The Midnight Swimmer

by Edward Wilson

  ‘I’d like a brandy,’ said Catesby.

  ‘Fine Champagne cognac?’

  Catesby envisioned his expenses claim. ‘No, just an ordinary one.’

  The young woman arrived at the same time as the brandy. She ordered a daiquiri in the Southern accent that Neville had mimicked. She was once again a fragrant honey pie from Tennessee or Alabama. Catesby wondered if she was laying it on too thick. Her hair was done up in bouffant and she was wearing a double-breasted navy dress with pearls. Her style slightly reflected the tastes of the new First Lady, but, like the accent, it was overdone.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I am absolutely ravenous. I could eat a horse.’

  ‘I bet you could,’ said Catesby.

  The waiter came over with the menus.

  ‘We’ll order now,’ she said, ‘I’ll start with the shrimp cocktail and then I’ll have the Delmonico steak with French fries.’

  Catesby decided to go down the American route too and ordered Caesar salad and Oysters Rockefeller, but opted for a bottle of Chablis to wash it all down.

  ‘Do you know something?’ she said.

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘This booth,’ she whispered, ‘this is the very booth where President John F. Kennedy proposed to Jackie.’

  Catesby wondered why she was continuing to act out her cover story. Maybe she wanted to practise the accent – or maybe she was schizophrenic and didn’t realise she was playing a role. The starters arrived and she attacked the shrimp cocktail like a starved wolf.

  ‘What,’ she said, dabbing the pink sauce from her lip, ‘shall I call you?’

  Catesby smiled, ‘Wilhelm?’

  Her eyes flashed like swords and her face turned to stone.

  ‘What shall I call you?’ said Catesby.

  ‘Norma.’

  Catesby poured himself a glass of Chablis. ‘Would you like red wine with your steak?’

  ‘No, thank you, ice-water will be fine.’

  ‘Have some of this for now,’ said Catesby proffering the Chablis.

  ‘Just a tiny tad.’

  Catesby filled her glass.

  Her face softened and she smiled. ‘I think, my good sir, that you are trying to get me tiddly so you can compromise me.’

  Catesby lifted his glass, ‘Have some Madeira, m’dear

  You really have nothing to fear …’

  ‘Is that an English song?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It sounds really kind of quaint.’

  ‘I’m not trying to tempt you, that wouldn’t be right

  You shouldn’t drink spirits at this time of night …’

  Catesby stopped singing. He could see that she was bored. But for a second, he had wanted to ‘tempt’ her. She sparkled with erotic electricity. But when he looked more closely, he saw only the vacancy of calculation and it left him cold. The main courses arrived and they ate in silence.

  When the waiter came to take their plates away, she took out her compact and studied herself in the mirror checking that all was still in place. Maybe, thought Catesby, she had another date. Meanwhile, he took a fat envelope out of his pocket and placed it on the table.

  She finished adjusting her lipstick, mewed and put her compact away. ‘I’ve got the prints from the modelling agency,’ she said in a voice loud enough to attract stares.

  Catesby looked around furtively. It was all a bit too public.

  ‘Here they are.’ She handed Catesby a brown eight-by-ten envelope. Meanwhile she quickly scooped the other envelope into her handbag.

  ‘Taxi?’ said Catesby.

  ‘I don’t need one,’ her voice had lost most of its Deep South honey, ‘my lift is already here.’

  Through the window condensation Catesby could make out the outlines of a black Lincoln Continental that was purring by the kerb. His dinner companion didn’t even make eye contact as she slid out of the booth. The waiter came over. Catesby listened to the departing staccato beat of her heels as he paid the bill.

  When Catesby first got into the taxi, he told the driver to take him to his hotel. He then settled into the back seat to see what had just cost the British taxpayer two thousand dollars plus the cost of a slap-up meal. All the photos were black and white, but of outstandingly good quality. They left nothing out. Norma wasn’t the only girl in the photos, but was certainly the most imaginative. Overall, the new president seemed to be enjoying himself, but there were photos where there was clearly pain on Kennedy’s face. It certainly didn’t look like the pain of Roman Catholic guilt, but rather the grinding aches related to the president’s chronic back problems. Kennedy seemed to prefer to have sex done to him while he was lying flat on his back. In two photos the president looked very odd indeed because he was still wearing his canvas back brace with tightly laced metal stays. The British taxpayer had got a real bargain for a change.

