The Midnight Swimmer

by Edward Wilson

  ‘You now think I’m a bad man?’

  Catesby slowly shook his head.

  ‘Moscow Central knows that one of us has been treacherous. I need to prove it’s me. That’s one of the reasons I invited you to take those pictures.’

  ‘Is there another reason?’

  Alekseev gave a weary smile. ‘I don’t want there to be a war, but maybe I’m just making things worse.’

  Catesby nodded agreement. Alekseev was facing the dilemma of a chess master being asked to the poker table.

  ‘The leadership in Moscow is split down the middle – and so are we in Cuba. One side believes that if the Americans find out about the Lunas and the FKR missiles, it will provoke them into an attack. But why should it? These weapons are short range and prove no danger to the American mainland.’

  ‘But public opinion whipped up by the evangelist American right may not differentiate.’

  ‘That’s the argument. And there’s also the problem of the American generals. They want war – maybe they haven’t seen enough of it. And they will use any excuse to launch one.’

  ‘And what does your side think?’

  ‘We think that the Lunas and the FKRs are a deterrent that will prevent the Americans from invading Cuba. But they won’t be a deterrent if Washington doesn’t know about them and doesn’t realise that the weapons are mobile, easy to conceal and impossible to neutralise with surgical airstrikes.’ Alekseev looked at Catesby. ‘You can, I am sure, explain that.’

  ‘If they listen.’

  ‘I don’t believe that the Kennedy brothers are good men, but I do believe they are rational and intelligent. We have got to the point where the world will not be saved by goodwill, but by good pragmatic judgement.’

  ‘It’s still a gamble.’

  ‘Is it not a gamble you want to take?’

  ‘I never wanted to be in this position.’

  ‘That’s why it’s best that it’s someone like you. Will you do it?’

  Catesby looked out on to the night sea as he had done thousands of times in Suffolk. There was no guidance. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes I will.’

  ‘Let’s go for a swim.’

  As Alekseev stripped off, Catesby caught a glimpse of his naked body. The Russian’s right leg was badly scarred and partly withered. There were huge suture marks over his lower abdomen as if he were a much-loved but badly stitched rag doll. And nothing below at all: more woman than eunuch. His penis urethra had been replaced by a pale catheter tube.

  Alekseev went into the water first. The waves were gentle and lapping. The night was windless. Catesby waded in behind the Russian and cupped his genitals when the water was waist high. He felt so afraid, so naked and vulnerable – and then ashamed of his fear.

  Catesby could see that Alekseev was a strong swimmer. He had to struggle to keep up. The Russian headed straight out to sea doing an even and graceful crawl. Despite his injuries he was a good athlete. They were getting further and further from land. The only light on the shore was the campfire which gradually faded into an intermittent glimmer like a distant star.

  They had been swimming nearly half an hour. Catesby guessed they must be a mile from shore. All was utter blackness. The campfire had disappeared. Alekseev stopped and turned. ‘Where are you, Will?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘We’ve come such a long way. Do you want to turn back?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I’m going to continue swimming.’

  ‘I’ll stay with you, Zhenka – until you’re ready to turn back.’

  The Russian laughed.

  ‘I wish,’ said Catesby also laughing, ‘that we had a compass.’

  ‘There’ll be a moon later – just for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘That poem I recited to you …’

  ‘The one by Mayakovsky?’

  ‘Yes, that one. It was the last thing that he wrote before he shot himself. Do you know how it ends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Behold what quiet settles on the world.

  Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.

  In hours like these, one rises to address

  The ages, history, and all creation.’

  ‘You’ve done just that.’

  ‘Thank you, Will.’

  ‘Let’s turn back.’

  ‘No.’

  It was the answer Catesby had been expecting.

  ‘Don’t follow me – I’m going for a very long swim. But you must go back – you have work to do. And look,’ the Russian pointed to the horizon, ‘here comes your moon to guide you.’

  A sliver of crescent rose above the eastern sea.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Catesby, ‘you should follow it home to Katya.’

