The Midnight Swimmer

by Edward Wilson

  Bone switched off the machine and looked at Catesby. ‘Who is OMEGA?’

  ‘It’s their codename for the Sov Director of OT. It’s the technical services and research branch of KGB First Directorate – the invisible ink and exploding cigars boffins. Let’s hear more of Angleton.’

  ‘… the emphasis is now on developing poisons that mirror natural causes of death to use as assassination weapons. Which isn’t to say that the KGB has given up on shooters and ice picks. But most important is the policy change from the top. Until recently, the KGB only ordered foreign assassinations on Soviet dissidents and defectors living in exile – like those Ukrainian nationalists they hit in ’59. Which, by the way, is one of the reasons we know FEDORA is genuine – otherwise, he wouldn’t have known about the cyanide gas pistol used.’

  Bone halted the tape again. ‘Are you impressed?’

  ‘Not much. As you know, Henry, I’m never impressed by anything. Just because intelligence is new doesn’t mean it’s a surprise. Of course, they’re working on poisons that don’t leave a trace – so are we. Look at VX.’

  ‘But it looks like they’re doing a better job. The problem with VX is that it doesn’t mimic a heart attack or something else. You’ve still got to furnish a likely cause of death.’

  ‘Got someone in mind, Henry?’

  Bone smiled wanly. ‘Let’s hear more.’ He forwarded the tape.

  ‘… his KGB codename is WAXWING. He developed close friendships with Molotov and Mikoyan during frequent visits to the Soviet Union when he was a cabinet minister. FEDORA managed to bring with him transcripts of some of his more revealing private conversations with the two. Have a look.’ There was the sound of papers shuffling.

  Ferret’s voice came in. ‘We’ve had our own file on him since 1945. Do you know he once played a game of cricket on the banks of the Moskva River? When he was batting the KGB man at square leg dropped a catch that would have had him out for a duck. We now know why.’ Sound of laughter.

  ‘Or maybe,’ said Catesby, ‘the KGB bloke was a rotten fielder. He was probably drunk and it’s not exactly their national sport. This is the sort of evidence we used to use to burn witches.’

  The tape continued with Angleton’s voice: ‘… we are very concerned, especially in light of the FEDORA debriefings, about this particular politician. As I am sure you must be as well?’ Sounds of assent. ‘In fact, FEDORA has given us proof that WAXWING is a Soviet agent.’

  ‘But not,’ it was Fox’s voice, ‘but not proof that could be presented in court without compromising intelligence operations?’

  Angleton laughing. ‘That’s always the case, isn’t it? Which is why we often have to use other means …’

  Catesby thumped the table. ‘You see what this unspeakable filth is trying to do, don’t you?’

  ‘Shh, listen.’

  ‘… we should take FEDORA’s warnings seriously that the KGB is willing and capable of assassinating Western political leaders in order to replace them with their own agents.’

  Ferret came in again. ‘So you’re saying that WAXWING may have visited East Germany last year to get his orders straight from the Kremlin leadership?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Angleton, ‘I’m not even sure it was WAXWING himself. It could have been one of his secret cabal – it could have been a deputy. But certainly someone of high rank. And I’m not sure it had anything to do with the running of a future pro-Soviet government. I think the meeting was about something much more serious and immediate.’

  ‘Why,’ said Fox, ‘haven’t you passed on this information to Hollis?’

  ‘I think you know the reason why?’

  Bone stopped the tape. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know – I’m not his doctor.’

  ‘Angleton isn’t as mad as you think. He’s playing to an audience who have more malice than brains.’

  ‘He’s also playing on our pro-Yank anti-Yank divide.’ Catesby knew that millions of his fellow Britons adored America. It was an admiration that also reached deep into the Security Services. The pro-Americans were the ones who feared that Britain had become too ‘socialist’ – and that something needed to be done to stop the rot. How far would they go?

  Bone had gone mysteriously silent – as if mentally ticking off a list of names.

  ‘In any case,’ said Catesby, ‘Angleton has always been a master at getting ourselves and Five at each other’s throats – and now he’s trying to get Five to tear itself apart too.’

  ‘And after that,’ said Bone, ‘he’ll get Five to undermine any future government that isn’t to Washington’s liking.’

