Fallout: Part 2

Gasa husked a coconut and used hand gestures to convey his idea.

Eighteen years later, still thin but no longer cadaverous, John Kennedy sat in the bathtub in his Washington home, soaking a back that had never fully healed, practicing the inaugural address he’d give in a few hours.

He’d worked through many drafts and revisions to get it just right—short and decisive, focused on the dangerous road ahead.

The walls were bare, freshly painted a drab green she knew her boss would hate.

He’d hit the snow and collapsed, arms and legs splayed at odd angles.

They also added a recording of a woman reading a recipe for borscht.

Two years before, Gagarin had been selected as one of two thousand candidates for a job that did not yet exist—cosmonaut, the Russian term for astronaut. They’d all been prodded and tested, examined inside and out, and given fiendishly difficult tasks such as solving math problems while wearing headphones through which a friendly voice whispered incorrect answers.

What about the loneliness a cosmonaut might feel in space? Could a human handle such utter isolation without going insane?

The cramped cabin had three small portholes, radio equipment, and instrument panels.

In their bombproof control bunker—protection against the very real possibility that the rocket would explode and land on them—Sergei Korolev and his team sat at consoles watching screens and gauges.

Batista’s soldiers sped to the scene, and the ensuing firefight reduced Castro’s force to twenty-one.

The U.S. government struck back by imposing a trade embargo on Cuba, blocking the sale of Cuban sugar in the United States—a devastating blow to Cuba’s economy.

The U.S. government struck back by imposing a trade embargo on Cuba, blocking the sale of Cuban sugar in the United States—a devastating blow to Cuba’s economy.

As the sun rose at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, hundreds of men fought through chest-high blue-green water, lugging guns and radios and cases of ammunition, stumbling on coral, facing a steady barrage of bullets as they struggled up to the beach.

Castro only had a few planes, but here they were at the worst possible time, unopposed, dropping low and strafing San Román’s men in the water and in their open landing crafts.

The brigade had captured a long beachhead. But how were they going to fight their way inland?

After dinner, an aide reminded Kennedy that it was time to dress for the White House’s congressional reception that evening. A formal gala was the last thing Kennedy was in the mood for, but twelve hundred guests were on their way.

In public, Kennedy accepted blame for the Bay of Pigs disaster. Privately, he seethed at what he saw as lousy advice from the CIA and military leaders.

Possibly, his offer was part of an elaborate Russian trick.

A voice began speaking in terribly garbled Russian.

Oleg Penkovsky came through customs carrying two large suitcases, flanked by the six other members of his delegation.

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.

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.

He was disillusioned with Soviet life, the lack of freedom, the constant fear.

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.

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 they made sure he wasn’t bothered.

West Berlin was essentially an island of freedom inside an oppressive police state.

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.

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.

In the Ministry of Defense building in Moscow, Oleg Penkovsky shut himself in a room of secret files.

“If a third world war breaks out, no ocean will protect America. It is very dangerous to play with fire in the age of hydrogen bombs and ballistic rockets.”

But almost immediately, the Berlin Wall began to backfire on Khrushchev.

“The United States and its allies are spinning the flywheel of their military machine ever faster,” charged the official Soviet statement, “fanning up the arms race to unprecedented scope, increasing the strength of armies, making the tension of the international situation red-hot.”

“Like twenty years ago,” the statement continued, “ominous clouds of war are once again overhanging the approaches to our motherland.”

In a secret lab in the Ural Mountains, the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov and his team devised a new kind of hydrogen bomb. They named it Big Ivan. Its yield, they calculated, would be in the range of one hundred megatons.

Khrushchev had hoped the Berlin Wall would be a symbol of Soviet strength. Instead, it became a stark symbol of what was at stake in the Cold War. When communists take over, they lock you behind a wall.

Kennedy had ordered the resumption of underground testing of H-bombs in September, and he wanted a better understanding of the dangers of fallout.

He poured a little sulfuric acid on the mortar between two bricks. Fifteen minutes later, he was able to work the tip of a screwdriver through the softened mortar.

Zigurd, in blatant violation of prison rules, was standing on a cabinet, looking down.

“You must be feeling rather tired,” he said. “Why don’t you rest for a few minutes in the hostess’s bedroom?”
A clever ploy to steal a moment alone? Or a trick to set her up, catch her in the act?