Edge of Eternity (34 page)

“What do you mean?”

“The quarantine is clearly ineffective, and the president isn't doing anything else.”

George was stung. He was part of the administration, albeit a small part, and he felt unjustly accused. “In his television speech on Monday the president said the quarantine was just the beginning.”

“So he will be taking further action?”

“That's obviously what he meant.”

“But what will he do?”

George smiled, realizing he was being pumped. “Watch this space,” he said.

When he got back to Justice, Bobby was in a rage. It was not Bobby's way to yell and curse and throw objects across the room. His fury was cold and mean. People talked about his terrifying blue-eyed stare.

“Who's he mad at?” George asked Dennis Wilson.

“Tim Tedder. He's sent three infiltration teams into Cuba, six men to a team. More are waiting to go.”

“What? Why? Who told the CIA to do that?”

“It's part of Operation Mongoose, and apparently no one told them to
stop.
”

“But they might start World War Three all on their own!”

“That's why Bobby's spitting nails. Also, they sent in a two-man team to blow up a copper mine—and, unfortunately, they've lost contact.”

“So those two guys are probably in jail now, drawing floor plans of the CIA station in Miami for their Soviet interrogators.”

“Yeah.”

“This is a stupid time to do that stuff for so many reasons,” George said. “Cuba's preparing for war. Castro's security is always good, but right now it must be on high alert.”

“Exactly. Bobby's going to a Mongoose meeting at the Pentagon in a few minutes, and I expect he will nail Tedder to a cross.”

George did not go with Bobby to the Pentagon. He still was not invited to Mongoose meetings—somewhat to his relief: his trip to La Isabela had convinced him that the whole operation was criminal, and he wanted nothing more to do with it.

He sat at his desk, but found it difficult to concentrate. Civil rights had taken a backseat anyway: no one was thinking about equality for Negroes this week.

George felt the crisis was slipping out of President Kennedy's control. Against his better judgment the president had ordered the
Marucla
to be boarded. The event had gone off without trouble, but what would happen next time? Now there were battlefield nuclear weapons in Cuba: America might still invade, but the price would be high. And just to add an extra element of risk, the CIA was playing its own games.

Everyone was desperate to cool the temperature, but the opposite kept happening, a nightmarish escalation of the crisis that no one wanted.

Later in the afternoon, Bobby came back from the Pentagon with a wire service report in his hand. “What the hell is this?” he said to the aides. He began to read: “In response to the speeded-up campaign to build missile launch sites in Cuba, fresh action by President Kennedy is expected imminently”—he held his hand in the air, finger pointing up—“according to sources close to the attorney general.” Bobby looked around the room. “Who blabbed?”

George said: “Oh, fuck.”

Everyone looked at him.

Bobby said: “Do you have something to tell me, George?”

George wanted to sink through the floor. “I'm sorry,” he said. “All I did was quote the president's speech, saying the quarantine was only the beginning.”

“You can't say that sort of thing to reporters! You've given him a new story.”

“Oh, boy, I know that now.”

“And you've escalated the crisis just when we were all trying to calm things down. The next story will speculate what action the president has in mind. Then if he does nothing they'll say he's dithering.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why were you talking to him at all?”

“He was introduced to me at the White House and he walked along Pennsylvania Avenue with me.”

Dennis Wilson said to Bobby: “Is that a Reuters report?”

“Yes, why?”

“It was probably written by Lee Montgomery.”

George groaned inwardly. He knew what was coming next. Wilson was deliberately making the incident look worse.

Bobby said: “What makes you say that, Dennis?”

Wilson hesitated, so George answered the question. “Montgomery is a Negro.”

Bobby said: “Is that why you talked to him, George?”

“I guess I didn't want to tell him to drop dead.”

“Next time, that's exactly what you say to him, and to any other reporter who tries to get a story out of you, no matter what his color.”

George was relieved to hear the words
next time.
It meant that he was not going to be fired. “Thank you,” he said. “I'll remember that.”

“You'd better.” Bobby went into his office.

“You got away with it,” Wilson said to George. “Lucky bastard.”

“Yeah,” said George. He added sarcastically: “Thanks for your help, Dennis.”

Everyone returned to their work. George could hardly believe what he had done. He, too, had inadvertently poured fuel on the flames.

He was still feeling depressed when the switchboard put through a long-distance call from Atlanta. “Hi, George, this is Verena Marquand.”

Her voice cheered him up. “How are you?”

“Worried.”

“You and the whole world.”

“Dr. King asked me to call you and find out what's happening.”

“You probably know as much as we do,” George said. He was still smarting from Bobby's reprimand, and he was not about to risk another indiscretion. “Pretty much everything is in the newspapers.”

“Are we really going to invade Cuba?”

“Only the president knows that.”

“Will there be a nuclear war?”

“Even the president doesn't know that.”

“I miss you, George. I wish I could sit down with you and just, you know, talk.”

That surprised him. He had not known her well at Harvard, and he had not seen her for a half a year. He was not aware that she was fond enough of him to miss him. He did not know what to say.

She said: “What am I going to tell Dr. King?”

“Tell him . . .” George paused. He thought of all the people around President Kennedy: the hotheaded generals who wanted war now, the CIA men trying to be James Bond, the reporters who complained of inaction when the president was being cautious. “Tell him the smartest man in the United States is in charge, and we can't ask for better than that.”

“Okay,” said Verena, and she hung up.

George asked himself if he believed what he had said. He wanted to hate Jack Kennedy for the way he had treated Maria. But could anyone else handle this crisis better than Kennedy? No. George could not think of another man with the right combination of courage, wisdom, restraint, and calm.

Late in the afternoon, Wilson took a phone call, then said to everyone in the room: “We're getting a letter from Khrushchev. It's coming through to the State Department.”

