The Midnight Swimmer (39 page)

‘You’ve come back,’ said Catesby.

‘So I have.
Would you like to come for a ride?’

Catesby got in.
He knew it would be the end.

‘This is where the Marines will come ashore.’
General Alekseev swept his arm towards a low flat stony beach.
Catesby knew they were near Santa Cruz del Norte, twenty-five miles east of Havana, because he could see the tower of the big electric power station silhouetted against the night sky.
The tower’s red aircraft warning lights had been blacked out in anticipation of an invasion.

They then turned inland and walked a couple of hundred yards across rough scrubby ground.
They were heading towards the main coast road.
The shadows of large Soviet military trucks moved slowly without lights along the road.
The road had been blocked to all non-military traffic.
There were no more jeans and checked shirts.
With war imminent, the Russians had changed into military uniforms for the first time since their deployment.
In order to get through the checkpoints Catesby had to don a Soviet uniform as well.
He was wearing the distinctive field grey camouflage of the KGB Ninth Directorate.
His shoulder boards bore the three stars of a colonel.
It didn’t matter that his Russian was heavily accented.
The Soviet Union comprised several nationalities – and no one was going to query the origins of a Ninth Directorate colonel.
The only other person who knew Catesby was bogus was Viktor, Alekseev’s driver.
Viktor seemed to be completely trusted.

They continued walking towards a large clump of prickly brush.
When they got to it, Alekseev drew back the camouflage netting that had been carefully arranged to disguise the profile of the tracked vehicle and the Luna 2K6 tactical nuclear missile that lay ready for elevation and launch upon the transporter.
Catesby
clambered
up on to the tracked transporter and began taking photos of the Luna missile with the Fedka 3 camera that Alekseev had given him, ‘a present’.
He snapped the serial numbers in particular, for it
was important that the evidence be complete and irrefutable.

When he was finished, Catesby jumped down and Alekseev replaced the camouflage netting.
He had already snapped four other Luna 2K6s of the twelve that Alekseev claimed were deployed.
But even more sinister were the FKR cruise missiles.
No one had
predicted
, or even wildly guessed, that the FKRs would be present in Cuba.
The missiles were fourteen kilotons, the same as the
Hiroshima
bomb, and would wipe out an approaching US fleet.
Alekseev said that thirty-six had already been deployed – and several were aimed at the US Guantánamo base.
Catesby had photographed ten of the FKRs earlier in the evening.
They had been hidden in a palm grove near the port of Mariel.
The missiles looked like small
pilotless
jet planes and were towed on launch trailers behind big GAZ 63 trucks.
Viktor was normally one of the drivers.

‘I hope you’ve got enough photos,’ said Alekseev as they walked back to the car.

‘More than enough.’

‘I can’t, of course, give you an underwater tour, but our
submarines
are equipped with nuclear torpedoes that could destroy an American carrier group – and the submarine commanders are authorised to fire them without authorisation from Moscow.’

‘And what about Pliyev?’
Catesby was referring to the commander of the 41,000 Soviet troops in Cuba.

‘He’s authorised to use the Lunas if there is a US landing.’

‘It’s become a nightmare.’

‘I’ve heard,’ said Alekseev, ‘that Khrushchev realises that he made a mistake and wants to find a face-saving way out.
He fears, however, that if he shows a lack of firmness, then the Americans will take it as weakness and attack.’

‘That’s exactly how wars start.’

Alekseev unbuttoned the top of his tunic.
‘It’s a very hot evening.’

Catesby looked out to sea.
He was longing for a swim.

The vodka and the caviar were cold and crisp although the night was hot and clammy.
Viktor had built a driftwood fire where he toasted brown bread for the caviar.
Catesby was still in his Soviet colonel’s uniform even though they had left the restricted military area.
He tried to imagine what it would have been like to have been a comrade of Alekseev’s that cold spring day in Berlin.

As if reading Catesby’s thoughts Alekseev said, ‘It was a
Panzerfaust
.’
The weapon, literally ‘armour-fist’, was a German anti-tank weapon fired by a single soldier.
‘The boy wasted it on me, instead of waiting for the following tank.
He must have been so frightened.
Have some vodka.’

‘Thank you, Yevgeny Ivanovich.’
Catesby held out his glass which was frosted from the ice chest.

‘Why be so formal?’
Alekseev’s eyes sparkled in the firelight as he poured the drink.
‘We are, in a way, friends.
Please call me Zhenka.’

Catesby raised his glass, ‘To you, Zhenka.’

Alekseev nodded and drank.
‘And what is your preferred diminutive?’

‘Will,’ said Catesby, although the only person who called him Will was his sister.
Even his mother called him Catesby.

Alekseev returned the toast, ‘To you, Will.’
And by that simple act of communion, an enemy spy entered an intimate family circle.

Catesby looked at the Russian.
He knew that Alekseev, like himself, would never play his country false.
If either disobeyed orders it was out of patriotism, not betrayal.

‘The thing,’ said Alekseev, ‘that was odd about Berlin was that there were so many child soldiers.
We seemed to be fighting whole battalions of twelve-year-old boys.
We had seen fourteen-year-olds before, but in Berlin some of the soldiers were as young as ten.
And the Germans said that we were barbarians for using adult women as pilots and snipers.’

