The Midnight Swimmer

by Edward Wilson

  Catesby started with the economic section of Isvestia. It tested his vocabulary and had a certain surreal poetry:

  The Krasnoyarsk Sibtyazmash Plant has made a metallurgical crane for Magnitogorsk. It has a hoisting capacity of 75 tons and an ingot stripping force of 250 tons.

  He loved the heaviness of Russian names. He put aside ‘News’ and picked up ‘Truth’, Pravda. It was an important death, for the obituary was on the front page.

  Chief Marshall of Strategic Missile Forces

  Dies in Airplane Accident

  Mitrofan Ivanovich Nedelin, Hero of the Soviet Union, perished yesterday in a …

  Catesby read the article twice, but found no clues other than terseness. He didn’t find it odd that so little information was given about the actual crash or other fatalities. And neither would Russian readers. They were used to secrecy – and Nedelin may well have been on a visit or a mission that required secrecy. But there had been rumours.

  The rumours originated from Berne, the Swiss capital. The city had always been a good listening post to pick up diplomatic indiscretions. Maybe it was the mountain air or Swiss neutrality, but people often blabbed in a way they would never dream of doing in Moscow or Washington. They seemed to think they were temporarily on a safe square and immune from surveillance. In any case, it started with a tale about a dead cosmonaut. The rumour was that the Russians had tried to surprise the world by launching a man into space – as a follow-up spectacular to the Sputnik dogs. But it didn’t work. The capsule failed to separate from the rocket and consequently both capsule and cosmonaut disintegrated. Khrushchev, apparently, had been furious because he had planned to flaunt the achievement at the October Revolution parade. He had berated Nedelin for the failure – and poor Nedelin had slunk off and committed suicide. At least, that was the story doing the rounds.

  Catesby sat back and tried to piece things together. A Russian man in space would certainly have upstaged the US presidential election which was due the very same day as the Bolshevik Revolution celebrations. It would have been a stunning propaganda coup that would have wiped the new US president off the front pages of the world press. No wonder Nedelin reached for his Makarov 9mm. It did add up – and air crashes were the usual Soviet cover story for suicides and other unnatural deaths.

  Catesby put Pravda aside and started browsing the American papers. They were all full of the election which still seemed to be heading for a dead heat between Nixon and Kennedy. There was much discussion in the FO and SIS about which one would be less bad for Britain. Nixon was usually referred to as ‘the shit’ and Kennedy as ‘the young warmonger’. Opinion seemed to prefer ‘the shit’ as the lesser of two evils and the easier to deceive. There was still bitterness about Kennedy’s father, Joe, who as US Ambassador in London at the start of the war had relished the idea of a German victory. Son Jack was suspected of warmongering because he had campaigned on a totally fictional ‘missile gap’ between the USA and the Soviet Union. Catesby and his colleagues in the intelligence service knew perfectly well that the USA had ten times as many nuclear warheads as the Soviets. And there was also considerable doubt as to whether the Soviet Union had a single missile capable of reaching the USA. The grim fear in London was that a warmongering Kennedy presidency might panic the Russians into a pre-emptive strike against American bases in Britain – or that Britain would suffer retaliation for a pre-emptive US strike against the Soviet Union. Either way tens of millions of Britons would die. Personally, Catesby wanted to see the UK move towards neutrality – but it was an opinion he had to keep to himself.

  The clock on the wall, like all the other clocks in the Berlin HQ, was run by battery – so that if war broke out and power lines were down they would still know what time it was. It was now half past two in the morning. What a lousy life. Catesby looked at the cut on his thumb; it was finally starting to heal. He had mistaken his thumb for an onion when he was tired and drunk and cooking a late-night meal in his bachelor flat. It was a lousy life. The only sound was the clock’s second to second click. The second hand vibrated each time it moved and seemed to point at Catesby each time it reached the twelve. It was bad. It was the time of night he always thought of her when he lay awake. He was glad that no one could see him crying.

