“America sleeps under a Soviet moon,” crowed Nikita Khrushchev.
It was a brag. It was a threat.
Because rockets powerful enough to launch satellites into space could also be used to deliver hydrogen bombs to American cities.
* * *
If there was ever a good time to be on trial as a Soviet spy in America, this was not it.
In a packed Brooklyn courtroom, prosecutors displayed Abel’s spy gadgets to the jury. Jimmy Bozart, now a college student, told his story of finding the hollow nickel. Reino Hayhanen, who’d cut a deal to disappear into the government’s witness protection program, made a dramatic entrance in dark sunglasses, his hair, eyebrows, and new mustache dyed deep black, and gave devastating testimony about secret codes and dead-drops.
“This is an offense directed at our very existence,” the prosecutor said of Abel’s mission in America, “and through us at the free world and civilization itself.”
Abel sat through it all, doodling in a notebook as if enduring a boring meeting.
The jury convicted him, leaving the judge with two sentencing options: a long prison sentence or the electric chair. Abel’s lawyer, James Donovan, argued successfully against the death penalty by pointing out that one day the U.S. government might want to send Abel back to the Soviet Union as part of a trade.
True, Donovan conceded, the Russians did not have an important American spy in custody at the moment. But that could always change.
* * *
Barbara Powers was lonely, bored, and tired of waiting for answers.
Frank had been gone for more than a year, and she still didn’t know where he was or when he might return. She understood, of course, that military personnel had to leave home sometimes. But her husband had resigned from the Air Force. Why? His Air Force career meant everything to him. Who was he working for? Why were they paying him so much?
One of Frank’s letters had mentioned something about Athens, Greece. It was a place to start.
Barbara found the sheet of paper with the emergency contact information and dialed the Virginia phone number.
A man’s voice: “Yes?”
“This is Barbara Gay Powers, the wife of Francis Gary Powers. And I just wanted to inform you that I am flying to Athens, Greece, tomorrow morning to be with my husband.”
Brief silence on the line.
“Mrs. Powers, do you, er, think this is wise?”
Her mind was made up. “You bet your boots, mister. I’m on my way!”
MAN OR MONSTER?
LESS THAN A WEEK LATER Barbara and Frank Powers sat at a table in an Athens nightclub, toasting her arrival with champagne. He was thrilled to see her, she could see that in his eyes. But there was something else, something bothering him.
He put his glass down and fidgeted with its long stem.
“I might as well tell you this right off the bat,” he began. “Sugar, this wild trip of yours over here isn’t gonna exactly solve our problem.”
“What do you mean? We’re here now, together!”
“But not for long.” He had to force out the next sentence. “Barbara, I am not stationed in Greece.”
“Well, where are you stationed?”
“I still can’t tell you that.”
He’d heard that she was on her way to Athens and had come to meet her, he explained. If she decided to stay, he could fly in once or twice a month.
Barbara made the best of it. She worked at an air base in Athens, then another in Tripoli, Libya. Finally, in early 1958, the CIA agreed to let the U-2 pilots’ wives join them at their base—Incirlik Air Base in Adana, Turkey.
* * *
“There she is,” Frank Powers announced, “the U-2!”
Barbara Powers and a few other spouses were touring the base with their husbands. Barbara stood in front of the spy plane. Like a black crow, she thought, enormous and hungry.
“So,” one of the women said, “this is John’s other wife.”
It was a joke, and not a joke. Life in Turkey was, in Barbara’s words, a “marriage of three”—husband, wife, and the strange plane in which Frank conducted what he described as “weather reconnaissance flights.” She still didn’t know who he was really working for.
Approval for all overflights came directly from the White House. The pilots were then assigned specific routes and targets to photograph. Pilots call routine flights “milk runs.” There were no milk runs over Soviet territory.
