The Company: A Novel of the CIA (73 page)

"It's not too late—"

"The ships that weren't sunk headed for the open sea—"

Millie was keenly aware of the ludicrousness of the situation: here she was, a public relations flack, discussing operational details with the head of the Central Intelligence Agency. "Surely you can organize air drops—"

"Not while Castro has planes in the air. Jack Kennedy has flatly refused..." Dulles let the sentence trail off.

"If things get really bad," Millie said, "you'll extricate Jack, won't you?"

"Of course we will," Dulles said, a trace of the old heartiness back in his voice. "We certainly don't want a CIA officer to fall into Castro's hands. Look, I know you've been through this before." The Director cleared his throat. "I wanted to bring you up to date—you were bound to hear about the sinking of the two ships and start worrying that Jack might have been on one of them."

Millie came around the desk and offered her hand to Dulles. "You were very thoughtful, Director. With all the things you have to think of—"

Dulles stood up. "Dear lady, it was the least I could do, all things considered."

"You'll keep me posted on what's happening to Jack?"

"Yes."

"Thank you, Director."

Dulles nodded. He tried to think of what else he could say. Then he pursed his lips and turned to go.

Early on Tuesday morning, Jack—running on catnaps and nervous energy —shared some dry biscuits and muddy instant coffee with Roberto Escalona in his G-2 bungalow as they took stock of the situation. Castro's heavy artillery was starting to zero in on the beaches; his tanks and mortars would soon come within range. The brigade's makeshift infirmary was overflowing with wounded; the makeshift mortuary behind it was filled with dead bodies and pieces of bodies. Ammunition was running perilously low; if the freighters didn't return to the Bay of Pigs and offload supplies, the brigade would run out of ammunition in the next twenty-four hours. And then there was the eternal problem of air cover. Unless American Navy jets off the Essex patrolled overhead, the brigade's antiquated B-26s, lumbering in from Guatemala, were no match for Castro's T-33s and Sea Furies; three of them had been shot down that morning trying to attack Castro's forces on the causeways. The brigade blocking units there were taking heavy casualties; Roberto wasn't sure how long they could hold out without air support. Once they pulled back, there would be nothing to stop Castro's heavy Stalin III tanks from rolling down to the water's edge.

Jack waited for a lull in the shelling, then jogged back across the sand to Blanco's Bar. Orlando, his radioman, raised the Essex and Jack called in the morning's situation report. At midmorning he went out onto the porch and scanned the bay with binoculars. There was still no sign of the freighters. He climbed onto the porch railing and then up to the roof. Sitting on the edge of an open skylight, his feet dangling down into the bar, he watched the contrails high overhead thicken and dissipate. Then he trained his binoculars on the horizon to the northeast, where the battle was raging for control of the middle causeway. "It was a dirty trick," he muttered, talking to himself, shaking his head dejectedly.

The dirty trick he had in mind was the one he'd pulled on Millie when he came ashore with the brigade. It was one thing not to resist the demon that drives you to live on the edge, quite another not to protect your wife from becoming, once again, a widow.

A voice boomed, "Ladies and gentlemen, the President and Mrs. Kennedy!"

Elegant in white tie and tails, Jack Kennedy strode into the East Room of the White House as the Marine band, decked out in red dress uniforms, struck up "Mr. Wonderful." Jackie, wearing green earrings and a pleated floor-length sea-green gown that bared one shoulder, clung to the President's elbow. The eighty or so guests around the room applauded. Smiling broadly, looking as if he didn't have a care in the world, Jack gathered his wife in his arms and started off the dancing.

As the gala dragged on the couple separated to work the room. "Oh, thank you," Jackie, slightly breathless, told a Congressman who complimented her on the bash. "When the Eisenhowers were here we used to get invited to the White House. It was just unbearable. There was never anything served to drink and we made up our minds, when we moved to the White House, that nobody was ever going to be as bored as we'd been."

Jack was chatting with Senator Smathers from Florida when Bobby, also in white tie, motioned to him from the door. The two brothers met half way. "The shit has hit the fan," Bobby told the President in a low voice. "The whole thing has turned sour in ways you won't believe. Bissell and his people are coming over." Bobby glanced at his wristwatch. "I've rounded up the usual suspects—everyone'll be in the Cabinet Room at midnight."

