The Midnight Swimmer

by Edward Wilson

  ‘Well,’ Che took two long puffs, ‘Fidel was more amused than angry. He is very gallant in these matters and wanted another night of love with the guilty party. So, without Sophie knowing, he found another wetsuit and they both went off for a morning’s diving. And it ended up being a very interesting morning indeed.

  ‘Sophie suggested that they explore a coral reef that was a kilometre offshore. They motored out to it, just the two of them, in a small rubber dinghy. By now, Sophie must have been wondering when the wetsuit poison was going to have its effect. In any case, they landed the dinghy on a small island – about the size of this room – that Sophie had pointed out. I thought that Fidel was far too reckless, but he enjoys playing these games. There was another femme fatale who tried to poison him last year. She hid pills in her cold cream jar. When Fidel found the pills he handed her his pistol and said, “Here, shoot me.” She didn’t have the nerve, but Fidel would never have tried that game with Sophie. He knew instantly that she was much colder, much tougher-minded – a natural killer.

  ‘In any case, they started diving on the coral reef – which is beautiful. Fidel was impressed that Sophie wasn’t frightened by the sharks that came to investigate as they swam along the reef. Owing to the sharks there aren’t many other fish, but the coral is an example of great natural beauty – so many pulsating colours. You ought to see it. In any case, Fidel’s eyes were drawn to a huge conch that was stunningly beautiful – and a rarity too, for that species of conch is virtually unknown on the reefs of Cayo Coco. He gestured to Sophie that she should take it for a prize. She shook her head and pointed to Fidel, meaning it was his. She then swam away towards the surface. Sophie is a very swift swimmer and reached the dinghy well before Fidel. She pushed it back into the water, started the outboard and was motoring out to sea while Fidel was still ten metres away.

  ‘Our security boys on Cayo Coco beach saw what was happening and were quickly in pursuit. And it was at that very moment that the Florida speed boats arrived. Great big steel ones with twin-mounted .50 calibre machine guns in their bows. They sprayed the tiny island with gunfire, but Fidel, for once, had done the sensible thing. He dived back into the water and kept well below the surface for the rest of the battle. Our boats were outgunned and far less fast than the gangsters. But they didn’t get away completely. We called in the air force and one of the boats was sunk.’

  ‘Was it the boat that picked up Sophie?’

  Che shrugged. ‘Who knows? By the way, we later discovered that the trophy conch was a bomb with an anti-disturbance device. It would have killed Fidel if he had touched it. Unfortunately, we had to blow it up in place. It would have been a lovely souvenir for the Museum of the Revolution.’

  ‘What happened to Sophie’s other lover?’

  Che’s face was a blank. ‘What other lover?’

  ‘The government minister who committed suicide.’

  ‘I think you have been misinformed.’

  Once again Catesby felt he was lost in a corridor of mirrors where the reflections were not so much false as distorted. He looked away, but felt Guevara’s eyes boring into him.

  ‘Who,’ said Che, ‘told you about this minister who killed himself?’

  Catesby wasn’t going to answer. He didn’t want to implicate Katya even further. He changed the subject by gesturing to the handwritten page on Che’s desk. ‘In this statement you read to me, you said that only Cuba had the right to decide which weapons to keep within her borders. What weapons were you talking about?’

  Che smiled. ‘You must know. I revealed most of the plan last time you were here.’

  ‘Are the nuclear missiles already operational?’

  ‘You know that I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘If you don’t want to get bombed and invaded by the United States, it might be a good idea to pretend they are operational.’

  ‘The situation is difficult. We need to give a more precise definition of peaceful coexistence. Peaceful coexistence among nations does not mean coexistence between the exploiters and the exploited, between the oppressors and the oppressed.’

  Catesby felt a chill run down his back. He agreed with Che’s words, but not the likely consequences. You can’t always have peace and fairness on the same plate.

  ‘You look worried,’ said Che.

  ‘No, just thoughtful.’

