– The truth is that the idea of killing Austin never crossed my mind. The idea had never been proposed by the FBI, I swear to God, not once did we discuss it, not even when the old fool was telling the world how he’d rather fight for the Communists than for the United States.

Leo had no interest in this rhetorical performance, nor in hearing the many reasons why Yates hated Austin, and asked:

– Who shot him?

– Your people did. The Communists killed him. Jesse Austin was shot dead by a Soviet agent.

Leo nodded, he sighed.

– I believe you.

Yates lowered his beer, checking with Nara as she translated Leo’s statement. He had always believed Jesse Austin’s death was a Soviet plot, not an American one.

Leo said in Dari:

– My daughter Elena was in New York, on that same trip. She was working for a Soviet government agency. She believed that her mission was to rejuvenate the career of Jesse Austin. It is clear to me that this was a lie. She’d been tricked. However, I have never been able to find out why my country wanted Jesse Austin dead. My daughter obviously didn’t know.

Hearing the translation, Yates nodded.

– Elena? That girl couldn’t have explained it to you. She didn’t know anything. All she did when we arrested her was cry. She honestly believed she was giving Jesse’s career a boost. It was pitiful how stupid she was.

Leo felt tremendous fury at these words. His daughter had been exploited because she was a dreamer, a young girl who’d fallen in love. Hearing Yates mock her, the desire to kill him was so strong he was forced to shut his eyes briefly, controlling his anger, allowing Yates to speak without interruption.

– They needed someone like her to force Austin into the open. He was practically a hermit, never going out. That girl turns up, talks about changing the world, and he can’t say no. The only person who could’ve convinced Jesse Austin was someone like her.

Finally Leo understood that Elena’s naivety hadn’t merely made it easy for her to be manipulated, it was the key to unlocking Austin’s scepticism, the only way to make sure he turned up to the concert.

Yates toyed with the gun throughout the translation. Once Nara was finished, he carried on.

– I’m not surprised you couldn’t figure out what the point of the assassination was. It’s hard to imagine a scheme more twisted than the one they cooked up. The Kremlin had decided that Austin was no longer an asset. He wasn’t on the radio, no one knew who he was and no one was buying his records. He couldn’t get a gig in a bar, let alone a concert hall. I’d done my job well. I’d made the old man irrelevant. The Soviets took a long cold look at their biggest supporter and decided that he was more useful dead than alive. Your government was fixated on the idea that the Negro community was the most likely way to start a revolution in America. I suppose since they were downtrodden, the idea was that they’d rise up, rip off their chains and rebuild the State according to a Socialist model. All it needed was a spark and the whole racial tinderbox would go up in flames, bringing down the capitalist regime and turning the United States red. That was the plan.

Yates chuckled at the notion.

– I don’t know if they were deluded enough to believe that old man Austin would be the spark but they did believe his assassination would worsen racial tensions. If they shot him, no matter what the truth of the assassination, every black American would think it was the FBI lynching an outspoken Negro. No one would believe it was a Communist plot, they’d all think it was an FBI hit. The assassination would make the forgotten man famous again; more famous than he’d ever been before, a martyr for the Negro revolution. Malcolm X had been shot only a few months earlier, two Negro assassinations in a year, it looked suspicious, I’ll grant them that. They were hoping, after Austin’s death, that everyone would buy his music and listen to recordings of his speeches. They thought they could breathe life into his career by taking his life.

Yates smiled through much of Nara’s translation, amused by the ironies, fondly recollecting a time when he had power over life and death.

– For the plan to work, they needed him in a public place, with the world’s media present. That’s why they tagged this plan onto the concert.

Leo asked, in Russian: