The Midnight Swimmer

by Edward Wilson

  Jutta stifled a yawn.

  ‘I’m sorry if I am boring you – or sound patronising.’

  ‘You can’t help it.’

  Catesby smiled. He always seemed to say the wrong thing even when he meant well. It had been like that with Petra. The memory pain came back as if a knife had gone into the front of his brain. He closed his eyes.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. Just a bit of a migraine.’

  ‘Men don’t often get them.’

  ‘It must be something else then.’

  The girders of the Friedrichstrasse rail bridge and the huge barn of the rail station loomed ahead. It was their destination and – with casual clothes, rucksacks and sensible shoes – Catesby and Jutta looked just like an ordinary East Berlin couple heading to catch a train for an autumnal walk in the countryside. When they got to the eastbound platform for S-Bahn Line 3, there were families and couples in similar dress.

  The S-Bahn, ‘fast rail’, covered both halves of Berlin, but was controlled by the East German government and ran on rails that were mostly above ground. They had been waiting only a minute when the next train arrived. There was always plenty of space if you got on at Friedrichstrasse. Jutta took the window seat and stared at the grey urban landscape as the train wheezed over the bridge that crossed the Spree.

  The second stop was the busy Alexanderplatz, and the carriage filled up to standing room only. A lot of the new passengers were Russians, presumably heading back to their base in Karlshorst, but as they were in civilian clothes Catesby didn’t know what their functions were. Ordinary Soviet soldiers seldom went out on the town in Berlin; they didn’t have the money. A Russian of about forty towered over their seat. His clothes smelled strongly of tobacco and he was staring at Jutta as if he recognised her. She seemed to feel his eyes on her and this made her stare more intently out the window. Catesby tried to control his paranoia and reasoned that the Russian was just a lonely man in a distant country looking at a pretty girl.

  Suddenly, the Russian nodded at the rucksack Jutta had on her lap and said, ‘Spazierengehen?’ He had asked if they were going for ‘a walk’. The Russian’s German was clear, but heavily accented.

  Jutta nodded, ‘Ja’.

  The Russian carried on speaking German, as if he were a schoolchild rehearsing for a test. ‘Deutschland, very pretty.’

  Catesby nodded and smiled.

  The Russian smiled and continued. ‘I come Deutschland first time in 1945. Deutschland not pretty then, alles kaput.’ As the train pulled into the next station, the Russian made a sweeping gesture with his arm. ‘But today, Deutschland is very pretty everywhere.’

  Catesby was relieved. The Russian was just being friendly. His open demeanour suggested he was probably a driver or a cook rather than a security type. He just wanted to practise his German. Catesby kept smiling and nodding, but noticed that they were only as far as Warschauer Strasse. There were still four more stops before they got to Karlshorst – where, presumably, the Russian would disembark. Time for lots more German lessons. Catesby began to mentally rehearse his cover legend in case the Russian started to ask questions. His name was Karl and he had been a soldier in France – which, at least, was half true.

  As they pulled away from the station, the Russian reached deep into the pocket of his coat. Catesby stiffened and thought he had been wrong about the friendliness. He expected to see a revolver emerge – but it was only a packet of cigarettes. The brand was called Orbita and bore an image of a red sputnik whizzing around the earth.

  Catesby pointed at the sputnik and said, ‘Belka and Strelka.’

  The Russian nodded vigorously. At first, he seemed pleased that his new ‘German’ friend remembered the names of the two dogs that the Russians had launched into space and safely recovered the previous summer. Then the Russian stopped smiling and looked at Catesby with what seemed a slight turn of suspicion.

  Catesby felt his stomach do a queasy flip. Had the Sovs actually announced the names of the bloody dogs or had he heard about them in a top secret briefing? He couldn’t remember.

  The Russian continued staring at him. His lips were moving as if he was rehearsing another German sentence. Finally, the Russian said, ‘And there were forty mice – and two rats as well. All come back safe and healthy.’

  ‘Wunderbar,’ said Catesby.

  Jutta half stifled a yawn with undisguised boredom.

