Agent 6 (37 page)

SIX MONTHS LATER

Manhattan
United Nations Headquarters
1st Avenue & East 44th Street
15 November 1981

Leo stood on 1st Avenue, outside the main gates of the United Nations Headquarters, at the spot where Jesse Austin had been shot sixteen years ago. Having researched the photographs and newspaper articles, spending many hours in the New York Public Library with access to evidence he’d coveted after Raisa’s death, Leo had ascertained the exact location where the crate had been set up, carried by Austin all the way from Harlem – the stage for his assassination. There was no plaque to mark the place, no sign and no statue. It was an unremarkable sidewalk, giving pedestrians no reason to reflect upon what happened here, the lives lost that night.

Leo came here often, standing with his hands behind his back, as if there were a tombstone before him instead of a kerb. He would ponder the many aspects of the case that he still failed to comprehend. Fundamentally he could not grasp why Austin had been killed, no could he understand why it appeared that the Soviet and American governments had collaborated in covering up the murder. Why had the perpetrators planted the gun on his daughter, slipping it into her jacket pocket only to frame Raisa for the murder? The discrepancy suggested a change of plan and subsequent improvisation. Above all, one question remained unanswered:

Who murdered my wife?

The answers in the history books were lies, undetectable to a casual reader caught up in a narrative of adultery and illicit passion, a fanciful story masquerading as a series of bullet-point facts.

When Leo closed his eyes he was transported back to that night, feeling the heat of the crowd and the humid summer air. He could kneel beside Austin’s body on the street and stare down at the white shirt turning red with blood. He could see the expression on Anna Austin’s face: her mouth open, crying out. He could hear the desperation in her voice, a prescient fear that no help would come. He could picture the crowd panicking, knocking down the barricades – the metal clang ringing out. Leo could see his wife and he’d move closer to her, so close he could hear her heartbeat as she cradled Elena, so close he could hear his daughter’s shallow, rapid breathing as her dreams of a better world smashed around her feet.

Like an optical illusion, he could see the episode vividly and yet not understand the things he was able to see. Although a wealth of photographs existed from that night, curiously there was not one photograph with Elena in it. According to her account, she’d been in the midst of the chaos. She’d held up a Soviet flag beside Jesse Austin. Yet there was no evidence supporting that, no mention in any newspaper of her role. A different story had been told, matched with a single iconic photograph, not reproduced in the Soviet Union, one Leo had never seen before, showing Raisa beside Austin’s body. To Leo’s eye, she was responding to the cry for help. To the American public, she was a crazed killer, bitter with jealousy. Another photo showed Raisa in Jesse Austin’s apartment, the singer’s hand on her arm, bed sheets crumpled in the background. Leo knew the photograph was doctored – Elena had told him she’d visited Jesse Austin, not Raisa. Until Leo arrived in the United States, he’d never grasped the public shame that had been heaped on his wife: the degree to which journalists had been captivated by the idea of a tragic Soviet–American love triangle. The shrewdest woman he’d ever known, the only woman he’d ever truly loved, had been logged in the history books as a naive and deluded mistress. The most idealistic man he’d ever known, and one of the few men he’d ever truly admired, had been characterized as lecherous and a liar, a man of such low morals that a bullet through the heart was seen by many as an appropriate end.

On his visits Leo didn’t always linger outside. It was possible to go on a tour of the United Nations building and he’d been inside, listening to the guides, understanding only a little of their English. He’d seen the hall where Raisa’s concert had taken place, not because it served his investigation but because he enjoyed thinking of her success here – a war refugee who survived Stalin’s purges leading a performance in a venue such as this, the diplomatic elite on their feet, applauding her. Zoya told him the concert had gone better than anyone expected, all Raisa’s preparations had worked ctly. While she’d planned for hope and music and song, others had planned for murder.

