The Midnight Swimmer

by Edward Wilson

  When the training was finished Andreas was given a new Minox B that could be traced back to a factory in West Germany by its serial number. There was also West German film to use with it. If Andreas was caught, the camera’s origins would suggest he was working for a Western intelligence agency. But, of course, Western agencies supplied their own agents spy gadgets of East bloc origins for the same reason. The agent handler knew that the bluff and double bluff procedures fooled no one in the trade, but it was vitally important that nothing in Andreas’s possession pointed back to the East German state.

  Oddly, Andreas found that his new role as a honey trap whore gave him more confidence as a lover. It meant that he was no longer, as he had felt before, the inferior, less attractive partner in the relationship. It also gave the lovemaking a certain slightly kinky frisson. At first Andreas had felt that Katya was using him, now he felt that he was using her. Otherwise he would have fallen hopelessly in love with her.

  Katya was so intelligent that Andreas sometimes forgot that she was also beautiful. Yet he found her intelligence unsettling. Katya wasn’t just an intellectual who embarrassed him with her learning, but a sharply perceptive woman. When Andreas suggested they have a lovemaking session at his flat, as his MfS handler had urged, Katya firmly declined with a knowing sparkle in her eye. She wasn’t a fool. Ekaterina Alekseeva hadn’t been married to a KGB general for fifteen years without learning a few trade secrets. She wasn’t certain that her lover was a spy, but she was certain that Andreas’s flat would have a secret camera over the bed that had been installed with or without his knowledge. In the espionage swamp of Berlin there were predators lying in wait behind every bush – and Katya knew she was a trophy prey.

  At first, Andreas was more than nervous about making love in the marital flat. He was terrified that at any moment the bedroom door would fling open and Lieutenant General Alekseev would be waving a black Makarov 9mm automatic in his face. If he wasn’t executed on the spot, Andreas suspected that he would be bundled off to the huge Karlshorst compound where the Soviets enjoyed extra-territorial sovereignty. What awaited him there would be far worse than a bullet between the eyes – or legs. But as the months went by, the door remained closed and their lovemaking remained undisturbed. Andreas began to realise that Yevgeny Alekseev was un mari complaisant, a husband who turned a blind eye. It certainly explained the separate bedrooms and the fact the rezident was seldom at home even in the evenings. It then occurred to Andreas that Katya was, in fact, using him more than he was using her. The realisation made him angry, but it also made him love her all the more. He now knew that his love was hopeless and that he must do whatever was possible to profit from the affair before it ended.

  Andreas found Katya the cleanest and most hygienic woman that he had ever been with. She spent a long time in the bathroom preparing herself for lovemaking – and she always fragrant – and a long time in the bathroom afterwards too. As Katya luxuriated in the bath bubbles of a pre-coital toilette intime, Andreas took out the camera and searched the bedroom for things to photograph. Katya was just as tidy with her things as with her body and never left paperwork lying about, but there was a writing desk with a locked drawer. The lock proved easy to pick – his MfS handler had taught him that skill as well. The top drawer contained letters from her mother and siblings. Andreas, who had studied compulsory Russian in school, wasn’t fluent, but he could see that the letters were about family news that was mostly boring. Nonetheless, he photographed a selection of the letters; then opened a second drawer.

  This drawer was more promising. It was full of photos – many of which seemed to have been taken at embassy receptions and dacha parties. Andreas was certain that the photos might identify high-ranking friends – as well as hitherto unknown KGB officers. He was sure that his agent handler would be impressed. Andreas snapped furiously until the roll of film was exhausted. When he heard Katya stirring from her bath, he hid the camera in the lining of his coat.

