President Kennedy had no strong feelings about race, always considering it as a purely political issue. Although he had not wanted to be photographed with Percy Marquand and Babe Lee, fearing it would lose him votes, George had seen him cheerfully shaking hands with black men and women, chatting and laughing, relaxed and comfortable. George had also been told that Kennedy attended parties where there were prostitutes of all colors, though he did not know whether those rumors were true.
But the president's callousness had shocked George. It was not the procedure she had undergone--though that was unpleasant enough--but the fact that she had been alone. The man who made her pregnant should have picked her up after the operation and driven her home and stayed with her until he was sure she was okay. A phone call was not enough. His being president was not a sufficient excuse. Jack Kennedy had fallen a long way in George's estimation.
Just as he was thinking about men who irresponsibly get girls pregnant, his own father walked in.
George was startled. Greg had never before visited this office.
"Hello, George," he said, and they shook hands just as if they were not father and son. Greg was wearing a rumpled suit made of a soft blue pinstripe fabric that looked as if it had some cashmere in the mix. If I could afford a suit like that, George thought, I'd keep it pressed. He often thought that when he looked at Greg.
George said: "This is unexpected. How are you?"
"I was just passing your door. Do you want to get a cup of coffee?"
They went to the cafeteria. Greg ordered tea and George got a bottle of Coke and a straw. As they sat down, George said: "Someone was asking after you the other day. A lady in the press office."
"What's her name?"
"Nell something. I'm trying to remember. Nelly Ford?"
"Nelly Fordham." Greg looked into the distance, his expression showing nostalgia for half-forgotten delights.
George was amused. "A girlfriend, evidently."
"More than that. We were engaged."
"But you didn't get married."
"She broke it off."
George hesitated. "This may be none of my business . . . but why?"
"Well . . . if you want to know the truth, she found out about you, and she said she didn't want to marry a man who already had a family."
George was fascinated. His father rarely opened up about those days.
Greg looked thoughtful. "Nelly was probably right," he said. "You and your mother were my family. But I couldn't marry your mom--couldn't have a career in politics and a black wife. So I chose the career. I can't say it's made me happy."
"You've never talked to me about this."
"I know. It's taken the threat of World War Three to make me tell you the truth. How do you think things are going, anyway?"
"Wait a minute. Was it ever really in the cards that you might marry Mom?"
"When I was fifteen I wanted to, more than anything else in the world. But my father made damn sure it didn't happen. I had another chance, a decade later, but at that point I was old enough to see what a crazy idea it was. Listen, mixed-race couples have a hard enough time of it now, in the sixties. Imagine what it would have been like in the forties. All three of us would probably have been miserable." He looked sad. "Besides, I didn't have the guts--and that's the truth. Now tell me about the crisis."
With an effort, George turned his mind to the Cuban missiles. "An hour ago I was beginning to believe we might get through this--but now the president has ordered the navy to intercept a Soviet ship tomorrow morning." He told Greg about the Marucla.
Greg said: "If she's genuine, there should be no problem."
"Correct. Our people will go aboard and look at the cargo, then give out some candy bars and leave."
"Candy?"
"Each interception vessel has been allocated two hundred dollars for 'people-to-people materials'--that means candy, magazines, and cheap cigarette lighters."
"God bless America. But . . ."
"But if the crew are Soviet military and the cargo is nuclear warheads, the ship probably won't stop when requested. Then the shooting starts."
"I better let you get back to saving the world."
They got up and left the cafeteria. In the hall they shook hands again. Greg said: "The reason I came by . . ."
George waited.
"We may all die this weekend, and before we do there's something I want you to know."
"Okay." George wondered what the hell was coming.
"You are the best thing that ever happened to me."
"Wow," George said quietly.
"I haven't been much of a father, and I wasn't kind to your mother, and . . . you know all that. But I'm proud of you, George. I don't deserve any credit, I know, but, my God, I'm proud." He had tears in his eyes.