Keeping the U-2 in the air was hard enough. On top of that, the pilots knew they were being tracked by Soviet radar. The Soviets fired missiles at the American planes and gave chase in their own MiG fighters. The U-2, as its designers had promised, flew too high to be hit.
Yet Frank Powers couldn’t help but wonder—what if he was hit? What if he was taken prisoner? What was he supposed to do?
His CIA bosses never discussed the topic. The most they did was offer pilots the option of carrying an “L pill”—L for lethal. The label of the bottle instructed users to crush a capsule between the teeth and inhale the toxic cyanide through the mouth. “It is expected that there will be no pain, but there may be a feeling of constriction about the chest,” read the directions. “Death will follow.”
Best not to think about it.
Between flights, it was easy not to. Frank and Barbara got their own three-bedroom trailer on base and were assigned two maids and a gardener. Barbara arranged parties, and Frank bought a slick Mercedes convertible. They adopted a massive German shepherd named Eck von Heinerberg, and the three of them crowded into the front seat of the sports car for epic drives through the Turkish countryside.
* * *
On the overcast afternoon of September 15, 1959, about 200,000 Americans lined the streets of Washington, D.C. Not cheering. Not booing. Just watching the surreal sight in silence.
There, in a car rolling slowly down the street, smiling and waving, was Nikita Khrushchev.
There was Mr. “We will bury you” taking in the sights like a tourist.
President Eisenhower had invited the Soviet leader to America. The rival powers were speeding toward a war that no one could win. Khrushchev had agreed it was time to talk. But Americans had no way of knowing what was really on his mind.
One newspaper captured the mood in a headline: “Khrushchev: Man or Monster?”
From Washington, Nikita, his wife, Nina, and Khrushchev’s four grown children set off on a trip across America. The strange scenes played out on the TV news each night—Khrushchev cracking jokes with farmers, chowing down in corporate cafeterias, watching a movie being filmed in a Hollywood studio. His one disappointment was that the family visit to Disneyland was canceled at the last moment.
“Just now, I was told that I could not go,” Khrushchev announced at a banquet full of movie stars. “I asked, ‘Why not? What is it? Do you have rocket-launching pads there?’”
The audience roared with laughter as the words were translated into English.
Were the Los Angeles police worried about his safety, Khrushchev continued? Or was there another reason? “Have gangsters taken hold of the place? Your policemen are so tough they can lift a bull by the horns. Surely they can restore order if there are any gangsters around.”
People chuckled. He was doing a comedy bit—right?
So why was his face turning so red?
“That’s the situation I find myself in,” Khrushchev ranted, punching the air. “For me, such a situation is inconceivable!”
Silence. Confusion. Was this guy joking or making threats? Was the man with his finger on the trigger of rockets and bombs pointed at the United States really getting this upset over not meeting Mickey Mouse? Was it because he felt disrespected? Was he just trying to keep his enemies guessing?
Man or monster?
“Please forgive me if I was somewhat hot-headed,” Khrushchev said, ending his speech with a smile. “But the temperature here contributes to this.”
Everyone clapped. Then the S
oviet leader was led to one of the tables to meet Marilyn Monroe.
* * *
The important part of Khrushchev’s visit came last: a meeting with President Eisenhower at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.
At sixty-nine, nearing the end of his second term as president, Eisenhower—Ike, as Americans called him—was just about worn out. Only one major goal remained. A huge one. Before stepping away from public life, he was determined to get the United States and the Soviet Union off the road to World War III.
Ike had seen the horrors of World War II up close. The next war, if it happened, would be far worse. The U.S. stockpile of nuclear weapons was up to twelve thousand and rising. The Soviets had far fewer, but enough to kill millions of Americans in a matter of minutes. Both powers were racing to build more bombs, faster planes, more powerful rockets. Eisenhower’s goal was to make it less likely that future confrontations would lead to all-out war. This would be his crowning achievement—a thawing of Cold War tensions. The dawn of a new, less dangerous era. Not a bad way to finish his life’s work.