  When Katya emerged from the bathroom she wasn’t as made-up or slinkily dressed as usual. She was wearing a dressing gown and her hair was done up in a towel. She spent a long time looking at Andreas with her head cocked to one side – as if she were inspecting a plucked hen on a butcher’s hook, a hen that had been there too long and gone off. Finally, Katya went over to the chair where Andreas had draped his coat. She went through the pockets and then felt the lining until she found the camera. Without saying a thing, she opened the camera and took out the film cartridge. She flicked open the cartridge with her thumbnail. She stared hard at Andreas as she unwound the film and exposed it. Katya crumpled up the ruined film into her fist and said, ‘I’ll burn it later.’ She then picked up the camera and handed it to Andreas. ‘I’m sure your boss will want this back. I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Katya sat on the side of the bed and buried her face in her hands. Andreas sat down beside her, but without touching. He knew there was nothing he could say. Suddenly, he felt her stir next to him. Katya had slipped the dressing from her shoulder and exposed her nakedness. Her eyes had turned to cinders. She grabbed Andreas by his hair and pulled hard. ‘Come on,’ she said twisting his head downwards so that his face was in front of hers, ‘fuck me. You get paid for that too.’

  The relationship continued, but things were never the same. Andreas realised a gulf had opened between them – and that the coolness and distancing were completely on Katya’s side. He began to feel the desolate pain of making love to someone who no longer loved him. Her coolness, of course, made him love her all the more. Andreas began to wonder if her continuing to see him was a form of punishment and revenge.

  Andreas never told his agent handler what had happened. The handler, meanwhile, was becoming more and more disillusioned with a ‘Romeo’ who didn’t deliver results. ‘When,’ said the handler, ‘are you going to start using the camera? We’re not paying you to get laid, you know.’ At first, Andreas had been paid double the average DDR wage for a pleasant job that only took three or four hours a week. But his stipend as an IM had dwindled to less than beer money. In fact, Andreas began to have serious worries about his future life. The DDR offered full employment in return for subsidised housing and food. But it was not a society that tolerated the work-shy. Andreas feared that his agent handler would report him as useless and lazy. He knew that he would be forced to take on a job in a factory or building site. His previous experience with the proletariat, his two years in an opencast coalmine, had not been a happy one. Maybe, he thought, it was time to pack up and leave for the West. The only thing holding him back was his love for Katya. And the only thing he loved more was money.

  A common characteristic of spiv Berliner IMs like Andreas was their lack of loyalty and ideological commitment. Every agent handler, both East and West, knew this was a fact. None would have been surprised to learn that Andreas hated life in the DDR – and that he wanted to live in the West and drive a soft-top Mercedes. He was shallow. Which was fine, for it also meant that his moves and motivations were all the more predictable. But the big problem with greedy spies like Andreas was their tendency to go in for ‘double dipping’. A double dipper wasn’t a doubled agent. A double dipper was simply someone who sold the same intelligence to more than one agency in order to maximise profits. It happened all the time in Berlin in the days before the Wall. It was a very risky business, but one that paid huge returns if you got away with it. Andreas’s agent handler knew that his Romeo was a potential double dipper, but he still didn’t have anything to double dip with. The handler decided it was too soon to put Andreas under surveillance.

  The next time he visited the flat it was obvious that something was wrong. Katya was in a strange mood – and Andreas could tell it had nothing to do with him. She didn’t even seem to notice that he was there. At first, Andreas thought that maybe she had taken a new lover. When he asked her, she simply shook her head and said, ‘No.’

  ‘What is
it then?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why are you so strange?’

  ‘Can’t you just let me be?’ She smiled, but it was artificial. ‘Let’s get in bed.’

  The lovemaking was perfunctory. Katya seemed completely uninvolved, as if she were on another planet. As soon as it was over, Katya got out of bed. Andreas tried to embrace her, but she pushed him away and went into the bathroom for her post-coital wash. Andreas sat on the side of the bed feeling both confused and desolate. When he heard the sound of Katya vomiting behind the bathroom door, Andreas felt relieved. It explained why she had been so out of sorts – she wasn’t well. He listened to the toilet flushing, the bath water being drawn and then Katya sliding into the tub.

  Andreas noticed something strange. Katya had left her writing desk open. He listened to the sound of her splashing and soaping in the tub. She couldn’t be watching from the keyhole. He had a quick ransack of the desk drawer – and realised there was nothing there that he hadn’t seen before. There was, however, a letter that she had begun to write – but it went no further than, My dearest brother… Andreas touched the paper: it was tear-stained. Something bad had happened.

