Reckless

by William Nicholson

  ‘Big buggers, aren’t they?’

  ‘Eight-foot diameter,’ said the launch control officer. ‘Sixty-five foot tall. They say when they take off the ground will shake for three miles all round.’

  ‘That’ll make a mess of the launch pad, won’t it?’ said Mountbatten.

  ‘Oh, these are single-use weapons,’ said the wing commander. ‘If we ever fire them, I’ll send the men home to their families right afterwards. Their job will be over.’

  A series of strange noises now came from the launch pads, groans and screams and creaks. Clouds of white vapour shrouded the rockets.

  ‘They’re pushing in the liquid oxygen now. It’s super-cold, which makes the pipes set up that caterwauling. The cloud you can see is the boil-off.’

  The fuelling phase lasted for several minutes. Then Captain Kreiss stepped forward with his war/peace key and ceremoniously armed the warheads.

  ‘There are no warheads today, you’ll be relieved to hear,’ said the wing commander. ‘Just dummies.’ He checked the clock. ‘Eight minutes. Fast work.’

  ‘What if the American officer and his key can’t be located?’ said Mountbatten.

  The missile technician at the console tapped the war/peace switch.

  ‘I can fix this with a screwdriver,’ he said.

  Kreiss laughed.

  ‘You better not, buddy.’

  Signals sounded.

  ‘Ready to go,’ said the wing commander. ‘I get the coded go order, and that’s it. The bird goes up vertically over eighty thousand feet, rolls over and hits a speed of ten thousand miles an hour, climbs to three hundred and ninety-nine miles, travels seventeen hundred miles, and lands within two miles of its target.’

  Mountbatten led his visiting team in a round of applause.

  ‘Please take this the right way, Wing Commander,’ he said, ‘but I sincerely hope your men never get the opportunity to see the fruits of all their fine work.’

  ‘We’re all with you there, sir.’

  *

  As they drove away from the complex Mountbatten said to Rupert, ‘You see now why I need you.’

  ‘What are we doing with these monsters?’ said Rupert. ‘They must be number one on any Soviet target list. If we don’t fire them first they’re scrap metal.’

  ‘That’s why we have to rethink our entire strategy. Everyone knows it. But I’m one of the only two men in the country who’s going to have to push the button. Believe me, that concentrates the mind.’

  Rupert’s position in Mountbatten’s entourage was not clearly defined. His official title was Strategic Adviser to the Chief of Defence Staff, but as in all the former roles he had filled for Mountbatten, from Combined Operations to the ending of empire in India, his value lay in their personal relationship. They were not friends in the usual meaning of the word. They did not socialise. But Mountbatten spoke his mind more freely to Rupert than to anyone else, and he expected Rupert’s best truth in return.

  When he took on this latest position, Rupert had plunged into the fledgling field of nuclear strategy. To his amazement he found that there was no existing academic discipline supporting the decisions made by the military leaders. The staff colleges taught how to fight and win wars; but this was a new age. For this there was no rule book.

  He read Schelling’s Strategy of Conflict, and papers by Sherwin and Rapoport. He read Bernard Brodie’s Strategy in the Missile Age, and familiarised himself with Clausewitz’s classic On War. He studied papers issued by the RAND Corporation, by Daniel Ellsberg, Herman Kahn and Albert J. Wohlstetter. He was currently reading Henry Kissinger’s Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, a work commissioned by the US Council on Foreign Relations, which as far as he could tell argued for the benefits of waging a limited nuclear war. What had started out sounding like suicidal insanity was turning into something else. But what?

  The more he read, and the more he thought about what he had read, the more convinced he became that the debate was no longer connected to any recognisable reality.

  Everyone made jokes about nuclear weapons. The joking was a mix of dread and apology. Everyone understood that the deployment of such devastating destructive power was a kind of madness. And yet there they were, nuclear bombs in their thousands, the mainstay of an entire strategy of national defence.

  In the little office allocated to him in the Department of Defence in Whitehall, Rupert wrote out the most blatant absurdities on cards, and pinned them up on the walls round his desk. He called them his ‘jokes’.

