Tania was writing articles for
TASS
that told how the Soviet Union was helping Cuba, and how grateful the Cuban people were for the friendship of their ally on the far side of the globe. But she reserved the real truth for the coded cables she sent, via the KGB’s telegraph system, to Dimka in the Kremlin. And now Dimka had given her the unofficial task of making sure that his instructions were carried out without fail. That was why she was anxious.
With Tania was General Paz Oliva, the most beautiful man she had ever met.
Paz was breathtakingly attractive: tall and strong and a little scary, until he smiled and spoke in a soft bass voice that made her think of the strings of a cello being caressed by a bow. He was in his thirties: most of Castro’s military men were young. With his dark skin and soft curls he looked more Negro than Hispanic. He was a poster boy for Castro’s policy of racial equality, such a contrast with Kennedy’s.
Tania loved Cuba, but it had taken a while. She missed Vasili more than she had expected. She realized how fond she was of him, even though they had never been lovers. She worried about him in his Siberian labour camp, hungry and cold. The campaign for which he had been punished – publicizing the illness of Ustin Bodian, the singer – had been successful, sort of: Bodian had been released from prison, though he had died soon afterwards in a Moscow hospital. Vasili would find the irony telling.
Some things she could not get used to. She still put on a coat to go out, although the weather was never cold. She got bored with beans and rice and, to her surprise, found herself longing for a bowl of kasha with sour cream. After endless days of hot summer sun, she sometimes hoped for a downpour to freshen the streets.
Cuban peasants were as poor as Soviet peasants, but they seemed happier, perhaps because of the weather. And eventually the Cuban people’s irrepressible joie de vivre bewitched Tania. She smoked cigars and drank rum with
tuKola
, the local substitute for Coke. She loved to dance with Paz to the irresistibly sexy rhythms of the traditional music they called
trova.
Castro had closed most of the nightclubs, but no one could prevent Cubans playing guitars, and the musicians had moved to small bars called
casas de la trova.
But she worried for the Cuban people. They had defied their giant neighbour, the United States, only ninety miles away across the Straits of Florida, and she knew that one day they might be punished. When she thought about it, Tania felt like the crocodile bird, bravely perched between the open jaws of the great beast, pecking food from a row of teeth like broken knives.
Was the Cubans’ defiance worth the price? Only time would tell. Tania was pessimistic about the prospects for reforming Communism, but some of the things Castro had done were admirable. In 1961, the Year of Education, ten thousand students had flocked to the countryside to teach farmers to read, a heroic crusade to wipe out illiteracy in one campaign. The first sentence in the primer was ‘The peasants work in the cooperative,’ but so what? People who could read were better equipped to recognize government propaganda for what it was.
Castro was no Bolshevik. He scorned orthodoxy and restlessly sought out new ideas. That was why he annoyed the Kremlin. But he was no Democrat either. Tania had been saddened when he had announced that the revolution had made elections unnecessary. And there was one area in which he had imitated the Soviet Union slavishly: with advice from the KGB he had created a ruthlessly efficient secret police force to stamp out dissent.
On balance, Tania wished the revolution well. Cuba had to escape from underdevelopment and colonialism. No one wanted the Americans back, with their casinos and their prostitutes. But Tania wondered whether Cubans would ever be allowed to make their own decisions. American hostility drove them into the arms of the Soviets; but as Castro moved closer to the USSR, so it became increasingly likely that the Americans would invade. What Cuba really needed was to be left alone.
But perhaps now it had a chance. She and Paz were among a mere handful of people who knew what was in these long wooden crates. She was reporting directly to Dimka on the effectiveness of the security blanket. If the plan worked, it might protect Cuba permanently from the danger of an American invasion, and give the country breathing space in which to find its own way into the future.
That was her hope, anyway.
She had known Paz a year. ‘You never talk about your family,’ she said as they watched the crate being positioned in the trailer. She addressed him in Spanish: she was now fairly fluent. She had also picked up a smattering of the American-accented English that many Cubans used occasionally.
