Agent 6 (42 page)

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:

— But the FBI would simply tell the public it was a Communist plot.

Nara struggled with the translation but Yates smiled, understanding what had been said.

— The more the FBI told the public it was a Communist plot, the more the public would believe it was an FBI plot. That’s how conspiracy theories are born. The official version has to sound like a lie even when it’s the truth, and the louder you say the truth, the more people look elsewhere. The Communists couldn’t frame the FBI directly: they didn’t have the means or the capability. They were going to frame your daughter, Elena, pretend that she’d slept with Jesse Austin. White Americans would believe the girl had shot him out of jealousy. Negroes wouldn’t. The plan relied upon innuendo and suggestion: they banked on the fact that the Negro community would automatically believe anything bad about the FBI.

Yates climbed out of his seat, pocketing the gun and walking to the fridge, fetching another beer. He pulled the top off, letting it land on the carpet. He took a gulp, impatiently waiting for Nara to finish. Hearing the translation, Leo asked:

—
How did you find this out? Elena couldn’t have told you: she didn’t know.

—
I had it all explained to me by a queer Jew Communist called Osip Feinstein. He’d gotten cold feet about his involvement. Like all Communists, he wanted to switch sides. He wanted me to save him, as if he were a damsel in distress.

—
He didn’t want to be involved in the murder of Jesse Austin?

—
Maybe he liked the old man’s music. I don’t know what the reasoning was. But he spilled his guts, ratted out his colleagues.

— Did he come to you before or after the assassination?

Yates considered lying then shrugged and said:

— What happened was Feinstein ran an agency based in New York that organized trips to Communist Europe for rich dumb Red Americans. He’d managed it for years. Suddenly he wanted to talk. So, I turned up and he asked me to stop the murder. He said I could save Jesse Austin. In exchange, he wanted to go into hiding, protective custody, scared that the Russians would kill him.

Leo said:

— You did nothing?

Yates nodded.

— I did nothing, well, almost nothing. First of all, I didn’t know if anything he said was true. He had switched sides more times than anyone in the history of spying. You couldn’t trust him even as your enemy. Second of all, I figured if the Communists wanted to kill one of their own then why should I get in the way? Why should I save old man Jesse, the guy who wanted to fight Americans? I didn’t want to hear Jesse Austin bad-mouthing this country any more. Why save a Communist who hated America? Why should the FBI save a traitor? In the end, Jesse picked the wrong side. The decision cost him his life.

— Why didn’t Feinstein tell another officer, if you didn’t respond?

Yates nodded, appreciating the point.

— I handcuffed him to a pipe, locked him in his office, to make sure he couldn’t interfere, so he couldn’t tell anyone else. I let Jesse Austin turn up at the demonstration. That was the extent of my involvement. I didn’t orchestrate anything. I didn’t kill him. And I didn’t kill your wife either. All I’m guilty of is letting the whole thing play out.

Yates leaned against the wall, becoming thoughtful, speaking almost to himself as much as Leo.

— Did I fail in my duty as an FBI officer? I’d argue that I did not. I’ll tell you why. I knew Austin’s murder wasn’t going to cause a revolution. Even if every Negro out there believed that the President Lyndon Johnson himself had personally ordered Austin’s assassination, there wasn’t going to be any revolution.

The notion of trying to save Austin because he was an American citizen, an innocent man, didn’t factor into his equation.

— Most blacks believe in God. They go to church. They pray. They sing. Communists don’t. Communists hate God. In the end, there were never enough Godless blacks – there were never enough Jesse Austins for the riots to ever become an uprising.

Yates had said most of what he’d wanted to say. But Leo had not yet received an answer to the question that had brought him here.

— Who murdered my wife?

Yates widened his eyes, as if he’d forgotten about this part of the story.

— You already know the answer to that! After Austin was shot we took your wife and daughter into custody. The precinct was mobbed. There was press in the street. There was a protest. When Anna Austin arrived, they didn’t think to search her, the grieving widow. She sat in the office and waited, claiming she had evidence. I’d been interviewing your wife. Soviet diplomats wanted to talk to her. We left the interview room together, walking into the main office. Anna Austin pulled out a gun. She’d always hated me. She must have figured I’d killed her husband. She fired four shots before another officer shot her dead. All four shots missed me. They hit the desk, the walls – one bullet whistled past my ear. It’s a miracle I’m alive. One of those bullets hit your wife by mistake – caught her in the stomach. That’s all there is to it. It was an accident, no mystery to solve. You’ve been waiting all these years but you’ve known the answer all along: the official version is the truth. Anna Austin killed your wife. She didn’t mean to, but she did.

Pre-empting his reaction, Yates said:

— There are lots of people that can say it’s so. They saw it happen. They saw Anna pull the trigger. They saw your wife go down.

Leo mulled over this explanation, asking:

— Anna Austin never intended to shoot my wife?

Yates moved closer.

— Her intention was to kill me. But she couldn’t manage it. She was a lousy shot, probably never fired a gun before. Afterwards we lied about the motives, not about the facts. Jesse Austin was dead. Anna Austin was dead, shot by a police officer. We were in trouble. Two dead Negroes in one night with one shot in the middle of a police precinct? We had to lie. Harlem was going to burn. We were left with no choice. We needed to create a story to confuse the public so that even if they didn’t believe us, they wouldn’t be able to agree among themselves what the truth was. We needed to tie the whole thing together. Powers far above me decided that the story about Austin taking a lover would work. We’d tell the world your wife had an affair with Austin and that she shot him dead out of jealousy. Anna came to the precinct and acted out of revenge. It squared with the facts. There were photos of your wife at the murder scene. We doctored some photos so that we had images of your wife meeting Austin in his apartment, cutting out Elena and replacing her with images of Raisa. Those photos were rushed. Take a look at them closely: the proportions are out of line. Osip Feinstein’s store was burnt down, with him inside it, the Soviet punishment for betraying them. There were small-scale riots. There were civil-rights marches but nothing of consequence and certainly no revolution. In the end, the majority believed the murders were the result of a tragic romance. Only the Negroes doubted it, and even then, most didn’t care. The whole thing worked out so well I couldn’t believe the FBI wanted me to quit. They claimed I should have acted to stop the murder of Jesse Austin.

Yates shook his head. It was clear that he was troubled not by the murder, nor by the death of three people, but by the fact that he’d lost his job. He was a villain convinced he was a hero.

As Nara finished the translation, Yates warned them:

— There’s nothing you can do. It’s history no one cares about. No one will believe you. No newspaper will publish it. There’s no evidence. If you try and cause problems my government will kick you both out the country. I’ve got nothing else to say. If you expected an apology, you’ve wasted your time. The affair cost me my job, a job I loved and a job I was good at, so I paid my dues too. Now, we’re done talking. If you don’t get out of my house right now I’ll make the phone call and have you both sent back to that hell-hole Afghanistan.

Leo gripped hold of one of the biographies on the table. As Yates moved within range he swung it, striking him across the jaw, knocking the former agent to the floor. Moving at speed, he took the gun from his pocket, kneeling on his chest, pinning him down and saying in Russian:

— I’ve done worse things than kill a man like you.