  1. The Deterrence Joke

  We’ll never use our nuclear weapons, but don’t tell the enemy. So long as he believes we’ll use them, he’ll be afraid. The more he fears us, the more likely he is to attack us.

  2. The Security Joke

  Our nuclear weapons must be secure against attack, so the enemy is always afraid of our power to retaliate. The more he fears us, the more likely he is to attack us.

  3. The Reasonable Leader Joke

  A reasonable man would never risk nuclear war, so a reasonable leader would not be feared by the enemy. Our leader must therefore be a madman, so the enemy will be afraid. The more he fears us, the more likely he is to attack us.

  Rupert also had an actual joke on his wall.

  What should you do in the event of a nuclear war?

  Cover yourself with a sheet and crawl slowly to the nearest cemetery.

  Why slowly?

  To avoid panic.

  Behind the paradoxes and the jokes, or above and beyond them, loomed the grim and almost unimaginable reality called SIOP. The Single Integrated Operational Plan, devised and controlled by the Americans, stood ready to deliver 3,267 nuclear warheads on as many targets in a single strike.

  *

  Rupert’s first report to Mountbatten was his most radical. He argued that no democratic government would ever choose to destroy civilian populations on such a massive scale. Since the weapons were unusable, they might as well be given up.

  ‘What you have to understand, Rupert,’ said Mountbatten, ‘is that these weapons aren’t for fighting wars at all. They’re political weapons. They’re for perceived power. Perceived prestige.’

  ‘But if the Russians know we’ll never use them, what power can they wield?’

  ‘The Russians must never know we won’t use them.’

  ‘So all that matters is that Khrushchev thinks we have overwhelming power, and that we have the will to use it.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Rupert, ‘I’d like to repropose a scheme I’ve just dug up in the records. It was put forward seven years ago by one Lieutenant-Colonel S. E. Spey. His plan was that we pretend to build an imaginary weapon that could destroy all forms of attack, some sort of death ray, he suggested. He proposed a massive research programme, with occasional leaks to the Soviets about the success of this remarkable weapon. Of course it wouldn’t exist. But as Spey pointed out, it didn’t need to exist. It had only to be believed.’

  Mountbatten was duly amused.

  ‘I take it poor Colonel Spey failed to convince anyone.’

  ‘So it seems. But is he wrong?’

  ‘I think our friend Khrushchev would need harder evidence than leaks and rumours. Remember the prestige of nuclear weapons rests on the ultimate experimental demonstrations. Hiroshima and Nagasaki.’

  ‘You know it’s all a kind of madness, don’t you, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mountbatten sighed. ‘But it’s our madness. We have to do the best with it that we can.’

  The image of Colonel Spey’s imaginary death ray haunted Rupert in his ponderings. He was sure that there was a clue here, a way out of the trap in which they had all been caught. Somehow, he sensed, they were asking the wrong questions, or using the wrong tools. Defence strategy in an age of nuclear weapons could no longer be understood as the winning of battles. In an age of deterrence, the only victory was not to have a war.

  10

  Oleg Troyanovsky stood
on the long first-floor balcony of the main villa and watched a car pull up in the drive outside. Now into his forties, his body had thickened, and the creases between his thick eyebrows had deepened into permanent furrows. Frowning, he looked down as the visitor emerged stooping from the car. It was Rodion Yakovlevich Malinowsky, Minister of Defence and Marshal of the Red Army. Troyanovsky knew perfectly well why he had come.

  From the balcony he could see the tree-filled grounds of the estate, and the narrow boardwalk known as the Tsar’s Path that ran for half a mile or so along the gravel beach. He could see the line of blue-and-white canvas-covered cabins used in summer as dressing rooms for swimmers. And some way off, making his way slowly along the boardwalk, he could see the short stout figure of his boss, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, General Secretary of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Presidium of the Soviet Union.

  Khrushchev was making vigorous movements of his arms as he walked, which meant he was arguing aloud with himself. Troyanovsky could guess at what was agitating him. He himself had passed on the report from Khrushchev’s son-in-law Aleksei Adzhubei, who had recently returned from a trip to the United States. To general astonishment this Adzhubei, who was considered a fool, had succeeded in getting a meeting with President Kennedy. Kennedy had banged his fist on the table, and said, ‘We should learn from you Russians! When you had difficulties in Hungary, you liquidated the conflict in three days!’

