One minute to midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the brink of nuclear war (34 page)

The Cold War was an intelligence war. There were times and places when it was waged in the open, as in Korea and later in Vietnam, but for the most part, it was fought in the shadows. Since it was impossible to destroy the enemy without risking a nuclear exchange, Cold War strategists attempted instead to discover his capabilities, to probe for weakness. Military superiority could be transformed into political and diplomatic advantage. Information was power.

Occasionally, an incident took place that provided a glimpse behind the shadows of the intelligence war, as when the Soviets shot down the U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers over Siberia in May 1960. As a result of the shootdown, and the subsequent interrogation of Powers by the Soviets, American photographic intelligence capabilities, known as "Photint," were widely understood. But words like "Elint," "Comint," and "Sigint" remained jealously guarded national secrets. "Elint" was shorthand for "electronics intelligence," primarily the study of radar signals. "Comint" was the acronym for "communications intelligence" "Sigint" signified the broader field of signals intelligence. In addition to the
Oxford,
listening posts for gathering Comint and Elint included the naval bases at Guantanamo and Key West and Air Force RB-47 planes that patrolled the periphery of Cuba recording radar signals, Morse code messages, pilot chatter, and microwave transmissions.

The last few weeks had been alternately exciting and frustrating for the hundred or so professional eavesdroppers aboard the
Oxford,
a converted World War II Liberty ship. From their regular operations area adjacent to Havana, they had helped map the SAM missile sites strung out along the coast and overheard Soviet fighter pilots sending messages in rudimentary Spanish with thick Russian accents. But their eavesdropping capabilities had been much reduced by an order the previous weekend to pull the ship out to the middle of the Florida Straits, at least forty miles from Cuba. The decision had been taken for security reasons. Except for a couple of Thompson submachine guns and a half-dozen M-1 rifles, the
Oxford
was practically defenseless. The United States could not risk her capture. A window into Cuban decision making shut down just as the crisis was heating up.

The gloom was particularly intense in the forward part of the ship, home to R Branch, which specialized in high-frequency microwave transmissions and Morse code signals. The Cuban microwave network had been installed by an American company, Radio Corporation of America, during the Batista period. Armed with a complete map of the network and technical details of the transmissions facilities, the eavesdroppers on board the
Oxford
were able to record and analyze some tantalizing communications traffic. Among the circuits they succeeded in breaking at least partially were the Cuban secret police, the Cuban navy, the police, air defenses, and civil aviation. For the trick to work, the ship had to be stationed between microwave transmission towers in the Havana area. The quality of the intercept fell sharply whenever the
Oxford
pulled back more than a dozen miles from the Cuban coast.

Prior to October 22, the
Oxford
had been making lazy figures-of-eight along the coast, usually well within sight of El Morro Castle, Havana's most visible landmark from the sea. Traveling at around 5 knots, the vessel would steam eastward for sixty or seventy miles, then head back in the opposite direction, repeating the pattern over and over. The
Oxford
was officially described as a "a technical research ship," conducting studies on "radio wave propagation," in addition to gathering "oceanographic data." The Cubans were not deceived. They saw the towering antennae on the stern and aft decks and concluded that the
Oxford
was "a spy ship," whose primary purpose was to scoop up their communications. The Cuban military sent out messages warning of the dangers of "loose talk" over the phone.

The Cuban navy played a continuous cat-and-mouse game with the
Oxford.
On one occasion, it sent patrol boats to photograph the spy ship. On another, a Cuban gunboat approached within a few hundred yards. The Elint operators could hear the fire-control radar on the gunboat emitting a series of beeps in search of a target. When the radar locked on to the target--the
Oxford
herself--the beeps became a steady tone. Up on deck, the crew saw Cuban sailors aiming heavy guns in their direction. After staging its mock attack, the gunboat veered away.

Stripped of its World War II fittings, the
Oxford
functioned as a giant electronic ear. The signals captured by the communications masts were broken down and piped belowdecks, where they were analyzed by teams of electronics engineers and linguists. Each specialty had its own traditions and lingo. The Morse code experts, for example, were known as "diddy chasers" because they spent their working hours transcribing dots and dashes. It was the "diddy chasers" who demonstrated that the Soviets were assuming control of Cuban air defenses. On October 9, they picked up evidence that the grid tracking system used by the Cubans to locate aircraft was practically a carbon copy of a system previously used by the Soviets.

