Agent 6 (16 page)

Manhattan
Global Travel Company
926 Broadway
Same Do kont>

In the storeroom behind his office, Osip Feinstein developed the photographs he’d taken of Jesse Austin towering over the Russian girl, the rumpled bed sheets in the background appearing to carry the fossilized impression of their sexual encounter. It would’ve been preferable for Jesse’s hand to be clasping her arm rather than the other way round. No matter, the sordid implications were striking. What couldn’t be seen in the photograph was Austin’s wife. She was out of shot. Nor would anyone know that the bed had been unmade before the girl had arrived. Those passing judgement were unlikely to spend time analysing it: the snap response would be outrage. The roles of the villain and victim were clear. Though the meeting had been entirely innocent, the photograph produced showed striking guilt and moral compromise – an exploited, fragile white girl pathetically bidding farewell after a squalid escapade with a lecherous old Negro.

Osip dropped his head in shame, staring at his wrinkled hands clasped around the photographs. He noted with interest that he still had the capacity to feel shame. He wasn’t entirely dead inside, numbed with opium but not yet oblivious to his failings. This was not the life he’d sought when he’d come to America, to frame a man he admired, a man of great integrity.

A long time ago Osip had been a man of integrity too. Though he was now a spy, the truth was that he had no love for the Soviet Union and plenty of affection for the country he was betraying. He reconciled the contradiction, to some degree, by smoking opium – which helped a lot – and rationalizing – which helped a little. When he’d arrived in New York as a young man, he’d felt certain that success of some kind was inside him. He’d achieved success but not the kind he’d expected. At the age of fifty-nine, Osip had become one of the longest-serving Soviet spies to work in ‘the main adversary’, spy slang for the United States of America.

As a young man, forty years ago, Osip had been an ambitious nineteen-year-old living in the Ukraine, attending Kyiv University, with aspirations to spend his life in academia. Feeling the grip of prejudice around the neck of his fledgling career – the door to his room defaced, the Star of David scratched into it, the contempt of his tutors – it was evident that he would never achieve a professorship. Sitting in his cold room, looking over a snow-covered street, he could no longer imagine a future in Kyiv. Without close family to root him in the city, he made the decision to leave, motivated less by a sense of fear than a determination to fulfil his potential. He’d originally intended to travel to France. However, leaving Kyiv was akin to stepping off a cliff and falling into the ocean, buffeted by the waves, with no control over his direction. He eventually washed up on the shores of the American consulate at Riga, Latvia, where he’d remained in the State Emigrant House for two days, suffering the indignity of being examined and disinfected. He’d paid his entire worldly fortune to the Sovtorgflor Company, which specialized in arranging travel for emigrants. Clutching his transit papers and doctor’s certificate, six months after he’d made the decision to leave, he’d boarded a boat. For the first time he could imagine a future again: his future was New York.

He arrived in 1934 – the worst period in living memory to look for work. To make matters worse, his gifts were intellectual. Even so, he’d failed to complete his degree, meaning that the only work open to him was as an unskilled labourer, yet he lacked the physical strength to compete within the vast and desperate labour pool. Frm the window of his run-down room, shared with five other men, he’d watch the Unemployed Union marching through the streets, slow-moving lines of jobless workers that filed south on Broadway. He’d scratched together a meagre, desperate existence for a couple of years, living hand to mouth, before chancing across Communist activists trying to tap into the disenchantment of the unemployed. His survival instincts had taken over and sensing an opportunity he approached them, explaining his history. Since he was Jewish and fluent in Russian, they presumed he had an predisposition to Communism. He’d lied about the reasons he’d left the Soviet Union, explaining that he’d come to the USA in the depths of the Great Depression certain that the capitalist society was in crisis and wishing to ferment a revolution. Familiar with the jargon, the slogans, aphorisms and theory, he’d dazzled his audience. Though the Communist Party of the USA didn’t know it, they were at the apogee of their success. The Communist presidential candidate William Foster and his Negro running mate James Ford had received over a hundred thousand votes in the 1932 election – claiming to be at the forefront of change: progressive socially and offering a radical alternative to the broken capitalist system that had driven workers to jump from office windows and families to live in shanty towns in Central Park. Almost everyone involved with the CPUSA hoped the Depression was the beginning of the end for capitalism, everyone, that is, except for their newest recruit, Osip.

