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

At one point early on, when the Russians had still been aboard the Tupolev jet, Harrigan—watching from the sidelines as the catastrophe unfolded—thought he detected a small, smug smile briefly purse Khrushchev’s thick lips, as the dictator peered from the plane’s window at the Americans below, running around like ants that had their colony disturbed.

Surely the Russians knew the specifications of U.S. commercial jets. Had they built their plane bigger on purpose? Was this a cunning chess move, designed to make the Americans start off the trip with a blunder?

Later, when an obviously embarrassed President Eisenhower asked Khrushchev to leave the huge Tupolev behind at the base, and offered one of the Air Force’s new 707s for the rest of the premier’s cross-country trip, Harrigan again could only wonder: Had that been Khrushchev’s plan all along? Just how much national security would be compromised in the name of hospitality?

Harrigan of course had been briefed extensively on Khrushchev at the State Department. There was no denying that this man—however much the roly-poly despot might seem a thug or peasant-risen-to-power—was a smart and formidable adversary. He’d have to be, to have survived the bloody purges of Stalin.

Now Harrigan had had a week to form his own opinion of the Russian ruler, and found him to be a complicated man, whose disposition could turn on a dime, like a big precocious child. Amusing and warm at one moment, Khrushchev was an erupting human earthquake the next: shrewd and ruthless, and about as subtle about his wants and needs as a sailor on a three-hour pass.

At the moment, however, Harrigan was not the least bit interested in the inner workings of Nikita Khrushchev’s mind and what made this bomb of a man tick; he was concerned— make that panic-stricken—over the perils of making it through the last leg of what he considered to have been an ill-advised trip in the first place … a trip that had only deteriorated further with each stop along the way.

While in New York, the premier infuriated the United Nations delegation—Chiang Kai-shek’s democratic Nationalist China had refused to attend—who had generously allowed him to give a speech before the General Assembly. The Russian guest had repaid this gracious gesture by delivering a tirade punctuated with bellicose blustering and outright threats.

Still, Harrigan had noted, there had been a suggestion that what Khrushchev wanted most was peace…

Khrushchev—surprisingly dapper in a blue serge suit with gray tie and gold stickpin, two medals on his lapel—had taken the U.N. podium with his personal interpreter at his side, a handsome if vaguely sinister-looking young man named Oleg Troyanovsky. As Khrushchev spoke in his native tongue, his voice grew sharper and louder. The interpreter was able to soften the premier’s inflection, but not his words, which warned of world destruction unless the cold war came to an end, and disarmament began.

“Over a period of four years,” Khrushchev suggested, “all states should effect complete disarmament and should no longer have any means of waging war. Military bases on foreign territories shall be abolished, all atomic and hydrogen bombs destroyed…”

The delegates had no argument with that. But how? Khrushchev never said.

Twice before—in 1927 and 1932—the Soviet Union had proposed total world disarmament of this kind, but on both occasions the rest of the world had recognized the proposal for what it was—a one-sided attempt to get every other nation to cast its armaments aside … while Russia refused adequate supervision to demonstrate that they were doing the same.

Khrushchev concluded his seventy-two minute speech by condemning the assembly for not allowing Mao Tse-tung’s Red China to join the United Nations. Nationalist China on Formosa, he told them, was all but dead, “a rotting corpse that should be carried out.” Delegates shifted uncomfortably in their seats, disgruntled murmurs rising among them.

After the media reported the speech, the mood of the general public—who previously had been guardedly polite toward the Russian leader in Washington and New York—began to shift ominously; and by Chicago, crowds had become downright hostile, as Khrushchev continued his lecturing on the evils of capitalism and of eminent Soviet domination.

There had been an electrified charge in the air as the motorcade whisked the premier along Chicago’s Michigan Avenue amid signs that read: fish and guests smell in 3 days!, go to the moon, leave us alone!, and Russian atrocities in Hungary must be answered! The lynch mob mood concerned Harrigan enough that he’d flown back to Washington that night to meet with his State Department boss, on whose shoulders rested the enormous responsibility of safeguarding Khrushchev.

For decades, the Secret Service had protected not only the president of the United States but any visiting dignitaries. Recently, however, a new security division had been formed in the State Department to handle the ever-increasing number of foreign guests; the world was growing smaller, it seemed, even as living on it grew more dangerous.

Many of these agents, Harrigan included, had been culled from the ranks of the Secret Service. Protecting Khrushchev was their first assignment. Harrigan wished they could have gotten their feet wet with a much smaller fish; but they were stuck instead with this big barracuda.

“I think we should cut the trip short,” Harrigan told Bill Larsen, his chief.

He and Larsen had known each other for over ten years, working the White House Detail together. They had both gone after the coveted top spot in the new division, but Bill—Harrigan’s senior officer by a few years—had landed the position, putting a strain on their friendship.

Seated behind the massive, cluttered mahogany desk in his executive office, Larsen—middle-aged, brown-haired, average, even undistinguished looking (always a plus in this work), wearing a rumpled Brooks Brothers suit and a twelve-hour stubble— gave Harrigan a hard stare.

A portrait of Eisenhower peered over the shoulder of Harrigan’s former colleague/new boss, as if Ike were curious to hear Harrigan’s thoughts, while an American flag stood at attention in the corner. A wall clock with the division seal