Dimka was astonished by what he was reading. It meant he would win today’s argument, thanks to Natalya, but it was bad news for Cuba’s revolution. ‘This is even worse than Comrade Khrushchev feared!’ he said. ‘The CIA has sabotage teams in Cuba ready to destroy sugar mills and power stations. It’s guerrilla warfare! And they’re plotting to assassinate Castro!’
Filipov said desperately: ‘Can we rely on this information?’
Dimka looked at him. ‘What’s your opinion of the KGB, Comrade?’
Filipov shut up.
Dimka got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry to draw this meeting to a premature close,’ he said. ‘But I think the First Secretary needs to see this right away.’ He left the building.
He followed a path through the pine forest to Khrushchev’s white stucco villa. Inside, it was strikingly furnished with white curtains and furniture made of timber bleached like driftwood. He wondered who had picked such a radically contemporary style: certainly not the peasant Khrushchev who, if he noticed decor at all, would probably have preferred velvet upholstery and flower-patterned carpets.
Dimka found the leader on the upstairs balcony that looked over the bay. Khrushchev was holding a pair of powerful Komz binoculars.
Dimka was not nervous. Khrushchev had taken a liking to him, he knew. The boss was pleased with the way he stood up to the other aides. ‘I thought you would want to see this report right away,’ Dimka said. ‘Operation Mongoose—’
‘I just read it,’ Khrushchev interrupted. He handed the binoculars to Dimka. ‘Look over there,’ he said, pointing across the water towards Turkey.
Dimka put the binoculars to his eyes.
‘American nuclear missiles,’ said Khrushchev. ‘Aimed at my dacha!’
Dimka could not see any missiles. He could not see Turkey, which was 150 miles away in that direction. But he knew that this characteristically theatrical gesture by Khrushchev was essentially right. In Turkey, the US had deployed Jupiter missiles, obsolete but certainly not harmless: Dimka had this information from his Uncle Volodya in Red Army Intelligence.
Dimka was not sure what to do. Should he pretend he could see the missiles through the binoculars? But Khrushchev must know he could not.
Khrushchev solved the problem by snatching the binoculars back. ‘And do you know what I’m going to do?’ he said.
‘Please tell me.’
‘I’m going to let Kennedy know how it feels. I will deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba – aimed at his dacha!’
Dimka was speechless. He had not been expecting this. And he could not see it as a good idea. He agreed with his boss in wanting more military aid for Cuba, and he had been battling the Defence Ministry over that issue – but now Khrushchev was going too far. ‘Nuclear missiles?’ he repeated, trying to gain time to think.
‘Exactly!’ Khrushchev pointed to the KGB report on Operation Mongoose that Dimka was still clutching. ‘And that will convince the Politburo to support me. Poisoned cigars. Ha!’
‘Our official line has been that we will not deploy nuclear weapons in Cuba,’ Dimka said, in the manner of one who presents incidental information, rather than in an argumentative tone. ‘We have given the Americans that reassurance several times, and publicly.’
Khrushchev grinned with impish delight. ‘Then Kennedy will be all the more surprised!’
Khrushchev scared Dimka in this mood. The First Secretary was not a fool, but he was a gambler. If this scheme went wrong it could lead to a diplomatic humiliation that might bring about Khrushchev’s downfall as leader – and, by way of collateral damage, end Dimka’s career. Worse, it might provoke the American invasion of Cuba that it was intended to prevent – and his beloved sister was in Cuba. There was even a chance that it would spark the nuclear war that would end capitalism, Communism and, quite possibly, the human race.
On the other hand, Dimka could not help feeling excited. What a tremendous blow would be struck against the rich, smug Kennedy boys, against the global bully that was the United States, and against the whole capitalist-imperialist power bloc. If the gamble paid off, what a triumph it would be for the USSR and Khrushchev.
What should he do? He switched to practical mode and strained to think of ways to reduce the apocalyptic risks of the scheme. ‘We could start by signing a peace treaty with Cuba,’ he said. ‘The Americans could hardly object to that without admitting that they were planning to attack a poor Third World country.’ Khrushchev looked unenthusiastic but said nothing, so Dimka went on. ‘Then we could step up the supply of conventional weapons. Again, it would be awkward for Kennedy to protest: why shouldn’t a country buy guns for its army? Finally we could send the missiles—’
‘No,’ said Khrushchev abruptly. He never liked gradualism, Dimka reflected. ‘This is what we’ll do,’ Khrushchev went on. ‘We’ll ship the missiles secretly. We’ll put them in boxes labelled “drainage pipes”, anything. Even the ships’ captains won’t know what’s inside. We’ll send our artillerymen over to Cuba to assemble the launchers. The Americans won’t have any idea what we’re up to.’
Dimka felt a little sick, with both fear and exhilaration. It would be extraordinarily difficult to keep such a big project secret, even in the Soviet Union. Thousands of men would be involved in crating the weapons, sending them by train to the ports, opening them in Cuba and deploying them. Was it even possible to keep them all quiet?
However, he said nothing.
Khrushchev went on: ‘And then, when the weapons are launch-ready, we’ll make an announcement. It will be a fait accompli – the Americans will be helpless to do anything about it.’
It was just the kind of grand dramatic gesture Khrushchev loved, and Dimka realized he would never talk him out of it. He said cautiously: ‘I wonder how President Kennedy will react to such an announcement.’
Khrushchev made a scornful noise. ‘He’s a boy – inexperienced, timid, weak.’
‘Of course,’ said Dimka, though he feared Khrushchev might be underestimating the young President. ‘But they have midterm elections on the sixth of November. If we revealed the missiles during the campaign, Kennedy would come under heavy pressure to do something drastic, to avoid humiliation at the polls.’