‘The revolution is my family,’ he said.
Bullshit, she thought.
All the same, she was probably going to sleep with him.
Paz might turn out to be a dark-skinned version of Vasili, handsome and charming and faithless. There was probably a string of lissom Cuban girls with flashing eyes taking turns to fall into his bed.
She told herself not to be cynical. Just because a man was gorgeous he did not have to be a mindless Lothario. Perhaps Paz was just waiting for the right woman to become his life partner and toil alongside him in the mission to build a new Cuba.
The missile in its crate was lashed to the bed of the trailer. Paz was approached by a small, obsequious lieutenant called Lorenzo, who said: ‘Ready to move out, General.’
‘Carry on,’ said Paz.
The truck moved slowly away from the dock. A herd of motorcycles roared into life and went ahead of the truck to clear the road. Tania and Paz got into his army car, a green Buick Le Sabre station wagon, and followed the convoy.
Cuba’s roads had not been designed for eighty-foot trucks. In the last three months, Red Army engineers had built new bridges and reconfigured hairpin bends, but still the convoy moved at walking pace much of the time. Tania noted with relief that all other vehicles had been cleared from the roads. In the villages through which they passed, the low-built two-room wooden houses were dark, and the bars were shut. Dimka would be satisfied.
Tania knew that, back at the dockside, another missile was already being eased on to another truck. The process would go on until first light. Unloading the entire cargo would take two nights.
So far, Dimka’s strategy was working. It seemed no one suspected what the Soviet Union was up to in Cuba. There was no whisper of it on the diplomatic circuit or in the uncontrolled pages of Western newspapers. The feared explosion of outrage in the White House had not yet happened.
But there were still two months to go before the American midterm elections; two more months during which these huge missiles had to be made launch-ready in total secrecy. Tania did not know whether it could be done.
After two hours they drove into a broad valley that had been taken over by the Red Army. Here engineers were building a launch site. This was one of more than a dozen tucked away out of sight in the folds of the mountains all across the 777-mile-long island of Cuba.
Tania and Paz got out of the car to watch the crate being off-loaded from the truck, again under floodlights. ‘We did it,’ said Paz in a tone of satisfaction. ‘We now have nuclear weapons.’ He took out a cigar and lit it.
Sounding a note of caution, Tania said: ‘How long will it take to deploy them?’
‘Not long,’ he said dismissively. ‘A couple of weeks.’
He was not in the mood to think about problems, but to Tania the task looked as if it might take more than two weeks. The valley was a dusty construction site where little had so far been achieved. All the same, Paz was right: they had done the hard part, which was bringing nuclear weapons into Cuba without the Americans finding out.
‘Look at that baby,’ Paz said. ‘One day it could land in the middle of Miami. Bang.’
Tania shuddered at the thought. ‘I hope not.’
‘Why?’
Did he really need to be told? ‘These weapons are meant to be a threat. They’re supposed to make the Americans afraid to invade Cuba. If ever they are used, they will have failed.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But if they do attack us, we will be able to wipe out entire American cities.’
Tania was unnerved by the evident relish with which he contemplated this dreadful prospect. ‘What good would that do?’
He seemed surprised by the question. ‘It will maintain the pride of the Cuban nation.’ He uttered the Spanish word
dignidad
as if it were sacred.
She could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘So you would start a nuclear war for the sake of your pride?’
‘Of course. What could be more important?’
Indignantly she said: ‘The survival of the human race, for one thing!’
He waved his lighted cigar in a dismissive gesture. ‘You worry about the human race,’ he said. ‘My concern is my honour.’
‘Shit,’ said Tania. ‘Are you mad?’
Paz looked at her. ‘President Kennedy is prepared to use nuclear weapons if the United States is attacked,’ he said. ‘Secretary Khrushchev will use them if the Soviet Union is attacked. The same for de Gaulle of France and whoever is the leader of Great Britain. If one of them said anything different he would be deposed within hours.’ He drew on his cigar, making the end glow red, then blew out smoke. ‘If I’m mad,’ he said, ‘they all are.’
