All this was done.
Kirov said on the phone that he would be happy to go to Havana to pick Pushkin up, the only alternative being that Pushkin take a bus. Bus? Pushkin said evenly that he would prefer to go by car, which in any event would give them an opportunity to get acquainted.
Kirov told him that in approximately two hours he would be at the hotel and would call up to Pushkin’s room.
“I will be ready.”
Kirov was left with a problem—the usual one of leaving the camp at San Cristóbal on days and hours other than those specified for leaves. But he had thought the problem through. Tamayo was conscripted to send him a telex, datelined Moscow, with all the appropriate coding. (Indeed, the wording had been written out by Kirov himself.) The cable said that Comrade Eska Chodopov, the deputy ballet assistant arriving on Aeroflot’s cultural exchange flight on November 12 at José Martí Airport, was a special friend of Major Kirov’s late wife and had attended to her during her last hours. She would be happy to have the opportunity to talk with the widower. Kirov took the telegram and showed it to the adjutant, asking permission to leave the camp. “She just called me. She says she’s going to be pretty busy beginning tomorrow, but could see me this afternoon.” The adjutant nodded understandingly, and assigned Kirov a pool car.
Pushkin’s baggage included a heavy metal suitcase, presumably containing refinements, and even spare parts, for the missile, Kirov thought. He helped to load it into the trunk, together with the two large heavy-canvas suitcases. Pushkin kept his briefcase on his lap and the two men drove off.
There was the kind of chatter Soviet citizens exchange when one has just come in from Moscow and finds himself talking to someone who has been many months away from Moscow. But after about fifteen minutes of this, Kirov got the impression that Pushkin was delaying any talk of a professional nature. Now he was reminiscing about his own stay in Cuba. He had been in charge of a battery of three—anticipated—SKEANs in Sagua la Grande. Pushkin then began analyzing the dramatic events of the preceding October, as they bounced along the neglected highway into the heat of the sugar country. The dogged conversation about events a year old was approaching the point of strain. Kirov was enormously relieved, notwithstanding the surprise written on his face, when they heard a sound behind them. A police siren.
Kirov braked his car to a stop.
There were two unmarked cars, in a moment clearly recognizable as police cars. One car pulled ahead of them and stopped. The second stopped behind. A total of four men, two with pistols drawn, approached from the two cars. The leader said only, “We have orders to detain you.”
Both men, in three languages, protested vigorously. Pushkin was led into the rear car, a handcuff already on his left wrist. In the car, the loose handcuff was slipped through an iron eye hook, and then onto his right wrist. As the rear car drew forward, Pushkin could see that Kirov was in the back seat of the forward car, similarly tied down. One of the four men took over the car Kirov had been driving. For a few kilometers they drove as in a caravan. But at the fork entering San Cristóbal, Pushkin’s car went in one direction, the car with Kirov, followed by the Soviet pool car, in the other—with the luggage.
And Pushkin’s briefcase.
32
The following morning, Major Kirov paid the first of his twice-daily visits to the Soviet communications center. Only he was permitted to use the Command Center’s communications center, for traffic directed to his particular detachment; and only he possessed the code that unlocked the meaning of messages dispatched from Section G/L, Armed Services CC, the Kremlin. He was left entirely alone during this operation, and that isolation was centrally convenient to the Plan.
Because orders he would be “receiving” from the Kremlin were actually being transmitted by Kirov to Kirov, an operation easy enough, with a little technological sophistication, to effect on the telex satellite: San Cristóbal to Soviet satellite to San Cristóbal. The text Kirov had carefully rehearsed in his quarters, on a typewriter, so that he could fastidiously replicate the signals, dates, times, and code numbers associated with Kremlin-cabled traffic to San Cristóbal.