Twenty minutes had passed and he hadn’t moved, standing in the same spot, hands behind his back. The guards at the United Nation were staring at him, suspicious. Taxi cabs slowed to see if there was somewhere he needed to be. But there was nowhere else he needed to be. There were no more journeys to be made. Now his task was purely an investigative one. Peering up at the skyscrapers he considered them to be holders of the city’s secrets, silent giants, answers locked away in steel, concrete and glass. He did not lay a flower. He had no interest in any memorial except to catch his wife’s killer.

He’d been instructed not to come here for security reasons. It would be easy for the Soviets to find him if they ever suspected his defection. This would be the first place they’d stake out. As was his way, he ignored the instructions. He walked towards the subway station, conscious that he was being followed. He knew this to be true without stopping and turning around, without seeing the agent on his tail, or glimpsing him out of the corner of his eye. His instincts had been honed over many years. He didn’t blame the American secret police for trying to keep tabs on him. Normally he’d allow them to follow him so that they’d feel reassured. But not today – he had work to do, and he did not want the company of the FBI.

Bradhurst
Harlem
West 145th Street

Walking past the apartment building where Jesse Austin once lived, Leo resisted going in. He haunted the location as though he believed that some trace of the past remained, some imprint of the day when young Elena had arrived, with dreams of equality and fairness. His persistence had not yet been rewarded: queries had been rebuffed on every occasion with responses that ranged from hostile to blank incomprehension. There was no one in the building he hadn’t approached, acquiring a reputation with the inhabitants as a crank. When he’d knocked on what was once Jesse Austin’s door he’d addressed the current occupants, a young couple, in rudimentary awkward English, asking if they knew anything about Jesse Austin. They shook their head, seemingly under the impression that he was looking for someone who lived there now. Unable to articulate his real purpose, he’d taken out the newspaper clippings of the assassination. From their confusion, they had no knowledge of the event, no idea who Jesse Austin was, and certainly no idea why this strange foreign man was asking about him sixteen years after the murder. Though they’d been more polite than most, they’d shut the door and locked it.

Moving away from the apartment building, Leo walked down the street, clutching the articles that he showed to almost anyone, particularly those men and women old enough to have been adults at the time of the murders. While he’d been in the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, he’d always presumed that reaching New York was the main obstacle he faced. He was wrong, underestimating the difficulties an outsider would experience when trying to solve a sixteen-year-old case that no one wanted to remember.

There was a cafe on the other side of the street, always busy and something of a social hub in the neighbourhood, popular with an older clientele. He crossed over and entered. Filled with lunch time customers, it was noisy and lively, packed with small square tables situated so close together the waitresses needed to side-step between them, which they did with some lity. Wearing blue-and-white-striped aprons they delivered plates loaded with inelegant, delicious-looking food. The kitchen was visible, steam rising. There was an almost constant sound of plates clattering. Many of the men and women eating here were at least fifty years old. Surely someone knew Jesse Austin and the truth about his death, even if it were no more than a rumour. Leo would have gladly listened to even the idlest speculation.

Approaching the woman at the cash register, Leo felt frustrated by his limited English, verbal clumsiness that would not endear him to an already suspicious audience.

— I want to ask questions. About this man . . . Jesse Austin.

As Leo unfolded his newspaper articles, the woman cocked her head, a dumbfounded expression he’d seen countless times. She called out towards the kitchen:

— You better get out here!

An older woman emerged. As soon as she saw Leo she shook her head. Leo was out of luck, he’d asked for her help before. She’d declined.

—
You got to leave!

—
Please—

—
I told you before. I told you no!

Leo decided to say aloud the man’s name, to see if anyone reacted.

—
I want to speak about Jesse Austin.

—
Get out, right now!

Her command was loud, silencing the entire cafe, customers staring at him, waitresses staring at him, everyone trying to figure him out. Leo observed one interesting point, no matter how much he annoyed her, no matter how angry she became, she never threatened to call the police. He held up the newspaper clippings, showing them to the customers, and repeating the name.

— Jesse Austin. Please. Someone. Talk to me.

He waited outside, loitering on the off-chance someone was going to respond to his request. No one did. He sighed. Hopefully that woman didn’t work every day. He would try again, and again. The breakthrough would come.