  ‘You need, William, to stop thinking of yourself as a spy.’

  ‘What should I be then?’

  ‘A back-channel diplomat. Someone who does not officially exist, but who can be trusted to convey messages between the powers.’

  Catesby felt a certain unease. Che was echoing the advice that Henry Bone and Bob Neville had given months before. It was too much of a coincidence.

  Che looked closely at Catesby. ‘I believe you’ve heard of Aleksandr Semyonovich Feklisov?’

  Catesby nodded. Feklisov was one of Russia’s best spies. He was thought to have run the spy ring that passed on US atomic secrets to Moscow in the late forties.

  ‘Aleksandr is now working in Washington under the name of Fomin. But a certain powerful American knows who he is and what he is doing – just as I know what you’re doing. Maybe one day you will meet Aleksandr.’

  ‘You seem to have forgotten that I do not work for you, Dr Guevara, I work for the British government.’

  ‘I have never doubted that for one moment. I am not asking you to work for me. Nor am I asking you to be a mere messenger. I respect you – and feel that I can trust you, not only to convey my words, but also to interpret them accurately.’

  Catesby understood the situation. The role of the back-channel diplomat wasn’t to repeat the words, but to explain what they really meant.

  ‘Feklisov tells us,’ said Che, ‘that the Americans have suspended U-2 flights over Cuba. He says the suspension is the result of an accidental U-2 flight over the Soviet Union for which the USA had to make a humiliating apology. And also because another U-2 was shot down over China. It shows that Kennedy is weak.’

  Catesby looked out the window. It was still the hurricane season and the sky was overcast. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘the Americans are not overflying Cuba because of the weather.’

  Che puffed his cigar. ‘You think so?’

  Catesby was tempted to say I know so, but shrugged instead. He didn’t want to give too much away. He knew that the flights had been re-authorised for nearly a week, but there hadn’t been a hole in the cloud cover.

  ‘If they do overfly,’ said Che, ‘we will shoot them down.’

  ‘So you control the surface-to-air missiles and not the Russians?’

  Che smiled. ‘It depends on the weather.’

  It depended, thought Catesby, on a lot of things. The most interesting aspect of international relations wasn’t the conflict between enemies, but the conflicts between allies. You only had to go to an embassy cocktail party to see those conflicts in the flesh. It was easier for Western diplos to talk to the Russians than to talk to each other.

  ‘There is,’ said Che, ‘a side to Cuba’s defensive weapons that you should know about. It is important for Washington’s future calculations – and hence to Britain’s survival.’

  ‘What about Cuba’s survival?’

  ‘In some ways we are less vulnerable than you. Washington doesn’t want clouds of radioactive fallout drifting back over Florida. Our nearness to our enemy is an advantage that Britain doesn’t have.’

  Catesby suspected that he already knew the secret that Che was going to reveal. ‘What is it, Dr Guevara, that you want to tell me?’

  Che leaned forward and spoke in a quiet deliberate voice. ‘These are the weapons we have in place and they are invulnerable …’

  Catesby listened to the discourse in numb silence. As soon as Guevara had finished, Catesby sensed it was time to go.

  ‘Are you leaving?’ said Che.

  ‘I thought you were finished.’

  ‘There’s one other thing.’

 
Catesby found Che looking at him with an impish half smile. Something about the smile worried him. ‘What is it?’ said Catesby fidgeting.

  ‘Are you good friends with General Alekseev and his wife?’

  ‘I think that you’ve already come to your own conclusions.’

  ‘Perhaps I have. It’s wrong of me to tease you.’ Che waved his cigar in a gesture of apology. ‘You know, of course, that Yevgeny Ivanovich made … how should I say it, the ultimate sacrifice in the Great Patriotic War?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And I think it wounded his mind too. Would you kill yourself if that happened to you?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’d probably drink a lot – a lot more.’

  ‘It’s a pity. The Alekseevs had just married weeks before it happened. That meant that the other person was wounded as well.’