  Catesby wiped his eyes and suddenly remembered why he was still there at three o’clock in the morning. The film. It must be dry by now. He went into the darkroom and turned on the red light so he could make prints. He took the film down – nicely dry – and threaded it on the enlarger spools. Work was good. His grief dissipated and the excitement of maybe discovering something filled its space. But he tried not to get his hopes up. Most of the stuff you gathered – and even paid good money for – was a waste of time. You had to pan through tons of silt before you found a nugget of gold.

  The first frame was the beginning of the letter. He adjusted the magnifier so the Cyrillic letters came out in sharp focus. The person wrote in the clear script of someone used to doing technical work – like an architect or engineer:

  Ground Control Station

  Baikonur Cosmodrome

  Kazakhstan

  25 October 1960

  My darling sweetest Katyusha …

  Before he was even halfway through the letter, Catesby knew that he had panned gold. And he also knew he needed to fly back to England on the first available flight out of Templehof.

  Catesby drove past the pub and parked the battered Austin A35 on rough ground behind the ridge of bulldozed shingle that stopped the North Sea from pouring in over the beach. The Suffolk coast was always at war. If it wasn’t the Saxons or the Vikings, it was the sea itself – and the sea seemed likely to be the final winner. The autumnal tides were hungry and relentless and determined to have the Dingle Marshes that stretched like a vulnerable maiden between Walberswick and Dunwich. They had already had their way with Dunwich. In the thirteenth century the town had been one of the richest ports in England trading grain and wool for Russian fur, Flemish cloth and French wine. But the sea had finally swallowed everything leaving only the pub, a church and a few holiday cottages. In winter there was no one at all except for beach fishermen in oilskins long-lining cod. But Catesby loved the place. Suffolk was his home and he knew every river and forlorn muddy creek like the veins on the back of his hand. It was a secretive land that kept its mysteries to itself: a nocturnal land of poachers, smugglers – and spies.

  Catesby took the letter out of his pocket and read it once more:

  I wish you were here, my loving big sister, to wrap your arms around me and wipe my tears away – like you did when Papa and Volodya didn’t come back in ’45.

  I want you to know, my darling Katya, that I am not badly hurt but that I still need you to chase away my nightmare. I feel like a child of three asking you to hold me again. When I close my eyes I can still feel your fingertips gently stroking my back to drive away Baba Yaga and all the other witches of the night. I felt safe because I knew that you were stronger than them.

  What happened yesterday was worse than a nightmare, for when I opened my eyes it was still happening. I was very lucky – but I am still shaking with the dark exhilaration of escape and the shock of grief for those who did not escape. I owe my life to a technician who summoned me away from the launch pad to help solve a problem with the current distributor.

  I was about forty metres away from the rocket when I heard the explosion. I turned around, but instead of fleeing I simply looked on. For a few seconds I was rooted to the ground by ghoulish fascination. I watched the orange fireball at the base of the rocket pulse outwards and swallow people and trucks. The heat burned my face and forehead, but I couldn’t move for my eyes were fixed to a sight that was as magnetic as it was horrible.

  The workers on the top level of the gantry were untouched, although everything below them, including the lower levels of the gantry, were consumed in flame. The poor men on the gantry looked like ants on the end of a burning branch in a bonfire. They
knew they were doomed and started to run pointlessly back and forth. When the gantry was finally consumed, the men danced wildly like candle flames in the wind. Then dropped one by one into the fireball.

  It was then that I realised that I was going to be next. A river of burning fuel was coming towards me. I began to run like I had never run before. The fuel had turned into a flood of fire as high as a tall man’s knees. I looked behind and watched the burning flood lap across the tarmac and swallow my colleagues whole. The most awful moment was when their high-pitched screaming suddenly ceased. It was as if someone had lifted the arm on a phonograph record in the middle of an aria. At first I could not understand why the others were running so slowly, but then I saw their black galoshes. The enormous heat had melted the asphalt around the launch pad. My friends were screaming for help as they waded through a steaming black glue of freshly melted tar. Their clothes were on fire too. I watched helplessly as they fell into the sticky tar where they were engulfed by the spreading river of flames. Others managed to outrun the flames only to come up against the chain link fence where they were grilled like meat on a grate …

  Catesby stopped reading and looked at his watch. It was time to meet Henry. He folded the letter, put it back in his pocket and got out of the car.

