Agent 6

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Agent 6 is a political thriller by the British writer Tom Rob Smith from 2011. After the novels Kind 44 and Kolyma , it closes the trilogy about the former MGB officer Leo Demidow, who made it to Afghanistan in the personally motivated search for a murderer and ends up in the United States .

content

In 1950, the 27-year-old MGB officer Leo Demidow had a delicate job. Well-known African American singer Jesse Austin, an avid communist fanatic , visits the Soviet Union . In order to use it for their propaganda , the Soviet leadership wants to present their guest with an embellished reality. Austin picks out young Leo, one of the agents used to look after him, as a confidante. To study the Soviet education system, the entourage attended a Soviet school where Raisa, Leo's future wife, taught.

In July 1965, the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States continues . A visit program for young people founded under the motto Students for Peace is intended to set an example of relaxation . Raisa and her two adoptive daughters Soja and Elena travel to New York with a Soviet delegation , while the MGB dropout and current plant manager Leo is considered politically unreliable and has no chance of getting such a trip abroad approved. 17-year-old Elena is secretly in love with Mikael Ivanov, who accompanies the delegation as a propaganda officer. He lets her take her on a secret mission where she seeks out Jesse Austin, who lives in poor conditions in Harlem . The once celebrated singer is now ostracized as a communist and black in his American homeland. He is monitored by the FBI and his career is ruined with targeted defamation. Elena's naive enthusiasm for communism convinced the disappointed idealist to go to the UN headquarters that evening , where a propaganda photo of the singer was planned amidst Russian youth. But after the concert there was no photo, but Austin was murdered in front of the assembled press. The murder weapon is slipped into Elena, who is arrested together with her mother, and Raisa is shot at the police station when she meets Jesse's wife Anna.

The American media soon speculated about a love affair between Austin, to whom women's stories have been attached for years, and Raisa, who the singer had met 15 years ago in Moscow. The Russian teacher, it is said, only took part in the trip to America to meet her lover again and to start a life together with him. But Austin rejected them, whereupon Raisa shot him out of hurt love. Anna Austin avenged her husband and died after an exchange of fire with the police. The Soviet Union joins the hypothesis of a lone perpetrator so as not to suspect that a propaganda campaign has gotten out of control. Only the devastated Leo Demidow wants to clear up the background of the attack, for which he sees no other chance than to get to New York in some way.

Eight years later, Leo Demidov's attempt to flee across the Finnish border fails. He was transferred to Afghanistan , where he trained the local security police as an advisor to the pro-Soviet government. Another seven years later, after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan , he has long been doing the same dirty work as once as an MGB agent, an activity for which he despises himself and which he can only endure through massive consumption of opium . Only for his student Nara Mir, whose naive commitment to communism reminds him of his daughter Elena, does he raise feelings. And when his superior, Captain Vashchenko, wanted to kill the only survivor of a bomb attack, a little girl named Zabi, because she was venerated by the Afghan resistance fighters as a symbol against oppression, Leo openly opposed the Soviet invaders. He flees with Nara and Zabi to the mujahideen , who allow him to cross the border to Pakistan if, in return, he campaigns for American support for their struggle.

Six months later, Leo, Nara and Zabi found asylum in America and live in New York. The former MGB agent is still obsessed with finding his wife's murderer. After long and fruitless efforts, he finally succeeds in locating Jim Yates, the FBI agent who monitored Austin and whom Elena referred to in her diary as "Agent 6". Yates reveals to Leo that the Soviet side planned the attack to blame the FBI for the murder of a prominent communist. Elena was just a pawn in the plot that was supposed to be brought into superficial suspicion in order to fuel the conspiracy theories all the more. Although Yates knew about the plans in advance through an exposed Soviet agent named Osip Feinstein, he did not prevent them because, like all communists, he hated the victim. At the police station there was a confrontation with Anna Austin, but their bullets were not aimed at Raisa, but Yates, whom she blamed for the murder of her husband. The FBI agent shot her and let Raisa, who was wounded by a missed shot, bleed to death in order to be able to attach the assassination to her and to wash himself off of any suspicion. The angry Leo shoots Yates and wants to let him die the same way as his wife, but when he realizes that Raisa himself had shown pity, he calls the ambulance at the last moment.

After discovering the truth about his wife's death, Leo no longer holds it in America. He wants to go home to the Soviet Union to his daughters and the happy moments with his wife, even though as a traitor he is threatened with a trial for high treason there. No punishment can really hurt him except for one: every day in the Moscow remand prison he is offered the prospect of visiting his daughters and refused at the last moment. Finally, a man visits him who identifies himself as Mikael Ivanov, the propaganda officer who led the action in New York and who now holds a high office in the state. Ivanov shows genuine repentance and promises Leo that he will do his best to visit his daughters. When Soja and Elena are shown into the visiting cell the next day, Leo experiences a moment of happiness that he no longer believed in.

background

Festive event for Paul Robeson's 70th birthday in the GDR

According to Tom Rob Smith's statements, the entire trilogy around MGB agent Leo Demidow up to her graduation in New York was already mapped out at the time when child 44 was born . He understands "all three volumes basically as one book". A basic principle of his novels is to find "something lovable" in every character. Jim Yates, the FBI agent in Agent 6 , is ultimately just a misguided idealist. The figure of the communist singer Jesse Austin is based on the life of Paul Robeson . Politicized by the labor movement in Great Britain, the American actor and singer became a sympathizer of communism and the Soviet Union. In the McCarthy era , he was summoned to appear on the Un-American Activities Committee . The controversy over his political views damaged his career and he became increasingly sidelined. Today he is considered one of the pioneers of the black civil rights movement .

reception

For Jan Kanter, Agent 6 is an “exceptionally strong thriller” with sensitively drawn characters and an “extremely exciting plot” in “extremely condensed language”. A “fascinating journey through time” takes the reader “through more than three decades and around the globe”. Peter Twiehaus emphasizes the urgency of the description of a system "of constant spying, in which people become the plaything of states and writing diaries can be fatal." For Martin Pieper, the author also succeeds in creating "a mood of fear and mistrust that too." poisoned the most private areas of life, to combine with a rousing thriller plot. Still, Agent 6 is the "weakest band in the series, but still good enough to stand out from the mountains of crime literature".

expenditure

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lars Reichardt: “A hero who has dipped his hands in blood is simply good for the story” . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin 38/2011.
  2. ↑ The American friend . Background information on the novel at tom-rob-smith.de.
  3. ↑ Jan Kanter: Russian agents don't drink martinis . In: Die Welt from November 14, 2011.
  4. ↑ Book tips from Peter Twiehaus ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zdf.de archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: ZDF morning magazine from October 6, 2011.
  5. ↑ Martin Pieper: Stalinist investigation . In: FM4 of October 17, 2011.