Agent 6 (43 page)

Leo looked up at a terrified Nara, saying in Dari:

—
Translate for me.

—
Leo!

—
Translate!

He turned back to face Yates.

— My wife didn’t die instantly. It took twenty minutes. She died from loss of blood. Maybe Anna Austin did shoot her by mistake but you let her die, didn’t you? Maybe you were worried Raisa would tell the world Anna Austin tried to shoot you? My wife was lying on the floor, desperate for help – you saw an opportunity, didn’t you?

Leo struck Yates across the face with the gun, splitting his lip.

— Answer me!

Yates spat blood, listening to Nara as she translated. He was calm, saying:

— No matter what you do to me your wife will always be remembered as a whore.

Hearing the translation, Leo cocked the gun, saying in English:

— Tell me how she died.

Yates didn’t answer. Leo moved the gun to the exact position where Raisa had been shot, the barrel pressing against Yates’s stomach.

— Tell me.

Yates shook his head. Leo pulled the trigger.

Same Day

Nara dropped to floor beside Yates, moving to help. Leo stopped her, saying:

— He’s been shot in the same place as my wife was shot. It took her twenty minutes to die. Tell him that he might have that long. But he’s older and the bullet was fired at point-blank range. In all likelihood, he has less time.

Nara translated, stumbling over the words. Leo continued, calmly:

— In this soundproofed room no one will have heard the shot. The only way he’s going to survive is if I show him the mercy he failed to show my wife. I’ll consider doing that if he tells me the truth.

Nara translated, pleading with Yates to speak. Leo directed his Russian at Yates as though he could understand.

— When Anna Austin fired at you, you fired back, not another officer. You shot and killed her, didn’t you? And once she was dead you realized the trouble you were suddenly in. You’d visited Jesse Austin that same day. He was dead. And now you’d shot his wife. You saw my injured wife as an opportunity: she was injured, seriously, but she wasn’t going to die, not if you’d sought help. The cover-up wasn’t your superior’s idea. It was your idea. But in order for your plan to work my wife needed to die. Isn’t that right?

Yates squeezed his lips tight, refusing to speak. He tried to stem the bleeding, putting pressure on the wound, ignoring the questions. Leo pulled Yates’s hand away: keeping the wound exposed, blood continuing to flow, saying in Russian:

— Did you do that to my wife? Did you pull her hand away? You let her bleed?

Yates’s brow overed with sweat, his body shaking. Leo said:

— You delayed calling the ambulance?

Nara translated, no longer stumbling over the words, levelling the accusation at him. She wanted an answer too. Yates said nothing.

Leo didn’t raise his voice, speaking as though addressing a child:

— Yates, you’re running out of time. If you don’t answer I will watch you die as you watched my wife. I will consider the events before me a replay of what happened in New York, and I don’t need you to speak in order to understand that night. I’m prepared to watch, like this, as you bleed to death.

Yates was the master of reading people’s weaknesses and could surely see that there was no uncertainty in Leo.

— You stayed with her, didn’t you? For twenty minutes, making sure of her death? You came up with the idea of tying the murders together, claiming that Anna killed Raisa, that it was an act of revenge, but not against you.

Yates sat up, regarding his bloody shirt, red all the way up to his chest, spreading out across the patchwork carpet. Leo said in English:

— Speak to me.

Finally, Yates reacted. He nodded. Leo grabbed his face.

— Not good enough. I want to hear you speak. Tell me: did you let her die?

Yates’s teeth were bloody. He said:

— Yes, I let her die.

Leo’s voice was almost a whisper.

— My wife spent the last moments of her life with you. Describe them for me.

Yates had turned ghostly pale. He shut his eyes. Leo slapped him across the face, forcing him to respond. Yates opened his mouth but didn’t speak. Leo said:

— Her last minutes. I want to know.

Yates tried to touch the bullet wound but Leo kept a grip on his hand.

— You don’t have much time.

Yates spoke. His words sounded like a man struggling to keep afloat, snatched breaths, panicking.

— I told her there was an ambulance on its way. She didn’t believe me. She knew I was lying. She tried to call out for help. Once she realized there was no help she became peaceful. Her breathing was slow. I thought it was going to take a few minutes but almost fifteen minutes passed. There was a lot of blood. I thought she was ready to die.

He shook his head.

— She began to speak. Very quietly, like she was praying. I thought it had to be Russian. But she was speaking English. She was speaking to me. So I moved closer. She asked me to tell . . . her daughter . . .

— Elena?

Yates nodded.

— That she wasn’t angry. And that she loved her. She kept mumbling it over and over. Tell her I’m not angry. Tell her that I love her. And then she shut her eyes. This time she didn’t open them a gain.

Leo was crying. He let his tears run, unable to wipe them away since he was keeping Yates’s arms pinned down. He composed himself enough to ask:

— You didn’t tell Elena? You couldn’t even do that?

Yates shook his head.

Leo stood up. Freed, Yates pressed his hand against the bullet wound, stemming the bleeding. His anger and confidence returned.

— I answered your questions! Call an ambulance!

Leo took hold of Nara’s hand, silently guiding her up the padded stairs. Behind them came the cry:

— Call me a fucking ambulance!

In the hallway Leo put the gun down on the side cabinet. The telephone was situated below the wedding photograph, the young, handsome Yates with his beautiful bride, destined for a life together of duty and dislike. Holding the receiver against his ear, ready to dial, staring at this photograph, Leo thought of the details of Yates’s confession, picturing Raisa’s last minutes – the physical pain, the protracted suffering and the grubby loneliness of her death, bleeding on the floor of a police precinct. There was not a doubt in his mind that Agent Jim Yates deserved to die. It was sentimental dishonesty to believe that a show of mercy would result in a change of heart. Men like Yates regretted nothing. They could not repent and were incapable of uncertainty. Contemplation and introspection served only to underscore what they already believed. They would always be able to justify their actions. A voice seemed to shout at Leo, demanding justice:

Let him die!

That was why he was here, that was why he’d travelled so far and risked so much. How could he come all this way only to save the man who’d murdered his wife? He was not seeking the moral satisfactionof being a betterperson than his adversary. He would find no sense of pride in saving this man. The anger and anguish he suffered over his wife’s death were as raw today as they were on the day he heard the news – those feelings should be acted upon, rather than a preconceived notion of decency. Knowing the truth of what happened was no tonic to his hurt and provided him with no sense of inner peace. His fury was just as strong, his emotions as unsettled as they had ever been. Maybe if he let Yates die, alone in his basement, a sad and pathetic death, one befitting a man ruled by hatred, he would feel differently, he would achieve the peacehe’d been seeking.

Let him die!

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.

New York City
Brighton Beach
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.

ONE MONTH LATER

Soviet Airspace above Moscow
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.

With regards to the Soviet government, Leo had been unable to obtain any guarantees except for one – if he returned, the punitive measures against his daughters would stop. He had requested that within twenty-four hours of his plane touching down he would be permitted to see them, but he was in no position to insist upon anything. His guilt was not in question. He’d shared sensitive information with the main adversary and was to be tried for treason, a trial whose verdict had already been decided.

As the plane descended, Leo tried to imagine the events of the past eight years, the things that had happened since he was last in Moscow – eight years in which he’d been missing from the lives of his daughters and their husbands. As he thought upon the letters he’d received, it suddenly struck him that he wasn’t anxious about returning to a city filled with memories of Raisa. Something had changed. He was excited. This was the place where he’d fallen in love. He would be closer to his wife here than at any point during his investigation into her death. As the wheels touched down, he closed his eyes. He was home.