The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  “I’m late for my workout,” he said, trying to pull away.

  Her hand closed gently on his penis. “You won’t need that sort of exercise this morning,” she said. “I have a much better idea.” Frash was surprised to discover that Albert and Ali both agreed to the proposition, but even as they began to make love he wondered if this would turn out to be a mistake.

  111MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1961, 11:30 A.M.Arlington, Virginia

  Like any large organization, the CIA had its own rules, values, prescribed behaviors and its own distinct culture; and after so long in the business and having lived through the transition from the OSS and a hot war to the CIA and a cold one, Arizona could read the organization in subtle ways. Today the signs were clear. Only a small number of people knew the specifics of the Cuban invasion, but everyone could sense that something important was afoot. George Zezulka, the third-floor security supervisor, had quit smoking a year ago but today he was chain-smoking Lucky Strikes. Edwin Razornik, a China analyst and impeccable dresser, was wearing one brown penny loafer and one black one. Wilma Washington, a secretary whose life away from the CIA was wrapped up in some sort of evangelical church, was wearing a red silk dress cut so low that her breasts nearly fell out when she breathed. Normally she wore drab dresses with high collars and complained about declining American morals; now she looked like a ten-dollar hooker on a Baltimore street corner. None of these people knew about Cuba, but all of them sensed that something was about to happen, the mass anticipation like a virus floating from person to person.

  Arizona had never romanticized the Company or its work. What they did was essential, dangerous and often dirty by normal standards. Cuba was a piece seated on the periphery of the world’s playing board, a cancer that some argued had to be surgically removed, and it was this assumption that made him doubt the mission’s objectives. Motives counted for nothing if an effort failed, as he suspected this one was bound to. Many of the invasion’s assumptions were flat-out false, but the architects of the operation were blinded by righteousness and a compulsion to revenge themselves against Castro, who had screwed them after they helped him defeat Batista. The landing site was poorly chosen, the air cover plan inadequate, and there was no hard or recent evidence that there would be a popular uprising to support the invaders. The expatriates would go in, the Cubans would react frantically, the Russians would condemn the act, and the U.S. would counter with a denial of involvement. He sensed that there had been too much concern about political cosmetics and not enough focus on the mission’s purely military aspects. Castro might be an amateur soldier, but his raggedy-ass troops had eventually done the job against Batista. The whole mission was a throwback, a step backward to the days of larger-scale military intervention. This had been Sylvia’s view, and she had shown poor judgment by making her opinion known outside her own chain of command. Had he not moved to extract her from the Cuban operation, her career would have been finished. Once a decision was made, the Company’s culture demanded enthusiastic cheerleaders, not skeptics, especially outspoken ones. Most especially, outspoken women.

  Arizona checked his watch. Were the invaders on the beach yet? Not that Cuba matters, he reminded himself; all that matters now is finding Frash. The timing of the invasion was predicated on information that came from Frash. When the operation failed, the inevitable hunt for scapegoats would begin, and if doubt settled on the veracity of Frash’s information, the searchlight would settle on him. He had no desire to be charged with altering information, so Sylvia and Valentine had to find the bastard. When that was done he would see to it that no trails led backward; officially Frash would be gone and would stay that way. Ironically, Gabler’s death had been transformed into an advantage. He had the logic worked out: someone had moved against the Company in Belgrade and two men had perished, along with a Soviet asset. He could weave a story out of this, patch the pieces together, sell it and make it stick—but only if Frash could be found and eliminated. Elsewhere in the Company the men in charge were entertaining visions of victory, of a parade through old Havana with Castro’s head on a bayonet. Arizona’s vision was solely on damage control. To win at chess, one ignored the current situation and examined the board in order to chart the next ten moves. Chess was played in the future, not the present.

  Wilma Washington brought him a pot of hot coffee and lingered to put sugar and cream in his cup. Her breasts strained to escape. “Nice dress,” Arizona said.