  The source of Kennedy’s agitation was Cuba.

  Cuba was much on Khrushchev’s mind in this April of 1962. He had retired to his dacha at Pitsunda to consider how best to resolve the problem.

  ‘A chicken has to sit quietly for a certain time,’ he liked to say, ‘if she expects to lay an egg.’

  Such pithy remarks were part of his tiresome man-of-the-people act. And yet Troyanovsky, so much more sophisticated, so much better educated, had a real respect for his boss. He had come to appreciate, first as his interpreter, now as his foreign policy adviser, the subtle way in which this semi-literate son of a miner deployed his crudity.

  ‘Where I come from, in Kalinovka,’ Khrushchev told him, ‘it’s the dream of every villager to own a pair of boots. So how do you think I made it to the top? What do you think saved my skin under Stalin?’

  ‘Your political instincts, Nikita Sergeyevich.’

  ‘Political my arse! Instinct plain and simple. I’m no intellectual. I don’t go in for argument and analysis, papers for and papers against. I just follow my nose.’

  ‘Lenin himself urged us,’ said Troyanovsky, ‘to engage in battle first, and see what happens.’

  ‘Did he? Did he? What a great man he was.’

  *

  Troyanovsky descended from the first floor to find the marshal pacing irritably up and down the veranda.

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘Walking by the beach, Rodion Yakovlevich.’

  ‘I’ve brought him what he asked for.’ He waved a plump paper file. ‘He’s not going to like it.’

  ‘The report on the missile programme?’

  Malinowsky grunted.

  ‘How long’s he going to be walking?’

  ‘Would you like me to let him know you’re here, Marshal?’

  Malinowsky stared round at the surrounding trees and sea with a look of disgust.

  ‘No food, no drink, no women. Might as well talk business.’

  Troyanovsky set off down the path to the beach. As he came nearer to the arm-waving figure on the boardwalk he could hear the chairman’s words sharp on the spring air. Khrushchev was haranguing the young American president.

  ‘Cuba is now a socialist country, Mr President. The only one so far in the Americas. That is a fact, Mr President. Tiny though it is, it upholds with pride the prestige of international socialism. Furthermore, Mr President, you must consider my position. It was I alone who made the decision to support the Cuban revolution. My colleagues were both timid and penny-pinching. I alone saw that as the father of socialism, the Soviet Union could not stand aside and watch our new child falter as it took its first steps. You must therefore appreciate, Mr President, that if you attack Cuba, you attack the Soviet Union. You attack me.’

  He came to a stop and took in Troyanovsky, now standing before him blocking his way.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Rodion Yakovlevich has arrived, Comrade Chairman.’

  ‘He can come and talk to me here. I’m walking.’

  He continued down the boardwalk, his short stout figure now joined by the taller figure of his aide.

  ‘I’ve never forgotten something Stalin said to us,’ he told Troyanovsky. ‘He said, “After I’m gone, the imperialists will strangle you like kittens.” Like kittens!’

  Troyanovsky said nothing. He understood very well that Khrushchev, the inheritor of Stalin’s absolute power, accustomed to unquestioning obedience, had formed the habit of conducting his debates with himself.

  ‘Stalin was mad, of course. We found that out too late. Quite mad.’ Suddenly he began to beat the air with his fists, and his face went red. ‘That Mudakshvili! That prick! Does anyone have any idea what shit he dumped on our country? Do you realise that it’s only by the skin of my teeth that I’m here in Pitsunda and not in a grave in Vagan’kovskoe? The prisoners wept as they dug their own graves. The guards had to be drunk before they shot them.’

  Just as suddenly he was calm again.

  ‘Nonetheless, we must work. We must do everything in our power for the happiness of the people.’

  When they returned, Malinowsky was standing by the gate in the wall. Behind him rose the high Caucasus mountains. He held the plump paper file in one hand.

  ‘Another report, Rodion Yakovlevich?’ said Khrushchev.

