the Afghan officers. Fahad did not execute Vashchenko, leaving him seated. Leo grabbed the captain’s hands, pinning them down. Even mortally injured, the man was incredibly strong and tried to pull free. Leo didth='1equo; t let him move, holding his hands tight. The captain’s legs kicked, thrashed, he leant forward, almost touching Leo’s face. Finally he weakened, his eyes closing, but Leo still did not let go, pinning his hands down long after the captain had stopped moving.
Leo released Vashchenko and allowed him to drop to the floor. He stood up and remarked:
– He would never have allowed me to live. He would never have allowed himself to be captured. There was no compromise to be made.
It had been a long time since Leo had killed a man. Still seated, Greene edged his smart shoes away from the blood pooling on the ground, remarking:
– The Soviets have gone to extreme lengths to silence you. You’re worth more to them than I thought.
Salaam peered at the bodies. He knelt down, searching the captain’s pockets. Leo whispered to Greene:
– Will we be given asylum? Will you support my request? Greene considered.
– Yes.
*
Leo slowly climbed the stairs, confused whether he should be pleased or apprehensive. He could not be sure his defection would remain a secret. However, at long last, he had a passage to America and no matter what, Zabi and Nara would have a new home. With this thought, he hurried up the stairs, two steps at a time. At the top-floor corridor he ran down to the room, throwing open the door. The curtains were drawn back and a pale orange glow from the street spread across the bed linen. Nara and Zabi were nowhere to be seen. He entered the room, moving around the bed, finding them seated, cross-legged on the floor, hidden in the corner. He sat down beside them, unable to articulate what had taken place downstairs – that there was the chance of a new home. Despite his smile, he saw both Nara and Zabi staring at his hands. In his haste, he’d forgotten to wash them. They were smeared with blood. He considered putting them behind his back. Perhaps it was better that they’d seen. Bloody hands were the price he’d paid for their freedom.
SIX MONTHS LATER
Manhattan United Nations Headquarters 1st Avenue amp; 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
