Fallout

by Steve Sheinkin

  Kennedy agreed. “We are in an entirely new ball game.”

  The group was angry, eager for revenge. General Taylor called for an immediate strike. At the very least, they had to take out the antiaircraft weapons that had hit the American plane.

  “We ought to go in at dawn,” McNamara agreed.

  Yet again, Kennedy resisted making a snap decision.

  When they took a short break, Robert McNamara stepped outside. Looking up at the streaks of color in the sky above Washington, he wondered whether this was the last sunset he’d ever see.

  And that was without knowing what was happening in the Caribbean.

  * * *

  Captain Savitsky’s torpedo crew loaded their purple-tipped weapon into B-59’s firing tube number two. Standard procedure was that two officers needed to authorize the firing of the weapon—the captain and the boat’s political officer, a representative of the Soviet government. Each had a unique key. The keys had to be used together to unlock the firing mechanism for the special weapon.

  Captain Savitsky and the political officer pulled out their keys.

  On any other sub, that would have been enough. The torpedo would have been launched. The American fleet would have been blown apart beneath a boiling mushroom cloud. Then what? President Kennedy had warned that any Soviet attack would be met with “a full retaliatory response.”

  The reason this didn’t happen is that Vasili Arkhipov, chief of staff for the four Soviet subs, just happened to be aboard B-59. Arkhipov had survived the K-19 nuclear submarine disaster the year before. He’d gained experience keeping cool under impossible pressure. He’d seen the horrors of radiation poisoning up close.

  “No!” Arkhipov now commanded. “The conditions for firing have not been met.”

  “Maybe the war has already started up there!” Savitsky shouted. “We’re gonna blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all—we will not become the shame of the fleet!”

  Another explosive hit the hull, throwing men to their knees. A seal ruptured and green seawater sprayed in.

  Vasili Arkhipov remained calm. Taking Savitsky by the arm, he said, “You can’t do this.”

  “Prepare to fire tube number two,” Savitsky ordered.

  Arkhipov refused to yield. The American Navy had more powerful bombs than the ones they were dropping, he argued. They could have already sunk the sub if they’d wanted to. If B-59 fired its special weapon, they would be the ones to start the war.

  Savitsky held Arkhipov’s glare for a long moment.

  “Cancel attack,” Savitsky finally said. “Prepare to surface.”

  * * *

  It was after midnight in Moscow. Nikita Khrushchev was home, sitting in his favorite chair with a glass of tea—and no idea that a man he’d never heard of had just saved the world.

  Still, he could feel things slipping out of control.

  That U-2 flight over Soviet territory had set off alarms, causing some terrifying moments. And Khrushchev had just gotten word that a different U-2 had been shot down over Cuba. He’d never authorized that. A local commander had simply decided to take a shot. What would happen if the Americans retaliated? There would be no way for Khrushchev to keep a lid on the violence from six thousand miles away.

  More bad news arrived. Foreign policy aide Oleg Troyanovsky, who was spending the night at the Kremlin, called to say a letter from Fidel Castro had just come in, a truly unhinged message. Castro wanted Khrushchev to know that Cuba was about to be attacked. Troyanovsky read the key sentences over the phone: “It would seem the appropriate time to think about putting a permanent end to such a danger. No matter how difficult and terrible this decision is, in my opinion there is no other solution.”

  “What?” Khrushchev gasped, horrified. “Is he proposing that we start a nuclear war?”

  “Apparently.”

  Any hope of getting some rest that night was gone. Khrushchev told Nina and Sergei he’d be meeting with Presidium members in the morning at Novo-Ogaryovo, a government retreat outside the city. He suggested they go to the family dacha nearby. It might be a good day to be out of Moscow.

  * * *

  Jackie Kennedy and the kids were spending the weekend at their country home in rural Virginia, out of the Washington, D.C., fallout zone. The president called to check in with them, then met in the Oval Office with only his closest advisers.