  ‘Don’t pull that sour face with me, Nikita Sergeyevich. You asked for it yourself. Much good may it do you.’

  Malinowsky was an old friend, and dared to speak to Khrushchev in this way. They had survived the purges together, and they had come through the Battle of Stalingrad alive. They had been instructed to spy on each other by Stalin, and had done so, and still they were friends. You had to have been alive in those days to understand how it was.

  ‘Well, then, I’d better take a look,’ said Khrushchev.

  He led them back into the house, across the veranda and through French doors to his mahogany-panelled study. Here he sat himself down at his big desk, pushed a cluster of phones to one side, and patted the mahogany desktop. Malinowsky unpacked the pages of the report and laid them out as if they had already been scanned. He was familiar with Khrushchev’s habits. The chairman rarely read long reports. He liked it to be understood that he was too busy to read.

  ‘To put it plainly, Nikita Sergeyevich,’ he said, ‘as far as our long-range missile programme goes, you’d have better luck fucking a goat with a telephone pole.’

  Khrushchev frowned.

  ‘I accepted the R-7 had to be abandoned,’ he said. ‘What about the R-16?’

  ‘The R-16 functions perfectly, so long as it’s set up and fully fuelled eight hours before launch. So if you could request the Americans to give us eight hours’ notice of any attack, and not to target the R-16 sites, I’m told the missiles could be effective.’

  Khrushchev threw up his arms.

  ‘Take this shit paper away! Just tell me one thing. How long before we have long-range missiles that actually work?’

  ‘Ten years,’ said Malinowsky.

  ‘Ten years! For ten more years the imperialists can shit nuclear bombs at us any time they like, and we can do nothing?’

  ‘That’s how it is.’

  ‘I don’t like how it is!’

  Now Khrushchev was shouting again. Malinowsky shrugged.

  ‘They don’t know,’ he said. ‘Which is almost as good.’

  ‘Of course they know! They’re not idiots!’

  He got up and stamped out onto the veranda. Malinowsky followed. Troyanovsky came discreetly at the rear.

  ‘When will it
ever end?’ cried Khrushchev at the sky. ‘They armed the enemies of Bolshevism in the Civil War! They waited sixteen years to recognise the Soviet Union! They kept out of the Great Patriotic War as long as they could, so we’d be bled dry! They dropped atom bombs on Japan when Japan was already defeated, just to intimidate us! They build up their armed forces so we’re forced to respond, even though it means starving our own people. Has their hatred no end?’

  Without thinking, he set off back down the waterside board-walk.

  ‘I should also report,’ said Malinowsky, ‘that the Jupiter missiles deployed by the Americans in Turkey have now become operational.’

  Khrushchev stopped and pointed dramatically out to sea.

  ‘I can see them, Rodion Yakovlevich! I can see them!’

  Of course he couldn’t see them. The coast of Turkey was a hundred miles away.

  ‘That sticks in my throat,’ growled Malinowsky. ‘Right in our backyard! How would they like it if we put nuclear missiles in their backyard?’

  Khrushchev turned to him. His bright piercing eyes had all at once become focused. He had had a single brilliant idea.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘What if we were to put nuclear missiles in their backyard? That would throw a hedgehog in Uncle Sam’s pants!’

  Suddenly he was all smiles. He was bubbling with excitement.

  ‘Our medium-range missiles work well enough, don’t they? What’s the range of the R-12?’

  ‘A thousand nautical miles.’

  ‘And the R-14?’

  ‘Two thousand.’

  Malinowsky knew what Khrushchev was thinking, but he took care not to speak the words first. His friend liked it to be known that he was the one who had the ideas.

  For a long time, Khrushchev didn’t speak. He was filled with amazement at the brilliance of the idea that had just come to him.

  Ever since Truman had demonstrated to the world the awesome destructive power of the atom bomb, the Soviet Union had been struggling to catch up. So long as America had nuclear superiority, the Soviet Union was doomed to be a second-rate power. And this, the country that had almost single-handedly defeated Nazi Germany at such a colossal cost in blood! Stalin had vowed to match the Americans’ new super-weapons, and then to surpass them. But however much of the nation’s precious resources they poured into the programme, the Americans were always ahead.