Jack nodded. Forcing a smile onto his face, he turned to chat up the wife of a syndicated columnist.

At two minutes to midnight the President, still in his tails, pushed through the doors into the Cabinet Room. Other guests from the evening gala were there already: Vice President Johnson, Secretaries Rusk and McNamara. General Lemnitzer and Admiral Burke, trailing after the President from the East Room and wearing formal dress uniforms with rows of medals glistening on their breasts, closed the doors behind them. A dozen or so aides from the White House, Defense and State had been summoned from their homes by the White House switchboard; most of them had thrown on corduroys and sweatshirts and looked as if they had been roused from a deep sleep. The CIA men—Bissell and Leo Kritzky and a handful of others—were unshaven and dressed in the same rumpled clothing they'd been sleeping in for days. They all climbed to their feet while the President made his way around to the head of the table. When Kennedy sank into a chair everyone except Bissell followed suit.

"Mr. President, gentlemen, the news is not good," the DD/0 began.

"That may be the understatement of the century," Bobby Kennedy remarked. "This administration is ninety days old and you people—"

Jack said patiently, "Let him tell us what's happening."

Bissell, barely controlling his emotions, brought everyone up to date on the situation. Castro's tanks and mortars had closed to within range of the two landing beaches. Casualties were heavy. The units blocking the causeways were running desperately low on ammunition. Roberto Escalona was rationing what was left—commanders begging for five mortar shells were lucky to get two. If the blocking units gave way, Castro's tanks would roll down to the beaches in a matter of hours. The ships carrying spare ammunition had fled the bay after the two freighters were sunk. The Navy had talked them into returning but didn't expect them to get there in time to save the situation. To complicate matters several members of the provisional government, under lock and key in a Miami hotel, were threatening to commit suicide if they weren't allowed to join their comrades in the Bay of Pigs. In Guatemala, the Company liaison officers at the Retalhuleu airstrip were complaining that the pilots and crews, flying nonstop since Monday morning, were too exhausted to respond to the brigade's appeals for air cover. A handful of American advisors, sheep-dipped from Alabama Air National guard units, were begging for permission to take the B-26s out in their place. "I trust you didn't say yes," Kennedy snapped.

"I sent them a four-word response, Mr. President: 'Out of the question.'"

Secretary McNamara and General Lemnitzer pressed Bissell for details. When the DD/0, who hadn't slept in days, hesitated, Leo, sitting next to him, scratched answers on a pad and Bissell, his memory refreshed, responded as best he could. There were roughly a hundred dead, twice that number of wounded, he said. Yes, there were brigade tanks on the beach but, due to the shortage of fuel, they had dug in and were being used as fixed artillery positions.

"That is," Bobby put in, "as long as their ammunition lasts."

"Thank you for the clarification, Mr. Attorney General," Bissell said.

"Any time," Bobby shot back.

"The bottom line, Mr. President," Bissell said, trying to ignore Bobby, "is that the operation can still be saved."

"I'd certainly like to know how," Kennedy said.

"It can be saved if you authorize jets from the Essex to fly combat missions over the beaches. It would take them forty-five minutes to clean out the causeways."

Bissell found an unlikely ally in Admiral Burke. "Let me have two jets and I'll shoot down anything Castro throws at us," declared the gruff Chief of Naval Operations.

"No," Kennedy said flatly. "I want to remind you all of what I said over and over—I will not commit American armed forces to combat to save this operation."

Bobby remarked, "The problem, as I see it, is that the CIA and Admiral Burke are still hoping to salvage the situation. The President wants to find a way to cut our losses. There's a whole world out there waiting to rub our faces in this if we let them."

Burke shook his head in disbelief. "One destroyer opening fire from the Bay could knock the hell out of Castro's tanks. It could change the course of the battle—"

Jack Kennedy's eyes narrowed. "Burke, I don't want the United States involved in this. Period."

Arleigh Burke wasn't ready to give up yet. "Hell, Mr. President, we are involved."

Secretary of State Rusk jotted some words on a pad and passed the slip of paper to Kennedy. On it he had written: "What about the hills?"

