Prologue (19 page)

It was Lewis’ turn to nod.
“One of history’s blunders.
We studied that operation, the CIA recruitment of the Cubans, the training process, the battle…” he grimaced.
“Studied it all in school.”

Paul discerned Lewis’ pause before saying “in school.” It was often Lewis’ euphemism for military training.

“Kennedy’s decision had a number of long term effects,” Lewis finished.

“It had three big ones,” Amanda continued. “First, right wingers in the
U.S.
believed that Kennedy was soft. Second, Khrushchev realized that he needed to do something to strengthen
Cuba
’s hand if Castro were to stay in power. And third, Castro himself realized that he needed to expand Communism to South and
Central America
if he was ever going to challenge the
U.S.
”

“That was 1961, though,” Paul protested.

Amanda nodded. “In response to all this Khrushchev sent missiles to
Cuba
which could be loaded with nuclear warheads. In October of ’62 Kennedy found out about them and a debate erupted in the administration as to what to do.”

Amanda leaned across the bar room table toward Paul. “I’ve listened to the tapes of the meeting. Every one of his advisors recommended invasion to remove Castro and Cuban Communism. Senator Russell, Senator Fulbright, General Curtis
LeMay
, everyone. The risk, of course, was that Kennedy feared a nuclear war.”

“Was he right?” Paul asked.

“No, absolutely not,” Amanda answered. “Khrushchev never would have done it. If Kennedy had invaded
Cuba
the
U.S.
would have won and there never would have been any Ché Guevara to foment a Central and South American revolution. As it was Ché was almost stopped in
Bolivia
except he was saved by General Lee.”

“General Li? Chinese?” deVere asked

Lewis rolled his eyes.
“No, an American traitor who had defected to
Cuba
and joined the Cuban guerillas.
Named Lee.
He later became a general and won a crucial battle at
Acapulco
. We studied his campaigns in training school. They became the blueprint for Communist guerrilla activities everywhere.”

“Oh yeah.”
Paul remembered the picture of the thin-faced man on the wall at the Kennedy Library Exhibit. He had forgotten his name.
“Any relation to Robert E. Lee?”

Amanda snickered. “No, no relation to Robert E. He was O.H. Lee. Anyway, Ché lucked out. A successful invasion in ’62 would have made Kennedy wildly popular and may have given the
U.S.
the courage to stay and fight in Indo-China. As it was, the American military advisors were pulled out in early ’64.”

“So, what do we do?” Paul asked. “How do we convince Kennedy to invade
Cuba
in ’62?”

Amanda sipped her beer. As a waitress drifted close she held up three fingers. She waited until the waitress had moved away before answering.

“We don’t,” she answered. “The press does. We use an indirect approach. First, we get cash. As a history professor I can get access to the old American money plates at the museum and can print up a bunch of old United States money.
Real paper and everything.
Every so often someone will do it for a party or Halloween or something. It’s not a big deal. Obviously, the currency is no good today but valid in ’62.” She smiled. “At least we’ll be rich.

“Second, Lewis gets us all communicators with extended energy packs. No satellite communications back then but strong scrambled radio transmitters with coast-to-coast range.

“Third, three laptops filled with scanned newspaper articles from the New York Times and Washington Post.
And of course, three printers since they’ll be none there.”

Paul nodded.
“Anything else?”

“Firearms,” Lewis answered.
“Just in case.”

Amanda shrugged. “That’s up to you. I don’t need any. But anyway, gun laws were more relaxed back then before the Soviets took over.”

It was Paul’s turn to shake his head. “It was that damn NRA and their idiot president. First thing the Soviets did was
go
to the NRA building in D.C. and grab the member list. They didn’t need gun registration. Once they had that, they were able to eliminate 85% of the private gun ownership in the country.”

“But not their bumper stickers.”
Amanda smiled.

“Then what?”
Paul asked. “How do we use the newspapers?”

“The two most important newspapers were the New York Times and the Washington Post,” Amanda continued. “We approach Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post and Harrison Salisbury at the Times,
prove
who we are by showing them copies of the newspaper articles from the next day’s papers which we’ll bring with us, horse racing results, etc., and convince them of the need to go to war. William Randolph Hearst was once able to convince the
United States
to go to war against
Spain
–we can do it again.”