  ‘What a good idea, Will.’ Alekseev laughed again. ‘Imagine the places I will see and the adventures I will have. A Russian Odysseus going home to his Penelope.’

  ‘You’re the only person she will ever love.’

  The two men were treading water facing each other in the moon-silvered sea. ‘But I hope,’ said Alekseev in a quiet voice, ‘she will love her child even more. Katya is pregnant with your baby.’ The Russian looked at Catesby and quoted the lines in English:

  ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends

  Rough-hew them how we will.’

  Then back to Russian. ‘I hope I didn’t slaughter your beautiful language.’

  ‘You would have been the best Hamlet ever – and an even better father.’

  ‘I must go now.’ The Russian reached out and embraced Catesby. He held him close for a few seconds and they both began to sink. He released him. They bobbed to the surface as if reborn. Alekseev turned away without saying another word and started swimming into the moon path.

  Catesby treaded water and watched as Alekseev swam into the long night. And beyond the sea horizon the armies of the night were stirring. The steady pulse beat of the swimmer’s arms and feet kneading the water became more and more faint. Catesby kept watching until the midnight swimmer had vanished in the moon path.

  Catesby turned to swim back to shore, then looked once again out to sea. He called into the night:

  ‘Good night sweet prince;

  And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.’

  He waited, but there was only silence. He began his long swim back.

  PART THREE

  Now hear this: general quarters, general quarters. All hands man their battle stations. This is not a drill!

  The USS Beale had scented its prey, pursued her and now had her cornered. The Beale was one of eleven destroyers in Task Force Randolf that were stalking Soviet submarines. The ship’s call to battle was a deafening combination of sirens, klaxons and bells. Several sailors held their ears as they dashed along the decks to their stations.

  The Beale’s weapons officer and skipper were staring at the green sonar screen which showed the depth and location of the target. The sonar operator was wearing earphones. ‘She’s so close, sir, you can hear the propellers and the engine clanking.’

  The skipper spoke first. ‘The biggest fear is that you got to make sure it’s Ivan and not one of our own.’

  ‘It’s definitely an Ivan, sir.’

  The skipper nodded and left the sonar station for the CIC, the Combat Information Center, to begin to plan for the attack.

  The damage control officer was giving a briefing in Damage Control Central, a cabin in the middle of the ship hung with diagrams of the ship highlighting the locations of watertight doors and fire hose outlets. All the men were wearing lifejackets and grey helmets. They had their sleeves rolled down and buttoned and their trousers tucked into their socks. A few of the sailors had rosary beads draped around their necks.

  One of the younger sailors looked particularly nervous and tried to hide his nervousness by making little jokes. His socks weren’t long enough and his trousers kept popping out. ‘Here,’ said the damage control officer handing him a piece of string,
‘tie them.’

  ‘Why, sir, have we got to tuck our trousers in like that anyway?’

  ‘Because when a ship gets hit and the explosions start a lot of guys get nervous – and they start pissing and shitting themselves. You don’t want to be slipping and sliding on decks full of piss and shit when you’re trying to fight fires and deal with dead and wounded.’

  The skipper of the Beale, like the other ship commanders involved, was authorised to conduct anti-submarine operations without much interference from above. The highest priority was to avoid losing an American warship by lack of decisive action. The skipper turned to his weapons officer: ‘Prepare practice depth charges for immediate launch.’

  It was the ultimate Cold War game for a US destroyer commander: finding a Soviet sub and forcing her to surface. The procedure approved for the Cuba crisis was to drop four practice-depth charges as close to the Soviet submarine as possible. The depth charges produced a loud bang, but were supposed to be otherwise harmless. It was a signal for the Soviet sub to surface and identify herself. The US Embassy in Moscow had passed on the details of the procedure to the Kremlin, but the Soviet government had not yet passed the message on to their submarine commanders.