  The cool sea breeze felt good on his face. He leaned against the car and looked around for his boss. Still no Henry. Finally, Catesby turned and tried to lock the Austin so he could go for a walk. After a while, he gave up trying. The door lock was too worn and loose for the key to turn. But it didn’t matter; there was nothing important in the car. The important thing was on his person and he kept clutching his coat pocket to make sure it was still there. Catesby looked at the Austin. He had asked for the grottiest car in the pool and they had obliged. He felt a need to be inconspicuous and the last thing he wanted was a gleaming Humber Hawk that befitted his rank. The letter in his coat pocket had set the fires of paranoia raging. He touched it again to make sure that it was still there. He wished that he had written the translation on rice paper. If he got in trouble, that would make it easier to swallow. But the Webley.38 that heavily bulged his other coat pocket was intended to make that unnecessary. Catesby didn’t like ‘tooling up’, but on this occasion he wasn’t taking any chances. He was carrying a crown jewel.

  Catesby climbed to the top of the shingle ridge and looked north towards Walberswick. It was getting dusk and the lighthouse across the river at Southwold had already started to blink – four flashes every ten seconds. Each light had its own code like an agent in place. Catesby searched the beach, but it was empty. He scrambled down the bank and started to walk in the opposite direction. Beneath the sand cliffs to the south there were still signs of life stirring in the twilight gloom. Two fishermen were unloading a broad-beamed beach boat; a boy of ten was throwing stones at the darkening sea.

  But the dead, as often happened at Dunwich, outnumbered the living. The town hadn’t stopped falling into the sea and never would until every brick and stone was gone. The recent tides had undermined the cliff face below the ancient churchyard. A jumble of thigh bones and ribcages were protruding from the sandy cliff below the green turf. It often happened after a storm, but this unearthing seemed exceptional. A figure in a black cassock was bent over something at the base of the cliff. As Catesby walked nearer he saw that the bent figure was gathering bones and putting them in a canvas sack.

  ‘I’ve never seen so many bones here,’ said Catesby.

  The vicar answered without looking up, ‘It’s a plague pit.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to re-inter them in St. James churchyard – they should be safe, at least for the next few hundred years.’

  Catesby smiled. His school friends had often cycled to Dunwich after a big north-easterly blow to gather bones. It was part of a Suffolk childhood. He left the vicar to his work and continued up the beach towards Minsmere. Catesby was looking for his boss, the aptly named Henry Bone, but darkness was fast descending – and it was getting cold too. The wind had veered to the south-west and blew sand into his face. Dark clouds scudded across the sky and there was a spatter of rain. Catesby peered into the gloom and realised that the beach was empty. He turned around and walked back.

  Catesby felt the emptiness grip him by both shoulders. The vicar had finished his gruesome chore; the fishermen had gone to the pub. As he walked past the cliff face of exposed bones Catesby felt something hit his shoulder. It was hard and solid like a stone. He looked down on the shingle. The object was white and round with flanges on the side. It was a lumbar vertebra. Catesby looked up to the top of the cliff. A figure in black was silhouetted against the less dark sky. It was his boss. Henry Bone normally lacked a sense of humour, but he must have found the joke irresistible.

  Catesby nodded at Bone and both men walked in parallel until they converged on the level of the beach. When they met, Catesby reached out with the vertebra in his palm.

  ‘Keep it,’ said Bone.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I assume, Catesby, this is important. I was enjoying a long weekend with friends – and I don’t like playing the hush-hush drama card to disappear without explaining why.’

  ‘I bet they love it – it makes them feel part of things.’

  ‘You don’t know them. In any case, why didn’t you use the air bag? I was expecting a packet from an FO courier.’ Bone was referring to the high-security diplomatic pouch that was flown to London each morning.