George had had no idea Greg felt so strongly. He was stunned. He did not know what to say in response to such unexpected emotions. In the end he just said: "Thank you."
"Good-bye, George."
"Good-bye."
"God bless and keep you," said Greg, and he walked away.
*
Early Friday morning George went to the White House Situation Room.
President Kennedy had created this suite in the West Wing basement where previously there had been a bowling alley. Its ostensible purpose was to speed communications in a crisis. The truth was that Kennedy believed the military had kept information from him during the Bay of Pigs crisis, and he wanted to make sure they never got another chance to do that.
This morning the walls were covered with large-scale maps of Cuba and its sea approaches. The teletype machines chattered like cicadas on a warm night. Pentagon telegrams were copied here. The president could listen in to military communications. The quarantine operation was being run from a room in the Pentagon known as Navy Flag Plot, but radio conversations between that room and the ships could be overheard here.
The military hated the Situation Room.
George sat on an uncomfortable modern chair at a cheap dining table and listened. He was still mulling over last night's conversation with Greg. Had Greg expected George to throw his arms around him and cry: "Daddy!" Probably not. Greg seemed comfortable with his avuncular role. George had no wish to change that. At the age of twenty-six he could not suddenly start treating Greg like a regular father. All the same, George was kind of happy about what Greg had said. My father loves me, he thought; that can't be bad.
The USS Joseph P. Kennedy hailed the Marucla at dawn.
The Kennedy was a twenty-four-hundred-ton destroyer armed with eight missiles, an antisubmarine rocket launcher, six torpedo tubes, and twin five-inch gun mounts. It also had nuclear depth charge capability.
The Marucla immediately cut its engines, and George breathed easier.
The Kennedy lowered a boat and six men crossed to the Marucla. The sea was rough, but the crew of the Marucla obligingly threw a rope ladder over the side. All the same, the chop made it difficult to board. The officer in charge did not want to look ridiculous by falling in the water, but eventually he took a chance, leaped for the ladder, and boarded the ship. His men followed.
The Greek crew offered them coffee.
They were delighted to open the hatches for the Americans to inspect their cargo, which was pretty much what they had said. There was a tense moment when the Americans insisted on opening a crate labeled SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS, but it turned out to contain laboratory equipment no more sophisticated than what might be found in a high school.
The Americans left and the Marucla resumed course for Havana.
George reported the good news to Bobby Kennedy by phone, then hopped a cab.
He told the driver to take him to the corner of Fifth and K Streets, in one of the city's worst slum neighborhoods. Here, above a car showroom, was the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center. George wanted to understand this art and had asked for a special briefing, and since he worked for Bobby, he got it. He picked his way a
cross a sidewalk littered with beer bottles, entered the building, and passed through a security turnstile; then he was escorted to the fourth floor.
He was shown around by a gray-haired photointerpreter called Claud Henry who had learned his trade in the Second World War, analyzing aerial photographs of bomb damage from Germany.
Claud told George: "Yesterday the navy sent Crusader jets over Cuba, so we now have low-level photographs, much easier to read."
George did not find it so easy. To him the photos pinned up around Claud's room still looked like abstract art, meaningless shapes arranged in a random pattern. "This is a Soviet military base," Claud said, pointing at a photo.
"How do you know?"
"Here's a soccer pitch. Cuban soldiers don't play soccer. If it was a Cuban camp it would have a baseball diamond."
George nodded. Clever, he thought.
"Here's a row of T-54 tanks."
They just looked like dark squares to George.
"These tents are missile shelters," Claud said. "According to our tentologists."
"Tentologists?"
"Yes. I'm actually a cratologist. I wrote the CIA handbook on crates."
George smiled. "You're not kidding, are you."
"When the Soviets are shipping very large items such as fighter aircraft, they have to be carried on deck. They disguise them by putting them in crates. But we can usually work out the dimensions of the crate. And a MiG-15 comes in a different-size crate than a MiG-21."
