Moments later, Wynne knocked on the door. Penkovsky let him in, shut the door, and finally allowed himself to smile.
“I can’t believe it, Greville,” he said in English, grabbing Wynne by the shoulders. “I just can’t believe it!”
Wynne detailed the next step. There would be a formal dinner for the delegation, good food and drink. Then, after everyone was in bed and the hallways were empty, Penkovsky would be expected in room 360.
* * *
In room 360, two agents of MI6 waited with Joe Bulik and a second CIA man, George Kisevalter, who had experience running Soviet agents. They’d arranged a couch and chairs around a coffee table and set out a few bottles of wine.
Penkovsky showed up right on time. He took a seat.
“What do we speak, what language?” Kisevalter began in Russian. “How’s your English?”
“My English stinks,” Penkovsky said. “Let’s speak Russian.”
The Soviet officer lit a cigarette. “Well, gentlemen, let’s get to work.”
Penkovsky began with his own story. He was an only child, raised by a single mother. He’d graduated from Kiev Artillery School at age twenty, just as World War II began, and fought his way across Europe in an anti-tank regiment, sustaining serious wounds from a shell fragment that fractured his jaw and knocked out six teeth. After the war he applied for military intelligence training, joined the GRU, and rose to the rank of full colonel.
Penkovsky described his job. He gave details of how the GRU was organized. He named Soviet agents working in Europe. He talked for over three hours.
“I wish that your governments, and I consider them both my governments, trust me as their own soldier,” he said.
Then he went to his room to get some sleep.
The American and British agents looked at each other—stunned and absolutely convinced. That was no chicken feed they’d just heard.
The two CIA men carried the wine bottles they’d emptied during the meeting out to the street and dropped them in a trash can. No need for anyone on the hotel staff to think anything interesting had happened that night in room 360.
LIGHT THE CANDLE
EARLY ON THE MORNING OF May 5, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, a man in a white-and-silver space suit sat in a tiny capsule, hemmed in by panels of gauges and switches. This was Navy-pilot-turned-astronaut Alan Shepard. Three weeks after Yuri Gagarin’s launch, the United States was about to attempt its first manned space flight.
And, unlike the Soviets, the Americans were going to do it on live television.
Eventually.
Shepard had been strapped into his seat for four hours. The countdown kept stopping as technicians made final checks. At fifteen minutes to takeoff, they paused again to wait for clouds over the launch site to float past. Shepard didn’t think he could make it. He’d been trained to handle any emergency—except this.
“Gordo!” he said over his headset.
Fellow astronaut Gordon Cooper answered from the control room. “Go, Alan.”
“Man, I gotta pee.”
“You what?”
“I’ve been in here forever,” Shepard said. “Check and see if I can get out quickly.”
“Hold on.”
Cooper checked with the scientists. The answer was no.
Shepard said, “Tell ’em I’m going to let it go in my suit.”
“No!”
Cooper reminded Shepard that his body was covered with sensors and electrical wires; he’d short-circuit the system.
So turn off the juice for a minute, Shepard suggested.
After some discussion, the technical team agreed.
“Okay, Alan. Power’s off,” Cooper reported.
None of this conversation was included in the official transcript NASA would later release to the media. Nor was Shepard’s clearly audible “ahhhhhh.”
Oxygen flowing through the astronaut’s suit dried it quickly. Now totally focused on the job ahead, he lost patience when there was yet another delay.
“Why don’t you just fix your little problem,” Shepard said, “and light this candle.”
* * *
Evelyn Lincoln watched the countdown on a black-and-white television in her White House office. A tall white rocket with UNITED STATES painted down its side stood on the launch pad. At the very top was the astronaut’s little black capsule. The countdown hit two minutes.
Lincoln stepped into the Cabinet Room, where Kennedy was in a meeting. She leaned over the president’s shoulder. “Two minutes.”
“Two minutes to launch,” Kennedy announced to the group.