  The group had put together a formal letter from Kennedy to Nikita Khrushchev. Kennedy agreed to the proposal in Khrushchev’s “knot of war” letter—the Soviets would remove their missiles from Cuba, and the United States would give, as the letter put it, “assurances against an invasion of Cuba.” It was a tough letter, demanding an immediate halt to all work at the Cuban missile sites. There was no mention of the demand in Khrushchev’s second letter, the removal of American missiles from Turkey.

  This was Kennedy’s last shot to resolve the crisis without war. With that in mind, he had a special assignment for the person he trusted most, his brother Bobby. There was a second part of Kennedy’s message to Khrushchev. One that could not be put into writing.

  Bobby understood. He picked up the phone and called the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin.

  * * *

  Dobrynin walked into Bobby Kennedy’s office at the Justice Department thirty minutes later, bracing for an outburst of Bobby’s famous temper. But the ambassador could see right away that Bobby was in no mood to trade punches. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, looked more scared than angry.

  “We are under very severe stress,” Bobby began. He gave Dobrynin a copy of Kennedy’s letter to Khrushchev. The text was being released to the press, so it would arrive in Moscow without the usual delay. He emphasized the central point: if Khrushchev did not remove the missiles, the Americans would.

  “The danger of war is great,” Bobby said. “It’s going to be hard to stop this process. The generals are itching for a fight. They want to go. The situation might get out of control, with irreversible consequences.”

  Dobrynin asked if this was a threat.

  “A statement of fact,” Bobby said.

  “And what about Turkey?” Dobrynin asked.

  This was a delicate issue. This was why Bobby wanted to meet, to deliver a private message about the American missiles in Turkey. The president would remove them, Bobby said. In four or five months, they’d be gone. But the president would never admit in public to making this offer. This part of the deal had to remain secret, or it was off the table. The Soviet leader had one day to decide.

  “Time is running out,” Bobby said. “We mustn’t miss our chance.”

  * * *

  John Kennedy and aide Dave Powers were sitting in the White House living quarters having a late supper of roast chicken when Bobby walked in.

  “How did it go?” the president asked.

  Message delivered, Bobby reported. He grabbed a chicken leg and summed up the meeting. He did not sound optimistic. Dave Powers continued nervously chowing down.

  “God, Dave,” Kennedy joked. “The way you’re eating up all that chicken and drinking up all my wine, anybody would think it was your last meal.”

  Powers said, “The way Bobby’s been talking, I thought it was my last meal.”

  MOSCOW TIME

  SUNDAY AT 10:00 A.M., NIKITA Khrushchev’s car stopped in front of Novo-Ogaryovo, a two-story mansion in a birch forest.

  “What’s new?” Khrushchev asked Oleg Troyanovsky as he got out of the car.

  “There’s a letter from Kennedy,” the aide said. “During the night it was broadcast on American radio.”

  “Let’s go in. We’ll look at everything there.”

  Top officials took seats at a long dining room table, set at each place with folders of key documents. According to the latest intelligence reports, the United States was ready to launch an attack in the Caribbean, most likely later today or tomorrow.

  The premier did not open with a joke. No talk of wooden knives. />
  Troyanovsky read President Kennedy’s letter aloud. Kennedy was offering to promise not to invade Cuba in exchange for the removal of the Soviet missiles. The president’s message ended with a warning. “The continuation of this threat,” Troyanovsky recited in a slow, steady voice, “would surely lead to an intensification of the Cuban crisis and a grave risk to the peace of the world.”

  The room was silent. Khrushchev looked around the table, waiting for opinions.

  Presidium members studied the contents of their folders, shuffling papers they’d seen many times. No one wanted to go first.

  Khrushchev understood. He’d gotten them into this mess. He was the one who would have to say the painful words.

  “We find ourselves face to face with the danger of war and of nuclear catastrophe, with the possible result of destroying the human race,” he told the group. In an act of true bravery, an act that required far greater courage than aiming missiles or threatening war, he said, “In order to save the world, we must retreat.”

