The Midnight Swimmer (11 page)

‘Absolutely certain.’

‘In a way,’ said George, ‘I’m not altogether surprised.’
He looked at his niece for confirmation.
Caddie shrugged.
‘Jennifer,’ continued George, ‘was incredibly idealistic from an early age.
When she was seven she invited Negro children to come to our house.’

‘Did they?’

‘Oh yes, and we received them with open arms.
We’re not
prejudiced
.
But then Jennifer, unknown to us, started giving her clothes away to Negro girls.’
George paused.
‘I don’t think our poor
daughter
understood.
One day a group of the girls’ parents turned up and returned all of Jennifer’s frocks.
She didn’t understand how she had hurt their pride.
Her young Negro friends never came again.’

Catesby reflected on his own country’s upper classes.
They would never have made that mistake.

‘She became even more difficult as a teenager.
Jennifer seemed to turn her anger against her own family.’
George looked at Catesby.
‘Some of our ancestors, I must confess, did own slaves.
Personally, I am ashamed of the fact, but I pleaded to her that we were not responsible for their sins.
But Jennifer thought we were
responsible
for those wrongs.
She wanted us to sell the farm and give the money to the NAACP.
Maybe she was right.
Once she said to me that our family, our very country, was under a curse because we had stolen the land from one people and enriched it by the slave labour of another.’
George looked into the fire.
‘It’s difficult to deny those facts.
And, somehow, Jennifer decided that becoming a Russian spy was the best way to put things right.’

As the final pieces of the Jennifer mystery slotted into place, Catesby felt guilt as well as longing.

Caddie had put her arm around her uncle, but was still looking at Catesby.
‘Can we,’ she said, ‘talk about my brother?’

This, Catesby knew, was the beginning of the real bargaining.
The confirmation and details of Jennifer’s death, in isolation, were dealing chips of little value.
He decided to put his opening card on the table.
‘Your brother is still alive.’

‘And safe?’

‘Very safe.’
Catesby smiled.
Fournier was a crown jewel.
‘Safer than any of us.’

‘Where is he?’

‘In a safe place.’

‘You’re starting to annoy me – intensely.’
Caddie’s eyes were smouldering.

‘Caddie,’ said George.

‘Sorry.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Catesby, ‘if I sounded flippant.’

Caddie smiled for the first time.
‘We’re one sorry bunch too.’

‘In a way, we rescued your brother.
The choices facing him were a life in Moscow or in one of your prisons.’

‘I assume,’ said George, ‘that you can’t tell us where he is?’

‘I can’t do that or I’ll end up in one of our prisons.’

‘I apologise,’ said George, ‘for haggling like a souk trader, but what’s on offer?’

‘I’ve already handed over quite a bit, more than authorised.
I’m sure a letter to your congressman or a telephone call to a journalist could create a nasty diplomatic incident and get me sacked.’

‘Is that all that’s on offer?’

‘No.’

‘But,’ said George, ‘you want to know what I’m giving you in return.’

‘Crudely, yes.’

‘First of all, it will be nothing that would embarrass the United States government or compromise the activities – the legal and authorised activities – of our intelligence agencies.’

Catesby thought that ‘legal and authorised’ was an
interesting
caveat, but wanted to remain unimpressed.
‘I’m not sure that’s enough to justify my agreeing to deal about Kit.’

George looked at Catesby with hard gimlet eyes.
He wasn’t as soft as his voice.
‘What I can give is – how should I say – a series of perspectives on various aspects of current military and intelligence thinking.’

‘Merely thoughts?’

‘No.’

‘And documents?’
said Catesby

George turned slightly pale.
‘And documents.’

‘And what do we get?’
said Caddie.
‘Do we get my brother back?’

‘No, but you get immediate access to him via letters – letters which, of course, will be censored.’

‘Not much.’

‘Take it or leave it.
There’s also the possibility of a future telephone link, once again supervised.
And also, but not anytime soon, Kit’s eventual release.’

George intervened.
‘Think how much this will mean to your mother.’

‘It’s not my decision, Uncle George, you’re the one who has to stick your neck out.’

‘Don’t worry, Caddie, I’m not going to end up in Leavenworth.
In fact, they might give me a medal.
I say we do it.’

‘Fine, let’s do it then.’
Caddie sounded less than enthusiastic.
‘I suppose I’d better go see how Aunt Janet is getting on.
Would either of you like a drink?’

George gave his niece a reproving look.
As she left the room, he turned to Catesby.
‘She can be very acerbic, but there’s a loving side too.’

‘She’s a lot different from Kit.’

‘Caddie thinks she’s the strongest of the three – the other sibling is a playwright.’

‘Are you still in the intelligence loop?’
Catesby wanted to get back to business.

‘Unofficially.
I was on Ike’s staff during the war.
He used to call me in from time to time for a chat.
But I doubt if Kennedy will do the same – new generation, clean broom sweep.’

‘Who do you know who’s still in power?’