  Catesby slipped the photos back into the envelope and decided it was best that he not go back to his hotel.

  ‘Driver.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you take me to the British Embassy instead?’

  The embassy was located on the section of Massachusetts Avenue known as Embassy Row. Catesby had to explain to the taxi driver not to drop him at the Ambassador’s residence itself, a grand building with columns that looked like something out of Gone with the Wind, known as the Great House. What Catesby wanted was the large modern building entered from Observatory Circle where the actual business of being a major foreign mission was carried out. Some visiting Brits said the new office building looked like a giant public lavatory, but Catesby preferred it to the airs and graces of the Great House.

  The Night Duty Officer was a young Second Secretary with a public school accent. He looked at Catesby’s identity card with bemusement, ‘Oh, you’re one of those. How can I help?’ His eyes soundly grew round and bright. ‘Do you need a gun?’

  ‘No, just a diplomatic bag.’

  Catesby followed the Second Secretary to the mailroom where he resealed the photo envelope, tagged it UK EYES ALPHA/Delicate Source Attn: SIS/Dir/EU/SOV and popped it in the bag labelled ‘priority air’. It meant that it would go on the next flight and then straight to Henry Bone via Royal Corps of Signals motorcycle courier. Catesby breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘Would you like a lift?’ said the Second Secretary.

  ‘No, I think a taxi would be more discreet.’

  ‘You’re not officially here.’ The young man seemed to be one who enjoyed drama.

  ‘Speaking about diplomatic bags,’ said Catesby, ‘is it true about the cigars?’

  The Second Secretary winked and nodded.

  ‘I’ll keep it hush,’ said Catesby. The news confirmed the rumour that the new British Ambassador supplied Kennedy with Havana cigars smuggled out of Cuba via the UK diplomatic bag. The young diplomat was obviously accommodating. Later, Catesby wondered if he ought to have taken up the gun offer.

  The Lord Calvert Hotel had over 400 rooms. It had a gym, an indoor swimming pool, a restaurant and various bars. Most of its guests were expense-account lobbyists who flocked from all over the USA to pitch for government contracts. The Lord Calvert also had a large number of foreign visitors. Embassies used the hotel as overflow accommodation and officials from international organisations were regulars too. Catesby was certain that the FBI, and even less friendly Security Services, kept the hotel under surveillance. He was annoyed that someone, probably the British Embassy accommodation officer, had booked him in – even if it was under an assumed name, Timothy Manton. He ought to have found his own place. Bad security.

  When Catesby got to his room he was glad that no one else was in the corridor to watch him. He began by listening with his ear to the door for five minutes. No noise, but he still had to be careful. He put the key in and turned it. When he felt the door unlock, Catesby pushed it open hard and then flattened himself against the wall. He was sure he had heard a sound: someone rustling in the room. Or maybe it was his overactive
imagination.

  Catesby remained flattened against the wall and started to plan his actions if someone was in the room. The training manual solution for ‘room clearing’ involved four armed operatives. You always went in with your gun pointed at the floor, never straight ahead. If you ran into someone in the dark you didn’t want them to push your pistol away. Even if they grabbed you, you could shoot them in the foot or leg. But room clearing wasn’t an option: the only option was to find an escape route. But maybe, after all, the room was empty. He remembered that he had left a window open. The noise might have been a curtain fluttering. This is, thought Catesby, really going to be embarrassing if someone comes out of the lift and sees me like this. Just then the lift door opened.

  A man with spectacles waddled out of the lift. He was wearing an enormous paper hat that said: Nebraska Meat Convention. There was also a motif of cartoon pigs holding hands. The man staggered over to Catesby. He was trying to read the number on his room key and said, ‘Is this the fifth floor?’

