Read The Midnight Swimmer Online
Authors: Edward Wilson
C
atesby drove past the pub and parked the battered Austin A35 on rough ground behind the ridge of bulldozed shingle that stopped the North Sea from pouring in over the beach.
The Suffolk coast was always at war.
If it wasn’t the Saxons or the Vikings, it was the sea itself – and the sea seemed likely to be the final winner.
The autumnal tides were hungry and relentless and determined to have the Dingle Marshes that stretched like a vulnerable maiden between
Walberswick
and Dunwich.
They had already had their way with Dunwich.
In the thirteenth century the town had been one of the richest ports in England trading grain and wool for Russian fur, Flemish cloth and French wine.
But the sea had finally swallowed everything leaving only the pub, a church and a few holiday cottages.
In winter there was no one at all except for beach fishermen in oilskins long-lining cod.
But Catesby loved the place.
Suffolk was his home and he knew every river and forlorn muddy creek like the veins on the back of his hand.
It was a secretive land that kept its mysteries to itself: a
nocturnal
land of poachers, smugglers – and spies.
Catesby took the letter out of his pocket and read it once more:
I wish you were here, my loving big sister, to wrap your arms around me and wipe my tears away – like you did when Papa and Volodya didn’t come back in ’45.
I want you to know, my darling Katya, that I am not badly hurt but that I still need you to chase away my nightmare.
I feel like a child of three asking you to hold me again.
When I close my eyes I can still feel your fingertips gently stroking my back to drive away Baba Yaga and all the other witches of the night.
I felt safe because I knew that you were stronger than them.
What happened yesterday was worse than a nightmare, for when I opened my eyes it was still happening.
I was very lucky – but I am still shaking with the dark exhilaration of escape and the shock of grief for those who did not escape.
I owe my life to a technician who summoned me away from the launch pad to help solve a problem with the current distributor.
I was about forty metres away from the rocket when I heard the explosion.
I turned around, but instead of fleeing I simply looked on.
For a few seconds I was rooted to the ground by ghoulish fascination.
I watched the orange fireball at the base of the rocket pulse outwards and swallow people and trucks.
The heat burned my face and forehead, but I couldn’t move for my eyes were fixed to a sight that was as magnetic as it was horrible.
The workers on the top level of the gantry were untouched, although everything below them, including the lower levels of the gantry, were consumed in flame.
The poor men on the gantry looked like ants on the end of a burning branch in a bonfire.
They knew they were doomed and started to run pointlessly back and forth.
When the gantry was finally consumed, the men danced wildly like candle flames in the wind.
Then dropped one by one into the fireball.
It was then that I realised that I was going to be next.
A river of burning fuel was coming towards me.
I began to run like I had never run before.
The fuel had turned into a flood of fire as high as a tall man’s knees.
I looked behind and watched the burning flood lap across the tarmac and swallow my colleagues whole.
The most awful moment was when their high-pitched screaming suddenly ceased.
It was as if someone had lifted the arm on a phonograph record in the middle of an aria.
At first I could not understand why the others were running so slowly, but then I saw their black galoshes.
The enormous heat had melted the asphalt around the launch pad.
My friends were screaming for help as they waded through a steaming black glue of freshly melted tar.
Their clothes were on fire too.
I watched helplessly as they fell into the sticky tar where they were engulfed by the spreading river of flames.
Others managed to outrun the flames only to come up against the chain link fence where they were grilled like meat on a grate …
Catesby stopped reading and looked at his watch.
It was time to meet Henry.
He folded the letter, put it back in his pocket and got out of the car.
The cool sea breeze felt good on his face.
He leaned against the car and looked around for his boss.
Still no Henry.
Finally, Catesby turned and tried to lock the Austin so he could go for a walk.
After a
while, he gave up trying.
The door lock was too worn and loose for the key to turn.
But it didn’t matter; there was nothing important in the car.
The important thing was on his person and he kept
clutching
his coat pocket to make sure it was still there.
Catesby looked at the Austin.
He had asked for the grottiest car in the pool and they had obliged.
He felt a need to be inconspicuous and the last thing he wanted was a gleaming Humber Hawk that befitted his rank.
The letter in his coat pocket had set the fires of paranoia raging.
He touched it again to make sure that it was still there.
He wished that he had written the translation on rice paper.
If he got in trouble, that would make it easier to swallow.
But the Webley.38 that heavily bulged his other coat pocket was intended to make that
unnecessary
.
Catesby didn’t like ‘tooling up’, but on this occasion he wasn’t taking any chances.
He was carrying a crown jewel.
Catesby climbed to the top of the shingle ridge and looked north towards Walberswick.
It was getting dusk and the lighthouse across the river at Southwold had already started to blink – four flashes every ten seconds.
Each light had its own code like an agent in place.
Catesby searched the beach, but it was empty.
He scrambled down the bank and started to walk in the opposite direction.
Beneath the sand cliffs to the south there were still signs of life stirring in the
twilight
gloom.
Two fishermen were unloading a broad-beamed beach boat; a boy of ten was throwing stones at the darkening sea.