Fifteen minutes later, Kirov emerged and walked to the adjutant’s office next door, nodded, and leaned over to use the telephone. He told the operator to give him the commandant. On reaching Colonel Bilensky, he identified himself and said he needed to speak with him. He was given an appointment immediately, and five minutes later sat opposite the Soviet commandant, who proceeded to read not once but twice the cable allegedly sent by General Malinovsky.
“I wonder whether we shouldn’t ask for confirmation, Kirov?”
“Yes, you are right. I did just that, Colonel. Look down at the bottom of the fold.” The general lowered his eyes, and there it was. “OUR CABLE INSTRUCTIONS 111532ZA KKSC KIROV CONFIRMED.”
“Well,” the colonel said, “that would appear to be that. We must discuss details now.”
Colonel Bilensky knew about the SS-4 hidden under the steel flooring inside the cave. But only he and Kirov and Kirov’s six technicians did. The two guarded tanks deep within the cave that husbanded the liquid oxygen (LOX) and the kerosene were off limits except to Kirov and his men. The original detachment of Soviet workers who had placed the SANDAL underground had done so during the hectic weeks of September when all forty-two missiles were being deployed. The crew engaged in the excavation necessary to conceal Petrouchka, as the missile had been named (Soviet missiles, no less than Soviet submarines, are all given a name, usually feminine), had long since departed Cuba. And the Soviet crew engaged in pulling out and retransporting to Soviet ships the missiles being evacuated were not aware that, under the flooring, lay Petrouchka. Personnel rotation had effectively taken from San Cristóbal anyone engaged in the original interment of Petrouchka.
The colonel thought out loud. The instructions from Malinovsky were explicit: the missile was to be pulled out of the ground, installed on its assembled launcher, and the supporting equipment was to be prepared in such a way as to permit a missile firing within six hours of word from Moscow.
“Where, Major Kirov, is Petrouchka programmed to land?”
“I am sorry, Colonel. I am not permitted to answer that question.”
“Yes, yes.”
It had been made clear to Colonel Bilensky that Kirov was in absolute command of the missile and that the colonel’s orders were to expedite any arrangements dictated by Moscow to Kirov.
“But—if I may ask this—do you have the equipment here to reprogram the target?”
Kirov paused, as if giving thought to whether he could conscientiously answer that question.
“I do not mind your knowing this, Colonel, but let us keep it to ourselves. The answer is no. To ordain a different destination would require a programmer to come from Moscow. It is a very delicate business, radio-inertial guidance. What we can do very easily is abort the targeted instructions, which is in effect an abort procedure. That would cause Petrouchka simply to drop into the ocean. And, of course, it is within my power to disarm the missile, transforming it simply into a heavy piece of metal.”
The colonel greatly wished to speculate on the motives for the Kremlin’s orders, but was being careful not to give to Kirov, who was after all twice a day in touch with his command post in the Kremlin, any grounds for suspecting that his curiosity was inordinate. Kirov spotted this, and made it easier for Bilensky by engaging in speculation of his own.
“I can only assume, Colonel, that the plans are to dispose of Petrouchka, which is fine by me—I would be glad to return to Moscow, even though it would involve a painful visit to my late wife’s grave … Perhaps Moscow plans something in connection with a peace offensive, and Petrouchka is to be one of the exhibits in that offensive.”
The colonel seized on that explanation. “Of course! Of course! Undoubtedly that is what it is to be.”
Kirov interrupted him. “But on practical matters, Colonel, you will note that the cable specified th
at under no circumstances are the Cubans to be permitted to know about the missile, and this poses a problem. There are Cubans working in front of the cave every day, and also inside the cave. We will need the large crane to lift the missile. We will then lay it on the launcher. Then we will need to move it toward the mouth of the cave. Now, the height of the mouth of the cave is not sufficient to permit the designated launch angle for Petrouchka. This angle, as also the azimuth toward which the missile must point, needs to be accurate within one degree as to both height and azimuth. It is one thing to close off the mouth of the cave—that could be done in a few hours with cloth strung from the top, as with a curtain. The interior of the cave would then be off visual limits. We would of course need to pull out the ordnance that stands now in the way of the missile coming up through the flooring when the steel plates have been unbolted and set aside. But when the missile actually needs to protrude: How are you going to camouflage it?”