  The Russian extended the cigarette packet to Catesby to offer him a fag. Catesby shook his head and touched his chest. ‘I don’t smoke. I’ve got a lung problem.’

  The Russian looked hurt. He hadn’t understood the words, only the refusal of proffered friendship. He seemed to withdraw into himself, and he stood aloof and silent for the rest of the journey. At first Catesby felt guilty for having loosened the fraternal bonds between the people of the DDR and their Soviet brothers, but then he remembered that was part of his job.

  When they got to Karlshorst all the Russians and a number of Germans got off the train. Catesby looked over Jutta’s shoulder to see through the window. The name of the station was also displayed in Cyrillic letters as if it were a terminus of the Moscow Metro. There were Soviet soldiers in uniform on the platform – and Catesby could see the tops of army trucks parked under the birch trees in the station car park. Karlshorst was not a normal Berlin suburb.

  For some reason the train remained stationary. Catesby was worried by the unexplained delay. He half expected to see a uniformed Vopo, an officer of the ‘People’s Police’, enter the carriage to check IDs. During ID checks the Vopos usually worked with a partner from the MfS, State Security Service, who was always dressed in a smart black leather jacket and grey trousers. The MfS types must have watched a lot of Bogart films, but they never pulled off the sardonic sexiness no matter how much they tried. Catesby was relieved when he finally heard the electric motors wheeze into life as the train started up and began to move.

  The carriage was now only a quarter full. As the train pulled out of the station a huge tank park full of T-34s was visible behind a chain link fence topped with barbed wire. Behind the tanks were grim rows of barracks in red brick. After Karlshorst and its dreary suburban backcloth, the train passed into a landscape of heath and woodland. The woods were mostly stunted pine and birch. The stops – Wuhlheide, Köpenick, Hirschgarten – were more village than suburb. The countryside between them had turned from sparse scrub into thick dark woodland. After Friedrichshagen the carriage was nearly empty.

  ‘It’s the next one,’ said Catesby.

  ‘I know,’ said Jutta as she buttoned up her jacket.

  Rahnsdorf was a completely lonely station in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. Catesby and Jutta were the only passengers who alighted on the platform. Rahnsdorf was, thought Catesby, the ultimate ‘choke point’. No surveillance team could follow you there without giving themselves away. And none had.

  Once the train had wheezed away down the tracks they were completely alone. An eerie silence embraced them. Catesby loved silence. But he knew that some people feel threatened by it. They need to break silence with senseless talk or a radio station or a phonograph. He could see that Jutta was one of those. They descended the platform and crossed the tracks to a rusty gate. The gate squeaked when Catesby pushed it open and a jay screeched a harsh warning cry from the forest.

  Jutta grabbed Catesby’s sleeve. ‘What was that?’

  Catesby paused. It took him a few seconds to remember the German word for the bird. Finally, he said, ‘Eichelhäher.’ The lapses in his fluency worried him; he didn’t want to get caught out. It had already happened once. The jay worried him too. They were exactly the same species as English jays, but they looked larger and sounded so much fiercer. Maybe they had more to be fierce about. Or maybe the twentieth century had provided so much carrion to their diet that the jays had changed into loud-beaked carnivores. Catesby felt a chill run down his spine.

  They crossed the unpaved potholed r
oad that gave vehicle access to the station and set off down a forest path. In summer the path would have been crowded with Berliners carrying beach towels and picnic baskets as they headed towards the beach at Müggelsee, the largest of Berlin’s several lakes. But now, on the first Saturday of a cold wet November, the beach path was empty and desolate. They walked along in silence, their feet muffled by a damp carpet of pine needles. Catesby kept his eyes on the path ahead. He was looking for the agreed rendezvous marker. He spotted the three stones sooner than he had expected – and was annoyed at the obvious way they were arranged in the middle of the path. He quickly kicked them apart and into the undergrowth. He shrugged his shoulders. You couldn’t expect ‘walk-in joes’, untrained assets who thought they had something to sell, to be experts at tradecraft.

