Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [72]
The men around the table leaned forward to the pictures.
“Are you sure? To me, uh, I dunno. Looks like it might be just the basement for a farm or something.”
“No, sir,” Lundahl said. “These rectangular objects here? These are medium-range ballistic missile trailers.”
“How do you know that? That these are for medium-range missiles?”
“From their length, Mr. President,” Graybeal said. “They are sixty-seven feet long, precisely the length of the Soviet MRBMs paraded through Moscow last May Day.”
“I see. And the range of these missiles?”
Graybeal said, “Launched from this site in Cuba, they’d come through the roof of this building thirteen minutes later.”
Bobby Kennedy whacked his bunched fist onto the table.
“Shit! Those sons a bitches Russians!”
“Are they ready to be fired?” JFK wanted to know.
“No, sir.”
Robert McNamara, the defense secretary, interrupted. “We have some reason to believe that the nuclear warheads are not yet present. And hence that they are not ready to fire.”
JFK looked to the CIA missile man. “Mr. Graybeal?”
“That is correct, Mr. President. Nuclear warheads require specialized storage facilities. We have no photographic evidence that these are in place.”
“So how long have we got? We can’t tell, can we, how long before they could be fired? Before they’re, uh, mated with the warheads?”
McNamara, a man with rimless spectacles and hair like thick black varnish, said, “No. But clearly we do have some time before these missiles are ready.”
General Maxwell Taylor growled, clearing his throat. Taylor was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — in other words, the supremo of the armed forces. He’d parachuted into Normandy during World War II and had fought in Korea. He wasn’t particularly fond of McNamara, whose previous job had been head of the Ford Motor Company. He wasn’t particularly fond of the Kennedys, either.
“I have to disagree, Mr. President. Time is what we do not have. The Soviets clearly have a lot in place. It’s not a question of waiting for extensive concrete launching pads or that sort of thing. They could hit us in days. Weeks, at most. We have to take these bases out now.”
“Can we do that with air strikes?”
“Not with one hundred percent certainty, sir, no.”
“I see. So, uh, let’s say we miss a couple of sites. Or leave them functional. Say, two or three Russian MRBMs still ready to fire. What, we lose Miami? Atlanta? Washington?”
Taylor, a soldier, was unhappy about discussing casualties. Especially civilian ones.
He said, “All this would be a preamble to the invasion of Cuba, obviously. We’d have to neutralize . . .”
“Yes,” JFK said. “And are we ready to invade Cuba, General?”
“Our plans are at an advanced stage, Mr. President.”
“That means no, I take it?”
“Yes, sir.”
A pause, then McNamara said, “I don’t know what kind of world we live in after we’ve struck Cuba.”
I’d like to think that the image of a globe of radioactive ash circling the sun might have flashed into the minds of those men at that moment. Maybe it did.
“Okay,” the president said, “we meet again at six thirty. In the meantime, we keep the lid on this thing. No one talks; everyone thinks. That clear?”
“Sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I will fulfill my scheduled engagements. I don’t want the press thinking that anything unusual is going on. General Taylor? Please confer with your Chiefs of Staff. By this evening, I want a realistic assessment of all military options, so far as that’s possible.”
The Kennedy brothers met outside the West Wing of the White House. Two men in sober suits among the white columns. The maples and birches dressed in rich autumnal colors. The sky impossibly blue. Elegant and beautiful things you could not dare risk or surrender. Lovely things suspended against the impending dark.
The Kennedys were young to be burdened with the fate of the world. Elected two years earlier at the age of forty-three, JFK was the youngest-ever president of the United States. Bobby, officially attorney general but in effect deputy president,