Colonel Bilensky was pleased by the question. Because in the last year of the great war, serving as a captain on the Eastern Front, he had been designated (without a single hour of formal training in the field) camouflage officer for the Soviet 51st Division, and he had had to camouflage the huge repositories of fuel and the tank-repair center from the German bombers. He had learned a great deal about camouflage.
He explained to Kirov that he should visualize a cave that grew higher and higher. “I give you a hypothetical example. Suppose that you needed an elevation—how long is the missile?”
“Twenty and seven-tenths meters.”
“And how high off the ground does the lowest part of the missile stand?”
“One and six-tenths meters.”
“What will be the height from the floor to the top of the missile when it is properly postured?”
“I would need to consult my papers—”
“Very well, but let us take a hypothetical number. Suppose that you need a total elevation of eighteen meters—just suppose. Now, the height of the entrance of the cave is what?”
“Fourteen meters.”
“So. The principle of camouflage is natural projections. Since the cave’s height diminishes as you proceed toward its base, we have an angle. For the sake of argument, we’ll call it an angle of fifty degrees. The well-trained camouflager would ‘extend’ the cave at an angle of fifty degrees until its new mouth is eighteen meters above the ground. With wooden scaffolding”—Colonel Bilensky took a sheet of paper from his desk and a heavy black pencil and drew a rectangle—“we create a Bigger Cave. And the same material we use at the existing mouth of the cave, we use to cover the new mouth, adding material at either end. Like a bathtub screen that pulls out from the wall, over the length of the tub, then forward back to the wall.” Colonel Bilensky was pleased.
“Now here, Colonel, is an operational detail you may not be aware of. It is this, that when the SANDAL is fired, the blast is, as you may imagine, appropriate to sending a thirty-ton weight eleven hundred miles. The blast is huge and of course lethal.
“Now, normally, a safe few minutes before a missile is fired ground personnel are ordered off to occupy a bunker, or more than one bunker, in an adjacent area. The engineers who designed the missile operation of last fall did not specify the construction of bunkers for one good reason, namely that the caves themselves were the best natural bunkers.
“But in order to utilize the caves as bunkers, the missile will need, shortly before its firing, to be moved.” Kirov traced the movement with a series of dots on a legal pad, having first sketched in the mouth of the cave. “The missile, let us say an hour before its anticipated launch—remember that we are now going to operate without effective camouflage—is—see here? brought out through the mouth of the cave. Then it makes a sharp right turn (or left turn, it does not matter) for a hundred meters. It then is made to recede, from the level of the cave entrance, oh, another hundred meters. So that when the moment comes to fire, the missile launcher and the missile are actually parallel to the long axis of the cave. What this means is that the missile controls can remain within the safety of the cave. Indeed, however many ground personnel are involved, they can safely reside within the cave during the actual launch.”
“How do you plan to move the missile and its launcher?”
“Precisely the right question to ask. What we will need to do—there are other ways of handling this problem, but this I think is the simplest—is to construct railroad tracks that describe the passage I have just drawn here. Not only the missile, then, but also the two tanks are at the appropriate moment hauled along the tracks. You will note that the tracks here”—he pointed to the sharp V he had drawn—“have to take into account turning the missile around. Otherwise, the missile would be pointing in the opposite direction. So the missile will, having made its right turn, swerve first left, and then back up into its rest position. There, the angle of the missile will need to be rechecked, and of course the azimuth at which it is designed to head.”
“Very well. A couple of hundred meters of railroad track don’t take long to lay. Is it your recommendation that work on this should be simultaneous with work inside the cave?”