Kennedy looked across the table at Bissell, still the only person in the room on his feet. "Dick, I think the time has come for the brigade to go guerrilla, don't you?"

Everyone in the room appeared to be hanging on the answer to the President's question. Leo glanced at his chief out of the corner of an eye.

Bissell was terribly alone, a bone-weary emotional wreck of a man. Swaying slightly as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, he seemed close to tears. "Mr. President, going guerrilla is not possible—"

Kennedy appeared confused. "I always thought... you assured me..." He looked around the table for support.

General Lemnitzer leveled an accusing finger at Bissell. "You specifically said that, in a worst-case scenario, the brigade could fade into the Escambray Mountains and go guerrilla."

Bissell, barely audible now, said, "That was a worst-case option in the Trinidad plan, which we shelved at the request of the President. From the Bay of Pigs, the brigade would have to fight its way across eighty miles of swamp to get to the mountains." Bissell looked around desperately and saw the chair behind him and collapsed back into it. "Mr. President—"

"I'm listening, Dick."

"Mr. President, to put a fine point on it, our people are trapped on the beaches. Castro has massed twenty thousand troops in the area. If we can keep Castro's forces—keep his tanks—at bay, keep them pinned to the causeways, why, we could bring in the ammunition ships, couldn't we? The brigade could regroup, get a second wind." Around the table people were starting to stare at the walls or the ceiling. Bissell, too, was getting a second wind. "The Provisional Government could set up shop, Mr. President. We'd have our foothold on the island—"

"You mean toehold—" Bobby interrupted, but Bissell, oblivious to the sarcasm, rushed on.

"Once the Provisional Government is in place Castro's troops will desert in droves. It's all down here in black and white, isn't it, Leo? Where's that briefing paper we worked up?" Leo went through the motions of riffling through a pile of file folders. Bissell, impatient, began quoting from memory.

"Sabotage is frequent, for God's sake. Church attendance is at record highs and can be interpreted as opposition to the regime. Disenchantment of the peasants has spread to all the regions of Cuba. Castro's government ministries and regular army have been penetrated by opposition groups. When the time comes for the brigade to break out of the beachhead, they can be counted on to muddy the waters..." Bissell looked around the table. "Muddy the waters," he repeated weakly. Then he shut his mouth.

A leaden silence filled the Cabinet Room. The President cleared his throat. "Burke, I'll let you put six jet fighters over the beach for one hour tomorrow morning on the absolute condition that their American markings are painted out. They are not to attack ground targets—"

"What if they're fired on, Mr. President?" asked Admiral Burke. "There's no reason for them to be fired on if they stay out of range of Castro's antiaircraft batteries. Dick, you can bring in the brigade's B-26s from Guatemala during that hour. The jets off the Essex will cover them. If any of Castro's T-33s or Sea Furies turn up the jets have permission to shoot them down. Just that. Only that."

"Aye-aye, sir," Burke said.

"Thank you for that, Mr. President," Bissell mumbled. As the meeting was breaking up, a National Security aide rushed up to the President with a message board. Kennedy read it and, shaking his head in disbelief, passed the board on to Bobby. Sensing that something important had happened, several of the participants garnered around the President and his brother. Bobby said, "Jesus! Four of those Alabama National Guard pilots who were training the Cubans in Guatemala have taken matters into their own hands— they flew a sortie in two B-26s. Both bombers were shot down over Cuba."

"What happened to the pilots?" asked General Lemnitzer.

"Nobody knows," Bobby said. The President's brother turned on Bissell. "Those American pilots had better goddamned well be dead," he fumed, his voice pitched high into a hatchet man's killer octave.

By midday Wednesday what was left of the units blocking the causeways had began pulling back toward Giron. When word of this reached the beaches, panic spread. Castro's tanks, pushing down the road from the airport, were firing at line-of-sight targets. Blanco's Bar was bracketed and Jack and his tadioman decided the time had come to join Roberto Escalona, who was crouching with a handful of fighters at the water's edge. Shells were bursting around them, kicking up gusts of sand and dust that blotted out the sun but causing relatively few injuries because the beach tended to dampen explosions.