New York City
Brighton Beach
Same Day

It was mid-afternoon and the subway was nearly empty as it approached Brighton Beach. Leo sat, regarding an advertisement depicting a young, beautiful woman in a bikini, holding a bottle of orange soda labelled:

FANTA

No other passengers appreciated the notoriety of this brand, no other passengers were aware of the ways the bottle had been used in Kabul – the fear that label created in the minds of prisoners awaiting interrogation. Here, in New York, it was a sugar drink, a symbol of frivolity and fun, and no more. Staring at this advertisement, Leo felt like a visitor from another world.

A fellow passenger was reading a newspaper, bags of shopping sagging by his feet. Another man was standingeven though there were seats available, hanging from the bar, lost in thought as the train emerged from under the city. A mother sat with her young daughter whose legs dangled over the edge of the seat, not reaching the floor of the carriage. Leo was reminded of the daughters he’d left behind in Russia. There wasn’t a day, or even an hour, that passed when he didn’t think about them. He hadn’t seen them in eight years and he had no idea when he’d see them again. The price for this investigation had been high. The idea that Elena and Zoya did not even know that he was alive made him ache. He couldn’t contact them. He couldn’t risk the Soviet government finding out that he was alive. If that happened, the girls would surely be targeted. Just as he found it impossible to believe that he would not solve Raisa’s murder, he found it impossible to accept that he would not see Elena and Zoya again even if he couldn’t rationalize when or how that might happen.

Advertisements aside, Leo found the subway the one place where life in Moscow and life in New York were not so dissimilar. Commuting served as a great leveller of men. He would always watch with interest as the doors opened and a new wave of passengers boarded. The subtle flirtations flickering between passengers were faint echoes of the chance encounter between him and Raisa on the Moscow metro. Far from the memory upsetting him, he’d wonder whether the strangers would part ways, never to see each other again, or try to turn that chance connection into something more.

As he got off at Brighton Beach the sun came out and Leo unbuttoned his coat, feeling warm despite it being late in the autumn. He looked at his surroundings with a sense of wonder, not having adjusted to the fact that this strange new world was home. The notion remained bizarre to him. Perhaps because of his daughters in Russia, he could not imagine ever truly feeling at home. After arriving in the United States, he, Nara and Zabi had spent several weeks moving between temporary accommodation in New Jersey – a disjointed, disruptive experience, but one which Leo found less peculiar than being given a permanent address. He’d insisted upon New York, disguising his true intentions by stressing that this area offered several advantages. There were a large number of Soviet immigrants so his lack of English was not a problem, nor was his foreignness as conspicuous as it would have been in smaller cities. He went largely unnoticed, living under a new name, telling the more curious that he’d fled from persecution.

Zabi and Nara lived in an apartment next to him, also under new names and also with fictional back-stories, pretending to be Pakistani rather than Afghan so that they were harder to trace should anyone come looking for them. They’d wanted Leo to live with them but it would undermine their assumed identities. Arranged in this fashion, they were two different immigrant households who’d befriended each other. Officially, Nara had become Zabi’s mother. She had the paperwork to prove it and Leo sometimes caught her studying it as if unable to believe the words. The girl she’d called out to be killed was now legally her child, a contradiction that she would think upon every day. Far from being destructive, though, it made her a devoted mother. Since she was young to have a daughter aged seven, any questions from outsiders regarding the matter were met with stern silence and the suggestion that the explanation was too bleak to detail – a partial truth, at least.

So it was that’s Leo’s fourth home was on Brighton’s 6th Street, in a third-floor apartment. They hadn’t been able to secure a sea view, in fact they didn’t have much of a view at all, but the apartment was comfortble, with air conditioning, a refrigerator and a television set. Unlike in the apartments in Kabul, he hadn’t removed the doors to other rooms. The unbearable restlessness was gone. He no longer needed opium: he was a detective again.

Unlocking the front door and entering the living room, Leo sensed someone else was in the room. Were it a Soviet operative, Leo would surely be killed before he had time to turn on the lights. With this in mind, he reached for the switch.