“‘Thou knowest the commandments,’ Jesus said to him. ‘Keep the commandments.’
“But the young man wouldn’t settle for that. He had kept all the commandments from his youth, he told Jesus. And there is no reason to doubt the truth of what he said. ‘What,’ he asked Jesus, ‘is yet wanting to me?’
“Now that was a different question. Three of the evangelists tell us that when Jesus heard that question, he looked upon the rich young man with love in his eyes, and said to him: ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go sell all whatsoever thou hast and give it to the poor, and come follow Me.’
“Can you imagine yourselves in that young man’s place, my dear brothers in Christ?
“He was receiving a direct invitation, a calling or, as we say today, a vocation. But the young man couldn’t accept the invitation, not even from Jesus Himself. He went away sad, the Gospels tell us, ‘for he had great possessions.’
“As if that explained everything. Which, I suppose, it does. And Jesus just let him go with a certain sadness, I’m sure. But without blame. At least the young squire had asked the question. How many people can do even that much?
“So keep the rich young man in mind while you meditate on Ignatius’s ‘Principle and Foundation’, my young friends. It may be too much for you to accept, also, this idea of indifference. It is not for everyone. It is, as they say in the military, above and beyond the call of duty.”
∗ ∗ ∗
At the Steuart Building, photo-interpreters and missile experts spent the afternoon bent over the light tables, studying the U-2 photographs of the “Possibly Associated Installation” in the Sierra del Rosario Mountains, fifty miles from Havana.
They compared the pictures on the tables to photos of the same area taken on previous U-2 flights. The men at the light tables could see that whatever was there today had not been there before. Whatever was going on in Cuba was “new activity.”
They kept scanning and found eleven trucks and fifteen tents parked near the unidentified canvas-covered objects. Farther away, they found another twenty-eight trucks.
Then they discovered that the U-2 pilot had been lucky.
Just as he was passing over Cuba, a supply convoy had been on the move and so the photo-interpreters got a good look at another ten trucks and eight unidentified vehicles moving toward the “Possibly Missile-Associated Installation.”
Two of the trucks were hauling trailers.
By three-thirty in the afternoon, everyone had agreed that they were probably missile transporters. None that large had ever been seen in Cuba.
By four in the afternoon, the photo-interpreters were ready to tell their bosses that it was time to tighten security. The security control system was given a code name: PSALM.
According to a Presidential directive, any hard information about offensive weapons in Cuba was to be kept strictly secret and divulged only to a highly restricted group of government officials.
By five o’clock that evening, Mitchell Sloane had notified Robert Kennedy that there were Russian missiles in Cuba. No doubt about it.
∗ ∗ ∗
Eating his evening meal in silence, Charley Coogan thought about the rich young man in the Gospel story and about the young men with whom he was living at Milford. As Father Samozvanyetz had pointed out, they had all been willing to show up and ask what they could do. He wondered how many would be able to accept the answer. So, after supper, he checked the calcenarium. There were four more empty shoeboxes. Charley felt sorry about that, but he wasn’t upset. He felt sorry, the way he used to feel when the football coaches began cutting the team roster down to size.
∗ ∗ ∗
The photo-interpreters at the Steuart Building didn’t break for dinner until almost 9:00 o’clock that night. There was no rush to get back. The photo-lab technicians had taken over the U-2 films and were turning out dupes, prints and enlargements for the next morning’s briefings.
∗ ∗ ∗
At Milford Novitiate, the man who played Father Samozvanyetz was pacing back and forth in his room. The departure of four novices on the very first day of the Long Retreat had shaken him. He had barely begun his performance, and already his audience was leaving the theater.
He must be doing something wrong. But what? If only he had a director, he thought, someone to give him notes on his acting. Even a newspaper critic. Was the material too dry? Too academic, too abstract?
These novices are active young men, after all, not stodgy bookworms. He had better find some way of engaging them. He would be in desperate straits if too many of the novices packed up and went home. He would have to put on a better show.
C H A P T E R • 17
That night at the Steuart Building, one of the photo-interpreters noticed two large objects at an encampment in the sugar loaf hills near San Diego de los Banos. At first glance, they appeared to be the bottoms of big whaleboats. But what would two boats be doing there, so far from the ocean?
He alerted his colleagues and they found a third “boat” and then a fourth. The “boats” were launching erectors. The photo-interpreters had found a second missile site less than three miles from the first.
∗ ∗ ∗
Just before midnight, Charley Coogan felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t make a sound!’ whispered Father Samozvanyetz. “Wake the primi anni, one by one. Tell each one to keep silent and get dressed. Make sure they remember: no lights and strict silence! We’re going outside. It’s not cold. A sweater under the cassock should be enough. Tell each one to walk slowly and silently downstairs and out the side door. You hold the door open so it won’t bang. Send them straight out to the cemetery and wait there for me.”
Charley got dressed and began whispering the instructions through the dormitory rooms. One by one, the novices made their way along the corridor, down the stairs and out the side door where Charley waited to point them to the path that led to the cemetery.