Osip was starving, sick and unemployed. He didn’t care about the party. He cared that they had money. They could pay him – the CPUSA received substantial illegal subsidies from the Soviet Union, transferred via a system of mail drops. They could feed and clothe him. For the first time since arriving in New York he ate well, without counting the cost of each mouthful. His strength returned. After several months of leafleting and performing rudimentary services for the party, it was decided he would set up a legitimate business called the Global Travel Company, selling tourist packages for Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Under this cover, Osip was tasked with importing potential spies from the Soviet Union, academics and scientists who could infiltrate key military and scientific operations in the United States. The American authorities would accept the applicants because they would be too brilliant to pass over. He’d run this tourist agency, which lost thousands of dollars, ever since.

The store bell was ringing. He had a customer. There were very few legitimate customers: rarely more than four or five a week. Osip wiped his hands and stepped into the store regarding the customer, a man in his forties. He was wearing a crumpled suit. The cut was poor and his shoes were cheap and scuffed but he wore his clothes with a swagger and bravado that concealed many of their faults. He was an FBI agent and Osip was sure it was the man he’d seen outside Jesse Austin’s apartment. The agent had yet to look at him, flicking through one of the brochures. Osip said:

— Can I help you?

The agent turned, answering with mock formality:

— I was wondering how much it would cost for a one-way ticket to the Soviet Union? First class, of course, I only want to see Communism if I can travel in luxury.

He switched into his regular way of speaking.

—
Isn’t that how it works in rackets like this, people with lots of money paying to see how people live with none?

—
The point is for the traveller to experience a different way of life. What they make of that society is entirely up to them. We merely make the arrangements.

Osip offered his hand to shake.

—
My name is Osip Feinstein. I’m the owner of this agency.

—
Agent Yates.

Yates produced his credentials but didn’t shake Osip’s hand. Instead, he sat on a chair, slumped, as though he were at home in front of his television. He lit a cigarette, inhaled, exhaled and said nothing more. Osip stood, waiting.

—
I take it you’re not here for the travel.

—
Correct.

—
How can I help you?

—
You tell me.

—
Tell you what?

—
Listen, Mr Feinstein, we can bounce this back and forth all day long. Why don’t I lay my cards on the table? You’ve been under surveillance for many years. We know you’re a Communist. You’re described as a cautious man and a canny operator. Yet today my men are able to follow you to Harlem. You go into an apartment building not too far from a man called Jesse Austin. After several hours you left, returning to the store with a camera slung over your arm. We saw it all. That’s what troubles me. It’s not your style to be this careless. It feels like you’re flirting with us, Mr Feinstein. If I’m wrong, if I have insulted you in some way, that’s fine: I’ll walk out of here right now and say sorry for taking up so much of your time, I’m sure you’re busy selling these tours.

Yates stood up, walked towards the door. Osip called out:

— Wait!

He had not intended to sound so pitiful. Yates turned around, slowly, a toxic smile on his face.

Osip tried to ascertain quickly what kind of man he was dealing with. He’d hoped for someone businesslike. This agent seemed emotional and angry.

— You queer, Mr Feinstein? In my experience most Communists are either queer, Negro or Jew. I know you’re a Jew. I can see you’re no Negro. I’m not all that expert at guessing queers, though. Sure, there might be other kinds of Communists, but the ones who aren’t ashamed to stand up and say ‘I’m proud to be a Communist’ are always queer, Negro or Jew.

Yates sucked on his cigarette and exhaled, jabbing it at Osip’s chest.

— I’ve been following your career with interest, Mr Feinstein. We’ve known for some time that this tourist agency is a cover. Did you think we were stupid? Those spies you sent us? We let them in. Why? Because we were confident as soon as they arrive in this country and start living in a nice house, and driving a nice car and eating nice food, they’re going to forget about that god-awful Communist hole they left behind. They’re going to be loyal to us because our lives are better than yours. And you know what? We were right. You’ve arranged for what, maybe three hundred people and their families to come over?