"Tell me something," said George. "Do the Soviets have this kind of expertise?"
"We don't think so. Consider this. They shot down a U-2 plane, so they know we have high-altitude planes with cameras. Yet they thought they could send missiles to Cuba without us finding out. They were still denying the existence of the missiles until yesterday, when we showed them the photos. So, they know about the spy planes and they know about the cameras, but until now they didn't know we could see their missiles from the stratosphere. That leads me to think they're behind us in photointerpretation."
"That sounds right."
"But here's last night's big revelation." Claud pointed to an object with fins in one of the photos. "My boss will be briefing the president about this within the hour. It's thirty-five feet long. We call it a Frog, for Free Rocket over Ground. It's a short-range missile, intended for battlefield situations."
"So this will be used against American troops if we invade Cuba."
"Yes. And it's designed to carry a nuclear warhead."
"Oh, shit," said George.
"That's probably what President Kennedy is going to say," said Claud.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The radio was on in the kitchen of the house in Great Peter Street on Friday evening. All over the world, people were keeping their radios on, listening fearfully for news flashes.
It was a big kitchen, with a long scrubbed-pine table in the center. Jasper Murray was making toast and reading the newspapers. Lloyd and Daisy Williams got all the London papers and several Continental ones as well. Lloyd's main interest as a member of Parliament was foreign affairs, and had been ever since he fought in the Spanish Civil War. Jasper was scanning the pages for some reason to hope.
Tomorrow, Saturday, there would be a protest march in London, if London was still standing in the morning. Jasper would be there as a reporter for St. Julian's News, the student paper. Jasper did not really like doing news reports: he preferred features, longer, more reflective pieces, in which the writing could be a little more fancy. He hoped one day to work in magazines, or maybe even television.
But first he wanted to be editor of St. Julian's News. The post came with a small salary and a sabbatical year off studies. It was much coveted, as it practically guaranteed the student a good job in journalism after graduation. Jasper had applied but had been defeated by Sam Cakebread. The Cakebread name was famous in British journalism: Sam's father was assistant editor of The Times and his uncle was a much-loved radio commentator. He had a younger sister at St. Julian's College who had interned with Vogue magazine. Jasper suspected that it was Sam's name, not his ability, that had won him the job.
But ability was never enough in Britain. Jasper's grandfather had been a general, and his father had been on course for a similar career, until he made the mistake of marrying a Jewish girl, and in consequence had never been promoted above the rank of colonel. The British establishment never forgave people who broke their rules. Jasper had heard it was different in the United States.
Evie Williams was in the kitchen with Jasper, sitting at the table, making a placard that read HANDS OFF CUBA.
Evie no longer had a schoolgirl crush on Jasper. He was relieved. She was sixteen now, and beautiful in a pale, ethereal way; but she was too solemn and intense for his taste. Anyone who dated her would have to share her passionate commitment to a wide range of campaigns against cruelty and injustice, from apartheid in South Africa to experiments on animals. Jasper had no commitment to anything, and anyway he preferred girls like the impish Beep Dewar, who even at the age of thirteen had put her tongue in his mouth and rubbed herself against his erection.
As Jasper watched, Evie inscribed, inside the O of OFF, the four-branched symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Jasper said: "So your slogan supports two idealistic causes for the price of one!"
"There's nothing idealistic about it," she said sharply. "If war breaks out tonight, do you know what the first target of Soviet nuclear bombs will be? Britain. That's because we have nuclear weapons, which they need to eliminate before they attack the United States. They won't be bombing Norway, or Portugal, or any country that has the sense to stay out of the nuclear competition. Anyone who thinks logically about the defense of our country knows that nuclear weapons don't protect us--they put us in danger."
Jasper had not intended his remark to be taken seriously, but Evie took everything seriously.