Even after the
Oxford
pulled back, it was still able to pick up Soviet radar signals from the Havana area. Analyzing the signals was the responsibility of T Branch--a small, eighteen-man department that occupied the aft part of the ship. Four men were usually on duty in the Receiver Room, scanning known radar frequencies and switching on their recorders whenever they heard anything interesting. The most valuable information came from the surface-to-air missile sites that formed a defensive ring around Cuba. Used to shoot down Gary Powers, the V-75 SAM missile was the weapon most feared by American pilots. It operated in conjunction with two radar systems: a tracking, or target acquisition, radar known to NATO as "Spoon Rest" and a fire control radar known as "Fruit Set." The Spoon Rest radar would be activated first. The Fruit Set radar would only be switched on if a target was in sight or the system was being tested.

The
Oxford
had first detected a Spoon Rest radar in Cuba on September 15. It was evidently just a test because the radar, west of Mariel, was soon switched off. On October 20, T-branchers picked up signals from a Fruit Set radar. This suggested that the SAM missiles were fully checked out and could be launched at any time. The development was so important that the head of the Navy's cryptological agency insisted on seeing the evidence himself. That night, the
Oxford
put into Key West for thirty minutes so that Admiral Thomas Kurtz could retrieve the tapes.

The next big breakthrough came shortly after midnight on Black Saturday. The
Oxford
had just begun her slow loop eastward. The spy ship was now seventy miles off the coast of Cuba, too far to pick up the microwave signals, but close enough to detect radar signals. At 12:38 a.m., T-branchers picked up the whoop of an air defense radar from a SAM site, just outside Mariel. They turned on their recorders and got out their stopwatches, measuring the interval between the buzzing sounds and consulting a bulky manual that contained the identifying characteristics of all known Soviet radar systems, including frequency, pulse width, and pulse repetition rate. The manual confirmed what they already suspected. It was a Spoon Rest radar.

This time, the Soviets did not turn the radar off, as they had done previously when they were only testing the system. Soon, the
Oxford
was picking up Spoon Rest signals from SAM sites at Havana East (the site visited by Castro on October 24) and Matanzas, in addition to Mariel. The radar systems at all three sites were still active nearly two hours later when the National Security Agency sent out its first flash report. Since the spy ship was moving slowly down the coast, the T-branchers were able to take multiple bearings on the source of the radar signals and establish the precise locations of the SAM sites.

The activation of the radar systems coincided with the discovery of a major change in the organization of Cuban air defenses. NSA analysts noticed that Cuban call signs, codes, and procedures were replaced by Soviet ones in the early hours of Saturday morning. Commands were issued in Russian rather than Spanish. It looked as if the Soviets had taken over and activated the entire air defense network. Only the low-level antiaircraft guns remained under Cuban control.

There was only one possible conclusion: the rules of engagement had suddenly changed. From now on, American planes flying over Cuba would be tracked and targeted.

2:00 A.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (11:00 A.M. BAIKONUR, KAZAKHSTAN)

Nine time zones to the east, it was already midmorning on the Soviet missile testing range at Baikonur, in the arid plains of southern Kazakhstan. Boris Chertok was late getting up. The rocket designer had been working for weeks preparing the Soviet Union's latest space spectacular, a probe to Mars. He had been awake most of the night, worrying about the project. One launch had already failed after a rocket engine misfired. A second attempt was planned for October 29.

When he got to the rocket assembly hall, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Heavily armed soldiers had taken over the building, and were carefully checking the identities of anyone entering and leaving. Nobody was paying any attention to the Mars rocket. Instead, engineers were swarming around an unwieldy five-engined monster previously covered with tarps. Nicknamed the
Semyorka--
"the little seven"--the R-7 had won worldwide fame as the rocket that launched Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin into orbit. But it was fast becoming obsolete. All that it was good for now was to deliver a 2.8-megaton nuclear warhead to wipe out New York, Chicago, or Washington. The Soviets had so few intercontinental ballistic missiles in service that they had to make use of every single rocket in the inventory, outdated or not.