  It was then that Andreas noticed a book that was lying on Katya’s bedside table. He picked it up. It was a collection of Mayakovsky’s poetry – a favourite, apparently, of her husband. There was a bulge in the middle of the book – as if a bookmarker had been inserted. But it wasn’t a bookmarker, it was a letter. Despite his poor Russian, Andreas knew that he had hit the jackpot as soon as he read the first words. It was too good to be true. It was certainly far too good for his MfS handler, the mean bastard had cut his wages. Andreas decided then and there that only the West had pockets deep enough to pay for this gem. His love affair with Katya may have been doomed, but money was a balm that would soon soothe his broken heart.

  Catesby hated his office in the bowels of the Olympic Stadium, Berlin. There were no windows and no – Gemütlichkeit. It was the German word for ‘cosiness’, but the full sense of glowing warmth conveyed by the expression was untranslatable. It was funny, thought Catesby, that Germans, who valued Gemütlichkeit so highly, constructed buildings that completely destroyed it. Their national character had more internal contradictions than Marx’s theory of capitalism.

  The Olympic Stadium had been built for the 1936 games – and was the largest building in Berlin that had survived destruction from the ’45 Soviet onslaught. Consequently, the British had requisitioned it for their headquarters during the occupation and were still there. Catesby’s own office had been a physiotherapy room. He imagined that it had been used for massages as well as more exotic forms of manual manipulation. At certain times Catesby was sure he could detect the lingering scents of massage oils – camphor, chamomile, clove and sandalwood – still emanating from the concrete walls. He closed his eyes and imagined the fit toned bodies being kneaded, pummelled and slapped. How many of those toned athletic limbs had survived intact the storm of shell, bullet and flame?

  Catesby looked at the standard-issue Ministry of Supply clock on the bare wall. It was just after nine in the morning, but it might have been midnight. His office bunker registered neither time of day nor time of year. Catesby looked at his desk diary. It was one of his mornings devoted to meeting his field officers. He only gave them five minutes each which was a good discipline for them. It meant they had to refine and summarise their intelligence findings into a presentation of about three hundred words. Young Gerald was his first appointment. Catesby pressed a button on his desk that flashed a green light. The office door opened.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Catesby, ‘and speak softly. I’ve got a terrible hangover.’

  ‘This might need more than five minutes, sir.’

  ‘BINDWEED?’

  ‘Yes – and it looks certain that his claims are genuine.’

  Gerald handed over the document ledger. The red cover and yellow stripes indicated the contents were Delicate Source: UK EYES ALPHA. Catesby began to flick through the folder.

  ‘As you can see, sir, he’s only provided us a few taster samples. He’s demanding a lot of cash for the full range – far more money than I’m authorised to hand over. But BINDWEED might be worth every pfennig.’

  Catesby nodded agreement. He trusted the young field officer’s judgement. Gerald was one of the best in his cohort. He was shrewd without being cynical. He was thorough and conscientious without being a bore. And Gerald was a team player. One of the worst duties of a junior SIS officer was being part of the British liaison team that inspected areas in East Germany where Soviet military exercises had taken place. It was literally a shit job. Soviet troops were not issued toilet paper. As a result, the mock battle areas were strewn with ill-smelling intelligence treasure: letters, supply chits, sections of field manuals and even code books. Gerald never complained – and always provided extra rubber gloves for his forgetful colleagues.

  Catesby looked up from the file. ‘He won’t hand over until he gets the money?’

  ‘That appears to be the case.’

  ‘Shit.’ Catesby closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. Berlin was an espionage strip joint full of con artists. The Americans made things worse by throwing around money like drunken sailors in a whorehouse.

  ‘We might, sir, be able to bargain BINDWEED down.’

  ‘I think I had better deal with this bird personally. Can you arrange a treff?’