  Catesby stopped and waited. Jutta continued walking until she was out of sight and out of earshot. It was important that she didn’t eyeball BINDWEED; it was all strictly ‘need to know’. And she didn’t need to know anything. Catesby regretted bringing her along. He checked his watch; he was early. He decided to carry on down the path to make sure Jutta was out of sight. He walked about fifty yards, dipping in and out of the cover of the trees, and still didn’t see her. Suddenly, he spotted something pale and low in the undergrowth. Catesby quickly and quietly retraced his steps. He didn’t want Jutta to know he had seen her squatting for a pee.

  When Catesby got back to the RV point there was still no sign of BINDWEED. He shifted nervously and wished that he had brought a gun. Both sides liked to play the kidnap game. Finally, he heard a branch snap and someone clearing his throat. He stared hard at the trees and saw a figure emerge who was dressed in a long black coat, town shoes and a flowing white scarf. BINDWEED looked far too urbane and bohemian to be a credible presence in the middle of a wood. Once again, Catesby frowned at the lack of tradecraft.

  BINDWEED looked closely at Catesby and smiled. ‘You look familiar,’ he said, ‘have we met before?’

  ‘I’m sure we haven’t.’

  ‘My name,’ said BINDWEED shaking hands, ‘is Andreas, and that’s my real name.’

  There was, in fact, something familiar about the young man’s face, but Catesby couldn’t place him. The problem with the spy trade was that there were too many faces – from photo files as well as real life. More than one innocent civilian had been gunned down by mistaken identity. And on one occasion Catesby had accidentally brush-passed a secret document into the pocket of an unsuspecting stranger. He then had to mug the poor guy to get it back.

  But this time Catesby was sure he had the right person. ‘What have you got for me?’

  Andreas leaned close. His breath smelt of menthol. ‘A guy who called himself Roger said I should meet you here and that you might want to do a deal.’

  Roger was Gerald’s cover name.

  ‘Roger,’ said Catesby, ‘thinks you might have something to sell, but we both think you’re asking too much. You’ve got sixty seconds to convince me that it’s genuine and that it’s valuable.’

  Andreas delivered his pitch. It was terse and businesslike. Catesby kept a stony poker face. Intelligence trading involved all the arts of haggling in a medina souk.

  ‘How good’s your Russian?’ said Catesby.

  ‘Not bad.’

  Catesby tested him by asking him intimate questions in Russian about his mistress. Andreas’s Russian was stumbling and schoolboyish, but the answers seemed convincing.

  ‘Right,’ said Catesby, ‘what was the return address on the letter and the postmark on the envelope?’

  Andreas gave the details and they matched up. Catesby was always suspicious that ‘walk-in joe’ intelligence might be fabricated at best – or a disinformation plant at worst. It was certainly not the latter. If the stuff was genuine, it was the last thing that Moscow would want the West to know about.

  Catesby looked away and gave a bored sigh. It wasn’t easy to keep up the act. He wanted the stuff badly. He wasn’t sure what to do if Andreas didn’t hand it over. During Catesby’s initial training at Fort Monckton in the late forties they had all been taught how to break someone’s neck, but none of the SIS recruits had taken the unarmed combat lessons seriously. The marine commando in charge had punished their flippancy with a long-distance run. Catesby now wished that he had paid more attention.

  It was Andreas’s turn to play souk trader. ‘I can see that you’re not particularly interested – I’d better be off.’

  ‘I am interested.’

  ‘Have you got the money?’

  ‘I’ve got half of it – but there are strings attached.’

  ‘What strings?’

  Catesby looked closely at Andreas. ‘In 1951 we ran an agent in Vienna who thought he was a gold mine – and expected a gold mine’s profits. One day he said he could give us a full set of Soviet Army radio codes for fifty thousand US dollars. We paid up – and the codes were genuine and worth every penny. Fine. But the very next day our man turned up at GRU … you know them?’

  ‘Soviet military intelligence.’

  ‘That’s right – and they’ve got lots of cash too. So our man, with a big Viennese smile, says to the Russian in charge, “I’ve got some important news for you – but it will cost you fifty thousand US dollars.” The Russian general agreed because he knew this was a prize agent, and began to count out the cash. As the agent pocketed the money, he said, “I’ve just sold your top secret codes to the British.” What do you think of that?’