The exact number was three hundred and twenty-five. Yates sneered:

— How many have given you anything confidential? How many have given you even a scrap of information or a single blueprint?

Despite his doubts about Yates, there was no way back. Osip had to proceed with his plan.

— Agent Yates, I left the Soviet Union fearing for my life. I have no love for that regime. I began working as a spy for the Soviet Union only because I couldn’t get any other work in New York. I was hungry. It was during the Great Depression. The CPUSA had money. I had none. That is the truth. After I joined them, there was no going back. My card was marked as a Communist. I had to behave as one. The men and women whose visas I arranged were never likely spies. They were people in danger, scientists and engineers. They feared for their lives and the lives of their children. I never expected them to become spies. I never expected them to provide a scrap of information, as you say. I used Soviet resources to get them to safety under the guise of infiltrating American universities or factories or even the military. That is the truth. The measure of my success was not how many spies I created, but how many lives I saved.

Yates stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

—
Mr Feinstein, that’s an interesting story. Makes you sound like an American hero, is that what you’re saying? I should be patting you on the back?

—
Agent Yates, I no longer wish to work as a Soviet agent. I wish to work for the United States government. In saying this, my life is now in terrible danger, so you should have no reason to doubt my word.

Yates moved close to Feinstein.

— You wish to work for the United States government?

— Please, Agent Yates, follow me. I can prove my sincerity.

Osip escorted him through to the temporary darkroom, showing him the photographs of Jesse Austin. Only now did Osip notice that Yates had drawn his gun, fearing a trap. Keeping the gun by his side, Yates asked:

—
Why did you take the photographs?

—
They’re part of a plan drawn up by a Soviet department called SERVICE.A. The Soviet authorities intend to exploit these concerts for their own benefit. They have asked Jesse Austin to speak outside the UN tonight.

—
They’ve been trying to get him to attend for months now. So what?

— He turned down every request, so they sent this girl, a Russian girl, an admirer of Jesse Austin. They want him to address the crowd. The world’s media will be present.

— The world’s media will be inside the hall, not on the sidewalk. You’re telling me their plan is to persuade a washed-up singer to shout about his Communist brothers to a rabble on the sidewalk? Let him speak! I don’t give a shit.

Yates began to laugh, shaking his head.

—
Feinstein, is this really what you brought me over for?

—
Agent Yates, after tonight, Jesse Austin will be more famous than ever, more famous than you can possibly imagine.

Yates stopped laughing.

&mdyoull me everything.

Bradhurst
Harlem
West 145th Street
Same Day

The night was as hot as the day. Red-brick walls baked in the full glare of the sun leached the heat back out, slow-cooking the residents. For about an hour either side of sunrise there was some respite, when the bricks were cool and the sun wasn’t yet beating down, the only time of day that was fresh and human. Jesse sat on the window ledge with no expectations of a breeze. Outside the sound of children playing ball or skipping ropes no longer cut the air. Having sold its day’s stock the clam wagon was pushed off, arthritic, rusty wheels creaking into the distance. Beggars, who’d set up position next to it in the hope of catching loose change, were moving off, breaking into different directions, looking for somewhere to sleep or for new places to beg. The card players took their games from the shade onto the sidewalk, on fold-out flimsy tables. Those who’d slept during the day came alive with the night. There was drink and dope and laughter – the light side of the night, the first drink, the first smoke and it was always a good time. Later the fights would start, the arguments and shouting, the women crying and the men crying too.

Jesse watched the street evolve into darkness as the last of the sunlight seeped away. This was his entertainment now, for they no longer owned a television set, sold it years ago. They didn’t miss it. They didn’t want to watch the programmes it showed, the music that was aired, suspicious of the powers that controlled it, powers that would block him being on television in a heartbeat. Jesse wondered about the other men and women he might have known and loved if their careers hadn’t been swallowed up by a disapproving state. How many artists, musicians, writers, painters, had been lost to fear? He wished he could bring them together, these lost souls, sit them round his table, pour them a drink, hear their stories, listen to their troubles and delight in their talents.