“It is. There is no security reason to disguise a railroad track, which is useful for many conventional operations. And there is no reason to delay getting the missile ready, as the Kremlin has ordered, ‘as quickly as possible’ for that reason. So kindly add that to your list of things that need to be done by your detachments.”
“I understand.”
“Very well, Colonel. I leave it to you to organize a Soviet detachment to help me and my team with the extraction. The first job is the removal of the flooring. We shall be busy with a thousand details. We check the humidity every week, of course, and the batteries. But we will be well occupied. How long do you estimate at your end, so I can tell Moscow when we will be ready?”
The colonel frowned. He was wondering whether it should be organized as a day-and-night operation. The more people involved, the greater the risk of exposure. He sketched for a moment on his pad. “Our end of the operation should be completed in four working days. If Moscow needs quicker action than that, we can do it in two and a half days. I leave it to you to communicate with Moscow on the matter. As for the Cubans, we will simply tell them that an anti-aircraft gun of an experimental nature is being assembled, and that Moscow has decreed that this be done under security. That’s all they need to know. That’s all, come to think of it, that anybody needs to know.” Kirov too was taking notes.
“Yes, Colonel. I will get the answer to the day-and-night shift question in my communication at fourteen hundred. I shall summon my men and tell them to prepare for our operation. As soon as you have installed the camouflage on the existing opening of the cave, we will remove the manhole cover and, little by little, the surrounding plates. And, Colonel, I shall need to consult with my people on a very private basis and more frequently than under existing arrangements. I shall need private quarters nearby. I notice that Barracks L on the south side of the cave has not been used for a few weeks. Could I install myself there?”
The colonel pulled out a map and studied it. He picked up the telephone and called the quartermaster. Was he planning anything for Barracks L? “A what? A special clinic for venereal disease treatment? Well, postpone that until further notice, and mark down that Barracks L is for the exclusive use of Major Kirov and his Special/Tec detachment.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
He got the key to Barracks L, which in anticipation of its use by the medical unit was spotlessly clean, with utilitarian furniture, a few beds, and even a precious air conditioner in the principal office. He dispatched one of his assistants to make a copy of the main key.
After a hastily eaten dinner at the officers’ mess, Kirov went to the barracks building and turned on the little radio transmitter he had put on the top rack of the coat closet that afternoon. Tamayo was waiting at the hotel for his signal.
“All clear. I’ll
be waiting for you.”
Tamayo drove through the gate, showed his identification, and walked over to Barracks L, carrying the briefcase of Captain Pushkin.
Its lock was strong, and Kirov looked about for something to serve as a crowbar.
“Permit me, Anatoly,” Ingenio Tamayo said. He bent over the case, after pulling a small leather pouch from his pocket, about the size one would require for a set of reading glasses. The tools of one of his trades were there and in a minute or two with the keys he snapped open the latches.
Kirov lifted out a batch of papers.
He read them with avid interest. Tamayo was quiet, suppressing his impatience by scanning a copy of Playboy he had got from the black market.
He stole a glance at Kirov, whose expressive face was contorted. Finally Kirov put the papers down.
“Tell me,” Tamayo said. “Anything special? Routine stuff?”
“Much of it is routine. Instructions for some technical improvements, using the material in that aluminum suitcase, probably: longer-lasting batteries; fresh fuses, that kind of thing. Two or three manuals governing care of the electrical system. How to use a new meter to check on the internal guidance points X and Y.”
“That all?”
“No. There is a secret letter to Colonel Bilensky. It instructs him to wait until midnight tonight when the camp is quiet. He is then to send two guards to my quarters to bring me to the colonel. The colonel is to advise me that I am charged with treason and that for reasons of national security he is there and then conducting a summary court-martial. He is to find me guilty as charged, and to order my execution. Before dawn tomorrow. That all of this has been done is to be confirmed by Captain Pushkin at the regular ten o’clock broadcast tomorrow morning.”
Mongoose, R.I.P. Page 27