Catesby looked closely at Alekseev.
The tragedy of Europe was etched on the Russian’s face.
It was a tragedy that turned some into dumb oxen, others into escape artists and racketeers – and made a few even more monstrous and brutal than before.
But for many, like
Alekseev
, it was a tragedy that deepened wells of compassion and wisdom – and fine-tuned their benign intelligence.
Suffering didn’t turn their hearts into stone, but made them more generous and warm.

‘Of course,’ said Alekseev, ‘we still had to kill the German boys.
They were, after all, armed enemy soldiers trying to kill us.
But the one who rose from the rubble of the underground station was so small – he wasn’t even as tall as the
Panzerfaust
that he lifted to his shoulder.
He was so small that I made a mistake and paused.
I don’t think that he was more than ten – and a frail ten-year-old with
spectacles
.
He seemed to have difficulty raising the heavy weapon to his
shoulder – it caught his spectacles and they nearly slipped off.
He needed help.
I ought to have shot him then.’

Viktor brought more driftwood for the fire and stirred it.

‘Thank you,’ said Alekseev.

Viktor disappeared again into the shadows.

‘Why didn’t I pull the trigger?
Was it an imprinted instinct?
Something evolutionary that ensured our survival as a species – an instinct to preserve the young even to our own cost?
Survival of the group is more important than survival of the individual.’
Alekseev smiled.
‘Nuclear missiles don’t possess such obsolete sentiments.
More vodka?’

Catesby nodded.

‘In any case, evolutionary speculation aside, I had paused for whatever reason.
The boy meanwhile wobbled, but finally managed to balance the
Panzerfaust
on his shoulder.
At that moment, I pointed my gun at him and pulled the trigger.
But it was too late.
My little world had turned into fire and, literally, brimstone.
The
Panzerfaust
exploded on the cobblestones in front of me.’
Alekseev laughed.
‘The doctors later told me I was lucky not to lose a leg.
And, oddly, I still feel guilty about the boy.
I’ll never know what happened to him.
Let’s eat the caviar.’

Viktor emerged out of the shadows bearing plates with thin slices of toasted bread and heaped caviar.

‘Never,’ said Alekseev, ‘eat caviar with a metal spoon – it
transfers
a metallic taste.
These spoons are made from mother of pearl.
I inherited them from my grandmother.’

They ate the meal in reflective silence.
Viktor sat away from them and stared into the fire.
The young man wasn’t a professional soldier, but a conscript.
Catesby wondered if Viktor would ever see his family or sweetheart again.
He wondered if Viktor was conjuring his family’s faces out of the flames.

Alekseev leaned towards Catesby and spoke in a whisper.
‘Do you love Katya?’

‘Yes.’

‘I love her too and will never stop loving her.’

‘Are you jealous?’

‘I used to be.
But there’s no longer any point.’

‘In some ways,’ said Catesby, ‘I wish that Katya was married to someone else.’

Alekseev laughed.
‘I don’t.’

‘I mean someone that I didn’t respect.’

‘Someone you wouldn’t have minded hurting – and humiliating.’

‘That’s right.
I once had an affair with a woman.
I was genuinely attracted to her, but I hated her husband.
I enjoyed torturing him with jealousy and seeing him make a fool of himself in public.’

Alekseev stared hard at Catesby.
‘But have you ever been jealous?’

‘Yes, enormously.’

‘Enough to kill someone.’

‘I think so.’

‘Then you will forgive me.’

‘Are you going to kill me?’

‘No.’

Catesby smiled.
‘Thank you, Zhenka.’

‘More vodka?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘It was wrong of me to ask forgiveness.
It isn’t yours to give.
But I do want you to understand my feelings.
I want you to understand the rage, the insanity perhaps, that led me to kill someone out of jealousy.’

Catesby knew that the last piece was about to fit in to the puzzle.

‘The German woman who killed Andreas was working for me and under my orders.
When Katya told me that Andreas had stolen the letter about the Baikonur disaster, it gave me the excuse for which I had been secretly longing.’
Alekseev poured more vodka.
‘I used the security breach as a justification to murder for jealousy.
The genie was already out of the bottle – so, in a way, the killing was pointless.
Andreas had already sold the letter to the Americans.’

‘How did you feel afterwards?’

‘Good at first, then empty.
Perhaps I would do it again.’

‘You’re very honest.’
Catesby paused.
There was something else he wanted to know.
‘Why did you let Andreas pass on a copy of the letter to me – before killing him?’

‘Because it was useful to us that London knew of our dilemma.
We’ve always looked upon Britain as a potential brake upon the impetuous Americans.’

‘Because we have so much more to lose.’

‘Precisely.’

The thing, thought Catesby, that made the Cold War so dangerous
was that the Russians were playing chess and the Americans poker.
The Russians deployed an elaborate defence with layers of deceit to protect their vital squares.
The Americans responded with upping antes, calling bluffs and flexing muscles.

‘Have you ever written poetry?’

Catesby smiled.
‘None that was any good.
And you?’

Alekseev shook his head.
‘Perhaps it is better to love poetry than to write it.
When I returned home after being wounded and patched I used to recite Mayakovsky to Katya: