—Maybe he liked the old man’s music. I don’t know what the reasoning was. But he spilled his guts, ratted out his colleagues.

—Did he come to you before or after the assassination?

Yates considered lying then shrugged and said:

—What happened was Feinstein ran an agency based in New York that organized trips to Communist Europe for rich dumb Red Americans. He’d managed it for years. Suddenly he wanted to talk. So, I turned up and he asked me to stop the murder. He said I could save Jesse Austin. In exchange, he wanted to go into hiding, protective custody, scared that the Russians would kill him.

Leo said:

—You did nothing?

Yates nodded.

—I did nothing, well, almost nothing. First of all, I didn’t know if anything he said was true. He had switched sides more times than anyone in the history of spying. You couldn’t trust him even as your enemy. Second of all, I figured if the Communists wanted to kill one of their own then why should I get in the way? Why should I save old man Jesse, the guy who wanted to fight Americans? I didn’t want to hear Jesse Austin bad-mouthing this country any more. Why save a Communist who hated America? Why should the FBI save a traitor? In the end, Jesse picked the wrong side. The decision cost him his life.

—Why didn’t Feinstein tell another officer, if you didn’t respond?

Yates nodded, appreciating the point.

—I handcuffed him to a pipe, locked him in his office, to make sure he couldn’t interfere, so he couldn’t tell anyone else. I let Jesse Austin turn up at the demonstration. That was the extent of my involvement. I didn’t orchestrate anything. I didn’t kill him. And I didn’t kill your wife either. All I’m guilty of is letting the whole thing play out.

Yates leaned against the wall, becoming thoughtful, speaking almost to himself as much as Leo.

—Did I fail in my duty as an FBI officer? I’d argue that I did not. I’ll tell you why. I knew Austin’s murder wasn’t going to cause a revolution. Even if every Negro out there believed that the President Lyndon Johnson himself had personally ordered Austin’s assassination, there wasn’t going to be any revolution.

The notion of trying to save Austin because he was an American citizen, an innocent man, didn’t factor into his equation.

—Most blacks believe in God. They go to church. They pray. They sing. Communists don’t. Communists hate God. In the end, there were never enough Godless blacks – there were never enough Jesse Austins for the riots to ever become an uprising.

Yates had said most of what he’d wanted to say. But Leo had not yet received an answer to the question that had brought him here.

—Who murdered my wife?