Topaz - Leon Uris [120]
8
VASILI LEONOV TIED ON his falling pajama pants and examined himself in the bathroom mirror. He had a slight hangover from the night of partying. Americans were good sports. Leonov had enjoyed the give and take of ideological debate, the off-record inside jokes, and the lack of formality. Yes, Americans were extremely pleasant fellows.
Leonov opened the medicine cabinet and fished about for those wonderful American products. First a Bromo. He grimaced as he downed the fizzy stuff, smacked his lips together and reached for the aerosol spray can and lathered his face. A new stainless steel blade went into the razor. He scraped.
A knock on the door.
“Enter!”
Leonov’s male secretary stopped opposite the toilet bowl and cleared his throat.
“Well?”
“Comrade Leonov, I have just received a telephone call from the White House. The President has cancelled his meeting with you today.”
“Eh? What’s this all about?”
“It has just been announced that he is going to speak on television today.”
In the eternal gloom of the Soviet Embassy, Leonov, the Soviet Ambassador and Resident and a half-dozen of the top staff assembled before the television and watched with heart-pounding anticipation.
In the study of the American President, one of his female secretaries swiped at his unruly hair with a brush and comb an instant before the cameras focused.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.”
“Good evening, my fellow citizens. The government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere ....
“... capable of striking Washington, D.C., the Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City ....
“Additional sites, not yet completed, appear to be designed for intermediate-range ballistic missiles....
“ ... and thus capable of striking most of the major cities in the Western Hemisphere.
“... In addition, jet bombers, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, are now being uncrated and assembled in Cuba, while the necessary air bases are being prepared....”
Vasili Leonov grabbed the arms of his chair to hide his tremor. He dared not look right or left at his stunned and frightened colleagues. The American President now spoke with powerful righteousness, without threat. Yes, he was the silent cowboy who had been pushed too far and he was shooting for the heart. He continued on to denounce the Soviet Union’s deliberate lies in the Cuban deception and he flung the gauntlet down by saying that American courage and commitments should never be doubted by friend or foe.
“All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back ....
“... We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.
“... I call on Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace.... I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination .... He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction....”
In the Caribbean some two hundred warships of the United States Navy straddled the sea routes to Cuba as their patrol planes swept in search.
From underground bastions, maximum alerts were flashed to the far-flung American military bases.
B-47s with nuclear bombs dispersed from military airfields to civil airports to evade destruction in the event of a Soviet missile attack.
Fifteen dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles, enough to obliterate the cities and factories and military bases of the Soviet Union, were readied to fire from their silos.
Strategic Air Command put their B-52 bombers into an airborne alert. While part of them circled and waited for