  ‘I am aware of the circumstances – you don’t need to tell me.’ Catesby’s voice was sharp and abrupt. ‘And why is this any of your business?’

  ‘It’s my business because General Alekseev plays an important role in the relations between the Soviet Union and Cuba – and I want to imagine what it’s like to be him.’ Che closed his eyes and touched his forehead with two fingers as if his head were aching. He looked exhausted. He continued in a voice that was almost a whisper. ‘Alekseev and I had a terrible argument. Maybe I was wrong.’

  Catesby sat in silence and stared at Guevara.

  Che opened his eyes. He looked even more tired and drained. ‘It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had only been Alekseev and myself alone, but there were other Russians present – including General Pliyev. I raised my voice and pointed my finger at Alekseev as if I were accusing him of being a traitor. Everyone started staring. If only …’

  ‘I’m confused. What did you say?’

  ‘Haven’t I told you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I said that, “We must never establish peaceful coexistence. We are in a struggle to the death between two systems and we must gain the ultimate victory – no matter what the cost in lives.”’

  ‘Did you mean it?’

  ‘In a way, as rhetoric at least.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think there has been a big dispute between the Russians.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The Alekseevs have been recalled to Moscow. I just got the news an hour ago.’

  Catesby struggled to hide his shock and pain. He knew that he would never see Katya again.

  When Catesby got back to the embassy there was more bad news. Not about Russian missiles or double agents or a dire international crisis. Bad news about his family in Suffolk. His Uncle Jack and his cousin Bill, also named William Catesby, had drowned in a fishing accident while long lining for early cod. Catesby was devastated. Family was more important than job. It wouldn’t be a long compassionate leave – only seventy-two hours including flights – but there was no way Catesby was going to miss the funeral.

  Eternal Father, strong to save,

  Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

  Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep

  Its own appointed limits keep …

  No one in the congregation at St Margaret’s Church, or any Lowestoft church, needed a hymn sheet to remember those words. Catesby put his arm around Aunt Jean. She hadn’t cried until then.

  Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,

  For those in peril on the sea!

  Jean had suffered the worst thing: the double loss. The worst nightmare of a fishing port woman. And yet, fishing hadn’t been the primary job of her son and husband. Jack and Billy were shipyard workers by trade. The long lining was just something they did at weekends, like a lot of Suffolk men, for extra cash.

  Billy’s widow, Sally, was on Catesby’s other side. Her face was stiff and hard. She was going to have to get used to bringing up four children on her own. Catesby knew there was nothing he could do to console Sally. She had always regarded Catesby and his sister with suspicion. Sally had left school at fourteen to work in the food-processing industry. Depending on the time of year, she gutted herring, plucked pheasants, filleted fish, dressed Cromer crabs or jointed chickens. Her hands were always rough and red. Part of Sally resented Catesby and his sister. It didn’t seem fair that they were the only ones in the family to go to university and escape a harsh life of manual labour and poverty. And yet another part of Sally desperately wanted that different life for her children. But with Billy dead, the sixth form for the children, let alone university, was a vanished dream. The trawlers and the factories beckoned.

  Catesby knew how Sally felt. He understood why she didn’t like him. But he would never turn his back on her or those like her even if they turned their backs on him. And once again he prayed, as much as an atheist can pray, that he would never have to make the choice between betraying his class or his country. For he knew which one he would choose.

  After the church service there was only family at the graveside. It was short and bitter. Uncle Jack had washed up at Kessingland and Billy at Pakefield. It was as if both had been riding the ebb tide to get as near to home as possible. Catesby wondered what had happened to their gold earrings. It was a tradition among Lowestoft fishermen. The gold earrings were meant to pay for their funerals if their bodies washed up.