Anna was dressed for work. She was on a late shift, working for a restaurant that stayed open twenty-four hours a day. Nine at night to nine in the morning was a shift that not even the younger waitresses volunteered for. Anna claimed to prefer it, saying the heavy night-time drinkers always tipped better than the daytime diners and they never sent any of the food back. She stood by the door, ready to go. Jesse got down from the window ledge, taking her hands. She asked:

—
Have you decided?

—
I don’t know. I just don’t know. Standing on the sidewalk outside the United Nations, giving a speech? I’m not proud, Anna, but it’s not like an invitation to perform at Madison Square Garden. It’s not what I had in mind for us. I don’t know how I feel about it all.

—
Jesse, I can’t take tonight off, not at this late notice, I’ve got to work.

— I don’t even know if I’m going, so there’s no point you waiting around.

She was uneasy.

—
I don’t want you to think that I’m against it, should you choose to go.

—
I know that.

—
I’d never ask you not to do something when you believed in it, when you thought it was the right thing to do.

—
Anna, what’s wrong?

She looked like she was about to cry. It was only for a moment, a ripple of emotion across her face, and then she recovered her composure. Anna never cried.

— I’m late, that’s all.

— Then don’t waste any more time worrying about me.

Anna kissed him on the check, but instead of pulling away, she remained close by his face, whispering:

— I love you.

Those three words were too much for him to bear right now. Jesse looked down at the floorboards, his voice faltering.

— I’m sorry, Anna. For all this trouble, for all this . . .

She smiled.

— Jesse Austin, don’t you ever apologize to me, not for what they’ve done, not for something that was never your fault.

She kissed him again.

—
Just tell me you love me.

—
Sometimes ‘I love you’ doesn’t sound like it’s enough.

—
It’s all I’ve ever wanted.

She let go of him, straightened her clothes, opened the door and hurried down the stairs, without looking back and without shutting the door behind her.

Jesse waited by the window. Anna appeared on the street, snaking her way through the card games on her way to the restaurant. Almost out of sight she stopped, turning back and waving at him. He waved back and by the time he’d lowered his hand she was gone.

It was time to decide. He checked his watch. There was only an hour until he was meant to address a group of unknown demonstrators. He didn’t even know what they would be demonstrating about. In all likelihood they would not recognize him and he’d struggle to be heard. The concert started at nine. According to the Russian girl it only lasted seventy minutes. Jesse tapped the face of his handsome watch bought in better times. As he pondered on whether to accept the invitation, the memory of another watch crept into his thoughts, a watch he’d never worn. It had been given to him at the very start of his career while he’d been on his first national tour. The manager of the concert hall had been so pleased with the unexpected success of the performances, three sold-out events in the town of Monroe, Louisiana, that he’d presented Jesse with a handsome box, containing a nicely made watch with a leather strap with
MADE IN MONROE
embossed on the back. Jesse didn’t remember too much about the watch itself but he remembered the manager very well. The man had knocked on his dressing-room door after the final performance, snuck in with the stealth of a mistress. Anna had been in the room and witnessed the manager nervously offering Jesse the watch as a token of his gratitude before hurrying out again. Jesse had laughed out loud at the odd manners of this pleasant man until he’d noticed that Anna wasn’t laughing. She’d explained that man wanted show his gratitude, he just wasn’t able to show it in public. He couldn’t come onto the stage at the end of the show and give Jesse the watch. He couldn’t invite them to dinner sie he didn’t want to be seen with Jesse and Anna in a restaurant. He could employ Jesse to sing, he could be seen applauding, but as soon as Jesse stepped off that stage he couldn’t be seen near him. It was a fine watch, a handsome watch, par ticularly for a young man who’d yet to make much money, but Jesse hadn’t kept it, leaving it behind in the dressing room with a note:

Dinner would’ve been plenty.

He’d never been booked there to play again.