“And?”

Amanda raised her eyebrows.

“What happens if Kennedy changes his mind and invades?” Paul asked.

“He also might not pull out of
Vietnam
. Pulling out was a mistake.”

“He should’ve stayed in?”

“They called it the Domino Theory,” Amanda said. “There’s a guy nobody remembers today named John Foster Dulles, but he was brilliant. If anybody knew what they were talking about back then, he did. His theory was that if Vietnam goes, next goes Laos, next goes Cambodia, one after the other, next thing you know all Indochina’s Communist.
Which is exactly what happened.
”

“Do tell,” Paul snickered.

“Exactly,” Amanda said. “I’m of the opinion that without Castro to worry about, Kennedy would have stayed in
Vietnam
. Even if we change just one thing, maybe the first domino never falls and worldwide domination by the East is stopped in its tracks. If we stop just one country from going we might stop it all, and preserve our western way of life.” She snickered. “We wouldn’t be living under a bunch of goddamn civil administrators hand picked by Vodkaville.”

“Hell of an assumption,” Paul said.

“Got a better one?” she challenged.

“Hey, that’s why you’re here,” Paul said. “You’re convinced of that?”

She sighed. “No, but it’s the best I’ve got.”

Paul raised his glass before remembering that his beer was already empty. The waitress had not yet arrived with the refills. Ordinarily he would have stopped at one, driving home and Valerie smelling it but tonight, tonight… He put his glass down. Amanda was the historian, she’d forgotten more 20
^th
Century American history than he’d ever known, but still, there had to be something more certain than that.

“So we go back to change Kennedy’s mind in October of 1962,” Amanda continued. “I say we go back earlier, say mid-summer, do the drum beat, stay through the Cuban missile crisis to make sure Cuba gets invaded, and get out of there in the late fall returning here the day we left. We won’t even miss one faculty meeting. Otherwise we give Ché and Ho Chi Minh a free pass, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“Why even screw with trying to start an invasion?” Lewis asked suddenly. The pair turned to look at him.

“That can’t be that certain a thing to do,” Lewis continued. “Why not just go after Ché Guevara himself? We know where he’ll be in
Bolivia
in 1968. I can pin point the day and locale where they almost got him. Let me train 12 guys-two snipers with eight or ten for perimeter protection-and we can find a wormhole back to the spot a few days early, set up an ambush, and wormhole right back afterwards leaving him dead in the jungle. That seems a lot better than hoping we can convince a bunch of newspaper guys to convince the public to convince Kennedy to start a war.”

Paul stared across the table open mouthed. “Are you crazy, Lewis?” He looked around the pub nervously before turning back to his friend. “How are you going to give 12 guys military training without getting noticed? You think you can do that?
And where the hell you going to train them?
The
Public
Garden
?
C’mon!”

Amanda shook her head forcefully. “Paul’s right. Where are you going to find a dozen people you can even trust? And there’s no way you could train them for a guerrilla attack. That would take daily training for weeks. Months even. The satellites would pick that up in an instant, you know that.

“And,” she continued, “
how
would you ever get them all into the lab at once without raising suspicion? And where would you get the weapons?”

“But, could Lewis’ plan work?” Paul asked cautiously.

Amanda shrugged. “That’s the other thing. Even if we did this training thing and killed Ché Guevara how do we know that Castro wouldn’t have sent someone else to pick up where Ché left off and maybe still be successful?

“No,” she said forcefully, slapping her beer back down on the table so that some sloshed out. “The key is
Cuba
itself. Take out
Cuba
in ‘62 and no one can be sent to
Bolivia
. And the only way to do that is with an invasion. Invade
Cuba
and Ché never leaves for
Bolivia
.”

Lewis took another sip without answering. He stared straight ahead. “Maybe,” he mused.
“Maybe.”

“The
Bay of Pigs
was an unmitigated fiasco for JFK,” Amanda continued. “The Cuban Missile Partnership–what they used to call the Cuban Missile Crisis–boiled down to America removing first-strike nukes from Turkey, another colossal blunder by Kennedy. Simply put the guy couldn’t afford a third strike with re-election coming up, so he pulled out of
Vietnam
rather than get waxed there.”