He stood and walked into Lincoln’s office. He’d been nervous about this launch for days. That was America on that Florida launch pad. Not just an American astronaut, but American technology, American pride. The country—and Kennedy personally—had been taking a pounding. Gagarin. Bay of Pigs. Could he handle another loss now? With the whole world tuned in?
Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk crowded around the TV. Kennedy watched, arms folded, as the countdown hit zero.
The rocket lifted off the ground and shot smoothly into the sky.
Shepard’s flight was not quite like Gagarin’s. He didn’t orbit earth—he sped 116 miles up, reached space, and arced back through the atmosphere. The capsule’s parachute opened, and he splashed down in the ocean. The whole thing was over in fifteen minutes.
An assistant press secretary stuck his head into Lincoln’s office and said, “The astronaut is in the helicopter.”
Kennedy smiled. He could finally relax.
“It’s a success,” he said.
A badly needed one. Cheers echoed through the West Wing.
* * *
The next day, Oleg Penkovsky flew home from London. It had been a successful trip, in more ways than one.
Penkovsky had spent his days with his fellow Russians, touring British factories and watching presentations about products the Soviets might like to buy. After each tour, a member of the Soviet delegation would slip back into the factory to photograph the equipment.
The British pretended not to notice. It was all part of the plan.
At night, back at the hotel, the British treated their guests to big dinners and endless drinks. After everyone went to bed, Penkovsky would sneak down to room 360.
In a series of late-night meetings, with tape recorders rolling, Penkovsky shared secret details about Soviet weapons technology. He revealed Khrushchev’s plans in the case of nuclear war. He looked at photos of Soviet missiles taken at various May Day parades and identified each one, explaining its capabilities.
The United States and Britain had never had a source of information like this.
Why was he betraying his country? From a complex mix of motives, it seemed. He wanted to save the world from Khrushchev. He was disillusioned with Soviet life, the lack of freedom, the constant fear.
“The people are afraid to do anything,” he said, “because if they open their mouths they will lose even the little bit they have.”
He wanted a better life—nice clothes, money in the bank. He shamelessly produced a shopping list, including a sheet of paper on which he’d traced the feet of his wife and daughter, so he’d be sure to bring home the right size shoes.
Also, he reveled in the role of Cold War spy, a real-life James Bond. He looked forward to receiving the personal thanks of Queen Elizabeth and President Kennedy.
“You could throw me on a U.S. airplane to Washington, D.C.,” he suggested at one meeting. “I could meet the president and fly right back.”
“Okay, Oleg, someday.”
When his plane landed in Moscow, Penkovsky collected his two large suitcases. They were stuffed with electric razors, cigarette lighters, stockings, lipstick, perfume, and one set of false teeth. It was illegal to bring all this Western loot into the Soviet Union, but Penkovsky breezed through customs without a search—the goodies were for his bosses, and t
hey made sure he wasn’t bothered. Taking advantage of this, Penkovsky sneaked in a tiny Minox camera, a favorite device of fictional spies. And real spies.
On May 8, after a routine day at work in Moscow, he ducked out to a phone booth and dialed a number he’d been given by his new friends in London. He let it ring three times, then hung up. He waited one minute, dialed the same number, let it ring three times, and hung up.
Five rings would have signaled that something was wrong.
Three rings meant “All is well.”
* * *
A week later, in Ottawa, Canada, John Kennedy made the terrible mistake of trying to plant a tree.
It was a ceremonial planting, meant to symbolize the friendship between two great nations, and Kennedy, in the spirit of the event, grabbed a shovel. He scooped a mound of dirt—and felt an explosion in his back. By the time he made it back to Air Force One, he could no longer walk without help.
This was Kennedy’s life. There were days when his back ached relentlessly. And then there were the bad days.
