Fallout

by Steve Sheinkin

  “I’m just fed up!” Eisenhower ranted, back at the U.S. ambassador’s residence that evening. “I’m just fed up!”

  As if the Soviets were angels! As if they didn’t believe in spying! The president had hoped there would at least be a chance to talk things through with Khrushchev, but the man insisted on playing the victim, putting on a show. Ike flew home in a foul mood. His dream of ending his presidency with a step toward peace was shattered.

  Khrushchev stuck around Paris to give one more performance.

  At a press conference packed with reporters and spectators, the Soviet leader strutted onto the stage, clapping his hands as some in the audience hooted and booed.

  “If you boo us and attack us again, look out!” he threatened. “We will hit you so hard that there won’t be a squeal out of you!”

  Khrushchev was well aware he was pushing the world closer to war. It was all part of the game. The more frightened people were of the Soviet Union, the more power he held in his hands.

  Members of the press shouted questions over the bedlam. Khrushchev, as always, had a story at the ready, telling the crowd that Eisenhower and his U-2 pilot reminded him of a trespassing cat. “If at the mine where I was raised, a cat was caught climbing into the pigeon coop, it would be grabbed by the tail and thrown to the ground. After that, the cat understood better the lesson he’d been taught.”

  * * *

  A week later, a somber President Eisenhower sat at his desk in the Oval Office, addressing the nation on live TV.

  “Tonight I want to talk with you about the remarkable events last week in Paris and their meaning to our future.”

  Ike defended the U-2 flights as necessary when dealing with a secretive and unpredictable adversary. He blamed Khrushchev for the failure of the summit. The United States would remain strong, he vowed—but Americans should not view the Cold War as business as usual. Throughout human history, rival powers had built weapons and moved inevitably toward the next war. This must not be allowed to happen again.

  “Whether started deliberately or accidentally, global war would leave civilization in a shambles,” Eisenhower warned the nation. “In a nuclear war, there can be no victors—only losers.”

  * * *

  Three months later, on his thirty-first birthday, Francis Gary Powers was led by guards onto—appropriately enough—the stage of a massive theater.

  High-profile trials in the Soviet Union were nothing more than scripted theatrics. Playing the role of Powers’s defense lawyer was Mikhail Grinev, a wispy-goateed attorney whose job was to lose important cases to the government. Grinev had represented Khrushchev’s rival for power, Lavrenty Beria. Right before they shot him in the head.

  Barbara Powers sat in a private box, silently praying. She and Frank’s parents had gotten permission to come to Moscow to attend the trial. She watched as guards guided Frank to the witness stand. He looked healthy but thin, swimming in the boxy suit they’d given him. He was squinting through the bright TV lights, trying to find his family in the crowd.

  Three judges in dress uniforms sat at a table center stage. One of the judges, speaking Russian, read the official charge of spying. Powers and his family listened over headsets to an English translation.

  “Do you understand the charge brought against you?”

  “Yes,” Powers said.

  “Do you plead guilty of the charge?”

  “Yes, I plead guilty.”

  He said he was sorry—because he genuinely was. And because it was his only chance to avoid the firing squad. “There was, I suppose, a great increase in tension in the world,” he explained to the court, “and I am sincerely sorry I had anything to do with this.”

  As the trial moved to the question of sentencing, the prosecutor attacked Powers as a dangerous criminal, the foolish tool of a reckless government bent on starting a new world war.

  “I have all grounds,” the prosecutor concluded, “to ask the court to pass an exceptional sentence on the defendant.”

  I was right, Powers thought. They’re making an example of me.

  “But, taking into account Defendant Powers’s sincere repentance before the Soviet court of the crime which he committed, I do not insist on the death sentence being passed on him, and ask the court to sentence the defendant to fifteen years’ imprisonment.”

  Flash bulbs popped in Powers’s eyes. He was in shock, unable to react.

  Barbara’s first thought was Thank God he will not be executed.

  Frank’s father, Oliver, leapt to his feet, bellowing, “Give me fifteen years here! I’d rather get death!”

  LITTLE BOY BLUE

  “DROP DEAD, YOU SCUM!”

  This was how New Yorkers greeted Nikita Khrushchev as his ship docked at a Manhattan pier a month after Frank Powers’s trial in Moscow. Longshoremen were supposed to help moor incoming ships—instead, they shouted curses. A banner draped over a boat floating nearby offered the Soviet leader a poem of welcome:

  Roses are red,

  Violets are blue,

  Stalin dropped dead.

  How about you?

  Well, Khrushchev was used to such rudeness. The way American newspapers caricatured his portly build and bald head, portraying him like some stubby supervillain sprung from the pages of one of their ludicrous comic books.

  That was fine. Let them laugh. Just so long as they respected the might of the Soviet Union.

  * * *

  Khrushchev was in New York for a meeting of the United Nations, and it was here that he joined forces with the controversial new ruler of Cuba, Fidel Castro.

  Just thirty-four, Castro had overthrown a corrupt tyrant and seized control of Cuba less than two years before. Ever since, he’d been inching closer to communism. Closer to the Soviet Union. Now, outside a hotel in Harlem, in front of crowds and reporters, Castro and Khrushchev met for the first time. The bearded six-foot-two Cuban embraced the five-foot-two Russian, and Khrushchev would later describe the pleasant sensation of nestling in the arms of a bear.

  There was opportunity in that hug.

  The United States had dominated and exploited Cuba for decades. Now Castro was rejecting American influence, kicking out American businesses, setting a defiant example that other countries might choose to follow. Cuba was an island just ninety miles from the coast of Florida. A square on the American side of the Cold War chessboard. Khrushchev particularly admired Castro’s combative style. He was an attacker—big, loud, radiating intensity and confidence.

  At the United Nations, before an audience of world leaders in dark suits, Fidel Castro strode to the front of the room in green army fatigues. Launching into the longest speech in U.N. history, he chided the United States for supporting dictators around the world, just because they sided with America in the Cold War. He mocked Senator John Kennedy, a candidate for U.S. president, calling him a “millionaire, illiterate and ignorant.”

  Khrushchev laughed and cheered and pounded his desk, loving every minute—all 269 minutes—of the speech.

  * * *

  President Eisenhower saw Fidel Castro as a growing threat. A communist country right off the shores of America was bad enough. But the real danger, from the U.S. government’s point of view, was that Castro would spread his revolution through Latin America and beyond.

  With the full knowledge and support of the president, CIA planners and gadget-makers began devising plots to humiliate the Cuban leader. One idea was to poison Castro’s cigars with drugs that would make him hallucinate and act crazy. Another was to sprinkle a special chemical into his shoes that, once absorbed into the bloodstream, would cause his famous beard to fall out.

  And then there was the more direct approach.

  Just a short cab ride from the U.N. building, a silver-haired man in diamond cuff links checked into New York’s Plaza Hotel. This was Johnny Rosselli, Handsome Johnny to his friends. To the government, he was a high-ranking organized crime figure suspected of several murders. But the government was n
ot looking to arrest Rosselli. It was looking to hire him.

  American mobsters hated Castro for shutting down the casinos they’d been running in Cuba. For the right price, the CIA figured, maybe the mob would do the government’s dirty work. Rather than deal with the mobsters directly, the agency sent what’s known in the language of spies as a cut-out. A middleman, in other words. Plausible deniability. The cut-out, a private detective named Robert Maheu, made his way up to Rosselli’s suite at the Plaza and got right to the point. Maheu was authorized, at the highest levels, to offer Johnny Rosselli $150,000 to murder Fidel Castro.

  This story is well documented in the CIA’s own files.

  Rosselli said he’d do it. Not for money, forget the one-fifty. He’d do it, he said, as a patriotic American.

  * * *

  “The Soviets have made a spectacle before the world of the U-2 flight and the trial of our pilot,” U.S. Senator John Kennedy told American voters, “and have treated this nation with hostility and contempt.”

