The Midnight Swimmer

by Edward Wilson

  Che looked closely at Catesby. ‘But you pass things on to Washington too.’

  ‘Only if it is in the British national interest. We’re not the poodles that Washington would like us to be.’

  Che sat back down in his chair, which like the desk, was a dark colonial heirloom with elaborately carved ornamentation. Catesby felt that he was negotiating with a pirate who had been plundering the Spanish Main. ‘I have,’ said Che, ‘a message for you to pass on to Washington. But if you don’t want to carry it, perhaps your Canadian friend will.’

  ‘I am sure we can do it.’

  ‘First of all, I want to convey my thanks to President Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs. Before the invasion, the revolution was shaky. Now it is stronger than ever.’ Che laughed. ‘Kennedy chose to back the most incompetent band of criminals imaginable. Their defeat was the first great victory of the people of Latin America over US imperialism. Are you writing this down?’

  ‘If you like.’ Catesby took a pad out of his folder.

  ‘The Bay of Pigs fiasco has allowed us to consolidate our power. Before the invasion, there was a small chance of reconciliation with Washington. Now there is none. The Kennedy administration has transformed our little aggrieved country to an equal with the USA. Likewise, the invasion has shown there is no alternative to following a communist agenda.’

  Catesby sensed a pause. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No.’ Che pointed to the notepad. ‘And I don’t want you to write down what I’m going to say next. I want your mind – and the minds of those you share it with – to see not only the words, but the images too.’

  Catesby put his pen down and looked at Che. At first there had been something pleasantly boyish about him, but now a cloud seemed to darken his face.

  ‘We are now going to build stronger ties with the Soviet Union.’ Che lowered his voice and spoke slowly. The words were calm, but deliberate. Che continued to speak for fifteen minutes as he carefully outlined every stage of what was going to happen. His voice never ceased to be calm and reasonable despite the enormity of the consequences. Catesby wasn’t surprised. It all had a certain inevitability. But actually hearing the words had a finality that made him shiver.

  ‘Is there no other way?’ said Catesby.

  Che slowly shook his head. ‘Since imperialists blackmail humanity by threatening it with war, the wise reaction is not to fear war.’ He looked at Catesby. ‘What do you think?’

  Catesby smiled. ‘I’m more easily blackmailed than you.’

  ‘Fear is a cultural trait. It is taught to us. You can unlearn it.’ Che began to cough. He covered his mouth with a handkerchief and mumbled, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Che was wheezing and seemed to be struggling for breath. He closed his eyes and took short shallow even breaths.

  ‘Can I get you some water?’

  Che put his hand up and continued taking short breaths. He opened his eyes, ‘I’ll be okay. Just give me a few seconds.’

  ‘Let me know if I can help.’

  Che nodded thanks as he struggled to breathe.

  Catesby had read about Che’s asthma attacks in various reports. He knew that he would now have to update the reports by confirming that he had personally witnessed one – and also describe the symptoms. It’s what spies are supposed to do. But Catesby didn’t want to do it. The man in front of him, with all his faun-like beauty, was also a vulnerable human being. He reminded Catesby of the girl in The Rite of Spring who is danced to death to appease the gods.

  Che began to breathe more deeply. ‘I’m better now.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But before you go, I have a present that I want you to give to President Kennedy.’ Che got up and went to an untidy bookshelf where he found a box. ‘I understand that Kennedy likes cigars. These are special hand-rolled ones. Perhaps you can send them to Washington in a diplomatic bag – I believe some far inferior cigars have already gone that way. There’s a note from me too. Can you check the English?’

  Catesby looked at a white card headed Gobierno de la República de Cuba with the national flag. Che had written underneath: Dear President Kennedy, The Revolution is inevitable and unstoppable, but while you are waiting I hope you enjoy these cigars. Che.

  ‘The English is fine. Would you like to add anything?’

  ‘What would you suggest?’

  Catesby scribbled a few words on a notepad. ‘Try that.’

  Che read the note and smiled. He then copied Catesby’s message to the card: PS I bet you can’t get Marilyn Monroe to sing at your birthday party.

