Tom Smith - Agent 6

Let him die.

Nara touched his arm.

– Leo?

When he turned to her, he did not see Raisa, but she was by his side as surely as Nara was standing there. The truth is that Raisa would have hated Yates even more intensely than Leo. She would never have forgiven Yates for allowing Jesse Austin to die. She would never have forgiven him for not passing on her last words to Elena. His silence had contributed to Elena blaming herself, carrying a burden of guilt that had altered her character and shaped her life. Even so, even feeling that degree of hatred, Leo was sure that Raisa would call for an ambulance.

He dialled the number, handing the phone to Nara.

– Tell them the address. Tell them to hurry.

– Where are you going?

– To help Yates.

Same Day

Leo sat on the beach watching the ocean break against the shore. The sunset had contracted to a smudge of red, night closing in on what remained of the day. He rolled a smooth stone from hand to hand, back and forth at regular intervals, as if he were an elaborate timepiece counting down to darkness. One fact was clear to him now – the truth had brought him no comfort. His discoveries did not make Raisa’s death any easier to bear. With grief, there was no resolution, no closure. There was no end to it. He missed her now, today, on this beach, as much as he had ever missed her. He found a future without her as hard to picture as the moments after he’d first heard she was dead. The thought of waking up tomorrow morning without her by his side, after many years of doing exactly that, still made him sick with loneliness. In truth, his investigation had been an elaborate, fifteen-year-long diversion from the fact that he did not know how to live without her. He would never know.

As contradictory as it might seem, he had been trying to keep Raisa alive by exploring the mysteries surrounding her death, to legitimize obsessing about her by framing that obsession as the work of a detective. In an unsolved mystery there was immortality. Looking back he realized that Zoya had always perceived the true nature of his investigation and had always known it would bring him no comfort. She was right. He had found out who’d murdered his wife, he had found out why and how she’d been killed. He could now picture the events of that night in New York, understanding every detail, fully grasping the motivations. Yet what was important was that he finally grasped the futility of trying to keep Raisa alive, understanding that the unsolved mystery had only ever offered the illusion of her company, a man chasing the reflection of a woman he loved.

He would never see Raisa again. He would never sleep beside her, or kiss her. And with that thought, he let the smooth, heavy stone roll out of his hand. Night had come. The red smudge of sunset was gone. The lights of Coney Island were bright.

Hearing footsteps, he turned around. Nara and Zabi were approaching. They arrived by his side, standing over him, unsure what to say. Leo patted the ground beside him.

– Sit with me a while.

Nara sat on one side, Zabi on the other. Leo took Zabi’s hand. She sensed something was wrong even if she didn’t understand what it was.

– Are you leaving us?

Leo nodded.

– I have to go home.

– Isn’t this home?

– It is for you. I must return to Russiai›

– Why?

– My daughters are there. They’re in trouble. They’re being punished instead of me. I can’t allow that to happen.

– Can’t they come here? They can live with us. I don’t mind sharing my room.

– They won’t be allowed to come here.

– I don’t want you to go.

– I don’t want to leave you.

– Can’t you stay until Christmas? I’ve been reading about it at school. I want to celebrate it with you. We can buy a tree and cover it with lights.

– You can still do that with Nara.

– When are you coming back?

Leo didn’t reply.

– You are coming back, aren’t you?

– I don’t think so.

Zabi was crying.

– Have we done something wrong?

Leo took hold of her hand.

– You’re the most amazing girl. You’re going to have a wonderful life here with Nara. I’m sure of that. You can achieve anything you set your mind to. And I’m going to enjoy hearing about your success. But there is something I must do.

13 December

Peering out of the window of the passenger plane chartered by the Soviet government to bring him home, Leo was disappointed that Moscow was hidden below angry clouds, as if shunning the gaze of the returning traitor, refusing to show him the city that he’d once sworn to protect against all enemies, domestic and foreign. No matter what rationale he applied, he could not deny that he felt ashamed. He was a man who’d fought proudly as a Soviet soldier and he would gladly have died for his country. Yet he had ended up betraying it. While his sense of personal shame was intense, he felt far greater shame that his nation had squandered its opportunity for social progress, instead industrializing darkness, making its citizens complicit in a murderous command economy, building death-factories in every corner of the country, from Kolyma’s gulags to the secret police headquarters, the Lubyanka, a building that lurked somewhere underneath those winter clouds. To the ideals that underpinned the Revolution, they were all traitors to one degree or another.

The journey from New York had been eerie, Leo surrounded by unoccupied seats, the flight empty except for the KGB operatives guarding him and the diplomatic officials sent from Moscow to oversee his return. Upon boarding he’d felt no sense of apprehension, instead pondering the money wasted on his repatriation. As a traitor of international status, he had been granted an entire plane to himself. Recalling the perks he’d once desired as a young agent, he marvelled at the irony that not even the most powerful KGB officer, with the largest dacha and longest limousine, would ever have been granted the use of an entire airliner. It was a simple matter of appearances. Leo’s deportation was taking place upon a global stage before a worldwide media circus and no economies would be tolerated. Just as Raisa had been sent to New York in the nation’s most modern airliner to impress the main adversary, so the defector Leo would be brought home in the most modern Soviet aircraft available, flying direct to Moscow from New York. The Soviet government was keen to show the world that it was not experiencing financial worries. Carefree spending was an attempt to mask the strain caused by the ever-spiralling cost of the Afghan war, a fact Leo had described in detail to the Americans.

In negotiating his return to the Soviet Union, it was clear that the Americans were pleased to be rid of him. He was a troublemaker, a loose cannon, and they’d extracted the information they needed, understanding from his briefings that Soviet failure in Afghanistan would leave their enemies humiliated. Providing aid to the Afghan insurgency would drain Soviet resources, pulling in more troops and making their ultimate and inevitable defeat even more expensive politically.

As for Leo’s incident with former Agent Jim Yates – the attack had been covered up. Yates survived. His revelations would never see the light of day. The history books had been written and they would not be re-written: lies had been chiselled into the encyclopaedias and textbooks. The shooting of Yates in his pleasant suburban house in Teaneck had been blamed on an armed intruder, an opportunistic robbery gone wrong. Leo had assured the American authorities that he would not cause any further problems, or give any statements regarding the death of Jesse Austin, as long as Nara and Zabi were left alone. A pact of silence had been agreed. Leo took some satisfaction from the symmetry of Yates’s shooting being concealed as a matter of convenience, just as Austin’s murder had been. Though Yates had agreed to go along with the story, he’d pointedly told local reporters that all he remembered about the intruder was that he was black.