  With the election just weeks away, Senator Kennedy, the Democratic nominee for president, warned that America was losing the Cold War. Losing in Cuba, in space, everywhere. He vowed to do better, to protect Americans from the Soviet advance.

  Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican candidate, fired back that Kennedy lacked experience and toughness. Kennedy was the “kind of man Mr. Khrushchev will make mincemeat of,” Nixon charged.

  Nikita Khrushchev followed the election with great interest. For the first time, American presidential candidates debated on live television, and Khrushchev was fascinated by the back-and-forth combat. Kennedy seemed to handle the pressure better. He was quick-witted and well-informed. He sweated less, for what that was worth.

  When reporters asked Khrushchev which candidate the Soviets favored, he shrugged. “As we Russians say, they are two boots of the same pair.”

  That was the public line. In private, he wanted Kennedy. He’d spent time with Nixon and found him abrasive and inflexible. The young Kennedy might be easier to deal with. Easier to intimidate.

  Was there some way Khrushchev could influence the election? Perhaps. He had Francis Gary Powers in prison. The Americans wanted to get Powers back. Khrushchev was willing to let the man go if there was something in it for the Soviets. But if he sent the pilot home now, it would be a win for Eisenhower and his vice president, Richard Nixon.

  So why not wait a bit?

  John Kennedy won a very close election. For the rest of his life, Nikita Khrushchev would claim that he had cast what he called “the deciding ballot.”

  * * *

  January 19, 1961, was a cold, gray morning in Washington, D.C. Outside the Capitol building, crews of workers set up platforms and chairs for the inauguration ceremony the next day.

  A black car stopped in front of the White House and John Kennedy jumped out. This would be his home in twenty-four hours. For now, he was here to meet the outgoing president.

  At forty-three, Kennedy was the youngest person ever elected president. Eisenhower was the first president to serve into his seventies. Privately, Kennedy had mocked Ike for being old and out of touch. Eisenhower had dismissed Kennedy as “that young whippersnapper.” Also “Little Boy Blue.” But the transition from one president to the next was too important for politics or personal feelings. They were on the same side, after all. And there was business to discuss.

  Across the president’s desk in the Oval Office, Eisenhower warned Kennedy of the many Cold War challenges ahead.

  “It’s a high-stakes poker game,” Ike said. “There’s no easy solution.”

  Of course the most pressing issue was nuclear war. How to avoid it. If necessary, how to fight it.

  Eisenhower described the procedure a president would use to launch an attack. There was no big red button. There was the “football”—a black briefcase carried by military officers, handed off from one to the other, kept close to the president at all times. Inside the football were folders with the secret commands needed to launch a nuclear strike.

  The president would give his orders to the Pentagon by phone. From there, the orders would be relayed to bombers, submarines, and missile bases. The crews were trained, drilled, ready to go at a moment’s notice. To achieve a maximum state of readiness, the Air Force kept some of its bombers airborne at all times. Fully loaded with hydrogen bombs, the bombers could be refueled in the air, giving them the range to reach Soviet targets. Even if Khrushchev launched a surprise attack, even if American cities and military bases lay in smoking ruins, the president could still order those bombers to deliver a devastating counterpunch.

  “Watch this,” Eisenhower said, lifting a phone on his desk. “Opal Drill Three!”

  He set down the receiver. He told Kennedy to check his watch. Then he stood and turned to the French doors leading out to the White House lawn.

  In exactly three minutes a Marine helicopter set down on the grass.

  Kennedy was in awe.

  Three minutes. A football, a phone call, a few commands.

  Three minutes, and he could be on his way to a bunker carved into a mountain.

  Three minutes, and he could be leading his country into World War III.

  * * *

  Francis Gary Powers shivered through a long winter in a tiny cell in Vladimir Prison, 150 miles east of Moscow. He shared the twelve-by-eight-foot space with Zigurd Kruminsh, a political prisoner from Latvia who’d been convicted of treason for trying to free his country from Soviet rule. They had two beds, a table, and a bucket for use between trips to the bathroom. A window high in the wall showed a tiny square of the sky.