  The mission of Major Anderson’s U-2 flight was the photo-reconnaissance of six surface-to-air missile sites. It was essential that the US military have up-to-date intelligence on the Soviet air defence systems as a prerequisite to launching surgical airstrikes against the nuclear missile sites.

  Major Anderson was on a very dangerous mission because the very S-75 Dvina anti-aircraft missiles he was photographing were the only weapons capable of shooting down U-2s at 70,000 feet. On the other hand, the S-75s could only be fired by Soviet personnel, who were more restrained than their Cuban colleagues manning the lower level anti-aircraft guns. It was a critical time and the Russians didn’t want to escalate. The Soviet general in charge of the S-75 sites had been ordered to act with restraint, but the order did not anticipate that a U-2 would fly directly over a battery of nuclear-equipped FKR cruise missiles aimed at the US base at Guantánamo Bay. The tension was heightened by the fact that one of the missile transporters had overturned in a ditch during the previous night’s deployment. The driver, young Viktor, had been killed. The general knew that the U-2 had photographed one of the most sensitive secrets in Cuba. He was one of those who, unlike Alekseev, believed that knowledge of the tactical nuclear weapons would provoke rather than deter the Americans. There wasn’t time to get authorisation from Moscow, the U-2 would soon be on its way back to the USA and out of range. The general picked up the radio handset in his underground bunker and gave the order.

  The news reached the White House cabinet room in the middle of a hot discussion. EXCOMM, the committee formed to deal with the crisis, was debating the President’s proposal to swap the removal of US missiles in Turkey and Italy for the removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba. The hawks were against it. The Joint Chiefs wanted massive airstrikes against Cuba within thirty-six hours unless there was ‘irrefutable evidence’ that the Russian missiles had been dismantled.

  The debate was interrupted when one of the Defense Secretary’s aides passed him an urgent message. The secretary looked up at his colleagues. ‘A U-2 has been shot down over Cuba and the pilot killed.’

  ‘This is ominous,’ said the secretary’s deputy, ‘those missiles are under sole Soviet control.’

  The Defense Secretary looked drained. ‘This signals a change in pattern. And why is Moscow changing the pattern? I simply don’t know.’

  One of the generals hammered his fist on the table. ‘We’ve got to go in now and go in hard.’

  The crew of the B-59, a Soviet Foxtrot class submarine, thought they were about to die. The practice-depth charges were exploding right next to the hull of the sub – one even bounced off the hull with a loud clang before detonating. It felt like they were trapped in a steel barrel that someone was hitting with a sledgehammer.

  The B-59 was in a desperate situation. Her batteries were so low that she had been forced to switch to emergency lighting which left the submarine in a murky gloom. It was stifling hot, plus forty-five degrees Celsius, and the carbon dioxide level had become so dangerously high that crew had begun to pass out. Ironically, the most comfortable place in the submarine was next to the ten-kiloton nuclear-tipped torpedo in the forward section of the hull. It was the place furthest from the toxic fumes and heat of the engine room.

  The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievich Savitsky, had had enough. ‘We’re under attack,’ he shouted. ‘It is obvious that war has already started. Prepare the torpedo for firing. We’re going to blast them now. It doesn’t matter if we die, we will sink them all. We will not disgrace the Soviet Navy!’

  Over the North Pole tragedy was turning into farce. Captain Charles W. Maultsby had got lost. The mission of his U-2 flight was to collect air samples to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. The U-2 had flown from Eilson Air Base in Alaska and, once the mission over the Pole was complete, the plane would return on the same track. There is, however, a serious problem with navigating over the North Pole. Compasses are useless. The needles gyrate wildly or point to the magnetic pole, totally confusing north with south. A pilot has to rely on the stars to plot his plane’s position. But on this night it was impossible. Captain Maultsby could not distinguish the stars because of a spectacular display of the aurora borealis, the northern lights. The night sky had turned into a fireworks display of whirling cartwheels streaked with red, blue, pink and luminous green. It was as if nature was providing a preview of the looming nuclear apocalypse.

