—All right, Anna: do whatever you have to do. Don’t worry about this place, I’ll serve the food myself if I have to.

At his kindness, Anna kissed him on the cheek.

—Thank youquo;d p>

She turned around, taking off her apron, leaving the restaurant and heading back as fast as she could. She ran all the way home, across the street, through the men playing cards, through the haze of cigarette smoke, reaching the stairs up to her apartment building. On her way up, striding up two steps at a time, she felt the eyes of her neighbours. They pitied her, imagining that she’d suffered because of Jesse. They were wrong. She was the luckiest woman alive to have shared her life with him.

She threw open the apartment door. Jesse was standing on the bed, addressing the open window as though it were an audience of ten thousand. Around his feet were the handwritten pages of all the speeches he’d ever performed.

Manhattan

United Nations Headquarters - The General Assembly Hall

1st Avenue & East 44th Street - Same Day

Jim Yates slipped into the back of the hall and watched the performance. Communists mingled with American students, dressed identically: boys in white shirts and black pants, girls in white shirts and black skirts, nothing distinguishing one nationality from the other. According to the programme, framed with a multitude of international flags, the songs had been composed by musicians from around the world. Not even the liberal organizers of this event could allow Communist propaganda songs, Soviet hymns about being the strongest nation ready to crush all enemies including the United States. The Communists would save them for when they got home, as soon as they stepped off the plane in Moscow. As the Russians weren’t able to sing their songs, neither were the Americans for fear of offending their guests. Not allowed to sing their own songs in their own country! Of course, this wasn’t his country – the United Nations Headquarters did not fall under the authority of the United States, even though it was in New York. Without a shot being fired the land had been handed over to an international organization. Yates wasn’t even an FBI agent here. He was a guest.

As the song came to an end and the audience applauded, Yates regarded the diplomats. White people seemed to be a minority. Several envoys stood up to applaud. Yates couldn’t make them out clearly from where he was standing – probably Cubans or South Americans. The truth was that while the students sang on stage, arm in arm, their nations planned the other’s annihilation. The charade was grotesque. He was appalled that there were American parents who’d agreed to put their children into this concert. Those mothers and fathers warranted further investigation.

Yates checked his watch, fingernail tapping the dial face. The real performance was about to take place outside.

Manhattan