Walking together on wooded paths at Camp David, Eisenhower and Khrushchev made a small step toward finding common ground. The United States and Soviet Union would always be rivals, that was a given. What they needed to do, both leaders agreed, was find a way to compete without letting events slip out of control. Without destroying each other’s cities. They agreed to hold formal talks on these issues at a summit meeting in Paris in May 1960. Eisenhower would then travel to the Soviet Union, making the first ever visit by a U.S. president.
Both leaders saw Khrushchev’s visit as a success. Both saw it as in their interests to slow down the march toward a war no one could win. Both wanted to continue battling for advantage around the world, without resorting to hydrogen bombs.
Both truly believed their side would win the Cold War.
* * *
Khrushchev returned home and began preparing to host the American president. Teams of workers scrubbed streets and buildings, and broke ground on the nation’s first and only golf course. President Eisenhower, it was understood, greatly enjoyed golf.
In Washington, Eisenhower turned to a vital question: Should he continue to approve U-2 flights over Soviet territory in the early months of 1960?
On the one hand, the flights were risky. They could wreck the fragile goodwill Ike had built with the Soviet leader. On the other hand, the spy planes brought back priceless intelligence on Soviet military strength. And Khrushchev had stopped complaining about the overflights years ago. Maybe he’d learned to accept them.
It was a tough call. The Paris summit was set to start on May 16, 1960.
Eisenhower decided the U-2 flights could continue until the first of May.
The last overflight before the Paris summit was assigned to Francis Gary Powers.
HOLLOW COIN #2
FRANK POWERS LOOKED OVER THE new piece of equipment a CIA officer had just handed him. A shiny silver dollar. But not an ordinary one.
The coin had a tiny metal loop attached to the top, like some sort of good-luck charm you’d hang on a keychain. Turn the loop and the coin opened. It was hollow. Inside was a pin, its tip covered with something sticky and brown. Curare, the officer explained, a highly lethal toxin. A quicker version of the L pill. One prick would be deadly. There’d be no danger of being tortured by the Russians.
The coin was optional. Pilots were not ordered to take it along. Or to use it.
Powers decided to take it, just in case. Then he brought up the topic they’d all been avoiding.
“What if something happens and one of us goes down over Russia?” he asked. Suppose they don’t use the coin? What then? “Is there anyone there we can contact? Can you give us any names and addresses?”
“No, we can’t.”
“All right, say the worst happens,” Powers said. “A plane goes down, and the pilot is captured. What story does he use? Exactly how much should he tell?”
“You may as well tell them everything,” said the CIA man. “Because they’re going to get it out of you anyway.”
* * *
Barbara Powers packed her husband a bag with thermoses of coffee and soup, six sandwiches, pickles, and cookies. Frank couldn’t tell her where he was going, of course, but she knew he often flew to other bases for these secret missions. She did not expect to see him again for a few days.
Frank Powers flew to an American air base at Peshawar, Pakistan, the jumping-off point for his twenty-eighth overflight. It would be his longest, the longest for any pilot—from Pakistan all the way over Russia to an air base in northern Norway. Nine hours of flight time, most of that in Soviet airspace.
After tossing and turning on a cot in a hangar, Powers rolled out of bed at 2:00 a.m. on May 1, 1960. He ate a big breakfast, did his pre-breathing, pulled on his pressure suit, climbed into his plane, and took off, soaring high above the peaks of the Hindu Kush mountain range. Crammed into the cockpit of his U-2, Powers felt the usual tension as he neared the enemy frontier. Reaching for his radio, he sent the pre-arranged code to the base in Pakistan: two quick clicks. A response of three clicks would mean return to base. One click would mean proceed.
The signal came back: CLICK, and silence.
* * *
It was the special phone that woke him that morning.
Nikita Khrushchev opened his eyes in his dark bedroom and reached for the red phone on his bedside table. The minister of defense, Rodion Malinovsky, was on the line. Khrushchev listened, then hung up, his Sunday already ruined. He dressed in a suit and tie and trudged downstairs for breakfast.