‘The Joint Chiefs of Staff – all of them.
I know Allen Dulles, but don’t get on with him – and quite a few other CIA types including Angleton, Bissell and a somewhat loony one called E.
Howard Hunt.
But most importantly, I have a network of covert contacts.
I can’t give you their names, but they pass things on to me because they know I’ll protect their identity.’

Catesby nodded.
George was the sort of informal and trusted channel that kept governments from going off the rails.

‘In the past, I sometimes passed on news of covert operations to Eisenhower.
More often than not, Ike was surprised to find that they even existed and angry that he was kept in the dark.
But for the last year or so I’ve been frozen out.’
George looked closely at Catesby.
‘I consider myself a sort of watchdog, but I feel I’ve lost my bark as well as my bite.’

‘What’s the most important thing that you’ve got to tell me?’

‘That the ruling classes in this country are at war with themselves.’

‘That’s not an unusual state of affairs.’

‘I agree, but what’s happening in Washington has never been more dangerous for the rest of the world.’
George stopped and smiled at Catesby.
‘Don’t I sound like a portentous ass?
You must find us Americans awfully self-dramatising.’

‘Only when you don’t admit it.’

‘Touché.
I have, by the way, done a bit of acting.
So I will continue.’

‘Please.’

‘At bottom, Eisenhower is a civilised man, but he lost control.
Maybe it would have been better if he had died after his heart attack in ’55 – or not run the next year.’
George got up and gestured to a watercolour over the fireplace.
‘That’s a skipjack dredging oysters.
For conservation reasons they’re only allowed to dredge under sail.’
George lifted the painting from its hook and handed it to Catesby.
He then worked the combination of the wall safe.
The thick steel door squeaked open and George reached inside to remove a paper bundle bound by black ribbon, then looked at Catesby.
‘You wanted documents?’

Catesby nodded.

George closed the safe and re-hung the picture.
They sat together on the sofa.
‘The first thing we should look at is the latest SIOP.’
George undid the ribbon and rolled out the first document.
It was headed TOP SECRET SPECIAL HANDLING NOFORN.
The acronym meant ‘no foreign nationals’ were allowed to see it.
‘I’m not, by the way, just trying to buy access to my nephew.
This is information that our British allies should know about.
I’m not being a traitor.’

Catesby felt sorry for George.
The American needed to
reassure
himself that he wasn’t betraying his country.
Catesby knew the feeling well.

‘Are you familiar with SIOP?’
said George.

Catesby nodded.
It meant Single Integrated Operational Plan.
It
was the combined nuclear war plan for the US Air Force and Navy.
It comprised a list of targets and the weapons to be used to eliminate them.
There was nothing more secret.

‘As you can see,’ said George pointing to the document, ‘these are the minutes of a recent Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting.
It’s pretty easy to see which individuals are the patients and which ones are the mental health professionals.’

Catesby’s eye fell on an exchange between Albert Wohlstetter, a RAND strategist, and General Powers, Commanding Officer of the Strategic Air Command.

Catesby looked up.
‘Surely, Power was being ironic?’

George shook his head.
‘Our four star generals are never ironic.
Politicians need to accept their words at face value.’

Catesby recollected a drunken conversation he had once had with a US military attaché.
‘Someone once told me that LeMay, even LeMay, thinks that Power is mentally unstable and sadistic.’

‘That’s correct – and could be the very reason LeMay appointed Power to command SAC.
If the person commanding those bombers isn’t crazy, who’s going to believe we would ever use them?
Would you like a drink?’

‘Yes, please.’

While George went to fetch the whisky, Catesby leafed through the document.
It was clear that SIOP called for a massive global attack deploying the entire US nuclear arsenal of 3,200 warheads.
He was bleakly pleased that UK intelligence had accurately
estimated
the size of the US arsenal.
But what UK intelligence hadn’t apprised was the inflexibility of the US nuclear war plan.

George came back with a half-empty bottle of bourbon and two tumblers.

‘Your SIOP is all or nothing,’ whispered Catesby.

George nodded as he poured the drinks.
‘The worst thing is that countries that are not even involved in the coming war are going to get hit.
Look at the target list.
Every single East European bloc country is there.
It doesn’t matter how much their people may object to Soviet rule: the brave Hungarians, the Poles and even the poor Latvians.
They all get incinerated.
And non-European countries too: China, North Korea, North Vietnam – and now,’ George lowered his voice, ‘Cuba.’

Catesby held up the document and smiled bleakly.
‘This reminds me of what we used to say in the war.’

‘Go on.’

‘When the Germans open fire, the British duck.
When the British open fire, the Germans duck.
But …’

‘But when the Americans open fire, everyone ducks.
I’ve heard that one before.’

‘Sorry.’

‘You don’t,’ said George, ‘hold our military in high esteem.’

‘I shouldn’t judge.’

‘We’re not all bad – some of us are even on the side of the good angels.
Do you know David Shoup?’

Catesby shook his head