The Midnight Swimmer (43 page)

T
hey wanted to blame it on Havana.
That’s why the fall guy, Lee Harvey Oswald, was told to become a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and to make a big show of handing out pro-Castro leaflets.
The truth was otherwise.
The gang still wanted Cuba back and that was one of the reasons Kennedy had to die.

T
he plotting had begun months before.
It wasn’t just agricultural failures; it was the lingering humiliation of what they called ‘the Caribbean Crisis’.
The plotter in chief said as much when he
suggested
the coup to Head of KGB, Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny.

‘I’m worried,’ said the plotter on the day, ‘if Nikita Sergeyevich finds out about this, he’ll have us all shot.’

‘Don’t worry.
Everything is in place.’

‘What if he phones for help?’

‘He no longer has a phone that works.
I’ve taken control of the whole communication system.’

In the end Khrushchev went quietly and no one was shot.
That evening, he wanted to be alone and there were tears in his eyes.
Of all things he was proudest of having denounced Stalin and created a new era.
‘The fear is gone.
That’s my contribution.
I won’t put up a fight.’

T
he prisoner wasn’t behaving himself.
Despite being shot in the leg, he managed to kick one officer against a wall when the officer tried to confiscate his pipe as a souvenir.
Later, a Rear Admiral arrived by helicopter to have a look at their prize prey.
The prisoner was lying on his back on a table in the one room of the village school.
He was smoking the pipe that he had managed to retain and staring at the ceiling.
The Rear Admiral bent over to look in the prisoner’s face to see if it was really him.
Che removed his pipe and smiled at the visitor.
He then spat in the Rear Admiral’s face.

Che’s first visitor the next morning was the schoolteacher.
He had asked to see her.
At first, twenty-two-year-old Julia Cortez was frightened by the sight of a man with his clothes in rags and his long unkempt hair caked with mud and blood.
She then saw that he was ‘nice looking’ and had soft gentle eyes.
But Julia Cortez could not bear to look in those eyes because his glance was so piercing, but yet so serene.

‘How,’ said Che, ‘can you teach
campesino
children in a
schoolhouse
in such poor condition?
You have so few books – and yet your government officials drive new Mercedes cars and live in villas.’

The young teacher could no sooner speak to him than look in his intense unblinking eyes.

Che gestured at the crumbling schoolroom.
‘The injustice of this poverty is what we are fighting against.’

At noon more visitors began to arrive.
There was a pinch-faced man who spoke Spanish with a German accent, whom everyone referred to as Señor Altmann – except for an American officer who insisted on calling him ‘Herr Barbie’, which seemed to annoy Altmann.

Just before one o’clock the final order was received from the
Bolivian
president.
Che was to be executed.
Colonel Arnaldo Saucedo
Parada, an intelligence officer, came into the schoolroom to tell Che that he was going to die.

Che stared at the ceiling for a long moment.
When he spoke it was in a calm voice.
‘I knew you were going to shoot me – I should never have been taken alive.
Tell Fidel that this failure does not mean the end of the revolution, that it will triumph elsewhere.
Tell Aleida to forget this, to remarry and be happy, and to keep the children
studying
.
Ask the soldiers to aim well.’

C
atesby had been invited to California to help out with a book.
The author was very busy because he was running for President of the United States, but the editor was trying to interview as many people as possible who were involved with the events of October, 1962.
They wanted to publish as soon as possible.
If the author did win his party’s nomination, it was hoped that the book would show the candidate as a good and responsible leader.

The first thing that Catesby did was to show the invitation to his superiors at SIS to ask for advice.
C was very enthusiastic.
‘You must go, William, it will be a wonderful opportunity to add to our profile on this chap.
It looks likely that he’s going to be the next president.’
C paused.
‘I’m certain, of course, that you will be discreet to the point of blandness.’

The house on Palisades Beach Road was part of the exclusive and ludicrously rich enclave of Santa Monica Bluffs.
Catesby couldn’t wait to report back to Henry Bone.
The place was an utter
vindication
of Bone’s acid views on American style and taste.
The house was more than the mere vulgarity of too much money and too little taste that simply made you smile, but a leaping vulgarity that left you breathless.
There was a cocktail bar in every room and gold taps on every sink.
But the sweetest irony, the one that Catesby couldn’t wait to spring on Bone, was that the house was owned by a well-born English actor who was the son of a lord.