But the timing of this injury was awful. Kennedy was about to head to Vienna, Austria, for a meeting with Nikita Khrushchev. The young president had not exactly made a great first impression on the world. He felt intense pressure to show the Soviet leader that he was smart and tough, that he could not be bullied.
Hobbling around the White House on crutches, Kennedy prepped for the summit by reviewing major issues of the Cold War. Spies, Cuba, the space race, the arms race—they were all connected, all part of the larger struggle to stop the expansion of Soviet power. And there was still another front in the global war, one likely to spark the next superpower clash: the German city of Berlin.
In the last year of World War II, American and British forces had fought their way into Germany from the west. The Soviets battled in from the east. The Allies crushed Germany between them, forcing its surrender, but could not agree on what should happen next. The result was that Germany was divided in two.
With U.S. support, West Germany became a free country with democratic elections. In East Germany, the Soviets installed a communist dictator who took his orders from Moscow. Germany’s capital city, Berlin, was also divided. West Berlin was part of free West Germany. East Berlin was part of communist East Germany.
This might have worked, except for one thing—Berlin was 110 miles inside of East Germany. West Berlin was essentially an island of freedom inside an oppressive police state.
Not surprisingly, every year more than 100,000 people moved across the border from East Berlin to West Berlin. This was a growing crisis for East Germany. The country’s population was draining away. Nikita Khrushchev ranted often about this, threatening to seize the entire city and unite it under communist rule.
Kennedy vowed to defend the freedom of West Berlin. But how? The Soviets could pour millions of soldiers into Germany. The United States was four thousand miles away. Realistically, the only way to stop a Soviet invasion would be with hydrogen bombs. But that would mean World War III. The ultimate failure.
As Eisenhower had warned, there were no easy answers.
On the plane to Europe, pain raging in his back, Kennedy studied Khrushchev’s speeches. He read a psychological analysis done by the CIA. Khrushchev was a showman and a gambler, agency doctors concluded. He liked to joke around, but often used this talent to deceive, to disguise his intelligence and ruthlessness—to set opponents up for the strike.
It was good stuff, very helpful. Kennedy was feeling confident. He knew the issues cold—and besides, when did he ever meet someone he couldn’t charm?
As his private train car rolled east toward Vienna, Nikita Khrushchev read the KGB’s files on John Kennedy. The American president was a child of wealth and privilege. He’d used his father’s money and connections to get ahead in politics. He was well-read and intelligent, but young and unproven. It’s quite possible he could be intimidated.
Khrushchev’s plan exactly. After all, he’d outlasted Stalin. He’d outmaneuvered his rivals. He’d crushed freedom movements in Eastern Europe. His side in the Cold War was on a winning streak. If Berlin was at the center of the chessboard, he had superior forces in and around that key square.
“Berlin is the testicles of the West,” Khrushchev was fond of saying. “Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin.”
VIENNA
“KHRUSHCHEV WILL BE HERE ANY minute,” Kennedy told his doctor early on the afternoon of June 3. “You’d better give me something for my back.”
In an upstairs bedroom at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Vienna, the president’s doctor gave him an injection to dull the pain. Kennedy was wearing the stiff back brace that he hid beneath his suit on bad days. He hoped this would be enough to get him through.
A few minutes later, a black limousine rolled to a stop on the gravel driveway in front of the building. Khrushchev jumped out, grinning. Kennedy willed himself to hop youthfully down the stairs toward the car. Photographers surrounded the leaders as they shook hands, both hatless in the light rain.
“I’m glad to see you,” Kennedy said through an interpreter.
“The pleasure is mutual.”
“Another handshake!” photographers called out.
More than fifteen hundred reporters had come to Vienna, making this the most closely watched meeting of leaders the world had ever seen. The two men shook hands again. Still smiling for the cameras, Khrushchev told Kennedy he had helped swing the American election.
“How?” Kennedy asked.
Khrushchev explained: he could have released Powers, the American pilot, right before the election. That would have helped Kennedy’s opponent, Vice President Nixon.