The Mars probe was off, explained Anatoly Kirillov, commander of the Baikonur launch site, when Chertok finally caught up with him. Orders had arrived from Moscow to get a pair or reserve
Semyorka
s ready for launch. One missile had already been checked out, fueled, and mated with its warhead. It was standing on a launch pad at the other end of the cosmodrome. The second
Semyorka
would be ready to go as soon as the warhead was delivered from the special storage depot. When that happened, all civilian personnel would be "sent away," in case the rocket exploded on takeoff, as had happened before.

Chertok did a quick mental calculation. A 2.8-megaton weapon would destroy everything within a seven-mile radius of the blast, and spew radiation over a much larger area. There was nowhere safe to go near Baikonur. He had known Kirillov for many years and got on well with him, but he was disturbed by what was happening. He wanted to call Moscow and speak to someone in the leadership, even Khrushchev personally. The launch site director brushed him aside. It was impossible to reach Moscow on a regular phone. All communication lines were reserved for the military, in case the order came to go to war.

The rocket designer found himself wondering if his friend was ready to push the button, if ordered by Moscow. A nuclear conflict was going to be very different from the last war in which they had both fought.

"We aren't talking just about the death of a hundred thousand people from a specific nuclear warhead. This could be the beginning of the end for the entire human race. It's not the same as in the war, when you were commanding a battery and someone shouted 'Fire.'"

Kirillov thought about this for a moment.

"I am a soldier and I will fulfill my orders, just as I did at the front," he replied eventually. "Somewhere or other, there is another missile officer, not called Kirillov, but something like Smith, who is waiting for an order to attack Moscow or this very cosmodrome. So there is no need to poison my soul."

The Baikonur cosmodrome was just one island in a vast nuclear archipelago stretching across the Soviet Union. In the seventeen years since America exploded the world's first atomic bomb, the Soviets had made a frantic effort to catch up. Matching the United States nuclear weapon for nuclear weapon and missile for missile was the supreme national priority. The nuclear bomb, plus the ability to deliver it, was both the symbol and guarantor of the Soviet Union's superpower status. Everything else--the country's economic well-being, political freedoms, even the promised Communist future--took second place to the nuclear competition with the rival superpower.

In their pursuit of nuclear equality, Stalin and his successors had transformed large parts of the country into a military-industrial wasteland. The Soviet Union was dotted with top secret nuclear installations, from the uranium mines of Siberia to the nuclear testing grounds of Russia and Kazakhstan to the rocket factories of Ukraine and the Urals. But despite some impressive achievements, the Communist superpower remained a long way behind the capitalist superpower in both the number and the quality of deliverable nuclear weapons.

By Pentagon calculations, the Soviet Union possessed between 86 and 110 long-range ballistic missiles in October 1962, compared to 240 on the American side; in fact, the real figure on the Soviet side was 42. Six of these missiles were antiquated
Semyorka
s, which were so large and unwieldy that they had little military utility. Soaring 110 feet into the air, the R-7 relied on unstable liquid propellants. It took twenty hours to prepare for launch and could not be kept on alert for more than a day. Too bulky to be stored in underground silos, the
Semyorka
s were an easy target for an American attack.

The most effective long-range Soviet missile was the R-16, which used storable propellants. The slim, two-stage missile was designed by Mikhail Yangel, the inventor of the medium-range R-12 missile that had made its appearance in Cuba. Never has a missile system had a less auspicious beginning. The first R-16 to be tested, in October 1960, blew up on the launch pad at Baikonur, killing 126 engineers, scientists, and military leaders who had come to witness Yangel's moment of triumph over his rival, Sergei Korolev. The victims included the chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces, Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin. But the disaster was hushed up and the problems ironed out. The Soviet Union began to mass-produce the R-16 two years later. A total of thirty-six had been deployed by the time of the missile crisis and were on fifteen-minute alert. All but ten of these missiles were based in silos.