  The DDR authorities were making noises about it, but they still hadn’t done anything. There were rumours, however, of plans to build a barrier called ‘The Anti-Fascist Protection Wall’. But it was only a rumour. In the autumn of 1960 it was still easy to move around the city, although vehicle crossing points were fewer and document checks more frequent. Nonetheless, the easiest way to get to East Berlin was simply to take one of the U-Bahn trains that regularly crossed under the border. And this was exactly how Catesby preferred to travel to the Soviet sector.

  In Catesby’s view, the best place for a treff was East Berlin. The streets were far less crowded which meant it was easier to do a counter-surveillance check to make sure you hadn’t ‘grown a tail’. If you had grown a tail, the best thing was to abort and go home. But it was always a good idea to get rid of your tail whatever you did. You could do this by changing U- and S-Bahn trains at busy stations like Alexanderplatz. But Friedrichstrasse was the best because there were always lots of ‘Wessies’ around who popped over to exchange hard currency for cheap DDR coffee and booze – especially Rotkäppchen sparkling wine which was as good as non-vintage champagne.

  Catesby tried to look the part. He had a full wardrobe of DDR-manufactured clothing – and a large selection of fake DDR IDs. But he tended to leave those behind because if he got caught using one it could create a serious diplomatic incident. In any case, he preferred flashing his genuine British ID and demanding his full rights as a bona fide member of the Allied High Commission. They were allowed to go anywhere without asking permission. Although from time to time someone got shot doing so – and no one ever said ‘sorry’.

  On the way to meet BINDWEED, Catesby had borrowed a ‘wife’ from the Abteilung 4 of the BfV. The BfV was a West German internal security agency modelled on the American FBI. Abteilung 4 was its counterespionage section. Catesby didn’t like working with the BfV because he wasn’t sure where their loyalties lay – Washington or Bonn – and to what degree they had been penetrated by Mischa. But he didn’t mind borrowing an occasional BfV ‘wife’ as cover disguise. Catesby encouraged his agents and watchers to operate as male/female couples whenever possible. A fond, or not so fond, couple looked far less suspicious than a bloke or a pair of blokes wearing trilbies and overcoats. MI5 had considered the practice for their own surveillance teams, but rejected it when the real-life wives complained. Ideally, thought Catesby, an agent going to a treff ought to take along a kid and a dog as well – but that was probably over-egging it.

  The ‘wife’s’ name was Jutta and she seeme
d realistically bored with her ‘husband’. She was about ten years younger than Catesby and a little too pretty to be a likely Frau Catesby. She was an entry grade operative and didn’t seem too happy about doing overtime on a Saturday. As they did an SDR, Surveillance Detection Run, along the banks of the River Spree Catesby regretted not having come alone. The secret of an SDR was to appear ‘normal’ and they didn’t look like a normal couple. Mischa certainly wouldn’t have paired them. And she kept looking around – which was amateurish – to spot a ‘watcher’. Jutta had been trained to use TEDD. It was a procedure the BfV had picked up from the Americans. The acronym stood for Time, Environment, Distance and Demeanour. The idea was that you could spot a watcher if you saw him more than once in a different environment at the same distance – and acting oddly. TEDD was total crap. No professional surveillance operative would give him- or herself away that easily – unless they worked for MI5.

  ‘If,’ said Catesby, ‘you look around once more I’m going to throw you in the river.’

  Jutta grabbed Catesby by the arm and pushed him towards the water. ‘I’ll throw you in first.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Catesby smiled. He was beginning to like her – and they were looking more normal too. ‘If you want to check for surveillance, pretend you’re pointing out something to your partner.’ To demonstrate he touched her elbow and pointed back up the Spree, ‘Look at that beautiful swan.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There isn’t one – I just wanted to check the bridge to see if anyone followed us. Small bridges like that are called choke points – you can use alleys or woodland paths too. It makes it more difficult for a surveillance team not to show themselves.’ Catesby paused. ‘But if they are well trained and large in number – in Moscow the KGB have been known to assign 200 to a single target – you will never get rid of them.’