His son Sergei, now twenty-four, wondered what was wrong. May 1—May Day—was a Soviet workers’ holiday, a day of celebrations and parades that Khrushchev always enjoyed. But the way his father was clinking his spoon on the side of his glass of tea—that was a “do not disturb” sign.
It was a silent meal. Khrushchev got up and walked out.
Sergei was too curious to resist. He ran outside. His father was about to get into a black government car but stopped when he saw Sergei. Nikita Khrushchev often confided in his son when they were alone. He did so now.
“They’ve flown over us, again.”
“How many?” Sergei asked.
“Like before—one,” Khrushchev said. “It’s flying at a great height.”
“Will we shoot it down?”
“That’s a stupid question.” Softening his tone, he added, “It all depends on what happens.”
Soviet air defense had improved its weapons, but the American pilot would have to fly near enough to a missile base to give them a decent shot. They would need a bit of luck.
* * *
Two hours into the flight, Frank Powers switched on his plane’s cameras and photographed Baikonur Cosmodrome, the site from which Soviet scientists had shocked the world with their Sputnik launch.
Powers continued northwest for another two hours. The rounded tops of the Ural Mountains came into view. He was on course. The skies ahead were clear. It was a beautiful spring day. He was making a note in his flight log when he felt a thump.
His seat jerked forward and the sky flashed orange.
“My God,” he shouted, “I’ve had it now!”
The nose of the plane dipped. Powers pulled back on the wheel to bring it up. No response. Either the control cable to the tail had snapped, or the tail itself had been shot off. The plane tipped into a nosedive. Its long wings sheared off. The fuselage swung nose-up and dropped like a spent rocket. All Powers could see was spinning blue sky.
He reached for the self-destruct switch. Once he flipped it, he’d have seventy seconds before an explosive charge blew the cockpit apart, destroying the plane’s secret technology. The procedure was to start the self-destruct countdown, then blast himself free in his ejection seat. But Powers’s knees were jammed under the instrument panel. If he tried ejecting now, he’d leave his legs behind.
The accelerating free fall c
reated tremendous g-force, which Powers felt as crushing weight on his body, making every movement a battle.
The altimeter was spinning crazily—but accurately—past 35,000, under 34,000 …
Powers had the presence of mind to know he was beginning to panic.
“Stop,” he told himself. “Stop and think.”
He reached up and unlatched the clear canopy over the cockpit, and the whole thing cracked off and spun into the sky. Blinding frost instantly covered the faceplate of his helmet. Managing to yank his legs loose with his hands, he unfastened his seat belt and felt his body being ripped from the plane, then jerked to a stop, held back by the oxygen hoses attached to his flight suit. He kicked and twisted, and the hoses snapped, and he was free, tumbling toward the earth.
His parachute opened at 15,000 feet. Everything slowed down. There was no sound. The air was frigid, but breathable.
Powers lifted his faceplate just in time to see pieces of his plane rain past. He looked down at a landscape of hills and forests, farmland, and a small town. It looked pleasant and peaceful. Almost like his home state of Virginia.
It was definitely not Virginia.
Now Powers had a few minutes to take stock, to prepare for the worst. He reached into a pocket of his flight suit, pulled out a map of his flight plan, ripped it to small pieces, and let them fall. What other evidence did he have of his spying mission?
The coin. The hollow coin.
Powers took the silver dollar from his pocket. He unscrewed the loop and the hollow coin split open.
There was the needle. One prick would be plenty.
* * *
The Soviet military paraded past massive crowds in Moscow’s Red Square, displaying some of its latest weapons and missiles. Then came more peaceful marchers—ballerinas dancing, singers and musicians, farmers holding government-approved banners with stirring slogans such as MORE FERTILIZER FOR AGRICULTURE!
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