  Catesby had never seen her before, but he knew it was her. Her hair was indeed deepest black, but that was no rare thing at the Brazilian Embassy in Havana. She wasn’t alone. But there was something about her that was perfectly self-contained, as if she were enclosed by an invisible bell jar. Katya was wearing a simple white dress and holding between her hands a caipirinha, the Brazilian national cocktail, as if it were a bouquet rather than something to drink. The lime and ice in the caipirinha complemented her dress.

  Katya’s husband, KGB Lieutenant General Yevgeny Ivanovich Alekseev, was standing behind her talking to Che Guevara. Che was eating an impossibly large cream cake. He looked ravenous. There were only puddings and sweets to eat. It was a rather late reception, as many were in Havana, and too late for savouries. But it was still a big event. The reception was celebrating the visit of Brazil’s newly elected president, Jânio da Silva Quadros, to Havana. Jânio was talking to Fidel and the British Ambassador was talking to the Brazilian Ambassador, but no one was talking to Catesby. He always felt awkward at these things. He wondered if he should find another spy for a chat. Just then he caught Katya looking at him. It was a very odd look. Catesby nodded back. She seemed to frown; then turned her eyes away.

  ‘I say, William, it’s a jolly good job we didn’t wear evening dress with sashes and medals.’ It was Mickey Blakeney, Head of Chancery.

  ‘We would have looked complete tits,’ said Catesby. There had been a brief debate at the embassy on dress code – and lounge suits won. The top Cubans, as usual, were wearing green battledress. And Che, in fact, looked even more scruffy than usual.

  ‘The new Brazilian guy,’ said Mickey, ‘is a bit of a lefty which is why he’s decided to get closer to Fidel and Moscow. Washington must be having a fit.’

  ‘They think Cuba is turning contagious and only they can stop it.’

  ‘That appears to be the mood music. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into the last act of Die Götterdämmerung.’ Mickey smiled. ‘Have you noticed, by the way, the uncanny resemblance between Richard Wagner and John Wayne? They could be twins. Must circulate, see you later.’

  Catesby looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight. Havana was like that. No one ever seemed to sleep. He sensed someone at his elbow. Then there was a voice speaking German.

  ‘Good evening, Herr Catesby, would you like a little kiss?’ The German was a dapper young man in a light grey suit.

  ‘Have you brushed your teeth?’

  ‘I don’t mean that sort of kiss. I mean one of these.’ The man held out a serving plate with what looked like tiny cupcakes. ‘They’re called beijinho – which I believe translates as kleine Küsse.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Catesby took one of the cakes and ate it. ‘Lots of coconut. I’m not fond of coconut.’

  ‘Neither am I. Have you tried mother-in-law’s eye, olho de sogra?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a sweet wrapped in dried plum. I prefer them.’

  ‘Do you speak Portuguese?’ said Catesby.

  ‘A little.’

  ‘But I bet your Portuguese isn’t as good as your Russian?’

  The German smiled blandly without answering.

  Germans were a problem in Cuba. They could be either brand. The West Germans were fully represented with an embassy. But the East Germans, formerly completely unrepresented, had signed a trade deal with the revolution
ary government and now had a ‘commercial mission’ in Havana. It seemed likely that the East German presence was going to grow and the ‘Wessies’ might clear off entirely.

  ‘That’s a nice suit,’ said Catesby, ‘did you get it from the HO?’ The HO, Handelsorganisation, provided East Germany’s official state shops. A lot of people found HO clothes frumpy, but Catesby rather liked them – and the suit did look very HO. Perhaps they were dressing down to fit in with the Cubans.

  ‘You are obviously teasing me because you want to know if I represent the BRD or the DDR.’

  ‘It could make a difference.’ Catesby nodded towards Katya. ‘Do you owe her an apology?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The German studied Catesby with hooded eyes. ‘Maybe you owe her an apology.’