  Catesby had been in the same class at Roman Hill Primary as cousin Billy. They were as close as siblings until Catesby went on to Denes Grammar and Billy left school to become an apprentice fitter. Catesby always regarded his cousin as his ‘what if’ alter ego. Billy was blond, blue-eyed and tall. Catesby was dark and smaller, more like his Belgian mother than his English father. Billy was open and friendly; Catesby always a little reserved and shifty. They complemented each other and used their different styles to outwit opponents on the football field. But they had the same name. When Catesby and Billy went to the pub after Catesby’s first term at Cambridge, Billy put his arm around his cousin and shouted: ‘Don’t forget. I’m the real William Catesby.’ Catesby knew that Billy was right.

  The wake was held at the Labour Club and after three pints Catesby found himself talking broad ‘Lowes’toff’ as if he had never left home. Both Billy and his father had been strong trade unionists and both had been shop stewards. Inevitably, the mourners linked arms and began singing. Catesby sensed that a number of eyes were on him to see if he knew the words by heart. He did.

  The people’s flag is deepest red,

  It shrouded oft our martyred dead,

  And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,

  Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold …

  ‘What exactly happened?’

  ‘No one seems to know, Will. The coastguard and the police are still looking at records of shipping traffic in the area.’

  Catesby was alone with his sister in the family home in Dene Road. It was late at night and they were in the back sitting room. It was a large house that had once been home to a number of Belgian relatives on the run from either war or the law. It was where Catesby and his sister Frederieke, ‘Freddie’, had become fluent in Flemish, French – and Russian too from an aunt by marriage.

  ‘The only thing I’ve heard,’ said Catesby, ‘is that it was a real October pea-souper with visibility down to less than the length of the boat.’

  ‘I remember the day. It was foggy here too.’

  ‘You know, Freddie, I’ve been out on that boat and it had a fog horn that ran off a gas bottle – and if that ran out there was an old frying pan they could hit with a spanner. And a radar reflector too. Why are you looking so thoughtful?’

  ‘It just doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t right. The shipping companies never own up if there aren’t any survivors to point the finger.’

  ‘Sally could use the money.’

  ‘I’ll have a chat with some of the other fishermen who were out on the day, but I’m flying back to Cuba the day after tomorrow. How’s your new j
ob?’

  ‘At least it’s not far to walk.’ Freddie was teaching modern languages at Denes Grammar – about 400 yards away. ‘But going back to teach at your old school makes you feel a failure.’

  ‘You’ll never be a failure, Freddie.’

  Freddie had been a translator at GCHQ, but had lost her security clearance. It was the result of an ugly incident that had affected both their careers. Catesby had kept his job – even though he had lied to protect Freddie. It was one of the swords that Henry Bone kept dangling over Catesby’s head.

  ‘They say there’s been “foreigners” around, but that could be anyone who isn’t from Orford.’

  Catesby was having a drink with old school friends John and Ange in the Jolly Sailor. John had rightly pointed out that in Suffolk ‘foreign’ began at about five miles away. In North Lowestoft, ‘foreign’ began south of the bridge. Cuba wasn’t even in the same galaxy. And yet Cuba could toll the final end and obliteration of Suffolk. The county’s airbases were frontline targets of the first resort.

  ‘Apparently,’ said Ange, ‘they had American accents. They were probably from the airbase.’

  ‘What did they want?’ said Catesby.

  ‘They wanted to hire a fishing boat – and the answer of course was no.’

  Catesby had spent the day nosing around Orford and talking to fishermen. Several had been out to sea the day that Jack and Billy had disappeared. Visibility had been dreadful, but no one had noticed anything untoward. The chances of Sally getting compensation seemed nil.

  ‘Sorry I can’t stay longer,’ said Catesby, ‘but I’m heading back to London this evening. And then Heathrow in the morning.’

  ‘Interesting new job?’ said John.

  ‘Not particularly, I’m second to the press attaché when I’m not drinking rum.’

  ‘Sounds like jolly hard work the Foreign Office.’

  ‘If you only knew.’

  The most dangerous thing about driving the road from Orford to Woodbridge at night is leaping deer. They seem to panic when caught in a car’s headlamps. Another hazard is a drunken countryman weaving his way home from the Butley Oyster.