Catesby’s room was one of the smaller ones without a view of the sea, but he was still pampered by the Hispanic servants – and did avail himself of the cocktail bar.
It helped him sleep.
He spent most of the next day closeted with the book editor who recorded everything that was said.
Catesby was careful not to give away state secrets, but did reveal matters that were already in the public record with hushed confidentiality as if they were, in fact, top secret.
The trick suitably impressed the editor.

Catesby was then left to his own devices until evening.
He had a walk along the beach which was private to the enclave.
A group of nubile young women in bikinis were playing volleyball.
They were, like the cocktail cabinets, part of the hospitality.

After the first shock, the water was like cool silk.
It was colder than the Caribbean, but not as cold as his native North Sea – even in a sunny August.
It was a moonless midnight which made the stars even brighter and fiercer.
He took a deep breath and dived deep into the dark.
He wanted to return to that womb – the salt sea that had surrounded his native island and mothered every life form.
He stayed under for a long time and heard strange sounds.
Something made him feel that Alekseev’s ghost was rising from the deep after a midnight swim of six years to join him.
Catesby clawed frantically to get back to the surface.
And when his head burst into the good night air, he realised that he was not alone.

‘They told me that you had gone for a swim.
I thought I would join you.
I hope I didn’t frighten you.’
The voice was just as
disarmingly
feminine as it had been in that dreadful October, perhaps even more so.
But there was a new inflection in the American’s voice – one of reflection and melancholy.
It was no longer the voice of a young man who hammered tables with fists and lisped angry orders.

‘You surprised me.’

‘Sorry I startled you.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘I also wanted to thank you for helping with the book.
The editor says you were great.’

‘I did my best, but we obviously can’t tell the whole story.’

‘Not in our lifetimes.’

Catesby laughed.
‘That’s as good as never.
Dead people are awfully quiet.’

‘I know – that’s why they killed Oswald.’

‘And why you tried to kill me – twice.’

‘Being in power makes people brutal.
We need to change that.’
Kennedy paused.
‘But at the time, I was trying to protect my brother.
Can you understand that loyalty?’

‘Yes.’

The two men were treading water and facing each other.
It reminded Catesby of the night swim with Alekseev.
And once again
something dark and fatal hung in the midnight air.
He knew that the man opposite was America’s last chance.

‘The same people who killed my brother want to kill me.’

Catesby noticed an odd quaver in Kennedy’s voice – something ancient.
It wasn’t only his story, but a story as timeless as the murders of Absalom and Caesar.
High office comes with a blood chalice.

‘At first, I thought Johnson was behind it.
Then I realised that LBJ hadn’t the balls.
The CIA, the Mafia?
Sure, they had the balls, but not the competence.
That’s why you’re still alive – not to mention Castro.’

Catesby breathed the sea air.
He had never felt more alive.

‘Jack was killed by big money, the Texas oil industry to be
specific
.
They set up Oswald with a job that provided a sniper’s perch.
They used Oswald with his Russian defector background because they wanted to implicate the Soviet Union and Cuba.
What those bastards really wanted was a backlash against the communists that would lead to war.
It’s why they hated us after the Cuba Missile Crisis.
We didn’t give them the apocalypse they wanted.’

‘Is that what made you change?’

‘I began to change before Jack’s death.
Cuba taught us both a lesson.
We came so close to midnight.
I saw what the other tough guys were like and they made me sick.’
Kennedy paused.
When he spoke again there was passion in his voice.
‘We must stop this
senseless
slaughter in Vietnam.’

Catesby thought back to the incident in the US officers club in Berlin in 1961.
He remembered all the lean young officers
yearning
to be let loose on Cuba, Laos and Vietnam.
He wondered what their burning unquestioning eyes had seen – and if war had turned back on them and taken away their limbs and lives.
Or if they had changed too – or only become hardened.

‘There is something else I should tell you about,’ said Kennedy, ‘a confession.’