  ‘I didn’t want to take any chances – so I brought the docs myself.’

  Bone looked closely at Catesby. ‘Let’s go further down the beach.’

  Bone turned up his collar and put his hands in his pockets. The sound of their feet on the shingle seemed to echo the gentle sough of wave on shingle. Southwold Light kept blinking at them as if sending a Morse message. ‘Have you heard anything from P3?’ asked Catesby. In normal circumstances P3, Controller Eastern Area, would have been Catesby’s line manager, but when Bone was swapped over to Director Europe/Sovbloc it was decided that Catesby (Head of E. Europe P) would report directly to Bone. It made sense because Catesby also ran Berlin Station – and when something happened in Berlin it needed to be treated urgently and go straight to director grade. But on this occasion, nothing had happened – in Berlin.

  ‘According to P3,’ said Bone, ‘the general in charge of the Soviet Artillery Corps was killed in a plane crash.’ Bone smiled. ‘P3’s encrypted Eyes Alpha cable arrived ten hours after I got the news from GCHQ – and one hour after I read General Nedelin’s obituary in The Times. I think P3’s retirement beckons.’

  ‘Nedelin wasn’t killed in a plane crash.’ Catesby reached in his pocket and handed the translated letter to his boss. He suddenly felt a great sense of relief. The knowledge, and the responsibility that went with it, no longer rested on his shoulders alone. Catesby watched Bone squint to read the letter in the failing light. By the time he got to the end, Bone’s face had drained of colour and his hands were shaking.

  ‘Thank you for this.’ Bone gripped the letter with both hands as if he were about to tear it to shreds.

  Catesby looked on in silence.

  ‘I assume,’ said Bone, ‘this document was photographed?’

  Catesby nodded.

  ‘Have you got the film negatives?’

  Catesby handed him an envelope that contained the negatives and a print of the original Russian letter. It was a special ‘burn’ envelope that was permeated with a highly flammable substance. Bone folded the letter into the envelope and held it at arm’s length. Catesby took a lighter from his pocket and ignited it. At the last moment, Bone pulled the envelope away and put it in his pocket. ‘No, it’s best I keep it.’

  Catesby looked away from Bone and stared out to sea. The North Sea also kept its bleak mysteries – his own mysteries. Catesby’s father was a dead Suffolk sailor; his mother, a Belgian. He knew his own identity was stranded halfway in that salty wilder
ness of quick fish and dead mariner. The sea was him: cold, grey and full of lost longing.

  ‘You’ve gone all enigmatic again, Catesby.’

  ‘Thanks for noticing.’

  ‘I’d better get back to my kind and hospitable friends.’ Bone tapped the pocket where he had put the letter and film. ‘By the way, I’m going to classify this as Guard.’

  ‘I always get told off when I try that one.’

  Guard had been the highest security classification a British intelligence document could carry. It meant that the UK’s closest ally, the United States, was denied access. But the use of Guard had been banned by the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement with the USA.

  ‘There’s one exception,’ said Bone. He looked directly at Catesby as if he were a prof prodding a dull student.

  ‘When a secret is essential to the UK’s national survival.’

  Bone gave a bleak smile. It was his only smile. ‘Have you revealed the contents of the letter to anyone else?’

  Catesby shook his head.

  ‘Was there a cut-out courier or dead drop?’

  ‘No, the Romeo was a walk-in joe who contacted one of my officers?’

  ‘What does your officer know?’

  ‘He knows that Andreas was shagging Alekseev’s missus. When I realised it might be something important I did the purchasing treff myself.’

  Bone looked hard at Catesby. ‘Had your Romeo been double dipping with the cousins?’

  ‘Not yet, but he started out as an IM for Mischa’s gang.’

  ‘So the East Germans knew about the explosion all along – and they killed the Romeo for passing it on.’

  Catesby frowned and looked out to sea. ‘I know that our man passed on the stuff to the East Germans because he admitted it. They might have found out that he was double dipping with us. But I’m sure that’s not why they killed him. Or if it was them.’