* * *
George Jakes did not know what the emergency was. Bobby Kennedy summoned him and Dennis Wilson to a crisis meeting in the White House on the morning of Tuesday, 16 October. His best guess was that the subject would be the front page of today’s
New York Times
, with the headline:
E
ISENHOWER
C
ALLS
P
RESIDENT
W
EAK
O
N
F
OREIGN
P
OLICY
The unwritten rule was that ex-presidents did not attack their successors. However, George was not surprised that Eisenhower had flouted the convention. Jack Kennedy had won by calling Eisenhower weak and inventing a non-existent ‘missile gap’ in the Soviets’ favour. Clearly, Ike was still hurting from this punch below the belt. Now that Kennedy was vulnerable to a similar charge, Eisenhower was getting his revenge – exactly three weeks before the midterm elections.
The other possibility was worse. George’s great fear was that Operation Mongoose might have leaked. The revelation that the President and his brother were organizing international terrorism would be ammunition for every Republican candidate. They would say the Kennedys were criminals for doing it and fools for letting the secret out. And what reprisals might Khrushchev dream up?
George could see that his boss was furious. Bobby was not good at hiding his feelings. Rage showed in the set of his jaw and the hunch of his shoulders and the Arctic blast of his blue-eyed gaze.
George liked Bobby for the openness of his emotions. People who worked with Bobby saw into his heart, frequently. It made him more vulnerable but also more lovable.
When they walked into the Cabinet Room, President Kennedy was already there. He sat on the other side of a long table on which were several large ashtrays. He was in the centre, with the presidential seal on the wall above and behind him. Either side of the seal, tall arched windows looked out on to the Rose Garden.
With him was a little girl in a white dress who was obviously his daughter, Caroline, not quite five years old. She had short light-brown hair parted at the side – like her father’s – and held back with a simple clip. She was speaking to him, solemnly explaining something, and he was listening raptly, as if her words were as vital as anything else said in this room of power. George was profoundly struck by the intensity of the connection between parent and child. If ever I have a daughter, he thought, I will listen like that, so that she will know she is the most important person in the world.
The aides took their seats against the wall. George sat next to Skip Dickerson, who worked for Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. Skip had very fair straight hair and pale skin, almost like an albino. He pushed his blond forelock out of his eyes and spoke in a Southern accent. ‘Any idea where the fire is?’
‘Bobby isn’t saying,’ George replied.
A woman George did not know came into the room and took Caroline away. ‘The CIA has some news for us,’ the President said. ‘Let’s begin.’
At one end of the room, in front of the fireplace, stood an easel displaying a large monochrome photograph. The man standing next to it introduced himself as an expert photo interpreter. George had not known that such a profession existed. ‘The pictures you are about to see were taken on Sunday by a high-altitude U-2 aircraft of the CIA flying over Cuba.’
Everyone knew about the CIA’s spy planes. The Soviets had shot one down over Siberia two years ago, and had put the pilot on trial for espionage.
Everyone peered at the photo on the easel. It seemed blurred and grainy, and showed nothing that George could recognize except maybe trees. They needed an interpreter to tell them what they were looking at.
‘This is a valley in Cuba about twenty miles inland from the port of Mariel,’ the CIA man said. He pointed with a little baton. ‘A good-quality new road leads to a large open field. These small shapes scattered around are construction vehicles: bulldozers, backhoes, and dump trucks. And here –’ he tapped the photo for emphasis – ‘here, in the middle, you see a group of shapes like planks of wood in a row. They are, in fact, crates eighty feet long by nine feet across. That is exactly the right size and shape to contain a Soviet R-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile, designed to carry a nuclear warhead.’
George just stopped himself from saying
Holy shit
, but others were not so restrained, and for a moment the room was full of astonished curses.
Someone said: ‘Are you sure?’
The photo interpreter replied: ‘Sir, I have been studying air reconnaissance photographs for many years, and I can assure you of two things: one, this is exactly what nuclear missiles look like, and two, nothing else looks like this.’