Yates got into his car, grabbed hold of the steering wheel, but did not start the engine. He just sat there, surveying his home. He’d loved this house when he’d bought it. He’d loved the street with its beautiful front yard, located near parks and a range of stores. In the summer it smelt of freshly cut lawns and always seemed to be cooler than the city. People would wave and say hel. Nothing angered him more than people who didn’t appreciate how lucky they were to live in a country like this. The race riots in Jersey City in August last year were a disgrace, men and women destroying the very place where they lived. Those riots proved he’d been right to oppose the desegregation of public schools in Teaneck. Many people had been proud of this development, which they called social progress. Yates hadn’t said anything in public but he was sure it would lead to an influx of outsiders and that would lead to tensions. Paradise doesn’t need progress. The photographs of Jersey City had shocked him – smashed shop windows, burning cars. Maybe there were some legitimate complaints in that part of town, problems with employment, there were always problems, but only a sick man, a blind man, would trash his own home rather than trying to fix it. Yates would fight to stop the same happening here.

He pulled out of the drive, heading towards Manhattan, thirty minutes away. He’d been in the city until late last night, wanting to be certain that every member of the Soviet delegation staying in the Grand Metropolitan was accounted for. Once the final checks had been completed and he was sure that they were in their rooms, he should have returned home, to his wife. Instead, he’d visited a basement bar called Flute, off Broadway, where a part-time waitress worked, a woman he’d been seeing for the past three months. Twenty years younger than him, this waitress was beautiful and interested in the mostly made-up stories he told about the FBI. She would lie on the bed, naked, holding her head in her hands while he sat, shirt unbuttoned, recounting his adventures. Almost as good as the sex was the way she hung off every anecdote, saying Un Be Lieve Able at the end of each story, pronouncing it as though it were four words, as though being unbelievable were the highest compliment a man could be paid.