The Midnight Swimmer (28 page)

‘And after that,’ said Bone, ‘he’ll get Five to undermine any future government that isn’t to Washington’s liking.’

Catesby stared at the worn and frayed Indian carpet on the office floor.
He felt just as tired and threadbare.
‘I agree with what you’re saying, Henry, but Angleton’s claims about a looming assassination are pure fantasy.’

‘Why?’

‘Angleton seems to be inferring that the KGB is planning to
assassinate
Hugh Gaitskell so that WAXWING, obviously Harold Wilson, becomes their man in Downing Street.
Utter nonsense.’

‘You think it sounds far-fetched?’

‘First of all,’ said Catesby, ‘if Gaitskell fell under the Number 19, the next leader of the Labour Party would be George Brown,
provided
his liver held out, and not Wilson – and the Russians loathe Brown even more than Gaitskell.
In fact, the Sovs would prefer the Tories to either of them.’

‘You seem to think that truth and logic matter to those Angleton is trying to influence.’

‘Good point, Henry.’

‘Twists and turns, William, twists and turns.’
Bone put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
‘Meanwhile everything is linked to Cuba – even Berlin and the Thor missile sites in East Anglia.
Can’t you see?’

‘Of course I can.’
In fact, Catesby didn’t see the links at all.
But he did know that Bone’s gnomic utterances were almost always based on withheld secrets that would, when Henry judged the time right, be revealed.

‘Tea?’

‘I’d love one, Henry.’
Catesby watched Bone go the sideboard.
The chipped mugs that looked like refugees from a building site were still there, but there was a red wooden box with Chinese ideograms.

As Bone spooned the loose leaf tea into the pot, he said, ‘I got this brew from a shop in Wardour Street.
The tea’s distinctive smoky flavour comes from it being dried over burning pine.’

‘What’s the Cuba connection?’

Bone beamed.
‘I don’t always enjoy trumping the glib jibes that probably passed for wit in your grammar school sixth form, but I will on this occasion.
Here is the Cuban China connection.
“I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our
weakness
for strength, and thus will turn his strength into weakness.”’

‘Sun Tzu?’

‘Correct.
Sun Tzu wasn’t only a general – he was also a renowned tea merchant.’

‘You just made that up.’

‘Perhaps I did.
In any case, enough banter.
Have a look at this.’

Catesby opened the folder.
It was a thin file that had just been started.
The opening page gave the security classification and title:

‘We need,’ said Bone pouring the tea, ‘to flesh this folder out quite a bit.
Both Neville and his successor in DC think there is, how should I say, quite a bit of flesh involved – and not just Galen’s own.’

Catesby suddenly realised that his first impression of Galen, as ‘a bank clerk with a secret vice’, may have been a correct one.

‘So, William, you’re going to have to do some travelling and visit an old friend – that master of gossip and indiscretion.’

The airport north of Punta Arenas wasn’t the end of the world, but it wasn’t far away from the end.
It had taken Catesby eight hours to get there on a scheduled flight from Santiago.

The next part of the journey would have been dangerous even if the pilot had been sober.
But Catesby didn’t blame Ramos for being drunk.
He had had a hard life and was clearly bored with living in exile in the middle of nowhere.
Born in Barcelona at the end of the nineteenth century, Ramos had discovered South America as a courier pilot for Aeroposta in the twenties and early thirties when he flew with Saint-Exupéry.
He returned to his native Spain to fly an obsolete Potez 540 against Franco’s Fascists and was badly wounded.
Catesby was in awe of the wizened old pilot as he guided the tiny Cessna 170 into the mist of the South Atlantic.
Ramos was also the ideal pilot for such a mission.
He had absolutely no curiosity in Catesby or what he was doing.

There were no airfields on the islands.
But on previous flights Ramos had found a flattish pasture near the settlement which served as a landing place.
As he went into the landing glide Ramos spoke for the first time.
‘What’s the difference between a live pilot and a dead pilot?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Catesby.

‘A live pilot can tell the difference between a field of boulders and a flock of sheep.’

Fortunately, there were neither boulders nor sheep on the makeshift landing field.

‘Thanks for the whisky – and the letters.
And it’s even good to see you again.’
Kit Fournier continued speaking as he opened the front of the cooker and put in a peat block.
‘They cut this stuff as a sort of spring ritual at the beginning of October.
The peat cutting is a big event, even bigger than Christmas.
The idea is that the peat ought to be dry enough to burn when winter comes – July’s the worst month.
But it’s never really warm and never dry for more than two days in a row.
Since it’s a bit chilly this evening we’ll have lamb stew.
Tomorrow
we can catch some fresh trout.
Have you ever had
truite au bleu
?’

Catesby shook his head.