  Captain Maultsby was a dapper man with a thin moustache who looked oddly British and bore a resemblance to Peter Sellars. He was one of the USAF’s most capable and experienced pilots. This wasn’t the first time that he had been in trouble. His F-80 Shooting Star fighter had been shot down over Korea and he taken prisoner. But this situation was even worse because of the complete disorientation. The northern lights eventually disappeared, but seemed to have left behind a vastly changed sky. It was as if the dancing lights had mischievously scrambled the position of the stars. Maultsby realised he was totally lost. No star was where it was supposed to be. This was because Captain Maultsby was flying forty-five degrees off course to the west and had entered Soviet air space.

  Shortly after Soviet military radar spotted the intruding U-2, two squadrons of MiGs took off to deal with the American plane. As soon as US Strategic Air Command became aware that MiGs were pursuing Maultsby, F-102 fighter-interceptors were scrambled to protect the U-2. Maultsby meanwhile had finally made radio contact with Alaska and was being talked back to base. The U-2 was now out of fuel, losing height and gliding back to Alaska. It was a race against time. Maultsby needed to leave Soviet air space before the MiGs came within firing range. If not, the F-102s coming to his rescue were armed with nuclear-tipped Falcon air-to-air missiles which would completely vaporise the squadrons of pursuing MiGs.

  When Catesby arrived at the British Embassy in Washington he was treated with far more deference than he was accustomed. He was met by the Ambassador, David Ormsby-Gore, and given a room in the residence that was usually reserved for visiting cabinet ministers.

  Ormsby-Gore was patrician without being posh. When he spoke to Catesby there wasn’t a hint of condescension in his voice. It was as if he and Catesby were members of the same club. Catesby had noticed that upper-class people were now more civil to him than when he had been an army officer during the war. He wondered if he had changed or if they had changed. Catesby now spoke with a classless accent and had adopted the manners of the embassy environments that were his usual workplaces. He tried to assure himself that it wasn’t a matter of selling out, but of fitting in. And maybe the toffs had begun to realise that Britain was a different place and they had to alter their ways to fit in too. But for the moment, class differences no longer mattered. When the nuclear bombs rained down on Britain they wouldn’t make a distinctio
n between vowels, income or education.

  ‘How was your trip?’ said Ormsby-Gore.

  ‘Tense. The Aeroméxico flight from José Martí to Mexico City was packed with fleeing diplomat families. Then Pan Am to here – that one was nearly empty.’

  The Ambassador smiled grimly. ‘No one wants to fly into a nuclear target. How are things in Cuba?’

  ‘No sign of panic, at least not among the Cubans. There are still lovers strolling along the Malecón between the anti-aircraft guns, joking and chatting with the gun crews. Crowds gather at the harbour entrance to cheer any ships that manage to run the blockade. There don’t seem to be any civil defence preparations. I suppose there’s a whiff of carnival in the air.’

  ‘Carnival indeed.’ The Ambassador looked thoughtfully out of his study window. There was a view of manicured lawns and oak trees, almost like an English country estate. Ormsby-Gore finally spoke in a voice that was quiet, humble and completely unaffected. ‘It would indeed be the ultimate tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more noble than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump.’

  ‘We need to stop that ape.’

  ‘It might be too late. Have you heard the latest?

  Catesby softly said, ‘No.’ He had been cocooned in airliners for most of the past twenty-four hours.

  ‘A US plane has been shot down over Cuba. Consequently, the American Strategic Air Command has gone to DEFCON 2 – for the first time ever.’

  Catesby felt his stomach lurch. DEFCON 2 was the alert level just short of war. It meant that B-52 bombers, fully loaded with nuclear bombs, had been dispersed to ‘start line’ locations and were ready to take off at fifteen minutes’ notice. They would then join nearly 200 more B-52s which were already airborne in holding positions. It also meant that the Thor missiles in East Anglia were loaded, fuelled and ready to launch.