“Take your time,” he whispered as each one emerged from the building. “Move slowly. Absolute silence.” By the time Charley finished his head count, Father Samozvanyetz was at his side.
“They’re all out, Father.”
“Well done,” whispered the priest.
He led Charley along the path to where the novices were waiting silently: a platoon of black cassocks and pale white faces, huddled in the darkness, waiting for orders.
“Can you all hear me?” said the priest quietly. “Good! We are going to move out across the playing fields. Follow me, and don’t make a sound!” With that, he turned and stepped into the darkness. He moved forward in a slight crouch, as if ready to throw himself forward onto the ground.
Charley saw that some of the novices were assuming the same posture.
The novices followed the priest out beyond the second football field to the line of trees that marked the novitiate’s boundary. With some sharp gestures, the priest silently arranged the novices into a tight semicircle, two deep, their backs to the trees.
Nice going, thought Charley. In their cassocks, the novices blended into the trees behind them. They were far enough away from the novitiate building to be seen or heard.
“Good work,” said Father Samozvanyetz in a normal tone of voice. “You know how to obey orders. Relax and catch your breath.”
He waited for the novices to settle down.
“In Siberia,” he said casually, “they sometimes called us out for assembly in the dead of night. Midnight formations always meant some new hardship was going to be imposed or that somebody was going to be punished, perhaps even executed. There was never any good news at a midnight formation.
“But that’s not the case tonight, lads. I brought you out here for a much different reason. Take a look around. See what you can see.”
He had Charley’s full attention now. It was the first time that he had heard Father Samozvanyetz say anything about his experiences in the Soviet Union.
Charley looked around, but he could see not
hing except the novices and the priest and the dark trees and the dark fields stretching off toward the dark novitiate building. Just the dark night and, then—of course!—the stars.
“Yes, the stars,” said the priest, once all the novices were looking up. “I brought you here to see the stars. They are bright tonight. They are even brighter during the long polar night above the Arctic Circle where human beings are sent to work and suffer and die. In Siberia, you look at the stars and wonder how such cruelty and such beauty can exist in the same world. The labor camps, the endless snow fields, the Northern Lights, the brilliant moon, and those unchanging stars.”
Charley found the Big Dipper. He followed Ursa Major’s pointers to Polaris, the North Star, just as his father had taught him to do years before.
“Stand perfectly still,” commanded the priest. “Can you feel the wind on your face? Just a light breeze, really. It’s drifting across the field in a southeasterly direction at less than one mile per hour and we are not moving at all. Your senses confirm that, don’t they? We are not moving an inch. Think about that.”
Charley waited silently for at least a minute until the priest spoke again.
“Everything seems calm and peaceful here, does it not? But let me describe our true situation.”
∗ ∗ ∗
The photo-interpreters in Washington kept magnifying the U-2 photos of the second military camp in Cuba. They found seven missile transporters at the edge of a nearby woods and an eighth partially hidden in the trees. They saw two large tents about a hundred feet long. Definitely Soviet SS-4 equipment. The SS-4 was known to be a liquid fueled medium range ballistic missile that had a range of a thousand nautical miles and could carry a three-megaton nuclear warhead. If launched from Cuba, an SS-4 could hit Washington, D.C. or Dallas or the Panama Canal.
“And if we’ve found two of these missile sites,” someone in the room said, “how many more are we going to find?”
∗ ∗ ∗
“Take two steps forward and halt,” commanded the Master of Novices. “You have stopped moving and we are all now standing absolutely still. No doubt about it. But we are all dead wrong.
“We can’t feel it, but the Earth beneath our feet is turning on its axis like a hunk of meat on a spit. And our spinning planet is orbiting around our Sun like a ball being swung around on a long string. Our Earth is but a small part of our Solar System which is only a small part of our Galaxy which is hurtling through space. Yet we are not conscious of any of this movement. Gravity holds us tight to the surface of our small planet.
“We perceive only the regular changes from day to night, the gradual changing of the seasons, but not our twisting, twirling, hurtling through the black void of Space. That is just as well. If our senses could tell us what is actually happening to us at this moment, we would all drop dead of fright.
“But we are not frightened, are we? We stand here on our tiny patch of ground on our tiny planet, convinced that we are standing, more or less safely, at the center of the Universe. Don’t we all feel that, each one of us? That I am the center of everything? That everything is revolving around Me?
“What a wonderful species we are! The arrogance of our ignorance is more dazzling than the brightest star! To dare to think that the Universe was created just for us! To believe that we are the reason for all this! But perhaps, in some strange way, our feelings are correct and we do stand at the center of the universe.
“Not the physical center, of course. But, just maybe, the spiritual center? Are there any others like us, anywhere in this vast universe, who can look into the heavens and think and marvel and wonder where all this came from and what its purpose might be? No, not that we know of. Until scientific exploration determines otherwise, we must proceed on the assumption that we human beings are alone. And unique.
