The Midnight Swimmer (20 page)

Even though it was two in the morning the sound of music and people singing still percolated through the narrow streets that smelled of mildew and cooking.

You heard the song everywhere.
It wasn’t just a Cuban song.
It was the song of all the Americas from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego.

It starts as a love song.
A
guajira
is a young peasant woman, but guajira also means a song – the woman and the song become one.
And the lyric becomes a love song of both place and person – for
Guantanamera
identifies the place, the province, of the
guajira
.
As she tends her fields, she is not only a
guajira
, but a
Guantanamera
– the place itself.

The cobbles of
Calle San Ignacio
glistened in the light warm rain as Catesby made his way through
Habana Vieja
to the rendezvous.
Most of the houses had narrow balconies with iron railings
overhanging
the footpaths.
In the sunlight of day the balconies would be festooned with washing.
From an alleyway there was the sound of a drummer pounding out a rumba beat.
An Afro-Cuban woman emerged from a doorway in front of him.
A white dress clung tight to hips that seemed to syncopate effortlessly to the drum rhythm.
She was a
guajira
too, part of the sensual mystery that surrounded him.
Catesby wondered if, despite his pale skin and ways, he could enter that dark warmth and drown himself in the night.
The woman in front of him rapped gently on a door and softly called a name.
The door opened and she was gone – leaving behind a smell of sweet musk and sweat.

Catesby crossed Calle O’Reilly.
It had stopped raining and he could hear voices from the upstairs bar and the clink of
mojitos
being poured.
He could tell from the smells that he wasn’t far from the harbour.
The tang of salt water and oily smoke began to permeate, and the inscrutable night noises of a working port – bumps, shouts and clangs – echoed over the water.
Someone emerged from the shadows and stopped him.
It was an old man wearing a tattered straw hat.
He leaned towards Catesby and said, ‘
Oye chico, tú sabes
…’

Catesby never found out what he was supposed to know, saber, for the old man lurched back into the night.
A chill of cold sweat ran down his spine.
Maybe the old chap was warning him of something, had spotted something dangerous lurking.
Catesby turned around and said, ‘
Qué, compay
?’
But no one answered.
The old man was gone.

In daytime
La Plaza de la Catedral
would have been pulsing with human life, but in the moonless night it seemed to have reverted
to the swamp from which it had been drained.
Three sides of the square were bordered by arched colonnades.
Catesby imagined
alligators
and giant lizards lurking in the shadows.
Set back behind the colonnades were majestic eighteenth-century houses where rich merchants had once counted their gold doubloons after going to Mass and communion.

Catesby kept to the middle of the square, well away from the dark colonnades, as he made his way to the Cathedral of San Cristóbal.
His footsteps echoed so loudly that he half-expected the ghost of a Spanish don with a pointed beard to throw open a shutter and order him arrested.

The silhouette of San Cristóbal loomed menacing against the night sky.
Catesby felt like Childe Roland going to the Dark Tower to meet his fate – but here were two dark towers, one oddly smaller than the other.
The incongruity of the architecture seemed to throw everything else out of balance too.
The sense of unreality became even more eerie when Catesby remembered that he was in the centre of a capital which had just witnessed a Marxist revolution based on dialectical materialism.
The old gods and the old voodoo spirits seemed to creep back in the dark watches of the night.

The heavy oak door groaned as Catesby pushed it open.
The inside of the cathedral was as dark as a tomb except for the faint flicker of devotional candles on one side of the altar.
He had been told to go to a pew beneath a painting of
La Asunción de la Virgen
.
But it was too dark to see anything – and so spooky that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see the Blessed Virgin turn up in person to warn of the coming apocalypse.

Catesby decided he needed one of the candles to navigate.
His footsteps squeaked and echoed as he made his way across the marble floor.
What a racket.
But when he got to the candles he
realised
that he had no need to go further.
In the faint light he could see the oil painting of the Virgin, swathed in her iconic lapis lazuli gown, about to be elevated beyond the clouds.
Now he had to find the other woman.

Catesby heard her breathing before he saw her.
He turned around and looked at the pews.
She was four rows back, at the very limit of the candlelight.
She was wearing a mantilla, a gesture of religious respect that you wouldn’t normally expect from the wife of a KGB general.
Maybe, thought Catesby, she wanted to make amends for
her adultery.
That’s what the Spanish priests who built this place would have wanted.

Catesby retraced his steps down the aisle and slipped into the pew to sit next to her.
He folded his hands and stared at the oil painting.
The image of the Virgin hovered into sight and out of sight again as the candles flickered and sputtered.
It was like watching a very old film.

‘Did you kill Andreas?’
Katya said the words without looking up.

‘No.’

‘Please don’t lie to me.’

‘I didn’t kill him – nor did I order him killed either.
I wanted to keep him alive because …

‘Because of his relationship with me.’