Kennedy, smiling for the cameras, said, “Don’t spread that story around.”
Just a little friendly banter.
Or was it? With Khrushchev, it was hard to be sure.
* * *
Inside, the leaders sat at a long table with their teams of aides and translators. Kennedy began by trying to outline his main point—that in the age of the Super, the United States and the Soviet Union must figure out how to compete with each other without allowing Cold War tensions to escalate to World War III.
Khrushchev jumped in, instantly angry. Communism was going to spread around the world, Khrushchev argued. The Americans could not accept this—that was the cause of Cold War tensions. To prevent war, the United States would have to back down. “The Soviet Union supports its ideas and holds them in high esteem,” Khrushchev said. “It cannot guarantee that these ideas will stop at its borders.”
Kennedy calmly explained that he understood that point of view—but still, the two powers must not push each other toward war.
And why, Khrushchev demanded, was that the Soviets’ responsibility? When would the United States learn that not everyone could be bullied?
“There was a man who bossed his son,” Khrushchev said. “Then his son grew up, but the father didn’t realize it and took him by the ear. ‘Look here, father,’ said the son, ‘I’m grown up. I have children of my own. You can’t treat me the way you used to.’
“We have grown up,” the Soviet leader added, in case anyone had missed the point of his little story. “You’re an old country. We’re a young country.”
They went back and forth all day, Kennedy on the defensive, Khrushchev hammering away. Take Cuba, Khrushchev scolded, take the Bay of Pigs. Was that the Americans’ idea of easing Cold War tensions?
“That was a mistake,” Kennedy said.
A mistake—who admits mistakes? Sensing weakness, Khrushchev pressed even harder. Kennedy came out of the room looking pale. He limped upstairs to the living quarters.
“How did it go?” Evelyn Lincoln asked.
“Not too well.”
The president was as furious with himself as he was with Khrushchev.
“He treated me like a little boy,” Kennedy fumed. “Like a little boy!”
* * *
/> “This man is very inexperienced, even immature,” Khrushchev told aides after the meeting. “This young man thinks that, backed by the might of the United States, he can lead us by the hand and make us dance to his tune.”
Later that evening six hundred guests gathered for a dinner gala at Vienna’s glittering Schönbrunn Palace. An orchestra played Mozart. Waiters in white gloves carried cocktails on silver trays. Everyone turned to watch John and Jackie Kennedy walk in—John wearing a hand-cut tuxedo (with his back brace underneath), Jackie dazzling the crowd in a sleeveless pink sequined gown. Nikita Khrushchev walked up in his baggy business suit with his wife, Nina, who sported a dark silk dress.
“Mr. Khrushchev,” shouted a photographer, “won’t you shake hands with Mr. Kennedy for us?”
Nikita turned to Jackie, grinning, “I’d like to shake her hand first.”
A bit later, when Jackie Kennedy made her way to a sofa, Nikita Khrushchev sat down beside the first lady and treated her to a barrage of jokes and boastful stories. She played along, mentioning Strelka, one of the dogs the Soviets had sent to space and brought safely home.
“I see one of your space dogs has just had puppies,” Jackie said. “Why don’t you send me one?”
Nikita threw back his head and laughed.
Nina watched from a nearby couch.
John walked over and nearly sat in her lap.
“He got halfway,” noted a New York Times reporter, “when he discovered to his horror he was about to sit on Mme. Khrushchev. The President of the United States quickly shifted to a chair and smiled an apology.”
It was that kind of day for John Kennedy.
* * *
Talks resumed the next morning in a conference room at the Soviet embassy.
Kennedy tried to set a new tone, bringing up an issue the two powers might see eye-to-eye on—the need to stop testing nuclear bombs. Both sides understood that these tests caused radioactive fallout that threatened the entire world. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had tested bombs in nearly three years. So why not, proposed Kennedy, sign a treaty to ban tests permanently?
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