  Catesby noticed that General Alekseev was staring in their direction. Things were getting complicated. Catesby nodded a greeting at Alekseev. The Russian raised his glass. Even more complicated. Catesby turned to the German, ‘Do you know the general and his wife?’

  ‘Manchester United,’ said the German, ‘aren’t doing very well this season.’

  ‘No, they look headed for a middle-table finish.’

  ‘I suppose Busby’s trying to rebuild with younger players.’

  Catesby smiled. ‘Would you like us to get you some tickets for Old Trafford?’

  The German suddenly switched to English and put on a pastiche posh accent. ‘That would be jolly spiffing good, old sport.’

  Catesby laughed. ‘We’d better not get you those Man U tickets after all.’

  ‘Isn’t my English good enough?’ They were both speaking German again.

  ‘It’s not, how should I say, nuanced enough.’

  The German looked deflated, but it wasn’t because he couldn’t speak Mancunian English. ‘It’s a pity we can’t spend the rest of the evening talking about football. I never know when I’m getting things right.’

  Catesby looked at his fellow spy. He probably wasn’t much over thirty, if that. He could tell from the accent that he was a Berliner. He’d probably been fourteen or fifteen at the end. Catesby wondered if he had been one of those boy soldiers in uniforms three sizes too big lugging anti-tank grenades through the ruins and crying for their mothers. War is shit – especially if you have to fight for the wrong side.

  ‘You want to tell me something,’ whispered Catesby.

  The German gave the instructions clearly and concisely. It was also important that Catesby went there alone.

  Yo soy un hombre sincero

  De donde crecen las palmas …

  Even though it was two in the morning the sound of music and people singing still percolated through the narrow streets that smelled of mildew and cooking.

  Yo soy … an honest man

  From where the palm trees grow

  Before dying I want

  To share these poems of my soul …

  You heard the song everywhere. It wasn’t just a Cuban song. It was the song of all the Americas from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego.

  Guantanamera

  Guajira Guantanamera …

  It starts as a love song. A guajira is a young peasant woman, but guajira also means a song – the woman and the song become one. And the lyric becomes a love song of both place and person – for Guantanamera identifies the place, the province, of the guajira. As she tends her fields, she is not only a guajira, but a Guantanamera – the place itself.

  The cobbles of Calle San Ignacio glistened in the light warm rain as Catesby made his way through Habana Vieja to the rendezvous. Most of the houses had narrow balconies with iron railings overhanging the footpaths. In the sunlight of day the balconies would be festooned with washing. From an alleyway there was the sound of a drummer pounding out a rumba beat. An Afro-Cuban woman emerged from a doorway in front of him. A white dress clung tight to hips that seemed to syncopate effortlessly to the drum rhythm. She was a guajira too, part of the sensual mystery that surrounded him. Catesby wondered if, despite his pale skin and ways, he could enter that dark warmth and drown himself in the night. The woman in front of him rapped gently on a door and softly called a name. The door opened and she was gone – leaving behind a smell of sweet musk and sweat.

  Catesby crossed Calle O’Reilly. It had stopped raining and he could hear voices from the upstairs bar and the clink of mojitos being poured. He could tell from the smells that he wasn’t far from the harbour. The tang of salt water and oily smoke began to permeate, and the inscrutable night noises of a working port – bumps, shouts and clangs – echoed over the water. Someone emerged from the shadows and stopped him. It was an old man wearing a tattered straw hat. He leaned towards Catesby and said, ‘Oye chico, tú sabes …’

  Catesby never found out what he was supposed to know, saber, for the old man lurched back into the night. A chill of cold sweat ran down his spine. Maybe the old chap was warning him of something, had spotted something dangerous lurking. Catesby turned around and said, ‘Qué, compay?’ But no one answered. The old man was gone.

  In daytime La Plaza de la Catedral would have been pulsing with human life, but in the moonless night it seemed to have reverted to the swamp from which it had been drained. Three sides of the square were bordered by arched colonnades. Catesby imagined alligators and giant lizards lurking in the shadows. Set back behind the colonnades were majestic eighteenth-century houses where rich merchants had once counted their gold doubloons after going to Mass and communion.