  * * *

  A ten-minute drive away, Sergei Khrushchev paced from room to room in the family dacha, wondering what the Presidium was doing.

  His mother sat watching TV. He couldn’t understand how she could be so calm.

  Sergei called his father’s office at the Kremlin to ask for an update.

  “They’re still at the meeting, which is not being held here,” an official told him. “We don’t know when it will end.”

  Knowing he shouldn’t, Sergei dialed the number of the government dacha down the road. He quickly thought up an absurd excuse—he’d ask whether his father would be coming home for lunch.

  A soldier picked up the phone and informed Sergei that the Presidium meeting would probably not be over by lunchtime.

  “What’s new?” Sergei asked.

  “Nothing.”

  The soldier hung up.

  Sergei turned on the radio. Music, routine news. He left the radio on, just in case.

  * * *

  At Novo-Ogaryovo, the group had just begun discussing Kennedy’s proposal—it was not too bad, at least they got something for the missiles—when Oleg Troyanovsky was called to the telephone in the hallway. He came back with a page of handwritten notes. A telegram, he explained, had just come in from Ambassador Dobrynin in Washington.

  “Read it,” Khrushchev said.

  This was Dobrynin’s report about his brief meeting with Bobby Kennedy last night. The key point was President Kennedy’s secret offer to remove the American missiles from Turkey.

  “So,” Khrushchev said, “what do you think?”

  More silence.

  Khrushchev worked out his ideas aloud, as if speaking to himself. Kennedy was pleading for help. The president added this Turkey detail to say, Please accept my public offer before it’s too late. Why did this part of the deal have to be secret? Obviously, Kennedy was thinking of politics, thinking of his image. He wanted the world to believe he’d “won” the showdown. Well, Khrushchev could live with that. Look what he got from the Americans—a pledge not to invade Cuba and the removal of the missiles in Turkey.

  Everyone agreed. The mood in the room lightened. It looked as if the crisis was finally over.

  The phone in the hall rang again. The door opened, and an officer gestured to General Semyon Ivanov, a top military official. Ivanov stepped out to take the call. He came back in with news. According to American newspapers, President Kennedy would be addressing the nation on television today at 5:00 p.m.

  “At five o’clock whose time?” Khrushchev demanded.

  Ivanov checked his notes. “Moscow time.”

  Ten in the morning in Washington. This was seriously alarming. Presidents did not make televised speeches on Sunday morning. Kennedy must have something of vital importance to tell the American people. What could it be, but an announcement that U.S. forces had begun their attack in Cuba? Kennedy’s military men must have won out. They would get their invasion after all.

  How long before this point of no return? A few hours? He shouted orders to Defense Minister Malinovsky, to be immediately relayed to Soviet commanders in Cuba: “Allow no one near the missiles. Obey no orders to launch!”

  Malinovsky hurried out of the room.

  Now he needed to get a message to Kennedy. There was no time for the usual coded telegrams. Turning to his stenographer, he said, “Let’s begin, Nadezhda Petrovna.”

  * * *

  A Presidium member named Leonid Ilychev dashed out of the mansion with a stack of hastily typed pages. He jumped in a black government car, and the driver sped out of the forest and onto the busier roads leading into the city. Swerving through traffic, honking his horn at red lights—which was illegal in Moscow—the driver pulled up to Moscow’s Radio Center building. Ilychev jumped out while the car was still moving.

  Radio officials were waiting in the lobby.

  “Which floor?” Ilychev shouted as he ran into the elevator.

  The rickety cage creaked slowly up—and stopped between two floors.

  Radio officials gathered outside. They assured Ilychev that the repairman had been called.

  No time, Ilychev said, sliding his papers through a crack between the doors.