  She smiled. “Woke up this morning with the strangest feeling,” she said. “It was as if this dress insisted I put it on. Must be something in the air. Maybe it’s spring fever.”

  More like a plague, he thought as she marched out of his office swinging her hips.

  112MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1961, 6:35 P.M.Geneva

  The couples had separated to talk. Valentine opened a bottle of mineral water, turned on the radio and sat down to listen to a news bulletin.

  “Cuba claims that it has been invaded by American forces,” an announcer said. “A spokesman in the Cuban embassy in Paris has announced that a hostile force landed on Cuban soil early this morning with American naval and air support. The Cubans claim that these forces were stopped quickly and destroyed. There have been many news reports in recent months alleging that the Americans were training a secret army of Cuban expatriates, but there is no comment so far on today’s events from the United States.”

  Valentine looked up to see Sylvia in the doorway of the bedroom, her eyes dark, mouth open. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid assholes,” she whispered.

  “We have to tell the Russians,” Valentine said. “Right now.” He went next door and entered without knocking. The Russians were seated at a table, talking animatedly. “We’ve just heard on the radio that the Cubans are claiming they’ve been invaded by the U.S., or at least by a U.S.-supported military force.”

  “Which is probably true,” Sylvia said, stepping past him. “An operation has been planned for some time; I doubt that it will be a surprise to your people, but we felt you should know.”

  “Cuba doesn’t concern us,” Talia said quickly. “Our own interests remain paramount. Leave it to our governments to sort out Cuba. We need to concentrate on Frash and Lumbas, and nothing else must get in our way.”

  The Americans joined the Russians at the table again and the discussion lasted until early the next morning. In the end they agreed on a course of action. The Americans would concentrate on Frash, while the Soviets would focus on Frascetti and his connection to Lumbas. Communications between the two sides would be through the channel that had brought them together this time.

  113TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 1961, 7:30 A.M.Arlington, Virginia

  Arizona’s ashtray was overflowing and the desk was a chaos of stacks of handwritten notes, pencil stubs, twisted paper clips and dirty coffee cups. The reports from Cuba were fragmentary, but in Arizona’s mind the military issue had already been decided; Operation Pluto was a disaster of the first magnitude. Pluto, the arrogant, scheming god of the underworld, had turned out to be more like his Disney namesake. The Cuban expats were getting their asses kicked and the president was seething. It was a bad scene about to get worse. The only good thing about the whole fiasco was that he did not have to be at the White House. He had drawn communications relay duty and was on a secure telephone helping to pass the latest reports and developments to the Cabinet Room several miles away, where Kennedy’s people were alternating between grousing and pontificating.

  Nothing had gone right. The preemptive air strike had been intended to cripple Castro’s twenty-nine-bird air force, but bomb-damage assessment from U-2 photos showed that less than 20 percent of the dictator’s aircraft had been destroyed. Of all that could go wrong, this was the worst. Pluto had been predicated upon elimination of all Cuban warplanes; this would have limited the decision to the ground, where the fourteen-hundred-man invasion force could move against Havana with a reasonable margin of safety as their own air cover took out the tanks and troop concentrat
ions ahead of them. Now, Arizona guessed, all bets were off.

  As soon as the analysts saw the U-2 photos, only one decisive option was possible: an immediate and comprehensive second air strike. But Kennedy had refused, reminding the CIA of their own caveat—that this had to look like a Cuban expat operation. No second strike would be authorized until the invaders secured an airfield, declared their government to be in place and formally called for assistance. Only with a democratic government on the ground could the invaders assume the role of patriots requesting help from their American friends.

  The president’s stubborn refusal was the invaders’ death sentence. Arizona found this decision difficult to accept. The invasion’s cover story was already blown, so why was Kennedy refusing to face reality? One of the attacking B-26s had been painted to look like one of Castro’s aircraft. While the other air attackers struck Cuban targets, the decoy was flown to Miami, where the expat pilot told reporters that he had defected to join the cause. This event had gone as planned, but then one of the attacking B-26s had encountered engine trouble, turned around and landed at the municipal airport in Key West and the newspapers had photos. Who were these Cubans flying unmarked aircraft? The cover was shot.