  ‘It sounded like a pretty stupid thing to do?’

  Catesby smiled and shook his head. ‘On the contrary. It was brilliant. The Russians were delighted because it meant they could use the compromised codes and radio frequencies to pump tons of false information our way.’

  Andreas looked sceptical. ‘How do you know he did this?’

  ‘We know, because two days later our Viennese friend came back to us with a big shitty smile on his face and said, “I’ve got some very important news for you, but it will cost you fifty thousand US dollars.”’ Catesby smiled at Andreas. ‘Wasn’t our agent a clever lad?’

  ‘Don’t treat me like I’m stupid.’

  Catesby looked at the ground and kicked a stone off the path.

  ‘I think,’ said Andreas, ‘you’ve made your point.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ Catesby grabbed the German by the lapel and pulled him close. ‘You don’t know what happened to our Viennese pal.’

  Andreas stared at the trees for a few seconds; three blackbirds were huddled silhouettes on the bare branches of a birch. He finally whispered, ‘Okay, what happened to him?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Catesby let go of Andreas’s lapel and smiled. ‘Nothing … that could be traced back to Her Majesty’s representatives on the Allied High Commission. We used local talent: nothing written down, no names, no dates – just a sack full of used banknotes to pay them off. In fact, it was a pretty gruesome business.’ Catesby paused. ‘Have you ever been in a coal-fired power station?’

  Andreas shook his head.

  ‘Well, I hadn’t been in a power station before that night either. It’s all very efficient and logical. The coal is tipped on to conveyer belts which carry the coal to the furnaces. You can adjust the speed of any conveyer belt according to how much power you want to put out. In fact, you can lower the rate down to one centimetre per minute – so slow as to be almost imperceptible.’ Catesby looked hard at Andreas. ‘Except, of course, for the person lashed to a plank being fed into a furnace.’

  The woodland around them was totally, eerily, still.

  ‘Quiet, isn’t it?’ said Catesby. ‘I thought about stopping them when they got out the bolt cutters – but I realised it was part of their procedure, part of the ritualised horror they use to keep other Vienna gangsters in awe and in line. In any case, they started by snipping off each toe beginning with the littlest … Do you know the nursery rhyme, “This little piggy went to market?”’

  Andreas nodded.

 
; ‘Well, they were singing it as they did the business … What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Andreas, they stopped with the toes. They saved his other bits for the furnace.’ Catesby cleared his throat. ‘It was amazing how long it took him to lose consciousness – and then to die. Those guys are experts. Apparently, the gang are still at large – I suppose the cops don’t want to tangle with them … And I’ve still got their number.’

  The harsh rasping alarm call of a blue jay split the silence like a rusty saw.

  Andreas looked up startled. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a jay, they can be noisy buggers. You’re not a country person, are you?’

  Andreas shook his head.

  ‘They usually make that sound when they spot a hawk or a magpie. So don’t worry, the warning wasn’t meant for you. But … I have a warning for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t ever, ever tell me a lie.’ Catesby looked directly into Andreas’s eyes. ‘Tell me the truth. Have you passed on a copy of the letter to the East German Security Service?’

  Andreas slowly nodded.

  ‘That’s bad. Have you passed it on to anyone else?’ Catesby meant Washington, but didn’t specify.

  ‘No.’ Andreas’s face turned from chalk colour to grey.

  Catesby tried not to laugh. Andreas was what the Americans called ‘scared shitless’. Catesby had used the furnace story before and it never failed.

  ‘I swear to you,’ said Andreas, ‘I’m not lying.’

  ‘Don’t worry, my friend, if you’re straight with us we’ll look after you.’

  Andreas shifted nervously in the path looking at the ground.

  It was good, thought Catesby, that Andreas realised the stakes and the sanctions. The Vienna double dipper may not have been slow roasted, but he hadn’t got off scot-free. He had been shot, by Catesby personally, and deep-sixed in the Danube. The furnace story was a frightener tale that had been doing the rounds for some time. There were KGB versions, East End villain versions and Mafia versions. Catesby hoped it had never really happened.