  Catesby stared at the worn and frayed Indian carpet on the office floor. He felt just as tired and threadbare. ‘I agree with what you’re saying, Henry, but Angleton’s claims about a looming assassination are pure fantasy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Angleton seems to be inferring that the KGB is planning to assassinate Hugh Gaitskell so that WAXWING, obviously Harold Wilson, becomes their man in Downing Street. Utter nonsense.’

  ‘You think it sounds far-fetched?’

  ‘First of all,’ said Catesby, ‘if Gaitskell fell under the Number 19, the next leader of the Labour Party would be George Brown, provided his liver held out, and not Wilson – and the Russians loathe Brown even more than Gaitskell. In fact, the Sovs would prefer the Tories to either of them.’

  ‘You seem to think that truth and logic matter to those Angleton is trying to influence.’

  ‘Good point, Henry.’

  ‘Twists and turns, William, twists and turns.’ Bone put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. ‘Meanwhile everything is linked to Cuba – even Berlin and the Thor missile sites in East Anglia. Can’t you see?’

  ‘Of course I can.’ In fact, Catesby didn’t see the links at all. But he did know that Bone’s gnomic utterances were almost always based on withheld secrets that would, when Henry judged the time right, be revealed.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘I’d love one, Henry.’ Catesby watched Bone go the sideboard. The chipped mugs that looked like refugees from a building site were still there, but there was a red wooden box with Chinese ideograms.

  As Bone spooned the loose leaf tea into the pot, he said, ‘I got this brew from a shop in Wardour Street. The tea’s distinctive smoky flavour comes from it being dried over burning pine.’

  ‘What’s the Cuba connection?’

  Bone beamed. ‘I don’t always enjoy trumping the glib jibes that probably passed for wit in your grammar school sixth form, but I will on this occasion. Here is the Cuban China connection. “I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength, and thus will turn his strength into weakness.”’

  ‘Sun Tzu?’

  ‘Correct. Sun Tzu wasn’t only a general – he was also a renowned tea merchant.’

  ‘You just made that up.’

  ‘Perhaps I did. In any case, enough banter. Have a look at this.’

  Catesby opened the folder. It was a thin file that had just been started. The opening page gave the security classification and title:

  BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONALITY REPORT

  Jennings Galen, CIA Intelligence Officer

  ‘We need,’ said Bone pouring the tea, ‘to flesh this folder out quite a bit. Both Neville and his successor in DC think there is, how should I say, quite a bit of flesh involved – and not just Galen’s own.’

  Catesby suddenly realised that his first impression of Galen, as ‘a bank clerk with a secret vice’, may have been a correct one.

  ‘So, William, you’re going to have to do some travelling and visit an old friend – that master of gossip and indiscretion.’

  The airport north of Punta Arenas wasn’t the end of the world, but it wasn’t far away from the end. It had taken Catesby eight hours to get there on a scheduled flight from Santiago.

  The next part of the journey would have been dangerous even
if the pilot had been sober. But Catesby didn’t blame Ramos for being drunk. He had had a hard life and was clearly bored with living in exile in the middle of nowhere. Born in Barcelona at the end of the nineteenth century, Ramos had discovered South America as a courier pilot for Aeroposta in the twenties and early thirties when he flew with Saint-Exupéry. He returned to his native Spain to fly an obsolete Potez 540 against Franco’s Fascists and was badly wounded. Catesby was in awe of the wizened old pilot as he guided the tiny Cessna 170 into the mist of the South Atlantic. Ramos was also the ideal pilot for such a mission. He had absolutely no curiosity in Catesby or what he was doing.

  There were no airfields on the islands. But on previous flights Ramos had found a flattish pasture near the settlement which served as a landing place. As he went into the landing glide Ramos spoke for the first time. ‘What’s the difference between a live pilot and a dead pilot?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Catesby.

  ‘A live pilot can tell the difference between a field of boulders and a flock of sheep.’

  Fortunately, there were neither boulders nor sheep on the makeshift landing field.