“But what purpose can we frail insignificant human beings possibly have in this array of planets and suns and galaxies? What possible effect can we have on Jupiter or the stars of Orion or some galaxy ten thousand million light years away?
“If it is true, as we believe, that some Omnipotent Power created this seemingly infinite Universe, this orderly but unthinking cosmos of minerals and gases and blazing fires, well, did this unimaginable Creative Power also create us? We are here, are we not? We cannot deny our own existence, can we?
“So, here we are, standing in the darkness, gazing up at the heavens and wondering about our place in that Creator’s Universe.
“Does this midnight exercise of ours seem unnatural? Or does it seem a proper thing to do? Isn’t this wonderment, this feeling of awe, somehow satisfying? Don’t we feel some deep emotion as you begin to realize that, in some mysterious but natural way, the Creator of all this magnificent display and order and design arrayed above us is saying something to each one of us as we look to the stars in the heavens?
“‘See what I can do! Try to comprehend Who and What I am! You can never understand completely, because I am Infinite and your minds are small, but I want you to try!’
“I often ask myself why the Creator gave us this instinct, this impulse, this ability to search for the meaning of things. Why, alone among all other creatures, are we the species that is impelled to look up into the heavens and search for answers?
“The stars above us—or below us, if we understand our true situation—may have some more important purpose than to provide us with a demonstration of Order and Design. Perhaps we will come to understand it someday. Perhaps not. But the stars, the unknown, the infinite, all draw our minds like a magnet. That is our nature.”
The priest fell silent. Charley, who had begun to feel the cold, waited for him to continue.
“It is time to return,” said the priest at last. “I did not bring you out here tonight to find answers. Only questions. Does it seem reasonable that the Creator gave us the curiosity and intelligence to discover our true location in this universe and to evaluate our relative significance, and to ask questions, so that we could devote our entire existence to ignoring Him? If not, then why did God create me? What am I supposed to do with my life?
“You won’t find the answers out there in the stars, lads. You’ll have to look for them deep down inside your minds and hearts where your Creator has hidden them.
“Ignatius Loyola stood beneath these stars in the 16th Century before he went underground to look for answers. Tomorrow we will begin what Ignatius began to explore in his cave at Manresa. We will start to learn about the answers he dug out.
“Let’s head back now,” he said. “Keep perfect silence as you slip back into your beds.”
The young men followed their Master of Novices back through the darkness toward the novitiate. Charley saw that all the novices were walking more resolutely now, like players who were out to win. He felt their excitement, the thrill he felt before the kickoff of a big game.
Too bad, he thought, that he wasn’t a part of this team.
∗ ∗ ∗
President Kennedy, still in his pajamas, was reading the morning newspapers when the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Advisor arrived in the White House living quarters. They were there to confirm that there was hard photographic evidence that the Russians had offensive missiles in Cuba. But PSALM was working. No information had leaked out.
“That’s important,” said the President. “We can’t let the bastards in the Kremlin find out that we know what they’re doing.”
Eleven forty-five seemed to be a good time to gather key members of the administration in the Cabinet Room. The President had nothing scheduled after that. No need to break any appointment. Plenty of time to secretly assemble everybody without causing a commotion.
∗ ∗ ∗
General Confessions were scheduled for the end of the First Week of the Long Retreat. The Master of Novices would be leading the primi anni toward that objective, the confession of all past sins so that their minds could be cleared for the new challenges of the Exercises. All the novices, save
one.
Once again, Charley Coogan was being left out and that bothered him. In spite of the leadership position Father Samozvanyetz had given him, he was only a bench warmer watching from the sidelines while others were playing the game for real.
“When it comes your turn,” Charley had been instructed, “enter my office like the others and shut the door behind you. We will just sit and chat for the appropriate length of time and then you will leave. No one will be the wiser.”
Charley had suggested that he might make a general confession anyway, since the opportunity was there.
“No, definitely not,” the priest had said. “I warned you about this before. You must keep your distance, Charles. Someday you may want to make such a general confession. But make it as a layman, away from this place, outside in some parish church. Not here. This is not your natural habitat, my young friend.”
The priest had leaned forward.
“You are not one of them. You are not being prepared to do what they must do. The standards they must set for themselves must not become your standards, Charles. I cannot allow you to return to the world with the conscience of a monk. You would not survive. You would die of scruples.”
Father Samozvanyetz had grasped him by the shoulders. “Just settle for acting the part. Don’t push beyond that. Don’t start believing that you are what you are only pretending to be. Settle for being who you are. Let the others advance. Be content to watch them pass you by. Let them go on ahead and don’t try to follow them.”
And so, that Tuesday morning, Charley sat back in the chapel and tried to be a detached observer as Father Samozvanyetz fleshed out the bare bones of Ignatius Loyola’s terse observations with his Russian experiences, leading his platoon of brave young men across a desolate spiritual battlefield scarred by heavy fighting and devastating barrages.
Red Army Spies and the Blackrobes Trilogy Page 31