  Moments later, the pages were in the hands of Yuri Levitan, the Soviet Union’s most famous news broadcaster. It was Levitan’s deep voice that first announced the victory over Hitler, the death of Stalin, Yuri Gagarin’s space flight. He looked over the pages, clearing his throat. He asked for a few minutes to practice with the text, but Leonid Ilychev, who’d made it out of the elevator, insisted it had to be now.

  “Attention, this is Radio Moscow,” Levitan said into the microphone. “We have the following important announcement.”

  * * *

  Presidium members listened live on a radio in the dining room at Novo-Ogaryovo.

  “Dear Mr. President,” Levitan began. “I have received your message of October 27. I express satisfaction and thank you for the sense of proportion you have displayed and for realization of the responsibility which now devolves on you for the preservation of peace throughout the world.”

  Nikita Khrushchev nodded in agreement with his own words.

  “The Soviet government,” continued the announcer, “has issued a new order to dismantle the arms you describe as offensive, and to crate and return them to the Soviet Union.”

  Sergei and Nina listened at the family dacha.

  Well, that’s it, Sergei thought. We’ve retreated!

  “I regard with respect and trust the statement you made in your message of October 27, that there will be no attack, no invasion,” read Levitan. “In that case, the motives which induced us to render assistance of such a kind to Cuba disappear.”

  Tape machines rolled at the American embassy in Moscow. Russian-speaking diplomats made quick translations of the message.

  “If we, together with you, and with the assistance of other people of good will, succeed in eliminating this tense atmosphere, we should also make certain that no other dangerous conflicts which could lead to a world nuclear catastrophe would arise.”

  It was a sunny Sunday morning in Washington, unusually warm, with highs expected to reach the low sixties. National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy was eating breakfast in the White House when an aide ran in with the text of Khrushchev’s announcement.

  Bundy grabbed the phone and called up to the president’s bedroom.

  * * *

  “I feel like a new man now,” Kennedy said. “Thank God it’s all over.”

  The world heard the news on the radio that morning. White House advisers cheered in their cars on their way to work. Evelyn Lincoln missed it at first. She was driving with her husband, Abe, but with the radio off, enjoying what they feared were a last few moments of peace.

  “Wasn’t it great about the news?” a staffer asked when Lincoln walked into the West Wing.

  “It sure was,” she said, not wanting to admit she had no idea what everyon
e was so happy about.

  Bobby Kennedy missed it, too. He’d promised to take his daughters to a horse show that morning. He was pulled from the stands to take a call from the White House.

  General Curtis LeMay was sure this was another one of Khrushchev’s tricks. The thought of Kennedy accepting the deal enraged him. “This is the greatest defeat in our history,” LeMay howled, pounding a table. “We should invade today!”

  In Havana, the newspaper editor Carlos Franqui dialed Fidel Castro’s number. “Fidel,” Franqui began, “what should we do about this news?”

  “What news?”

  Franqui hesitated, realizing Castro hadn’t heard yet of Khrushchev’s decision. There was a long silence. Castro asked if the editor was still on the line.

  Franqui told him the news.

  “Son of a *****!” Castro roared. “Bastard! ***hole!”

  Franqui heard a boot kicking a wall and what sounded very much like shattering glass.

  * * *

  In the dining room at Novo-Ogaryovo, Nikita Khrushchev and the group waited anxiously for some response from the White House. An aide rushed in with a cable from Soviet agents in Washington: the KGB had just observed President Kennedy going into a church.

  What was the meaning of this?

  Presidium members debated the point. Was he praying for guidance in the coming war? Was it some kind of trick? But what sort of trick involves going to church?

  All they could do was guess.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, Kennedy’s response to Nikita Khrushchev’s offer was broadcast on American radio.

  “I welcome Chairman Khrushchev’s statesmanlike decision,” Kennedy announced. “It is my earnest hope that the governments of the world can, with a solution of the Cuban crisis, turn their urgent attention to the compelling necessity for ending the arms race and reducing world tension.”