The Midnight Swimmer (37 page)

‘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.

N
o 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.

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.

‘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 job?’

‘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.

On this occasion the countryman seemed to have fallen off his bicycle in the middle of the road.
He was so sprawled across the road that Catesby was going to have to run over him to get past.
He pushed his foot down on the accelerator, but covered the brake in case the countryman didn’t roll or jump out of the way.
Catesby’s paranoia, not for the first time, was vindicated.
The fake
countryman
jumped up and to the side with his pistol out.
The first shot hit the back passenger window.
The next one managed to take out a rear tyre.
Catesby’s car slewed off the road and two more shots hit the rear windscreen.
Then the car stalled.

Catesby lay down across the passenger seat as if he had been hit.
At the same time he removed his Browning 9mm automatic from where he carried it beneath the passenger seat.
If the shooter had any sense he would fire a few rounds into the car to see if Catesby was faking it.
He wondered if the Humber’s bodywork would deflect the bullets.
He continued waiting.
There were footsteps on the road and then voices – voices as unmistakably American as a shot of rye whiskey.

‘Hey, Joey, you think that guy’s playing possum?’

‘Let’s make sure he’s a dead possum.’

Two shots rang out, but the bullets didn’t make it through the boot and back seat.
There was then the sound of a single set of
footsteps
coming up alongside the car.
Catesby reckoned the shooter was going to put a few rounds through the driver-side door.
And British motorcar steel wouldn’t stop those.
Catesby reached for the passenger door handle and pushed.
He landed on the damp grassy verge just as bullets ripped through the fabric of the front seats.

Catesby saw Joey appear from behind the car to get a clear shot, but Catesby fired first and hit him in the knee.
Joey went down clutching at his injury and Catesby put a bullet through the top of his head.
The other guy then fired two shots which passed through the driver-side door and ricocheted over Catesby’s head.
Then there was the sound of footsteps running down the road.
The gunman had run out of ammunition.

Catesby was up and after him.
Joey’s pal wasn’t a good runner.
Catesby dropped him with a bullet through the thigh.
He was now certain that the two gunmen had been responsible for the deaths of Jack and Billy.
Catesby realised that his relatives had been killed to draw him into an ambush.
He calmly walked up to the wounded gunman and put two bullets into his crotch.
The gunman then grabbed his mutilated genitals and screamed so loudly that Catesby had to end the noise with a bullet in the temple.

Catesby checked his own pockets to make sure he had enough money for phone calls.
He then went through the pockets of the gunmen to see what they had.
Joey’s pal was completely clean, except for a half-finished pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint chewing gum.
Maybe it was what Americans carried instead of passports.

He then had a look at Joey.
His eyes were open and the whites reflected in the dark like little moons.
Catesby decided it was a good idea to pull the bodies and the bicycle off the road and into the shadow of the wood beside it.
When that was done he went through Joey’s pockets.
There was a huge wad of banknotes.
Catesby transferred the money to his own pocket.
He wondered if he should hand it in to SIS or pass it over to Sally.
Catesby methodically went through the rest of the pockets.
He was troubled that there weren’t any car keys.
Did it mean that someone had dropped them there and was soon going to return to pick them up?
Or did it mean they had hidden the car and left the keys in the ignition?
Catesby decided he’d
better get a move on.
He went through Joey’s breast pockets.
The only thing he found was a business card.
It was too dark to read so Catesby put it in his own pocket.

Catesby tucked the Browning automatic in his waistband and started walking.
The nearest phone box was outside the Butley Oyster, about a mile away.
The loom of advancing headlamps would give him plenty of warning of approaching cars so he could
disappear
off the road.
As he walked along Catesby made a mental list of the people who wanted to kill him and why.
He suspected that revenge for the Galen hit was high on the list.
A lot of people lurking in dark corners must have realised that Galen didn’t kill himself.
And Catesby also suspected that a lot of the same people reckoned, incorrectly, that he had grassed Sophie to the Cubans.