‘I suppose you could say that.’

‘Andreas was such an innocent.
He was like a child.’

‘The innocent never last long in our business.’
Catesby could name a dozen other innocents.
At the top of the list was Guy Burgess.
His drinking, his wholesale sexual indiscretion, his outrageous sense of humour and even his spying were always the japes of a clever sixth former.
Perhaps, thought Catesby, this was what had made Guy so much more likeable than the grey grown-ups around him.

‘What,’ said Katya, ‘did Andreas give you?’

‘Very little.’

‘I know you can’t tell me.
But I can’t imagine what he could have found to pass on.’

Catesby noticed a change in her voice.
The last sentence sounded scripted.
‘Are you close to your husband?’

‘Yes.’
Her voice was normal again.
‘How can you even ask such a question?’

When he was younger, when he was less aware of the
complexities
of the human heart, Catesby would have laughed at her reply as blatant hypocrisy.
Instead he said softly, ‘I’m not here to judge you – I’m here to answer your questions.’

‘I want to know what happened.’

‘So do I,’ said Catesby.
‘Did your husband know about your affair?’

Katya looked at Catesby for the first time.
Her eyes flickered in the candlelight like coals from behind the lace of her mantilla.
‘Yes.’

‘Have you been married long?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because I want to understand – and I can’t put together the pieces to answer your questions, if I don’t know more.’

The Russian woman stirred uncomfortably on the pew.
After a minute she breathed deeply and began.
‘Our wedding was also my nineteenth birthday, the 3rd of January, 1945.
It was a beautiful sunny day and so cold.
Zhenka was on leave, a tiny break before the Vistula offensive.’
She paused and looked at the candles.
‘
Unfortunately
our wedding turned into a funeral, my twin brother was reported killed the same day.
But things like that happened all the time – so you just kept living.
Her voice dropped to a faint whisper, ‘Volodya, Volodya.’
Katya then smiled bleakly, ‘But you don’t want to hear this stuff.’

‘You’ve suffered a lot of pain – and none of it’s your fault.’

Katya looked away.
‘You can’t say that.
You don’t know anything about me.’

‘Except for what Andreas told me.’

‘What did he tell you?’

‘Intimate things, that only a lover could know.’
Catesby paused.
‘Why did you dye your hair blond?’

‘I was sick of being me – I deceived others, so why not deceive myself.’

‘Are you deceiving anyone by meeting me here?’

‘We haven’t much time.
You said you didn’t kill Andreas, but I think you were with him when he died.’

Catesby could see that Katya had been briefed to ask questions.
He wondered whether it was by her husband or Mischa – or both.
He decided to give straight answers.
‘Yes, I was with him.’

‘What happened?’

‘He was shot – by a woman.
But I suppose you know that already?’

Katya didn’t answer.

‘I assumed,’ continued Catesby, ‘that the woman was working for East German intelligence.’

‘Mischa Wolf says that isn’t true.’

‘Maybe Mischa is lying.’

‘Maybe you’re lying.’

‘This is pointless,’ said Catesby, ‘we could go in circles like this for ever.’

‘My husband is certain that Mischa is telling the truth.’

Catesby smiled.
‘If your husband thinks that the
Ministerium für
Staatssicherheit
keeps no secrets from the KGB, then he must believe in Baba Yaga and her magic broomstick too.’

Katya shivered slightly, as if the reference to the arch-witch of Russian folklore had given her a moment’s fright.

‘There’s a part of you that still believes in spirits,’ said Catesby, ‘that’s why you’re wearing a head-covering in this church.’

‘No, not really.
But the worst thing about the war was not being allowed to mourn.’
Katya laughed.
‘How do you mourn
twenty-six
million of your fellow citizens?
But that loss, as the years go by, creates a respect for the spiritual.
But don’t think for a second …’ she laughed again and suddenly removed the mantilla from her head, ‘… that I’m a believer.’

Catesby looked at her and watched her eyes flash like a cat about to leap.
Her glossy black hair flowed free and sparkled in the
candlelight
.
Catesby suddenly understood how Andreas had ended up nailed to a rosy rack of longing.
Ekaterina Mikhailovna Alekseeva wasn’t beautiful – she was magnificent.

‘Stop staring at me.
I don’t like it when men stare at me.’

‘Why do you think they stare at you?’

‘Because …’ Katya fidgeted and turned away.

‘Yes, I was staring at you – and I’m sorry that it made you
uncomfortable
.
I hope you don’t think …’

Katya laughed.
‘You don’t want me to think what?
That you desire me?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘No, it doesn’t matter.
I don’t want another man.
My husband
satisfies
me.’

Catesby sat staring in silence at the Virgin Mary as candlelight flickered across her stone face.

‘Are you surprised?’
said Katya.

‘Why should I be surprised?
Your intimate relations with your husband are none of my business.’