Agent 6

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.