Someone asked: “What does it say?”

“Not much, so far,” Wilson said. He looked at his notebook. “We don't have it all yet. ‘You are threatening us with war, but you well know that the least you would receive in reply would be to experience the same consequences . . .' It was delivered to our embassy in Moscow just before ten this morning, our time.”

George said: “Ten o'clock! It's six in the evening now. What's taking so long?”

Wilson answered with weary condescension, as if tired of explaining elementary procedures to beginners. “Our people in Moscow have to translate the letter into English, then encrypt it, then key it. After it's received here in Washington, State Department officials must decrypt it and then type it. And every word must be triple-checked before the president acts. It's a long process.”

“Thank you,” said George. Wilson was a smug prick. However, he knew a lot.

It was Friday night, but no one was going home.

Khrushchev's message arrived in bits. Predictably, the important part was at the end. If the United States would promise not to invade Cuba, Khrushchev said, “the necessity for the presence of our military specialists would disappear.”

It was a compromise proposal, and that had to be good news. But what, exactly, did it mean?

Presumably the Soviets would withdraw their nuclear weapons from Cuba. Nothing less would count for anything.

But could the United States promise never to invade Cuba? Would President Kennedy even consider tying his own hands like that? George thought he would be loath to give up all hope of getting rid of Castro.

And how would the world react to such a deal? Would they see it as a foreign policy coup for Khrushchev? Or would they say Kennedy had forced the Soviets to back down?

Was this good news? George could not decide.

Larry Mawhinney put his buzz-cut head around the door. “Cuba has short-range nuclear weapons now,” he said.

“We know,” said George. “The CIA found them yesterday.”

“That means we have to have the same,” said Larry.

“What do you mean?”

“The Cuba invasion force must be equipped with battlefield nukes.”

“Must it?”

“Of course! The Joint Chiefs are about to demand them. Would you send our men into battle less well armed than the enemy?”

He had a point, George saw; but there was a terrible consequence. “So now any war with Cuba must be a nuclear war, from the start.”

“Damn right,” said Larry, and he left.

•   •   •

Last thing, George dropped by his mother's house. Jacky made coffee and put a plate of cookies in front of him. He did not take one. “I saw Greg yesterday,” he said.

“How is he?”

“Same as ever. Except . . . Except that he told me I was the best thing that ever happened to him.”

“Hm!” she said in a disparaging tone. “What brought that on?”

“He wanted me to know how proud he is of me.”

“Well, well. There is still some good in that man.”

“How long is it since you last saw Lev and Marga?”

Jacky narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “What kind of question is that?”

“You get along well with Grandmother Marga.”

“That's because she loves you. When a person loves your child, it's endearing. You'll find that out when you have kids.”

“You haven't seen her since Harvard commencement, more than a year ago.”

“That's true.”

“You don't work on the weekend.”

“The club is closed Saturdays and Sundays. When you were small I had to have weekends off, to take care of you when you weren't in school.”

“The First Lady has taken Caroline and John Junior to Glen Ora.”

“Oh, and I suppose you think I ought to go to my country house in Virginia and spend a couple of days riding my horses?”

“You could go and see Marga and Lev in Buffalo.”

“Go to Buffalo for the weekend?” she said incredulously. “For pity's sake, child! I'd spend all Saturday on the train there and all Sunday on the train back.”

“You could fly.”

“I can't afford to.”

“I'll buy you a ticket.”

“Oh, my good Lord,” she said. “You think the Russians are going to bomb us this weekend, don't you?”

“It's never been closer than this. Go to Buffalo.”

She drained her cup, then got up and went to the sink to wash it. After a moment she said: “And what about you?”

“I have to stay here and do what I can to prevent it happening.”

Jacky shook her head decisively. “I'm not going to Buffalo.”

“It would ease my heart mightily, Mom.”

“If you want to ease your heart, pray to the Lord.”

“You know what the Arabs say? ‘Trust in Allah, but tether your camel.' I'll pray if you'll go to Buffalo.”

“How do you know the Russians won't bomb Buffalo?”

“I don't know for sure. But I'd guess it's a secondary target. And it may be out of range of those missiles in Cuba.”

“You make a weak case, for a lawyer.”

“I'm serious, Mom.”

“So am I,” she said. “And you're a good son, to worry about your mother. But listen to me, now. From the age of sixteen I've given my life to nothing but raising you. If everything I've done is going to be wiped out in a nuclear flash, I don't want to be alive afterward to know about it. I'm staying where you are.”

“Either we'll both survive, or we'll both die.”

“‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,'” she quoted. “‘Blessed be the name of the Lord.'”

•   •   •

The United States had more than two hundred nuclear missiles that could reach the Soviet Union, according to Dimka's uncle Volodya in Red Army Intelligence. The Americans believed the Soviet Union had about half that many intercontinental missiles, Volodya said. In truth, the USSR had precisely forty-two.

And some of them were obsolete.

When the United States did not immediately reply to the Soviet Union's compromise offer, Khrushchev ordered even the oldest and most unreliable missiles to be made launch-ready.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Dimka telephoned the missile testing range at Baikonur in Kazakhstan. The army base there had two five-engined Semyorkas, obsolete R-7 rockets of the type that had taken the
Sputnik
into orbit five years ago. They were being readied for a Mars probe.

Dimka called off the Mars expedition. The Semyorkas were included in the Soviet Union's forty-two intercontinental missiles. They were needed for World War III.

He ordered the scientists to fit both rockets with nuclear warheads and fuel them.

Preparation for launch would take twenty hours. The Semyorkas used an unstable liquid propellant, and they could not be kept on alert for more than a day. They would be used this weekend or not at all.