  ‘Thanks for the whisky – and the letters. And it’s even good to see you again.’ Kit Fournier continued speaking as he opened the front of the cooker and put in a peat block. ‘They cut this stuff as a sort of spring ritual at the beginning of October. The peat cutting is a big event, even bigger than Christmas. The idea is that the peat ought to be dry enough to burn when winter comes – July’s the worst month. But it’s never really warm and never dry for more than two days in a row. Since it’s a bit chilly this evening we’ll have lamb stew. Tomorrow we can catch some fresh trout. Have you ever had truite au bleu?’

  Catesby shook his head.

  ‘You have to do it with live trout. You knock them out and gut them seconds before you put them in a court bouillon. Of course, the poor fish are still twitching when you throw them in the boiling liquid. They quickly turn a remarkable blue and you serve them with Hollandaise.’ Fournier paused and stared at Catesby. ‘And that’s what you bastards have done to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kit.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I would have done the same to you. Have some wine. It’s carmenère. I buy wine off a Chilean jigger, a squid boat, that calls in at Port Howard a few times a year. Look,’ Fournier went over to a crude bookshelf made of breeze blocks and planks. ‘The captain of the jigger brings me books too.’ He picked some volumes off the top shelf and caressed them with his eyes. ‘Neruda, Mistral, Quiroga, Borges, Asturias …’ He looked at Catesby and waved the books at him. ‘These books are my world …’ Fournier’s eyes were glistening with tears. He wept freely for a few seconds, then blew his nose and wiped his face on his sleeve. ‘I hate it when anyone sees me like this. But I’m so fucking lonely.’

  ‘I hope the letters are helping.’

  ‘What was the deal?’

  ‘If any of your family reveal that they’re in contact with you, we stop the letters.’

  ‘And mine are censored?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘My sister said she met you. What did you think of her?’

  ‘I thought she was a nice woman.’

  Fournier smiled. ‘You must be the only one who thinks so. Caddie can be very acerbic. Don’t you want to know what she thought of you?’

  Catesby shrugged.

  ‘She said that she thought you were a hard person who had been badly damaged.’

  ‘Should I vomit in the sink or outside?’

  ‘But she liked you – which is odd, because she usually prefers her own gender. Maybe she thought you were a bit of a girl.’

  ‘But a hardened bitch of a girl.’

  Fournier went over to the cooker and put chopped mushrooms in the stew. ‘There are ninety-seven species of native coprophilous fungi in these islands, but the ones we’re eating are cultivated. I don’t want to kill you with a poison mushroom. They might stop the letters.’

  ‘How’s your cover story holding up?’ Kit Fournier, who spoke Spanish as a first language, had been given a fake passport and papers purporting he was a Guatemalan naturalist who was making a study of the islands. He was supposed to cultivate eccentricity and a liking for his own company.

  ‘To be frank, I don’t think the locals give a flying fuck who I am. They call me “one-two-eight”.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because I brought the population of the island up to 128.’

  ‘We did think the naturalist cover story would wear thin after a while. But listen, Kit, you’ve got to keep up the pretence or …’

  ‘Or they’ll deep six me?’

  Catesby shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Their biggest worry is the thing leaking into the press.’

  ‘They could send me to St Helena?’

  ‘Sorry, Kit, you’re no Napoleon – and besides, we have to keep St Helena ready for de Gaulle in case he gets too cosy with the Sovs. In any case, you haven’t got too cosy with anyone. Have you?’

  ‘The person concerned, along with her husband and boy, have just emigrated to Australia – so they should call me “one-two-five”.’

  ‘That’s bad. Anyone else?’

  ‘I occasionally get drunk with Ramos on his stopovers – but I assure you it’s platonic. Did you know that one of the characters in Malraux’s L’espoir is based on him?’

  Catesby shook his head.

  ‘But since Ramos is another comrade in dodgy exile he knows how to keep his mouth shut.’ Fournier paused. ‘The saddest thing, and most inspiring thing, was what Ramos said about Madrid when the Fascists were bombing the poorest quarters of the city to punish the workers. There was only one sound that rose above the exploding bombs and the screams of the wounded and the crackling of flames. That heroic sound was the defiant music of a blind beggar playing the Internationale on the violin. Groupons nous, William, groupons nous pour la lute finale.’

