Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [93]
Fidel Castro was not someone who spent much time on introspection. Had he been, he might have had to admit to himself that he was a lousy politician. What he was good at, though, very good at, was Heroism. The crisis fueled him. Thrilled him. He’d spent the past week in incessant motion, snatching only short periods of sleep in the back of his car or in his underground command post across the river from the Havana zoo. To his Cuban troops, he had spoken of “patriotism” and “dignidad”— dignity. Fidel was very big on dignity, which is what you die with. To the Russians, he had spoken of the defense of Communism and the revolution, and urged them to stay off the booze, of which they were very fond.
What was worrying him most, on Friday night, was Cuba’s vulnerability to American air attack. His own antiaircraft defenses were weak. The Russians had SAMs, surface-to-air missiles, but he didn’t have direct control over them. It seemed to him vital that the comrades not sit there twiddling their thumbs while the Yanqui bombs fell, waiting for instructions from Moscow. At two o’clock on Saturday morning, he sent a message to Aleksandr Alekseev, the Soviet ambassador to Cuba, telling him to expect a visit. Alekseev was a great admirer of Castro. But I bet he groaned when he was woken up. Castro could talk nonstop for hours. He could talk you to a standstill.
ONLY THE SPACEMAN Yuri Gagarin had flown farther from the surface of Earth than the pilots of the American U-2 spy planes.
More than twelve miles above the earth, U-2s cruised the half-dark margins of the atmosphere. They were defenseless, frail, terrifying things to fly. In order to soar to such heights, powered by a single engine, and stay there for many hours, they had to be extremely light. They had very long, fragile wings. Apart from the pilot, the plane’s heaviest component was the huge camera in its belly. U-2s were, essentially, gliders: gliders designed to reach the limits of the air. The pilot, in his inflated oxygen-fed pressure suit, jammed into the tiny cockpit, needed very good bladder and bowel control. And to be crazy, in a special sort of way.
Flying at such a prodigious height, U-2s could not be shot down by conventional antiaircraft weapons or enemy aircraft. The only thing that could reach them was a surface-to-air missile.
Early on Saturday, October 27, two U-2s took off from opposite extremities of the United States: one from Alaska, headed north, and one from Florida, headed south. Only one would return, and by the skin of its teeth.
As Ambassador Alekseev had feared, Fidel Castro kept him up for the rest of the night. Alekseev’s Spanish was good, but less than perfect. Every now and again he had to raise a weary hand to stop the Cuban leader while the translator caught up. During these pauses, Castro paced up and down the room, stroking his beard in a manner that might have been comical under other circumstances. What Castro wanted was to communicate with Khrushchev personally and urgently. Less clear was what, exactly, Castro wanted to say.
It was six in the morning before the text of Castro’s message was finally agreed upon. Fidel told Comrade Khrushchev that he expected the Americans to attack Cuba within the next twenty-four hours — at most, seventy-two. Massive bombing was almost certain. Full-scale invasion probable. The heroic people of Cuba would fight and die with dignidad, naturally. “But,” Castro added, “if the Americans carry out an attack on Cuba, a barbaric, illegal, and immoral act, then that would be the time to consider liquidating, forever, such a danger through a legal right of self-defense. However harsh and terrible such a decision might be, there is no alternative, in my opinion.”
In other words, Castro was asking the Russians to nuke the United States as soon as the Americans