  Catesby put his finger to his lips and said, ‘Shhh.’

  The man squinted and looked at Catesby. ‘Are you all right? Why are you standing like that?’

  ‘We’re playing a game,’ Catesby whispered.

  ‘What kind of game?’

  ‘Something like peek-a-boo. If they see me first, I lose.’

  The man read the room number on the door nearest and said, ‘506. I’m just down there at 516.’ His voice was slurred and very drunk. He leaned down to Catesby and said, ‘Shhh.’ And began to tiptoe up the corridor.

  Catesby grabbed at the man’s sleeve, but it was too late to stop him. The man got as far as the open door, but instead of continuing down the corridor he looked into Catesby’s room. The drunk was smiling. He made a gun with fist, thumb and forefinger and pointed it at someone in the room. ‘Peek-a-boo, I see you.’

  A real gun answered back. Catesby watched the blood and tissue spray across the corridor from the man’s head in the mini-second before he tumbled backwards. The Nebraska Meat Convention party hat, detached from its owner, fluttered forlornly in midair, but Catesby was already ducking and weaving towards the stairs.

  The next bullet popped over Catesby’s shoulder and holed the reinforced glass of the service stairwell in front of him. He didn’t turn to make sure, but Catesby could tell by the pistol’s muffled dull bark that it had been fitted with a silencer. Someone had organised a very professional hit. The next bullet hit the metal frame of the stairwell door as Catesby barged through it. A sliver of metal, shorn off by the bullet, must have cut the back of his right hand. There was no pain and Catesby wondered why blood was dripping down his fingers.

  Catesby slipped on the top stair and ended up sliding down to the next level on his back. The stairwell was dimly lit by low wattage emergency lights. The assassin was now through the door and fired another shot wildly and un-aimed. He then wasted a precious few seconds looking for a light switch. He found it and switched it on. The stairwell was lit as bright as a stadium for a night match. Catesby turned and for the first time glimpsed his assailant. He was a large man in a dark suit. The harsh light made his black hair shine like wet coal. His face was dark, but the features more Mediterranean than Latin. Catesby was up and running before the gunman got a bead on him. He was now two flights ahead.

  There were four more shots before Catesby reached the ground floor. They pinged and ricocheted down the stairwell like coins thrown down a well. Catesby could see the stairs continued down into a basement where there were washing machines and driers, but he didn’t want to be trapped like a rat. He pushed on a door that he hoped would lead to the reception area. It was locked. The stair-pounding footsteps were getting closer. Catesby raised his foot and kicked with all his strength against the lower glass panel. It was hard safety glass and barely cracked with the first two kicks, but finally shattered with the third. As he bent down to crawl through the hole, a bullet went through the glass panel above.

  There was a corridor in front of him with trolleys packed with glasses, cutlery, china and folded tablecloths. Catesby started running for the twin swinging doors at the end of the corridor. The two porthole windows in the doors signalled life itself. He heard his assassin crawling through the shattered door panel. There was another dull bark and a tray of champagne flutes exploded into flying shards. A second later Catesby was through the doors and into a restaurant where a few late diners lingered over brandy, coffee and mints. He kept running, but the only person behind him was a waiter calling, ‘Sir, sir, sir …’ Catesby wondered if the waiter thought he was trying to leave without paying the bill.

  The restaurant was separated from the reception area by two wide glass doors. Catesby could see that reception was much busier than the restaurant. He stopped running and looked behind him. There was no one following him other than the waiter. Catesby raised his wounded hand. ‘I’ve cut myself. Don’t worry, it’s not bad.’

  ‘See John at reception, sir. He has a first-aid kit.’

  Catesby walked calmly over to the reception desk hiding his bleeding hand in his pocket. He didn’t want a bandage, he wanted a taxi.

  The taxi driver was a black man who looked to be in his sixties, if not older. Catesby settled in the back seat putting pressure on his hand to stop the bleeding. ‘Have you got some tissues?’

