Bombshell by Max Collins (most life changing books .TXT) 📗

More recently Mao had set the Chinese to chanting, “Let a hundred flowers bloom!” What in hell did that mean? Perhaps this held significance to the Chinese, but not to any Russian. If it meant—as Nikita guessed—to encourage new and different ideas, to allow art and culture to “flower” in their own way … well, what sort of dangerous nonsense was that, for a true communist to spout?

Soon, however, it became clear that Nikita’s interpretation was exactly what Mao’s slogan meant; but its sinister purpose was not to allow tolerance in new thinking, rather to draw out these “different” flowers … the better for Mao to cut down, and trample in the dirt.

Clever, Nikita would have to admit; but how could he trust so ruthless a man? Hadn’t one Stalin been enough for one lifetime?

In recent years, the fissure between the two communist leaders had widened to a chasm. Intelligence indicated the Chinese dictator was furious about Khrushchev’s conciliatory trip to the United States; and Nikita in turn was becoming increasingly aggravated by Mao’s incessant pestering for the plans to the A-bomb.

Even the thought of it—China with the bomb! Mao with a button to put his pudgy finger on! Ahstahrohzhnuh! Comrades or not, the notion chilled Nikita. If he were ever foolish enough to comply with Mao’s request, it would be like the old Russian saying: “The fox kissed the hen—right down to her tail-feathers.”

When Nikita warned Mao of the responsibility of having such a weapon, and the retaliatory destruction waging such a war would bring, the Chinaman had only laughed.

“Even so,” the panda had said, “there would still be three hundred million Chinese left!”

A more dangerous man, Nikita had never met—Stalin included.

Rather than this deadly ally, the premier would far rather deal with his enemy, Eisenhower, any day of any year. The colorless American president, at least, said exactly what was on his mind—that is, once something had been placed there by that pompous bastard John Foster Dulles, who was always passing the president schoolgirl notes and whispering in his ear.

Last week, in Washington, Eisenhower had seemed tired to Nikita—almost ill of health; perhaps that was why the president hadn’t accompanied the premier on the cross-country tour. Whereas the war with Hitler had strengthened Nikita, it appeared to have taken a toll on the former warrior, “Ike.” Russian intelligence—not always reliable, but worth considering—had passed along information of a serious heart condition, which now appeared to be true.

If so, a healthy Nikita might be able to take advantage of a weakened Eisenhower at week’s end, when they were to meet at the fabled Camp David. No Russian had ever been invited to this “camp” before, and it struck the premier as a strange custom for world leaders to indulge in … maybe it was this American pioneer heritage they trumpeted so—Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone. Should they have brought their own sleeping cots, he wondered?

Nonetheless, despite their opposing positions, Nikita sensed the president was a genuine, decent man. At the close of World War II, as Berlin had been about to fall, the Americans—under the orders of General Eisenhower—halted their offensive, allowing the Russians to step forward and take the city. This was in recognition of the rivers of Soviet blood spilled at the hands of the Germans.

This show of generosity Nikita would never forget. Nor could he be sure he would have done so magnanimous a thing for the Americans, had their roles been reversed. And it gnawed at the back of Nikita’s brain, this incongruity—that these selfish decadent Americans could be possessed of such a large heart.

The limousine bearing Nikita and his family cruised along through a commercial section, where some storefronts looked shabby (even the Americans couldn’t hide everything) and pedestrians—women in cotton dresses and men in lightweight suits—occasionally glanced at the passing sedan, their faces perking expectantly.

“They think we must be movie stars,” Sergei said to his father with a little smile.

“And when they find we are not,” Nikita said, “you see their disappointment?”

Nikita folded his arms and snorted. Even if they were too ignorant to recognize the most powerful leader of the world— their precious “Ike” had fallen to second place behind him, since the launching of Sputnik, and recent rocket to the moon—the premier certainly must have looked like someone important in his expensive, tailored clothes (the best his government could buy from the Western world, for this trip—no Moscow haberdasher could have managed them).

A self-made man, born poor in Kalinovka, Nikita took care not to repeat a naive blunder he’d made six years ago when he attended the Geneva Summit—the first time he met with the leaders of the so-called “free” world: the United States, England, and France.

While the head men of the other three world powers each arrived in impressive new four-engine planes, he putt-putted in, in a beat-up two-engine Ilyushin, making himself look like the peasant he at heart still was—and putting the Russian contingent at an immediate psychological disadvantage.

When Nikita and then-Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin disembarked in their saggy, baggy summer cotton suits— Bulganin looking like a Model-T motorist in his long coat and goggles—and on the tarmac joined Eisenhower, Eden, and Faure (in their impeccable, expensive, tailored woolen suits), Nikita had felt a shame of station that he had never before experienced. He could see the veiled contempt in the eyes of the other world leaders—except perhaps the kind-visaged Eisenhower—and could almost read their minds: “Why should serious sophisticated men like ourselves pay any attention to such clownish country bumpkins?”

In his political life, Nikita had made his share of mistakes; but he never made the same one twice.

The limousine had been stopped at a red light and was beginning to slide on through the intersection when a tremendous thump shook Nikita’s side of the vehicle. Startled, everyone in the back of the sedan jumped, as a man—where had he come from?— threw himself against the car, plastering his face against the rear window, a dirty, hawkish countenance, long-haired, bearded,