But the dead, as often happened at Dunwich, outnumbered the living.
The town hadn’t stopped falling into the sea and never would until every brick and stone was gone.
The recent tides had
undermined
the cliff face below the ancient churchyard.
A jumble of thigh bones and ribcages were protruding from the sandy cliff below the green turf.
It often happened after a storm, but this unearthing seemed exceptional.
A figure in a black cassock was bent over
something
at the base of the cliff.
As Catesby walked nearer he saw that the bent figure was gathering bones and putting them in a canvas sack.
‘I’ve never seen so many bones here,’ said Catesby.
The vicar answered without looking up, ‘It’s a plague pit.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to re-inter them in St.
James churchyard – they should be safe, at least for the next few hundred years.’
Catesby smiled.
His school friends had often cycled to Dunwich after a big north-easterly blow to gather bones.
It was part of a
Suffolk childhood.
He left the vicar to his work and continued up the beach towards Minsmere.
Catesby was looking for his boss, the aptly named Henry Bone, but darkness was fast descending – and it was getting cold too.
The wind had veered to the south-west and blew sand into his face.
Dark clouds scudded across the sky and there was a spatter of rain.
Catesby peered into the gloom and
realised
that the beach was empty.
He turned around and walked back.
Catesby felt the emptiness grip him by both shoulders.
The vicar had finished his gruesome chore; the fishermen had gone to the pub.
As he walked past the cliff face of exposed bones Catesby felt
something
hit his shoulder.
It was hard and solid like a stone.
He looked down on the shingle.
The object was white and round with flanges on the side.
It was a lumbar vertebra.
Catesby looked up to the top of the cliff.
A figure in black was silhouetted against the less dark sky.
It was his boss.
Henry Bone normally lacked a sense of humour, but he must have found the joke irresistible.
Catesby nodded at Bone and both men walked in parallel until they converged on the level of the beach.
When they met, Catesby reached out with the vertebra in his palm.
‘Keep it,’ said Bone.
‘Thanks.’
‘I assume, Catesby, this is important.
I was enjoying a long weekend with friends – and I don’t like playing the hush-hush drama card to disappear without explaining why.’
‘I bet they love it – it makes them feel part of things.’
‘You don’t know them.
In any case, why didn’t you use the air bag?
I was expecting a packet from an FO courier.’
Bone was referring to the high-security diplomatic pouch that was flown to London each morning.
‘I didn’t want to take any chances – so I brought the docs myself.’
Bone looked closely at Catesby.
‘Let’s go further down the beach.’
Bone turned up his collar and put his hands in his pockets.
The sound of their feet on the shingle seemed to echo the gentle sough of wave on shingle.
Southwold Light kept blinking at them as if sending a Morse message.
‘Have you heard anything from P3?’
asked Catesby.
In normal circumstances P3, Controller Eastern Area, would have been Catesby’s line manager, but when Bone was swapped over to Director Europe/Sovbloc it was decided that Catesby (Head of E.
Europe P) would report directly to Bone.
It
made sense because Catesby also ran Berlin Station – and when something happened in Berlin it needed to be treated urgently and go straight to director grade.
But on this occasion, nothing had
happened
– in Berlin.
‘According to P3,’ said Bone, ‘the general in charge of the Soviet Artillery Corps was killed in a plane crash.’
Bone smiled.
‘P3’s encrypted Eyes Alpha cable arrived ten hours after I got the news from GCHQ – and one hour after I read General Nedelin’s obituary in
The Times.
I think P3’s retirement beckons.’
‘Nedelin wasn’t killed in a plane crash.’
Catesby reached in his pocket and handed the translated letter to his boss.
He suddenly felt a great sense of relief.
The knowledge, and the responsibility that went with it, no longer rested on his shoulders alone.
Catesby watched Bone squint to read the letter in the failing light.
By the time he got to the end, Bone’s face had drained of colour and his hands were shaking.
‘Thank you for this.’
Bone gripped the letter with both hands as if he were about to tear it to shreds.
Catesby looked on in silence.
‘I assume,’ said Bone, ‘this document was photographed?’
Catesby nodded.
‘Have you got the film negatives?’
Catesby handed him an envelope that contained the negatives and a print of the original Russian letter.
It was a special ‘burn’ envelope that was permeated with a highly flammable substance.
Bone folded the letter into the envelope and held it at arm’s length.
Catesby took a lighter from his pocket and ignited it.
At the last moment, Bone pulled the envelope away and put it in his pocket.
‘No, it’s best I keep it.’
Catesby looked away from Bone and stared out to sea.
The North Sea also kept its bleak mysteries – his own mysteries.
Catesby’s father was a dead Suffolk sailor; his mother, a Belgian.
He knew his own identity was stranded halfway in that salty wilderness of quick fish and dead mariner.
The sea was him: cold, grey and full of lost longing.
‘You’ve gone all enigmatic again, Catesby.’
‘Thanks for noticing.’
‘I’d better get back to my kind and hospitable friends.’
Bone tapped the pocket where he had put the letter and film.
‘By the way, I’m going to classify this as Guard.’