The Midnight Swimmer (41 page)

W
hen 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 distinction 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.

The Ambassador turned to Catesby with a world-weary smile.
‘I shan’t detain you longer.
I am sure you have much to do.’
He handed over a slip of paper.
‘This cable arrived for you this morning from Downing Street.
I deciphered it myself.
Please don’t tell me what it concerns.’

Catesby dialled the number from the embassy.
The number he was ringing connected to one of the most secret and important phones in America.
It was still the same number that Ambassador
Winthrop
had passed on two years before.
Although the phone and its location changed, the number remained the same.
Catesby later realised it was the Mongoose line, a telephone that connected low people to high places.
He wondered if people washed their hands after touching it.

The voice that answered was American, but one that Catesby hadn’t heard before.
It was an educated voice that sounded stressed.
As soon as Catesby said the codeword, AMLASH, the line went quiet as the person on the other end put a palm over the speaking end.
A few seconds later, there was sound again and background voices – a familiar one saying, ‘This could be important.’
Then more distinctly into the phone, ‘What’s the latest?’

‘I’m in Washington.’

‘Who the fuck is this?’

‘I’m William Catesby ringing from the British Embassy.
I’ve just come from Cuba and I have very important information for you alone.’

There was a pause punctuated by the sound of breathing.
It was as if the person on the other end was piecing together something important, but half-remembered.
Then the voice came back sharp and direct, ‘Meet me at Hickory Hill in one hour.’

The phone clicked dead before Catesby could reply.

The house was huge, but not colossal.
Maybe eight or ten bedrooms.
It was set well back from the road in a rambling garden with large mature trees.
The architecture was traditional East Coast American: wooden clapboard painted white.
Catesby guessed it dated from the middle of the nineteenth century.
It was grand without being
pretentious
.
The house had the relaxed simplicity of the American Dream.

A man in dark glasses carrying a clunky walkie-talkie showed Catesby where to park the embassy car.
He then gestured for Catesby to follow and led him to a door at the back of the house.
The man pushed the door open and said, ‘Go through the kitchen to the back stairs.
The office is on the second floor.
Or what you guys call the “first floor”.’

‘You’ve been to England?’

‘Yeah, during the war.
Warm beer and easy lays.’

Catesby smiled and said, ‘They must have been wearing utility knickers – one Yank and they’re off.’

The American didn’t laugh, just turned and walked away.

The kitchen was untidy with unwashed dishes.
The house was completely silent.
Eerily silent, for a family home lived in by seven children under the age of eleven.
The door to the stairs was ajar.
As Catesby mounted the steps the stairs creaked loudly under his feet in the empty house.
He realised, with a chill, that wife and children had been evacuated to a safer place.
But the spirits of the children were still there.
The stairway walls were decorated with their paintings.
There was a forest and hills landscape with birds, a flower-bedecked birthday cake homage ‘to Kathleen’, a bumblebee wearing a striped blue jumper.

At the top of the stairs Catesby heard a voice shout ‘fuck’ and slam down a phone.
The door to the study was open.
The same voice shouted, ‘Come in.’

The man was slightly younger than Catesby, but his eyes looked far older.
He looked like he hadn’t slept for a week.
His tie was undone and his feet were propped up on the desk as if wishing it were a bed.
Catesby had personal issues with the man opposite.
It seemed likely that this was the man who had ordered his own killing.
And who was also indirectly responsible for the deaths of Catesby’s uncle and cousin.
But these were issues that had to be put aside.
Robert Kennedy in turn stared hard at Catesby and said, ‘Bill Harvey says you’re a deceitful son-of-a-bitch who sucks Russian ass.’

‘Harvey’s a bitter and twisted drunk.’

The president’s brother gave Catesby a look that seemed to convey a certain amount of agreement.
Bill Harvey, while CIA Station Chief in Berlin, had tried to scapegoat Catesby and the Brits for
everything
that went wrong.

‘What have you got to tell me?’
The younger Kennedy’s voice had a remarkably feminine quality which contradicted, and possibly explained, his tough-guy posturing.

‘There are a large number of tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba that are scattered and hidden throughout the countryside.’
Catesby handed Kennedy an envelope bulging with photos.

Bobby Kennedy seemed unexpectedly calm as he looked at the photos.
He held up a photo of the FKR cruise missiles, the ones that looked like toy jet planes.
‘What’s this?’

Catesby explained.

‘Shit, we didn’t know they had those.’

‘Did you know about the Lunas?’
said Catesby.

Kennedy didn’t answer the question, but looked closely at Catesby as if trying to peel off layers.
‘Maybe Harvey’s right.
You’re a Russian spy that’s been blown and doubled back by London.’

‘That’s not true, but it wouldn’t make those nuclear weapons any less real if it were.’

Kennedy nodded at the logic.
‘How then did you get this intelligence?’

Catesby told him about Alekseev and added, ‘Trust my
judgement
as an intelligence officer.
There is no way that your planes can destroy these weapons in a pre-emptive strike.
At least ninety per cent of the Lunas and FKRs will survive intact.
Not only will the vast majority of an American invading force be incinerated on the beach, but the US Navy ships in the offing will also be vaporised.’

Bobby Kennedy stared thoughtfully at his desk.
Catesby noticed a folder labelled TOP SECRET: OPERATION MONGOOSE.

‘Is there anything else you want to know?’
Catesby spoke in a voice that was a hoarse whisper.
He had never been so tired.

‘I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things in the past week.
This isn’t a football game where scoring touchdowns means you win.’
Kennedy looked at the Mongoose folder.
‘I want to do something for your uncle’s family.’

‘Did you order them killed so that you could get me?’

The president’s brother slowly shook his head.
‘No, but I ordered you killed.
I have a liaison officer in the CIA who reports directly to me.
Bill Harvey, for reasons you can well imagine, suggested to my liaison that we do a hit on you and make it look like it was the Cuban intelligence service.
Two birds with one stone – we get rid of a pinko Brit and we sour relations between London and Havana.
But the thugs we used for this didn’t appreciate the London-Havana nuance.
They seem to have lost their Cuba connections, so they lured you to England instead.
I was appalled when I found out the details.
I am ashamed that I let things get so out of control – but know that you can never forgive me.’

Catesby was surprised to hear one of the most powerful men in the world sound so contrite and self-critical.
For the first time that week he felt that peace might have a chance.

Aleksandr Semyonovich Feklisov, aka Fomin and KGB Head of Station, was waiting for Catesby in front of the Cathedral at Rouen.
Not the real one, but Monet’s impressionist version in the National Gallery of Art on Constitution Avenue NW.
Feklisov was wearing a black leather jacket and looked like an off-duty cop trying to soak up a bit of culture.

Catesby’s shoes squeaked as he walked across the waxed parquet flooring.
He recognised Feklisov, not only from the photo file, but also from embassy cocktail parties in early-fifties London.
The Russian was dark, ironic and had a reputation as a survivor.
He had spent the Great Patriotic War in New York where he worked out of the Soviet Consulate recruiting atomic and other spies with great success.
Which probably explained, thought Catesby, why he was now operating under the Fomin alias.

Feklisov shook hands and said, ‘This is where I recruited Jeffers
Cauldwell, who in turn recruited Kitson Fournier.’

Catesby wasn’t certain that was exactly how it happened, but didn’t want to have a debate about spilt milk.
Nor did he care for the inference.
‘But you’re wasting your time, Aleksandr Semyonovich, if you think you can recruit me.’

‘I did not mean to infer that.
In any case, we are not meeting as spies but as back-channel intermediaries.’