  ‘I’ve got everything, sir.’ He passed back a box of Kleenex. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I cut my hand on a broken glass.’

  ‘Here, let me have a look.’

  Catesby held out his hand to the driver who switched on the interior light. ‘Let me put some iodine on it and then I’ll wrap it up with a bit of bandage.’

  Catesby watched the driver get out a first-aid kit and administer to his wound. ‘You certainly have everything.’

  ‘You need it in this town. Washington may be the nation’s capital, but it is one bad-ass rough place. There you go, all done and no stitches.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Now that you’re patched, where I can I take you?’

  Catesby was about to say the British Embassy, but suddenly a self-preservation instinct stopped his tongue. The embassy was too obvious – he didn’t want to get ambushed and he didn’t want the kind taxi driver to get hurt. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir, take your time and have a think.’

  ‘Thanks. You know any all-night jazz clubs?’

  ‘Several, what kind of jazz you like?’

  ‘Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, John Coltrane – and I wish Charlie Parker could be reincarnated.’

  ‘I know where you’re coming from. And where do you come from?’

  ‘Lowestoft.’

  ‘Is it a cool place?’

  ‘It can be very cool.’

  ‘Well the coolest place I can take you is the Blue Door on U Street. You might like it there. They got a white dude who plays tenor sax most nights. He’s almost one of the brothers.’

  Catesby leaned forward. He couldn’t believe his luck. ‘This sax player, what’s his name?’

  ‘Otis something. At least they call him Otis.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  On reflection, thought Catesby, it wasn’t that surprising that Otis would end up in Washington. It’s where Otis used to work when he wasn’t abroad as a diplomat. The first time Catesby met him was in a jazz club in Bremen in 1947. He later found out they were both part of the Denazification Commission – and both angry at the way the CIA was covertly wrecking their work by whisking off war criminals. Otis was too honest and outspoken. He eventually fell victim to the McCarthy witch-hunts and was sacked without a pension.

  The Blue Door was packed and sweaty. As Catesby slid in at the back, the quintet was in the middle of Thelonius Monk’s ‘Well, You Needn’t’. The pianist, an old black man with a wispy grey beard, was singing the lyrics:

  It’s over now, it’s over now

  You’ve had your fun, so take a bow

&nb
sp; You oughta know, you lost the glow, the beat is slow …

  When the piece was over, Catesby made his way to the bar and ordered a shot of Four Roses bourbon. He noticed that he and Otis weren’t the only white people in the club. There was a handsome young couple at a table near him. They were speaking French. He wondered if they were from the embassy.

  As Catesby sipped his drink, he studied Otis on the stage. He was blowing into his sax mouthpiece and getting ready for the next piece. He hadn’t changed at all since the Bremen days. Otis looked like a man of fifty at the time and he still looked a man of fifty even though he was fourteen years older. His black hair looked like it had been lacquered to his head and hadn’t a streak of grey.

  The next two numbers, ‘Benji’s Bounce’ and ‘Stanley the Steamer’, had long tenor sax solos and the club went completely silent as Otis did his stuff. Catesby envied the complete concentration. There was nothing else, absolutely nothing else, in Otis’s world other than the music. When the last piece finished, the group were supposed to have a break, but there was so much cheering and clapping they encored ‘Moose the Mooch’. Finally, the lights came on. The musicians put down their instruments and wiped the sweat from their faces. Drinks were passed to the quintet as they left the stage. Otis made his way to a table where an elegant black woman was sitting. She stood up to give Otis a kiss. She was absolutely stunning and six inches taller than Otis.

  As Otis glanced around acknowledging his admirers he spotted his old friend. He shouted, ‘Hey Catesby, let me get you a drink,’ and started to walk over to the bar. Catesby noted his limp had got worse.

  ‘I’ve already got one.’

  ‘Come over here then.’

  Otis gave him a big bear hug with lots of back thumping, then turned to his companion, ‘Clarissa, I want you to meet Catesby. He’s a big cheese in the British Diplomatic Corps, but won’t admit it.’