Evie's fourteen-year-old brother, Dave, was also at the table, making miniature Cuban flags. He had used a stencil to paint the stripes onto sheets of heavy paper, and now he was attaching the sheets to small sticks of plywood with a borrowed staple gun. Jasper resented Dave's privileged life, with wealthy, easygoing parents, but he worked hard to be friendly. "How many are you making?" he asked.
Dave said: "Three hundred and sixty."
"Not a random number, presumably."
"If we don't all get killed by bombs tonight, I'm going to sell them at the demonstration tomorrow for sixpence each. Three hundred and sixty sixpences are one hundred and eighty shillings, or nine pounds, which is the price of the guitar amplifier I want to buy."
Dave had a nose for business. Jasper remembered his soft drinks stall at the school play, staffed by teenage boys who worked at top speed because Dave was paying them a commission. But Dave did badly at his lessons, coming at or near the bottom of the class in all academic subjects. It drove his father wild, for in other respects Dave seemed bright. Lloyd accused Dave of laziness, but Jasper thought it was more complicated. Dave had trouble making sense of anything written down. His own writing was dire, full of spelling mistakes and even reversed letters. It reminded Jasper of his best friend at school, who had been incapable of singing the school song, and found it hard to hear the difference between his one-note drone and the melody the other boys were singing. Likewise, Dave had to make an effort of concentration to see the difference between the letters d and b. He longed to fulfill the expectations of his high-achieving parents, but always fell short.
As he stapled his sixpenny flags together, his mind evidently wandered, for apropos of nothing he said: "Your mother and mine can't have had much in common when they first met."
"No," said Jasper. "Daisy Peshkov was the child of a Russian-American gangster. Eva Rothmann was a doctor's daughter from a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin, sent to America to escape the Nazis. Your mother took my mother in."
Evie, who had been named after Eva, said: "My mother just has a big heart."
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Jasper said half to himself: "I wish someone would send me to America."
"Why don't you just go?" said Evie. "You could tell them to leave the Cuban people alone."
Jasper did not care a damn about the Cubans. "I can't afford it." Even living rent-free he was too broke to buy a ticket to the United States.
At that moment the woman with the big heart walked into the room. Daisy Williams at forty-six was still attractive, with big blue eyes and fair curls: when she was young she must have been irresistible, Jasper thought. Tonight she was dressed modestly, in a midblue skirt with matching jacket and no jewelry; hiding her wealth, Jasper thought sardonically, the better to play the part of a politician's wife. Her figure was still trim, though not as slim as it used to be. Picturing her naked, he thought she would be better in bed than her daughter, Evie. Daisy would be like Beep, ready for anything. He was surprised to catch himself in such a fantasy about someone his mother's age. It was a good thing women could not read men's minds.
"What a nice picture," she said fondly. "Three kids working quietly." She still had a distinctive American accent, though its edges had been worn smooth by her living in London for a quarter of a century. She looked with surprise at Dave's flags. "You don't often take an interest in world affairs."
"I'm going to sell them for sixpence each."
"I might have guessed your efforts had nothing to do with world peace."
"I leave world peace to Evie."
Evie said with spirit: "Someone has to worry about it. We could all be dead before this march begins, you know--just because Americans are such hypocrites."
Jasper looked at Daisy, but she was not offended. She was used to her daughter's abrasive ethical pronouncements. Mildly, she said: "I guess Americans have been badly scared by the missiles in Cuba."
"Then they should imagine how other people feel, and take their missiles out of Turkey."
"I think you're right, and it was a mistake for President Kennedy to put them there. All the same, there's a difference. Here in Europe we're used to having missiles pointed at us--on both sides of the Iron Curtain. But when Khrushchev secretly sent missiles to Cuba he made a shocking change in the status quo."
"Justice is justice."
"And practical politics is something else. But look how history repeats itself. My son is like my father, always alert for an opportunity to make a few bucks, even on the brink of World War Three. My daughter is like my Bolshevik uncle Grigori, determined to change the world."