Anyone could love a person while they were singing and dancing on a stage. Jesse had learnt this lesson when he was seven years old. He and his family had been living in Braxton, Mississippi, before they’d made the decision to move north. Autumn 1914, a night so hot that after walking no more than a hundred paces Jesse’s shirt was as wet as if a cloud had followed his every step. His mother and father had made him promise that he would stay inside tonight, they both had to work and they were leaving him alone. But just last week, they’d run out of wood and his father had scolded him for not pulling his weight around the house and Jesse didn’t want to be told off again, deciding it would be better to find some more wood. So he’d been collecting timber without too much trouble since everything on the forest floor was a dry as thatch, bark coarse in his hands. Twigs crunched underfoot, the snap of dry wood, noises that echoed through the trees. Though he’d never admitted as much to his family, he’d always been afraid of the woods – his imagination ran free, his mind played tricks on him. He’d call himself silly. Sometimes he’d even call himself silly out loud.

— Jesse, don’t be scared. There’s bugs and mosquitoes in these woods, that’s all there is.

But when he stopped talking the sound of voices continued. He shook his head as though there were water in his ears. The voices continued, not one, but two or three.

—
You’ve done it wrong!

—
Like this!

—
Stand there.

—
Help me over here!

—
That’s it.

—
Get the camera ready!

He moved in one direction, deeper into the woods and the voices became softer. He changed direction, heading out of the woods, towards town. The voices became louder. He should’ve run home. He should’ve dropped his bundle of wood and run but he carried on, following the sounds.

Coming to the edge of the forest, not far from town, Jesse was surprised to see a large crowd, surprised since his parents had been so vocal in ordering him to remain inside that night when it seems so many other people were doing just the opposite. The crowd had their backs turned to him, in a semicircle, maybe one hundred in total; less like a crowd, he realized, and more like an audience. Those at the back and on the edges were holding burning branches, flickering lanterns, stage lights spitting red sparks into the night sky. They needed the lanterns since there wasn’t much moonlight, only a glimmer every now and then when the heavy clouds lumbered out of the moon’s way. Jess thought that this was a well-dressed group of people, considering they were in forest. There were women in crisp dresses. There were girls wearing matching outfits. The men wore shirts, tucked into their pants. It was like they were dressed for church, or the theatre. Some people were fanning themselves with straw hats, ladies were shooing away mosquitoes and flies with dainty swipes of their dainty fingers, but Jesse could see the sweat stains on their backs; they weren’t so different from him after all.

They hadn’t noticed little Jesse, standing silently behind a tree – his arms full of wood, his hair knotted with leaves, his clothes as scruffy as if they’d been knitted from the foliage on the forest floor. The audience were captivated by what was happening in front of them but Jesse couldn’t figure out what could be so entertaining this far into the woods. He was too short to see what was happening and he didn’t dare move from behind the tree for the audience was all white and it wasn’t wise to interfere.

As though a spell had been cast, every single man and woman and child in the clearing looked up into the trees at exactly the same time. Jesse looked up too, hoping to see a firework, a burst of brilliant stars. Instead, he saw what they had gathered to watch – it was a dance, two legs dancing in the sky; a jerky dance, not like one he’d ever seen before, a dance where the two black, shoeless feet didn’t touch the ground, a dance without rhythm and without music, a silent dance that lasted no more than a minute or two.

By the time those legs were done with their dance, Jesse had crushed all the twigs in his arms and his shoes were covered in ground-up bark. A man in the audience lifted up a bulky box camera and a bulb flashed, burning bright for an instant and exposing everything hidden by the night. To this day Jesse wondered why the man waited till the end to take his photograph. Maybe he didn’t want to miss a moment of that entertaining dance.

When the young Russian girl had asked him earlier why he’d sacrificed so much for Communism, when strangers and friends and families had asked him why he couldn’t shut his mouth about politics and enjoy the money, he’d never told them the truth. What had turned him into a Communist? It wasn’t the hatred his family encountered when they’d moved to New York, or the insulting things that anyone had ever said to him. It wasn’t the poverty, or the struggle his parents had faced just to make ends meet. On the opening night of his first major concert, onstage in a crowded auditorium, looking out at the well-heeled white people clapping as he danced and sang, he knew that they loved him only while his legs moved to a rhythm and only while his lips made song and not speech. Once the show was over, once his legs no longer danced, they wanted nothing to do with him.

Being loved onstage wasn’t enough. Singing wasn’t nearly enough.