  Catesby kept to the middle of the square, well away from the dark colonnades, as he made his way to the Cathedral of San Cristóbal. His footsteps echoed so loudly that he half-expected the ghost of a Spanish don with a pointed beard to throw open a shutter and order him arrested.

  The silhouette of San Cristóbal loomed menacing against the night sky. Catesby felt like Childe Roland going to the Dark Tower to meet his fate – but here were two dark towers, one oddly smaller than the other. The incongruity of the architecture seemed to throw everything else out of balance too. The sense of unreality became even more eerie when Catesby remembered that he was in the centre of a capital which had just witnessed a Marxist revolution based on dialectical materialism. The old gods and the old voodoo spirits seemed to creep back in the dark watches of the night.

  The heavy oak door groaned as Catesby pushed it open. The inside of the cathedral was as dark as a tomb except for the faint flicker of devotional candles on one side of the altar. He had been told to go to a pew beneath a painting of La Asunción de la Virgen. But it was too dark to see anything – and so spooky that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see the Blessed Virgin turn up in person to warn of the coming apocalypse.

  Catesby decided he needed one of the candles to navigate. His footsteps squeaked and echoed as he made his way across the marble floor. What a racket. But when he got to the candles he realised that he had no need to go further. In the faint light he could see the oil painting of the Virgin, swathed in her iconic lapis lazuli gown, about to be elevated beyond the clouds. Now he had to find the other woman.

  Catesby heard her breathing before he saw her. He turned around and looked at the pews. She was four rows back, at the very limit of the candlelight. She was wearing a mantilla, a gesture of religious respect that you wouldn’t normally expect from the wife of a KGB general. Maybe, thought Catesby, she wanted to make amends for her adultery. That’s what the Spanish priests who built this place would have wanted.

  Catesby retraced his steps down the aisle and slipped into the pew to sit next to her. He folded his hands and stared at the oil painting. The image of the Virgin hovered into sight and out of sight again as the candles flickered and sputtered. It was like watching a very old film.

  ‘Did you kill Andreas?’ Katya said the words without looking up.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please don’t lie to me.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him – nor did I order him killed either. I wanted to keep him alive be
cause …

  ‘Because of his relationship with me.’

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘Andreas was such an innocent. He was like a child.’

  ‘The innocent never last long in our business.’ Catesby could name a dozen other innocents. At the top of the list was Guy Burgess. His drinking, his wholesale sexual indiscretion, his outrageous sense of humour and even his spying were always the japes of a clever sixth former. Perhaps, thought Catesby, this was what had made Guy so much more likeable than the grey grown-ups around him.

  ‘What,’ said Katya, ‘did Andreas give you?’

  ‘Very little.’

  ‘I know you can’t tell me. But I can’t imagine what he could have found to pass on.’

  Catesby noticed a change in her voice. The last sentence sounded scripted. ‘Are you close to your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was normal again. ‘How can you even ask such a question?’

  When he was younger, when he was less aware of the complexities of the human heart, Catesby would have laughed at her reply as blatant hypocrisy. Instead he said softly, ‘I’m not here to judge you – I’m here to answer your questions.’

  ‘I want to know what happened.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Catesby. ‘Did your husband know about your affair?’

  Katya looked at Catesby for the first time. Her eyes flickered in the candlelight like coals from behind the lace of her mantilla. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you been married long?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because I want to understand – and I can’t put together the pieces to answer your questions, if I don’t know more.’

  The Russian woman stirred uncomfortably on the pew. After a minute she breathed deeply and began. ‘Our wedding was also my nineteenth birthday, the 3rd of January, 1945. It was a beautiful sunny day and so cold. Zhenka was on leave, a tiny break before the Vistula offensive.’ She paused and looked at the candles. ‘Unfortunately our wedding turned into a funeral, my twin brother was reported killed the same day. But things like that happened all the time – so you just kept living. Her voice dropped to a faint whisper, ‘Volodya, Volodya.’ Katya then smiled bleakly, ‘But you don’t want to hear this stuff.’