  Barbara Powers moved in with her mother in Milledgeville, Georgia. Reporters followed her around at first, snapping photos of the wife of the famous spy pilot, before gradually losing interest. Still, she didn’t exactly blend in—driving around town in the Mercedes convertible she and Frank had bought in Turkey, with Eck von Heinerberg in the passenger seat.

  One hundred miles northwest, in Atlanta’s federal penitentiary, the FBI finally gave up on trying to flip Rudolf Abel. The man simply would not crack. Three years into a thirty-year sentence, the Soviet spy battled boredom and loneliness with letters to his wife and daughter, crossword puzzles, and chess in the prison yard. He got a set of paints and worked on a portrait of John Kennedy.

  Somewhere in New England, Reino Hayhanen was living under a new name, drinking too much, terrified of being hunted down by Soviet agents.

  Jimmy Bozart, the hero paperboy, was back in college in upstate New York, driving a new Oldsmobile given to him as a reward by a wealthy citizen.

  In Miami, Handsome Johnny Rosselli began putting together a team of mobsters for his special assignment in Cuba.

  At a secret training base in a forest near Moscow, twenty young pilots competed for the honor of being strapped to the top of a rocket. American pilots, in their own secret spots, were doing the same. Both sides were racing to launch the first man into space.

  In Washington, a day before becoming president of the United States, John Kennedy stepped out of the White House into a cold morning. “No easy matters will ever come to you as president,” Eisenhower had told him. “If they are easy, they’ll be settled at a lower level.”

  Up on Capitol Hill, crews continued assembling the stands for the inauguration. A light snow began to fall.

  PART 2

  THE HEDGEHOG AND THE PANTS

  ORIGIN STORY

  “THIS IS HOW IT FEELS to be killed.”

  That thought flashed through U.S. Navy Lieutenant John Kennedy’s mind as a Japanese destroyer sliced his boat in half on the moonless night of August 2, 1943. Kennedy’s back slammed into the boat’s steel hull, a gas tank exploded, and by the light of the flames he watched the enemy ship disappear into the dark.

  He shouted, “Everybody into the water!”

  Most of the thirteen-man crew were already overboard, paddling between floating puddles of burning fuel. As the fire
s burned down, the men’s eyes, which had adjusted to the bright flames, could see nothing. Following each other’s voices, they gathered at a floating chunk of what had been the bow of their small patrol-torpedo boat, PT-109.

  Kennedy and his crew had been patrolling passages in the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific, one of many World War II battlegrounds between the United States and Japan. The situation was dire. The bow of PT-109 was sinking. Two of the sailors were dead, and several wounded. Patrick McMahon was hurt the worst, with severe burns on his face, arms, and feet.

  Sunrise made the situation even more desperate. The closest bases were all Japanese. If anyone was likely to see them, it was the enemy. Kennedy had to get his men out of the water—the shark-infested water—but how?

  “We’ll swim to that small island,” he told the crew, pointing to Kasolo Island, a dark shape about four miles in the distance. He hoped it was uninhabited. “I’ll take McMahon with me. The rest of you can swim together on this plank.”

  Someone said, “Will we ever get out of this?”

  “It can be done,” Kennedy said. “We’ll do it.”

  Kennedy used his knife to cut a strip of material from McMahon’s life vest, leaving one end attached to the vest and locking the other end between his teeth. He began to swim, pulling the wounded man along with him. They stopped to rest every fifteen minutes.

  It took five hours to reach the island.

  Gasping for air and vomiting salt water, their legs sliced open by sharp coral, Kennedy dragged McMahon onto the beach. Both men collapsed with their feet still in the sea. The other men crawled onto the sand. Just minutes later, they heard the hum of an engine. Everyone dove under bushes and watched a Japanese naval boat cruise past the island on its way to a nearby base.