  ‘You’ve finally become a believer?’

  ‘Yes. It’s funny, isn’t it? I wasn’t one at the time. I only wanted to go to Moscow so that I could be near Jennifer. It didn’t matter if I had to share her with someone else – with the whole Politburo for that matter.’ Fournier laughed. ‘But now that she’s gone, what she believed in has taken her place. But you haven’t come 8,000 miles to hear my ideological views?’

  ‘Not entirely.’

  ‘Have you replaced my agent handler?’

  ‘No. In any case, I’m sure they’ve squeezed you dry about most things by now.’ Catesby raised his glass. ‘Excellent wine, this.’

  ‘Have some more.’

  ‘Thanks. But, Kit, no matter how much we squeeze someone like you, there’s always some juice we didn’t realise we needed – or even existed. The amount of stuff a human brain can hold is impressive.’

  ‘Not the fucking Kennedys again, please.’

  ‘No, Kit, someone far less significant. The sort of creature you probably thought was less than the dust under your chariot wheels. Remember those halcyon days when it looked like your chariot was romping towards the National Security Council, or even to be Director of the CIA? What a star you were.’

  ‘Catesby, old pal, can you cut out the bullshit and tell me who the fuck you want to know about?’

  Catesby opened a file and passed it across the table. ‘Remember him?’

  Fournier looked at the file photo, then laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘Sheeee … it! Is this sick puppy still in the agency?’

  ‘You knew him well?’

  ‘Jennings Galen was in my induction training cohort when I joined the Agency. He was lousy at all the physical stuff and nearly washed out. I’m not sure he ever completed parachute training. But Jennings was brilliant at other things: intelligence analysis, languages, deception techniques – and most of all, his ability to memorise. He was subject to a lot of bullying on the course, the sort that led one guy to suicide. But bullying didn’t affect Jennings.’

  ‘Wh
y not?’

  ‘Because his ego was elsewhere. He saw us for what we were – a bunch of jocks and East Coast preppy snobs. He didn’t want to be one of us, that was his great strength.’ Fournier smiled at Catesby. ‘But this isn’t what you want, is it, William? You don’t want to know his strengths, you want to know Galen’s weaknesses so you can frame the bastard.’

  ‘Anything would be useful.’

  ‘Well how about this? Jennings Galen is a sexual pervert – not, I know, a particularly unusual trait for those in our trade. Hoover was once quite shocked to discover that two of his prize agents had a penchant for bestiality.’

  ‘But Jennings prefers humans?’

  ‘So it would seem.’ Fournier poured himself more wine. ‘To get the full picture you ought to know that Jennings was born in a small shit-kicking town in Texas – the sort of place where the girls admire star quarterbacks and other clean-limbed heroes. Everything that Jennings was not. He knew he was never going to be able to compete. So, he developed a different persona – one that was silky, observant and mysterious.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He became a Roman Catholic. Don’t laugh, William, this was a big deal in gringo Texas. He had been brought up as Southern Baptist – so going over to Rome was like …’

  ‘Like you going over to Moscow?’

  ‘In some ways worse. But, thanks to you guys, I didn’t get there. I ended up here instead. In any case, Jennings went Catholic in a serious way. I’m surprised he didn’t become a priest.’

  ‘Did it help him get laid?’

  ‘I think so, I know so. When he finished his training, Jennings married a very pretty girl from Louisiana. She looked like a piece of candy floss. Everyone thought they were an odd couple. On the other hand, they both were sort of pink and fluffy.’ Fournier lowered his voice. ‘Meanwhile things were getting very strange indeed.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Theologically. Jennings became a member of Opus Dei. You know about them?’

  Catesby nodded wearily. Opus Dei had strongly supported Franco’s Fascists in the Spanish Civil War – and their personal habits were even creepier than their political ones. Catesby had once been assigned to look after a Polish defector in a Berlin safe house who was Opus Dei. Every morning the Pole leapt out of bed and shouted ‘Serviam!’, Latin for ‘I serve’. The rest of the day was punctuated with rosaries and sudden outbursts of piety, but Catesby was spared the weirdest ritual. Maybe the Pole just didn’t do it in front of others or maybe he didn’t have the equipment.