‘Then you have to keep the secret until the sixth of November.’
Dimka said: ‘Who does?’
‘You do. I’m putting you in charge of this project. You’ll be my liaison with the Defence Ministry, who will have to carry it out. It will be your job to make sure they don’t let the secret leak before we’re ready.’
Dimka was shocked enough to blurt out: ‘Why me?’
‘You hate that prick Filipov. Therefore I can trust you to ride him hard.’
Dimka was too aghast to wonder how Khrushchev knew he hated Filipov. The army was being given a near-impossible task – and Dimka would get the blame if it went wrong. This was a catastrophe.
But he knew better than to say so. ‘Thank you, Nikita Sergeyevitch,’ he said formally. ‘You can rely on me.’
15
The GAZ-13 limousine was called a Seagull because of its streamlined American-style rear wings. It could reach one hundred miles per hour, just, although it was uncomfortable at such speeds on Soviet roads. It was available in two-tone burgundy and cream with whitewall tyres, but Dimka’s was black.
He sat in the back as it drove on to the quayside at Sevastopol, Ukraine. The town stood on the tip of the Crimean Peninsula where it poked out into the Black Sea. Twenty years ago it had been flattened by German bombing and artillery fire. After the war it had been rebuilt as a cheerful seaside resort with Mediterranean balconies and Venetian arches.
Dimka got out and looked at the ship moored at the dock, a timber freighter with oversize hatches designed to take tree trunks. Under the hot summer sun, stevedores were loading skis and clearly labelled cartons of cold-weather clothing, to give the impression that the ship was headed to the frozen north. Dimka had devised the deliberately misleading code name Operation Anadyr, after a town in Siberia.
A second Seagull pulled on to the dock and parked behind Dimka’s. Four men in Red Army Intelligence uniforms got out and stood waiting for his instructions.
A railway line ran alongside the dock, and a massive gantry straddled the line, positioned to shift cargo directly from railcar to ship. Dimka looked at his wristwatch. ‘The fucking train should be here by now.’
Dimka was wound up tight. He had never been so tense in all his life. He had not even known what stress was until he started this project.
The senior Red Army man was a colonel called Pankov. Despite his rank, he addressed Dimka with formal respect. ‘You want me to make a call, Dmitriy Ilich?’
A second officer, Lieutenant Meyer, said: ‘I think it’s coming.’
Dimka looked along the track. In the distance he could see, approaching slowly, a line of low-slung open railcars loaded with long wooden crates.
Dimka said: ‘Why does everyone think it’s all right to be fifteen fucking minutes late?’
Dimka was worried about spies. He had visited the chief of the local KGB station and reviewed his list of suspected people in the area. They were all dissidents: poets, priests, painters of abstract art and Jews who wanted to go to Israel – typical Soviet malcontents, about as threatening as a cycling club. Dimka had them all arrested anyway, but not one looked dangerous. Almost certainly there were real CIA agents in Sevastopol, but the KGB did not know who they were.
A man in captain’s uniform came from the ship across the gangway and addressed Pankov. ‘Are you in charge here, Colonel?’
Pankov inclined his head towards Dimka.
The captain became less deferential. ‘My ship can’t go to Siberia,’ he said.
‘Your destination is classified information,’ Dimka said. ‘Do not speak of it.’ In Dimka’s pocket was a sealed envelope that the captain was to open after he had sailed from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. At that point he would learn he was going to Cuba.
‘I need cold-weather lubricating oil, antifreeze, de-icing equipment—’
Dimka said: ‘Shut the fuck up.’
‘But I have to protest. Siberian conditions—’
Dimka said to Lieutenant Meyer: ‘Punch him in the mouth.’
Meyer was a big man and he hit hard. The captain fell back, his lips bleeding.
Dimka said: ‘Go back aboard your ship, wait for orders, and keep your stupid mouth shut.’
The captain left, and the men on the quay turned their attention back to the approaching train.
Operation Anadyr was huge. The approaching train was the first of nineteen similar, all required to bring just this first missile regiment to Sevastopol. Altogether, Dimka was sending fifty thousand men and 230,000 tons of equipment to Cuba. He had a fleet of eighty-five ships.
He still did not see how he was to keep the whole thing secret.
Many of the men in authority in the Soviet Union were careless, lazy, drunk, and just plain stupid. They misunderstood their instructions, they forgot, they approached challenging tasks half-heartedly then gave up, and sometimes they just decided they knew better. Reasoning with them was useless; charm was worse. Being nice to them made them think you were a fool who could be ignored.
The train inched alongside the ship, its steel-on-steel brakes squealing. Each purpose-built railcar carried just one wooden crate eighty feet long and nine feet square. A crane operator mounted the gantry and entered its control cabin. Stevedores leaped on to the railcars and began readying the crates for loading. A company of soldiers had travelled with the train, and now they began to help the stevedores. Dimka was relieved to see that the missile regiment flashes had been removed from their uniforms, in accordance with his instructions.
A man in a civilian suit jumped down off a car, and Dimka was irritated to see that it was Yevgeny Filipov, his opposite number at the Defence Ministry. Filipov approached Pankov, as the captain had, but Pankov said: ‘Comrade Dvorkin is in command here.’
Filipov shrugged. ‘Just a few minutes late,’ he said with a satisfied air. ‘We were delayed—’
Dimka noticed something. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Fuck it.’
Filipov said: ‘Something wrong?’
Dimka stamped his foot on the concrete quay. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’
‘What is it?’