  Arizona had been tracking the battle from radio reports, and what he heard was a nightmare. The initial target was three small beaches connected by tidal swamps. No escape routes, no safety valves. The original plan had called for an old-fashioned, full-scale amphibious assault near Trinidad on Cuba’s southern shore, but Kennedy’s people questioned this because it might deteriorate into a beachhead defensive action and force premature U.S. intervention. This logic had come to the fore early in March, so mission planners had been given only ten days to develop an alternative. They had settled on an area called the Bay of Pigs, which would require three separate landing forces to fight their way inland to link to a battalion of paratroopers who would be dropped ahead of them after sunrise. But unlike the Trinidad site, which offered the nearby Escambray Mountains as a refuge if the operation went sour, the Bay of Pigs provided no escape hatch. It was up and inland or die, with no margin for error.

  Problem after problem cropped up after the brigade landed. The reefs along the Bay of Pigs were supposed to be inconsequential, but coral tore the bottoms out of some of the little fiberglass boats used to land the troops, and waves capsized others. Some men drowned; many others had to swim ashore. Then Castro’s aircraft sank the USS Houston and another ship; the invasion force’s supplies and munitions were on the Houston, which meant that the invaders had only the equipment and ammo they carried ashore. Castro’s troops were supposed to be nowhere near the invasion zone, but on one of the three beaches the expats immediately ran into a heavily armed Cuban infantry company and got trapped in a deadly firefight. The plan called for guerrilla forces and anti-Castro insurgents to join the invaders, but none showed up. Every piece of information confirmed what Arizona had already concluded: the Bay of Pigs was inadequately planned and poorly executed. The only question now was how many of the fourteen hundred invaders would die in the effort. There would be hell to pay over this, and he guessed it would be the CIA that paid, especially when Congress learned that the $13 million it had authorized for the effort had burgeoned to more than $100 million.

  Ike had given approval to the initial plan, but Kennedy had inherited it and gone along with it because the planning was so far advanced. He had pressed for a one-year delay to study the situation better but had been advised that this was impossible; Cuban pilots were finishing flight training in Czechoslovakia, and by June 1 would return to Cuba with a squadron of Soviet MiG 17s. If the operation was delayed, the MiGs would annihilate the expat B-26s. It was now or never. Okay, Kennedy said, but this had better work. Not to worry, Mr. President.

  With one notable exception, Arizona’s role in Operation Pluto had been minor, but that exception put him and his career at risk. The intelligence on Cuban pilots training in Czechoslovakia had come from Lumbas. Now that Frash had disappeared there would be reason to question the Cuban pilot story; if it wasn’t true, then Arizona was responsible for the hurried attempt to bring Castro down. Frash was gone, Pluto was a disaster, and unless Valentine caught up with Frash, Arizona himself was in deep trouble. Kennedy’s opinion of the CIA was already negative; he had trusted the agency to be right, but it had been wrong. Last year’s U-2 situation had created a political storm, but before Powers was shot down the flights had at least confirmed that Khrushchev’s claims of Soviet missile superiority were so much hot air, and his recent stunt of putting a man into space changed nothing. REBUS had further confirmed that the Russian missile lead was so much air. But what intelligence success could be salvaged from the Bay of Pigs failure? Castro would retain power, fourteen hundred patriots would be lost, and the U.S. had demonstrated that it could not handle a two-bit dictator in its own backyard. N.F.G., Arizona told himself. No fucking good.