‘You have to do it with live trout.
You knock them out and gut them seconds before you put them in a court bouillon.
Of course, the poor fish are still twitching when you throw them in the boiling liquid.
They quickly turn a remarkable blue and you serve them with Hollandaise.’
Fournier paused and stared at Catesby.
‘And that’s what you bastards have done to me.’

‘I’m sorry, Kit.’

‘Don’t worry.
I would have done the same to you.
Have some wine.
It’s carmenère.
I buy wine off a Chilean jigger, a squid boat, that calls in at Port Howard a few times a year.
Look,’ Fournier went over to a crude bookshelf made of breeze blocks and planks.
‘The captain of the jigger brings me books too.’
He picked some volumes off the top shelf and caressed them with his eyes.
‘Neruda, Mistral, Quiroga, Borges, Asturias …’ He looked at Catesby and waved the books at him.
‘These books are my world …’ Fournier’s eyes were glistening with tears.
He wept freely for a few seconds, then blew his nose and wiped his face on his sleeve.
‘I hate it when anyone sees me like this.
But I’m so fucking lonely.’

‘I hope the letters are helping.’

‘What was the deal?’

‘If any of your family reveal that they’re in contact with you, we stop the letters.’

‘And mine are censored?’

‘Of course.’

‘My sister said she met you.
What did you think of her?’

‘I thought she was a nice woman.’

Fournier smiled.
‘You must be the only one who thinks so.
Caddie can be very acerbic.
Don’t you want to know what she thought of you?’

Catesby shrugged.

‘She said that she thought you were a hard person who had been badly damaged.’

‘Should I vomit in the sink or outside?’

‘But she liked you – which is odd, because she usually prefers her own gender.
Maybe she thought you were a bit of a girl.’

‘But a hardened bitch of a girl.’

Fournier went over to the cooker and put chopped mushrooms in the stew.
‘There are ninety-seven species of native
coprophilous
fungi in these islands, but the ones we’re eating are cultivated.
I don’t want to kill you with a poison mushroom.
They might stop the letters.’

‘How’s your cover story holding up?’
Kit Fournier, who spoke Spanish as a first language, had been given a fake passport and papers purporting he was a Guatemalan naturalist who was making a study of the islands.
He was supposed to cultivate eccentricity and a liking for his own company.

‘To be frank, I don’t think the locals give a flying fuck who I am.
They call me “one-two-eight”.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because I brought the population of the island up to 128.’

‘We did think the naturalist cover story would wear thin after a while.
But listen, Kit, you’ve got to keep up the pretence or …’

‘Or they’ll deep six me?’

Catesby shrugged.
‘I don’t know.
Their biggest worry is the thing leaking into the press.’

‘They could send me to St Helena?’

‘Sorry, Kit, you’re no Napoleon – and besides, we have to keep St Helena ready for de Gaulle in case he gets too cosy with the Sovs.
In any case, you haven’t got too cosy with anyone.
Have you?’

‘The person concerned, along with her husband and boy, have just emigrated to Australia – so they should call me “one-two-five”.’

‘That’s bad.
Anyone else?’

‘I occasionally get drunk with Ramos on his stopovers – but I assure you it’s platonic.
Did you know that one of the characters in Malraux’s
L’espoir
is based on him?’

Catesby shook his head.

‘But since Ramos is another comrade in dodgy exile he knows how to keep his mouth shut.’
Fournier paused.
‘The saddest thing, and most inspiring thing, was what Ramos said about Madrid when
the Fascists were bombing the poorest quarters of the city to punish the workers.
There was only one sound that rose above the
exploding
bombs and the screams of the wounded and the crackling of flames.
That heroic sound was the defiant music of a blind beggar playing the
Internationale
on the violin.
Groupons nous
, William,
groupons nous pour la lute finale
.’

‘You’ve finally become a believer?’

‘Yes.
It’s funny, isn’t it?
I wasn’t one at the time.
I only wanted to go to Moscow so that I could be near Jennifer.
It didn’t matter if I had to share her with someone else – with the whole Politburo for that matter.’
Fournier laughed.
‘But now that she’s gone, what she believed in has taken her place.
But you haven’t come 8,000 miles to hear my ideological views?’

‘Not entirely.’

‘Have you replaced my agent handler?’

‘No.
In any case, I’m sure they’ve squeezed you dry about most things by now.’
Catesby raised his glass.
‘Excellent wine, this.’

‘Have some more.’

‘Thanks.
But, Kit, no matter how much we squeeze someone like you, there’s always some juice we didn’t realise we needed – or even existed.
The amount of stuff a human brain can hold is impressive.’

‘Not the fucking Kennedys again,
please
.’

‘No, Kit, someone far less significant.
The sort of creature you probably thought was less than the dust under your chariot wheels.
Remember those halcyon days when it looked like your chariot was romping towards the National Security Council, or even to be Director of the CIA?
What a star you were.’