  114WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19, 1961, 11:20 P.M.Moscow

  The General Secretary had been raging all day at his aides, his secretary, Politburo members, and various messengers and officials of the KGB, GRU, armed services and the Foreign Ministry. Now his throat was raw, his voice hoarse, his temper frayed. It was not that they lacked information; the problem was that the sheer volume of it was overwhelming them. Despite this, Khrushchev had no coherent assessment of what had happened, much less what was at stake. Castro had cabled that he was facing an all-out American invasion, while American newspapers were reporting that the attackers were Cuban expatriates armed by the United States and trained in Central America. Soviet embassy people in Havana had no idea what was going on, yet they cabled every thirty minutes with a new message that said, in effect, “We are analyzing the situation.” Idiots!

  Despite his ignorance of the real situation, and though it was couched as a message of support to Castro, Khrushchev shot off a message to the American president. The Soviet Union was prepared to render all necessary assistance to Castro to help their gallant socialist brothers and sisters repel the invasion. Kennedy had quickly replied that the Soviet Union should stay out of it. Tough talk; was he prepared to follow through on the threat? There was no way to tell, which was why they had to meet. Face-to-face he would know once and for all if Kennedy had what it took to play on the world stage. Meanwhile he had to get this sorted out.

  There were some facts to go on, but they were disconnected, so the General Secretary ordered translations of American newspaper reports containing a number of related facts: unmarked B-26s had ineffectively attacked Cuban airfields; there had been landings in at least two locations by a force of one thousand to five thousand well-armed men; no tanks or artillery were involved; Castro had issued a statement claiming that the invaders had been stopped near the beach and that some of their boats had been sunk; he was rounding up political opponents in order to forestall a popular uprising.

  Khrushchev guessed that the reports from the American papers were close to the truth, but facts aside, what was Kennedy thinking of? In this regard he examined his own experiences. In Hungary he had smashed the uprising ruthlessly. History taught that if you were going to make a show of force for reasons of survival or as an instrument of foreign policy, there could be no limits. Strike suddenly, hit hard, crush the opposition before it can get organized. Hungarian students had been no match for Soviet tanks. One went all the way or did not go at all. Did the American president not understand this elemental strategic principle? In one month against Hitler’s invaders the Motherland had swallowed nearly two million casualties, but they had made the Germans pay an even higher price for every kilometer of ground gained. Anytime a trigger was pulled, the battle had to be to the death.

  It was unthinkable that the United States, with the most powerful military machine in history, could not swat Castro like a pesky sweat bee. Yet it seemed that the Americans had made what could only be viewed as a halfhearted, half-assed attempt to rid themselves of Cuban Communism. Why had Kennedy held bac
k? It was a critical question, his first chance to evaluate his new opponent. For long-term Soviet interests, specifics were not as important as an American leader’s motives. In this lay the clue to Kennedy, his motives the measure of his scrotum’s capacity: big balls, little ones or none at all. These events needed thorough, thoughtful assessment, not the sort of sniveling, undisciplined analysis that would trickle slowly out of the Foreign Ministry in the ensuing months.

  The General Secretary left his office at 10:00 P.M. and went to his flat on Granovskiy Street, a place he had only recently acquired and which had not yet been fully furnished. The building was only a ten-minute drive from the Kremlin and more convenient than the dacha, but for now it looked like an empty hall.

  Pogrebenoi, his acting chief security adviser, was gone without explanation and had left a muscular, bearded man in her place who objected vigorously to the General Secretary’s decision to go to the flat. “There can be no assurance of security there,” the man snapped at him.

  “I don’t want to hear what can’t be done,” Khrushchev countered. “People are forever telling me what can’t be done; I’m here and I intend to stay, so do your job.”

  The man was uncowed. “We were not aware of this place. It hasn’t been properly cleared.”

  “An oversight,” which was the truth.

  “Oversights are opportunities to be exploited by an enemy. The seams of life are its weak points.”

  “Don’t lecture me.”

  The man was persistent and outspoken. “We have a job. We can’t do it unless you cooperate. You want security, but then you run here and there like a perpetual motion machine.”